[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] me you hey are we prepared to go of the aurora city council for monday march 22nd 2021 is now called to order but the clerk please call the roll yes we just ended um exec sessions waiting for people to get on okay do okay yes here uh study session of the aurora city council for monday on march 22nd 2021 is now called to order with the clerk please call the rule mayor kaufman here mayor pro-tem bergen here councilmember burzins here council member coombs president councilmember gardner here councilmember gruber council member grouper councilmember hiltz here councilmember lawson lawson councilmember johnston here councilmember marcano president listen councilmember mario president and mayor i believe that roger's gonna do an announcement for the call-in line information very well roger you're needed okay i wasn't ready sorry hold on thank you for joining this evening's aurora city council study session if you're listening by phone please note we are in listen only mold the formal city council meeting begins at 6 30 p.m city council welcomes feedback from residents at council meetings on both matters appearing on the agenda and during public invited to be heard we will begin the sign up process at 6 00 pm for those watching on channel 8 please call speak 855-695-3475 will hear a prompt you will be connected to an operator and then able to continue listening to the meeting until the operator comes on to take your name and agenda item you wish to speak on again the operator will begin screening at 6 00 pm so please start press start three if you'd like to get in line thank you mayor you're muted i'll defer to the mayor protem for the mayor's update sorry mayor had muted um yes um we had executive session where legal advice was given regarding uh campaign finance litigation and the choice of an attorney that we would be seeking are there any issue updates uh seeing none uh is there any objection to moving the consent calendar forward item two a and two b as seeing none two a and two b will move forward uh uh honors from policy committee policy committees i'm number 3a theresa sednack and teresa's having a little bit of an issue with her technology here i do not see her as muted but let me double check okay can you can you hear me now yes hello okay i'm sorry having some having some technological issues here i apologize but my name is teresa sudmak and i am presenting two ordinances to you today both of them are related primarily to the financing of the southeast area maintenance facility or we call it theme the same facility is a project located in southeast aurora off quincy road designed to house aurora water and sewer employees as such its financing and debt service will be shared among aurora water and aurora sewer in the future the facility could be expanded to include public works fleet and parks recreation and open space the two ordinances authorized the issuance and sale of the obligations for water in an amount not to exceed 120 million in new money or money for this project and for sewer in an amount not to exceed 65 million the water ordinance provides a maximum par amount of up to 539 million which includes the new money portion of 120 million which would be devoted to seem and some other projects and an amount up to 419 million in potential refunding dollars which would be used to refund certain outstanding bonds that were issued in 2016. since we originally approached council and committee on this financing in february interest rates have moved significantly such that we are not looking at 419 million in refunding candidates right now we're looking at a much smaller candidate pool and saying that interest rates are constantly changing that amount may increase or decrease in the coming months so we may include the refunding we may get to the to the point where interest rates increase to the point where it doesn't make sense to do the refunding so the refunding portion of the water bond financing may be in or out of this transaction based on where interest rates are if that makes sense and i will be glad to take questions when i'm finished but with the volatility in the market right now the decision as to whether or not to refund the prior debt will be analyzed as we move along and we will make that decision closer to the time that we price the bonds in any event it will not be effectuated if we are looking at a savings of less than three percent which is what's dictated in the city's debt policy in addition the ordinances provide details related to the bonds including final maturity which we've listed at 35 years the amortization redemption provisions and maximum interest rates on the transaction both sets of bonds would be secured by an irrevocable irrevocable pledge of net system revenues they will be issued through a negotiated sale with morgan stanley serving as senior underwriter and key bank rbc capital markets and stifle rounding out the underwriting team it's currently anticipated that the bonds will be issued in late may of this year so i thank you for your consideration of these items i am happy to entertain any questions concerns or comments you may have in regards to the ordinances mayor mayor are there any uh questions or comments on it number three and three b i'm here for ten question yes um so did you say on the interest rate there would be a maximum did i hear three percent i can't remember what you said the the ordinances allow for a maximum interest rate of five percent if they are publicly offered or offered to investors in the public market which is what's anticipated and 10 if we went for a privately placed issue and said current interest rates we're looking at around three percent so we're well within that five percent range okay thank you teresa are you addressing did you address 3c as well in this or 3a are just 3a and 3b 3a and 3bi address together okay because they're very very similar yes are there further questions or comments that are number three or three b is there any objection to moving item number three and three b forward assuming none item three a three b will move forward i'm number three c and teresa yes i'm going for free fees regarding the debt policy we have uh introduced a debt policy for the city of aurora we had a debt policy which was not has been not updated for several years so i updated it many of the components of the original debt policy are the same the policy was updated with some current regulations and restrictions introduced by the sec and the irs mostly in involving post-issuance compliance which has become a compliance issue with the sec so it's been updated significantly to reflect current conditions in the financial markets and requirements in the municipal bond market other than that most of the changes have been non-substantive in nature again it was modified significantly but the major components of the prior policy remain the same so having said that i am happy to go into the debt policy um and answer any questions or concerns you may have in that regard i have indicated in the policy that it should be reviewed every several years um so that can be updated to reflect any changes in the markets for municipal bonds question i think uh mayor president so is a certificate of participation is not considered debt is that correct it is not considered debt under colorado law and that is because the gut service for a cop is appropriated in the annual budget it is very similar to a bond that's the major difference it has a different credit component in that bonds generally are secured through a general obligation credit or a revenue credit and cops are appropriated further questions or comments on item number three c are saying none is there any objection to um allowing item 3c to move forward assuming number 3c will move forward i remember 3d cabc bylaw changes um greg hayes yes hello everyone um i have some cnbc bylaw changes for you here uh this was uh taken through um m f it was approved in m f in the uh february meeting um very technical and the best part of uh this presentation is i'm just gonna give it over to uh michael westerberg who is the cbc chair to uh talk about this michael thanks craig i appreciate it uh basically we're just looking at a couple technical changes one of the big ones is moving our meeting or the election of our our executive board to the next i guess season you'd say or the next board season um right now it's in december we would move that to january so the brand new board can actually elect their leaders we thought that made sense the second one is just updating basically so we can do everything by electronic there was nothing in our bylaws about doing everything for example via webex which we're now doing um and that's kind of important in 20 20 20 and 2021 so that's the second one third major change was really um just making our rules congruent with each other and had to do with the definition of when quorum was met and the votes surrounding quorum uh any questions or comments on art number 3d well seeing that thank you so much for that presentation odd number 3d will move forward without objection uh item number 3c uh don joel thank you mayor may i please quit share my screen please wait for the permissions one moment one moment please you should be able to share it yes any issues seeing the screen good wonderful well first of all thank you very much mayor city council and staff for having me i'm going to keep this brief and i will leave time at the end for questions my name is don jewell and i am the water resources south platte basin supervisor and i work in the water resources division in our water department and in order to understand a little bit about some of the recent and upcoming agreements that are being presented to city council i've put this short presentation together to start with some of the fundamentals the most basic piece of why we're doing some of these seemingly random agreements is based on our involvement in ditch companies so today we're going to talk about uh what dish companies are where they're located why we keep buying them and then explain some of the ongoing obligations after we bought water in the ditch companies and i did make this presentation to water policy committee but i want to make sure that all council members were on the same page with that same information so farmers and minors began partnering and building sorry to understand a dish company you do have to go back to when this was a new territory and people started actually moving to colorado they were mining for gold at that time and the settlers got here and very quickly realized that they had to stay next to main rivers because it's a very arid area in the state and they needed water for their mining operations or to grow food that they needed to survive in this territory smart settlers began digging canals or ditches from the rivers to make water deliveries to operations and farms and then they realized that the larger the ditches the more water they could carry so the farmers and miners began partnering to build larger ditches to move more water and they formed private nonprofit companies with shareholders made up of farmers along the canal who needed to have water delivered and were willing to pay to own part of that water that was in the ditch the oldest continued irrigation ditch in the state is the people's ditch in the san luis valley which was built in 1852 to put that into perspective colorado became a territory in 1861 and it didn't become a state until 1876 so this is 24 years before we became a state that these irrigation ditches came to life in order to ensure water deliveries the ditches use diversions such as head gates to deliver a share of water to the shareholders the more shares you own the more water you get this is a photo that's taken at the end of the brighton ditch and the city of aurora owns 47 percent of this stitch company and this head gate on the right is owned by the city of aurora these are two of our staff members working on that head gate to deliver water to us the boards which you see down at the bottom of that photo uh stop up the water and help move it into our head gate and this is for reference just north of our aquifer recharge recovery site in the prairie waters system ditch companies are statewide and aurora owns water and ditch companies in each of our three basins primarily down in the lower arkansas river near the rocky ford area up in the colorado divide area between the arkansas and colorado river basins in the headwaters of the south platte and in the lower south platte below or downstream of the metro wastewater treatment plant the most active area of ditch company purchases right now is in the lower south platte river between denver and greeley but our activities within the ditch companies is very active throughout the state in this lower south platte area we are most active in water purchases right now we are purchasing ditch company shares in more than a dozen ditch companies because of their location to our infrastructure proximity to the city and other factors when you look on this map you'll see that ditch companies surround most of the north campus infrastructure including prairie waters the ar site walker everest and the site of our future gilchrist pit these are only the ditch companies aurora has an interest in and the area is littered with ditch companies this is a high level view of the systems but this is a closer view with two of the ditches which flow past our prairie waters infrastructure here you can see the brantner ditch in orange on the left the brighton ditch in blue and the prairie waters pipeline in red down the middle you can also see pump station number one sits right between those two ditches if you look around in this area you can see there's been a lot of development in the area with houses backing right up to the ditches new roads that are crossing these old ditches and what you can't see are the numerous utility and oil and gas lines which flow through here which all add up to why it's important that we're involved to keep the water in this ditch and these ditches protected i know a lot of you probably seen this photo but i'd be remiss explaining ditch companies and why we buy them if i didn't go into a little bit of colorado water law so colorado water law rights are based on the priority system it says if you were here first and you set your claim to the water no matter where you on there are on the river you have a right to take it even if someone moves in upstream from you it's called the prior appropriation that means that older water rights or senior water rights can stop a junior water right from taking their water if that senior water right is not getting what it's entitled to based on its water right ownership the oldest rights in the state are owned by these ditch companies so let's use an example to explain a bit more about why we buy stock in these ditch companies aurora owns a significant number of shares of the new brantner extension ditch company which runs on that west side the pump station it's about 32 miles long because we are shareholders we are entitled to water based on our share ownership and we are building up our ownership in this and many other ditch companies so that we can get more water delivered to the