[Music] so [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the study session for the aurora city council for monday october 18 2021 is called to order um when the clerk please call the roll i'm sorry mayor is having trouble immuting myself uh mayor kaufman yeah mayor protembergen here and um angela lawson needs a link to get in thank you we're forwarding it to it right now council member coons councilmember persons councilmember berzins council member gardner here council member hills council member hilts councilmember lawson council member marcano president council member mario council member hilt i think i see you on now yes yeah thank you uh council member coombs councilmember burzens okay i will check on them to see if they're having trouble logging in katie do you want a five-minute recess to do that i don't think do we have a forum mayor we can we can do the announcement of the call in line first okay please proceed okay here councilmember lawson i'm just um gonna make a note that you're here and i'm i'm counting you as present yeah thank you i'm not sure why i'm not getting the link anymore but i appreciate you sending it okay yeah we can um i'll touch base with you after the meeting and we can try to figure that out for you okay let me know when we're done with the announcement for the caller yes mayor i believe we're also having technical difficulties i'm not hearing it yeah yeah we can go ahead and get started and i'll try to get everybody on the meeting and see what's going on there is no uh mayor update um are there any issue updates no issue updates yes yes thank you you know i know we changed our meetings to include an additional monday so that we have two study sessions a month as well as the council meetings these study sessions are super super long and i just noticed our agenda tonight is really full um it i can't even pull anything off the consent calendar because it would just increase the time that we're on the meeting um do you think we're going to get through everything tonight or is there any room for delay of items um no i think we'll be able to get through everything okay thank you consent calendar um item items 2a through 2l are there any objections to moving items 2a through l forward sing none uh item two a uh through two l we'll move forward um um item number three a uh 2022 federal lobbying contract renewal uh good evening mayor and council luke palmisano intergovernmental relations manager i'll give a quick presentation on this item as well as 3b the state lobbying contract staff is bringing forward a renewal of both the federal and state lobbying contracts with our respective federal and state lobbying teams that's holland and knight on the federal level and capital capital partners at the state this is the final auction year of both contracts uh these were presented at the august 26 25th fsir committee and was referred unanimously for full council consideration the question before council tonight is whether to move both of these contracts to the regular council meeting for final consideration happy to answer any questions is there any objection to moving item number three a and three b forward then item number three and three b will move forward all right thank you very much i'm number three c aurora water state lobbying services contract renewal hi this is kathy kitzman water resources principal with the water department and this is similar to items 3a and 3b and this is a renewal of a competitively bid contract for aurora water state lobbying services for colorado advocates for the following or for next year and the question to counsel is if the item might be approved and move to the next available regular session is there any objection to moving item number 3c forward let's say none item number 3c we'll move forward uh i'm number 3d renaming the aurora water building um at the southeast area maintenance facility the daniel p uh miso water operations facility uh marshall brown good evening mayor council uh marshall brown with aurora water aurora water has a history of naming significant facilities in recognition of departed or retired directors who've contributed significantly to the corresponding facility and have served for extended periods of time that those facilities currently include the benny water purification facility the wemlinger water purification facility and the griswold water purification facility that we're all named after prior directors dan mikesell was originally hired by the city in march of 1981 served in multiple capacities including as the acting director of the utility from 2011 to 2012 and then thereafter served most recently as the director of operations and environmental programs dan contributed significantly to many efforts within the utility one of the things that he had a huge part in was the acquisition of the property for the southeast area maintenance facility and the initial design and all the studies to help assess the needs and determine what needed to be out at that facility so we are requesting uh the ability to name the aurora water operations buildings at seam after dan are there any objections to moving out of number 3d forward saying none item number 3d will move forward item number 3 e acknowledgement of the supporters of the aurora armed forces treatment court uh resolution uh jason bachelin thank you mr mayor uh this item was actually um came into the public safety committee at the request of council member gruber so uh if you're okay with it i'll turn it over to councilmember gruber to discuss the resolution councilman several council members were involved in uh standing up the uh the armed forces treatment court uh council member hills council member johnson and i uh have worked this for a number of years judge day has done the lion's share of work actually bringing it together and there have been many people many organizations that have volunteered to help the municipal armed forces treatment court is not funded congressionally like the county courts and the state courts are so this one is the result of volunteers this resolution thanks those volunteers and will simply give them a piece of paper showing them that the city of aurora is appreciative of their efforts and taking care of our veterans thank you for your service councilman gruber and for your involvement uh further discussion on item number three e uh seeing no further discussion is there any objection to moving out number three forward i have a question uh council uh manpower tim and i i miss this maybe if council member gruber already mentioned it but in terms of the um metrics are there going to be are we going to be measuring anything for that court in terms of success yes um and and um i don't i don't see judge day on uh but yes the the that so the idea of the armed forces treatment court is that a person comes in a veteran comes in with a problem goes to the judge the judge identifies a course of action for the person to take in order to divert him or divert him or her from going to jail the person is responsible for following all of the actions that the court determines to include counseling to include work skills to include whatever the court mandates and at the end of the process the person who successfully completes it will go through a graduation ceremony a person who does not complete it does not successfully complete it we'll go into the court system and be treated just like anybody else so this is another one of the diversion courts with another another concept in order to keep people out of jail deal with the special experiences that they have in this case as a veteran and move them forward uh and get them back on the right track to rejoin society okay thank you so much uh further discussion mayor all right councilman so to clarify this is to give some kind of a certificate to the volunteers that have supported this effort not necessarily everyone else for doing their jobs right this is this is for those organizations that have gone above and beyond um well they're not being paid this is for those organizations that have volunteered especially uh um like the storm center at the university denver university uh the psychological support center they're doing all of this um uh graduates to help the veteran community their charter is to support the veterans but they've expanded their charter to embrace the court further discussion are saying none is there any objection to moving 3e forward i see no objection item number 3e will move forward item number 3f battery operated alarmed electric fence ordinance uh jason messler yes sir uh this is an ordinance that's uh councilmember gardner uh is sponsoring and bringing forward so uh if there's no objections i'll turn it over to him to kind of uh talk about the ordinance thank you jason uh yeah this this ordinance um is essentially uh allows businesses in our community um to install battery-operated fence to protect their um their merchandise so a couple of use cases marijuana house grow houses equipment rentals uniform stores the stores like that uh retail stores industrial uses that need to protect high-value merchandise so this was presented at ped several months ago probably three or four months ago at this point and we've had i would say a fairly long process with staff kind of going back and forth and hiring out some details and i believe we're in a place now where um staff is comfortable with um with what we're bringing forward i do have a representative nikki huggins from the manufacturer of one of these expense companies on the line to answer any questions if there are any uh any any questions just uh remember him just uh i think i i think i know but this was the there was a change on how far they could be from residences right maybe council member gardner that's correct so there's a 300 foot setback in the in the ordnance and that came from discussions at pv um and essentially what would happen is if if there were uses within 300 feet of a residential area um the the the application would go to the planning department to determine how to proceed um there's some things that could be installed like screening and and other um i guess physical barriers that would block um the view from the residential areas okay so yes that that that was a result of the pd presentation okay thanks so much yeah uh councilmember lawson um yeah so i know when this came to ped i mean i know it went through and i was a little bit more of the hesitant person on this and i just wanted to ask is there somebody from police and fire i mean it looks like you've worked through some of the questions but i just want to know are they okay with this because i know that after that meeting i had talked to someone from police and they still had some issues with it so i just it looks like it some things went back and forth but is there a representative from police or fire to say that this is fine i could speak for fire councilmember lawson thank you um you said that would be great yeah speaking for the fire department um we did work a long time with the other city departments and came to compromise that meets what we need as far as accessing and de-energizing these so we are content with the ordinance is there someone from police that could speak on that as well commander lanigan's on the line okay i think i did talk to you commander lan again about it after pd that discussion so i'm glad that you're here yes ma'am i'm sorry it took me a minute to get in there um i'm on the same page with our department we worked through our problems and um we came through the ideas of making sure we can de-energize in that um there's security measures in place either our officers will not get um electrocuted or the general public will not get electrocuted okay thank you you're welcome further discussion mayor dave gruber i'm very pleased to hear that the uh that we've come to agreements within the city uh i agree with uh councilmember lawson that the um when we debated this or discussed this at ped there were several concerns raised so my understanding now is that the um this is still going to be a conditional use it'll still have to go before the planning commission and my question is on those that are already installed uh i'm assuming uh once we grant permission for these in the city that those that are already installed will go to the planning commission and get their uh authorization in you know in retrospect and given the fact that they're already they're already up is that is that what is going to happen so councilmember there are some areas that would be conditional uses uh and there's other areas that where i think it would be as long as it meets certain conditions it would be a use by right it would be in a permitted zone so if uh any of the existing fences fall in those areas that require conditional use they would go to the planning commission for conditional use approval if they're in the other areas where it's permitted use then they would uh go through the process to receive the permit as i wind in in the ordinance okay thank you i support this witness join the discussion mayor councilmember marcono councilmember thank you sir um so i did see in the back up that there was an option added or rather requirements added to allow ems uh and first responders generally access with knock knocks boxes and switches so i think that's great but i do have a question about the kind of liability that a business might face if someone injures themselves as a result of one of these fences i know it's not exactly a particularly high voltage but this is just like a concern i can see someone potentially trying to bring a suit because of that can someone speak to that as you say tim joyce perhaps you could speak to that from the city attorney's office and then um perhaps one of the manufacturers could also speak to that if that's okay with council this is tim joyce as far as liability i don't see liability on the part of the city if someone were to touch the fence and get shocked by that if there's a negligent installation or defective product that liability would be on the manufacturer and the business that installed the equipment but i don't see liability on the part of the city discussion uh saying none is there um any objection uh to moving uh item number three f forward so you know objection item number three yet we'll move forward i'm number three g gartrell road uh interchange expansion design project iga with e-470 uh brett uh bondhort yes good evening the proposed ita for the gartrail road interchange expansion improvement is a new iga between city of aurora and e-470 public highway authority to define the project development responsibilities and allow for city staff staff to oversee the planning and design for the future construction of the bridge whitening and ramp intersection improvements with e-470 as a stakeholder and reviewer of the project uh the south aurora regional improvement authority surya has a has identified the construction of this uh bridge facility improvements in its master plan and included funds to advance the design of the facility improvements in its first bonding package the project will include planning and design of the bridge to support a minimum of full five-lane roadway section with pedestrian and bike improvements and ramp intersection improvements the iga for the project between the city and syria has already been executed the proposed iga with e-470 allows for the city to manage the design of the project and establishes e-470 review authority and communication protocols further discussion is there any opposition to moving item number three g forward saying no opposition item number three g when we move forward number three h i g a with e 470 for the temporary traffic signals at guard trail road and e-470 um carly camposano good evening mayor and members of the council i'm carly campazano i'm the traffic manager at the city uh this item is for an iga for the temporary signals at gartrell road and e-470 between the city and e-470 these intersections are currently stop controlled but they currently meet warrants for signalization and this is related to the previous item which was the iga for the expansion of the bridge so this item will install temporary signals prior to the expansion project construction to get them signalized as soon as possible uh so these signals like i said will be um just you know more of a bare bones kind of temporary signal design that we're planning to get going on as quickly as possible so this with this agreement the city would be responsible for the design using internal forces and e-470 would contribute funding for the actual construction which is estimated to be about 1.2 million or less we're going to be working on the design right now um with the hopes of constructing next year but expediting that obviously as much as possible thank you from further discussion on 100 number three hey so i'm very happy to see this go in this is an area that that i hear complaints about all the time anything we can do to accelerate i thought that in the backup material uh that the uh as you said design starts now contracting starts in spring uh and the estimated completion is spring of 23. anything we can do to accelerate that uh would would be greatly appreciated uh by the folks in the southeast further discussions yeah and i want to echo the same thing as the ward 6 council members i get um quite a lot of discussion on this in fact carly has received some some council requests from from me on it it did go through e-470 was approved also at our last board meeting um and i just want to ask carly um i i know that there's trouble with getting materials on our traffic signals and i know this is not your the regular permanent signal it's the temporary one do you anticipate any delays with the supply chain we definitely could have delays with the supply chain the materials delays we've been experiencing have really been for all sorts of materials across the board even including items that typically had not been hard to procure like signing and striping materials we've had trouble really getting pretty much all all materials recently so we're hoping that next year we'll be a little bit better but we've also realized that we do need to expedite this as much as possible and we did already get started on the design since we're using internal forces and didn't need to execute a contract so