[Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] do uh the uh study session of the aurora city council for monday february 7 2022 is called order with the clerk please read the rule mayor kaufman mayor pro tim bergen here councilmember coombs president councilmember gardner here councilmember jorinsky here councilmember lawson sir council member marcano president council member medina here council member president councilmember sundberg council members of onik council members of anik here there's a quorum uh announcement of the public call-in line thank you for joining tonight 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 city council welcomes comments at regular council meetings on both matters appearing on the agenda and during public invited to be heard the phone line opens to sign up on those evenings at 6 pm is there a spanish version no mayor just the english version uh very well matthew snyder is the first individual up to be interviewed for the civil service commission and he is on the call right now and ready to be interviewed mayor very well okay um uh matthew thank you so much for your interest in being on the civil service commission uh you will have two minutes uh to introduce yourself and explain why you were interested in serving on the commission thank you mr mayor i have lived in aurora since 2011. i moved here from texas but i'm originally from new york uh i came here you know because i have family in the area when i relocated here the you know i had sold my business down in texas and retired um and came up here to basically be closer to my kids and uh and grandchild and wherever i am i try to find a way to serve my community and i think i have a unique background for this particular position in that i used to be a new york city auxiliary police officer and i think i bring that experience the entire range of that experience would be very useful in serving on this commission uh thank you very much um uh mayor patem you have the first question thank you mayor and thank you mr schneider for applying i know we interviewed you back in november so thank you for being here again so my question is that the commission is responsible for conducting hearings on discipline appeal appeals that are filed by the police officers or firefighters and so the commission's authorized to confirm reverse or modify a disciplinary order do you have any experience with this type of proceedings and then also do you believe you could be objective in handling such matters yes i uh but yes to both um in the first place uh back in my i owned my own company and i have 35 employees and so i had to go through hiring and occasional termination and retention interviews things like that but my my biggest experience for this comes from when i worked for ltv corporation which at one point in time was the 50th largest corporation in the world and i was in charge of the benefits and compensation department and i had a 160 employees directly under my responsibility i had five executive officers in charge of each division and employees under that and then i was also responsible uh you know the final responsibility for the benefits and compensation uh decisions of 55 000 participants that being said i've done and conducted hiring and termination interviews and i have also heard and ruled on decisions about uh when a director of those divisions would make a termination decision if there was an appeal that came to me and i was the final authority on that so i do have a lot of experience with that and i think i'd be very useful here thank you very much i'm sorry i forgot to tell you what you were within your time frame uh the you have two minutes to answer each question councilmember thank you mayor and thank you matt for joining us um again thank you and my question actually is the same as last time so i suppose you have the benefit of interviewing a second time which is given the consent decree there are likely to be significant changes to the operations of the civil service commission how will you adjust to changes that may be made well thank you for asking that same question again appreciate that um and i've had like you said the benefit of thinking about that um this is going to be a painful time for the city and its civil service employees um i i think i have not read the entire consent degree what i have read is what's been available to the general public um and it does require significant changes and i think what i can bring to this is a fairness of mind and a fairness of decision making in order for the public to have confidence that its civil service employees are going to do right by them everything needs to be you know transparent and above board and um and easily understood and in order for the civil service employees to feel like they are being heard the whole process has to be clear and concise and what i'm going to be looking for is that the administration and implementation of the consensus decree follows those two general principles that it's clear concise clear and concise and on its face is fair and even-handed because you you just can't have you know you just can't have confidence um either by the civil service employees or the public unless it is that way so that's what i'm going to be looking for and that's what i'm going to look to implement in this consent degree it's very wide ranging it's going to require a lot of cooperation between the city you know and the attorney general's it won't be without pain but it can be made to be as smooth as possible thank you customer gardener thank you mayor um hi matt thanks for being here again um so my question is can you give me one thing um one something unique about you that you might bring to the civil service commission that another candidate might not well as i said at the beginning in my introduction i was a new york city executive police officer and i i'm not sure if any of the other candidates bring uh you know policing experience but um you know i've had that i spent two years on the force um and in addition to going through the academy so uh that's something that i'm not sure if the other candidates have it gives me a an empathy uh and a respect for the civil service employees whether they be police or fire because it's a rigorous entry program either way the other thing is when i was up when i first got up to colorado i spent a year working for the fire and police pension association over in greenwood village and i got to talk to an awful lot of officers um you know either fire officers or police officers and i got the benefit of hearing their feedback or what their experience is in working in you know civil service in colorado so i i think i have a wealth of information and personal experience and what it's like to actually be a police officer to be able to again fairly and equitably interact with the officers and develop policies and procedures that would apply to them councilmember jorensky hi matt thank you so much for applying i want to know do you think that um do you think that ever there's opportunities for police officers to be rehabilitated course of course it's not a trick question i just wanted to you know that's all i wanted no i absolutely um you know we we've got you know uh if i can weigh in you know just briefly we've got a lot of issues that we have to confront and you know it's it's really easy to be on one side of the issue or the other when it comes to police action and discipline but they're very seldom is there one point of failure in any type of system and so there's a lot going on when it comes to training and discipline and rehabilitation and we would be really remiss in our duty to the public servants who you know come to work for the city of aurora if we didn't give him an opportunity after they made a mistake to make it right thank you councilwoman matt thank you for applying and welcome my question to you is the commission creates and maintains a set of rules and regulations outlining police and fire hiring and promotion procedures could you give some examples where you have been involved in writing policy creating and coordinating policy sure well within my own company i did that as i built it up over the years and i can tell you from personal experience that writing a uh personnel and manual is not the easiest thing in the world to do and when i was at ltv corporation i had to do that as well for an entire division of the company we had to fit within the general framework of all of the human resources uh policies and procedures but we had specific procedures within the benefits department and that had to do a lot with privacy because we're always dealing with personal information uh within the hr the benefits department uh and so we had to write extensive privacy rules and regulations and then prior to that um before i became the benefits manager of ltv i worked as an employee benefits paralegal and so i was working with law firms that actually wrote manuals you know practice and procedure manuals that we did for other other firms and i had a lot to do with that too so uh yeah i have a lot of experience doing that and you know i never really thought i would be doing that again but i think i could draw on that experience pretty well um council member mcconnell thank you mayor and thank you matt for joining us once again um my question for you is a little different from last time uh previous previous civil service commissions have overturned discipline from the chief on issues ranging from intoxication on the job to using racial epithets on the job if a similar situation came before you how would you handle those two scenarios and please explain your rationale well one of the things in my background is um i am an ordained united methodist pastor and i do not i'm currently not serving in a church obviously but um i have uh theo theological training from bright divinity school i've spent the better part of my life being involved in social justice issues uh from a faith standpoint and i don't like i don't tolerate i don't put up with any form of racism period full stop um i have read some of the commentary about some of the decisions the reversals uh and you know in in all honesty you know i don't have all the facts but the way sometimes it presents at the media it's it's rather incendiary so there's lots of things that go on behind the scenes and lots of information behind the scenes that's not available to the public so i hesitate to to comment on that but i i want to assure you that the last thing i will tolerate is racism in any form simply because that as as a matter of faith and as a matter of ethics it's just wrong period and full stop that's it so i mean i hope that is sufficient uh in two minutes all right thank you matt uh council member uh medina thank you mayor uh thank you mr snyder for interviewing uh my question is kind of similar it's uh would you uphold terminations involving those who disparage and demean the very people they swear an oath to serve and protect you what is your process on that your thoughts on that well you know following up on my prior answer thanks thanks for a dovetail question uh following up on that that the likelihood would i uphold the termination is if that was the salient fact that that the the officer involved uh had demonstrated repeatedly you know contempt for people of color or contempt for anybody for that matter but specifically for people of color i don't think i would ever overturn a termination like that because that says to me that this person's values don't comport with the city of auroras which is to be inclusive which is to be respectful of everybody that's here you know i don't think i would go against a termination if that person that officer displayed such contempt for other people you know it doesn't comport with my own values so i wouldn't want that person you know being out there representing me or the city of aurora because that's just not right thank you yes sir um council member mario thanks mayor uh let me just make sure my audio is working can you hear me okay yes ma'am yes yes okay thanks thanks for the support on that uh hi matt uh thanks for applying once again um my question to you um is how would you overcome implicit bias in your decision-making process as a commissioner well all of us bring baggage to decision making um the sum of our experience the sum of our learning um and the the thing that i try to do is you know check in with myself and say you know i understand that there's lots that i don't see just because when i look in the mirror you know what's staring back you know is an old white guy and i have to [Music] i have to consciously think about what i am doing and what i am missing when i evaluate facts in a situation that's what i do for myself when i'm faced with the decision um it doesn't mean that i totally eliminate the bias that i have but i i at least actively try to overcome it and deal with it in an honest way knowing that you know there's always something i'm gonna miss let's see um council member sunberg hi matt for being here my question refers to hiring do you believe the hiring process should remain in effect as it is now for example i've heard from some officers that it takes too long and we might lose good candidates as a result of that yet we do have to be selective so are there any changes that you might make well what i would have to do is uh it was really hard to get on the new york city police department when i applied all those many years ago that took almost the full year of interviews and uh processing and all of that so i don't think our process takes quite that long um but we're at a really precarious place right now as a city because we're under a consent decree we have citizens that don't have any faith in the police department we have police that feel disaffected uh and demoralized you know we we have a double-edged problem right now i don't know how long the process takes right now but what i would say to you is i will look at what it how long it takes and everything that's involved based upon my experience based upon the wisdom and experience of the current commission members and you know i have friends who are police officers as well i i take that input and evaluate what that process is and see sincerely whether it requires modification but i don't want to shortcut anything if it takes four to five months to make you know take somebody from a lateral move from another department or it you know takes that long to clear somebody uh who just has a post commission you know and and the other commission members say it really does take this long to do this um i i think i would stick with that but i'm open sincerely to looking at anything that will make the process better without diminishing the quality of the candidates council members of honor thank you mayor thanks matt for applying um you've had an opportunity now to kind of dig into this commission and understand it's its roles and responsibilities are there any processes as you've done this especially given your business background and experience in law enforcement that you've looked at and said you know if i were on the commission these are the types of or these are changes or potentially types of changes that i would want to push for well i have not read every word of the commission's you know rules and regulations and policies and procedures and because i've been in business because i've run a big company because i ran a huge division of a fortune 50 company the first thing i always do whenever i get into a new situation is i keep my mouth shut and i read and i learn what's there i try and learn the history of why something is in place before i make a recommendation of how changing stuff because the old saying is fools rush in where angels fear to tread no i am not prepared to change something that i don't know that's broken you know it's kind of the same answer that i just just gave to councilmember sunberg is you know don't change something before you know it it's broken i am sure because of the existing problems that we have as a city with uh the civil service uh civil servants that there are changes that probably have to be made both in policy and procedure but i can't give an intelligent answer about which particular thing needs to be changed at this point i don't want to lie to you i appreciate that thank you um uh mr schneider you have uh one minute for closing comments well thank you i appreciate your time um i appreciate you know the opportunity to interview again um i hope this time that my answers have been clearer and more complete and reassure you that i would bring valuable knowledge and experience to this commission i simply want to serve my city in whatever way i possibly can again i think i i can do this particular job uh very effectively and and serve the city faithfully and i hope you give me that opportunity thank you very much i really appreciate uh your time tonight and i appreciate your interest in the civil service commission thank you sir uh next next up we'll be bobbing feelings okay if we could just have one minute to get her logged in okay okay you mayor herbert green is actually on the call right now we're having some technical difficulties with barbara so if you want to start with him we'll switch the interview times okay um herbert herbert uh thank you so much for applying uh for the civil service commission and uh for your interest uh in serving our city uh you will have um two minutes uh for introductory remarks to say why you're interested in the commission and then you'll begin you'll have 10 questions and you'll have two minutes to answer each question please proceed my name is herbert greene i've lived in aurora since 1979 so i've watched the city grow and change over the years and the constant that's always been there is a high quality of people that work for the city of aurora over the years like all citizens i've had to deal with various departments in aurora and that people have always been polite knowledgeable and friendly to work with for myself i'm a retired registered nurse i was an air force officer as a nurse uh most of my career was spent in surgery so dealing with people under very stressful conditions was the normal not the abnormal dealing with uh people who are stressed out by whole thought of surgery which is normal and the hardest was dealing with parents you're taking their most precious gift back to surgery and you have to help them understand and become comfortable the fact you have the most precious thing in their life and you're going to take the best care of that person as much as they would care for them so dealing with people stressed out and not in the best of circumstances is normal providing service that's what all nurses do that's the core of our belief in serving and i expect anybody who works for the city of aurora will be dedicated to serving this city and its citizen and that's only two minutes i know it's less than that but it pretty much makes who i am thank you uh mayor protemberger for the first question thank you mayor and thank you mr greene for applying for the commission the commission is responsible for conducting hearings on discipline appeals that are filed by police officers and firefighters the commission is authorized to confirm reverse or modify the disciplinary order do you have any experience in this type of proceedings and then could you um also be objective in dealing with such matters as an air force officer i had to deal with what's called article 15 which is non-judicial punishment of military members under my command so i'm very familiar with dealing with the legalities and listening to all the facts and making a call on that as a nurse uh i've had to deal with police officers some who don't understand the surgical process and we had to explain to them that no carrying a gun into the or is not an appropriate scenario that the patient is going to be totally asleep and not moving you can stand outside the door and as soon as they're awake i'll be happy to have you come in but they will be secured to the bed you can watch that happen so i'm used to dealing with that as far as being objective i think everybody deserves a fair chance to explain why something happened what caused them to do that and to try to understand that and i have to having been on both sides of the table management and a worker bee i understand both sides of the situation and sometimes things happen and people don't get the fair shake and they deserve it other times when they've been told what you did is wrong and untenable you just say yes that's wrong and untenable and does not represent what aurora stands for and to me it's very important that anybody represents aurora provide everybody with the best light of what aurora is a great community thank you very much uh councilmember combs yes thank you herbert for joining us and for applying for the commission um my question is given the consent decree that has been agreed to by the city uh with the attorney general's office there are likely to be significant changes to how the civil service commission operates how will you approach um adapting to those changes reason there's a percent decree is because aurora's head problem and there needs to be change happen to me change is good and as a civil service commission we need to look at what they're offering and accept it and adopt it and go forward with it trying to fight it is ridiculous we want to make a better city and i think the consent degree is all about us becoming a better city and better represented by our police force and farther apartments on the street so i have no problem with dealing with whatever they ask for the issue is how do we incorporate it into how the civil service commission works and make it applicable thank you um customer gardener thank you for your application for being here tonight uh my question is what is what is something unique about you a skill set that you would bring to the commission that another applicant might not nurses have a core value and every nurse is taught this in nursing school and does with that their entire career and that is we put our patients first over and above everything else i bring that value to the commission that people are important that no matter what we're doing person we're dealing with is a human being and deserves to be treated with respect to be listened to and to have fair judgment made upon whatever it is the first day of my school many many years ago the director of nursing gave us two mantras to live by i created my whole career and my career has been on those mantras the first one was don't do anything you wouldn't do for your mother if you do that you'll always make the right choice and the second was if you can't explain to 12 people who know nothing about medicine what you did you probably shouldn't be doing it and i think anybody who is in the public view needs to look at those values as ways to interact with our citizens would you treat your mother this way can you explain to 12 people why you did this and why it was right if you can't answer those yes then you probably shouldn't be doing it uh council members jorensky yes hi herbert i would like to know do you believe that officers can be rehabilitated ma'am if we take off the table the fact that people cannot change how they do life then it's a sad scenario that i don't want to be part of every human being should be offered the opportunity you've made a mistake you've done things bad or you have some wrong thinking and with proper therapy and intervention you can come back to being a useful citizen and a valuable member of the of the city of aurora so i don't think anybody is a lost cause it's when they've come to the point that they've done something so egregious and they're not very willing to face it that then we have to deal with the fact they're not willing to be a part of our city and share its values but a lot of people when they're faced with the fact that yeah i was wrong and i did something wrong or maybe my thinking about it was wrong but given their opportunity interventions and they show a willingness to do that i have no problem with that i think it's wonderful nobody is a lost cause in this world nobody it's only a loss cause if we let it be councilmember lawson mr green thank you for your for applying for the commission thank you for your military service and also your service to the community as well my question for you is the commission creates and maintains a set of rules and regulations outlining the police and fire hiring and promotion procedures could you give some examples where you have been involved in writing policy creating and coordinating policy that's a routine thing that happens with nurses all the time uh working in surgery i was ahead of many departments over the years ent open heart plastics ophthalmology dealt with training people and saying some people who were qualified writing contracts for materials deriving policies to make sure everybody understood their roles and what had to be done in that department and asking they're answering their questions and taking their input saying oh well herb would this be a better way of doing it and say let's take a look at that i believe firmly that if you don't listen to the people working for you you lose out on great opportunities and changes that may make things better i don't have all the answers nobody does if you work with the people you're working with you get great results every time i'm a big collaborator i don't know everything but i'm willing to listen and take that advice and say okay this is an idea we have here