city every ditch company is built a bit differently but we get about 17.4 acre feet of water from each and every share of the new brantner company this means that we can receive about 1200 acre feet of water every year from our ownership in this ditch which is not bad but another element is that this ditch is the oldest water right in this section of the south flat river and that's very important this ditch holds four water rights of varying amounts and in an average year we can use that 17.4 acre feet of water for every share during severe drought years junior rights get called out and are forced to stop taking their water but this ditch company's rights are old enough that they will almost never be fully called out and will always be able to deliver their oldest rights even their less senior dates are fairly senior to many other ditches on the system based on the diversion records for this stitch company during the 2002 flood when the river was at its lowest and people were struggling the new brainerd extension ditch company was still able to take 77 percent of its average river diversions at the height of the drought the call on the river went to 1864 and the brainerd was still yielding two of its water rights just a reminder that colorado only became a state in 1876 so this was 12 years the call was actually 12 years senior to our statehood during the 2002 drought so what happens after we buy ditch company stock well we start off with the status quo we lease it back to farmers and those farmers continue to put the water on the ground which continues the historic practice of making return flows to the river from the water that is not consumed by the plants or evaporation in the meantime we start to gear up for a change of use for that water to change it from agricultural uses to municipal municipal uses these changes can be very complicated and we usually have a lot of people who object to the change case so that they can ensure that their own water rights are not injured injury can happen in several ways such as if you're using more than you were historically using with those rights or if you aren't making those historical return flows to the river that would made through the farming practices these change degrees that we get requires to have measuring structures and augmentation stations to deliver water to the city and back to the river as return flows it requires to have some methods such as storage to hold the water until ready to use it and to make those return flows in the winter when the ditches don't have water in them this is a view of walker reservoir as we started flowing water into it for the first time from those ditch chairs this is a diversion off the brighton ditch this is also why partnerships are so important to the city there are areas where we would struggle to make our own return flows because we don't yet have that infrastructure or storage other entities face the same problem and rely on those partnerships too like the westminster iga that we looked at last month we look for opportunities to have a win for the city in these situations when partnering we want to be fair and equitable to both parties but infrastructure is not the only thing we have to take care of after the purchases we have to stay involved with the ditches we go to meetings we get onto their boards we learn their systems we improve their record keeping improve their delivery systems work with their ditch superintendents to ensure equitable deliveries of water continue the ag use of water we don't need and we build those connections needed to acquire more ditch company water our involvement in these ditches requires us to work under the premise of their private non-profit ditch company status though we own shares in the ditch company the ditch company itself is responsible for the delivery and maintenance of the actual water rights our shares only give us the ability to use those rights the ditch company owns making our involvement in the ditches paramount to our use of the water and in some cases requiring us to make new companies to operate water rights using a model that's been in place for over 150 years you'll see this later this year with work we are doing the lower arkansas river with our return of yield project or roy project hopefully this helps to explain more about the ditch companies and why aurora water continues to pursue water from these ditch companies this really is a very high level presentation and i could literally talk about my job all day but your time is precious so hopefully this has been a good primer for you to understand a little bit about the why behind these agreements that we bring to city council and i'll open it up for questions are the dishes lined not all of them some are lined there are different kinds of lining for those stitches but the majority of them are still just dirt ditches they have clay liners in place which have currently been listed under state historic preservation so now when you injure that clay lining that's been in place for 150 years you have to have a nationwide permit to do so um and you're also um sorry not a nationwide permit you have to have a permit from the um state historic preservation office to actually work in the ditches so that lining while it's not a standard concrete lining they're usually pretty water solid further questions comment uh yes uh mayor from tim yes and i wanted to thank you for doing an excellent job on the presentation i know years ago during council meetings we'd have to vote on buying stock um from ditch companies and i remember a few times constituents either emailing us or making comments during public invited like why in the heck are we buying stock what's the city doing um so you explained very well that we need to have those water rights right the stock is ownership in a water right it's a little confusing but yes you did a good job thank you thank you very much further questions comments i'm seeing none thank you for great presentation thank you very much thank you very much mayor for the next item for 3f i just wanted to make an announcement that there is a spanish translator on the line so they can dial 1-877-820-7831 and enter participant code 2-5-4-6-1-0 pound and the interpreter is on the line to interpret very well um council um i'm number three f uh councilmember mario thanks mayor um i'm wondering if we could get the announcement of the spanish line in spanish i i tried to get that to get that down i'm sorry okay sorry yes we're trying to get them on the she can't join webex for some reason but that she is on the line so um councilmember i don't speak spanish if you would like to to translate the phone number it'd be i can i can see yeah um is there any way that we could i just want to make sure that folks are able to to log on correctly feedback i can read the the number really quickly um see see i can get in yamaha um and then pound sign i don't know how to say pound sign in spanish [Laughter] okay all righty mayor i'm gonna um go ahead and get going if that's okay please proceed please receive thank you um uh so um uh this is a resolution um expressing for council support um that housing is a human right i think it's pretty straightforward um but i wanted to give the the council some context um i was approached by a group of senoras or you know you know hispanic ladies from from my district who um have been wanting and have been following our housing conversations and we've been um having ongoing conversations around the housing affordable housing study that we passed late last year um and they're you know they on top of wanting to go through kind of each of the recommendations they they wanted to have input and to be able to um uh have input in the the parts of the housing study that i think were they thought were most important to highlight at this time as you know the housing study isn't just focused on affordability it kind of it spans the spectrum of housing so we have all the way from executive housing to developing housing for folks who are um experiencing hardships so in coming up with this resolution we wanted to offer a mechanism through resolution to be able to help guide um our staff to prioritize those recommendations that we believe collectively and we've vetted this through some other folks as well through the city as well um that should be prioritized now which is affordability um again our that that road map for our affordable housing recommendations is much more broad but at this time especially given covet we felt it was necessary and important to share a statement of support that we would like to prioritize those recommendations there are also some suggestions related to um some state legislation that have been barriers for us to fulfill some of those more affordable housing recommendations as well um so i guess high level i know this isn't an ordinance this is a resolution and that was kind of the beauty of it since we um you know don't we aren't the city manager to to kind of directly influence that we just um wanted a mechanism to be able to share the council's support for these recommendations and specifically prioritizing the affordable portion of that at this time so um i will stop there and see if there are any questions or you know however the mayor wants to proceed coming some questions discussion um is it councilman mcconnell oh i'm sorry councilman carter thanks mayor um a couple of things um so the wanting something to be a right doesn't make it a right um so there's a lot of things that i like to see in the world but um that doesn't make them right rights actually exist to limit the influence of government in our life so anything that's a right that requires the consumption of what others produce can't be right because it infringes on the freedom of others that's first thing second thing is i'm curious why this is coming forward now um councilman been on council for going on four years um we've had the current makeup of our council for um 16 18 months now i'm curious why we're now deciding that housing is a human right um and it hasn't been up until this point in aurora may i respond mayor further discussion uh mario okay yeah councilmember gardner i appreciate your comment um and i guess i'm a little confused why you would i guess reference timeline i like i said the the housing recommendations were passed this last december i've been working for three years to make affordable housing a conversation in the city for us to prioritize any policy and have any direction nothing so yeah as chair for the last three years as a housing committee that was something that took a long time given our structure of government given that it wasn't a explicit council priority so i could go into details of how i've navigated that myself but not sure that's entirely what your requesting so yeah so it passed in december so you know kind of getting this group of uh seniors up to date on what what what it was passed um nothing tangible had really in terms of policy direction had been passed prior to that so that was the impetus for these conversations with me and this group of women and constituents from my city um i did want to address your comments around uh creating a right we did hear i think there was a comment during committee on that as well and i was hoping we could get um legal to to make a statement on whether or not we're actually creating a human right or resolution you know it sounds like i mean can we just get some clarity on that yes yes mayor this is tim joyce this resolution does not create a constitutional right or any legal enforceable right this resolution is more of an aspiration or a goal if that helps you yes mr joyce should that affect um i i just wanted to say i am perfectly happy willing to make that an aspirational goal that we are able to house our constituency i have no problem with that even though it's not making any legal binding you know commitments on anything mayor resolutions are always non-binding um i'm sorry who is it uh mayor who's who wants to speak i can't see all right councilman mayor brayden bergen yeah i you know the resolution is fine in terms of the goals and i i would say that a lot of these things we've already done in the past couple years in terms of trying to address construction defect laws um to look at our zoning and um and certainly to look at affordable housing as as a uh something that's been a huge discussion so that is something we have been doing and my only issue is i guess of the work using the word uh right and because as was mentioned earlier it's not a constitutional right it's um it's not you know that's not in our constitution i would prefer that it was written with the word goal that's my only comment mayor further discussion on comments councilmember combs yes so i just want to comment a little bit about this discussion of rights and human rights the majority of human rights are in fact not the kinds of negative rights to which council member gardner has referred when you look at the u.n declaration on human rights it's not primarily about um ensuring that right that government doesn't overly interfere in people's lives most human rights in most of the accepted human right human rights discourse is actually focused on ensuring that people have things like dignity that people have things like food housing and the ability to aspire to as well as achieve certain capabilities and functionings in their lives so i think if we want to quibble about the definition of rights we could probably have a discussion about that for a very long time human rights discourse is frequently aspirational and i'm thankful to councilmember muriel for bringing this forward and acknowledging the role that housing plays as a right that sets the groundwork for freedom and for well-being and capabilities and functionings at all levels for people in our city further discussion there councilman lawson um i just had a question so i understand the intent behind this um i had a couple people a couple individuals call me this weekend i'm just basically trying to figure out and i'm not trying to be mean i know this goes to a group that's why you have it in the spanish version but they were saying if it's such if this is what a human right is why do you have it in spanish version and not just one version and if people want to get a copy of this in their different languages then why why is that it just looks so inequitable because you have it in a spanish version but are you really talking about because human this this applies to everybody we have all kinds of diverse cultures and in this particular packet you specify the the spanish-speaking version of this but and it looks kind of to some people from some different cultures that contacted me um that it's kind of unequivocal are you just speaking to one culture here or are you i mean i understand it's for the group the une group but it just looks like why couldn't you just have it in one version and if people wanted to get it into their native language in terms of because it's a human right for everyone but this this this looks really kind of for some looks a little inequitable of who you're actually making this pertaining this to yeah and i i know you probably can't you know uh guess all of the the questions that you would get on any particular legislation and i um