we do have a preliminary design that we've already discussed and shown e470 and we're trying to expedite that as much as possible but where we see the issues with the scheduler the materials and then also the just getting the power source from excel so we're looking to engage them as soon as possible as well to try to get it done faster okay so would we we would be able as soon as that design is done you're able to go ahead and put an order in for the materials since we yeah we would put it out to bid as soon as possible um we're also trying to put it out to bid with a couple of our other signals to get better economies of scale and better bidding because we've also noticed that uh if we put out smaller contracts we get a lot less interest from contractors so it's sort of a balance of trying to group it in with a bigger project but then also trying to get it out as soon as possible so we did start the design we are thinking that it'll be out to bid within the next probably a few months early next year and we can reach out to suppliers as well and you know as the months go on the next few months go on and see if the supply chain issues are going to be sustained or not okay great and then just on excel i heard the same thing from e470 on in terms of um just the backlog with excel and getting them to energize the the signals um any is there anything that can speed that up or we're just beholden to their schedule i guess we've really been trying i think you know they they can't do their entire design until we have the design for the signals pretty well solidified so we were just talking actually last week about what we can do to try to get excel design forces going but we really are at the mercy of their schedule in a lot of ways because on these brand new signals we need them to set up brand new transformer which is a decent amount of work and you know they have all sorts of staffing and materials issues just like the rest of us so thank you to work with us but um you know we have had a lot of delays with recent signal projects getting getting power in a timely fashion okay well thank you i appreciate everything you could do for us further discussion seeing none is there any objection to moving item 3h forward item number 3h forward um saying no objection item number 3h will move forward i'm number 3i i-70 piccadilly funding iga with cdot matt kovalesky good evening mayor and members of city council the i-70 piccadilly project represents key pieces of infrastructure needed for the rapidly developing region of our city as well as arapahoe and adams counties and the project will facilitate a much needed north-south connection on piccadilly road as well as provide some critical access to i-70 uh in late 2019 the city was awarded a usdot build grant then that stands for better utilizing investments to leverage development and the award was for 25 million which coincidentally was the maximum amount that was offered through that program and there were only two build grants issued for the state of colorado to meet the requirements of that grant the project team is running a few processes concurrently including development of preliminary design plans uh development of design build contract documents uh as well as right-of-way acquisition plans and right-wing acquisition itself as part of the project the project team has identified and negotiated five intergovernmental agreements necessary to complete the project and two of which have been reviewed by our transportation airports and public works policy committee and are before you uh this evening uh the item in question or 3i is for the funding iga with the colorado department of transportation the grant funds um from usdot are being administered uh by cdot as what's known as a pass-through on behalf of the city of aurora that's a standard practice uh and for other transportation grant programs for local agencies to have that pass-through arrangement and that's what this iga uh before you is uh in addition to the 25 million dollars of federal funds and the mandatory 20 percent local match that ceda is required to track in the iga uh the iga also identifies 5 million dollars of safety funds that cdot has added to the project for correction of a known safety issue in the i-70 geometry immediately adjacent to the project it just it made sense to add that to the project and they're funding it the project's progressing as i mentioned with a design build uh delivery model uh to meet the grant deadline of fully obligating funds by june of next year and as part of that the project has shortlisted three teams and will be issuing a final rfp to those firms march of next year and with that i would open the florida council with any questions you may have does your uh imagine your presentation address both item 3i and 3g i can if you'd like me to once you proceed with 3g census related absolutely um so item 3j is for the iga with the usdot but it's known as a grant agreement but for as far as the city is concerned is progressing through our normal iga process but they they refer to it as a grant agreement the agreement establishes the scope for the project as well as allows the city to administer the project and establishes the terms of the build grant program specifically the agreement identifies target dates for major milestones as well as establishes metrics for tracking the project's impact uh that will be measured prior to the project's initiation and after its completion um the ter as i mentioned the terms for reimbursement of eligible funds are not actually included in this agreement because they're in the agreement for the pass-through with c-dot the grant agreement is more specific to the terms of the grant program itself uh well there are other questions yes sir questions for matt see none is there any objection to moving item number three i and three j forward saying no objections item number 3i and 3j will move forward i remember 4a colorado opioids settlement memorandum of understanding uh kirsten uh classville good evening mayor and council i'm kirsten classball um as you know as part of the colorado coalition the city of aurora has been involved in ongoing litigation against opioid manufacturers distributors and other affiliated businesses a total of more than 20 defendants the colorado coalition and the state of colorado have prepared the mou that you have in your package today which lays out the framework and the distribution of the settlement funds that being said none of the settlements have been finalized yet so what we are going to present today is an overview of the mou uh which is more of a formality really rather than a policy discussion so the main question for council today is because like to move forward with agreeing to receive settlement funds directly and we do have a presentation lady can i share my screen please this is kendall yes in one moment yeah thanks kendall okay next slide right great so um so what does this framework look like it will all start with the first entered settlement that will trigger the formation of the abatement council probably early next year the abatement council will ensure that the distribution of opiate funds complies with the terms of the mou and will also be responsible for the oversight of opioid funds from the regional and the infrastructure share so these are the primary roles but there are there will be other roles too such as serving as a facilitator between the different parties including the city of aurora or developing a public dashboard to show how the settlement funds are used in the state of colorado the abatement council shall consist of 13 members seven members are appointed by the state six members are appointed by local governments one of the state members will be a non-voting chair except for in the event of a tie eligible members for the abatement council are local are on the local government side are mayors council members county commissioners or a professional with significant experience in substance use disorders so if council is interested there may be an opportunity for you to get involved directly here in a statewide level next slide please this slide shows the allocation of the settlement proceeds there will be four different buckets the city of aurora may receive funding from three of the buckets they are in bold on the slide ten percent of the settlement proceeds go directly to the state twenty percent will go directly to participating local governments the largest bucket is 60 that will go directly to regions and 10 will fund specific abatement infrastructure projects next slide please so this slide shows the local government share in more detail about one-fourth of the local government share will go to the three county areas that aurora is located in uh the arapahoe adamson douglas the allocations are based on three factors the amount of opioid pills dispensed in an area the number of opioid deaths in an area and the number of people suffering from opioid use disorder so for example 10.8 percent of the share will go to the arapahoe county area which will then be distributed to the county and the different municipalities within the county overall the city of aurora will receive four percent of the total local government share directly so how much is that well we don't we don't know yet we have some estimates but there are more than 20 defendants with a wide range of potential settlement dollars and payments are spread out over several years seven years 10 years 18 years depending on each individual settlement in addition the settlement amounts will be higher the more local governments sign the mou so there are still a few unknowns here and the city is expecting some movements and settlements in the next couple months but the first payment is not expected until 2022 potentially mid-year next slide please there will be a regional share making up 60 of the settlement funds uh the regional map is shown in exhibit c of the mou there the city of aurora will be a member of three separate regions around adams and douglas each region will create its own regional council the governance structure has not been determined yet but there will be local government representatives appointed to the regional councils um so there may be another opportunity for council to to get involved on a regional level the regional council will develop a two-year plan identifying the use of funds by the region and make requests to the abatement council for opioid funds the city of aurora may receive funding through this regional structure but it's really up to the regional council to to make a plan to develop policies and processes in regards to how these funds are spent and or allocated to municipalities next slide please and then there's the statewide infrastructures here 10 of the total settlement funds that will promote from promote capital improvements and provide operational assistance for developing or improving the infrastructure necessary to abate the opiate crisis anywhere within the state of colorado it's up to the abatement council to establish policies and procedures for the distribution of those funds including processes for local governments to apply for opioid funds from this share so more to come on this one as well and now kendall clutch i will provide you with an overview of the improved purposes of the settlement fence good evening mayor and council so what are some of the things that this money could be spent on well there are seven pages of approved um approved purposes for the for the funds and so that that could be anything from uh treatment to prevention and any other areas such as supporting uh first responders research things like that the treatments could be counsel inpatient outpatient maybe even for families this would be something that we might support existing programs in so that we could not have to start from the bottom up but there are a lot of items on this list so i encourage you to take a look at that um some of the next steps for us would be to ask you if you are okay with us moving forward for formal approval and then after that staff can take a look at some existing programs that are currently here in aurora and then also with our um other local agencies that we work with our discussion any questions of staff mayor dave gruber customer i maybe i misunderstood my understanding was that there was also a clause in there that allowed for payback in other words the city has incurred many thousands of dollars in expenses over the last couple of years dealing with the opioid crisis that money has come out of our general fund and i was wondering whether or not any of the money in the opioid agreement would allow the city to be paid back for the money that they've invested in this um you know this catastrophe uh over the years is that that's something that you can speak to that go ahead isabelle are you on i am good evening mayor and city council this is isabel evans with the city attorney's office uh there will be some limited purposes for which this settlement money can be used for reimbursement however the intent of the settlements and this agreement in particular is to really think forward in in terms of abatement projects so the vast majority of the funding is going to go to new projects or continuing to fund existing projects there is some potential for reimbursement for certain acceptable expenditures however all right thank you further questions um and i know this is just a memor uh memorandum of understanding to move forward of course we want to but um when when we're looking at the regional share versus the um local share and i know there'll be some crossover when do you anticipate these committees to be formed maybe i missed that the abatement council will need to be formed um 90 days and within 90 days of the first entered settlement and the regional council will need to be formed within 180 dates after after settlement so when i mean is there an approximate we don't have an actual date anticipated for the first settlement uh we are very close we believe and i'm sure you've seen in the news there has been some coverage that settlements are being negotiated but we don't have a firm date for when those will conclude and there are also still a number of defendants with whom there are no final settlements negotiated so this will be an ongoing process that will continue likely for several years but you said first payment possibly mid 2022 so if that was if that was the case then then it would be 90 days beyond that or 180 for the regional beyond that is that right 90 days after the abatement council started to form and then give them some time to start um paying out the local government here so this is a this is a very first estimate mid 2020. all right thank you further questions of staff uh discussion a thing done is there any objection to moving item number 4a forward signal objection item number 4a will move forward for b update on the evaluation and assessment of transportation um road impact fees on development in the city city call up good afternoon mayor this is victor show with the department of public works cindy cough is unavailable this afternoon and i'll be presenting for public works thank you presentation one moment please all right that's coming up for everybody i hope all right great thank you again victor rochelle deputy director of public works um and with me today i have brian dusty with eps and elliott uh with fhu and we're going to be talking about the proposed update to the transportation impact fees this was brought forward during the most recent budget workshop and asked to be advanced to study session for additional discussion so the agenda for the presentation tonight so we're going to cover the background definitions talk about the city growth our typical transportation costs then our proposed fees and the nexus for the study eligible projects maximum fees and how those were justified impacts to the surrounding community as well as fee credits for surya and arda and then finish up with recommended fees and stays in options open discussion and then request person council direction with that i'll hand it to brian for the next slide thanks um so we're gonna try to roll through a lot of this because you've seen some of this uh previously in the budget workshop and we'll try to cut to the chase here but um you know this this process kind of started in 2018 with the with a major update to the city's impact fees um and the decision was made at the time to defer doing the transportation fees until until later because the city was working on the northeast or transportation study and a new five-year capital planning cycle so there was going to be a better identification of project needs um before that would be applicable for impact fees and updated costs as well which is important next please oh actually one more point on here um the you know the the impact fee nexus study on the purpose of that is to calculate the maximum legally justifiable fee based on the you know the impacts that development creates on transportation in this case and then you know council has the discretion to adopt um to adopt anything up to up to the maximum fee um or to provide um you know a lower discounted option as well and we're going to show you some um some some recommendations on uh phase in and how we're treating the credits for zarya okay go ahead next again these are these are impact fees are for capital they're for capacity projects for transportation they're not a general revenue source for maintenance operations or to raise the level of service um basically you don't want your you can't charge new development for a higher level of service you're providing to existing development um we'll talk about processes and mechanisms for fee credits and um we noted last time that affordable housing can be exempted from impact fees next please these are for capacity projects so adding lanes new roads major intersection improvements we've included costs for multi-mold projects in here so the full full complete streets cross sections are eligible for impact fee revenue local roads and collector roads are not within the impact fee program those are typically developer responsibility next all right thank you brian so just going over some of the growth in the city this information comes from census data so we've seen i think as everybody's aware quite a level of growth