let's look at it let's see if it works if it does we incorporate it that's the hallmark of anybody who wants to work in a group you've got to listen to everybody take their input and be open to it you don't know how many they have the answers i don't i don't counselor mccarl thank you mayor and thank you mr green for your interest in serving our city uh my question for you is uh previous civil service commissions have overturned discipline from chiefs on issues ranging from intoxication on the job to using racial epithets on the job if a similar situation came before you how would you handle those two scenarios and please explain your rationale everybody is responsible for their actions we have one of the most diverse cities in the entire state of colorado i love that the reason i live here still my neighborhood's very diverse i love that uh intoxication i'll give you two ways it can go if a police officer comes to his boss and says look i got a problem and i want help that officer should get all the help he needs and all the rehabilitation he needs no questions asked when officers pulled out of his car intoxicated with a loaded gun in the car that is not something negotiable that's a hazard to society and he needs to be off the force that's the difference if you had to come forward said look i got a problem anybody then the city should work with that person to help the problem but when you get caught red-handed that's too late i'm sorry we have a duty to protect our citizens that's possible people representing the city of aurora all right councilman medina thank you so much thank you mr green uh for a plane and thank you mayor uh my question is would you uphold terminations involving those who disparage and demean the very people they swear an oath to serve and protect what is your thought process on that as i said earlier i don't think anybody is beyond rehabilitation but if their core values are that and they're unwilling to change their core values and they can disparage our citizens then they do not have a position in the city of aurora they're representing our city and our citizens and we have an incredibly diverse citizenry and they all deserve respect and treatment as if you would treat your own mother as i said earlier so if they're unwilling to see their faults and work with us with whatever rehab we can provide them then they don't belong in representing the city of aurora that's a core value you know i don't want i don't want me to treat it that way i don't want any of my neighbors treated that way and it comes back to what i was taught in nursing school you can't watch everybody like your mother always make the right choice and do the right thing thank you councilman council member mario thank you mayor and thank you robert for taking the time to interview my question is how would you overcome implicit bias in the decision-making process as a commissioner bias is a problem throughout our society everybody likes to point the finger at a particular department or a particular city but it's pandemic across the country well we have to step up to the plate and part of that is educating our workforce and our people not hiring people who associate with groups or even a lot of the associated with groups anybody associating with proud boys pardon me does not belong in the city of aurora government they're violent and they're racist anybody in the three percenters same thing so why would we allow a police officer or a fireman who's members of those groups to be part of the city of aurora and represent us we have to draw the line somewhere and the city of aurora is a great city celebration 79. it's diverse it's wonderful i love this place but we need to have continue our great city by having people who represent the city on the front lines respect and honor all of our citizens and not be part of groups that advocate violence or racism should not be part of any of our departments anywhere uh councilmember sunberg herbert thank you for being here sir uh this relates to hiring in the hiring process within the agency and the committee do you believe the hiring process should remain in effect as it is now some say it might take too long where we could lose excellent candidates along the way and is there anything you might change with it you know there's problems in the hiring process we've had officers who've been hired who should never have been hired i think when you're hiring a police officer you're hiring a person with the right to pull a gun and kill people it's a very high level of responsibility and you need a very careful background check some business at least in the press that has not been done and i also have to say our current police chief seems to be working very hard to make our force more friendly to the citizenry and weeding out the bad cases it's a long process it is but you know i get hired somewhere i'll tell you right now uh you get background checks fingerprinting checking your nursing license checking all the nursing licenses you ever held uh yeah you don't walk in and two days later get working any place with a high level responsibility has a high level of regard to making sure they're hiring the right people the right qualification to be in that position and you can't ask for a more high risk job than a police officer or a fireman and you really got to know who you're hiring so it may take a little longer and yes you may lose a qualified candidate but you also may lose three that are not qualified because you find out well they have domestic violence issues in the past do you want domestic violence on our police force i don't think so that means they got a temper problem but yes that's where i believe the council members of yeah thanks mayor um thanks for applying so you had mentioned um in a response to council member mario that bias is everywhere and that it's a pandemic so what biases do you have and how do you think that they might impact you as you take on this role in the commission i come from a very solid old-fashioned midwest grazing solid core values i really have very little tolerance to lying i have very little tolerance to domestic violence i think both of those things are awful i absolutely have an incredibly low tolerance anything dealing with child abuse usage and those color my thing and i do not tolerate them i i will stand up and i will be very verbal about it now my personal thing is i'm i like to think things through if you think about anything about me would be if i get really angry i know i got a temper at times the rule i take is wait 24 hours before i say anything let me think it through why am i mad and what does it mean and 24 hours later i'm still upset about it how do i address it in a productive way instead of just reacting and yelling so that's my core values thank you um disagreeing you now have one minute for concluding remarks i think i offer a lot to the companies i also understand there's probably a lot of candidates who are equally or better qualified than i am on paper but i'm also a great believer that the person is the most important thing i have watched people grow and develop change over the years and if i can be personal about this mr kaufman i have watched your career over the years i watch how you developed and changed to represent the people you're supposed to and i know some people were upset by that i respected it i respect every elected official who moves and changes with the facts and the knowledge of who they represent and do that accordingly that's what kind of person i am i'm very contemplative and very thinking and i think you need that on the civil service commission disciplinary action and you have to gather all the facts and make a judgment that'll affect someone's life you don't do that cavalierly or with a reaction mr green uh thank you so much uh for applying for the civil service commission and for your interest in serving our city my pleasure uh katie is uh barbara cleland uh ready yes she is on the line now okay i'm getting out of here good night okay am i here yes i am i see and first let me start by saying there we go sorry i am so sorry no problem thank you barbara thank you so much for applying for the civil service commission and you um have will have two minutes for opening remarks as to why you want to be on the civil service commission and then you'll have two minutes to answer each question from council members so please proceed with your opening remarks thank you thank you mayor and council members for allowing me the opportunity to do this it's i appreciate this as to why i if you look at my history i go back to i originally started on the budget committee was on planning commission was on city council as most of you are aware for quite a while and during my council years i did work with civil service in trying to figure out a way to get more diversity into our police department and our fire we did some traveling to other cities and worked with their civil service or talk to their their civil service commissions um to see if there were ways that we could work out within the city of aurora and um one of the things we did come up with was the latter lateral entry program of which um the city eventually did so um this is just one i i thought i i enjoy giving back to the city and giving back to my community that's why i'm doing this much uh mayor jim thank you mayor and thank you barb for applying for the commission and for your many years of service on council um as you know the commission is responsible for conducting hearings on disciplinary appeals that are filed by the police officers or firefighters the commission is authorized to confirm reverse or modify a disciplinary order do you have any experience with this type of proceedings and do you think you could be objective in deciding such matters um absolutely as you know working on city council being a council member there are times that that that you are working with various groups individuals in deciding what should happen and sometimes i agree sometimes i don't um but those things happen and i know also in my work at aurora mental health which i worked at for 20 some years we had opportunities that in working with some of the outside entities as to trying to figure out whether it was good bad or indifferent so i i feel i can do this i've done it in the past um in various situations so i i just need to take into all consideration of everything both sides all right thank you councilmember comes hi barb thank you for joining us and thank you for applying for the commission um my question is we have the consent decree coming down from the ag's office which is likely to change the way that the civil service commission operates so how will you approach adapting to those changes thank you for that question because i have read the consent decree and i think one of the things that is is interesting in it is that the um the consent decree monitor will be working much closer with civil service especially in hiring and some of those areas and i i think it's a it's an opportunity for the civil service um and the city uh for police and fire to see if we can find better ways as i said in in our hiring practices so i i see no problem because again it's going to be working with the consent decree monitor a lot thank you councilmember gardner barb thank you for being here um can you let me know uh what's a unique skill set um that you would bring to the commission that other candidates might not i think one of the things that um have always strived to do is i try to put myself on other people's shoes to see how they feel about situations part of the time that i was on city council i was a victim advocate and i've got some awards for it but i think it's the opportunity that i i have taken in trying to find i don't know if opportunity is the right word but but being able to to look at things and try and see it in many different ways from the beginning the middle and the end if that helps councilman jordanski i think councilmember gardner is next i'm sorry uh councilman gardner oh yeah oh he just went i'm sorry councilman oh um hi barb i wanted to ask you do you believe that police officers can be rehabilitated um yes i think it's done in the training i believe that we have an opportunity i think the city and i use the word opportunity a lot because i i think the city is in a place that they have a chance to become very unique in some of the training that could be done now is a part of the civil service commission they could provide some but again some of this is the policy decision too coming from city council that might help but do i think a police officer and a firefighter absolutely absolutely and it goes back to how you will do training and and again some of this needs to come from the post board oh thank you uh councilmember lawson hi barb and thank you for applying and it's great to see you and thank you for all your service on the city council and to this community as well this is probably going to be an easy question for you um but the commission creates and maintains a set of rules and regulations outlining the police and fire hiring and promotion procedures um could you give some examples where you've been involved in writing policy creating and coordinating policy um thank you angela absolutely um on city council many many of the committees that i was on we wrote policy and coordinated i was lucky enough to be on several national committees where we were setting policy and working with congress and or at the state legislature at the cml board as you know where you're writing and setting policy so i've had the opportunity and i've had the opportunity to work with others to try to get it implemented thank you councilman mcconnell thank you sir and thank you barb for uh your interest in continuing to serve the city uh my question for you is uh previous civil service commissions have overturned discipline from the chief on issues ranging from intoxication on the job to using racial epithets on the job if a similar situation came before you how would you handle those two scenarios and please explain your rationale thank you it is possible i believe that as a civil service commissioner you have to hear both sides it is my understanding that is it would be similar to a trial and you need to hear what the police department has to say and what the um and or um fire department has to say whichever and that decision needs to be made in a fair and equitable um but honestly i think you need to hear both sides can i live with if i feel it is appropriate and um there's not been enough reason to overturn the two chiefs decision i have no problem with with upholding some of the chiefs decisions but but i would have to listen to both sides all right thank you councilmember medina thank you miss cleveland for replying thank you mayor my question is would you have determinations involving those who disparage and demean the very people enough to serve and protect and what is your thought process on that i appreciate that comment um because it it has happened and do i approve of it absolutely not absolutely not again i will go back to to see the situations and hear both sides of the situation i i cannot see any situation where you are demeaning someone that i could say that that was acceptable but i with just those comments i really don't feel i should should say yes or no or what should happen exactly but i would definitely have to listen but i i have real issues with people using um terms that against people um we we've had that situation i've had that situation happen to me too so it's inappropriate thank you councilmember mario thanks mayor uh hi barb it's good to see you thanks for your willingness to serve the city once again my question to you is how would you overcome implicit bias in the decision-making process as a commissioner all of us i believe come with some sort of bias but again i go back to who i am and what i try to do is trying to put myself in another person's shoes and to try and understand where they may be coming from do i understand totally absolutely not absolutely not but i have to listen and learn because for me one of the biggest things in life is learning about other people and learning of what their concerns are and so would there be some absolutely we all have it as you said inherent but in in my life in the way i have done things i think it's just listening all right councilmember sunberg hey barb nice to see you thanks for all your service i want to ask you about the all-important process of hiring and i'm sure changes have been made over the years i've heard from officers the process takes too long we might lose people to other cities any changes that you foresee that you might want to make or what are your thoughts on hiring um as i said earlier um in my comments i took trips when i was a council member to other other cities and talking to them and there were some opportunities that we could have done in the city of aurora was civil service of which council did ask civil service at the time to look at them now understanding that civil service sits apart from city council and council does not have the right to tell civil service exactly what to do we could make suggestions and we did and at the time they didn't feel it was necessary it for me that is something that in civil service i think we can do the city can do a much better job in the timing and getting people hired and and in the testing process one of the the issues is doing more testing and and doing a different way of testing so that people have an opportunity to know whether they're going to be hired or not and then they can make decisions as to how to do their life one of the things i would hope is that um the civil service commission would start looking at ways of of doing the hiring and making it easier and getting a more diverse fire service and police service thank you councilmember zavonik thanks uh barb for applying and and for all of the years of service and and your willingness to continue to serve given your uh experience and you've obviously seen the the civil service commission and some of the potential changes over the years what are there any processes that you see whether it's in the hiring discipline or even termination that you think need to be reformed um regardless of what comes of the consent decree well i think that's kind of hard to say because you're going to have to be working with the consent decree monitor and and again it goes back to a civil service working with that consensus degree monitor and how you do some of the hiring i think one of the things and this is really not the civil service's purview but i would like to see that there is um better recruiting the city of aurora used to have a team of police and fire that would actually go out and do recruiting and go to places that um we were definitely pushing to get a more diverse um applicants for for police and fire and i would like to see the police chief and the fire chief use the laterals more the lateral program was created specifically for a diverse police and fire service the chiefs have the right to pick out who is in that lateral program and half of a program can be laterals but that's up to the chief to pick those those uh candidates so i'd like to see and that's something that that civil service has no say in but that's something that you as council members and or the city manager have a say and that's what i i i would think that could help create a more diverse um police and fire thank you uh councilman was devonic i just went sir oh i'm sorry um barb you have one minute for concluding remarks okay thanks mayor um again i appreciate i apologize i appreciate the opportunity i worked i think i said it at aurora mental health for quite a few years in community relations and legislation and that was trying to educate people and working with with police and fire in with some of the citizens that that had mental health issues and and substance abuse especially issues i worked with the jbc in getting some money created that we had a program years ago in the city of aurora that police and fire could drop clients citizens off it's where jefferson hills is now and that was funded for many years until the the state legislature and other facilities quit funding it but i think there is some opportunities here as i said i think the city i'm i am very um i love the city of aurora and i think we have some things that can be done and can be done better so thank you very much and again i apologize for my lack of computer computer skills thank you barbara katie is thomas mays uh waiting on us yes we just had thomas base join the meeting okay mr mays uh uh thank you so much for joining us tonight and for your interest in serving the citizens of aurora and the civil service commission you will have two minutes for opening remarks as to why you want to be on the civil service commission then there will be each member will ask you a question and you will have two minutes to answer uh those questions and so for your opening remarks thank you thank you mayor and uh city council for giving me the opportunity to uh be considered for the civil service commission i'm excited and because uh an opportunity that's being presented to continue to serve the civil service commission the one word in there that really catches me is the service i've served the city for a long time i consider this my home my children's home my grandchildren's home and i look forward to contributing uh more time to serving my community i've served with the military vietnam veteran 17 other years in government work and two years in civil service so i'm just excited for the opportunity to add anything i can bring to the civil service commission thank you very much uh mayor for timber for jim bergen thank you mayor and uh thank you mr mays for applying for the commission um the commission is responsible for conducting hearings on discipline appeals that are filed by police officers or firefighters and the commission is authorized to confirm reverse or modify a disciplinary order do you have any experience with this type of proceeding and then do you believe you could be objective in deciding such matters uh yes i think uh being objective is probably one of my strengths and for 16 years i've served on the incident review board with the aurora police department and uh serving on the incident review board we reviewed uh the disciplinary actions that the chief would take and also the actions that the civil service commission would take and i had an opportunity to share with both the police the police union and other civilians on that board to discuss disciplinary actions and the results and add my input on how i felt those would be fair or unfair i think in the last incident review board it was uh i think my objectivity was demonstrated when some of the police officers uh voted for more severe punishment where i voted for less severe so yes thank you councilman combs hello thomas and thank you for joining us again and for applying and offering your service to the city my question is the same as last time actually so you may remember um and that is given the consent decree the city of aurora will have to make some changes to the way that the civil service commission operates so how will you approach adapting to those changes well i would not only adapt to those changes but i would hope to be a part of those changes and that change is what brings about success and nothing can remain the same and continue to get grow better with the decree i'm excited that we now can look at other cities other states and our nation and see what uh things are going on in our nation so that we can continue to be one of the greatest if not the greatest city uh police force and fire department in the nation and so i look at it as a great opportunity for us to be challenged and for us to challenge ourselves how can we be better tomorrow than we are right now thank you um by councilmember gardner hi pastor mays thank you for being here um can you let me know what is one unique skill set you would bring to the civil service commission that another candidate might not well as a pastor of in aurora for 30 years and a native coloradan and 38 years in aurora i think one of my expertise that probably all i don't know what all the qualities of the other candidates have but i've had that experience working with the city and that special relationship with the community and i think what the city is is may one of the main challenges right now is trust and i do already have trust within the community and trust within the uh city i've been i'm a charter member of the akcrt since 1992 the city trusted me to go to baltimore maryland in 2010 to work with the community capacity development office they trusted me to be part of the group that went traveled to florida to become the all-american city they also trusted me to go all as far as johannesburg south africa to teach uh some of the churches the faith communities there how to work together with the police department to make changes so i think that in itself gives me a special unique relationship i've done the shoot no shoot with the aurora police department i've been to their academy i've done those things the experience i carry i think carries out great great weight in uh being unique in the uh candidacy for the civil service commission um thank you councilwoman yes hi thomas i just want to know do you believe that police officer do you believe that police officers can be rehabilitated well that's kind of a blanket question i believe anybody can be rehabilitated i work closely with