would imagine that you shared something similar to the fact that we have a language access program um if this were to be translated it could be um to any group i specifically requested it because um the the group that i was uh that was curious of learning more about the housing study didn't speak english um so it's plainly and simply an access issue in the in the process um in drafting i would be happy to request this to be um translated to all you know all of the major languages in the city as well um it just happened to be um who i was uh communicating with and i i have no problem i speak spanish you know i wanted to be accessible as a council member so um regardless of i mean i think it's kind of an odd i don't know who commented what but i i certainly don't um mean this to be that it would only serve one particular constituency i didn't write in the um resolution that it's only for people who speak spanish or latinos you know specifically it was um for access in in my conversations it was uh they were having a really hard time understanding uh some of this technical language even in english and having to break that down each time was really difficult so it made sense to have this translated so that they could understand um the written part of course we had conversations and such but and we had translation somebody there to translate all of our conversations so it's just the written form of that kind of access in the stakeholder process further discussion mayor councilmember johnson thank you um i actually um set this presentation in the horns meeting and um i'm gonna be supporting it um i know that we often hear with resolutions oh you know do we need to do a resolution it's not an ordinance but this is something that is on the forefront in our community um you know we've been in the the news with lots of different issues of high rents homelessness um various various issues and of course with the timing of the housing study so i'm i'm supporting it i i think it's it's just an extra thing that we can um point to to show people in our community our commitment with this thanks further discussion mayor uh mayor jim uh and then uh councilman mcconnell yeah i'm just in the back up on the questions for council it says does the basically um the committee which is the council wish to move this resolution forward that the city uh council support that housing is a human right so we're saying it is a human right and it's not constitutionally i guess that my issue is that that's what we're asking council to to make a decision on councilman mcconnell thank you mayor um so i just want to state that housing has been a something that we've been in crisis around frankly uh since before kovitz since before even the great recession uh it has become unattainable unaffordable um and a distant dream for far too many people in our city and all across the country um i think that this kind of resolution sets a statement and acknowledges that reality and sends a message to our constituency that we hear you um you know we want to make sure that we do everything we can to ensure you have options to secure a dignified and affordable place to live um and here in aurora and i strongly support this resolution further discussion mayor uh councilman homes just on the subject again of talking about human rights um as a specific class of rights they are not the same thing as constitutional rights they're neither limited by nor necessarily required to be the same as constitutional rights it's an entire other set of rights discourse that is not about the us constitution it's a global discourse further discussion person councilmembers thank you so i was in the horns committee and i said i i would not support this because it's not constitutional um we're saying that they want this resolution passed but it doesn't mean anything so to me this is kind of kind of a crazy way to go about it unless i i wanted to ask is your is your end goal here to have rent controls is this just the first step for council to pass this resolution and then you're going to come back asking for rent controls is is that one of the end goals mayor i think he called on me but he's muted russia i believe you're aware that we have a process through pfizer to take positions on bills so if that if something if somebody wants to ask for a particular position on a bill at the state legislature i'm sure they would contact uh chair lawson to be able to do that but i don't don't think that's on the docket at this point but uh you understood our process i wasn't talking about the legislature i was talking about aurora well aren't we preempted by the state legislature to be able to do that so you are talking about state legislation oh well maybe that's one of their end goals i don't i don't know but i i won't be supporting this thank you thank you for the comments yes mayor uh mayor pretend so if this is not binding and it's just a resolution um then are we not we're not setting policy for any kind of housing strategy correct i believe that it's resolutions are non-binding and so i believe that's correct uh city attorney attorney's office yes this resolution is non-binding will not bind this city in any way okay if it's non-binding then it but it's it's setting policy still even even though it's not an ordinance it's it's setting aspirational policy isn't it is it giving direction at all to to any city staff maybe that would be the better question i don't believe it uh i don't believe it does uh let me defer to council again to legal counsel this might give guidance for city staff to pursue a course of action but it's again a non-binding course of action it's just a goal right because we did discuss all of these types of initiatives in our udo and aurora places and so i thought you know that's really policy that's that's the direction we gave um the manager and staff not not through a resolution but it kind of sounds like it's still setting the stage for some housing policy further uh further discussion by saying none um mayor can you just add one more comment yes please yes please uh yes thank you uh yeah again um i offered i didn't probably need to get that in depth with the process um of creating this perhaps that's created some confusion my goal was just to show that this was a um in response to community people who are requesting who are who are struggling frankly um with um the the state of housing um and and i think it's so it's important enough that council affirm its support um again and i crafted this as a resolution specifically because i know that um we have so many different layers and strategies by which we accomplish housing um and that this could help um support all of those efforts you know we have different layers but um you know again we this is coming right after the housing um policy recommendations that we passed in december so my hope is that we um support that moving forward in those recommendations there's not anything explicit for that reason because it kind of exists in other documents basically so um i appreciate the the clarification questions councilmember bergen um and and yeah the the this is meant to complement some of the work that we've already been doing and and to show that folks and they're listening that um their voice matters and that they can um be part of this legislative process and that um we support housing in general i felt like there was enough of us on council that um supported housing um that that we could talk about a resolution like this and that it was aspirational and that we were okay with um talking about um aspirational goals for the city i mean i i felt like we had enough support for that so just wanted to close on that could those who would like to move it forward please identify themselves okay mercano okay johnston all right fields sorry uh [Music] yes yes yes mayor okay okay okay uh the majority have uh spoken in support so um the resolution won't move forward let's see i have number four i understand the city manager for a state legislative update uh yes thank you mayor this is luke palmisano intergovernmental relations manager with the city like to give a quick update on two bills and then i can stand for any questions on any other additional bills first bill i'd like to call out is house bill 21 1030 expanding peace officers mental health grant program this bill will allow for investment in community-based public partnerships public safety partnerships that will foster increased coordination between public safety departments and behavioral health mental health and community resource and housing service providers the program is currently housed in the department of local affairs and will expand the peace officer mental health support grant program at the march 1 study session council elected to take a pursuit changes through bill sponsor or amend position the bill was heard by the house public and behavioral health and human services committee on friday march 5th and passed out amended by the committee it was sent to appropriations the amendments to the bill included specifically calling out that the primary applicant can be a behavioral health entity public health agency or community based social service provider so long as those applicants are in partnership with local law enforcement or public safety departments this partnership is deemed necessary by the proponents in order to have access to the 9-1-1 dispatch system a second amendment clarifies co-responder community response and community-based alternative response using language directly from the office of behavioral health in the colorado department of human services and denver star program respectively a third amendment updates language used in the program from mental health to behavioral health as that term encompasses both mental health and substance use disorders given the amendments to the bill staff is recommending council adopt an active support position the question before council is does council support staff's recommendation of an active support position discussion mayor councilmember johnston council mary hilds thank you um i still personally i i think monitor um i wasn't able to make it to pfizer just because i had another appointment but um i i would recommend monitoring they are allowing this funding to be through non-law enforcement which i think it's fantastic but from aurora's standpoint we have two competing programs one of which would benefit more so from this particular funding mechanism and so i just i think that monitor is more appropriate for aurora even though they have addressed a lot of the issues in terms of the implementation further discussion mayor uh may pretend yeah i would be good with monitor as well right well further discussion mayor uh councilman homes um i also would rather see a position of monitor i have and i'm still talking to the senate bill sponsors about some changes that i wanted to see in some questions that i had um just because i know them um but um but yeah i'm still not with a support on this bill at this time further discussion uh seeing none is there any objection that to of uh the position uh uh uh to to i think we were at monitor we have been a monitor right uh to retain the uh yeah controller here at amend amend okay to to change from a men to monitor uh the bill what what bill number is this again house bill 10 30. house bill 10 30. is there any objection to moving the status to monitor bear i have a question for councilman councilman lawson my question is um i thought that the grant funding could go to either or um it could go to the co-responder and also to a non-behavioral like a cahoots program or something like that but it seems like the position on some of our colleagues is that they don't want it to go to any type of co-responder program they want it to be up just only to these other program and for me i'm kind of struggling because i think they're both kind of important there may be a dangerous situation wherein we might need a correspondent program with with law enforcement so is that i guess what i'm trying to understand in the amendments is the amendment luke confirmed just can you confirm with me is it moving more towards the position of this not funding any type of co-responder program at all using the grant funding for that the the um the amendments clarify that it does have to be in partnership with a public safety organization so it is supporting the co-responder the um the bill would not fund programs that are not aligned with any uh public safety department so i i don't i don't know all the details of the cahoots program but i don't believe that it would be able to receive funding mayor can i add something to that too got some very helps um specifically with aurora because our ems so ems would qualify for that so it would expand the types of programs but because our ems is a private company and not a city based i don't have clarification on whether or not that private company would qualify in which case we would be only getting qualifications for funding for one type of program and not both programs that we have okay luke is can you confirm that something that if you could look up and get back to council on whether the the grant funding would go to a contract um ems okay further uh questions or comments um again is there an objection to moving the status to monitor uh seeing none the status will move the monitor go ahead luke next thank you mayor uh the next bill we have is that i would like to discuss tonight is senate bill 21062 this is the jail population management bill this bill would prohibit arrest for many municipal ordinance violations misdemeanors and some felonies the bill would mandate personal reconnaissance bonds on municipal cases unless the court believes the defendant will flee or would threaten the safety of others and no other conditions of the pr would mitigate the risk of flight or harm the bill was heard in the senate judiciary committee on march 4th and did pass out amended among the changes included in those amendments are clarification that a victim's rights crime would allow for an arrest definition of what flea prosecution means and the addition that citizenship status alone is not evidence of future intent to flee clarification on when law enforcement can use warrantless arrests dramatically narrows the obligation to release somebody on a dui or alcohol or drug related driving offense addition of the offense of sexual predator to the list allowing arrest clarification of the failure to appear provision to state that three fta uh provision would not apply if the failure to appear was when a witness was subpoenaed or appeared or when a civilian witness was placed on call by the prosecution or when intentionally failing to appear for the purpose of interfering with or deterring victim or witness participate participation in the case other changes include clarification that a pr bond is used unless the violation is a failure to comply with court-ordered treatment related to sex offense or a crime of domestic violence and the court finds that failure to comply pose a substantial risk to the safety of another or was not based on the inability to pay and the defendant already has had probation revoked with the passing of these amendments a number of organizations have dropped their opposition or moved to neutral