within the city of aurora not just annexations but we're talking rooftops and population growth we have had transportation fees collected and that's roughly around 8.7 million based on the current uh policies and procedures there for collection of those fees if you look at those that 8.7 million in transportation impact fees and you break it down into the three core areas or three areas of the city we have the core area which currently based on those those allocations is about 2.3 million averaging a little over 193 000 per year for the northeast section 2.1 million and for the southeast section 4.3 million some of the things that the fees have been used for in the past uh we used 175 000 for the heather gardens entrance which included sidewalk improvements traffic signals ada ramps things of that nature 50 000 was used for the havana idaho turn signal or the traffic signal reconstruction or partial reconstruction we used 360 000 for the sand creek light rail trail connection that included sidewalk ada pedestrian lighting along the corridor we used 400 000 for a new traffic signal on new pedestrian facilities at yale and marina 125 for a north aurora traffic study 200 000 for mont view and fitz parkway again pedestrian upgrades and traffic signals and then supplementing into the signal budget 1.1 million in 2018 and 1.6 million in 2019. as far as transportation costs based on what we've seen and the current uh contractor costs materials etc we're estimating a little over or right around three million per mile on an arterial roadway and at our current impact fee rate of 667 it would take approximately 4 500 single family homes needed to recover that type of cost this slide is a little bit busy what we have on the screen here is a list of all of the projects public works is identified as capital projects including bridges intersections and roadways the length of the project the capacity it will add to the network and then the capital cost and the estimated cost per vehicle mile of capacity added all in the project down at the bottom you'll see in the red square is approximately 114 million so if we're looking at that list of projects and we go and look at the 114 million and based on our current impact fee of 667 we're looking at roughly 157 years to collect enough impact fees as it stands today to complete all of the projects the smallest project on the list versus havana that our current impact fee rate would take a little over eight years and to fund the pohatan road project in southeast aurora which is a widening project taking the road from two lanes to its full build at the current impact fee rate will take approximately 28 years last if we're looking at joule and genoa and widening jewel along that corridor up to 470 at the current rate it would be 130 years with that brian i'll hand it back to you thanks victor so i'm going to i'm going to get into the fee calculations and the recommendations now go to the next one the fee is designed in a way that the fee payer only pays for the road capacity that they used that they use or calculating based on a level of service d which ensures that people aren't um you know paying to sort of raise the level of service they're just paying to maintain the system and it's in a at a level of service d um and the fee revenue would be used on the major roadway system which we've defined as the city arterial roads um i've said this before multimodal cross-section capacity projects um so the first adjustment to the fee we make after we've calculated that cost per vehicle mile capacity is to take out some outstanding debt which is a minor amount on hogan parkway one of the principles and fees you want to make sure you're not double double charging you know if someone's paying on fees on one thing they shouldn't be paying property tax debt on another on another type of project um next one please these are a little bit a little bit jumping around a little bit but from the last meeting i recall we looked at which communities in the metro charge impact fees and they are generally large growing communities and from this this chart here you see that even even communities that aren't charging the full spectrum of capital impact fees are charging them on transportation transportation is one of the costliest items of public infrastructure that cities and counties provide thanks please um and so we're going to put so when you do the math on the cost per uh cost capacity and apply it to a couple of other factors um on trip length and shift generation rates you get at a maximum fee of about 5800 per single family unit about forty five hundred dollars per multi-family unit and so that would be the maximum justifiable fee but we've got a couple of recommended adjustments um and phasing options that we're gonna that i'm gonna go through now um next please and as we showed you last time you know this this would be a significant increase to the city's current capital impact fees but the information that victor presented in the first half of this slide deck i i think shows that the city for a long time really hasn't been recovering the cost of transportation infrastructure and so it's it causes it to fall further behind on its capital project needs and having to find other funding sources to supplement and impact these next please um so on uh next let's just so when we look at credits um the the two main things are uh credit for improvements built when a fee if if a fee payer a developer is building um the types of projects that would be part of that major roadway system part of the types of roads that the city would use with would fund with impact fees then there should be a mechanism for them to receive received credit for that but mention double charging um and we're also accounting for debt and other funding sources and so the other funding sources really comes in um with the with the zarya and the arda um they're they're they're special circumstances that we we took a close look at so next so sarya uh if you if you've got acronym fatigue as the south aurora regional improvement authority uh formed a few years ago it's a voluntary financing agreement um implemented through an iga between the city and eight title 32 metropolitan districts in southeast aurora they the sarya imposes an additional mill levy that's dedicated to funding regional transportation projects for the first 20 years it levy's one mill and then there's a mechanism for that middle of it to ramp up on uh subject to a number of conditions within the uh the metro districts uh they're trying to do about 89 and about 89 million dollars in project go ahead to the next one just a map just to give you a visual of where where we're talking about you know this is on the periphery of the city in the in southeast aurora right um and so um you know this is an area that's been developing ahead of the city cip um and the the saria was formed to help this area advance transportation projects that were that were needed in that area to provide regional connectivity next please um so the millet they're using the mill levy to um finance to do bond financing to to fund those kinds of projects um you know we took a close look at the types of projects that they are that they're funding and those are consistent with what we consider part of this major roadway system in the impact program um and so we do recommend that a credit mechanism be provided for for situations like the sarya we looked at the value of that mill levy over 40 years on an average on an average new home and it would be about 1 500 over that time period next please mayor if i could ask a question real quick hey grouper hello casper so i just want to point out that that you had talked about the the aurora regional improvement mill levy and you you said that that was sorry i want to point out that that ari the one mill for 20 years and five mills for 20 years after that applies to every metro district in the city that's operating under i think the 2004 service plan so it's not just sarya that's collecting that every metro district in this city and the exceptions you're going to get into arda and and uh green valley um and some of those those have agreed that they're going to charge five percent starting at the beginning so i just want to point out that that ari is not solely restricted to sorry it's every metro district in the city further discussion are saying none is there any objection to moving highway number four b forward yes yeah i think we have a lot more to go unfortunately i have a few more slides to get through so thank you councilmember gruber um yes so this this credit would apply to situations where there is an ari not just the zarya we're using that example i think for for for simplicity here um so if if you take out that that military credit the single family home fee would go down to about 4 200 um and and that and uh we'll i will kind of circle this back in terms of what that means in in terms of a recommended fee option um let's let's let's tackle the arta next next slide please victor so arda is a different situation um in our in our analysis um this is another this is a um this is the area around the aurora highlands development um along e470 and south of denver international airport so arta is the aerotropolis regional transportation authority regional transportation authorities are a fund a transportation funding tool authorized under state law they can collect five mil property tax um and uh and sales tax as well um and what what makes this a little bit uh what makes this different is that it's also a fun funding and financing agreement an incentive agreement really between the developer the city of aurora and adams county so the the arta also re receives 100 of the city's use tax excluding the quarter cent dedicated to public safety and they also receive 100 of the city's impact fees within their boundary they collect all of the use tax that they generate and they get to keep all the impact fees that they that they pay into that project adams county has also paid has also invested half of the general fund property tax generated in that area and 100 of their road and bridge property tax um and that and that is in addition to the five mills that the rtas can collect and they're they're trying to do about 300 million dollars in transportation projects you know this is again an area that's developing out ahead of the city cip um and there is a vast amount of transportation projects needed to make that area function can i ask you a question yes um i i know you're saying you know they got 100 of the use tax 100 of the city impact fees but had we not done that would any of these roads be happening right now um this is jason um i know he has so much money the answer is no right no some of the roads would be being constructed because they are um developer responsibilities in some cases and in other cases uh they are you know more regional in nature so part of the proposal uh when this came forward was to sort of um expedite the overall construction of the roadway so these roads would have been built but it probably would not have been built as quickly but they would have been built as you just said with some of them were developer responsibilities so it wasn't on the city correct so i'm just i i guess i'm making the point that the the developer was already paying for some of this and then on top of that with this art of being formed they're advancing the you know completion basically of some of these roads without i mean yes we're we're giving city use tax but we're not putting money up front and isn't the spurring development by having these roads done like bringing in job centers you know i don't i don't think that's a question i can answer i think that would be something the developer would be better better to re better responding at um but i think maybe mr batchelor could answer that so i think that is part of the um value proposition from the developer uh is that the transportation network would um perhaps bring some job centers in we've not currently seen that development occur yet okay thank you mayors dave gruber any other questions uh because since i'm on the art of board uh with uh councilmember gardner let me just bring out a couple correct a couple of things the 300 million dollars in projects is closer to 440 million dollars in projects the developer is responsible for building one lane in each direction uh arda is building the second and third lane on the road so that we're preparing that the entire northeast area to um we're anticipating extensive growth up there uh council approved the aerotropolis parkway and renamed it to the air droplets parkway last week we talked about piccadilly today arda is going to uh expand you know putting an overchain or an interchange at uh on the piccadilly i-70 is important but if there's nothing for that road to connect to then we have a problem so arda is widening the road from uh i-70 all the way up to 56 avenue so piccadilly is going to be a major thoroughfare the eurotropist parkway is going to be a major thoroughfare the air tropolis arda is putting an interchange at ice at e-470 and 38th so the tower road will connect uh um through um the aurora highlands parkway down to a new interchange going at i-70 so it's an extensive extensive um roadway that's going in there like i said it's closer to 440 million in 19 or in 2018 and and i think that um the aurora islands is paying about 200 200 to 220 million of that but green valley ranch aurora which is being built adjacent to green valley ranch denver is also a participant in arda as is a another tech center to the east side and then there's there's other folks looking at it uh north of 48th avenue so it's it's arda is going to radically transform uh that portion of the city having said that i'm concerned about the five mil property tax because i've read the slides in the back up the five mills is similar to what we talked about with sarya but the five mills in the arda area that includes the aurora highlands that includes green valley ranch will um start immediately so instead of one percent for 20 years it's going to be 5 for 40 years so which is a significant um amount of money that each homeowner is going to have to buy i want to make that point i'm going to talk more later but i want to make that point on this slide further questions please proceed thank you uh next slide please so this this map might be a little dated but at least gives you a general idea where we're talking about so e470 is going down the middle there 38th avenue is the orange line in the middle going east to west next please um so the consultant recommendation is is that based on the public financing invested in the project that a credit is not warranted um we looked at the use tax contributions that a typical home would pay um and those range from about four to six thousand dollars per home um and what that means is that's foregone revenue to the city so a lot of the use tax goes into the capital projects fund much of which is used for maintenance projects um and so the city now has to backfill those use tax contributions that you the use tax that they would have received with other general fund revenues other property tax other sales and use tax revenue and then the the use tax contribution is about four to six thousand dollars on a home um and that that is in many cases greater than what the impact fee would be if it were adopted at the maximum level um the other consideration is that because that project we see is allowed to keep all the impact fees paid within its boundaries then there's nothing else left for the city to use for other capacity projects that might you know might be sort of an indirect impact of the growth of that project um and then balancing that um you know the higher fees within the rta could actually help the district by providing more revenue and help to accelerate its its projects and pay off debt sooner so our recommendation is the that a specific credit would not be applied to arda however i want to show you the options that may be it may be a moot point so let's go let's go to the next please next please again so two options um that we're proposing the first would be to adopt one uniform fee city-wide so that would be taking that maximum fee netting out the ari um acknowledging that that is you know going to be more that may be more common in future years um and so that would be that that discounted level i think it was 4 500 per unit my memory seriously correct and then phase that in over three years because we do recognize that that would still be a substantial increase over what's being paid today the second option would be a little more complicated to implement um but would be would be to offer develop developers choices um so if they're if there is an ari in their project um they would you know they would they would form and join the ari and pay the discounted fee or um don't form the ari don't don't br don't form the ari and pay the full fee and again that would be phased in over three years so go to the next next side please so i answer the question on the slide that we're on yes if you could pick up um and actually probably back up even one one further um because my question is on the use taxes so i know that for your so every home built has to pay use taxes it's building materials right roofs and that type of thing correct and so i know southeast aurora has generated tens of millions of dollars so you that money did i hear stays within its boundaries yes in the arta um the financing agreement with the city allows it's not i'm just talking about like i'm in southeast aurora not arda no in southeast aurora everywhere else in the city that use text goes into the goes into the general fund and the capital fund okay so so the capital project fund is funded with the transfer of the building material use tax but it doesn't stay in its boundaries no right so here's my point i feel like my area gets taxed to death so we have you know metro district taxes that funded the development the interior roads whatever then you then we have syria on top of it then we pay use taxes and if we're going to add on an impact a greater impact fee and we're supposed to be talking about affordable housing this just adds more cost to each home built and i already have complaints about metro districts charging too much um i i just i don't like the plan