[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do do [Music] [Music] [Music] my the study session of the aurora city council on monday uh july uh 19th um 2021 is called the order with the clerk please call the roll mayor councilmember berzins here councilman crumbs president councilman gardner is mcgruber councilmember gruber councilmember hills here remember lawson i'm here but um i'm gonna have to connect to another computer because i can't get on council member marcono president there's a quorum um katie do you need to make an announcement on the calling yes we're going to have robbie chairman make an announcement for the call online good evening thank you for joining tonight's aurora city council study assessment if you are looking on the phone please note public comments are not taken during study sessions the phone line is in listen only mode the council welcomes comments from residents at regular council meetings on both matters appearing on the agenda and during the public invited to be heard the phone line opens for sign up on those evenings at 6 00 pm thank you thank you there's no mayor's update no issue updates um consent calendar a motion to approve item number two a through two eight um is there any way that i can pull 2 c and 2 d please sure 2 d and 2 and 2 i'm sorry 2 c and 2d that's correct for a discussion okay uh the motion before sin is adoption of the consent calendar uh item number 2a 2b uh 2 f 2 g and 2h motion mayor i'm not certain we need a motion and study session i don't know i'm sorry you're correct you're correct uh is there any objection uh very well and uh is is there um any objection to moving uh all uh consent items except for items two c and two d forward uh city none items uh all uh thank you sir i think someone else actually beat me to the punch i don't know who though you know i don't just go please okay um so i just wanted to bring up that last year i think it was around october uh we had discussed reworking our model service plan and um it looks like there was i'm looking at the minutes here there was agreement to do that but the motion to adopt some revisions failed for lack of a second i think there was a procedural faux pas that took place but i am uh just wondering if we can i guess how council feels about uh bringing that conversation back up and getting those changes through there's a lot of new residential metro districts here and a large portion of what we had discussed back then was to you know add some transparency measures for uh future home buyers in metro districts and i just wanted to make sure that we could adopt what we had worked on before you can have the the subject matter uh on its own in a study session or you simply yourself can move it forward through the process because it was never uh adopted sure the reason i'm speaking up now is to kind of get a temperature of the council and see how we feel about that mayor is there uh mayor for him uh yes i'm not sure that i'm actually understanding councilmember marcano but you're you're talking about 2c and 2d villages at murky creek metro district service plans that went through mnf no ma'am um all of these i actually meant to respond to the mayor's ask for the general consent question since these are all metro districts that's why i wanted to bring this up i felt it was relevant um and i just wanted to see how we were feeling about the conversation we had last year and if we wanted to actually move through these measures as you can bring it back up obviously through the process i just want to get council's temperature on that pretty unusual is there any objection is there any objection to having a metro district discussion uh on a future study session to review uh what discussions occurred uh last year on this issue is there any objection so i would recommend this dave gruber i would recommend that given the changes in the law that um that that's going to be a rather substantial cost uh it might be better to have the staff work that and then bring it through management finance through uh you know the standard process and bringing it straight to study session i think it might be too complex for that that would probably be a two-day two-day process okay is there any objection to council member gruber's recommendation mayor okay uh concerns yes um the revisions that were suggested already came through the process and through a pretty substantial process so i would object to bringing it back through that process over again uh further objection councilmember hilts yeah thank you i guess if it does go back to the committee process because it's a state law i think impacted it advisor could just be looped in on on those conversations um that's all just for the same confusion i'm sorry what is your recommendation customer held if it goes through the committee process and it goes through mnf just to make sure that pfizer is also plugged into that process um because it kind of crosses over okay uh i i council member uh so to gruber's recommendation to councilmember gruber's recommendation to send it to the process again uh and i understand councilmember mcconnell i think is just objects to that is there any other objections to be clear uh since there were changes that took place at the legislature i'd like to see how those impact what we worked on so i'm fine with it going back to committee i just want to make sure we don't believe that is there any objection uh to having go back through committee and um okay very well then it will it will go through back through committee uh it will need a sponsor um okay uh with that then uh i see no objection uh to the consent calendar items two a through two b