on the bill this includes cml the colorado organization for victim assistance the colorado district attorney's council violence-free colorado and the county sheriffs of colorado i'll note that the colorado association of chiefs of police the fop and the colorado municipal judges association are opposed the question before council is given these amendments does council council wish to move to a monitor position on this bill i have asked judge jay to join tonight and he and i can both answer any questions on this bill mayor um let me ask a question first and that is that uh uh maybe to judge day i believe that it hasn't changed relative to uh motor vehicle theft and uh i really think that this bill should be should should be made amended into a study so that we have better data than we do right now but we've had it from 2019 to 2020 we've had a 71 increase in the city of aurora in motor vehicle theft and when i talked to law enforcement they relate it to the fact that there are no arrests people are simply given a court date and release then it's a green light to proceed and steal more vehicles and i think it's a through the denver metro area it's a 55 percent uh increase but uh but i'm very concerned about the fact that we've had a substantial rise in crime and we really don't fully understand why and so i think this is premature but judge could you please comment yes thank you mayor um good evening uh mayor mayor butch and members of council be happy to answer any questions that you may have it's your question mayor um you are correct motor vehicle theft does not fall within the provision that would require or could allow for the issuance of a monetary bond monetary condition upon yes i was gonna i kind of piggyback off that question because my constituents in ward 6 are very concerned about the increase in crime across the board violent crimes um you know theft as well as the motor vehicle theft and we've had the d.a talk to um to my constituents on one of my town halls and there's an issue not only of you know not being able to arrest people but then there's the issue of those that have committed crime not not being prosecuted not being put in jail and they're just coming out and recommitting crime and i was told that you know a large part of the increase in crime is not necessarily this new new people out there committing crime but people reoffending and reoffending i mean if you're not faced with a consequence and you're just let off and you just stole a vehicle and you can go right back out and steal another one i think that's that is a major concern that we're not that we're we're so concerned about you know making it easier for criminals to not be in jail that that we have forgotten the victims i mean what about the victims like they just keep getting re-victimized and that's what i'm concerned about let me just say that the thesis behind senate bill 62 is that when we did social distancing because of the pandemic that was supposed that the idea was temporary but that there weren't consequences to that and we can make that permanent in terms of lowering the incarcerated population and i don't i just don't think we know enough to make that decision at this time and that's why i wish that they would amend this and i've seen this happen as a former state legislator amended into a studies to where we had more data further discussion mayor uh council member comes i just want to clarify that specifically victims advocates who are have their fingers on the pulse of all of these issues have removed their objections based on what's been brought forward so this isn't a bill that is insensitive to crime victims there's been extensive stakeholding to make sure that that objection was not there and to make sure that those issues were addressed i also would suggest that we not put words in the mouth of the bill sponsors regarding the thesis of this bill the thesis of this bill from what i understand having heard the actual sponsors speak when they are introducing it is that people who are in detention pre-trial the distinction there shouldn't be whether or not you have enough money to get out and that's the issue that arises here is that when you have a monetary condition of bond then as long as you have enough money you can get out of jail um and so we're saying without having been convicted of any crime as long as you have enough money it's fine for you to get out of jail that's what opposition to this bill really means in practice and so i would argue that rather than moving simply to monitor that we support i suspect from the positions of my colleagues that's not going to happen but i do agree with at least being at a position of monitor because i think there's a lot of misinformation about what this bill actually does and doesn't do mayor may i respond mayor for tim yeah when you talk about victim groups are you talking to the constituents that have had their vehicles stolen and because they're victims there may not be a rape victim but they're victims and it's very costly if you have uh if you're not making that much money and you have your primary means of getting transporting you to work stolen and then you have to go through all the headaches of trying to find a new vehicle go through your insurance company have pay your high deductible to try to find a new vehicle to get you to work i think that's i mean that's a real victim and they should you know again groups are not people i don't know what group these groups are and who if they've spoken to my constituents because i don't think my constituents agree with that further discussion fair that's where it comes my understanding is that victims advocates work with victims of a wide variety of crimes further discussion uh seeing none question before us is um whether to uh move um senate bill 62 to support position um mayor that's i'm sorry monitor is the recommendation but um we'll debate whatever council wants but uh staff is regular monitor okay i would like to oppose okay um who who is in support of moving from what am in to monitor uh councilmember coombs is in support mercano uh councilmember mcconnell is in support further support further support okay i've got comes marcano hilts johnson mario is anyone else in support uh there is not a majority uh so the position remains to amend uh anything else luke okay nope that's it that's all i had uh 4b uh discussion of new aurora fire rescue fees added to the 2021 budget uh matthew uh westerberger yes uh good evening council uh we presented on these fire fees uh at the november 16th uh study session uh they were included in the uh fire 2021 adopted budget we are kind of looking for feedback and direction from council tonight on kind of our next steps with those fees there were questions at the last meeting in november and we have some answers and they have a short presentation uh if you would allow it uh please proceed with the uh presentation uh sure uh clerk can i please have permission thank you all right um right can everyone see the screen hoping yes great uh so again in the 2021 adopted budget uh there were three fees uh that we added as part of our uh 2.1 million dollars worth of uh balancing impacts uh that was a uh first inspection fee uh for fire code inspections a seam mitigation fee for vehicle accidents and a treat no transport fee for ems patients that do not receive transport to the hospital um just to kind of go over those the old kind of current model 2020 fee schedule for uh fire inspection fees was a nominal 43.25 reinspection fee uh on the second inspection uh that program uh in terms of staffing costs about 671 thousand dollars and that reinspection fee uh brings in about five thousand dollars annually so our 2021 proposed fee schedule was kind of a more accurate cost recovery uh system for that uh it was based on industry standards um and really uh directed by occupancy type and square footage uh we had continuing dialogue with uh the business advisory board and really the crux of this fee is that just higher risk higher occupancy structures will pay higher fees um and that's looking uh this fee would bring in uh roughly 337 000 um this slide is in the 2021 b schedule um again so you kind of have to use uh you know this uh this type of chart to figure out what your fee would be but again the crux is just a higher hazard and a higher square footage building is just going to pay more for the fee for the service provided by the fire inspectors um we are moving towards a may uh 2021 launch of this fee uh again we've done the public outreach with the bab uh we've come to you back in november and again tonight we've worked with best practices with agencies and uh again just hoping uh we've done the coding in the new acela program so this fee is ready to launch in may unless there's feedback tonight with the scene mitigation fee uh the current structure is that aurora fire rescue responds to the scene of a car accident provides scene safety patient care we do some cleanup make sure the roadway is safe to operate and we do not uh get reimbursement for any of that for most motor vehicle accidents the exception that is large hazmat spills where we do uh seek reimbursement for those and work through the responsible party's car insurance provider uh with the 2021 fee schedule we are looking to charge all motor vehicle collisions a cleanup fee that's based on time and material the fee would be waived for aurora residents this was part of our initial proposal and again the 375 thousand dollar cost recovery does include any aurora resident not paying this fee um the fees would be done very similar to our hazmat billing and again we would build the responsible car or the responsible party's car insurance uh this fee schedules in the 21 uh fee schedules and again that would just be the the table we use to determine uh cost of materials so for firefighters at various ranks and then you know an aerial truck is responding to the scene you're looking at it on average about 500 for an hour's work you know response for the fire service um again with this one we've uh are looking more towards uh summer of an implementation on that we are again it's a little bit of public outreach with uh with this group back in november and we are kind of working on our internal processes making sure that we can use the same format that we do with hazmat recovery for this we have a new rms system which provides better reporting and that our rms system actually has a billing platform to it as well so we would again look at that you know as a possible third party billing uh if we are uh instructed to move forward and then the treat no transport the current structure is that uh roar fire rescue is usually the first to arrive on scene and begin patient care uh we maintain a continuity of care um for all patients but we do not uh charge a fee uh for the patients usually the third party vendor uh ambulance service uh charge the charges the fee if the patient is transported in 2021 we're hoping to move towards a you know the proposed fee schedule for a treat no transport where afr continues to initiate patient care but we could charge 175 dollar fee to patients uh that are treated medically but not transported again our model included waivers for financial hardship we haven't developed what that includes yet you know where the line would be with the financial hardship um but that did include you know roughly half of our treat no transports not uh receiving a bill um that is about 450 000 worth of ongoing cost recovery your questions from november definitely brought up some alternatives for us there's the subscription model that a number of the northern suburbs use where you would pay a one-time fee of 75 hours and you would have kind of coverage for a year where you would not be charged this fee uh this is kind of the you know model where you know you pay up front and if you never use it that's 75 hours that the city would keep but if you need it two or three times uh the the patient comes out ahead uh there's really no minimal fiscal impact to that that would just be a good customer service if that's what our residents are looking for and again those northern suburbs only see about 60 to maybe 100 uh participants in that program annually uh another alternative that was brought up was uh to waive uh this for all aurora residents if we did that that would be 315 000 of you know revenue going away from that 450. um if we waive the first call it's roughly about the same as an aurora resident but a little bit more of a loss to that potential cost recovery of 338 000 um and then if we didn't charge the fee at all again that would be 450 000 worth of ongoing revenue that uh the city would not collect that is part of the current budget um this is a a larger kind of task for us to take on we do uh you know we have the new rms system uh with patient you know with the electronic patient care reports in it so that's kind of our first step that we've worked through in the first quarter of this year but we definitely have more work to do in terms of you know working with hipaa policies and third-party billings to feel you know what that would look like and what how we would go about getting signatures of patients on the scene um and then all that pertinent information that we would need to build so again this is kind of a larger out you know later in the year where we could start implementing so again our question to council is uh should afr continue to move forward with the fees as proposed for the 2021 budget again this is all three fees the inspection fee the seam mitigation fee and the treatment of transport so with that i turn it back over to you can you can you do me a favor and tell us what the what the surrounding jurisdictions do uh yes uh so [Music] would be here so again with uh surrounding jurisdictions it was mostly again which me are you talking about all are uh with the treat no transport uh bennett does this evergreen fire in north metro and westminster fire again these are uh you know they although varying degrees of when they charge it if it's certain treatments in lieu of the transport fee okay the next one uh going to the scene mitigation be uh it was only evergreen fire that charges this they they exempt their district uh residence and uh only charged to non people outside of the district that are in a car you know accident in district and it's 500 for the first 90 minutes wow okay what's uh next one uh the other is the fire inspection fees and again i don't think i have a slide for that one um i know we just based it on uh what a large number of large metros do um including denver in terms of um and i have i really have a problem with um charging residents for um any of these fees especially the treat no transport because i understand if people are abusing the system that's a different situation but i think you said that we would lose 338 000 if we waive the first call i mean that's part of the reason that we have a fire department and people pay their taxes is that they they should be able to expect that service i also have you know i think the fact that evergreen only does it on the scene mitigation that's a very small fire department um so they probably have very few um resources and then they still exempt their residence um and then i don't i guess we didn't know what