i don't like either option personally mayor so just a clarifying question so these fees can be waived for affordable housing development specifically correct that was already clarified at the beginning right so can i do a follow-up to that yeah okay so they can be waived for affordable housing but then the people that are buying the homes in either northeast or southeast aurora where everything's being built primarily as far as like single-family homes they're they're taking the they're basically paying for all the roads i mean that's like the burden is on single-family homeowners um if i could i could clarify so if a city if the city gives a fee waiver um it can't make up the difference you know by by putting that additional no no you're not we're it's not making up the difference we're we're paying for the roads we're paying for if this plan goes into effect we would be this additional impact fees on top of the other fees all goes towards building roads that could be somewhere else in the city but that even people that live down south don't even use that's that's what i'm getting out of this mayor councilman so these are also being charged in redevelopments right so if an area is being redeveloped into mixed use or if new development is going into a blighted area these fees would still be charged on those developments except potentially exempted on any affordable units built in those developments is that correct yes and you know a nuance to this is that in a redevelopment situation um you you would look at the net increase um so let's say there was a easiest way let's say there was there were five five units of housing and it got redeveloped with 10 units of housing there would be a net increase of five units so the impact would be would be paid on those five units mayor mayor mayor prince so on the redevelopment if it's but if it's multi-family um the fees the fee is less and you calculated that i mean i didn't get that part because there's more people in a multi-family using the roads it's calculated sure those are calculated per dwelling unit so you know an apartment building might have 100 dwelling units in uh-huh compared to a single family home which is just one you know one dwelling unit within that building right but there's more people in the multi-family and the fee is lower but oh is it per person no it's per dwelling unit or dwelling okay and this is based on transportation fees are based on trip generation rates um you know the previous impact these we looked at were right a lot of those were based on household size okay but redevelopment typically is happening in our city at tod sites and so trans transit or you know oriented development um we don't have that in other parts of the city so people are forced to use their cars i guess i don't know um i think councilmember mcconnell oh yes sorry thank you sir i appreciate that um brian i do have a question for a little bit of clarification here one of the earlier slides you mentioned you showed that we actually do not charge impact fees for any kind of non-residential development currently is that correct that's correct okay and is that going to change with your proposal here because obviously the slide we're looking at is just for residential units still because i am concerned about residences carrying the burden because commercial development also generates trips that's that's something we're going to ask for council uh direction on at the end um right now we're not currently proposing non-residential fees and again i would just reiterate that we're not you know the policy decision to not charge commercial impact fees it doesn't it doesn't but it doesn't result in a higher fee on residential development that would be illegal to do the calculation that way it just means that the city is foregoing that revenue for policy reasons and has to find other funding sources to make up the gap so certain kinds of developments are not actually paying the runway in other words thank you can i follow up on that mayor jim okay if i understood correctly council member marcona's question so the commercial if we're not charging an impact fee on commercial then and you said that then residential's not making up for it but they have to because that's the pot of money so there's if if we were charging commercial wouldn't we lower the residential impact fee um no you said you can't do that the the fee is calculated the the fee study is a nexus study so it establishes the nexus between the impact of development and the cost that it creates and so your residential generates a certain number of trips and that costs x dollars to recover that cost commercial developments but commercial if you have people if you have 500 people working in a commercial center aren't they using the roads for work to get there um yes yes they are and there's but you know there are adjustments in let's say you're talking about an office building i don't want to get too far in the weeds here but you know if you're talking about i'm sorry i just i'm just trying to look at fairness kind of what council mark connor said just in terms of putting the burden on homeowners versus other there's other users of the road sure you know it's just it's just it's just been a policy decision by the by the city not to charge um commercial impact fees i think for economic development reasons you know the reasoning being they're trying to incentivize non-residential development and so it's just it's a it's simply a policy decision mayor if i could follow up on that counselor the council member combs then councilmember i'm sorry yeah sorry is this mine was actually a follow-up on what councilmember bergen was saying before so i have to rewind a little um so in tod's multi-family there may not be as many trips generated in a tod but that doesn't mean that they would pay less you don't calculate a tod is generating fewer trips so they still pay the same amount um in the multi-family developments that would be in those tods is that correct uh that's correct as proposed here we're proposing a simple fee structure city-wide where a multi-family would pay would pay a uniform rate okay and then um sorry mayor i had a couple of followers please receive so in that case maybe those folks are paying technically more than their share but we have to get through like we have to have some kind of a fee structure that's predictable and makes sense i guess my other question is if we were to choose to charge commercial impact fees could we choose to also charge less than the maximum fee on residential um yes councilman gruber so they just want to make two points the first one is especially in the northeast area we're seeing many warehouses go in the traffic that we're seeing are freight trucks obviously there are employees that deal with the freight trucks but those freight trucks are uh you know come in and out of aurora so i'm a little bit concerned you know maybe maybe we should be looking at you know some of those type of businesses as opposed to a shopping mall but those businesses that bring in the heavy traffic for them to participate the other thing i want to point out or i'm a little bit concerned about is that we're talking about new development and i understood the end i support the impact fees we created for do development to pay for their fire fire stations police stations libraries parks and so on i i think that in that case growth pays its own way i'm a little bit concerned here where we're developing new things across the city um say for example the southland's mall south and small is not does not only serve the people that are in the southeast aurora people from throughout the city come to come to that mall so but we aren't we aren't charging someone from uh other parts of the city to come to that mall same thing with corner star same thing with um you know some other other developments and we're going to see a lot more of that near the gaylord when the entertainment centers go in and and some of the you know the large shopping centers and hospitals and things like that go into the area so what i'm wondering is is that i can see not applying an impact fee to um residents that have been here for a long time but would it make sense for us to consider an impact fee when when a house sells and someone else moves into the city because when that that new person comes into the city that new person could go again to the various hospitals and things like that so that new person is is um you know could be charged the impact fee just like any other new person in the city i just that's just the point let's carry on the conversation further discussion mayor uh guess where we're going so i actually do have kind of a question and a follow-up on that that seems like that would have to be kind of a some type of like real estate transfer fee that would be in the form would be categorized as an impact fee is that something that is permissible if we were to look at something like that is that a question for the consultant or attorneys if you can answer it great if not maybe i would prefer to leave legal for that and maybe that's a later on question we can move on with the presentation but i think that would be just something we'd have to find out okay so victor would you mind backing up just one let me back on my feet here okay so this is the the the simple one fee city-wide option uh next please this is the the the second option where there would be a different fee based on whether there's an ari or not and then next please you know i i don't want to go through these in detail but we've shown in the packet how they would how they would be phased in if they were phased in over three years uh you can skip to the next one please uh next and so you know we can this is this is then the request from staff is should staff proceed with an ordinance for new residential transportation impact fees perhaps to take more questions and discussions and discussion uh here and then the the second question is whether um whether you would want us to come back with additional information on non-residential transportation impact fees i have a question on the comparison of the cities that was earlier was denver and i didn't see denver in that do they charge a transportation impact fee they do not okay because they're right next door to us how about parker and centennial they're right next door to us and they weren't in there um part uh centennial has a has an older fee that was i think calculated many years ago and is is it's a different methodology and it's older parker is a and so it's lower um that uh than what we're showing here parker is a very interesting case um for years parker parker charged an excise tax so sort of an additional sales tax on top of building permits um per square foot and they would use the excise tax revenue revenue a very flexible much more flexible funding source than impact these uh it can be used for maintenance for new capital what they ended up doing was commissioning an impact fee study a couple years ago that that that calculated impact fees um they repealed the asset excise tax adopted impact ease and then soon after had another ballot initiative that would rep that repealed the new impact fees which were calculated at you know a level similar to what we're talking about here in terms of transportation they repealed the impact fees replace them with a higher exif tax okay it's it's a complicated story i hope i got it right and personally i would like i i i personally don't want to move forward on this i would like to see a few more some nuances in terms of you know moving things around and do you have any discussions with um builders as to the impact of the housing costs like with the hba or um no we have we have not um you know i we look what we've looked at is what surrounding communities are charging um you know especially i think surrounding communities closer to southeast aurora douglas county i think castle rock has some of the highest impact he's in the region and that certainly hasn't slowed down uh slowed their growth um we look at fees in terms of percentage of home price um you know if you're talking about a 500 000 home uh let me do my math here let's just round numbers if if the total fees were 10 000 divided by 500 000 that would be about 2 of the cost right well and i guess my point on denver not having one because they're i mean they're they're right by us it just can't i'd like to see more apples to apples with you know the water tap feed the all the other impact fees that we have because some of them had the transportation but they didn't have the park impact fee or they didn't have the library impact fee and that type of thing and i i just don't want to rush into a decision and then find out that we have hurt ourselves in terms of you know of new housing development right i just have a question it would seem that denver has very little raw land left uh that it's more redevelopment is that correct yes yes i think it would be harder for them to implement an impact fee program because they're going to have fewer capacity projects fewer widening projects and they're generally their transportation policy is is increasing person capacity not vehicle capacity yes but denver sorry denver has never so they've never had an impact fee i don't i don't know the answer to that they may have historically but i don't think so i mean they do have homes in their in their area you know it's generally a tool used more more frequently in growing areas that's where that's where the tool works the best where you have places like aurora you know the in this the other large um suburban communities that we showed on those slides is where the tool works the best further uh the questions mayor dave gruber councilor so i want to just close on the points that i made earlier during the presentation one for those houses in green valley ranch and in the aurora highlands that are paying twice the ari mill levy as other metro districts i think adding an impact fee on top which is which is significantly different than would be applied to the rest of the city would raise a question in fairness i mean when the city and the county negotiated uh the creation of arda um everybody put the money on the table as far as we'll offer this we'll offer this and so on um to go back now and say you know now we're going to go back and charge arda significa or homeowners which are residents by the way aurora residents who live in arda significantly more than we would charge an aurora resident uh say going into the development on um buckley just south of uh her uh on airport or buckley road just out to the of the base uh or some of the other new developments um i i just don't think that's fair we we negotiate in good faith and i think that if we if we eliminate the ara payment in one part of the city we should eliminate it across but i'd also like to explore the concept of applying um applying this impact fee to new homeowner or to people who buy homes existing homes because they um you know they frankly the existing homes never paid an impact fee if you go back and look at the history of aurora and how we've charged for transportation over the last 10 years you know better than i did but look to see how we paid um you know many of the older homes or many of the neighborhoods uh throughout the city very many very nice neighborhoods throughout the city have never paid a dime extra for for transportation and yet these people are going to use facilities throughout the city and they're going to use these roads that are paid being paid for only by the new residents so i think that the impact fee could be brought out in such a way as to affect maybe charge more for new housing areas and that i can certainly understand that but to allow someone to buy a house across the street from a new a new development and pay zero where the person buying a house um you know the new house pays five thousand dollars uh just sounds like a lot if i could ask a question of the consultant and that is what other municipalities have a real estate transfer tax in the metro area boy in the metro area i am not aware of any in the metro area that have that have them it's um all the ones that i know of are mainly mountain communities not resort communities when when tabor passed in the early 90s it specifically outlawed new real estate transfer taxes um and so none have been adopted since then okay um further discussion mayor uh councilmember thank you sir so brian i just want to clarify that the proposals that you have before us this is more or less what it would take for us to absorb the real expected use of new residential development correct this isn't an arbitrary number you've used formulas to arrive at these conclusions all right and this is actually really similar to what we do with aurora water which is why our tap fees you know i'm sure we all hear about them periodically are high because it is expensive to bring that water in it's very expensive to acquire new water rights so i feel like what we're discussing here is a realistic approach of what we need to do if we're serious about not you know being able to grow and sustain that growth so i'm very grateful for this information for this presentation i think we should move forward with this and i'd also like to consider additional information on non-residential fees as well mayor um so brian you said that real estate transfer taxes were outlawed i know sometimes fees are not covered under that and so is there a distinction there or would that most likely i guess this is back to my question of our legal staff of what a fee be permissible knowing that uh tax was specifically outlawed for that same purpose um you know i would i would defer to um the city's legal team you know there's there's a lot of discussion out there right now on policy circles about the distinctions between fees and taxes um after the aspen bag fee case um you know but how that would how that would potentially apply um in aurora i think it was something you need to look into i mean we do a lot of community engagement on almost every initiative that we bring forward in the city i mean i would love to get some you know some feedback from the community from the residents as to you know what what they think about adding impact fees transportation impact fees so could we do some outreach is that a question for the consultant maybe the