and items uh uh two e through two eight uh um item two c uh please read the title to item 2c item 2c is a resolution to approve the villages at murphy creek number 3 metropolitan district service plan uh a brief staff presentation good evening this is tris arena dancing with office of development assistance um and i can speak for villages at murphy creek three and four together and happy to take any questions so these are brand new districts brand new service plans despite the naming which we have come to realize it was probably not the the preferred choice this is not part of the current murphy creek development this is an entirely separate development from what we currently know is murphy creek this is actually going to be known as harvest village at murphy creek it is on the east side whereas murphy creek is on the west side of jewel um so i just wanted to to clarify that because that was a bit confusing um purely residential on both districts and population impact of approximately 3 700 um and both of these proposed service plans are in compliance with our model and they're both currently vacant portals um thank you um nancy for providing that update um i have received some and i'm pretty sure there might be another council member that i've received some comments just about the confusion of the the naming of the metro district and the number and the concerns that they have it does create confusion so i wanted to see if there's a possibility to rename that and may possibly take murphy creek out of the name um for these particular to sub to actually solve that matter but also i understand by state law that you're not required to talk to you know surrounding metro districts about this particular juris this particular metro district because it's out of the boundaries but there are some concerns about the amenities that these metro districts are going to be having and i just wanted to see if i know these are coming up through the august 9th meeting for council and i understand that there is also an election but i wanted to see if there could be a delay in these to salvage to solve the naming issue and also to just see if there could be a possibility of some civic engagement just on the amenities issue that these that those questions with this particular metro district and the surrounding areas have so i just wanted to bring those into you as well yeah and i'm glad to respond to those and we also have um legal counsel for the district on the call paula williams so i'm sure um if if i miss anything paula please feel free to jump in um to answer your question about the name change yes that is something that the district already contemplated and there's a few ways that we can approach that um i do believe they are amenable to potentially pushing it to a further hearing than the rest of these districts to change the name now otherwise they plan on doing that in there for their first board meeting and i'm not sure of the timing of that but it is fairly soon so either way the name that they agree and concur that the name should be changed they did address the amenity piece in their transmittal letter and since this is totally separate from murphy creek this development will have its own amenities and there there's no crossover these will be two totally separate neighborhoods but i would definitely invite paula williams to jump in uh to speak the you know process as far as changing the name and i think that might help clarify further daniel frank on behalf of um oh i'm not sure if she's on i know she was uh perhaps stuck on uh paulie there i was on i was unmuted oh there she is thank you very much um i was just getting ready to see that we absolutely understand there's confusion in the naming process so we are more than happy to delay and get the name change for harvest crossing which is what the name of this development will be um danielle frank is on the line daniel is a member of the developer and i think daniel can speak to the significant amount of neighborhood meetings that they have had going through the land development process uh where they have had significant outreach with the um the other neighborhoods out there regarding the amenities again this is a standalone development it is in no way shape or form related to murphy creek and they will have their own amenities but daniel if you could maybe just go through the neighborhood process that you've already undertaken yeah absolutely um so some of you may or may not know we're currently going through the plotting process for our first filing which is 140 lots so recently we did our neighborhood outreach um to neighborhood groups metro districts hoas i believe it's within a three or five mile radius as well as the adjacent property owners and it was fairly well attended no real major issues there one of the things that did come up um you know was the relationship between um you know this development and what we know currently as uh murphy creek and so it was explained to the neighbors at that time um you know as it's already been kind of explained on this call you know it's a completely separate stand-alone development that will have um its own amenities um and its own districts and there will be no crossover and so a lot of those neighborhood groups have already been involved in these conversations and i think really their concern was you know with some existing surrounding communities that are having sales out there some of the sales offices um may or may not be telling potential buyers that you know the amenities within murphy creek can be used by all and so it's really you know i think an issue with uh surrounding communities existing sales office