the fire inspection fees were but the fire inspection fees i think i'm more open to looking at that as far as revenues because if you do the first inspection and then you have to keep going back i think you know there should be something there i just i've heard from residents about the fact that they just are upset that we would be charging them for treat no transport yeah councilman gardner thank you um i think it's important to point out as part of this conversation um you know the total budget of aurora fire as it compares to all the other agencies in the metro area so you know if you take kind of the budget and the total number of residents served aurora fires budget is quite a bit behind arvada bennett castle rock denver evergreen north metro south metro west metro and westminster both in terms of number of stations per resident as well as dollars spent per resident for the fire department budget and i think that's really important um you know i think it's it's easy to say well we pay taxes we should get these services but what this is really an example of uh is folks wanting champagne services on a beer budget you know this isn't the hill to die on for me having these fees um but you know i'm not going to apologize for advocating for the fire department to have an appropriate size budget and it doesn't discussion mayor uh councilman mcconnell thank you sir so i am personally in favor of eliminating the treat no transport fees in their entirety i agree with some of my colleagues that we should not be charging folks for medical services we don't want to have that kind of disincentive present frankly i find the fact that we have a private ambulance service that can charge a pretty penny to be a disincentive as it is to call 9-1-1 when you're in need of emergency uh assistance um and as far as i can tell from our market place facilitator less than one month of the additional gain we've seen from that covers the entirety of this fee so that's why i feel comfortable uh waiving that moving forward uh with regards to the inspection fees um what we're proposing is really typical that's something that i have a lot of experience with uh in my work in the architectural and engineering services field um so i'm happy to let that one stand and the accident mitigation fees already waive fees for aurora residents completely correct and then out and then out of out of city folks uh typically their insurance will cover that right uh we would charge the insurance with yes knowing that insurance companies are covering this be in other jurisdictions out of state okay great uh so yeah i guess to summarize i want to i'd like to see us eliminate the treatment transport fees um the inspection fees are reasonable and uh i'm fine with the accident mitigation fees as well and i also do want to echo part of council member gardner's comments that afr is underfunded when compared to peer cities and that's something that we also need to address further discussion mayor um councilmember so i also would like to see us take off the treat no transport fee but not take that 450 000 out of the afr budget so to find the money to keep that in the afr budget because fully in agreement on the need to better fund that service in general um and then with respect to the fire inspection fee it sounds like we're making it proportional to the amount of work that's required um and so that to me seems really appropriate rather than doing a one-size-fits-all knowing that we have a wide variety of places that are being inspected and then yeah the scene mitigation fee i think for specifically considering that aurora residents are not included i'm comfortable with that as well further discussion mayor just would clarify uh please proceed i don't know if i was clear so i also agree um that i'm fine with the fire inspection fees and and the scene mitigation because we do exempt the residents so my uh opposition was really on the treat no transport just wanted to clarify that just a question on residents and that is if somebody moves into the city and i think they have so long in which to change their driver's license or get a colorado driver's license or they they moved in the metro area but they reside in aurora but their driver's license doesn't yet reflect that how are they treated um so we would rely on the third party uh biller if we go that route to kind of set up that criteria again it might be where you have to provide uh just some sort of documentation for that waiver uh we could probably accept a bill you know a utility bill um or something in lieu of actually getting you have a hard uh photo id changed okay well yeah we'd be working with uh hopefully a consulting agent you know third-party biller to kind of come up with that criteria and what other cities are doing okay uh further discussions mayor um um i got a lot of feedback on the treat no transport fee um so i would support um eliminating that i think there was a a really negative impact and maybe unintended consequence um and folks feeling deterred for using some of our emergent services i you know i don't know how that bears out in data um just from what i've heard from my constituents so i you know i would support that um defeat to be eliminated um and then yeah the the fire inspection fee sounds um like we we did you know a lot of best practice and um kind of compared to other municipalities um so i'm okay with that as well as the scene mitigation fee i just i felt like i needed to clarify because i wasn't entirely sure um uh what the just it seems like there's like a i guess a leaning of the of proposals uh opposite of the what's in our in our backup let me uh let me get a sense of the council on on where they are uh is there objection to the fire inspection fee saying none the fire inspections fee will move forward uh is there objection to the scene mitigation fee is presented so you're done the scene mitigation fee will move forward is there objection to treat uh the no trans uh treat note i'm not clear with the the transport fee treat no transport yes create no transport okay object mayor okay um who's objecting uh customer raccoons council member bergen from everything bergen that's remember burson's marcano councilman roccano i'm sorry i'm sorry okay uh the majority um have arisen in opposition and so the the the transport fee will not move forward uh very well um thank you very much thank you for the quality okay uh for timmins uh health sciences uh area economic impact study at chad mayor mayor excuse me but it is 6 30 and we've got a city council meeting okay we will delay this until the next uh item number 4c will be delayed until the next uh study session uh as well as any other uh i don't know anything on five six seven and eight uh with that uh the study session is adjourned and we will reconvene uh right away uh for the regular study site for the regular session of the aurora city council um to the city clerks do we need to exit and then come back or can we just continue can you no we can just continue and then have roger do the announcement for the call in line okay very well please uh proceed roger you're unmuted city council welcomes feedback from residents at city council meetings on both matters appearing on the agenda enduring public invited to be heard for those watching on channel 8 please call 855 and when connected and for those who are already connected press star 3 to get in the queue to speak and not forget the star star 3 you'll hear a prompt confirming that you're in line to speak to an operator who will take down some basic information that gets you in the queue residents who want to speak from a specific agenda item and have not already called in to be screened please press star 3 to sign up before the item is called by the clerk callers who want to speak during public invite to be heard should press star 3 immediately to get in the queue and those that press later during the meeting will be assigned the public divided to be heard at the end of the meeting depending on the volume it may take a couple minutes to connect to the operator so please be patient and stay on the line as long as you heard the prompt after pressing star three you can still hear the meeting in progress you are in line to speak to an operator thank you uh the regular meeting of the aurora city council for monday march 22nd 2021 is now called the order with the clerk please call the role mayor kaufman yeah mayor pro-tem bergen here councilmember berzins here councilmember coombs president councilman mcgardner here councilmember gruber we can't hear him he's been um on this meeting the whole time his audience is not working oh okay thank you i'll kind of as president councilmember hiltz here councilmember lawson here councilmember johnston here council member marcano president councilmember mario president mr quorum uh i'd like to call a moment of silence for all those who have been lost to the pandemic or have suffered who are suffering in the hospital due to clovid 19 moment of silence please now please join me in the pledge of allegiance i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands uh public invited to be heard i'm sorry uh proclamation uh whereas every day women men and children across colorado suffer the pain and trauma of rape sexual assault and sexual harassment and whereas rape sexual assault and sexual harassment impacts citizens of the city of aurora regardless of age race or gender as we have seen over the last four years with an average rate of 109.5 reported sexual assaults per 100 000 people and whereas during national sexual assault awareness month we recommit ourselves not only to lifting the veil of secrecy and shame surrounding sexual violence but also to raising awareness expanding expanding support for victims and strengthening our response and whereas at the local level we we must work together to educate the city of aurora a community about sexual violence prevention supporting survivors and speaking out against harmful attitudes and actions that impede victims from seeking services and whereas prevention is possible when the entire city of aurora community is involved the first step in increasing awareness through education and supporting victims uh it's it's time for us all to join advoca join advocates and communities across the country in taking action to prevent sexual violence and ending sexual assault now therefore i might coffee mayor of the city of aurora colorado do we hereby proclaim april 2021 add sexual assault awareness month in the city of aurora colorado and urge all residents to promote to promote the support of survivors of sexual violence as a means to end sexual violence in our community in witness wherever i here to set my hand and caused the uh the seal of the city of aurora colorado to be fixed on this um 22nd day of march 2021. uh public invited to be heard mayor real quick uh mayor pretend yeah i just wanted to say that um since you just read the proclamation for um victims of sexual assault that in the 18th judicial district john kellner's office has an outreach specialist that can help victims with sexual assault and getting awareness out there so uh she has shared some informational content and i'll go ahead and get that email to all of council so that they can share it on their social media as well okay may i pretend like if you could get that out during your report during reports uh public invited to be heard roger you're unmuted we have one person signed up you have three minutes go ahead okay thank you good evening mayor and city council members my name is edith hinke and i am a resident of aurora i am glad that the campaign finance reform ordinance passed this ordinance will even the playing field for well-deserving candidates who do not have as many wealthy connections as other candidates do when raising funds for their campaign i envision these candidates will be assert will have a servant's heart and generally want to represent all citizens not just the wealthy this suit against the city is nothing more than a political stunt to bring attention to the mayor and his agenda and the candidate he supports i will not mention that candidate by name because i refuse to help the mayor in his attempt to gain free publicity for that candidate which is what this suits purpose is really frightening time for some white men and women in our country right now they are aware that the privilege they and their descendants have enjoyed for over the past 400 years in this country is slowly slipping away they will do anything to stay on top even sue the city that they serve even sue the country saying that the election was rigged and stolen from the white man even enact laws to suppress american citizens from voting because they know that black asian indigenous latinx and lgbtq american citizens are more engaged in politics and will vote for candidates that will represent them this point was written by a salvadorian pollman poet croquet delta garcia in 1974. if the poor sentiment can happen in this country then we will truly be a beacon of light for the world presently that light is well hidden under the oppression of the wealthy against the poor in the name of capitalism white power and hate laws are created to be followed by the poor laws are made by the rich to bring some order to exploitation the poor are the only law abiders in history when the poor makes love the rich will be no more my takeaway on this point is that the rich will no longer be able to be oppressive to the poor thank you very much goodbye number 6a i'm number 6a uh i'm public invited to be heard on the 2022 budget may i do not see anybody for public invited to be heard for that item item seven adoption of the agenda uh as in the case last time i would like to put uh mayor and council reports after public invited to be heard are there any other amendments to the adoption of the agenda uh seeing then well i believe that requires a second my emotion will require a second second okay it's been uh well moved by the mayor seconded by councilmember to put mayor and council reports after public invite after the public provider of your word um further discussion mayor uh councilman versions thank you i think when you do that that leaves out a large population of people that are listening to us on tv or on youtube when we have 60 people that want to speak um i'm told that a lot of people just turn us off and go to bed and they don't they don't hear the announcements um at the end so i think when you do that you are leaving out a lot of people that just can't stay up that late they have to get up and go to bed so they'd rather hear the announcements and then if they decide that they want to hear public invited be heard they have that choice a further discussion on the kaufman amendment uh seeing them with plea please call the role on the confident amendment sorry i sorry i died yeah i am also um not in favor of doing reports after all the public invited to be heard um for the same reasons that council member person stated um i think we basically it's a waste of time because no one's listening at that hour of the night further discussion mayor next member helps got somewhere else thank you um i think if i remember correctly the intent for this is so that we can respond to things that come up during public invite is there