re-entry programs where we look at prisoners coming out of jail who can be rehabilitated some can some cannot so i think the same thing with everybody whether they're a policeman a fireman a politician some can be rehabilitated some cannot the ones who can are the ones who want to be rehabilitated um councilmember lawson thank you dr mays it's great to see you and thank you for applying for the commission um the commission creates and maintains a set of rules and regulations outlining the police and fire hiring and promotion procedures could you give some examples where you've been involved in writing policy creating and coordinating policy uh yes i first of all in the military my afsc was administrative specialist so i've worked with the military writing policies and procedures also as i said before on the incident review board i will have the opportunity to review policies and procedures also as a pastor and an overseer i wrote the policies and procedures for our entire uh not only our church but 16 different churches in new mexico texas and colorado writing those policies and procedures and not writing them by myself but being objective enough to have others around me because i always feel you're never better than the people you surround yourself with thank you um councilmember mcconnell thank you mayor and uh thank you dr mays for being with us tonight and for interest in serving your city um my question for you is that previous civil service commissions have overturned discipline from chiefs on issues ranging from intoxication on the job to using racial epithets on the job if a similar situation came before you how would you handle those two scenarios and please explain your rationale well one of the key words there is similar because they're similar we don't always know if they're the same i think every case should be looked at individually and specifically the details has to be uh very transparent and it can't be just a judgment call it has to be the letter of the law all right thank you thank you council member medina thank you mayor uh thank you pastor mays for a plane uh my question is would you uphold terminations involving those who disparage and demean the very people they swear on oath to serve and protect what are your thought process on that my thought process first of all is to look at policy and procedure and the charter for the city because it's not to rewrite laws or policies or procedures first of all it's to go along with the policy and procedures that are in place and if that needs to be addressed i would back up to that and address that i don't believe anyone should speak judgmental of anyone we are all according to the constitution the same and i i believe that until proven differently thank you councilmember mario thanks mayor and thanks pastor mays for your willingness to serve our great city my question to you is how would you overcome implicit bias in the decision-making process as a commission as a commissioner i would overcome that implicit bias by through education i believe knowledge is power and implicit bias is sometimes unknown other times it's just hidden and i think we should have more of the equity and inclusion training and not just with police officers and the rank and file but the commissioners the city council uh the government we all need to be trained and retrained and educated on what implicit bias is and how to weed it out because we don't always understand the weight that it carries so i think to deal with that i would say education um councilmember summer hi pastor mays thanks for applying i want to ask you about the all-important process of the hiring super critical of course to get the right candidates in there and some of our police have indicated that the process currently for hiring is taking too long what is a good balance there in your opinion and what change changes would you like us well in hiring and i've worked with the police department even with sergeant pool in recruiting to try to ensure that our police department is diverse and it represents a city yes it is it is a bit long but when we say we may lose people to other uh police forces uh other cities then that's a good clue we can go to those cities let's see what are they doing differently than we are doing and how can we streamline the process uh i tell you this you cannot be too careful in hiring police officers and fire fighters you cannot be too careful so you don't want to shorten that time span at the risk of getting bad apples i i believe we need to pick good out pick better apples but at the same time if other cities have a shorter time to of in that hiring process then we need to look at those those cities because there's no need to create a new wheel uh if someone has it and it's working and i'm sure it has we traveled to phoenix arizona and looked at some of their hiring practices some years ago on behalf of the aurora police department and some of their practices can shorten the time it takes to get aboard council members devonic thanks sir uh thank you pastor mays for applying given your um history with the city and the experience you've had in the various capacities you've served our community um going into this or going into this potential role on the commission what what are what if any changes or reforms would you like to see made to the civil service commission well i would say this those ch any changes that should be made should be made very carefully and very slowly i think we need to review our charter we review the um commission functions and see what things are maybe outdated once again i always look for someone who is successful and try to pattern after that uh and focus more on our strengths less and less on our weaknesses there's no specific changes i would make off the top of my head because that would be ludicrous to nonchalantly just begin to make changes we know that it takes changes to to get better but to know those changes i would say we have to look at ourselves just a little bit closer look at our city look at our charter uh look at the antiquated uh methods we may be using and see what can we do to bring things up to uh 2022 great thank you so much mr rays i'm sorry you have now one minute uh for the closing remarks thank you mayor and thank you city council thank you for each of you given me the opportunity and the challenge in life uh to better myself as well as better our city uh i once again thank you uh for this opportunity and i commend uh our city council and i pray for our city council our government our police department our police chief our fire department our fire chief because i realize the task that you have is more than a challenge the atmosphere that has been created over the past few years and the past few months has been tremendous and i commend you that you continue to work tirelessly to get the job done i thank you for giving me an opportunity to help you to stand alongside you and come alongside you to add any expertise any knowledge i may have that will contribute to making aurora the best city in the nation of of america thank you thank you pastor mays uh the time is now 7 28 uh council will stand in recess until 7 35 council is now in recess [Laughter] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Laughter] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] okay yes the study session of the aurora city council for monday february 7th 2022 is uh back in order back in session um no honors for the mayor no issue updates uh motion uh to approve the consent calendar item number 4a through 4aq mayor sunburg councilmember sunburg could i pull uh 4i for clarification from staff and a couple questions very well um is there any member who wishes to pull any other items from the consent calendar i see none the question before us is mayor i'm sorry um sorry i was gonna pull probably about eight items but you'll be happy to know i met with staff earlier to have my questions answered i'm very disappointed um are there any other members who wish to pull iris from the consent calendar seeing none um let's see 4i is in is in pool so the adoption of the consent calendar items number four a through four h and four j through uh four hq motion motion to approve the consent calendar um with the exception of item number four i yes um motion to approve the consent calendar uh pulling uh for eye is there a second zevonic second move uh to approve uh the consent calendar with the exception of item number four i uh discussion i think no discussion with the clerk piece called a role in the adoption of the consent calendar uh with the exception of item number 4i do we vote in the study session no we don't follow i'm sorry i forgot i forgot i forgot okay is there objection for moving uh the console encounter with the exception of it number four i forward uh seeing down the consent calendar with the exception of item number four i will move forward um a brief presentation by staff on on number four i good evening this is chesarina danci i'm a project manager in the office of development assistance item 4i is regarding the boundary amendment for the boat metropolitan districts number one and two this is not any change to their current plan um the the ownership acquired another parcel of land and is wishing to include that within the boundaries of their current metropolitan district i'm i'm happy to answer any questions and we also have legal counsel here for the district as well questions of staff sunburst here mayor councilmember sunburg the uh the land there south of jewel as these new districts metro districts are sought after a good amount of infrastructure was already laid there a few years back paid for by another metro district now in such a case does the metro district that paid for that originally be reimbursed uh does life go on how does this work i'm councilmember simberg is it possible you might be referring to item 4l the yale metropolitan districts for yale yes okay no that's okay so with respect to that maybe you can just answer my question if you don't mind is it typical for infrastructure to be paid by a previous metro district without reimbursement happening later on for that i will refer to the council representing the district and how they're interacting together regarding their financials okay thank you hi councilmember thank you for that question i'm jennifer tanaka i'm counsel for the petitioners for yale metropolitan districts and there is no other infrastructure that was paid for by the other districts that will be benefiting this portion of the project in the event that there would be um then there would be likely an iga between those districts for a cost share component okay thank you uh do you know who paid for that uh infrastructure that's in there now it's been there for maybe five six or years or more right so the infrastructure that is in place right now is benefiting the northern part that's north of jewel these districts are south of jewel and on the very southern portion of it and so the districts that are paying for those improvements are murphy creek metropolitan districts one two three four and five okay thanks for the clarification sorry if the confusion on the item number no problem i'm just glad i stayed on is the is there any objection to moving number four i forward i see none item number four i will move forward uh number five um number five a intergovernmental agreement veterans service officer position um brief presentation by staff being mayor members of council this is roberto venegas deputy city manager this is an iga to renew with adams county and arapahoe county for a veteran services officer position during the pilot program year we've the arapahoe county and adams county funded this position 50 percent each and we provided all the technical uh equipment computer laptops for this individual to provide connected services for veterans in aurora there is a veterans service officer in littleton and one i believe in westminster and the adams county side and it was deemed with the opening of the va hospital in the la in the recent years that we would uh it would be advantageous to have an individual serving aurora folks as well since the opening of that facility so this is a renewal of that ig iga after the first pilot year to continue um with the program so i'll stand with any questions questions of staff mayor uh mayor for time uh just um and i'm sorry i had to step away for a second so um do we have any metrics on how the program is going i do and i can send those over to staff separately arapahoe is in charge of supervising the employee and they pulled together some metrics in terms of total uh veterans served and totaled veterans served from aurora and i think it was 627 in the first year but i'll have to get those figures and i'll send you over the first uh uh figures from the first year okay thank you very much sure uh is there any objection to moving out of number five five a forward mayor jorinsky uh councillor joyce roberto i just want to know if it continues on past the pilot program phase would arapahoe county still uh over oversee our aurora person uh it isn't an aurora employee it is it is essentially employee of the county so it's it's basically arapaho under the iga would continue to supervise the employee day-to-day our only involvement in the iga is is uh is in the technical technology and providing equipment for that employee at which point they after providing it in the first year they didn't need any new equipment but we would do that if it was requested but in terms of the day-to-day it is arapahoe county who is supervising that employee further questions to staff discussion see none is there any objection to from to from moving uh fi item 5a forward let's see now item 5a will move forward item number 5b uh the kuder tech lease agreement representation by staff thank you mayor thank you city council my name is don jewell i am the south platte base and water resources supervisor for the city on july 20th 2020 the city council approved the purchase of 119 shares of the whitney ditch irrigation company which were already changed and decreed in water court for municipal uses staff completed the purchase of those shares in december of 2020 at the time of the purchase the city leased back 111 shares to the seller great western industrial park for continued agricultural production the remaining eight shares of 119 shares purchased remained available for use under the terms of the water court decree hudertech metropolitan district is a small municipal water supplier located on the cash laputa river connected to the whitney ditch and adjacent to the town of windsor there is a map near package for their location pooter tech has requested the use of the eight shares for municipal purposes within their service area which is in compliance with the decree this intergovernmental agreement is a one-year renewable agreement to allow kuder tech to use the eight whitney shares at a rate of fifty dollars per acre foot of delivered water this fee will increase annually in the same percentage as any increases to the city's portable rates this short-term renewable option was used to allow for flexibility in aurora's use of the water into the future if approved this agreement will be renewed annually at aurora's discretion in addition to the fifty dollar per acre foot fee pooter tech will be responsible for all decree compliance including the return flow obligations revegetation accounting and dry up requirements um the city does reckon or the city staff recommends moving these eight shares uh the city staff recommends leasing these eight chairs of whitney ditch deputer till such time as the city of aurora has a need to put this water to a different beneficial use and i'll be happy to answer any questions questions of staff uh discussion uh sitting down is there any objection uh to to moving item number five b forward i think none item number five b will move forward i have number 5c waste management water supply agreement pre-presentation by staff good evening mayor and council this is marshall brown with aurora water this request is associated with um some property that waste management owns um i'm gonna try to is it possible to get sharing permission katie there's a map in the back up if if i can share i'll share the map real quickly this shows the location of the property um it's on the north side of quincy just to the east of e-470 it's the area shown in pink this is associated with the dad's landfill site it's immediately north across the street from the public safety training facility and we were approached by waste management requesting water and sewer service for the site as you can see due to the location of the site they don't really have alternative service providers aurora's the only entity that could reasonably provide water and sewer service to the site uh they cannot use the groundwater here it has uh use restrictions associated with the lowry landfill uh contamination below the site and they cannot excavate for a sewer uh or for a septic tank rather so our uh services they're realistically their only option um they have agreed to uh not install uh high water use landscaping at the facility the facility is a vehicle maintenance and a waste recovery operation it would use the equivalent of about 35 single-family residential units worth of water per month but again they've agreed to very stringent water use requirements for their outdoor landscaping that minimize the water use they've also agreed to [Music] dedicate up to two acres of this property to the city for future a future communication tower or pump station as might be needed by the city and they've agreed to pay one and a half times rates and fees because they will be outside our service area so that's our standard approach and with that they're requesting again water and sewer service from the city which staff is recommending questions of um marshall brown mayor um uh yes thank you and thank you marshall um so it is outside of aurora i was just wondering you i think i heard you say that they didn't have any other options um so there was no other um source of of water supply i was wondering like who who supplies arapaho county fairgrounds water yeah so arapahoe county fairgrounds and you can see that located to the uh kitty corner on the lower uh right portion of the screen they're outside the groundwater use restrictions yeah why under this site so they i'm 90 sure i'd i'll have to double check to verify but i'm 90 sure they're on wells um uh at arapahoe county fairgrounds which would not work for this site because of the groundwater restrictions associated with the landfill and then you said uh they they're going to be um you know use conservation for any kind of landscaping in in the background it said non-functional turf irrigation what does that mean right yeah so essentially no aesthetic or cool weather turf would be installed um at the site they would do low use landscaping okay and then my last question is on the cost so they will have to pay the um the higher cost 150 for all their uh connections and then their water rates as well right correct okay thank you further questions uh marshall brown mayor what's uh that's right washington um marshall so in the in the public i mean in the water committee i did ask about you guys did address my question that there would be no residential but you did state that there is something at the state level that could possibly if it did change residential could be in one particular area that could be close to this site yeah the closest the the area we were talking about that has the state conservation easement on it is shown in this graph in the green so it is actually quite a bit further to the east and then you can see the tolgate development to the south that's even a little closer but again that's all the way across the uh that open space area that's maintained by the county so there's quite a bit of separation from any potential uh residential even if the county or the state rather remove that conservation easement okay thank you marshall well further questions to mr brown uh seeing none of any discussion uh seeing no discussion is there um any objection um to moving um or what item is this license item five c forward i think none item five c will move forward item number 5d proposal to designate june 19th as juneteenth and a legal holiday um presentation presentation myself good evening mayor mayor pro tem council members i'm ryan lance the director of human resources katie i'll need the ability to share a presentation all right so um over the next couple slides write some information on juneteenth national independence day um this is uh juneteenth is celebrated annually on june 19th it commemorates the emancipation of african-american slaves this was recognized as a federal paid holiday it was signed into legislation on june 17th 2021 and this was to make juneteenth of federal holiday and training june 19th as a national day to commemorate the end of slavery in the united states now colorado does recognize this and has recognized this as a serum ceremonial holiday since 2024 but it is not a state paid holiday now the city aurora last year did make a proclamation on june 28th to recognize this as a ceremonial holiday it is worth mentioning that there is no obligation to make juneteenth a paid silly city holiday and that's for both private or public employers so over the next few slides i'll show you the official legal holidays for the federal government which is they currently have 11. the state of colorado which has 10 and the city of aurora which has 10 paid holidays and then the private sector which usually has a minimum of six common holidays so the on the federal level there are 11 paid holidays you can see listed here are new year's new year's martin luther king jr day president's memorial juneteenth being the new 11th holiday added independence day labor day columbus day veterans day thanksgiving and then christmas private sectors usually have a minimum of six paid holidays and those are listed in red in terms of the state of colorado and they do have 10 paid holidays um it's the you know common ones with one that's a little bit different and they did a swap out columbus day for cabrini day but as you notice here they do not include juneteenth or the friday after thanksgiving and then for the city of aurora we do have currently 10 paid holidays and you can see one of the main differences with ours is we do have the day after thanksgiving i thought it would be um very good for you to see some of the other colorado municipalities as well as comparisons to national what some other agencies are doing so the the following um surveys we conducted as a human resource department we did take a look at all colorado municipalities we did realize some of the feedback that some of them are still evaluating it they're really considering what their revenue situation is and the impact on budget they're also waiting to see what the state of colorado was doing for 2022 and they have made a decision not to adopt it but they're waiting to see what happens in 2023 and then a lot of other agencies are really taking a look at what other cities are doing now we do have a confirmation of 35 cities and counties and here's a list of some of the cities and counties that have elected to make juneteenth as a paid holiday and then in terms of other respondents 11 cities do not have not decided yet so they're still waiting there are 15 cities that have yet to discuss it they're really not contemplating right now and then 53 uh other cities and counties um are have made a decision not to make it a paid holiday at least for 2022. nationally you can see a list of some of the cities that have made it a paid holiday and then we do have some confirmations from some cities that do not plan to make it an observed holiday now our proposals are added as an eleventh paid holiday for the city of aurora it does require an ordinance amending city code pertaining to legal holidays during that process we also know that although we do have the friday after thanksgiving as a paid holiday it is actually not uh updated in the city code and then the cost to add this as a paid holiday so the hard cost for that one this is for civil service and career service uh employees that would have to work on the holiday that would cost about 246 000 and then some of the support for this i'm listing six reasons here there's a lot more um but i thought that these are the key main uh justification for this one it's just honoring gene team for what it is it's recognizing celebrating the emancipation and then considering the identity of the city of aurora and supporting and embracing our diverse community communities do have identities and ours is a very diverse one so we thought this would be great to embrace our diversity and it helps strengthen our identity but also honor the community members the civil service consent decree does have a strong focus on diversity equity and inclusion so as we really begin this journey of improving our civil service responsibilities we thought it would be a strong message that we embrace and honor the eye and then shifting to our employees we are a public servant a servant and it is tough not only to compete against the private sector and then other cities we also are in the tough labor market right now so this helps to add that to the advantage of working in local governments and being public servants and we think this would be a good benefit to add for our employees also help with attracting and retaining employees um providing another benefit