and once they realize that we're a completely separate community brand new districts brand new amenities um you know that'll be owned and maintained either by our hoa or the district you know it kind of quelled all of those concerns further questions i see none thank you oh mayor sorry i'm sorry those were reals thank you yeah i just um my understanding is that there were some concerns kind of raised about this naming prior to in the process so that it came up that it might might be confusing and i guess since this isn't related to murphy creek just in the future um if we can be more mindful of that because now staff has to spend producing something that was never intended to be part of murphy creek to begin with and it's just really unnecessary i think to put that additional workload on staff um to do that when this is something that was easily avoidable so just in the future if developers could be a little more mindful yeah absolutely and we've been trying to do everything we can to differentiate ourselves um you know by renaming the whole project because initially the name was villages of murphy creek and because of that confusion we felt it necessary to you know completely change the name so we we totally agree with you mayor councilmember lawson um so just to get clarification there will be um you guys there will be a name change to this uh metro district is that correct before it comes before council yes okay are there are further questions is there any objection to moving items number two c and two d forward uh c none items number two c and 2d will move forward i think we're going to take uh um a 10 a 10 minute recess i've got some uh problems technical problems at my end uh and then we'll we'll uh hear from the chief of police uh the time is now at 6 47 we will reconvene uh at 6 57 council stands in recess live [Music] [Music] thank you [Music] me [Music] me [Music] me [Music] did you want to [Music] [Music] [Music] me [Music] me [Music] me [Music] me [Music] [Music] [Music] me [Music] me [Music] [Music] me [Music] me [Music] [Music] three [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so by uh the meeting of the study session of the aurora city council for monday but july 19 2021 is called back into session i know all of us have been getting complaints about what appears to be seems to be an increase in gun violence in our city i requested through the city manager that the chief of police vanessa wilson coming for a study session to discuss what is the trajectory of gun violence in our city what is the current strategy for deterring gun violence are there any additional strategies she could implement and if so but would they require additional resources and are there any policy changes that would that are necessary um uh that would require the consent of counsel uh with that um chief vanessa wilson thank you mayor uh adrian's going to go ahead and share my share her screen for me um so we can get started here adrian if you can go ahead and go to the next slide so first of all before we get started the slide that you're looking at is going to talk about the increase in crime across the nation i understand that knowing that this is a nationwide problem does not do anything for the residents of the city of aurora and i want you to know as your chief of police we are committed to doing everything we possibly can in our power um the men and women that work here to to try to quell it um it is something that i wish i had a crystal ball i wish i had a magic pill that i could tell you exactly why this is happening i wish that we could um deal with this across the nation because behind every statistic i've said this before we have a family that's suffering we have mothers fathers daughters sons and children that have lost a family member and so i want you all to know that i appreciate the opportunity to talk to council this evening and to the mayor but i just want you to know that this is unfortunately something that we're seeing across the nation uh next slide please i've asked to show you the major city chiefs association there's 70 agencies that are considered major city chiefs across the nation these are just some of the statistics that were that we're seeing um homicide is is up aggravated assaults are up across the nation and this is just the first quarter so unfortunately these numbers i know have continued to rise and it is becoming um an issue like i said and with aggravated assaults just so people understand what that is that is going to be somewhere where it's a non-fatal shooting where someone has either been assaulted with a weapon or have have um have been inflicted serious bodily injury on them and so these are serious crimes that we're talking about and so we just wanted to provide some statistics uh for what specifically is happening in aurora next slide please our gun related homicides the last three years total victims not incidences but total victims and homicides in 2019 was 40 was 28 excuse me 11 of those were adults five juveniles and two were deemed to be gang-related for us to demon is gang related we have to have articulable facts for us to label it as such in 2020 we had 43 uh victims of homicide 31 adults uh two juveniles as well as two that were labeled as gang-related 2021 year-to-date uh unfortunately we have 18 homicides in our city 11 adults uh one juvenile and one that we have deemed at this point gang-related next slide please i've just provided our 2021 homicide demographics for you all to be able to look at just to see that it's affecting across all all races all genders this is a problem across the board next slide please so our non-fatal shooting statistics