anything prohibiting from us from just having both report sections however we want to call it you know reports and then public comment and then an opportunity to respond if people so choose no i i think we'll certainly could do that but i'd prefer not i think we council members should have one time to give the report not not two times no i understand that i was just asking if that was a possibility not your preference but thank you for sharing and mayor uh mayor patel i know you're not for that suggestion but i thought it was a very good suggestion that we could still do our reports quickly and then have the opportunity to uh respond the public invited to be heard at the end right well the question before us always is putting um uh mayor and council reports after a public inviter be heard um uh are there further uh uh well let's vote on the let's vote on the amendment um with the clerk police call the roll on the clock for a minute to 7 8. for item seven adoption of the agenda mayor kaufman yes yes councilmember persons no council member marielle council member media member maria yes i i think i am still unclear on what we're voting on my apologies are of the resolution for the council rules we're on item 7 adoption the agenda and we're going to vote on the mayor's amendment to move public invited to be heard right now public invited to be heard after or i'm sorry will you repeat the that portion of it yes to move public invited to be heard before item 18 reports by the mayor and reports by council i'm sorry did you say yes okay thank you council member johnston yes mayor pro tem bergen no councilmember coombs yes councilmember mcconnell yes councilmember gruber no councilmember hiltz yes but only because both options were not an option you you can vote no if you would like and then you don't have to no i'm gonna i'll vote i'll vote yes for this since this is the only option if a better option comes up i might vote yes for that too but yes for this one over the alternative thank you though that's all right guys you can always offer an amendment as well councilmember gardner no councilmember lawson okay the motion passes to move public invited to be heard before reports further are there further amendments to the adoption of the agenda mayor i'm sorry councilmember hills council member yeah i'm happy to throw out the option of doing council reports before public invited to be heard and then also having an additional time after for responding to public invited to be heard i'm going to throw it open for discussion to the rest of council i'm not personally attached to it but i'll i'll put it out for discussion i'll second it um let me i'm sorry let me do this to the city attorney a question to the city attorney's office is this a settled question at this point since the uh since we're it's i think if we i believe it's a subtle question but i'm sorry uh for okay because you just you just asked yeah i know i i made a mistake to offer um i'm afraid it might be a city attorney if you could opine on that should i bring a separate ordinance yeah you could do that um attorney so you actually need so what you decided you voted on the amendment you still need to vote on the underlying motion but i think the question is can she ought can can council member health uh offer an amendment to basically uh change uh what was just change the amendment uh and the answer is yes she can she okay and you vote on that first okay i'll throw that out as a motion for a second amendment for discussion and i'll second it okay uh discussion mayor uh councilman mcconnell yeah i will support the amendment but i just want to say that if we're gonna tweak our schedule uh every meeting maybe we just need to reconvene a rules committee so that we can get this you know done so we don't have to keep i've tried okay oh well let's try again okay okay further further discussion uh then when the clerk please call the roll on the hilts amendment to uh the adoption of the agenda okay just to clarify the hills amendment is going to be where there's a public invited to be heard before item 18 is reports and after item 18. is that correct no sorry it's reports before public invited to be heard like normal and then an additional option for um we can call it reports after public invited to be heard for council members to respond to what came up during public invite to be heard if they so choose okay thank you for the clarification i do think it's a subtle question but uh i'm not the city attorney so um further discussion on the hills amendment uh seeing that by the player please call the roll on the hills amendment to the adoption of the agenda mayor kaufman well no council member marcano yes councilmember johnston yes councilmember garner no councilmember lawson yes i'll support but this fly by night stuff is just really kind of unprofessional council member mario yes councilmember burzins yes councilmember gruber yes councilmember coombs yes me or pro tim bergen yes councilmember hilts yes the amendment passes well the code now please read the title to item number 7a item 7a is reconsideration of resolution 2020-24 to suspend certain council rules fair um merchant uh councilman version thank you move to approve seven eight seconds like council members and second by councilmember gruber uh to approve item number seven a uh discussion uh seeing norman clerk please call the rule and the adoption about item number seven hey councilmember hiltz yes councilmember lawson yeah councilmember mario councilmember johnston yes councilmember gardner yes councilwoman coombs yes councilmember mcconnell yes councilmember gruber yes councilmember berzins yes mayor pro tim bergen yes the motion passes uh a motion for adoption of the consent calendar item eight eight through eight c mayor moved to approve eight a through eight c it's been moved by councilmember gruber seconded by second councilman mcconnell to um approve item number eight a through eight c uh discussion i see none with police called a role on the adoption of the consent calendar item eight a through hc mayor kaufman yes councilmember mario councilmember johnston yes councilmember marcano yes mayor pro tim bergen yes councilman mcgruber yes councilmember hiltz yes councilmember coombs yes winner lawson yes councilmember berzins yes councilmember gardner yes the motion passes and the time is now 6 52 city council will stand at recess until 6 57 by giving time for an announcement for the call-in line uh we are now in recess roger can you please do the announcement you're unmuted residents who would like to speak on a resolution or ordinance that have not already been screened please press star 3 before the item is called by the clerk for those watching on channel 8 please call 855 six nine five three four seven five to be connected and then press star three don't forget the star council is taking a short break to allow any additional speakers to sign up again be patient and stay on the line so the operator is able to take down your information as long as you hear a prompt after pressing star 3 and can still hear the music hold during the break you are in line to speak to an operator thank you [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so all right there were city councils back in session please read the title of item number 9a item 9a is resolution 2021-20 a resolution of the city council of the city of aurora colorado approving the first amendment to the great outdoors colorado grant agreement to fund outdoor environmental education and passive recreational programs motion mayor move to support 9a [Music] yes great outdoors colorado um has granted aurora additional funding to continue for an additional three years uh funding to provide outdoor environmental education to the underserved children of aurora it's been a particularly significant it's been a significantly successful program in the last three years and this extension would allow us to continue discussion uh sitting down the question before says the adoption of item number nine a with please call the roll mayor pro-tem bergen yes councilmember johnston yes councilmember mario yes councilmember bergens yes councilmember marcano yes councilmember coombs yes councilmember gardner yes councilmember gruber yes councilmember hiltz yes councilmember lawson yes the motion passes we'll click now please read the title of item number 9b 9b is resolution 2021-16 a resolution of the city council of the city of aurora colorado expressing the aurora city council's strong support of the colorado general assembly's proposed 2021 military family open enrollment in public schools house bill 21-1217 mayor dave kerber uh it's moved by councilmember second by second johnston uh seconded by um customer constant to approve item number nine b uh councilmember mayor thank you for that this was a request by the garrison commander of buckley air force base to the city council what did what happens when military people are required to move is that those people that are living in the uh aurora area have to leave and it's usually every two to six years at the same time other people are directed by the military to move to aurora those people that are leaving aurora lose the opportunity to compete for some of the better schools uh in the lotteries uh within the different school districts what this ordinance does or with this resolution does is uh stands in support of uh an initiative by representative rockenfeld and senator fields that will allow the incoming people to have the rights of competing for schools in the same way that the people that are leaving have lost the right i i know this is unusual because we typically address these in our fizzer where we come up with a motion to support or or not but in this case given the fact that it is for a military community given the fact that buckley air force base has asked for our support on this i'm bringing us forward this uh resolution forward further discussion yeah uh um councilman ricardo as councilmember gruber said we have a process to bring or to support legislation through a pfizer committee um i support the spirit of this resolution but i don't think this is the right process uh so i will not support it um we certainly couldn't handle bringing forward every piece of legislation that we support via resolution so um for that reason i won't further discussion i've seen another question before says the adoption of item number nine b with the clerk please call the roll council member hilts yes councilmember johnston yes councilmember mcconnell yes councilmember berzins yes councilmember lawson yes mayor pro-tem bergen yes councilmember gruber yes councilmember mario yes councilmember coombs yes councilmember gardner yes the motion passes as i understand it um uh clear-cut rodriguez said that we need to take another break am i am i correcting that yes if we could just give the call in line a few minutes we'd have to do a five-minute break but we need to do another announcement for introduction of ordinances uh time is now at 705. the city council will stand in recess until 708. roger you're unmuted thank you residents who would like to speak on a resolution or an ordinance that have not already been screened please press star 3 before the item is called by the clerk if you're watching on channel 8 please call 855-695-3475 to be connected and then press star three don't forget to start council will take a three minute break to allow for any speakers to sign up again please be patient and stay on the line until the operator is able to take down your information as long as you hear the prompt after pressing star 3 and can still hear music cold during the break you are in line to speak to an operator [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] back in session with clery now please read the title uh to item number 12a yes item 12a is ordinance 2021-11 an ordinance authorizing the issuance and sell by the city of aurora colorado acting by and through its utility enterprise of first lane water revenue refunding and improvement bonds in one or more series in an aggregate principal amount not to exceed 539 million dollars for the purpose of financing and refinancing in whole or in part the cost of additions and improvements to the water system operated by the utility enterprise pledging certain funds and revenues of the enterprise to the payment of such bonds prescribing the form of such bonds and providing other details in connection there with motion mayor persons uh council member persons thank you move to approve 12a it's been moved by councilmember burns seconded by councilmember gruber to approve item number 12 a uh discussion saying none with the clerk please call the rule on the adoption of item number 12a mayor protembergen yes councilmember johnston yes councilmember mario councilmember burzins yes councilmember marcano yes councilmember coombs yes councilmember gardner yes councilmember gruber yes yes councilmember hiltz yes councilmember lawson yeah the motion passes will the clay now please read the title to add number 12b item 12b is ordinance 2021-12 an ordinance authorizing the issuance and sell by the city of aurora colorado acting by and through its utility enterprise of first lien sewer revenue bond seam facility improvement project series 2021 in an aggregate principle amount not to exceed 65 million dollars for the purpose of financing in whole or in part the cost of additions and improvements to the sewer system operated by the utility enterprise pledging certain funds and revenues of the enterprise to the payment of such bonds prescribing the form of such bonds and providing other details in connection there with motion mayor persons customer presence thank you move to approve 12v it's been moved by councilmember burns in second by second second by mayor for tim bergen to approve odd number 12 b discussion mayor uh mayor dan bergen yes and i just um i know this is about the financing but the um southeast or area maintenance facility is much needed it's been in discussion for years and um even with the recent snowstorm and we had a lot of people that were upset with the delivery of of snow plows in our city but one of the issues is that we don't have the the facilities to maintain some of this equipment so this will also help so that they're not not driving from the very far north part of aurora to the southeast area further discussion by saying no with code please call call the roll on the adoption of item number 12b councilmember lawson yes councilmember johnston yes mayor pro tim bergen yes councilmember berzins yes councilmember coombs yes councilmember mario yes councilmember gruber yes councilmember hiltz yes councilmember marcano yes and councilmember gardner yes the motion passes i will go now please read the title to item number 13a item 13a is finalizing of ordinances for the lobbyist registration ordinance ordinance 2021-08 an ordinance of the city code of the city of aurora colorado adding article 9 to chapter 2 of the city code pertaining to the regulation of lobbyists councilmember lawson move to approve 13a by been moved by council member law senate second or by second i'm sorry i don't care what i think about councilmember uh johnson uh took place like a nanosecond there uh to approve item number 13a discussion seeing none uh