and it does message our employees that we you know we do work hard but we also are taking that time to really play hard um and and you know celebrate some of these holidays that are important to the community and then lastly just that work-life balance for our employees and uh just being able to support uh you know them as employees for their wellness and as well as for their family so um we're just requesting consideration and support for adding juneteenth uh national independence day as an additional holiday so that's all that i had to present wanted to see if you guys had any questions for me thank you um i'd like to do a substitute in that first of all i really believe that juneteenth ought to be uh celebrated in the city a lot more than it is i think that uh it ought to be a formal holiday i think it ought to be a paid holiday but i also understand that um i there's not a day goes by that i'll get a complaint particularly by uh small and large businesses alike about how long it takes to get through the processes in this city and how long it takes to get an answer and that their work is held up uh pending that and so um i think the work that our city employees do is really valuable at every department and so what i would ask is a substantive motion to recognize juneteenth as a paid holiday but also to require the city manager to either do one or two things either um give up one of the personal days uh that are authorized and and i think that hr can explain how that works personal days or uh one of the paid holidays uh in order to have this holiday without a fiscal impact on the city and without any effect on serving the people of the city of aurora mayor um you'll see uh mayor pretend um yes um ryan you mentioned that the fiscal impact was i think 200 or wrote it down here um 246 000 what was the on the chart the 976 867 dollar that was on the the in the back up because it had it had like um the 246 000 is cost excluding salary and benefits so the almost million dollars is including salary benefits yeah that would be the soft cost for it so employees who are being paid but aren't working that's really the bulk of that 976 thousand dollars that are paid but not working so because it's a holiday right i might con i have no problem with the holiday my problem is the black i shouldn't say lack but the effect on productivity in the city i think the mayor alluded to that in his statement i also get a lot of complaints from constituents and developers about you know not being served in a timely fashion so i my concern is we have we have the holidays we have sick days we have personal time off we have um obviously vacation days and then we have family leave and military leave we have all kinds of leave and i i just am concerned by adding another paid holiday that we're impacting productivity and then i also wonder you know what other [Music] holidays might be coming forward so mine is more from a fiscal perspective um thank you sir so i'm strongly supportive of the paid holiday in making this our 11th holiday um i don't think that the i mean goodness y'all we spent what 24 times the soft costs on a retention bonus with no strings attached just you know a couple of weeks back um i think that we're kind of pinching pennies here when we can actually be as staff said more competitive we can improve morale make the city a more attractive place to work allow us to actually properly honor the milestone of juneteenth in our nation's history we have a lot of events that take place on juneteenth already so that'll actually allow folks to participate in those without having to take a paid day off on their own and frankly you know americans are overworked and underpaid we have less paid time off than most comparable oedc nations um i'm so i'm happy to have the city of aurora be a leader in you know giving folks more paid days off uh and give folks an opportunity to be more engaged in their community so i strongly support this as is i don't think that we need to uh amend it further discussion mayor councilmember lawson um ryan i just had a question for you just in general so um like that last year juneteenth was on a saturday and then this year in 2022 it's going to be on a sunday so how does that work does it mean that the city that that a day or friday or monday would be taken off or for exempt and non-exempt is are you just getting paid for that saturday regardless if it's if it falls on a holiday if it falls on a weekend yep if it falls on a sunday then except then the day off would be on monday okay let me ask you a quick question about that so for example this year juneteenth falls on a sunday um we have our calendar set for council on monday so i'm just kind of asking how does that how does that work if with that when we already have a preset calendar or is this going to be for the following year in 2023 um the proposal is actually for this year but that would be up to council to to contemplate and decide i'm just bringing that up because i know that you know working you know they you can decide if it's on a weekend it could either be a friday or a monday i'm just saying for this particular one if you do it on sunday juneteenth is on sunday we have council meeting on monday so i guess that would be something we could decide but i just wanted to see how you would figure that out so thanks further discussion mayor sundberg all right councilman sunburg uh i don't know how appropriate this is i have a second uh uh possibility for this whole thing i agree with you that it should be commemorated honored and events should take place around it as the city does such a good job of what if we took that one time pay of everyone having the day off of 246 000 and had a statue commissioned in a competitive process by local artists or artists within the region and put pomp and ceremony around it we could put it on the amc ground somewhere and i do agree with the productivity aspect of things in ward 2 i meet with developers who are frustrated with the process or they might be losing 16 to 24 000 a day waiting and um i think it's time for people to get back to work the city's the city buildings closed down people have been at home for a long time but a commemorative statue i think could be just one option instead of allowing people to take the day off year after year um uh again uh what what's the best process on this and if you could either come to an agreement tonight or we could bring multiple options forward for you at the regular account okay well if i understand because of somebody your proposal is not to make it a paid holiday but certainly make it recognize it as a holiday but not a paid holiday and utilize the money from one year to build a statue am i correct in that that is correct for up to 246 thousand dollars okay um discussion on the sunburg proposal and then we'll go to the conference proposal mayor uh um that's a pretty um creative idea and i kind of like it um you know i think it it's important to recognize the holiday i i again i just my my concern is from a fiscal perspective and and so i i would i would say that that's a pretty good idea mayor jarrinsky the council of jersey uh as the only jewish member of council then i would also like a uh proposal i would like a holocaust memorial statue built in the in the city as well i would like that to be well i think um let's get through the jarinsky i mean so let's get through the sunburg proposal first and then we can entertain other proposals yeah i'm okay with uh steve with council member sunberg's proposal as long as we we are putting up equitable statues that um reflect all of our population in aurora okay um so as i understand the sunburst um councilmember somebody's proposal it is not to have a paid holiday uh for juneteenth but but to appropriate this the um the amount of money that would otherwise be spent uh for one year um on uh to cover the paid holiday to to utilize that to develop some kind of statue or memorial uh to juneteenth um the celebration of jim team further discussion mayor i'm sorry who's uh remembered him well just an another option it couldn't couldn't we just offer um people to take the pto personal time off you know that's what that's what i said um that either a personal day uh or they could or but it's gonna be the city manager to make that decision um for a paid holiday for everyone or he can just he you can do one of two things uh and he'll have to do it by the time he'll have to identify what the process he wants to take before we vote on it on the 14th right and so he can either do one or two things he can either delete an existing holiday such as the day after thanksgiving or he can identify a personal day and subtract that okay okay um further discussion um on the sunburn proposal yes mayor uh councilmember mcconnell uh thank you sir um i'm not opposed to a statue but to me that's a yes and uh not a no but um i think that the gravity of what juneteenth represents is worthy of a full paid holiday um my gosh i graduated from high school 40 miles away from galveston texas in houston and i was not aware of juneteenth because it was not taught in her curriculum you'd think that that would have been covered you know given how close we were in proximity to where um you know this happened and it wasn't so i think having a paid holiday where folks are able to enjoy the day be out in community etc uh is worth as a worthwhile cause but i would say okay so we have right now uh council member case council robert sumberg um uh let's see and mayor pro tem uh in support of the summer proposal is anybody else in support of the sunburst proposal uh seeing none no further uh support sundberg proposal uh will not move forward uh now we're to the kauffman proposal uh that says we will have a paid holiday for juneteenth um and uh but and it will be up to the city manager to make it fiscally neutral uh by either identifying an existing paid holiday such as the day after thanksgiving or identifying a personal time that is currently allotted to employees to subtract that and then it would be fizz and then this proposal that we can have a paid holiday but it will be fiscally neutral um is there uh who will rise in support for that proposal mayor i have some more like can we have more discussion on on the very well please receive councilmember marielle thanks mayor um i mean i support the original proposal we celebrate july 4th of july celebrating our independence as a as a country and we can't support the emancipation of african-american slaves similarly you know i think the message that we're sending would be totally wrong um that we can't i mean just the institution of slavery was that people could not have many freedoms earning an income was one of them and the fact that we're we're arguing the the fiscal component um seems really i mean i have many words for that but it just seems wrong um so i i just i don't agree that we should be um substituting i feel like we're gonna force folks our staff to um choose uh between other things that they already expect um to be able to celebrate this holiday i don't think it should be a an either or choice so i i don't support the proposal i support the original proposal the the statue was a unique one um but i agree i don't think it's an either or it would be an and conversation um i think we should just follow suit um to what other folks are proposing um national international further discussion oh i was just going to say oh a lot of you know cities don't have the day after thanksgiving i mean obviously we want to recognize thanksgiving day but i thought that was reasonable to substitute that over the the other okay and then the um the city manager will will make a selection uh i just gave that an example but you could also take the personal time that's allocated uh to people personal days uh and utilize that instead of one of the paid holidays so that it's fiscally neutral uh cost neutral um further discussion uh council member jorinsky um thank you i just wanted to say i am in support of uh the the personal time off i deal with and have dealt with my entire life whether it was in school or um in the military now now on council uh holidays that i observe they are never paid time off for me or anybody in the jewish community and if we want that time off i've always had to you know make that personal choice and um i am very much in support of the personal time off for anybody who absolutely you know wants to an attention event uh for juneteenth or in any way that they choose to observe it as a holiday i am very much in favor of the the uh using a personal day for that further discussion mayors of honor uh council members of honor i just wanted to to chime in and say that i support the uh the proposal you've put forward to replace one of the existing holidays or a paid day in order to recognize juneteenth as a city holiday um further discussion um booms uh counselor um yeah i just want to be really clear that the way this conversation has gone is really concerning it seems that the main thrust of why we ought to um not pay the employees that work on this day holiday pay and not give people a paid day off is because we feel that our employees are not adequately productive um that was brought up by multiple people i think that's incredibly disrespectful to our employees who work very hard we have a number of employees including in the departments that were specifically called out that are on this meeting at 8 15 pm um and are consistently on meetings sometimes even into the wee hours of the morning so i just i do support giving our employees a paid holiday and i also don't support talking about them as if they're not working hard enough further discussion mayor um yeah and i didn't uh i wasn't trying to demean anyone when i talked about productivity but it is true that when you are do not have staff any staff working on a particular day you are reducing the productivity of the city as a whole so not trying to call out any particular you know people or departments or anything it's just that's a matter that's the fact that that you're you're losing productivity that day further discussion mayor uh councilwoman thank you sir i think there's multiple ways you can address productivity issues streamlining our processes ensuring that we're adequately staffed up improving our technology things like that can definitely improve productivity without necessarily adding more work hours to someone's schedule that's something that we've seen you know with the industrial revolution and on where actually americans again are more productive now than they've ever been but also getting paid crap have really awful vacation benefits and stuff like that again compared to other nations so i think if we have an opportunity as a city uh to start nudging in the right direction i think we should go for it um but if we if anyone has any suggestions as to you know what other efficiencies we can bring forward to improve our customer service experience for our residents and businesses i'm also all ears councilmember lawson uh let's go ahead and wrap this up i'm gonna go through the people who haven't uh have taken a position on this yet councilmember lawson is it on your proposal mayor yes it is no uh councilman gardner i'm a no let's see um councilmember mario's know my councilmember sunberg yes see um councilmember medina no let's see councilman coombs is as the councilmember mcconnell's known councilmember says no the mayor pro tem is yes um with um five individuals in support the the measure fails back to that you the paid routine holiday without an offset uh discussion mayor uh mayor for tim so we don't vote really tonight we were proposing some money oh i'm sorry but um is there any objection to moving the juneteenth uh holiday forward uh without an offset uh seeing none the juneteenth holiday will move forward without an offset and let's see uh 5e chapter 114 uh code enforcement ordinance amendment presentation by staff good morning council lynn um and mayor my name is sandra youngman manager of code enforcement and i'm here regarding their request to change the solid waste ordinance chapter 114 to modify placement of trash cans as well as to make a correction to the department name and um i have modified my powerpoint that was in the packet so i will go ahead and share just a few slides like this go i'm having trouble getting this here so hold on a minute please if i've been given the ability to share you have sandra okay thank you here we go thank you so the current ordinance um let me make this bigger let's see is that gonna okay so pardon me for this so the current uh what i'm asking is the current important current ordinance as for trash cans to be screened from the view from public streets and placed behind the front line of the principal building of the house facing the street and also uh it talks about waivers may be granted by the neighborhood services director of neighborhood services the modification that i'm asking for does keep the trash cans behind the front line of the principal building but we're asking that we designate the distance from the principal building on the side of the house and um so that they're they're they not necessarily screen but are kept behind the front principal building and also asking that the the new the director that the name change goes to housing and community services i have a few pictures um that was provided in your packet to just show some examples of what we're asking to do code enforcement staff actually um has some uh challenges when enforcing this particular ordinance so we're asking that this be taken care of so the trash cans in the front of the house actually certainly are less than uh beautiful for the neighborhood so that's what we're trying to deal with here uh these as well we see the trash cans on the side of the house in front of the garage what we're wanting to do is move the trash cans to the side of the house and within a short within a close proximity to the house so it's that's better aesthetics for the neighborhood so this is an example but you can barely see the trash cans on the sample on the left and this is where we're talking about the trash cans on the sample on the right where they'd be back behind the front plate of the house and within close proximity to the house the reason for these changes it will ease the burden on residents for trash can placement by removing the screening requirements but still keep the importance of a placement in the aesthetics of the neighborhood it will simplify enforcement of the trash can placements for the code enforcement and the code enforcement officers and we will work with community engagement division to notify the residents and the community of the ordinance modification and i can answer any questions questions of staff uh seeing none thank you very much for the presentation uh further discussion uh seeing none is there any objection to moving item number five e forward but seeing none item number five e will move forward thank you uh item number five f uh chapter 14 animals ordinance amendments uh presentation good evening council my name is anthony youngblood i'm the division manager for animal services um i can share just a all right so as you see in your screen here we are not changing much to the code it does look like a lot of sections but it is a small amount of language under each section mainly it is keeping um an aggressive potentially dangerous dog we are separating the language because as of right now there is no difference between an aggressive and a potentially dangerous dog and that's not what we intended to do when we first did this um so we want to fix that one for the judges one for the prosecution team when they help us out with this and so the officers can cite it properly um as you'll see here damage to property public nuisance restitution that one's been removed completely so that we're following the actual ordinance and then language cleanup big question is do you have any questions and do you wish to move this forward to the council meeting uh questions of staff um uh mayor patem i'm sorry who is it yes um i know we were doing cleanup of the language to match and everything was there anything changed in um in in fines or um how decisions are made nothing in fines the only thing that came down to decisions is now the judge's verdict when it gets read is what we use here at the shelter instead of overruling that with a behavior eval okay all right thank you no further questions to staff seeing none thank you for the presentation of discussion seeing no discussion is there any objection to moving number item number five f forward seeing none five f will move forward uh item number six a community wildland protection um this is a presentation by aurora fire rescue thank you mayor this is uh chief gray can you hear me okay oh yes okay uh we're gonna actually have a presentation related to our response approach to community wildland again i know that the community has asked a lot of questions about our capabilities and we're excited to basically inform council and our residents about what we can do so chief weber good evening mayor and council and i'm hoping i can get permissions to share my screen and i'll start the presentation yep i've already given you permissions mr weber all right thank you all right um so right now i'm just going to give a quick presentation i'm going to have the long one for the evening about aurora fire rescue and what our wildland team what we have for our wildland team and what we're hoping to do moving forward with the community wildland protection program so where are we at currently we have two wildland stations they're at fire station 8 and fire station 13. we do have a minimum staffing meaning that i have three wildland members so they're red carded at station eight and six at station 13 and that's the minimum amount that we can have and it's what we base that on is three per rig now that doesn't count for our minimum staffing of four so just to be clear we always have four people on every rig but at these stations these members have an additional certification of the red card so that they're wildly certified um we also have additional brush units type sixes which you'll see pictures of and i can do better you know explain a little better of what a brush unit is at stations uh nine and 12 and then we have a 1 500 gallon water tender at station 15. and all the personnel at station 9 12 and 15 received additional training and then all of our members receive wildland and urban interface training and we can also enhance that training as needed for when we see uh specific issues or fire conditions that are are coming up within the uh within that year so at our stations at station um station 13 specifically we have a brush engine which is considered a type 3 and i've got a picture of that and i'll follow up with that we also have a brush 13 so those are cross staff so at that station we also have engine 13 and ladder 13. so when we need to send a brush engine on a call in the city those people that are on the uh the engine or the ladder truck will jump onto that rig and respond to that call in that in that brush engine or the brush truck and at station eight we have a brushed truck so these and these uh apparatus are available to deploy within the city and then also external deployment so meaning that we'll resp respond to federal fires that you know we're always help training we're always available to help our neighbors when they call so this is our new brush engine 13 it's a type 3 and this currently this carries 500 gallons of water and 30 gallons of foam it's a it's a we carry nova cool it's a type a foam which is good for brush fires so this this rig is very new we just took possession of it in 2021 so this is a a new add to our fleet we're really excited about it it's a beautiful rig and we're you know we're excited to be able to provide extra support to our neighbors this is the brush trucks that we talk about this is our oldest brush truck brush engine rush truck 13. um it's about five years old it's in it's still in really good condition we just received another rush truck eight we just upgraded it and it looks very similar to this so and then the brush trucks that are at nine and twelve are older but they're in a replacement schedule so um they'll be uh we'll be replacing those within this year of 2022. now a brush truck is a smaller unit so you can see that it can get around and into our brush fires and it only carries 300 gallons of water and 10 gallons of foam but it also has a full complement of tools that are needed to fight brush fire so um at station 15 we have our water tender it's 1500 gallon tactical tender um so it just carries water to so um the main reason for this is that in some of the areas we don't have hydrants we're lucky here in aurora because our hydrant system is is very it's very good it's uh great pressure great gallonage but we do have areas that we respond to um out east like when we go with bennett or sable or down south with south metro where we have to go to a hydrant and bring our water to the fire so this is this is what this does this brings water to the fire and if you look on the side of the rig it carries its own little portable uh for lack of a better word a pool to hold the water so that the brush trucks can fill so pump from that and fill when they're fighting the fire so currently aurora fire has a 25 member deployable team this is used for external deployments in the federal level um so uh when we do deploy uh this is when say you know we went to uh around we've