these are our shootings that we have we we follow up on leads and we go out on these on these cases because someone has been struck by a bullet so a non-fatal shooting statistic is just truly the fact that um we don't have another homicide so as you can see uh the numbers are are alarming uh this 2021 we have 57 incidents with 66 victims that were shot and that were not thankfully considered a homicide eight of these are known to be gang related this year and i think it goes to to a lot to our partners at university health and their great medical facilities that we have in the city of aurora that many of these people's lives are being saved so i just want to thank them um i want to also talk about um one of the cases that sparked the request from the mayor to have this um presentation the june 20th shooting where over 100 rounds were fired i want to thank the public for submitting their tips to crime stoppers but we have some leads in that case and i'm hoping that we are going to be able to make an arrest in that situation next slide please so the other slide here that you're looking at is confirmed shots fired call so this is where no one was actually hit but obviously it's still an impact on our residents whether it's a vehicle that was shot up or a house that was shot we go out on these calls we send our officers out to canvas the area to collect shell casings and then we submit them to what we call nibbing which is our national integrated ballistic information network that way we can match some of these shell casings to these specific weapons so when we do take a gun off the street we're able to see if it's connected with several different uh shots fired calls or non-shooting uh non-fatal shooting cases so that we can build a case on the people that are in possession of this weapon hopefully this allows us to link cases not only in aurora but metro wide and we do that with our regional anti-violence enforcement network which i'll talk about a little bit later next slide please so this is just going to give you the shots fired calls by district again it's going to show the years the increases that we're having and then of course the differences in where the calls are taking place as you can see it's district 2 for 2021 has had more shots fired called by district at this point next slide please so like i said in the beginning of this presentation i don't know exactly what the reasons are but some of the possible influencing factors that we're talking about with other chiefs across the nation as well as my own executive staff is that i feel as though violence is being normalized throughout society you know people are asking the question of why is this happening i wish i had the answers i can tell you that um you know movies video games all these types of things uh guns and violence are just part of our normal normal day-to-day um society unfortunately i will say that the other things that we're looking at is that cobra related obviously we had issues with uh jail and some of our career criminals us not being able to put these individuals into jail and then due to the courts and them not being able to hold them with our code um or kogan uh crisis these individuals were getting out of out of jail immediately personal recognizance and they were out very next day uh doing the crimes we have an example of a motor vehicle theft operation where officers arrested some of these subjects the next day in the same operation the same suspects were contacted even though we had arrested them and put them in jail the day before we have an increase of firearms out on the street illegal guns it's a nationwide concern we have uh weapons being possessed by previous offenders what we call a palpo people are using social media platforms to buy and sell weapons unfortunately a lot of these weapons are getting into the hands of juveniles we have firearms being stolen in burglaries from vehicles where we have owners that perhaps don't have a gun safe and aren't locking these things up and so we've just seen an influx of guns out there on the street unfortunately our staffing issues that we're facing is limiting our ability to be proactive in a lot of our approaches when i talk about staffing um these high priority incidents that we're talking about the shootings that that we're seeing the increase on it ties up patrol resources causing delays for service for lower priority calls i know that's frustrating to uh the community as we they're waiting hours sometimes for us to be able to come and take the report and so i just ask for patience as we try to navigate the staffing issues that were focused on since since january 2020 we have lost 159 trained officers 72 of those officers with therapy retirements resignations or terminations 72 of those have occurred here in 2021. so we are hiring as fast as we can we are doing multiple smaller classes trying to get instead of us having to wait six months for some relief for to get some bodies out on the street we're trying to do smaller classes five different classes a year so that we're able to hopefully try and keep up with the attrition that we're seeing unfortunately i've had to reduce uh units like our swat unit our narcotics unit our police area representative our school resource officers our neighborhood policing unit which was the bicycles along uh the old part of aurora and also in traffic uh we've had to reduce some of these specialized units they're going out and being proactive as their daily mission just so we can staff patrol but we are still needing to pay overtime to fully staff patrol and so uh again we are facing a manpower issue and i want to applaud the officers