with code please call the role councilmember johnston yes councilmember gruber yes council member mario yes councilmember hiltz yes councilmember gardner yes mayor pertin bergen yes councilmember bergens no councilmember lawson councilmember marcano yes yes councilmember coombs yes the motion passes now please read the title to item number 13b item 13b is also finalizing of ordinances for the menstrual care product sales tax exemption ordinance 2021-09 an ordinance of the city council of the city of aurora colorado amending article 2 of section 130 of the city code relating to exempting menstrual care products from sales and use tax second by council member to approve item number 13 b um discussion uh seeing none with please please call the role on the adoption line number 15b councilmember lawson yes councilmember berzins councilmember gruber yes mayor pro tim bergen yes councilman raccoons yes councilmember gardner yes councilmember johnston yes councilmember hiltz yes councilmember mario yes the motion passes clerk now please read the title to item number 16a uh i think there's 13 c's still there oh i'm sorry okay we're going now please read the title i have number 13c item 13c is the finalizing of the ordinance for timbery caps on fees for food delivery ordinance for 2021-10 ordinance of the city council of the city of aurora colorado amending chapter 26 adding article 3 referred to as temporary caps on fees for food delivery and other related matters motion mayor councilman regarder motion to approve item 13c moved by councilmember gardner seconded by second dave seconded by uh councilmember gruber to approve item number 13c uh discussion mayor uh councilmember ricardo this morning i sent an email to council uh outlining a proposed amendment uh currently section two reads the ordinance shocks fire on june 30th 2021 or when public health orders allow restaurants to have 100 unrestricted capacity whichever is sooner um and i would like to offer a friendly amendment that reads this ordinance shall expire on may 15 2021 or when public health orders allow restaurants to have 100 unrestricted capacity whichever is sooner just want to briefly explain my reasoning for the change you know one of the things when when i first brought back this extension was the speed of the vaccine roll out and just within the last two weeks that process that is process has spent up quite a bit in fact our governor's announced that uh as of may 1st all adults in colorado will be eligible to use uh to receive the vaccine if they want to um you know and the other piece was this was really meant as a temporary cat to get us through the cold weather months and so i think combined with both the roll out of the vaccine and by may 15th while it still can snow in colorado we're basically out of the cold weather um i think that that's reasonable because you know at the end of the day i i want to get uninvolved between the private business transaction as quickly as possible that being said i do think we've helped a lot of restaurants um with with this ordinance some of the data that i've received from the colorado restaurant association shows um that restaurants have seen an increase in their deliveries um some probably related to this and some just from the pandemic in general but i do think it's been helpful so i would like to offer that amendment better second by uh councilman gruber uh with clerk please call the roll on the gardner amendment council member johnston yes councilmember marcano yes councilmember burzins yes mayor pro tim burgin yes councilmember lawson yeah councilmember hiltz yes councilmember coombs yes councilman gruber yes councilmember gardner yes and council members the motion passes the further discussion uh to item number 13 c as amended sitting down with cleveland please call the role in the adoption of item number 13c as amended mayor i thought that we just did the vote for it as amended no i don't think you gotta be you can't do both at the same time even though it's a friendly email it's a friendly amendment it still has to be voted on uh is that correct city attorney that is correct okay councilmember lawson yes councilmember coombs yes mayor potembergen yes councilmember gruber yes councilmember hills yes councilmember johnston yes councilmember marcano yes councilmember gardner yes councilmember burzins that's councilmember mario yes item 13c passes with the amendment please read the title of item number 16a item 16-8 is reconsideration of resolution 2020-22 review of the powers granted to the city manager by resolution 2020-22 motion mayor persons customer versions thank you move to approve 16 a second i'm sorry who's who's second uh uh second by council member johnson a discussion let's say you know mcclure please call the roll on the adoption of item number 16a councilmember mario councilmember johnston yes councilmember coombs yes councilmember gruber yes councilmember lawson yes councilmember hiltz oops sorry double muted yes councilmember gardner yes mayor pro tim bergen yes councilman mcconnell yes councilmember persons yes the motion passes uh no report by the mayor uh but item number 18a one uh planning a zoning commission interview process uh clerk rodriguez yes mayor i'm sharing the screen right now this is the most updated version of the rankings from council members so what we need to do today is figure out how many individuals you would like to interview and which ones you would like to interview in on the april 5th study session uh discussion i'm sorry um uh i would recommend that we interview the first four okay uh for a further discussion mayor so i i sent out an email last night um and i know there was another going around as well but um i think the instructions were pretty clear for council to vote or to rank all seven it said to list all seven in order of your preference it didn't say whether or not you wanted to interview a candidate but it did say to rank all seven from one to seven um and only a few council members myself included followed those instructions and so i feel like we should have an opportunity to resubmit our rankings if we do not have to rank all seven um i can see at least one individual on here that probably would be lower on this list if they didn't receive my vote further discussion yes mayor uh remember tim it did say your preferred ranking um we've never you know been instructed that we must rank exactly that that way but i i can appreciate council members gardner's um comment and i i don't know if we're leading to re-voting or on or re-re-doing the ranking it it doesn't mean just because it says please rank them in your preference that we were forced to rank all of them mayor member hill uh councillor hills thank you um i also ranked o7 and would not like points though if we're not going to be doing that um i pulled up the email it says to rank list the applicants in preferred order from one to seven so to me that means you rank your preferred order of all applicants from one to seven so if that's not going to be the same that's fine i just think we should all have a consistent number of people that we rank so that the weighted totals are fair and correct may or may say something um i'm sorry councilmember this is city clerk oh our councilmember i'm sorry uh rodriguez um i it did say to to list it from one to seven this is the same rankings that we did for the civil service commission and everybody did their one through six on there and i just wanted to let you guys know this is also just to get a general idea or a consensus consensus of who counsel would like to to interview so just because these people are on the top doesn't mean that you have to choose those individuals to interview and i appreciate that i think that the applicants deserve some consistency in the process and that's on us for not being consistent but there are people who i mean if you look at some people rank two some three four seven and at any one of those variations if you dropped one or two people or added one or two people it changes the outcome drastically so i just would like to see us consistently rank three four five six seven um whatever we decide okay i will entertain emotions those rankings i don't know where was my motion sorry your motion is to interview all seven no no no my motion is to resubmit the rankings in order of one to seven there's at least one individual that very clearly is not eligible due to not having been a resident and registered elector of the city for a full year um so i would recommend that we not include that person in our rankings i know that you have to do your chat okay so uh i tell you what what i want to let's let's give me a motion um first of all let me let me defer that question to the the clerk uh in terms of residency requirement yes um our city clerk's office does check their voting records to make sure that their address and that they are a registered voter of the secretary of state and each one of the applicants did meet those requirements one of the applicants listed their time of residence in the city of aurora as 10 months on their application uh clerk does that disqualify them yes it does my question about that question mayor what's up uh mayor protest well because this is taking so long so was that residency before i mean do we count this month and next month is there any objection to allowing the clerk to to decide that issue uh and to make a decision uh absent this meeting is there any objection no and i would like to just amend my motion to be to rank all candidates who are eligible in the order of one to whatever that end number is of eligible candidates six or seven okay is that amendment clear to everybody you know we're gonna go is there a second to the amendment uh so it's been seconded by uh uh councilmember johnson uh discussion yes is the city clerk's office going to do any kind of background checking or because we had that last situation uh claire rodriguez we are not planning right now to do any background check we don't have um procedures in order right now and so we've been speaking with the hr department to try to see what we can do and with the city attorney's office to figure out going forward how to do that further discussion to the hilt's uh amendment amendment motion uh saying none none uh the question uh the question oh this feedback feedback as i speak my dog is in the background apologies um i just wanted to say that um i'm okay with um switching it up um but my understanding is that we've followed that kind of council member prerogative process for for a long time now i recall count former council member richardson um voting for one person at a prior meeting you know a couple years ago and myself being surprised and the onus being on myself to to clarify that process so i'm okay if that if the majority of council wants to kind of reevaluate that um but i i just wanted to clarify that i had a different understanding of the process but i'm all for clarity here further discussion persons customer reversals thank you uh and i'm glad you brought that up councilmember mario it has always been council prerogative whether you vote for one or vote for or you know rank four five six seven it's it's council's prerogative um we've never been forced to vote for to rank all of them never ever uh so this would be um starting something that is really taken away council prerogative and we're the elected so you know i i don't support this um and and getting to the point of not having background checks on these folks boy i just i just don't want to get into what if somebody lied on an application you know i i think to in order to be transparent we need to to have these folks checked and whether it's by hr or whatever i don't certainly don't want us to get into the situation that we did before so i'm i'm pretty nervous um very anxious about ranking folks until they're until they're checked because from what happened last time further discussion mayor councilmember thank you sir i would also like to add that um a couple of things here i guess so first on the actual ranking form it just says to please use uh below be below form to rank your top choices so i interpreted that as just the people who we would want to consider and you know not necessarily considering everyone on our list and second i noticed that this list has seven choices the previous one that we received had six so i would like to see some kind of consistency between our forms and this whole process i think this might be a good subject for rules committee in the future so i just wanted to throw that out there thank you for further discussion yes mayor tim yes and i agree with council member marcano that this should be discussed at rules committee um and again as previously said we have never been forced to rank even if the instructions say so um there's been plenty of times when other people have done just one choice and here's the deal if you um you're forced to rank someone that you may not even consider you know viable for that position so i think it takes away your discretion um i don't like the process further discussion here i'm sorry um johnson councilman was awesome um i think it's obvious that we had different interpretations on this i did do all seven i've done that i think i can say every time we've had that um including the first one soon after i was um elected with the irb and i remember figuring there might even be only one person that i want on this so i think it's wrong i think it's important to have this amendment because particularly the thing that's looking at this could really spew the results if we're not all on the same page it's okay if we have different interpretations we'll move forward but supporting councilmember hiltz's amendment so we have uh interesting system and we're doing the same process yeah further discussion uh councilmember gardner so i know this seems kind of silly that we're spending so much time talking about this and nobody's asking anyone to vote for candidates they will be asked to rank them in order of their preference from one to seven but why that's important is because when we use weighted rankings if one council member only selects one person and then another councilman other council members select multiple that throws off the waiting system so that's why it's important for us to all use the consistent ranking system further discussion uh councilmember thank you you know i i don't i hear what you're saying councilmember gardner but how how is this how do the people get the votes and and honestly if you that's the first question second question is if you see three people that you absolutely think that they are not qualified how do you rank all three of those as your number sevens you know because you're still giving them a number to be interviewed so that's my second question i guess katie how how are you assigning them the numbers if i tell you that john smith is my number one choice what does he what number does he get and can you go on down yes and in that instance if john smith was your first choice there's seven seven names being named so they would get a ranking of seven and the second choice would get six their third choice would get fifth and so on until you get into it to number one to one point okay so you're how would i rank three people zero i don't want to interview