been to montana we've been to oregon we've been to california even you know in colorado so these members are a part of that federal wildland team and it's important that we have a deployable team because every time that somebody deploys and comes back they bring us back knowledge that you know that we can use here in the city um so currently like i have a we have a captain jeremy sones he's been on he's been on the federal deployment list for over 10 years and every time that he comes back he has learned something new he's brought it back to the department so we're able to you know upgrade our department upgrade our training so what we've also done internally is we currently have over 150 members that are red carded meaning that they're wild and trained they're not deployable that's just a choice of their own but they are red carded so and that's anywhere from a firefighter to a battalion chief so each when we hire people in the academy they now get their red card and that's because of it's we feel it's very important that they understand and have that extra capability of fighting these wildland fires let's see we also provide additional wildland refresher trainings for all of our deployable teams so that maintains a red card and that's also for our members that are non-deployable too so with the red card you have to maintain that every year so we we provide that training for them they don't have to go on their own time to get it we we provide that for them and then also um we have some you know annual training of wild and urban interface and this is done internally from our members and a lot of that knowledge is from what they brought back from their federal deployments all right so again with the federal deployments um so how that works is we have a wildland team director uh it's a battalion chief he means obtains a list of the personnel that are on that deployable team so they sign up for when they're available um so they have to be ready for when they get the call they have to be to station 13 or station 8 to pick up that piece of equipment and be on the road within anywhere from four to twelve hours um it's so the faster they can get get to the station and out the better it is and again like i've said it has been a great knowledge base for us and experience uh base for all of these federal deployments and we we thank the city for allowing us to do that um so and we talk about our internal wildland stations if you remember that was the additional of station nine and ten i mean nine and twelve so and then uh yeah so those are additional ones they are used within the city only so if we have fires in the city wildland fires 9 and 12s will go out but 8s and 13s will still go out it's just that when that brush truck 13 is out that one is not available in the city so we have we supplement that with with nines and twelves so we always have three brush trucks within the city that fourth one engine brush truck 13 will go outside the city to deploy one of the other things that i think is really important and that's why i put it in the slide is that during red flag warning days within the city we will staff those brush trucks meaning if i have extra people on duty i'll put two red card members on that on a brush truck um if i don't have extra people it's important enough for us that we'll do a call back and get those seats filled with overtime so with when i talk about red flag days i think everybody understands high winds low relative humidity uh it's a it's a hot day and it's a could be a very bad day within the city so um this map currently shows the wild and urban interface within the city of aurora um this was taken um i got this through chief chapman with oem i believe everybody's familiar with him and then also the water department but pros has this map and then it has also helped with this map this is just a a snapshot of you know you see the uh the ranks and risks now we have to remember that this map can change from year to year um depending on developments depending on just changes within the environment so i just i thought it was important that everybody see this map so we're going to talk about a cad response and a cad is a computer-aided dispatch but what does that mean um that what that means is i'm going to explain when we get called to a wildland fire or an outside fire or a brush fire what do we send so currently we send the closest engine that you know without the fire that this fire is occurring in the area and then we also send the closest wildland rig so that comes from eights nines twelves thirteens and then also 15s if we need to bring the tender so on an initial response i get we send an engine with four people and then we send that brush truck with two but also the the two extra personnel that are on that engine so you'll get an eight person response and uh two engines and a brush truck on every initial call and what's nice with our department too is that we've given our officers um you know it's their duty that if they feel like they need to upgrade the call and add other rigs yes they do it um we want them to make that that call our strategy is that we need to hit all our fires fast and quick so that we don't have a lot of spread and we we keep things to where you know we get a good quick response and a quick hit on all the fires so um and like what the next point talks about is that sometimes uh and we just saw it recently uh 100 miles an hour winds nobody could have you know imagine that this would have happened but we also have what's called a metro trees uh strike team and tax forces so that comes through south metro fire dispatch so our aurora 911 can call for that's added help so if our first arriving rigs get on the scene and they're seeing that hey we we can't handle this within the city of by ourselves by aurora fire we can get hold of south metro and then they can start dispatching outside agencies for us okay all right so i'm just i put this slide in here because this is a really good example and i actually got this slide from pros so we've been working diligently with pros oem it gis on our wildland urban interface plan within the city so this right here is you look at the at the slide and you look at you know we've got a 45-foot fire break and so pros actually next to the um the ditch they've done a 10-foot swath where they've went in and cut so that the fire you know if that does catch on fire it'll slow the response and this is from march of 2017. so if you look i mean things are dry but they're not that dry this was a relatively calm wind day but even with the 45 foot set you know that that setback you see the fire that we had um one of the things that i do want to point out is that in the middle of this fire this there was a juniper bush so this is where we talk about home ignition zones and how it's important for the public to realize what what they should and shouldn't have around around their house so even with that slight wind and you know this looks like a great break the fire was able to encroach on this apartment complex and then that juniper bush just lit up and uh really caused a lot of damage now one of the things that i was talking about was a fast initial response so on this fire we sent that first arriving engine the brush truck and the sister engine that goes along with it and then they upgraded to a full structure response which added in 2017 two engines two trucks and a chief so all together we were able to put the brush fire out and get a quick hit on the uh apartment complex it looks bad from from this picture but actually the crews did a really good job um it the fire did not get into the attic space and it did minimal damage inside they were able to keep the fire to the outside of this unit so once again i'm stressing a quick initial response with the proper equipment we can do quick stops on these fires so where hopefully we won't have a conflagration all right so one of the other things that we do is that we rely on our life safety and fire marshal office for those red red flag days they do weekly reviews of fuel moisture index they're the ones that keep us up to date on what the weather looks like what our fire hazards are i know around the fourth of july they advise the chief daily of a fight of a you know fire ban or a firework just firework bans just to of of the weather so that we are advised of you know how things are going and then with this again we talk about um specific asr responses um so with that information they give me i can say you know what today we're going to staff those brush trucks we just want to be ahead of the game and hopefully nothing this will help with uh keeping our fires at a minimum um this is again from pros and this was great pictures that i put in there because you know you just think okay well hey let's these fire breaks they're a great idea we need to do them you know when do we do them how do we do them the picture that's on the left is it's a that's what pros tries to provide so you see it's got the fire break the grass has been cut down around the um concrete path and then of course up to the fences of the private residence so uh this is yeah that that's a really good example the one that's on the upper right this one is that was cut too early the grass was too wet so they couldn't get a really good cut um and then really what happened here was also the embankment was a little steep and with it being steep and wet they had a issue with their lawnmower um and you know it it was a classified as a near miss and then they had to pay quite a bit of money to get the lawnmower unstuck and then the bottom one actually um was started by elon moore from pros they were out mowing a field and it was too dry and the grass was the vegetation was too dry and it was a hot day and this is what happened um the lawnmower caught the the vegetation on fire so there is a a sweet spot within the year that pros tries to uh be used to to do these hazard mitigation zones so and and i i really appreciate pros being on open and honest with us on you know starting this fire so that was just a lesson learned for them and then i think it's good for the public to see it too that they we can't mow just any time of the year there's specific times that we can mow in specific times that we shouldn't be mowing all right so where do we go from here so in 2021 we were directed by chief gray to implement a wildland protection program so we're currently working on that we i've got administrative battalion chief working on it and then the wildland teams working on it uh and the big thing is is that you know we were working on this and implementing it before the big marshall fire um we were as a matter of fact we were collaborating with west metro fire south metro fire the color state forest service so we were we were moving forward even before the big fire so that was a good thing so and currently we're also working with like i said we've had meetings with oem we've had meetings with pros we've had meetings with pd just to talk about this plan so we're moving forward and our goal like we said like i state here spring or prior to the 2022 wildland season which is hard to say you know when the season is going to be it seems to be starting earlier and earlier every year and again like i mentioned working with our oem and and making and piggybacking on their hazard mitigation plan so what is in a community wildland protection plan well we talk about wildland urban interface um that's the big key word now and we we had identified that through the maps that i put that we that we showed earlier in the powerpoint um we talked about preparedness that's where i you know talked about the the rigs that we have the stations that we have how we train our members do a community risk analysis that is through oem structural ignitability that's a new one um you know we've talked about that they always talk about defensible space around the structures but with the marshall fire the the structure and that ability really uh raised eyebrows around the the country uh about that so that's a new one that we're working on and that's gonna be uh you're probably going to be seeing some new legislation come down with this fire we talk about recommended fuel treatments and methods and that's where i showed you with pros about you know mowing and i know that sometimes you know uh over at rocky mountain arsenal they do annual burn days i don't know how well that would go over in the city uh just because of people when they see fire and they see the fire department they expect us to come and put it out or at the arsenal they let it burn itself out now granted you know they make sure that they have good fuel breaks and it doesn't get away from that containment zone but that is one of the methods that that is used around the state another thing in community wildland protection program is outreach and education activities for the public i'll go into that more in depth here in a few slides how we're going to implement the plan and then our next steps so the biggest thing with this plan is that it's not just a fire department plan it's it starts from the elected officials city management like i said police department parks and rec neighborhood services the water department we're all involved within the city but then it's not just a city issue either we need help from all of the citizens within the city homeowners associations neighborhood service services multi-family dwellings businesses individual homeowners we just need to get that education out to them so that they can help us to to possibly mitigate any fire hazards that we have and then um i've been working with our pios on putting on our website the free services that are available to our citizens and these are just a few of just a quick reference form a few um slides later i actually have the the website so if anybody you know it'll be a quick uh look up for people so uh yeah so it's just a uh a good there's a lot of people out there doing trying to you know do put information out so what i what we're doing is you know we're not trying to reinvent the wheel so we're going off of things from firewise defensible space color state forest service is a great resource okay so what we're this is just a uh when i talk about what we need to do to keep keep us up to date and and keep us safe within this in this the city city management has helped us out immensely by directing funding and upgrading our apparatus so i know i've kind of hit on this briefly but we have four brush trucks within the city two of them are brand new and then two of them are being built and we should have in 2022 and then we also have a new larger 3 000 gallon water tender um to help the the needs of the community and then uh what we've done from when especially from when i first started we didn't really do much wildland training well now we have increased our training um that's that's uh for the entire department just not for the wildland team we've also with the community wildland protection program we can actually start applying for grants and ask for state and federal funds and then with that too we integrate our wildland fire community partners um i know that our uh administrative battalion chief uh recently has been uh talking to the colorado state forest service we actually have a person that's assigned to arapahoe county and um adams county i i did not know this so he's he's in direct contact with them uh you know and we've always done a good job of keeping in contact with our mutual aid partners but uh we're doing a lot better job of making sure that our plans and responses are similar so that we we understand when we do have to work together what everybody's doing and what our expectations are so in our community wildland protection plan what we need to have is um like it's stated right here we've got to have that social media platform so we need to have that education material prep material the websites which i've left talked about and then multiple social media programs our pios do a really good job with our website and of course they have facebook they have a lot of ways to get information out so our goal is when this when we get this plan out and ready to go it's going to be on all our social media platforms the other thing is that this our plan helps to evaluate new industry guidelines like i talked with the the marshall fire you're gonna we're gonna see a lot um new industry guidelines when that once the the whole uh once they're done with the investigation and figure out um what how this happened why it happened and what they could have done better um is that something that we'll take into account and we'll learn from uh let's see and then i know we talk about reverse 9-1-1 i know that was a big one so here in the city of aurora we do um what's called code red but that's one thing that working with oem on making sure that we have everybody signed up for that and then also talking about making sure that we have uh other ways of notifying our citizens of you know danger that could be coming their way so um with this plan the big thing too and and i this is really important for for us and not just for the wildland equipment but for all of our rigs our engines on our ladder trucks and our rescues but to continue that capital equipment replacement plan this is this plan has helped us to stay current with our rigs it's also helped us to keep costs down when it comes to fuel usage and also repairs on our rigs so that is a i know this one very well because with the uh old council and the old uh oh um drawn a blank but i had to we gave a uh to uh public safety and courts we uh talked about our capital replacement plan um so that's really important to the fire department and then the big thing too is we're hoping to develop fun funding plan for research and subsequent outreach programs and then explore that possibility of third party consultant for homeowners why we put this in there is that we want to make sure that everybody in the city is is able to keep their piece of property safe from wildland fires well i don't you know we want to make sure that every you know everybody can get the what they need to get done on their their property i hate to have somebody you know needs to like they know that they need to clean up their piece of property but they just don't have the the funding or the whereabouts to get that done so that's why we put this in there is that we want to make sure that it's equitable for everyone so this is my last slide this is what i talked about the appendix this is what we use this is what's going to be on our website so that people can get started right away on their piece of property that they have within the city that it talks about um you know they shouldn't have anything that is combustible within five feet of the house you try to keep your grass less than four inches in um in length uh so it has a lot of good information in there and then it also the big one is ready set go i know it it says for wildfire but it's also very good for any other national or a natural disaster so there's a lot of good information out there that um we feel is important and that we're going to put into our plan and get onto our websites so that's the end of my presentation thank you for your time and i'm available for any questions uh questions to staff mayor uh mayor for tim i just want to say thank you for the presentation i know a lot of constituents were really concerned after the wildfire the marshall fire and just in terms of you know what the city was doing uh what plan you had so very happy to see that and then also we're asking for resources as far as like what they could do for their own protection of their properties you know clearing the brush and that type of thing um and then the code red you mentioned um is available on our website for for residents to sign up for so thank you you're welcome uh further questions to staff mayor kaufman this is chief gray uh could i be a one summarizing comment uh thanks again chief weber for the presentation uh council members i hope uh that that provided you with a good overview of what our capabilities are again i will say that our strategy related to community wildland protection is basically in five steps the first being is we make wanna make sure that we educate the public so that they have a clear understanding of how they can protect themselves uh the other piece is that we also wanna make sure that we partner with agencies like oem uh parks and rec to make sure that again all the stakeholders are involved in solutions to making sure that we are being proactive and then the other piece again i i can't um miss out on this opportunity to say this again we have excellent people our people do a great job each and every day and one of the reasons why we don't hear about some of these conflagrations in our city is just because again we have great people that work so hard at their craft to make sure that they're able to respond effectively the other piece is making sure that we have the resources strategically placed again chief webber ran through exactly where we actually have those wildland resources and finally again he really emphasized the whole approach of we try to overwhelm the incident making sure that we get there as quickly as possible to keep a fire from basically expanding so again thank you council members uh for your time tonight again we don't know if you have any other questions if you do we'd be more than happy to take those further questions mayor mayor zavonnick um councilman o'connell thank you sir uh and thank you uh for the presentation and i do have a question for you chief gray um it was my understanding that we were still lacking an apparatus to allow us to very quickly put out potential aircraft fires and oil and gas fires in the city or outside of the city's borders even if we have to go respond there and i'm wondering how does that intersect with our wildland fire preparedness because is it not outside of the or in the realm of possibility rather for a fire that starts as a result of one of those incidents to become a wildland fire as well and is it your opinion that we should also prepare for you know basically pursue one of these foam apparatus as well thank you for the question uh council member and i will say that one of the things that we've been working on and when i say we deputy city manager myself and also uh some other uh outside agencies are looking at uh a potential approach to where we can bring in a uh apparatus that would allow us to better serve uh those type of incidents that you just uh just mentioned oil and gas uh potential uh airplane crash or even a uh a wildland fire again there is a resource that we're looking at we've actually had a vendor come and provide presentations to us but we're still in the early phases of identifying when we can actually bring that type of apparatus into our community but again the fire department city management we're working hand in hand to make sure that we can address that particular gap so hopefully that answers your question all right i appreciate it thank you chief uh further questions mayor zavon council members yeah this is just um more of a comment for um chief gray and chief weber as council member bergen mentioned a lot of us have had people reaching out since the incident in boulder wanting information so i i recommend you guys have a lot of great resources here and every one of us on council have various platforms and of course get reached out to from constituents i would recommend that you have the pio package together some communication that we can help push out to ensure that people are hearing more about these mitigation you know plans that you guys have in place to help them understand what they need to do to prevent this type of of you know tragedy in our community yes sir that's an excellent idea and one of the things that um deputy chief weber mentioned is the fact that we are in the infancy of basically rolling out our community wildland protection plan so our goal will actually be to disseminate that not only to the council members but to the entire community uh this spring so again great recommendation again we're gonna follow that uh further questions comments are saying none chief ray thanks so much for the presentations uh morningstar adult care program review and update bill mayor i i have a couple of uh preliminary remarks before brooks starts that's all right please proceed yeah i just wanted to say that you know in may of 2021 uh we did reopen the aurora center for active adults and at that time we knew that morningstar was an issue in terms of uh reopening that facility um we talked in our our budget meetings that we knew we were going to have to address this with council and so we did continue the the budget in 2022 for that facility however and i'll i'll take the blame for this it didn't make it to council discussions over the summer or uh in the budget workshop and you know it has languished kind of since that time and i apologize that it was it didn't come to light really until through a commission meeting that occurred uh a month or so ago and so it wasn't you know it wasn't right the council members found out through a commission meeting about something that we had uh that i had not uh pushed forward at any rate we still have we have a presentation tonight we still think there are questions whether or not the facility should reopen but um that discussion that we have tonight really should have taken place six or eight months ago so again i apologize for that with that i'll just turn it over to brooke thank you jen and