that are working day in and day out those that are taking over on these uh overtime assignments they are tired and they're weary and i i just want to thank them for being able to still be committed to working that extra shift so that we can make sure that our our teams are safe out there as well as we're able to answer calls for service to our community next slide please so question is what are we doing here in aurora this cannot be a quick fix this is going to take a long-term crime reduction and uh like i said if we're going call to call and we're having staffing issues we're not our ability to be proactive and if we're having to take down specialized units it's going to take a while for us to be able to combat this problem but we need to understand why this is happening like i said i don't have all the answers um i'm partnering with christina operon working with the youth violence protect prevention program and i'd like to you know applaud councilmember lawson for seeing an issue back in 2020 and spearheading the youth violence prevention program the city all of council got behind that and has funded it and i just was on one of her youth violence prevention action tables and everyone on that was talking about a long-term commitment by the city to help prevention of violence in our community this isn't just the problem that the police can tackle we need everyone to come to the table with ideas we need to better fund mental health services we need to be taking care of people that are having facing drug addiction and those types of things within our city and also dealing with the economic situation in our city that may have people turn to crime had made people have people find themselves in a crisis where they don't feel like they have any other options next slide please some of our crime initiatives that i've implemented we are doing a council member group who likes to call them strike teams we are doing what we call directive directive patrol teams uh we are asking officers again on overtime that's the only way we're able to staff these proactive initiatives uh to go out work with the district district all three district commanders and their crime analysts to identify the hot spots within our city and these are just a few of the successes that we have seen obviously we have not been able to staff some of these because we're having the staff uh patrol first so our priority is always staffing patrol and i can tell you that what i'm hearing is our officers are tired and so i'm hoping that we are able to do more of this and right now we have been authorized over time for the next six weeks to do this and um we've thanks to the city manager we've been able to allow sergeants and lieutenants to actually work these patrol teams just to try and get out there and make a difference when we have the time to make these stops then we are able to be um you know making an impact as you can see we've taken weapons off the street we've made eight felony arrests seven misdemeanor arrests on just this group that we've had about four of these uh directed patrol teams go out next slide please another crime initiative uh that we've worked on which was uh again spearheaded by uh the city managers as well as i'd like to shout out to councilmember murillo uh that she asked for money uh from council which i appreciate them authorizing so we could have an impact on the colfax corridor so really the focus of this was high visibility um so that the businesses that were having many issues uh quality of life issues as well as um you know just people selling drugs outside of their outside of their businesses things that they were reporting to us that they were concerned about and increasing crime along the area so we're on a six-month pilot program with this and i can tell you that um i did one of one of these four-hour shifts myself a few weeks ago and the community was extremely happy to see us out there i was stopped many times with people saying we appreciate your presence i can tell you that um the focus was not a rest the focus was community reassurance and high visibility to show those business owners that we are still here for you and also uh impact people that were um just taking advantage of the fact that they didn't see an officer and so they were more likely to commit a crime or to do something that is negatively affecting that area of town these are just some of our our business contacts our consensual contacts these are the numbers that we've collected since april of 20 april 25th of this year next slide please and then this is some of the enforcement things that we did we did a lot of criminal warnings a lot of these will be low-level crimes whether that would be urinating in public or drinking open container out there so we really want to try and clean up the area for those businesses and also to give people an opportunity to have a voluntary compliance because as we know arrest is not always the answer so we did uh do a lot of criminal warnings we're also providing resources for um our unsheltered neighbors that are out there and trying to get them uh the help that they need whether that be mental health services or just trying to find housing for the evening working with mile high behavioral center and such and then we were also making arrests when it was deemed necessary and something that we couldn't give a warning on next slide please here's some of the crime initiative special teams that we've created uh the non-fatal shooting team again we talk about not a non-fatal shooting we really are just lucky it wasn't another homicide so they are these this group is meeting uh on a monthly basis and we're going