consultant yeah okay have you done that before in other communities or we we have um we've convened small groups of um you know of uh home builders and developers and done that well and i meant residents as well not just you know i mean i think it's important to get the home builders um opinion in terms of what they see you know from an impact on impact fees but let me just say that but the the this is the tax that our residents aren't going to be paying so they're basically going to be opining on a tax that other people are going to pay oh oh you mean new yes but people do move like i might miss another house and then i would pay it right no that's that's only if we adopted uh some kind of real estate transfer tax only if you bought a new house if you bought your house yeah if you bought a new house not only with the air the surya right you're gonna also end up with the impact fee right if you bought a new home correct yeah well there's new communities being built and that's a possibility for a lot of people well people downsize and people go to bigger homes all the time because so i would just like to have some community engagement welcome further discussion okay um then the question before us is should staff proceed with an ordinance for new residential transportation impact fees uh discussion uh uh councillor homes um i support this you know just based on the information that we've received and the understanding that really growth has not been paying its own way when it comes to roads um but i do also agree with the idea of if an ordinance is going to be brought forward having some community and stakeholder engagement in that process because it is a big change yeah so um if i can ask a consultant this question so why is it is it because of the gallagher amendment that has preceded us as to why impact fees were not uh placed on commercial properties historically great question um you know i'll i'll take a stab out and there are others in the room that might have more institutional knowledge than me but my understanding is it's really just been a policy decision by the city but to not charge them um in order to incentivize um non-residential development now but but the gallagher amendment i think was a consideration in that you know look with the fact that non-residential property does pay more in property tax than residential property and in addition things like retail do generate to generate more sales tax okay okay um further questions if not uh is there objection from having staff move forward mayor yes i remember tim i i object i'm not saying i object 100 but i object to moving forward right now because i would like to what was that other option wasn't there something where you you would come back with additional information the the second i think the second ask for direction is if you would like if council would like additional information on non-residential impact fees i'm non-residential i would like more information not only on that but also on is there any way to lower that amount that you just came up with you know in consideration of the the surya the the arta i mean i don't think that credit's enough okay let me let me do this let me let me uh i think i think let's let's address the first question and then we'll go to some additional ones and the first question is uh should uh staff proceed uh with an ordinance for new residential transportation impact fees so let's let's uh let me gaze the support of that um um are there are there members in opposition can i ask a question on this question are we saying an ordinance but not this particular plan because that's two different things like i might proceed with an ordinance for residential transportation impact fees but i don't like this plan great um consultants [Music] well i'm wondering if if we ought to put the options back up on the slide that might help help counsel um weigh the way the different pros and cons here so you know are there of these options are there is there one that that council um likes better and would like us to move forward with stuff such as option one there uh councilmember comes so i guess the question is so option one i think the fee that you showed for the citywide fee just kind of includes a credit for the ari whether or not an ari is assessed in that area and then option two would require you to actually be paying the ari to get that credit is that basically the difference between the two yes option that's a great great way to phrase that option one basically discounts the fee city-wide for the amount of the ari in that time that you have to get the credit you have to pay for the amount to get the credit to pay for the amount okay um okay so i'm just looking at option two so join ari and pay the discounted fee paid okay pay the full impact fee and do not join so they have the option of either one or the other i i think i like two mary jane groover uh councilmember okay so let me just go over some points um when a developer decides to to um to build a neighborhood uh they pencil out the costs and then they pencil out the the revenue and part of the revenue is that the house price uh and what that house price is uh based on that uh they go uh to the uh financial community and take out a loan for example arda took out the 65 billion loan fast friday so the cost of the house and anything that impacts the cost of the house is very important because those people that are buying the bonds in this case are marla look at the projected revenues and and the projected costs so if we go in unilaterally and impose a five thousand dollar fee which will either jump the price of every house five thousand dollars or reduce the sale price you know the money um uh the profit on the house five thousand dollars um that has a significant impact on on bonds it's not a trivial issue again in a 65 million dollar deal that would have affected underwriting you know it would have affected everything while arda did that development as far as the ari is concerned ari is in our service plan so in the service plan when the city adopted service plan i think back in 2004 2008 the ari was part of that so it's not a question of will they pay as if they put a metro district up in the city of aurora and so that they shall pay the question that the neighborhood has or the metro district has is will they use the money that they're collecting in the ari to build their own infrastructure or will they team with others and that's where the metro districts in the south southeast decided to do that but keep in mind that's only the metro districts that were formed after 2004. so those metro districts the older metro districts say um the eaglebend metro district which was formed before that time never had an ari so again we're imposing a cost that may or may not be considered fair uh across the city and then like i said earlier um everybody who pays an ari should get credit for the ari because it's not double imposing a fee on on green valley ranch is simply not fair i mean that that we negotiated the city and the county negotiated with those metro districts in good faith uh and to say that the city and the county were going to contribute but to go back now to um not the metro district but the the future aurora residents is to say you're going to pay an ari of three thousand four thousand dollars at five mills for forty years you're going to pay that ari and you're going to pay an additional fee on top it's very disconcerting it's just not fair from the business perspective the final point i want to make is that the beauty of an ari over a long period of time is that the infrastructure that's being bought with the ari in other words the uh the plumbing the the roads the uh um the water going in there's the sewage drain water all of that infrastructure is 40-year infrastructure so having it paid for over 40 years you can make a good argument the pain over 40 years makes sense as opposed to making the first buyer pay for something that's going to be there for 40 years having people who move out move in you know having the new residents pay when they move in for their share 5 10 20 years of using the drainage and the sewage and water and so on you know makes makes sense making the first buyer um pay that uh as adds a cost to the first buyer that could make a house prohibitive so just just a few points that's why i'd like to go and get some more comments on this developers and even if we ask some of the people that have moved in uh to some of the new metro areas to say you know if there was a five thousand dollar charge on top of which you've already paid you know would you have bought and okay let me let me ask this question then that is uh should we give members time to really digest this and defer this to the next study session meeting which i think is november 1st in give time uh to um uh ask questions um uh of the consultant uh and our staff um does that make sense mayor gomez i honestly would like that i'm not saying redo the whole presentation but i would love to have some time just to talk to some metro districts and some builders and some residents myself before making a big decision like this further discussion is there objection to uh we wouldn't have required another presentation would be an opportunity to ask questions of the consultant uh and end of staff and give members time to really look at this to really think about different options uh and to bring it back on november 1st is there objection i've seen none then uh we will defer this until november first and and place it um on the study session agenda for that date um uh i'm number 4c uh civil service commission vacancy uh kenny rodriguez yes mayor and councilman um council members this is to provide information regarding the recent vacancy on the civil service commission and to review some proposed schedules and processes so i'm just going to share my screen okay so we have one current vacancy right now aj mcdonnell the vice chair it was effective september 8th 2021 the next vacancy is going to occur february 2022 it'll be jim weeks the chairman um the civil service commission should be composed of three members but not more than five so we currently have one one vacant seat the proposed steps would be the application process communications will advertise for the open position the city clerk's office will receive applications make sure that they meet the minimum qualifications the application and the and the background check process was updated to comply with the request from council during the june 21st study session so on the application that's in your backup we did include a notification and acknowledgement about a criminal background check the verbiage on the application was updated to include this notification acknowledgement of the background check process so the applicants were aware that that is going to happen if they are chosen to be interviewed this was reviewed by hr in the city attorney's office in the city clerk's office and it's the same process that we use for city employees employment history we added the previous three employers and the reason for lead leaving was added to the application as well as the conflicts of interest question and then step two would be the ranking process where you would submit your rankings and then it would be reviewed during the regular council meeting to determine who would be interviewed and so step three this is the new uh step in this process background checks so all finalists selected to be interviewed will undergo a criminal background investigation this step will be conducted after the ranking process is complete and will be done for all of the applicants that were chosen to be interviewed by council the applicants will have the opportunity to provide clarification or an explanation of anything that came up on their background report during their interview process and so if anything does come up the city clerk's office will notify council and let them know that there was something on their background check the interview process will be done during a study session um and a lot of time for each interview will be determined after the amount of people to be interviewed will be selected the appointment process the motion to appoint applicant will be done during the regular council meeting and so here's a proposed schedule so this is an overview of the schedule of council wishes to appoint a commissioner before the new council members are sworn in it's a really aggressive schedule but it's it's the best um that we could come up with if we were going to do it before the december 6 council meeting when the new council members are sworn in so it would be the application process we could start advertising as soon as tomorrow we would need to upload the new application to the website and provide communications with as well first thing in the morning to start advertising october 29th would be um 11 days and that's the application due date so applicants would have about 11 days to submit an application council would have approximately five days to review the applications and submit their rankings and the november 8th council meeting um would be when council could choose who they would like to interview we would do the background check process in between the interview process and the ranking process and november 15th study session is when we could do the interviews and the appointment process would be november 22nd if council would like to begin the appointment process after the new council members are sworn in we could start advertising october 29th and application due dates could be around november 30th they would give the public a month to apply if they would wish to instead of 11 days and then the december 20th regular council meeting that is when council will approve the new 2022 city council meeting calendar so that's kind of when they would be able to determine how they would like to move forward with appointing this vacancy and so just any um feedback from counsel questions how you would like for your staff to proceed with the application process uh discussion on the two options mayor can i just um katie i just had a question maybe you can jog my memory um because i'm looking at the back up for the consumer information are we looking it was that to do to look for conflicts of interest or just are we looking at people's you know debt no that's just for the criminal background check so that is what we have to um provide the applicants the way they know that we're going to do a final bathroom check okay so it's just for the criminal it's not for credit checks and stuff okay further discussion mayor uh councilman gardner um i i think that we need to move forward with fulfilling the vacancy that we have now because of the i guess i would use the word higher staffing situation in our civil service with police and less so with the fire department i don't want to be in a position where we do not have a quorum um and you know we have one term uh here coming soon and um you know we don't know what else is going to happen with other commissioners so my my opinion would be we move to fill the vacancy now i mean it's frankly it's been vacant for for several months and we should have done it well before now but um here we are but but that all being said i think we should move forward with filling that vacancy now because i don't want to be in a position where the civil service commission doesn't have a quorum and can't can't fulfill their duties to fill academies mayor mayor we can't hear you mayor i see councilmember closing councilmember so yeah respectfully we couldn't fill a vacancy already with our current council as it's composed um so my concern would be that we end up in that same situation um so my recommendation would be that we give time more than 10 days for applicants to apply um and also that we wait until we have a full council so that if there is a giant can be broken okay um councilor mcconnell thank you sir uh i want to echo what councilmember comes said and i'm also curious uh staff have we had any attendance issues with our remaining commissioners um councilmember mcconnell i'm not aware of any attendance issues that hasn't been brought to my attention from the chairperson okay thank you so again i'll just uh reiterate that i think we should just wait until we have a full council further discussion mayor uh councilman i think it was me oh councilman remembered him ah okay who who is left on our civil service at this point i'm looking at this on the screen weeks is our chairperson carol johnson and brooke gabrielli so we have four members currently and we have one vacancy one vacancy and the effective yeah i thought there was going to be another one the in february 2022 the chairperson his uh term is ending in in february 2022. so as of right now we just have the vice chair who resigned september 8th okay um i mean i think we should fill it i i agree with councilmember gardner it's been a long time that we've had that vacancy um the really important commission and you know if someone is absent or you know if they're ill or whatever and can't make the meeting it just makes it much more difficult for the others further discussion mayor dave gruber councilman i tend to agree um based on on public safety and based on the um the size of the academy classes that we're trying to start to create both in the police and fire department we need somebody sooner rather than later you know to be fair we we had a major debate about one member of the uh commission but for the most part our votes have been unanimous or nearly unanimous so i think that we could bring you know if we had a few candidates that we could bring forward uh sooner rather than later again so that they can start ensure that that we have a quorum um that would that would help us out okay further discussion here uh councilman mark holmes yes i think it's been roughly six weeks by my calculation um that we've had this vacancy um i'm not sure that that's an extremely long time in fact but also as getting a more representative sample of applicants that represent the community can take time and i think it's worth taking that time rushing in 10 days um doesn't seem like taking that time to make sure that everybody knows and that different methods of outreach can be examined okay further discussion and i'm going to get a sense of the council on their on the gardner proposal and i don't want to name any names but i have heard that someone's going to leave soon further discussion that would leave two vacancies further discussion i've seen none uh is there objection to the gardner uh proposal to uh proceed um prior to the new council being sworn in mayor uh councilman i object customer controller jacks further objection comes coastline recalls further injection then we will move forward the direction is is to move forward with the faster process uh whereby uh a new member a new member of the civil service commission would be selected prior to the new council being seated in december um with that um let's see the time is now 8 27 i'd like to take a a break uh and reconvene at 8 8 35. we will reach city council will stand in recess until 8 35. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] uh council is now uh back in session uh number five a world mental health funding ordinance yes and um the proposed ordinance is sponsored by council member gardner and i'll turn it over to him for presentation thank you thank you terry um so what you have in your packet is a um result of several months of stakeholder outreach to address the mental health crisis in aurora i think you know i don't need to tell everyone it's it's been a serious issue for a long long time and i think the last um 18 months uh or so the kobe pandemic have only made the situation much much worse um there's really two separate uh pieces to this ordinance one is the creation of the board uh the board would be the group responsible for uh making funding decisions uh at the direction of council's approval council um and then in addition to that there is also a one-time funding mechanism using 10 million dollars of arpa money and um you know where this came from i think we're in a unique position with the arpa money available to the cities to to really make transformational decisions and i think um you know we've kicked around the idea of funding mental health for a long time in our city and i think you know this really allows us to do that from a one-time perspective and then in the future look for ways either budgetary or or other funding mechanisms to continue funding these programs after we're able to determine if they're successful or not i do have uh some folks online um that would like to say a couple words they have dr sandra frisch from uh and i might have gotten her last name wrong from children's hospital as well as zach dad mr mayor and members of council for the opportunity to speak this evening my name is sandra fritsch i'm a board-certified child and knowledge and psychiatrist my clinical role in why i'm here is i'm the medical director of all the pediatric mental health clinical activities at children's hospital colorado i'm also service the medical director of cop cap the colorado pediatric psychiatric consultation and access program i've been in colorado working at children's hospital as the medical director since the summer of 2016. on behalf of children's hospital colorado we want to thank you for the work that you're doing to prioritize mental health we strongly support the proposal under construction tonight to target existing federal funds for expanded access to mental health services in colorado and in aurora to fill you in on a little bit about what my experiences and what we're seeing at the hospital as you're probably aware in may children's hospital colorado declared a state of emergency for the pediatric mental health due to a 90 increase in demand for children and youth needing mental health services over the past two years i'm sure you're aware that suicide's the number one cause of death for children ages 10 to 24 years of age and that's been that way since i arrived in 2016. in most other states accidents are the leading cause of death at any time we rank 5th to 7th in the country for youth death by suicide and we've had a child as young as nine intentionally die by suicide there have been many weeks in 2021 that the number one reason for kids presenting to our emergency department as a suicide attempt in april of this past year the hospital experienced the highest ever volume for psychiatric patients presenting to the emergency department and this was also a peak month for the cop cap program where we support pediatric primary care providers to be able to respond to the medical health the mental health needs of the pediatric patients my work with primary care has revealed that the mental health needs have risen dramatically and many feel ill-equipped to address the concerns in primary care the severity of those suicide attempts have also increased with more kids needing treatments in our pediatric intensive care units and unfortunately the beds are limited in number and so kids have actually been staying longer in the emergency room waiting for that intensive care bed as well this has gone far beyond crisis levels um children families schools health care facilities are all at their breaking points we're also seeing an exodus of folks leaving because they're so overwhelmed these challenges they're not going to go away as the pandemic subsides kids have been dealing with the chronic stress for the past 19 months and that's really interrupted their normal expected developmental trajectory they're spending more time indoors behind screens there's weight gain there's low vitamin d levels and extremely poor sleep which is also a risk factor for mood and anxiety so how this this money can help with the generous support from many community donors children's hospital has been working to increase our mental health inpatient outpatient day treatment services by more than 50 percent we're expanding to create more space for patients who need the services but it's not enough and as we expand access to inpatient now patient care we're also working hard to recruit mental health providers which is it's its own challenge there's extreme workforce shortages in this profession at all levels of care from psychiatrists to psychologists to therapists we can't build our way out of this we need to intervene prior to the crisis by supporting our community and school-based providers we need to increase home-based resources so that the crisis does not escalate to the point of needing inpatient treatment currently colorado lacks a robust behavioral health system kids are often not able to be served in the right place at the right time we have kids over staying in the emergency department for days at on end staying in inpatient beds beyond needing to be there because there's no place appropriate for them to discharge so city council has a great chance to invest in a system that will better serve aurora's citizens including children and youth by investing in the arpa funding and behavioral health resources and we strongly support the approach that aurora is taking to prioritize these funds for behavioral health and also really want to give you our thanks for considering this so thank you very much for this opportunity to chat thank you for that um i want to mention briefly or talk briefly about the arpa money as you all got in your backup and then i believe there was some correspondence sent to council as well there's a very large stakeholder group that's worked on this and you know in addition um our state mandated mental health provider here in the city of aurora we have sent them the latest draft of the ordinance and they indicated the email their support would be effort as well to increase mental health funding to the city um and i think for the arc of money specifically it's important to point out when we received the presentation two weeks ago from the feedback from our citizen survey the number two item listed for uh desired use of funds from our residents was increased meant about funding in our city and so i think our residents really agree um and recognize the issue that's in front of us and the opportunity that we have to find mental health in our city i'm not sure if if michael reddick is on the phone for healthier but if he is michael do you want to say a few words i am thank you uh good evening everybody i'm michael ruddick policy manager with healthcare colorado we have over 8 500 members in aurora and we focus on improving health outcomes for coloradans through state and local policy thank you to councillor gardner mayor council for hearing us tonight thank you to dr frisch as well healthier colorado supports the ordinance before us today it's a really incredible opportunity to use arpa funds to invest in upstream preventative services that promote better mental health and quality of life for all aurorans across the country we're seeing a mental health emergency colorado is not immune to that and covet has played a really big part in exacerbating mental health effects like increasing social isolation increasing economic worries and stress and deep deepening existing mental health disorders for many so i think it's fairly appropriate that we're having this conversation about you know spending these arpa funds in lieu of how covid has exacerbated mental health issues colorado has the sixth highest suicide rate in the nation changes a little bit from year to year um more coloradans died from drug overdoses in 2020 than any year ever on record child mental health service needs jumped by almost 100 in 2020 and the thing is that that data is consistent in aurora so according to data from tri county health suicides and overdose deaths uh in 2018 and 2019 were at the highest recorded levels of the decade that was before covid nearly half of seniors in aurora think that available mental health services are either fair or poor a third of students in arapahoe adams and douglas county said they felt sad or hopeless every day for multiple weeks at a time in aurora public schools saw 150 percent increase for behavioral health services at school-based health centers from 19 to 20. so this ordinance is a much needed direct quick confusion of funds to address mental health behavioral health suicide substance use we'll create more resources for schools community organizations health care providers faith-based orgs and other folks that are on the ground doing this work and best yet i think it's a really simple and straightforward model so um the spending will be into five main buckets mental health services for children seniors veterans in the unhoused uh substance use disorder treatment and prevention suicide prevention restorative justice programs and non-policy models for mental health responses uh it's intended to be taken by the community so a nine-person board with two non-voting city councillors which would consist of mental and behavioral health experts including those with lived experience would be appointed by the city council and city manager to be to make sure that the money is spent by aurorans and for aurorans through a competitive grant process that board would be subject to open meetings oversight and city council would have final approval before that money is disbursed the money that goes out the door for those preventative treatments would be priorities that come from the community so there are provisions in the ordinance that would ensure community engagement identifies the top spending priorities reporting and auditing requirements that ensures transparency and who receives funding what they used it for the success of the program etc this ordinance is a really amazing opportunity to invest proactively in mental and behavioral health in aurora um to invest in community organizations to build trust and support for the community um i think that's it's indicative that we have you know 20 plus endorsing organizations as councilor gardner said that support this ordinance including tri-county health mental health colorado american academy of pediatrics one colorado and many many more i want to extend a very deep thank you to counselor gardner uh for his vision vision and leadership on this issue aurora will be happier and healthier if we can secure today's services for residents moving forward um i'm going to stick around and answer any questions that you all have thank you for having me thank you um councilman garner are you open for questions now or do you still have more for your presentations there's one last presenter zack as well from children's you have a couple of brief comments before we'll drop a question back uh thank you councilman gardner and uh mr mayor madam america chairman members i will be brief um first i want to encourage councilman gardner for your work on this dude i think dr fritz laid out a really compelling vision uh unfortunately of the desperate challenges that so many of our children youth and families are facing uh in this community and i thought michael did a good job of sort of laying out the the nuts and bolts of the solution so i don't have a whole lot more to say about the problem or the solution that you have in front of you i guess i would just put a finer point on their testimony and say we need action at every level local state and federal we in aurora cannot wait for the feds to come in and save us or even for state lawmakers to come in and help this community this measure that you have before you tonight presents an opportunity to take solutions into our own hands in this community um children's hospital compared with supporting this measure because as dr fritsch said we don't uh want children to have to come to our inpatient beds or our emergency department if they do that then the system in this community has failed them and we're overflowing right now which is indicative of of where we're at we want those kids to be able to stay with their families whenever possible and stay closer to home sleep in their own beds every night so the measure that you have before you tonight is not a complete solution um obviously but it is a significant step in the right direction and i would just urge that the time to take matters into our own hands as a community uh is now uh we we should not wait things really are uh that dire they are at that point so with that appreciate um uh the indulgence i know the hour's getting late but i'm happy to answer your questions as well thank you uh customer gardener are you prepared for questions soon uh yes please go ahead well thank you also the first question and that is the last time you brought this forward um and this is my question to zach from children's hospital it was never approved by the board has that have been approved by the boy this time because i talked to your board chair bart with lucy i'm sorry um bart um and he was not aware of it last time he brought it forward is he aware of it this time thank you mr mayor uh it's a it's a great question um he's aware of it and what i would say is in general the hospital's board does not um engage in uh decision making around specific policy priorities and how do you how do you represent them well they clearly they didn't vote if the board didn't vote on this position how do you represent the board that's a good question sir um i'll give you one example at the state legislative level alone not looking at local governments not looking at stuff in wyoming or washington dc we track north of 120 130 bills every session it would it just would not be manageable for our board of directors um that is responsible for broad high level fiduciary responsibilities etcetera to take positions on keeping those 100 plus pieces of legislation i'm sorry no they can't be bothered i say please proceed mayor government i was just going to say what i can tell you very clearly and i want everyone to hear this is our board's absolutely in the luke uh with regard to the challenges that we're seeing in our institution in our community and around the country with regard to mental health they're absolutely on board with the fact that this is a dire situation and again solutions are needed from elected officials at every single level federal state and local so yes our board is on board with that and it's my job to represent the organization's position let me let me say this that your regional facility and i appreciate all the work you do aurora mental health is not supportive of this and i'm sorry that there was a mix-up and they cannot be presenting tonight they will be presenting on october 1st their plan what what they want to see and what they want to see is if this is one-time money and they want to use uh to create the campus that they've already briefed us on they wanted it going in that direction and they take care of young people at aurora as well uh further questions or um meredith mayor council robert gruber then councilmember hills thank you mayor um i'm i'm concerned that the minutes from the management and finance committee are not attached in our in our package because we discussed a lot of this the point was made earlier that the children's hospital is a regional hospital it does wonderful wonderful work but if you go and i just checked it again if you go to the children's hospital website and look for the word aurora it's nowhere on there i mean we're delighted to have the hospital in aurora but it's not an aurora hospital and the money that we would take from aurora to give to the children's hospital would not be dedicated to aurora children it would be dedicated or you know it would go into a bigger fund i i think that the money that should go to um to the hospital should come at the regional level at the county level and uh state level uh certainly we would support that but again it's not a regional hospital the second thing and to emphasize what the mayor had talked about with aurora mental health which does focus on aurora intended to do or intends to do with with the 10 million dollar at least they asked i think we all received an email this morning talking about the 8 to 10 million dollar ask they purchased a piece of land directly across from the medical center of aurora which already has a building they're going to tear that building down and then build an entire campus uh for the mental health supporting the the people of aurora everything from battered women to homeless to children you know the entire suite of mental health mental health services so and and furthermore we had another discussion earlier about using the arpa money and making sure that we go through a profit process to vet the many requests that are there so in this case i'm just concerned that