hello good evening mayor and city council my name is brooke bell i'm the director of parks recreation for the city of aurora and adrian i'd like to share okay and and do you all see that adrian do they see that yes thank you i need to get this is it in a the view of uh there we go perfect thank you so i will be speaking about morningstar adult care program adult day program i'm going to start out with the history of recreation during the pandemic in the context of morningstar and prior to and before i do that just orient you on this timeline the blue on the book ends are where we've um we're still we closed but things not [Music] [Music] the available of morningstar prior to covid for about two years prior to code we did have significant challenges with with staffing and primarily the nursing position so we have full free full-time fp associated with the program plus a number of part-time employees seasonal employees that are cnas and so two years up till the closure we had significant turnover in the medical profession support roles and so that was a challenge for us and also we received reimbursements from the veterans administration for services and those reimbursements started lagging um the services by one to two years starting in about 2018 primarily due to a change in the billing systems associated with the va and how they process those bills so we were starting to see some issues prior to covet with covid you all know everything shut down we had some success the first year reopening things then we had the surge of thanksgiving i would say right before that surge we were talking about reopening the aurora center for active adults but because of that surge that didn't happen and then as we get the vaccines on board beginning in 2021 and we all saw the public health orders and the mass borders fall away in april and may we were able to open the acaa the first week of may during covid the morningstar staff were in contact with the families on a weekly basis for about the first year checking on the families the client families checking on what their needs might be and if there are things that that we could do to help them we did um if it was within our ability we also had access to meals from the veterans administration these were excess meals that were delivered to the acaa throughout the first year of the pandemic and so if those families qualified for those free meals staff delivered them to their household and there were 11 families that qualified and received meals during that time as the time went on as jim said we had talked about this in may some of the challenges and some of the public health orders and today we remain closed i'm going to talk about the history a little bit and then a potential path forward with regard to recreation in general our facilities are open the acaa is open morningstar remains closed our recreation program is about 75 percent pre-coven level i will tell you that's primarily due to staffing levels and also a change in the public's interest and so we're still a little bit challenged getting people back in our recreation center some of our popular program like fitness we're struggling with fitness instructors so there's if you've heard in the past we still had some nationwide there's a staffing challenge for for everybody with regard to the history of morningstar it was established over 30 years ago it was originally located near colfax avenue near the fox theater it relocated a while back to the former lowry air force base to a building that's an intergenerational building so the morningstar programs share space with the lowry preschool and the operations of the of the program pre-covered were 7 am to 5 pm people would filter in during the morning the programming really didn't start until about 9 00 am clients could choose between full day programming or half day 90 of the clients have some type of neurocognitive impairment such as dementia and alzheimer's the program really focused on the individuals like a a typical day would be getting them up and moving would be music the participants had the choice whether to engage in the programming or not there are a lot of recliners in the facility so they would get made comfortable in the morning that we'd serve lunch and a snack and try to engage them with different activities throughout the day with regard to attendance and fees the va and medicaid set the their fees and then private pay is set by city staff and approved by city council through the fee schedule typically we try to set private pay fees in between the va fee and the medicaid fee you can see the the range of fees a half day can range between almost 60 dollars a day that's reimbursable by the va for a half day um to as low as uh 43 dollars for a half day reimbursable by medicaid um you'll also see the pie chart below to give you a sense of what the percentage of fees are that we collect um we have 40 to 45 client families signed up for the program free cobit attendance averaged over the last five years about 17 clients per day there were some days where it would be as high as 28 the capacity of the facility for this program is 30 but the average is 17 a day and if you look back to the previous five years it would average about 14 today a day so it's really consistently set stayed at 14 clients to 17 clients a day over the last 10 years this is a map of what currently is in place for care date i should say care for day providers and this is the morning stars at the top of this map you see it with the star and the certain red circle around it the green labels are programs that are within aurora the blue labels are programs that are outside of aurora but nearby this there are 25 programs in aurora and there are 11 outside all of these programs except medicaid i would say when you look at the green labels and the programs that are in aurora some of them can have unique clientele which what i mean by that is some would only accept clients that spoke a certain language or they would accept um clients of a certain faith um that's how they've been set up or they have different criteria for their clients in aurora with regard to the veterans administration benefits there is one active program right now that has va it qualifies for va benefits the one closed program is morningstar we still have the ability uh when we open um to get the va benefit reimbursements and then there is a facility that has a pending approval with the va in aurora the va we spoke to the va i believe that was on the 26th of january and they confirmed that 94 of the qualifying veterans that they refer out are locally have the neurocognitive impairments such as dementia that i mentioned and then all the veterans seeking this type of care program right now have current placements with regard to the financials the average annual cost of the program is 440 thousand dollars the program is financially break even as a result of the reimbursement recovery and i think i missed that early on staff spent the last two years during the closure working on recovering the va benefits that we were that we were due over the last two years and that was about 120 000 so prior to closure as i said earlier those uh reimbursements were lagging one to two years and so we were seeing that increasing over time um in 2022 the budget still is intact the budget the funding for the program has never been reallocated in any of the years nor was it ever spent on other programs in any of the years during closure the additional expense estimate for the program should we reopen we're estimating about 165 000 and that's primarily because of the covered world that we're now in and also the challenges we had with staff prior to coven so it would uh include hiring additional support to recover the benefits that we are due and it would also increase wages for the medical professionals that we would need to hire and so we do believe that would be more expensive we're not cert if we can fully recover those expenses but we certainly would give give it a try the longer view for the older adults in aurora the commission in january talked about wanting a needs assessment for their war older adults and i believe we can do that we have the wherewithal in our budget to to do that type of study and i would propose having the commission for older adults inform the scope that work guide that work and it could be a standalone study um and we'd certainly or we could include it in the pro's master plan that we've embarked on and we certainly would want a standalone study to inform the pro's master plan and then my final is a question but um for counsel but i understand you can't vote in study sessions so the question really is does council want us to safely reopen the morningstar program in 2022 and do you have any questions for me so steph let me uh ask the first one i was um i mean this is amazing this is such a growth area uh outside the city in terms of new businesses i think uh councilmember mcconnell and i were at a grand opening on friday although it was a chinese immigrant uh service to the chinese memory community i'm going to a ribbon cutting i think it's on wednesday for a fairly large one relatively close by the one we just went to i've met with other owners that are that are starting these businesses up they serve low-income people through medicaid reimbursements and through va reimbursements and so there's a reason why other municipalities are not engaged in that i think you said we may be the only one in the country uh it's because there's robust capability outside of the city uh serving the same individuals with getting the same reimbursements and so there's virtually no reason for us in my view to reopen this discussion questions of staff mayor um so i i was not familiar with this program at all um and so it it's not it's not just for seniors for recreation it's for a particular population of seniors that's correct it's for uh seniors that have dementia alzheimer's it's neurocognitive impairments it also provides family members with an opportunity for respite care okay and so our staff is supervising nurses is that correct these are certified nursing assistants and then we have an a licensed nurse in lpn so yes that's correct i guess my concern is we're not a health department so i don't know that we have the expertise to supervise health you know workers so i know that we meet all the state licensing requirements okay so if something happened is this city liable or the or the health care providers health care providers have been employees of the city oh they've been employees of the city we are employees of the city i i okay i didn't know we had a health department okay it's all new to me i mean i understand the need for it um and i also understand you know that that this has served a certain community in in the in ward 2. um i i kind of think there needs to be a needs assessment just in terms of you know you did show on your map where some other facilities are and then i guess there's new ones opening um i i think it's a good service and so forth my concern is whether it's something that a city should be doing we're not a county so we don't have health department under us have any of the counties ever done this like arapahoe county or adams county i i don't have that information councilman bergen i can check on that okay if i could just add a point and that is the the benefit of this program is that it and that's why it's medicaid reimbursable and reimbursable from the va is that it keeps people out of nursing homes longer by keeping them in their home so it's really people that do need kind of supervision type care so it's not the kind of you know recreational service that we normally provide for seniors uh this is really a step beyond that and it really is into venturing into healthcare yeah this is the doctor that councilman um so i i'm very supportive of this program i um i think it is a program that has essentially is for special needs our our senior population and um just the way the whole thing went down was just bad anyway but i'll move on move forward on this but i do have a couple questions for you brooke um just so um just if you could provide these answers for me um you included a map of 24 area day providers so the aurora commission for older adults investigated those programs and others and they found all but approximately four programs to be unacceptable for many reasons which are listed in your response did anyone in this in your office take time to research and vet these programs to confirm that they were equal in quality to the morning star and what their qualifications were and if they even existed anymore um you know i i don't think they investigated them to the level that you're describing my understanding is that they um found these due to their licenses and then also duda they had to investigate the medicaid component and then they spoke to the va about who sir who um was qualified under the va benefits and then mayor i'd like to do a follow-up um i also contacted some uh some people that from the veterans who were actually waiting to be on a wait list to be part of this program and is it true that the city is still taking funding from some of those those reimbursable um individuals or their caretakers when the program isn't even open i mean the program is closed so i would say that's not accurate um as far as we're taking reimbursement we are collecting the reimbursements for services that were due to us from 2019 and 2018 and so the clients may have seen um statements from the dates of those services and the fact that we got reimbursements now over the last two years the other reimbursement they may have seen was for the meals so if we could get reimbursement for the meals that were delivered through the va then we did submit those to the va to get those and so a client would see the charge for the meal now the clients are receiving something else so they have a specific question certainly staff would be happy to go over that reimbursement and confirm with them what the date of that service was and allay any of their concerns and then lastly mayor one of the things in the um in terms of one of the gaps seems like to be in the program especially for the reimbursable partner the the payment part was really the lack of having a bill a person who does the billing um so i guess my point is when we're talking about the three hundred thousand dollars um which i mentioned at the budget workshop couldn't that accommodate some of the funding that is needed to at least do the staffing which the billing person was really something that you really lacked as well um to actually do that work um and that seems like that was one of the gaps in the program i would say having a full-time employee and that was one of the reasons where we would say we would need 100 165 000 in additional funds um is to take care of the billing um yeah well i support this program i think it is a program of one of its kind that is actually for in in the city of aurora compared to some of these new programs that are opening up which are privately funded and i'm not saying that we're a health department but this is a program that a lot of our seniors have relied on and people and our seniors with special needs and i think it's something that we really should be considering and looking at and keeping so i'm supportive of it um i know my colleagues may have other questions so mayor i'll give it over to other council council members further questions mayor coombs all right guys um yeah so i just want to also express my support for this program one of the things that i think gets underestimated when we say oh well there's these other programs is the importance of respite care the difficulty of finding good quality respite care and respite care providers that the families trust so the families that are going to this program are families that have been going there for a while when i had gone to a previous um commission for older adults meeting there were family members that were saying hey you know we really count on this respite care and this is the only place that we're really going to be comfortable sending our family members um so i think it's easy to treat these programs as interchangeable but they are not necessarily because who where you have your family members go when you need a break which is really important for caregivers to be able to have um is a really big deal um you know you have to know that your family member is going to be safe well taken care of be familiar with the services and supports that they're going to be getting in that program um and so i just i think we would be doing a disservice to those folks that have been served by this program if we just point to whichever other programs may exist they specifically rely on and trust this program and i support keeping it open and you don't have to be a health department in order to have employees that are cnas and nurses there are many many none of these agencies are health departments and the health department does oversee programs that get medicaid reimbursement so you don't have to be your own health department in order to do that further discussion mayor um tim um so if we are we looking to do this in perpetuity or are we just looking at doing this for this year and the reason for my question is i don't even know if my word is on this map i we we sometimes get forgotten but you know i guess i will now start having to advocate for such services in my ward as well um i don't know what the budget impact will be to add um you know facility plus staffing you mentioned the billing so we're now having to add an fte at least to do the billing as well so it that's not done by the state or anything no the current staff do the billing um but it really it's complex and it really and it gets the bills get denied often and then they have to be rebuild and so we really would like to have a full-time employee that is focused entirely on billing so the other um staff can focus on the clients and right so i think that's that's the issue is we're we are moving in and i'm not saying this is not a good program but we're moving into as a city that's only funded on city taxes and hardly any property taxes from the county we're now moving into having to add staff for one program in only one part of the city of aurora which is really not equitable if you i mean we're gonna do it for with taxpayer dollars for one part of the city we should be doing it all over and that's just adding a huge part to our budget you know i don't i don't i don't know if it's sustainable into the future council member mcconnell thank you mayor um so i do support this program um i think from a matter of equity actually having this located in north aurora makes a lot of sense seeing as that's an underserved part of our community has historically been underserved continues to be underserved to this day and i also want to point out on the map that we were given it looks like the big concentration is in south ward 3 and in ward 4. which i understand why it would be in ward 4 we're very close to the medical center where the medical center actually is in the ward force so um i would like to see how many uh exist in ward 6 though to your point councilman or mayor pretend bergen um so i do think that you know the private sector if they can should definitely uh serve that part of town but one of the things i just wanna i wanna point out is that just the same way i feel about housing um i think that with this really critical service that i think mayor you highlighted actually very well the importance of having these kinds of services in our city the private sector is not always to keep up but able to keep up with the real demand just like we see for housing and a bunch of other services so i think having something like this you know located in a way that is equitable and that is still serving a portion of our community makes a lot of sense so i would support keeping it going um and you know ensuring that we actually can maximize it let me just say that uh the reason why the city is losing money is because it lacks the expertise to to do this program it's only serves a handful of people and you know let's do the needs assessment because i think what the needs assessment will show is there's robust capability in the in the private sector serving the exact same population uh because they predominantly serve medicaid eligible individuals and so um this is just a waste of taxpayer dollars and it really you know there's again there's a reason why we're one of maybe the only one in the country doing it uh because other people understand that there's robust capability in the private sector that does it again serving the same population giving the same reimbursements but being able to at least break even or make a profit because they can be inefficient because they know what they're doing but they have the depth of expertise that we don't further discussion mayor cancer member thank you mayor um i wanted to express my support for the program i've been in contact with our commissioners that we appointed and that have been advocating on behalf of this program um you know i will say i was concerned to hear about how you know changes were communicated to to the commission members i under we've had this conversation so i don't want to kind of rehash past conversations um instead just focus more on the presentation today but um i think it's um you know when you look at the map i think councilman mcconnell mentioned that from an equity and access standpoint there there is a lack of um these types of facilities in the northwest part of aurora so you know um in terms of that being available an available resource for folks um i think is really critical and you know just just thinking about like how long it takes to build a relationship with folks um for them to want to join um you know a facility like this and to continue to participate um you know that's not something you can just kind of transfer um over or um you know just create um just because a business is opened um you know so you know i want to be careful with insinuating that you know just because there might be another facility a private facility that that would have the same impact on our residents when you think about kind of the the circumstance we're in with kovid you know this is a really um a group of constituents that is vulnerable especially in this time and i think this would be the wrong time to move away from that kind of larger picture though i do support um kind of a larger needs assessment to get a clearer picture of how else we might support our um elderly constituents um i know that that you know in terms of best practices how do we manage our resources that they they pay into as well um i think that would be um much needed and i look forward to supporting that as well but um you know just concerns with how this was um communicated and you know the the frustration we're hearing from our constituents and the access opportunity in the northwest part of aurora i think is really critical so i would love to see that this is um cont this funding is continued um as well as more information on other needs for for our elderly constituents but we're silent on uh moving this forward so what is your expectation in this meeting um it was to provide an update and was to ask the question about moving forward and the needs assessment but we can um i'll i'll circle back with city uh city manager tumbly and we'll talk about that because i just thought we had this discussion in the winter workshop so i don't understand why we're having it again right now i think we did i'm sorry the winter workshop we talked about are you i'm sorry i'm confused mayor i'm um i'm talking about the needs assessment for the city up for the right well we saw that we talked about going forward with the needs assessment right in the workshop but not but we were silent on going forward with this uh pending the results of ni's assessment yeah we were we were looking for direction if we could get it tonight i thought you had direction during the winter workshop not not on opening or not opening wow what's the question uh city manager do you want to put before us is the council interested in proceeding with reopening the uh morningstar program before the needs assessment is done so we were saying i think they were to say i thought they i recalled them as two separate items there were two separate i'm sorry mayor for being disrespectful um it was two different items and i you know i'm not gonna i'm not gonna support the needs assessment for this i would like to have it as two different questions if that's what we're proposing here to reopen the program okay let's do uh is there any opposition to going forward with the needs assessment okay seeing none the needs assessment will go forward i i just i'm amazed to think that the needs assessment is going to tell you whether or not morningstar should go forward and so what you're saying then is let's do it simultaneously before then the knees assessment is just a waste of money that's the case i'm sorry i'm sorry um councilmember lawson sorry i mean the needs assessment to me was not just to reference morningstar it was looking at all overall comprehensive in our city of what are the needs of our community of our elderly senior community that's how i looked at the knees that not not pertaining to morning star overall comprehensive assessment in our whole city they will tell you whether these are that was my proposal okay well we should have had okay all right um is there support for moving morningstar forward