over making sure that um all of our detectives are sharing information so that nothing's slipping through the crack we're able to make the linkages uh when we're all having conversation and also we're talking to denver and other metro areas when we have someone that is prolific across the metro wide area and we created a new gang and robbery investigation team we were finding a lot of our robberies were had a gang nexus and so we we created this gang and robbery investigation so that our gang unit our gang investigators are talking to our robbery investigators and again we are able to identify any criminal enterprise that is gang motivated and we've invited in the 18th judicial district we have meeting weekly meetings with uh three of the da's from there and we talk about the upcoming games that we see that are becoming present and talk about um the game cases that we have the gang intervention unit is collaborating with other metro gang units on new emerging gangs and retaliatory trends that we see obviously when we see a shooting go by or a shots fired call a lot of times these are connected from something that happened and then we're having retaliatory actions being taken in our city this is putting um in my opinion innocent individuals in uh in harm's way so we're really focusing on what we can do with a gang intervention again we are dealing a reactionary and trying to be as proactive as we possibly can with our staffing but also um we're working with our partners on how we can put these individuals that um are career criminals they're not learning from a chance they're not they're not someone that probation is going to work on immediately it's going to be someone that we need to take them off the street because they are they're creating violence within our community next slide please another thing that we're doing is collaboratively as we're working with raven we are the the agency that is uh leading raven it's the regional anti-violence enforcement network we're working with atf our partners in denver lakewood other metro arapaho county sheriff's department and we are looking at getting these violent criminals off the streets quickly there's 18 local state and federal law enforcement partners in this group we are empowered to take a regional approach to violent crime and gun violence we're able to use the power of the federal judicial system we can prosecute cases in multiple jurisdictions to include the federal level and also we have a strong working relationship with the united states attorney's office in 2021 so far raven has had 74 new cases and they're still working 23 ongoing cases from 2020. they've assisted 33 law enforcement agencies in their violent crime investigations again there are no borders the individuals that are um you know or they're committing these crimes in denver are coming into a war going into arapaho county and so us having all of us working on it together i think that's the best approach we can do to kind of have a force multiplier if you will with our other agencies to date ravens made 85 arrests and we've seized 134 firearms 83 of those being handguns 23s 23 rifles and shotguns and 18 assault weapons next slide please so what we need to do as a city in my opinion is we need to identify a long-term uh collaborative and sustainable approach uh to first of all what is causing the problems that we're seeing uh why why the increase if we can if we can identify that and then work together with um like i said the youth violence enforcement network uh prevention program trying to get them to be a part of the solution and like i know that um christina is going to present after me and she's going to talk about again how this is not a quick fix this isn't a band-aid this has got to be a commitment by the city and um not only council but our community in saying that we're all going to be working together to get to the core root of the problem of why a crime is occurring within our city and especially violent crime whether that be the access to weapons whether that be people that are you know facing economic crisis what we can do to to help these individuals and get them the resources that they need uh next slide please this is just going on with prevention intervention um obviously this is just some of the things the city is highlighting i want to applaud them for doing but the mobile response team that was championed by council member hilts that is going to be um a version of the cahoots program that the aurora has developed and then just working with our substance abuse and mental health partners as well as uh the youth violence prevention program that i that christina is going to talk to you about here in a second the mobile response team is getting ready to launch and this will be hopefully successful we've seen success in other parts of the country and then of course our crisis response team which has the dual officers with a clinician will also be still happening and hopefully once staffing gets back to normal we are able to increase the levels there next slide please i talked a lot about our staffing situation uh the response to that is i'm hoping that and i've and i've gotten um support from city management to try and do a pilot program to civilianize positions whether that be like i said a lot of times community members are waiting uh hours for a response and on a lower level crime still a major issue for them still a quality of life issue for them but we're hoping that we can civilianize community support officers we're gonna do a pilot program with um traffic officers going and responding to traffic accidents so people who don't have to wait as long for us to take