i don't think that they're qualified how would i tell you that i believe that's that's the discussion that we're having right now is to see if moving forward we want to have you guys rank everybody no matter what or only rank your top three choices specific choices whatever council would like to do more moving forward the city clerk's office will implement that um so it's up to the city council how they would like to do that moving forward further discussion mayor uh mayor burton yeah i think it i think if i remember correctly we've done it a couple different ways i think we've done where just give your top four you know and not done the ranking before as well in the past so i i obviously it needs to go to rules because i need to come up with a solution further discussion uh seeing none uh i i would just like to be some consistency it's math whether that's three five six seven i i'm really not worried about that i just would like to see some consistency so that the rankings work the way that they're intended to work and if some people don't want to vote for three people then i guess that means that we all wanted to vote for all six or civil service candidates because we all filled out all six according to um the city clerk so i guess whichever i'm this is bonkers that's remember on that point we ranked six six out of 24 for the civil service commission for two spots so i think you know back to council member marcano's point i think we should just have an established number of candidates that we rank regardless of how many applicants there are um so that if there are a significant number of candidates that folks don't feel are qualified or that they're not interested in interviewing that there's that opportunity to just say i'm not interested in interviewing this person which when we rank every candidate we don't have the opportunity to say to express that lack of interest that being said we have to figure out what to do about this particular situation so i don't really support re-ranking because i want us to get this dealt with um i think given this imperfect situation i would prefer to move forward with figuring out who we can interview okay question before it says the hilts amendment i'm sorry the hills motion is there further discussion seeing none uh will the clerk please call the role on the hills amendment uh to um item number eight a one bills function okay for item 18 a one mayor kaufman uh yes councilmember marcano no councilmember berzins could be restated please the amendment would be to rank the same number of candidates for all council members the question is and out of these seven or forever out of these just out of these seven wouldn't that require us to go back and re-rank yes okay no i will i will say that i asked to re-rank yesterday but was not able to get a response considered council member gardner so um that's why we are where we are now okay i vote no because i don't want to go back and rerun councilmember lawson yes councilmember garner yes councilmember mario council member mayor putin bergen um i i guess i'm going to say no just because i think we need to interview four people okay councilmember gruber no councilmember hiltz yes councilmember coombs no councilmember johnston yes okay the motion passes to re-rank the candidates uh reports by the uh reports by the council uh councilmember lawson mayor um the first thing i want to say is i want to give my thoughts and condolences to our city of boulder and the families i don't know what the latest update is but um um i just want to make sure that i from you know we're in jurisdictions and cities and um just give my thoughts and condolences to that city and to those families i'm also um my condolences and thoughts as well to the city of atlanta um i think that that was a terrible situation as well and um i think that we need to learn from that as well so i'm giving nlc i don't have an update for nlc i don't have an update for um for cml for um for the pfizer the state update governor the polis administration has released a draft plan to update the state's style system the draft plan which will go into effect on wednesday will loosen restrictions at lower levels of the state style system and make it easier for counties to reach them this includes plans to case to ease the statewide mass mandate in two weeks and turn control of most public health orders to local government in mid-april the state budget forecast was released on friday nonpartisan economists from the colorado legislative council projects the state will have an additional 5.3 billion for the next fiscal year this comes after state budget writers cut 3.3 billion during the last fiscal year um as far as rtd reimagine we had our meeting last thursday as i expressed last year on rtd uh reimagined rtd we were talking about the system optimization plan going forward for this final year we're going to actually be talking about the mobility plan for the future so that's what we were discussing and that's what we're going to move forward on um rtd has proposed a lot of service changes that have been released um there has been changes to route 15 the route 15 east colfax the route 2020 avenue the route 169l to buckley road in denver airport and the route 483 parker road and lincoln avenue and a mayor instead of just reading all of the changes i will send this report out to council and then you can put it out to your social media etc um the civic engagement academy will start on on april 8th um so far we've gotten a lot of people who will be attending so the applications um will be the final application that will receive the applications on april 1st if you would like to participate please go to award.gov forward slash citizens academy and mayor that's all of my reports for this evening councilmember gruber thank you mayor i just wanted to mention that there's been a lot of discussion about creating an inland port south of the denver airport within adams county aurora and surrounding jurisdictions there'll be more talk about that at the ped planning and economic development meeting that's all i have johnson murray hills thank you i also want to express my condolences i also haven't heard the latest update i believe it was multiple killed including an officer and want to send my my condolences to to all who were involved other than that i have no report thank you because of our daughter no report um councilmember mario thanks mayor um yes uh thanks for the opportunity to um share some some time to send our condolences to our neighbors in boulder um just read a couple headlines um and you know i think too too real to painfully uh us and aurora know um you know the impacts of mass shootings so you know my heart goes out to to the community and you know however we can be supportive um you know i hope we can reach out and show our support um uh i wanted to share a third culture bakery is fundraising for a safety and alarm kit initiatives to protect the aapi elders if you all are interested in donating it's i think it's about eight eight dollars a kit um they had requested and i'm making an ask to see if we might be able to do something on the council level but if individually folks would like to support um a small business and their their efforts of supporting the the community um councilmember lawson mentioned what happened in atlanta and i think it's a little timely to kind of bring that up as well so um wanted to elevate her her comments there um and then lastly i have a town hall this thursday at 6 pm and we'll be debriefing we had a community walk it was social distance and we had our par officer walk some high crime areas in the neighborhood just to create some positive space um there's created uh kovitz created a void of people um and so it's attracted someone unwanted attention and so we wanted to support community members and feel like they had a say in in the direction of their community and felt safe um walking around so um i hope to continue that on a you know a monthly or bi-weekly basis um as we start getting folks vaccinated and people back out into the community barrier muted i was looking at the story in the denver post and it looks like uh and this was uh updated four hours ago but it looks like there are six people known dead and there could be more and uh what a horrible tragedy you know and i i regret not you know being really aware of it when we started this meeting but let's take a moment of silence right now if we could you know for this horrible horrible mass shooting that took place uh in our state in boulder colorado if we could thank you um uh councilmember johnston thank you thank you mayor for acknowledging that and in a moment of silence i'm going to give an update on romances at least get fulfilled including a police officer and where people from aurora know from personal experience a lot of their treatments and when you hear this before but i also want to repeat we'll turn to number laws and it said with the city of england crimes that have happened in fact in the western germany journal there's been an increase of over 149 persons patients and clients in major cities more than a dozen l.a boston seattle and then in the united states um definitely wanted to do amazing drilling since just like that nothing in the supreme court councilmember burns thank you mayor um first off i would like to announce my ward 3 meeting coming up april 14th it will be on the webex and you'll be able to get the link from the city website or my personal my city facebook so you can join in but remember you must have webex on your on your computer in order to sign into webex so um i just wanted to say that um i attended the national league of cities virtual meeting i am on three national committees public safety military communities in large cities and i did attend all three of those and if we had more time i'd give you a rundown on what we discussed but it was very interesting i'm a big advocate of national league of cities because we do come in from all over the country and share ideas and have good speakers on how to make our cities better and as was said you know i i want to send my condolences to boulder and atlanta seems like we've had so much pain and tragedy recently that it's just hard to to get through so my hearts go out for them the six who died in boulder are one of them being an officer and so we'll just i'll just pray for recovery for the families and hope no one else passes so that's all i have thank you uh council member marcona thank you mayor i just want to echo a lot of what my colleagues have already said i want to send my heartfelt condolences out to the families friends and loved ones of everyone impacted by the senseless barbarism and boulder this evening and sadly this is a kind of tragedy that's uniquely american and one that we know way too well here in colorado and it doesn't have to be this way i'll provide a quick oh as quick and updated as i can hear from the arapahoe county transportation forum uh so we did meet uh and uh to discuss how to allocate another 7.3 million dollars in covet funding from dr cogg towards projects on the transportation forum's uh tip project list the good news is that we were able to reduce many matches public match requirements um down as close to 20 as possible which is going to hopefully assuming dr cog accepts our proposal reduced the city of aurora's commitment there at a little over the tune of about three and a half million dollars which is pretty substantial and very exciting so i'll keep you all posted on how that turns out our next ward 4 meeting is going to be on wednesday april 14th at 6 30. we will still be digital via webex and facebook live we'll be joined by sergeant thomas graham to discuss motor vehicle break-ins in the city and throughout the region get some general updates on city business and have open q a at the end thank you mayor uh councilman mccombs councilmember homes i think you muted sorry about that i was just trying to get unmuted and it was taking me a second um so yes first my ward meeting will be on the 7th of april at 6 30 pm um also this last weekend we did have a vaccine clinic at the stampede for heather gardens residents and we were able to vaccinate almost 600 folks for their first shot and then we'll have a second shot clinic at the stampede again and i know that the city plans to continue working with colorado primary care [Music] and the stampede and cdphe to get more vaccine sites there at the stampede which will be advertised moving forward and i know colorado primary care clinic has done a lot we also had a number of volunteers including folks from university of colorado so thank you to everyone for working so incredibly hard and making that come off so successfully um and then as far as committee reports sorry it's one of those weeks where all of my committees met except for tomorrow mile high behavioral health care um board meeting or it's the mile high behavioral health care board meeting um so i'll have updates later on that so i am also on the miracles fashion show uh committee this year so we're going to be doing fundraising for that program which serves women overcoming addiction the cherry creek basin water quality authority approved a wetland harvesting program which is to get nutrients that are leading to proliferation of algae and other microorganisms within the reservoir to get those nutrients out to help limit that pollution that we're seeing in the reservoir um and then visit aurora will be presenting their 2021 marketing plan to the city this week and it is showing a return of group marketing group sales so we are getting more groups back into our city hotels as we're getting into 2021 and beyond um dr cogg had public hearings on the regional transportation plan as well as the 2022 through 2025 tip plan um and i think that's all of them for now so thank you and oh and of course also wanting to acknowledge um the tragedies that happen in both boulder and atlanta um you know this senseless loss of life is really disturbing and i hope that we can collectively do more to intervene in all of the causes of these tragedies that we have become far too accustomed to yeah uh manpower tim bergen thank you mayor um and again i want to echo the same uh sentiments my sincere condolences to the city of boulder um and to the city of atlanta uh my prayers for the victims families um it's really really sad that this has happened um i do want to thank madison lingo who's with the 18th judicial she um is with the sexual assault response team and i um just tonight emailed all a council a flyer that you can share with your constituents it's basically on educational sessions or topics regarding sexual assault um and preventing it and then lastly my town hall is this wednesday from 6 to 8 and we will have a presentation on the state of retail and site selection which is important because a lot of my constituents think we can wave a magic wand and get you know any kind of retail that we want so this will be really interesting because he'll go through how we do or how developers and brokers choose site selection and retailers choose site selection public invited to be heard there is nobody in the queue for public invited to be heard uh then we are adjourned thank you everybody [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you