yeah mayor mayor mayor hotel is there any way for us to talk to the county i mean we're funding this alone well county's not doing it at all and so i don't know why they would engage in it i don't know of anybody else in colorado at the county or local level that's doing this um but okay we're gonna i'll tell you what uh council member mario and then we're gonna just we're gonna i'm gonna get a sense of the council in terms of whether this moves forward or not councilmember yeah no i just wanted to just point out we're having a conversation about having data before making decisions i personally think that we can continue the funding for this particular program because we know it's a community need community has spoken out for us to address that but i for folks who um are interested in waiting on data um i i welcome that same thought process in the upcoming conversation around the camping ban we have data that we have not yet collected around our capacity and staff but yet we are moving forward an ordinance that is going to impact our staffing without actually having the data so i just want us to be consistent with that kind of train of thought in our future conversation so um mayor kaufman uh councilman lawson okay so i mean my thing is we if we fund this program we're gonna reevaluate the program and the measurements in a year i mean we can actually see if the program is going to be if what's going on with what staff has presented are if if it's true or not i think we'll be able to re-evaluate this program so i don't think that just stopping the program entirely is something that we should do we can we're going to be able to reevaluate the measurements and the metrics of this program all those in favor of moving uh if i can identify those in favor of moving forward with the morningstar uh program uh that guy i'm assuming councilmember lawson is in favor uh could others identify themselves marcano because right now guy councilmember lawson councilmember mcconnell uh councilmember medina councilmember coons councilmember mario is there anybody else who wishes to move this forward not a sufficient number have arisen it will not move forward a public hearing schedule for red tape reduction ad hoc committee presentation by staff or council members veronica yeah thank you mayor and i will um kick this over to somebody from the city's attorney's office but just for a little bit of context during our first meeting of the red tape reduction committee we determined that one of the key tools that we'll be using is a series of public public forums where we'll be soliciting input from businesses and industry leaders but in order to do that it was brought to our attention that we had to have permission from council to hold those public hearings and so we're here today to ask that and so if there's somebody from the city attorney's office who can just uh talk us through that real quickly before we get a sense of counsel sure this is dan broughtsman under the council rules under under uh the committee section uh committees are not permitted to have public hearings unless unless they get permission from majority of of council at a study session so that's why we're here tonight is simply that that particular rule under the council rules we have set forward mayor zavonik please we had set um tentatively three dates february 17th march 17th and april 20th as hearing dates and with light council's approval to to move forward with those public hearings uh discussion i say none of there any objection uh to moving the schedule forward by saying then the schedule will move forward let's see um i'm going to turn my proverbial more my virtual gavel over to the manpo temp for image number 7c and 7d thank you mayor um that's my sheet okay i've lost my form 7c is is that the camping ban 7c is a camping ban 7d is a companion resolution to the camping band i would like to go ahead and present them both together and then we can decide them separately okay mayor would you like to go ahead on 7c thank you um what 7c does is a a ban on urban camping requires a 72 hour notice minimum notice with an extension for inclement weather or bad weather there are no penalties uh involved if someone is in camping in an unauthorized manner in violation of the law this particular proposal um so the penalties were stripped from um in writing that this version they were in the initial version that was introduced i believe in august however that is someone refused to move after given the um the required notice uh and a designated place to go to alternative place to go to then in fact could be arrested for um disobeying a lawful order our police officers are currently doing this now um particularly along the i-225 corridor with cdot we provide security for that so that i'm not aware of any incident where anybody has refused to move when order to do so requires the city to provide an alternative location for them to go to and a shelter option uh this will be this is defined in the companion resolution only requires that uh such space uh be available for each encampment when is it abated the resolution directs the city managers to develop the designated spaces and broadly define shelter options from everything from utilizing their own intents to save camping to a shelter bed to a motel voucher for 72 hours or more the resolution also directs the city to provide at a minimum sanitation water and food at the alternative locations this approach is compassionate to those experiencing homelessness um and fair to um our residents and neighborhoods and businesses in our city i believe that uh to be cruel to those experiencing homelessness is to do nothing this moves them to a location that has sanitation water and food with the availability of other services with that um i'm open to questions for a discussion council members does anyone have any questions yes mayor pretend head councilmember marcano uh thank you ma'am um so mayor we discussed this uh to some extent actually in our last uh horns meeting and we were told that tents actually did not constitute adequate shelter so could someone from the city attorney's office clarify that please or from housing community services this is tim dress with city attorney's office todd does not approve the tents as a shelter option using federal funds but tents can be a shelter option if we use city funds like marijuana or general funds all right so i just want to clarify that because the mayor said that including folks's own tents that would then not be accurate correct you know i think that we are not in um i think if you're a recipient of federal funds for the reimbursement for that that it wouldn't be recognized but it certainly meets the legal test yeah okay okay remember do you have any more um i do and it's more of a general comment um i actually want to push back very strongly on your framing of cruelty because what we're doing is actually worse than nothing it is not accomplishing anything but just wasting city resources to push people around in perpetuity which is what we already do as i think you admit it to some extent i was actually reading earlier today because i've heard from constituents you know well what are we really going to do what's the solution because they know that i don't support you know just a camping ban and i've told them look at what helsinki has done in finland those folks have basically eliminated chronic homelessness by investing in housing first with wrap around services at the appropriate scale and they haven't backed off of that investment either because our economic system in europe here produces homelessness as an externality if we could address that that would be awesome but that's i think well beyond the scope of a local government to do on its own but i was also reading about houston so i don't have to always point at europe they've actually are making serious progress in this area not because of a camping ban but because again they've consolidated their homeless services and are now aggressively pursuing a housing first strategy and actually building new housing restoring existing housing and helping folks actually secure stable employment and stable housing so it's an all-of-the-above strategy it's housing first but not just housing is what they the way that they like to frame it so what we're doing with this ban however we try to meet whatever legal threshold you know we're concerned about meeting doesn't matter because ultimately at the end of the day we're accomplishing nothing and this is the exact kind of do-nothing policies that got me to run for council to begin with because we can all pat ourselves on the back and be like look we did something about homelessness aren't we awesome but you're still going to find tents on i225 after this passes you're still going to find tents in tollgate creek if this passes you're still going to find people living in tents because we haven't provided them with shelter and that's the actual solution to this problem what we're doing right now is embarking on the same failed path the liberal and conservative cities all over this country have embarked on we're setting us up to basically to be the next los angeles to be the next denver to have a massive unhoused population to waste so basically as i said before set taxpayer dollars on fire playing uh ever increasingly difficult game of whack-a-mole because we're not addressing the root of the problem so you know i guess i appreciate to some extent the work you've tried to you know you've put into this to try to help us not get sued i'm still pretty sure we're gonna end up getting sued because we had a very long back and forth at horns where questions were not really able to be answered in a i think concise and consistent fashion um so don't say i didn't tell you so when that happens but seriously we actually have an opportunity here to be trailblazers in this area and actually follow the examples of those cities that have done something that actually works so let's not just pretend that yeah we're gonna be able to pass a law and all the unhoused people in our city are gonna just vanish into thin air that's not how this works you all know that we need to actually provide the solutions to get them off our streets not just say you don't have to go home oh sorry you don't have a home but you can't stay here that's cruelty and that's exactly what we're doing okay other council members we think we also have we will be discussing uh 7d which is the shelter operation mayor pretends [Music] yeah i just wanted to circle back on the um shelter availability so per hud's definition of reimbursable costs um our the proposal in mayor kaufman's um ordinance is to use uh tents and pallet homes that are not um eligible for reimbursement so essentially you are creating a cost an additional cost for the city um by enacting this ordinance meaning that we would have to use not city funds and not get reimbursed for the types of shelter um to meet this sheltering requirement so um i guess i think it's a bit hypocritical that in the same meeting we decided that we didn't want to um incur additional costs we wanted to be fiscally responsible when it came to honoring our black community and the juneteenth holiday we weren't willing to incur a fiscal cost then we also weren't willing to incur a fiscal cost when it came to our elderly community and the morningstar program so i you know i'm frustrated that um that that is a talking point because it's just it's inconsistent um to create an ordinance that is inherently creating a cost for the city when the tone of this conversation has been just the exact opposite i think is a bit hypocritical um let's see that's i guess just the the starting point there um let's see so there it was purported that there wasn't going to be any um costs or fines um for folks who are who are a victim of this ordinance as it's written are there any secondary or tertiary um citations or processes that would enact jail time fines fees that are not explicitly written into this ordinance and i'll leave that to staff to respond someone from staff that can respond this is tim dress in the city attorney's office the ordinance does have a provision in chapter 94 it's section 94 122 that does make it unlawful to camp on private and public property and if you fail to move after you've been ordered and if there is a shelter option available for you yes you can be cited and if you are cited you can get a fine uh what would be the fine city attorney joyce they'd be the same as any criminal maximum buying can be up two thousand six hundred and fifty dollars it can also be zero remember jim yes mayor kaufman uh mr joyce said but that's the status quo right now is it not um uh are police officers provide oversight when there is an abatement and in fact if someone fails to move then they could be cited under under existing law yes or they could be they could be cited for failing to be a lawful order if they're on private property and the property owner asks them to move and they don't they can be cited for trespass so yes there are provisions currently on the books that allow for criminal penalties okay and if i can ask staff what hud resources we receive for our homeless population staff mayor kaufman so on an annual basis we receive emergency solutions grants which is specifically for folks experiencing homelessness both for shelter as well as homelessness prevention outreach and things like that so we supplement those funds with marijuana funds on an ongoing places for operational needs of partner agencies the the esg funds specifically for homelessness is about 287 dollars a year we were we received about five million dollars in coveted relief funds so some of the things we've been doing to keep folks safe the past couple of years has come out of that allotment we also receive community development block grant money that could be used for some of these different projects as well and then there is a home um arpa sort of category of hud funds as well we receive 4.2 million that's more of a brick and mortar uh and just just to clarify going back um so the the um tents have been allowed during covid because we've been separating people out so high quality fishing tents with heat has been allowed during covid for reimbursable cost by could that will not continue after september when those funds cannot be used any further the pallet shelters any kind of brick and mortar shelter um you know leasing and additional space those would all be covered as as shelter options um and staff could certainly come back with proposals around what options could be and the the objection the objective is clearly to move to um more you know to to have shelters available to have other things available but if we don't have it available uh then we would in in as a last resort uh to have to utilize our own tents uh the unfortunate reality is as if you look at the outreach reports uh very few individuals take or outreach people up in terms of services my hope is that more people will access services if if gone to an alternate location where they will be supervised and again we will provide sanitation food and water for them there again i think that the cruelest thing we can do is to do nothing and to enable their behavior to continue okay and uh just real quick jessica also marijuana monies are used for emergency homeless services as well that's correct marijuana dollars are used for sheltering services as well as outreach and other you know homelessness prevention and rapid rehousing i have a clarifying question sorry sorry sorry go ahead councilman yeah so i i understand that there's different pots of money i you know um i'm glad we understand that there are different sources of funding um the point i made though about forcing this ordinance and a solution that is not refundable um still remains so um jessica can you just clarify we wouldn't be reimbursed for any costs related to non-hud approved methods of sheltering that that's correct someone's personal tent would not meet the criteria for a structure um that's you know suitable for habitation it needs to have heat it needs to be sided enough that you know hail and other wind and things wouldn't be able to dismantle it so there are some kind of criteria related to what constitutes a shelter facility i have other questions i wanna i know you were trying to speak as well so i don't know if you are okay with me asking no go ahead go ahead okay thank you um so you know just to kind of zoom out a little bit in terms of enforceability of an ordinance like this we have to meet a certain shelter threshold correct um how how are we do we currently have enough shelter beds to house everyone um for this ordinance to be enforceable i'll start do we have someone to answer that councilmember maria this is tim joyce again um we do not need to have a bed for every single homeless person in aurora in order for us to abate a single camp what we need is for every person in a camp we must have a shelter option available for that person okay before we can even post it and consider updating it so um can i that this was part of my frustration at our horns meeting the the legal i guess answer can be a little confusing i was hoping that jessica prosser could um answer that as well so on a baseline of shelter beds we have about a hundred and 150 on any given night and kind of brick and mortar we've added some additional capacity with our pallet shelters um and so right now currently when we're abating a camp we're looking to see if there's capacity in the shelter we can usually accommodate a few people and i say that's kind of in a 10 or less category we can find spaces and move forward with the abatement if we're doing additional abatements more often or of larger camps we would probably be in a situation where we would need additional shelter option capacity in some way to be able to move forward with those encampments so um you know at any given time it fluctuates but for the most part our overnight shelter is full our pallets have been full and when one comes available we have do have weekends and they um become filled therefore wait i do have a one clarifying question um yeah so so there was 150 beds on an on any given night roughly um and the concern is that with this ordinance with increased frequency and potential volume of abatements um mandated by this ordinance that we wouldn't necessarily have the capacity to accommodate um those changes that we wouldn't you know have the capacity there is that correct and then could you answer approximately how many folks are experiencing homelessness in the city sure so um you know i think we would have to track data over time over the next several months to see um what that capacity looks like and what the needs would be but at this point just looking at the number of requests that we have currently in excess aurora and the number of beds we would probably need some additional capacity uh pretty quickly to be able to accommodate and we would also need to to just sort of take a look at our current um practices of how we're going through the process based on the ordinance there would need to be some changes lana can you chime in on kind of the number number of folks experiencing homelessness it's it's a it's a tricky answer just because we haven't had a good count in a few years so i'm going to call on lana to help answer that question thanks um this is lana dalton the homelessness programs manager for the city as far as account of individuals experiencing homelessness last year we were able to do a sheltered count and not an unsheltered count because of covid and so we had 594 individuals experiencing homelessness that were accessing shelter on any given night last year again we had additional beds available because of covid's we had an overflow facility that was open every night we had additional tent capacity we had the regular aurora day resource center open on cold weather nights as well as um the comitas shelter which provided that additional capacity to get to 594. this year um on january 25th we did a full count so we have account for individuals that were experiencing a homelessness that were unsheltered as well as shelter those count results will not come back until early summer because those are controlled by our continuum of care or the metro denver homelessness initiative so if we were to look at our total bed capacity with cold weather on any given night so this includes our cold weather beds we have between 285 and 360. if you want a total bed capacity without our cold weather sheltering options we have 210 to 285. um and the reason is is because our aurora resource center that opens on uh cold weather nights adds an additional capacity of 75 mats for individuals to sleep on on those cold weather nights all right a mayor kaufman thank you man for tim the second vote the companion resolution directs staff to increase uh capability in terms of of shelter options okay other council members airport time yes councilmember marcono thank you ma'am and since this companion resolution keeps getting referenced i'd like to ask staff is there anything in that resolution that you are not already doing it was my understanding that for the last several years you've been pretty aggressively trying to acquire land or identify partners who are with land who are willing to allow us to expand our shelter capacity is that not true uh council member mark connell that is accurate however we have not had the resources to bolster uh the additional sheltering capacity for a long period of time and so therefore that would be something that would need to be um accompanying this this resolution mayor emergency shelter at the arpa uh workshop this past weekend that is also accurate that's for cold weather sheltering specifically and so we would need that to continue throughout the year if we're looking at abatements year-round okay and then also in addition to consent items that we had tonight a lot of that was funding right for homeless services and mayor protem one one other thing oh sorry go ahead council members of honor and also i know that we and i can't remember the number now but we had allocated funds for non-profits and i think in my conversation with the city manager i think it would be appropriate when this passes um for the city manager and staff to reach out to non-profits who could potentially offer more beds to ensure that we can be in compliance once this passes i think it's important to note that um you know this ban isn't going to solve homelessness but it is going to solve a symptom of it and and what we're seeing is that these encampments that are on the sides of our highways and in our neighborhoods and next to our businesses they're causing serious public health and safety issues and so this doesn't make homelessness illegal when this passes you can still be homeless in aurora but what you won't be able to do is camp in public and have these open-air drug facilities and that are creating serious public health and safety concerns for our community council member lawson i do have a question about what council councilmember zavonik said stated so even though we we're putting this 72-hour ban abatement you know this is going to be what the what the law is going to be but then we still have to how are we going to work that with c dot and also the state because we have those two different different things we have a 72 hour but if we're working with c dot can you explain to me how is that going to work with this ordinance um they have a different process or they are we going to do some type of coordination with them i know we do something now but if we're meeting the 72 hour provision so maybe mayor you can explain that or maybe mr joyce kid well we don't have i mean they ask for our assistance but they have jurisdiction uh over state land and so in the right of ways along i-225 um that that's their jurisdiction but they've been working with us and we've been providing security uh oversight uh when they do the payments but they would not but that right if you're talking about right in their right of way they wouldn't be subject to the 72 hours okay okay mayor i understand that i'm sorry mayor pro tem can i just continue so yeah go ahead i was going to ask questions so my question is we're still going to get res i think what if this will pass you will need to educate residents though that they still will see that and that that's not going to be applicable to the 72 hours because we get i i mean i get calls i'm pretty sure a lot of other council members do talking about those particular areas too so i'm just saying the education is going to have to be on the front of where residents to say hey there is a gap here we are going to have to work with this because they're going to see that and they're going to not understand what's going on with this with the 72 hour so i think that that's something that is going to be interesting to see so thank you can i clarify okay with jessica so we did just a couple of weeks ago approve an intergovernmental agreement with cdot so that we do have the authority uh to provide abatement in the cdot right-of-way um which is is yeah so we are partnering with them we are working they've provided us with an additional budget however their requirement is for seven days so the city can proactively um you know work towards abating things in the right of way however they require a seven day donors where ours would be 72 on uh you know city property or other public land so just wanted to clarify that we do have that iga in place that's right and mayor kaufman mayor pro tem