a report and then i would like to see it if this is successful to move into things like a cold burglary report or those other types of things where you don't actually need a uniformed officer and that way we can have better customer service for um community we've done the increased frequency of the police academy which i've talked about which is that we are doing five academies right now which is extremely taxing on our academy staff but they've been phenomenal and just trying to get these individuals through and train properly so that we can get some relief out to the officers that are on the street i've had to again reassign and supplement patrol staffing by taking down some of my specialty units temporarily and hopefully i can get those put back together once staffing gets better and then we can hopefully have increased police presence in neighborhoods with this directed active patrol continuing the the foot pursuit the foot excuse me foot patrol on long colfax that i think is having a positive impact and also driving some of the numbers down in that area high visibility is is having an effect on the crime in that area which i'm happy about the next slide this next slide is something uh the us department of justice i'm sorry it sounds like i may be off of the slides what slide are we on we are speaking okay can you go forward one more please it sounds like i already did the response to staffing sorry it's hard to do this uh timing wise okay now we're on track the us department of justice has established a national public safety partnership to enhance federal support of law enforcement i received authorization from city management city management to apply for this and to be accepted into this program hopefully we will get this it's going to be a while before i find out if we are selected as the city of aurora we put a proposal together asking for them to come in and this would just be a public safety partnership it's it's promote it's designed to promote interagency coordination uh by just coming in and a three-year program looking at everything that we can do to try and reduce violent crime and use all this all the um initiatives that the federal government has and the uh you know whether it be the analysts or training or technology that they think that we should be getting here in the city to help us combat violent crime okay next slide please we should be on slide 21. uh additional support needed i what i would ask from council when you ask that question is just uh you know helping me fund the civilianized civilian physicians within the police department i think people do want officers to be responding to the right types of calls i know that's a priority for council so i think with looking at some of the community support officers that we see across the nation i think this could be successful here in the city of aurora obviously it's going to take funding and to train these individuals up and it's going to take time we are looking to reduce like i said police responses to quality of life and non-criminal issues by taking that officer out of that situation where they can focus on more of the violent uh high-profile crimes and put civilians in into responding to those other issues and then also i really need support on us keeping necessary equipment that is used on these very violent incidents i think just last week uh we saw you know the the bear in action uh we had the ucs gas on that call and i really in order to keep these officers safe i ask for support in keeping these keeping this equipment because i i can tell you right now that uh we would have had a major uh casualties that evening i believe had we not had uh that equipment to be utilized and i'm thankful that it held held on and that those uh swat officers were safely taken out of that bear next slide and with that i will just turn over to questions uh from council and that is whoops chief let me uh ask the first question and that is um i think a key issue is you say you're down the number of officers you've had a lot of retirements uh i assume some people quit transfers so you're significantly down but then you say you're going to civilianize some of the positions and so um what do you what is the mix that you need right now between civilianized positions and uniformed officers they're projecting forward so i don't have a number for you sir but that's something that we can bring back to hopefully public safety um and obviously i have to work with my city managers uh to see what we can afford to do but i think that uh you know we are gonna move forward with this pilot program for uh traffic investigations so that individuals aren't waiting for us to respond on non-injury accidents where an officer isn't uh deemed necessary but i think it's very successful sir in places like denver where office civilian personnel are responding to cold burglary cases you know those types of situations found property whatever it may be so that officers are out here just dealing with um crimes that officers should be responding to the violent crime that we're seeing and then knowing that you know our citizens and our residents aren't waiting uh for hours upon hours for police response so what is the number that you need in terms of uniform officers to be able to fully staff patrol and to staff the specialized units well 745 is i believe what our last number was that we are authorized to be at um so i don't have that exact number in front of me sir but i can get that to you yeah you really i mean you've got to have a plan going forward i mean you got to know what resources you sir need respectfully i i think i've just gone over several plans that we have