that um you know we discussed it at management finance we identified the fact that it's a regional hospital the board itself i have trouble with given the fact that the responsibility for allocating the funds in the city of aurora should always be on the elected officials so to to create a board that would then distribute the funds or even you know bring that forward i just have a problem with that's a that's a city responsibility maybe have input but certainly not have the power to allocate anything so i do not support this i look forward to having a rural mental health previous and i look forward to a more nuanced process where we look at all of the requirements coming in for our funds and apply them as best we can cosmo hills thank you um my my comment was only to earlier about the board not necessarily wing and it sounds a lot like our pfizer committee where we have a committee that takes positions on behalf of the of the full council and then when it needs to it comes the full council and there are updates and briefings um was all because i think that the questioning the line of questioning was trying to make it sound like you know this was going behind the the board's back and i i'm assuming that that was not the case and it sounds very much like how we here at the city operate um and i just wanted to share that but that was two two comments ago now so but thank you further discussion here um councilmember gardner couple of things um first first of all um the the money is not earmarked for children's hospital and that was discussed at management finance and i guess the minutes should have been in there um because that would have reminded councilmember guru about that conversation if you redid your events in fact there's a process for community organizations to apply for this money so it's not money that's dedicated for children's hospital children's hospital obviously has a vested interest in improving health conditions and i don't speak for them in our city which is why they're involved but this is not um a way to to to send money to two children [Music] the as far as the um approval of the money so the board makes recommendations and final um approval authority still rests with council on this so that's a key difference from what's been done in denver and other places where the the elected officials do not have that accountability that was something that was important for me to have here um further discussion mayor joshua um so a couple things first of all council member gardner i do thank you for having that board structure with council approval i think that's a significant improvement over previous um proposals that have been brought before us for taking this to the ballot um which it's my opinion that for the ongoing program aspect that's really the approach that we need to take um and so this ordinance establishes an ongoing program with one-time funds and doesn't identify where a minimum of 2.5 million dollars a year would come from um and so that's concerning because we as a council have voted down things for one-tenth of that amount and less of not having identified the ongoing funds um and i so i that is a concern to me that we create an ongoing program with these one-time funds i do think we absolutely need to allocate funding um for these priorities and maybe even with this board structure as a short-term kind of temporary how we're gonna allocate those funds because we i think we could use help um figuring out who's bringing in what mental health specific um requests now right now we've had about 20 million dollars of requests around mental health for 60 million dollars and that doesn't even include setting aside some for leveraging partnerships with other levels of government or other types of entities so i want to see us allocate money to mental health i want to see us allocate probably some of it to this type of program some of it to the ask from aurora mental health that we'll hear and some of it to leveraging partnerships so i think we need to get all of those asks together and then decide how much of the money is going to that because i agree we absolutely have to spend on this issue um it's a huge issue as everyone has mentioned this just isn't i think the way to do it with arpa money because our staff specifically recommended that because these are one-time funds we use them for one-time purposes when we were in our budget workshop talking about the harpa funds so yes to allocating funds no to creating an ongoing program with our offense brother's question yes mayors uh member tim yeah for me um and i acknowledge that we have a serious problem with mental health illness and it's just you know what's the best way to to deal with it um and i know we have this other proposal um to use one-time funds for a campus which i personally like that concept a lot we're not experts in mental health and that or mental health um i mean that's exactly what they do i i don't i have always said that i how i'm gonna phrase this um that we're not a county so we don't have health and human services under our purview and we we have three counties douglas arapahoe and adams um i i think councilmember coombs also alluded to you know leveraging monies and i think that's a really good idea but really they should be taking the they should be the one really looking at this program and then having us partner with them that is their responsibility health and human services and so i also have an issue with the ongoing um monies i i think that's problematic i think it's very complicated with this number of people on the board and how we're going to allocate i would like us to and i also thought that we at the last discussion uh study session i thought we were going to look at all the needs of the city you know there's infrastructure needs that that we can spend our monies on and and housing needs and so forth there's a lot of needs and i would rather see all of it before making um a decision on one program further discussion customer lawson um thank you mayor um so councilmember gardner and most of the people here on the call know how i kind of feel about this we i met with most of them i was very concerned my issue is i would like to hear what our mental health agency has to say about this proposal and they're not meeting until the end of the month um and so for me um i really that's why i'm not going to be for this i agree with someone what a lot of my colleagues have said about the ongoing funds but for me i really want to know what they think about this proposal so councilmember gardner already knows that so does everyone else on this the people that were here zach and um um i can't i'm sorry if i missed your name he was on the call as well that was one of my issues um also um i you know i brought this i council member gardner has headed this in some ways but i have too and um you know when i brought the proposal together in january everybody was against it so i am very much for mental health i do believe we need to do something on all levels but i do think that our mental health agency really needs to chime in on this proposal so i will not be supporting this as is for tonight further discussion mayor councilman mcconnell thank you sir um i think we are all in agreement about the urgent need to address mental health in the city i think that this discussion gives me hope that we can find a way to actually move forward in the future but i do want to echo a lot of the comments that my colleagues have made about using one-time funds for ongoing expenses and frankly i am also partial to the campus plan uh that was presented to us uh some time back um so i would like to see us bring this uh you know include this in the conversation when we're looking at opportunities to leverage um you know funding um to address mental health issues in the city but also um how we can create a ongoing revenues you know source of revenue for this kind of programming in the future um i really do like the committee structure for the most part that you laid out in hero council member gardner i think that having community representation and input is very important um but for the reasons outlined by my colleagues i will not be supporting this version of it but i'm hopeful that we're getting closer to one where we can all agree seeing none is there any opposition to the gardner proposal um i believe um council member lawson councilmember coombs council member bergen councilmember gruber uh myself and councilmember mcconnell are in opposition uh to having you move forward at this time um with that a majority have arisen in opposition so um item number 5a will not move forward item number 5b a proposal mayor i still used my prerogative to bring this forward to a full council meeting um all my colleagues are saying that we need to do something and they've been saying that we need to do something for two years and i haven't seen another other proposal so this will be coming forward to the floor for a formal vote i think that's interesting that you heard from most of the your colleagues on council and you're going to bring it forward for a vote on the floor when when i think there was some openness to you know looking at this in conjunction with other proposals that are coming forward i mean basically it's like okay let's give 10 million dollars plus we don't even know where the ongoing is and and then that that right away takes a piece of the pie away from the rest of the arpa funds and it's i i don't i just think it's really not considerate to let us consider the other options and weigh those first mayor councillor hills thank you um i support moving this to the floor and um with all due respect the mayor is consistently bringing competing proposals to the floor after they are voted down and we are not um calling him out in the same way so it does seem very targeted towards councilmember gardner and perhaps some of the opposition um from outside actors that is inspiring the discontent with moving it forward because this is something that has been uh consistently supported when the mayor has done it in the past and i just want to make sure that we are being fair in allowing council members to bring something to the floor and not calling them out individually um and picking and choosing because i i know many on this council have have supported doing just this with competing proposals as recently as what a week ago or one one study session ago when councilmember coombs brought something forward and rather than working with her decided to bring a competing proposal so i just you know let's just be mindful that this is not something that's new and unique mayor cosby mccombs so i i fully support you know councilmember gardner using his prerogative i do hope that should it continue to not be supported when it comes to the floor that there's an opportunity to work with the stakeholder group about what an arpa request could look like that's in conjunction with all of the other requests that we're receiving on mental health because again i think we need to use arpa funds for mental health and we need to use arpa funds in a way that includes community input and includes being able to reach out to community partners um to fund those needs so again supportive of the intent in terms of leveraging arpa funds immediately and so i hope we can keep having those conversations about how that looks in our arpa allocation process i just don't see an ordinance and that allocation process kind of driving further discussion by saying nothing uh i've never 5a will not move forward uh councilman mcconnell okay sorry can you hear me yes okay i apologize i don't think my microphone was working i was actually trying to speak to the last item before um moving it forward but i just wanted to say to councilmember gardner that um again i'm coming at this from a place of good faith i support the direction this is going um i just want us to be able to talk to our mental health first i want us to see what other opportunities may exist to partner with other jurisdictions and to better leverage the funding that we have um mental health is absolutely a high priority i think for all of us you've heard that from all of us um so i'm hoping in moving it forward which against your prerogative and that support you in doing that it's nothing new and we've all done that before at one point or another um but i'm hoping that we can actually have a conversation as opposed to just holding fast to this version of it because i think that there's probably a way that we can all get to yes on this so let's see no further disguise is there further discussion seeing no further discussion then item number five b i mean five a will not move forward number five b proposed amendments to article 3-5 uh sub-parent a of the city charter pertaining to partisanship of elections um um councilman mcconnell all right thank you mayor um so i wanted to bring this forward to the full council since this is something that we've touched on already a little bit during our group stalemate or sorry our stalemate for filling the ward 2 vacancy as i said then i had my original intent was to actually create a process for special elections but after doing some homework on special elections i kind of discovered a few hurdles that i'll bring up here so first i reached out to the arapahoe county clerk's office and um cost was the first thing that was brought to my attention we normally get charged based on a weighted population average for the cost of administering election by the county so that means that our costs get reduced the more jurisdictions participate in an election so they sent over a copy of the invoice or trolling every preliminary invoice for the november second election with just for arapahoe county alone the total cost is 643 000 uh but thankfully since we're doing that weighted population average our share is just about 106 000 plus 107 000 and katie if you have an updated version of that uh final price you can chime in at the end here um but for a special election we would actually need to bear the entirety of the cost for the election if it's just us who are basically making that happen now the cost wouldn't be you know 643 000 but it would be a pretty substantial amount the adams county election would be pretty substantial as well and douglas county would be way less uh than the other two counties but would still be some kind of cost associated there as well and then the second issue that came to light when i was researching special elections was the issue of participation so our regular municipal elections already have really really low turnout um so those of us who got elected in 2019 i think we got elected with a 35 turnout and those of us who got elected in 2017 enjoyed somewhere around like a 25 turnout and special elections have even lower turnout than that uh which exacerbates a problem that we have with our regular municipal races where in my opinion we don't really generate representative outcomes and we should probably do something about that so with the costs of our special elections being high and participation being potentially lower even than our regular municipal elections i decided to keep looking for some other solutions and arrived at this proposal so i looked at what our state legislature does to fill vacancies and found that it accomplished one of the goals that y'all heard me reiterate a lot when we were you know in 150 rounds or so of voting which was i was trying to focus on keeping the values that people voted for in place when we're you know trying to fill a vacancy and you know some folks accuse me of potentially using it to advantage my side of the aisle or you know that i would do the same if i was in that position i told you then i wouldn't and this uh proposal that i'm bringing forward tonight again would prohibit any of us from doing that so when there's a vacancy at the state legislature a vacancy committee is created and that vacancy committee is comprised of the precinct committee people who belong to the party of the person who vacated the seat so if a democrat vacates a seat a democratic vacancy committee comprised of the precinct committee people for a given district uh or senate seat actually happened pretty recently i think with uh senator kagan when he resigned um they get together and they get to vote on who they want to replace that person so the values stay with the seat same would have same thing would happen regardless of your party if you were an elected libertarian or green party member uh and then for the process for unaffiliated members is interesting uh it's actually it would get kicked back to the folks who signed the nominating petition so if you're a state level unaffiliated which i don't think we've had at least since i've lived in colorado but if that were to happen it would be the folks who signed your nominating petition who would comprise the vacancy committee uh and that's something that's really easily transferable to our municipal seats and the second thing that stuck out to me is that you know even numbered years partisan elections have much higher turnout uh than we have with our non-partisan off-year elections uh and nonpartisan in quotes you already know how i feel about that uh so i did more reading into that phenomenon and you already saw some of the supporting evidence in the back up and found that partisan races have higher rates of participation than non-partisan races uh there have even been you know uh well i guess there's already studies in your backup and one of the interesting things that that one of the papers actually i think two of them uh talk about is that not having party affiliation on the ballot is actually an information barrier for some people and that is a big contributor to why we see lower voter turnout and uh if any of you all have been knocking doors this cycle i've already knocked close to 400 doors uh and i knocked you know what north of 3000 for myself in 2019. it's one of the most common questions i get on doors and i'm sure the same is true for y'all and from that after that typically you know specifics follow about uh issues and other things so we can't fix the issue of low information from a media standpoint i think that's another one of the issues that contributes to low turnout for our municipal races but we can fix the issue of low information on the ballot and that ties into