what about the what about iga with the state part of it that's like where the state park is as well um where we see we've had to work that's that's been tough in in that area there's a an area outside the fence i think when you under uh vaughn way i think comes out um right by the cherq state park and so i think we've actually it's not in aurora so cdot has worked with uh i think it was sea dot has worked with uh arapahoe county sheriff's office in terms of doing abatements right in that area go ahead councilmember mercano go ahead sorry yeah i just have information to share here because i've you know um folks have contacted me about that camp and i have um put in requests so that's actually owned by colorado parks and wildlife it's a different state agency and they're the ones that you have to partner with to do that and they have a completely different schedule and guidelines around this issue um as i'm sure we all we're all learning here right so yeah and i did want to uh just highlight something that councilmember lawson said that i completely agree with and it is something that i'm very frustrated with because you know this is something that we've been talking about for over a year at this point and it's the dishonesty with the public around this issue that i think the mayor and frankly some of our new members of council during the campaign and some of our older members of council have been taking advantage of is misleading and i would say lying to because we all know better perspective we are not to attack uh council members you can talk about the you know the policy but we should not be attacking other council members or the mayor i don't think saying that you're lying is an attack but you're the mayor pretends i could go ahead mayor um i think council member marcano gets mixed up in terms of when there's differences of opinion the other person is there's a lack of integrity on the other side always and i think that goes back to a statement uh that he did earlier that i'm going to be introducing a resolution uh concerning this conduct uh in the city council in terms of uh making you know uh uh making it an ethics breach but let me just uh i i think that going back to the the everybody uh recognized by the mayor pro tem i'm sorry everyone needs to be recognized by the mayor pro tem before speaking okay um um i'm recognizing the mayor and then i will recognize council member combs i think what council member mcconnell referred to was the area is the where the abatements occurred was outside the fence and so that is a long uh that's a right-of-way for highway 83 which is a state road which is parker road and so it was cedar that did the abatement there okay councilmember combs please yeah the point of order was just that the mayor literally just carried on to do the thing that you just did a point of order council member marcano about and you allowed him to do it i am trying to control everybody yeah but so i just want to be very clear that we have to be consistent across those things um but also i want to address as well the question of cruelty which has come up because i think that there is inconsistency in the kinds of comments that have been made about the subject matter matter namely we're saying that we don't want to be cruel by quote doing nothing but then at the same time comments have been made that the hope is for this policy to make the city of aurora an inhospitable place for people to experience unsheltered homelessness and so i don't think we can say that we both want to avoid cruelty and we want to create an inhospitable environment for people creating an inhospitable environment is a cruelty to them saying we'd rather they just go to another city and really what ends up happening is they go to another city for a little bit and then they come back to our city or they go from one part of our city to another part of our city to another part of our city and so let's really think about both the impact and the intent of what we're doing and if we say we want to create an inhospitable environment we can't also turn around and say that what we want is to avoid cruelty and i'm going to recognize myself right now um you know i think what what we're trying to do i mean people are already camping in tents in terrible conditions horrible conditions um that are not hygienic and so i think the camping ban is a way to hopefully move uh people in these encampments to a safer environment and and i want to say that we're not recognizing residents that we have had hundreds of emails from over the past couple years and business owners that have had to deal with this so i think in in fairness you know we want to be respectful of those experiencing homelessness but we need to be respectful of our residents that are our neighbors and also our businesses um so that's it for me other council members yeah so many of the people currently now experiencing homelessness whether unsheltered or otherwise in the city of aurora are residents of our city who have become homeless homeless as a result of evictions and other issues that they face so i don't think we can say that we're drawing a distinction between our residents and people experiencing unsheltered homelessness that would be a false dichotomy um the people having this experience are also our residents fair enough other council members mayor broughton yes council members thank you i'm glad you don't get my voice or name mixed up uh okay so all right um last um we heard from the police chief was that there was hesitation um and you know a desire to not participate in forcibly removing um folks um that would be created a a more frequent occurrence that would be created as a result of this ordinance um because of the lack of already you know lack of police capacity they want to be addressing more serious crimes has that opinion changed we have the chief total someone from the police department police department hi this is uh this is darren parker deputy chief chief chief wilson's out of town on training so i guess i'll attempt to address that question um no the opinion has that chief wilson's opinion has not changed on that uh we although we haven't had any further more detailed discussions about this i have other questions but if the mayor had a specific follow-up to that mayor i gotta i do have a question to the deputy chief go ahead uh deputy chief isn't it true that your officers have been providing uh security uh for these abatements um so this is nothing new that you've been doing is that not correct we have been priding providing security for these abatements yes so i believe that the chief is philosophically opposed to a campaign ban but the fact is her officers have been doing this all along um thank you appreciate that thank you thank you so much yeah i like your accent on that one yeah so i guess it begs the question what is the point of this um we already have procedures and processes that address and situations similar to this this feels like a non-ordinance only for show we're not going to be solving the root of any of these issues we know for a fact and i've heard many council members speak on behalf of our police officers in these conversations that we've had on city council but when our police the head of our police department is saying we do not have the capacity and we are reminded several meetings by several council members that that is the case yet when it's opportunistic and convenient we we don't want to support that opinion or lack of capacity so we're going to be creating more and increased volume and then increased need for police officers to engage in this type of activity um to to follow this ordinance so we are totally ignoring the fact that we do not have capacity we are ignoring the thousands probably of constituent emails of folks who email us about x y or z related to the police department we're going to focus their energies um with this law where we're creating to and that's going to impact the volume um of response needed by police department so again what's the point of this um it's a non-ordinance and do we not care about the costs that we are incurring because that was not the only cost that i heard so again back to the fiscal responsibility and being fiscally conservative we are increasing potentially very likely the alvaro police department's staff time we are increasing the occurrence of non-reimbursable costs to the city and we are potentially incurring costs to increase staffing from our housing department as well so i don't see how any of this um is in line with the rhetoric that i've heard around cost neutrality around being fiscally conservative around cutting red tape uh none of that i'm just there's a lot of inconsistency here and i think it's though it is stated in the ordinance that this will not create any casts that is that is inherently misleading we've just heard the three ways in which this would be creating an additional cost important that the public management never says that this will be cost neutral in fact it will drive additional costs because it states that that um it directs uh the staff to come up increase capability and with increased capability there's going to be costs in terms of providing shelter options but the fact is that there is great economic damage that these um it's not just uh that they're a threat to public health if they're a threat to public safety uh that the individuals quite frankly given their behavior or a threat to themselves but with that there's economic damage created by these if you talk to businesses and the property crimes associated with these uh the blight uh associated with these as people drive through our city i think it's problematic and i think we need to deal with it and this then that's the objective of this ordinance with the companion resolution mayor pro tem oh i'm sorry council members if you wanted to go did you want to go did you want to go i have more questions but i've been speaking a lot you should go and i will if mayor bertone will call me next i'd appreciate it um so mayor i have a question for you uh you kind of evaded the question for me oh i understand that along 83 parker road where we do get people contacting us i live over in this ward so i don't live far from there what is going to be your messaging to deal with that are we going to try to get an iga with the state what are you going to do to tell constituents about that part in your messaging about this ordinance is not going to be able to do that in 72 hours and i think it will take some education of the of the public but what the public want to see is an improvement the public's fed up the majority of the residents of the city are absolutely fed up with what's going on and they want this council to take action and this proposal takes action well i'm going to go to council member mario and then council member marcano i didn't know if councilmember lawson was finished with her oh sorry i'm sorry sorry um you can go head counselor maria maria okay uh thank you so i i don't even know where to start like okay so again i think this is creating false expectations people are going to suddenly expect us to um address all of the issues um all at once and that is just not legally we don't control all of this these different moving parts um and just because um the mayor organizes people to email us saying that we want a camping ban doesn't mean that the majority of residents want a camping ban um you know so i'm not saying that that's not an opinion that's held but i also you know i've gotten emails i understand i want to be clear like i think we should address the health and safety issues uh we should help address the underlying causes that's the entire point of the housing strategy we just implemented we are this is just as premature at best we haven't even had the time to see how that has impacted um homelessness in aurora if if we are chasing more than um you know taglines or you know buzzwords around homelessness what i did when this first came up is i actually spoke to staff around what the issues they were experiencing if you recall we experienced the three times increase in the volume of just complaints to the city of aurora on the issue so it's not that there's necessarily three times the occurrence it's just that's how many people are contacting our staff as a result we included a new full-time employee specifically to um let's see reduce the red tape internally around our procedures around homelessness and addressing and creating a more efficient process i'm specifically dedicated to addressing those that increase in in uh constituents that are connecting and complaining to the city they've been hired for not even a month at this point so we haven't even we haven't even seen the impact of how that alleviates that bottleneck because that was a legitimate bottleneck that our staff pointed to and us being able to respond in an efficient manner and that's part of the the issue you know being really honest we can't just lump things together we actually have to investigate the data and that's what the data is showing us that we we needed that additional cap staff capacity we haven't yet had the amount of time to see the impact so i have many opinions on this as you guys have heard but this is premature at best um but yeah so that was another point that i felt was important to me thank you um just i just want to make a note that it is almost 10 30. we do also have a presentation from the um from laurel uh laura hayes um in the court um so just to be you know um respectful of staff time so uh other comments yes go ahead councilmember marcano thank you ma'am um so i guess i just want to close out my piece here by saying that i want us to take action and you're right our residents demand that we take action and that's why i have for over a year really since being on council have been advocating for a housing first approach to homelessness i'm hoping that we can stand up a pilot for a social housing program i want us to follow the lead of cities across this globe that have actually solved this problem or at the very least have dramatically reduced it while addressing a lot of other socioeconomic issues in their communities i think we should follow the evidence and what this is i would not consider this action this is political theater with a fiscal note at the very very best and given the mountains of evidence that we have that these kinds of policies do nothing more than allow politicians to take a victory lap and pretend they did something while setting money on fire i feel very confident saying that this is dishonest at very best when we're interacting with the public because we know better everyone up well up on this virtual dais knows better and our city deserves better than this kind of crap any other council members i did i'm sorry i do have a last question thank you for entertaining my the the thoroughness of my questions um i unders so am i correct in um understanding that this would be coming up for a vote at our next regular city council meeting on the 14th getting a head nod okay is it also true that city council will be in person but residents will not be allowed to be in person yes that is true we are looking to bring the people again at a future meeting okay so i i have concerns with the with that just that situation i don't know if it was intentional or not i know the mayor and yourself kind of set that that up so i won't escape i won't assume well i like i said i won't assume negative intentions but optically speaking the fact that we are bringing up a very politically charged conversation during a meeting that we are not allowing the public to be in person i understand they can be virtual um but i just think it's different um allowing folks to show up in person as opposed to being virtual so i don't know i just think that that the optically looks really odd and i would support postponing until we can get more ability of the ability to have the public weigh in in person um as opposed to them being separated and having only the virtual platform um in the future mayor protests council members of anik yeah i you know what um councilman maria i agree um let's let's open it up to the public if we can have 70 somewhat thousand people at the denver broncos stadium on a sunday let's let's open the city building on the 14th and allow the public to come and testify for and against it happy to have that conversation with the public so i will just interject here that there is a concern that we would have so many you know with covid um i know the mass mandate has been lifted but i believe there was concern from staff on capacity um in the council chambers um for people being right next to each other with genomes well i just want to honor that you had those questions you know those questions those conversations and that's an informed kind of decision so you know i wouldn't want to rush that per se but i also wouldn't want to rush this very important boat if the that is a legitimate concern i'm not going to pretend like i know all of the intricacies about our capacity or you know i understand you know kind of these larger things that are out of control around mass mandates i want to be very sensitive to that so by no means am i saying let's absolutely open it up to the public but if if we're not allowing the public to speak at that meeting can we postpone this conversation um till a later date um if we can so we we are looking at 7c and 7d 7c is the camping band ordinance 7d is the resolution uh to provide shelter options in conjunction with with the camping ban any final comments before we this will go to obviously to the next council meeting and further discussion can happen at that meeting as well okay um so any objections to moving this forward yes yes okay so halfway to the council member mario councilmember marcano medina booms medina any others okay that is not enough so it will move forward and mayor i will return the virtual gavel back to you well okay so i'm assuming both then move forward the resolution and the ordinance yes okay very well um presentation from on judicial performance commission process presentation good evening mayor mayor potem members of council this is shaun day presiding judge um i would just like to take this opportunity to thank three of our community members who are here in the meeting tonight who serve on the judicial performance commission we have chairman john hand who will present today tonight in addition we have commissioner nicholson commissioner stafford who are also um on tonight's meeting i'd just like to thank commissioner malcolm commissioner kennedy as well for their service on the judicial performance commission i know chairman han is uh going to need the privileges for his presentation i'll turn it over to chairman hand thank you judge today mayor kaufman city council members thanks for giving us the invitation to talk to you tonight about the judicial performance commission the purpose of the judicial performance commission is chartered under the city statutes under the city code and a good summary is is as follows we maintain and improve the quality of judges performance we compile a great deal of information about the judges from a variety of sources one of which is a survey that i believe city council members have recently recently received it's about an 80 page compilation of survey results from citizens jurors attorneys even court administrators and and law enforcement and our purpose is to develop a variety of techniques to evaluate the judges we follow up on this by providing a report to city council the the various uh different reports that we have plus letters and evaluations for each judge that go to you every other year this is not a retention year as we call it this is a non-retention year but next year will be and will be providing um a recommendation on each judge for the city council those recommendations can be reappoint the judge do not reappoint the judge or no opinion and we can also give a more detailed explanation if we'd like to it's also important to know that the judicial performance commission is not an appeals or judicial decision review commission we strictly evaluate the judges because there are a lot of judicial avenues in play to to pursue if a judge's decision needs to be analyzed here are some of our evaluation sources we do these statistical surveys that are combined compiled by a market research organization on an annual basis they come from about 400 to 600 questionnaires which are returned to the judicial performance commission and interestingly the majority of those questionnaires come from jurors typically not from attorneys law enforcement or other sources annually we interview the judges to get an idea of how they're feeling about their work some of the challenges they face we do not tell judges you know what we think of their opinions or anything like that but we do ask some very pointed questions and at times we'll review a judge's performance on a specific case by looking into transcripts and other things we can get our hands on to see if the judge's performance meets 23 different criteria that you'll find attached inside that statistical study also judges can do self-evaluations for us they can respond to if they choose uh the commissioners are regularly in the courtroom watching cases getting to know how the judges work what their style is uh even some of their their their key abilities and and sometimes some of their challenges and then we have executive sessions uh sometimes at every meeting which is the second saturday of the month from march through october roughly the commission has an interesting composition four attorneys four non-attorneys and three attorneys we are in a hunt for a couple of extra attorneys at this point we're actively recruiting uh all of the commissioners have a unique mix of skills and commissioner wesley nicholson is on tonight and if he can if he can be recognized so he can talk i'll allow him to introduce himself maybe wesley had to had to leave us our vice chair is debbie stafford and good evening everyone thank you for allowing us to join you and uh it's been an honor to serve on the commission and i have to tell you i am so proud of the bench in aurora and how they've managed the challenges of covid and um i come not only uh with some public policy background but also as a domestic violence counselor working with offenders so i really appreciate what i believe is the respectful and fair process that most people receive in our courts and uh thank you for allowing us to join you tonight i wanted to talk a little more about debbie and some things she didn't mention she she is a very gifted mental health practitioner and she's very handy to have on the commission because judges often deal with people who have mental health issues and i think she brings a lot to the table in helping us to see the complexity of that i'm john hayne the chairman and my background is mainly market research uh business analysis and business planning i've been doing that for about 30 years our newest member is yasmine kennedy she just joined us a couple of months ago i'd like to walk you through a quick exercise that shows you the value of the the commission so here i'm comparing two judges uh for judge abel 40 questionnaires were returned that's not enough to be statistically significant but we can use that to develop some clues about judge abel's behavior 75 percent of people favor his retention he has an increase in his retention rating from last year his mean skill rating went up and uh some of the comments are we get a mix of comments verbatim comments about judges he's an excellent judge or i have no confidence in him and you can go on reading the rest on the other side is judge baker he has 33 questionnaires returned but only 47 percent favor his retention he has a 28 decrease in in retention rating from last year his skill rating has gone down to 3.3 and again we receive a lot of a diversity of comments about different judges sometimes they're they're actually obscene but we filter through those so which judge is the best one it would seem that judge abel is the best judge of the two but this was kind of a false exercise and i set it up that way for this reason it's the same judge it's just a judge two different years on a different assignment and the reason judge baker's scores have gone down is that now judge abel has a new assignment where he's being evaluated more severely by attorneys more attorneys are evaluating him than judge abel who had jury trials the year before insurers tend to write glowing reports about judges whereas a law enforcement and attorneys typically rate judges much more critically and because of the tools that we use the evaluations that we give the judges our interviews our import presence the judicial performance commission is able to to really separate these issues out and i'd like to open it for questions uh questions mayor uh remembered him i don't have any questions i just want to thank you for a very um earl presentation and i think you guys do a wonderful job i know it's uh you put a lot of hours into this and um and being very objective and and i appreciate it and thank you for staying up so late thank you council member uh further questions uh comments seeing and i want to thank you uh thanks judge jay for setting this up uh thank you all for what you do i really appreciate it uh really meaningful very important work thank you so much um with that there are no further honors before uh council uh meeting is adjourned good night [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you