the vacancy uh committee structure that we'd be borrowing from the state legislature so given that partisan races have higher turnout uh which is something that i think we should all be interested in fostering regardless of our affiliation and that we could really easily employ a vacancy system to accompany that change uh ensuring that we don't ever have a repeat of the ward 2 vacancy going into the future this is the proposal i wanted to settle on and bring forward to council for discussion um i'll also note that this doesn't cost us anything because we would basically just be using um the same ballots that we have now the only difference is that we'd have a party affiliation on the ballot um beginning in 2023 and then the vacancy committees are actually handled by the parties so for example for senator kagan's committee vacancy committee they i think rented out englewood city hall if memory serves and had the election there so uh one of the rooms in englewood city hall so that's kind of how that would work so it kind of uh offs the cost of the vacancy committee to the parties um while ensuring that representation uh you know um is maintained and that the valleys of a given seat stay with the you know with what the voters voted for and with that i am happy to address any questions or concerns you may have and i believe uh david lathers is on the line as well to take questions discussion uh questions here uh councilwoman um councilmember mcconnell so i mean i have some a couple concerns with this so let me let me just tell you where my concerns are essentially a lot of there's a lot of jobs people a lot of people have jobs who maybe want to serve and there's a lot of positions non-profit corporations whatever they may have a clause that says that they cannot participate in elections if they are partisan i'm a product of that i was asked if this this election was partisan and the only reason why i was able to run is because it was considered nonpartisan this council talks about you know um inclusion and voices of people well to me with this you are kind of maybe figuring out a segment of a population that may want to run because we're not a full-time council that may want to run because they and they may not be able to because you're making the these seats partisan um i i just have a real issue with that and and i'm just a product of that so i i don't really agree with you on that um on that particular part of making a partisan in the in the war ii council race there is an individual that is considered unaffiliated if we have this c partisan she would not have been able to run and i just think that you're kind of limiting people um who may want to run for these seats because you're going to make these elections partisan i don't totally do not understand how you're dealing with the unaffiliated because i'm an unaffiliated and i'm not even sure how that would work and then thirdly if you're knocking on doors you can go up to people and say i'm this i'm that um you know you can go on a forum and say this is my political position um i understand 2023 is coming up and maybe that's why we want to get this passed but i will see real issues my particular issue with it is maybe limiting potential voices or potential people who really want to serve their issue is not to be political but really to serve the community and the residents and so that's where i have an issue with this and at this point i will not support this uh councilman thank you sir uh thank you councilmember lawson so i want to run through uh the points that you brought up here so i understand that some jobs don't allow for uh partisan positions um and that is uh gosh how do i put this the i think the pretense that some of us might have around partisan positions um i don't think it is one that is a positive thing and unfortunately if an employer requires that you can't serve in a partisan position i don't think that that should have any bearing frankly on your employment but i understand that that's up to that employer the reality of the situation is that all of us have some kind of ideological compass and you know value a value system some kind of moorings and what political parties are shorthand by and large for those values so my intent here is not to exclude anyone and the way this is currently written it wouldn't begin to take effect until the 2023 um election uh just um you know because that's our really that's gonna be our next election after uh this would be voted on by the voters your second point uh is that unaffiliates would not be able to run that's untrue the ordinance specifically lays out the process for filling vacancies for unaffiliated voters and i did touch on it a little bit but i'll reiterate uh and that's that uh the current way state statute works for a vacancy committee for unaffiliated uh is that the people who sign your nominating position to get on the ballot uh without a party affiliation those folks are actually your vacancy committee um so we already have a process to petition onto the ballot that's not changing with this uh ordinance the only thing that's changing is that our races would be made openly partisan transparently partisan so you would appear unaffiliated on a ballot hypothetically i would appear as a democrat um councilmember gruber i'll pick on you since you're leaving you'd be a republican on the ballot um and that's just i think being honest with voters about our values and our affiliation um but that doesn't preclude anybody from running you're right i think jessica gemaldo is unaffiliated in ward 2. and no she'd still absolutely be able to petition onto the ballot um with this or with this charter change and her vacancy committee would be the folks who signed her petition um and then the last point that you know we can identify ourselves however we choose to you're absolutely right um i changed my you know door spiel basically after getting asked you know for the umpteenth time what my party was and i was just i'm juan marcano i'm a democrat running for ward 4 on the university council um but that's not really enough to accomplish the information aspect of this because one of the things i touched on was the low turnout in non-partisan races and what a lot of the research again that's in your backup shows is that when folks don't have easy access to information it turns them off so we basically disenfranchise a bunch of people we make it harder for them to vote it's actually a form of voter suppression because this typically impacts communities of color uh so to me it's actually an equity issue as a in addition to a transparency issue um so i think having our affiliation on the ballot has way more pros uh than cons and you know again um i think to anyone who's been a frequent uh viewer of our city council meetings they can tell that this is a actually it's a pretty partisan dynamic that we have here um whether or not we have an affiliation on the ballot it's unfortunate but i think it's just kind of human nature maybe not even human nature but just part of how our political system uh fosters um exchange and um i'm hoping that you know bringing this level of transparency into our local process we'll help you catalyst for future change to make our politics more accessible and more honest uh because i'd like to see ranked choice voting in a bunch of other uh choice uh changes in the future as well maybe answer your questions uh council member lawson okay further discussion mayor um councilman mayor jim berger thank you um i don't really even understand the need to have party affiliation in in a local race um i was elected in 2015 i was elected again in 2019 and i'm knocked on a lot of doors and actually very few people asked my party affiliation and when they did i told them it was a nonpartisan election and and that focused on local issues um and i think that's what it's about it's about being able to talk about what issues affect them and what services the city is supposed to provide you know so water and and roads and public safety and those type of things that are the core of what we provide to our to our citizens um i i i don't know if this is a way to garner more votes for your party if you look at demographics in our city um certainly it leans more democrat but i think it's really unfair to voters to assume that they should just vote based on their party affiliation i personally had had uh democrats that volunteered on my campaign and i'm a republican um and that's because it's to me it's i have never pushed a republican issue and if you can point to one please tell me because i've never done it you know it's not like i'm pushing something that the national republican party talks about or the state republicans i have never done that because i just focus on the local level and the local issues and i think unfortunately we have become partisan because some issues were really honestly non-city issues that were that were pushed down um and and made it partisan in terms of our discussions um so i don't understand the the motive behind it and i i just think it's unfair to our voters that they should be able to elect someone based not on party affiliation but whether they are the best person um based on background and based on values you can talk about values um and and they can do research and by the way the republican party doesn't do anything with with um local elections like they don't they're not helping us if that's you know what's going on here further discussions mayor councilman combs so just a couple things on that point i mean first of all i do think i have been asked a lot about party affiliation on doors as well and seen a lot of conversation online this cycle about party affiliation so that may not be your experience but it's certainly an experience that other folks have but in terms of not pushing republican or democratic issues i think the partisanship shows up not just because some people are bringing partisan issues forward i don't think that people being able to survive and thrive and have housing in our city is or should be a partisan issue and it has become one because what people are voting are advocating from voting from and operating from is their political ideology and that's what's reflected right when you're saying well government just shouldn't have anything to do with x y and z that is a republican ideological position and so you're still operating from that ideological position it's not a platform issue but when your party doesn't have a platform it's very easy to say i can't point to an item from the platform that i've brought forward on city council but it's still the ideology um of that party and finally i believe just this last weekend um christy burton-brown did post a get out the vote launch so yes the republican party is absolutely involved in this election mayor may i respond just to one thing um account uh mayor tem and then um councilman mcconnell so on the um the minimum wage for me that was not a republican or democrat issue it was an economic issue and it i came from the perspective of how that would affect the economy in general in terms of a business shutting down laying off employees then that employee no longer has a job no longer has benefits i looked at it simply from a practical perspective you may not agree with my perspective but it was not based on a party you know position i didn't go to my party and go hey you know what am i supposed to do on this i made my own decision based on um talking to business owners and talking to um you know to small well to small business owners and how it would affect not just them but their employees and that's how i arrived at my decision mayor hi mayor community council member okay thank you sir um so i want to quickly respond to well i guess all the points you made so uh bear with me um so respectfully the exact rationale that you gave here for the minimum wage um is a republican position like when people talk about minimum wage and they told me we need to elect democrats so we can raise the minimum wage they know that generally speaking democrats support raising the minimum wage the exact amount may vary but they know that we know that what is currently happening is unsustainable unfair to workers and is frankly contributing to economic calamity in our city so we have a different a differing viewpoint there but again it's a very traditional democratic versus republican viewpoint so i think you kind of made my point for me local issues also i kind of want to touch back on that because it's you're right it's roads and potholes and things of that nature but it's also wages as we just touched on environmental protections we had arguments over masking early on in the covet pandemic that unfortunately became partisan but they were very well represented in those conversations uh economic development incentives uh which used to actually be a bipartisan consensus or not by participants necessarily but a bipartisan effort to actually rein those in nationwide but unfortunately that became a partisan issue as well um campaign contributions are a hell of a thing so um you know i think that you're well i understand what you're saying and that you come through these things you know through a process but that manifests in your ideology which manifests in your affiliation um so again the parties are really just shorthand for values by councilmember bergens or mayor tom bergen so respectfully i think you're kind of actually making the point and may i respond mayor i think i'd like to bring this to a close pretty soon here well yeah i just need to say that i don't make those decisions that way and you're you're making the acting like it's because i'm a republican and i'm telling you that i come at it from a practical perspective and do my homework and i may not agree with you but you know you had a forum the other day where people said they wanted to do a 27 minimum wage uh 27 an hour minimum wage what do you think a burger is going to cost for the poor person who um who you know buys hamburgers or buys milk and that milk is going to be more expensive so it's it's not it's not republican democrat it's actually just common sense and economic development so you could say raise wages but then what what does that do to products and that people have to buy it all is going to go up okay we're not going to resolve this uh i would like to bring this to a close uh councilmember carl can you do the concluding room first please i wanted to bring us back to the topic but i did want to address that as well um we're not discussing you know minimum wage right now but i do want to point out that again the exact rationale that you laid out is something that i hear from republicans at every level of government um i would also add that it's not true that's not how wages and prices work if you increase labor costs you're right there's going to be some level of increase but i want to point out to you all that places with higher minimum wages play sometimes less for burgers than we do because it all depends on profit margins and economies of scale and a bunch of other factors uh but i digress so again the reason i brought this forward was to do two things one is to address our vacancy conundrum without costing the city any more money and two to actually increase voter turnout by providing voters more information on the ballot and i think that again the first is something that we discussed um intermittently during our 150 plus uh votes um trying to fill the ward two vacancy uh and i thought that we had some agreement that we needed to find a better way to do things i think this is objectively a better way to do things the second uh is to increase voter turnout and transparency and information uh for aurorans um and i think that increasing voter turnout is something that we should all be committed to regardless of our political affiliation so i would encourage a yes vote on this again it's not just us making this decision this would actually go to the voters next year uh and they'd get to decide uh on this um for the whether they want to keep the status quo or if they want to change this for 2023 and onward is there opposition to the marcano proposal councilmember hills can i make a comment still or please please proceed yeah i i mean i would like to see this go through committee personally i think bringing it straight to um study session is is fine and certainly a prerogative but we have this process that we constantly talk about needing to go through and i think there's a lot to work through um and a lot of just things to kind of follow through from the conversation to their end that needs to be um workshopped and it's a big change and i think councilmember lawson also brings up a good point um you know this is not a full-time council and so in order to be on this council um most people have to have some type of outside employment or a partner who has that employment um and so making this change without having any conversation around how to to mitigate the impact that that has on people who won't be able to run because they can't keep their jobs i mean that is a larger conversation i think that that needs to be had so i'm you know i just i think it needs to go back through committee i think we're we're right now in the middle of an election season so bringing forward a a ballot proposal when we keep kicking things to um december when we have a full council i think this just needs to go through the formal process and so that would be my preference first of all i object um to the proposal but also i want to say that i think it's an insult to people's critical thinking skills that they would just vote by party affiliation it's insulting okay uh council member lawson is in opposition um councilmember gruber's in opposition um i'm in opposition because i wanted to go to committee but not particularly overall councilmember hilton i was a councilmember coast i'm not in opposition but i do want to point out that we have not actually deferred anything to when we have a full council we've only mentioned doing so very well uh councilmember coombs is in support [Music] um councilmember gardner president okay um is there anybody else in opposition uh um mayors in opposition worked with with five in opposition the proposal does not move forward seeing no other business before the council the meeting is assured thank you [Music] [Music] [Music] you