uh put in place and uh i don't know the exact number that we're at today again we're losing individuals daily i've told you how many i've lost um and we have a plan of trying to put five academies in we're working with civil service commission but because i don't have a number in front of me sir that doesn't mean i don't have a plan so then how many um how many of you expected the academies to to be able to officers to be able to to field operationally say by the end of the year we are hiring 20 officers per academy and again if i'm losing officers a lot of times they don't tell us they're leaving until they're gone so i don't i don't believe john schneebick is on vacation that unfortunately today he has those numbers in front of him but i'll make sure that i have an email to you first thing in the morning sir with those numbers further questions yes [Music] as we've just discussed before i support the concept of having the uniformed officers do uniform work and civilianizing work that doesn't have to be done by a uniformed officer i think that's a good use of resources with the understanding that the uniformed officers return to uniformed work so it's not a we will not hire a uniformed officer because we've hired a non-uniformed officer it's a question of making sure that we best use the uniform officers that we have so it's not a question of defunding the police it's augmenting the police with civilians so the police can do their primary duty so i appreciate that second point i want to discuss is the uh the crimes numbers that you showed you know we at public safety every month we discuss crime um looking at major violent crimes are up 22 percent for the year major property crimes 32 percent the implication or i guess if someone was listening to this who didn't have a background they may take away the fact that that we're talking about youth gangs and i want you if i could i'd like you to clarify uh the issue between youth gangs and adult gangs uh during previous raven presentations we heard that we have major cartels working through several latin american countries we have heroin meth and fentanyl coming in from china and russia managed by cartels uh in those countries we have uh we aren't talking a bunch of high school kids or a bunch of young you know sub 18 year old uh people committing these crimes we have serious serious crime in in aurora done by seriously bad people and could you address that part of it because again it almost sounded like if we can deal with the with the youth violence then these issues are going to go away and my interpretation is is that yes we have a youth violence issue yes we need to to do our best and we'll have more presentations on that but we have an adult violence problem and we've got some serious issues going on and the murders and things like that are that are going on aren't high school kids shooting each other they're cartel people shooting each other could you help help on that sure and i and i apologize if that's how that came off what i was saying is when we look at long-term violence prevention we definitely want to try and impact the youth uh before they are so far into the situation that they are going to become adults that are committing crimes within the city of aurora so what i'm talking about prevention is we are reactionary as a police force we're trying to be proactive but as a community we need to start talking about prevention uh programs and i know specifically i was applauding the city for focusing on the youth situation that we have and then we're going to need to work with you know our district attorneys and as well as our judicial system to keep the adults that are committing crimes in in jail and incarcerating them and making sure that they are being held accountable for the crimes they're committed so if i could follow up on that the jails have been closed as a result of covid uh at the county level that the city if we only we have a three-day detention uh facility i understand that that's taking people now um as far as the uh the counties accepting uh uh folks that are arrested by the aurora police department and the uh the va's the district attorneys of the of the primarily two counties uh are they are they prosecuted fully prosecuting the the criminals we bring in so i want to applaud the sheriffs for dealing with obviously a pandemic and having to make hard decisions in order to keep communities safe as well as to keep the people that are incarcerated safe so i know that the district attorneys like i said we are working with um the da's honor gang related robberies and where we're meeting with them weekly to try and prosecute these cases and make sure that we are putting these individuals who are career criminals and that are hardcore criminals in jail and making sure that they are being held responsible for what the actions that they do thank you mayor town thank you mayor um and thank you chief wilson i um i know it's a really challenging time for you and in the department and i appreciate you know the uh the plan that you have in place the the changes you've made the effort um i like the directed patrol team i think that's really um probably was needed a while back but i really appreciate that that being um done um my concern is you know you said 159 officers that we lost since beginning last year 72 officers lost so far and we're halfway through the year um obviously we're supposed to be meeting the 2 000 consent um that you mentioned earlier i think we're supposed to be at 745 officers do you know why they're leaving i know that you know you have exit interviews but i have heard lots of things that you know had to do with state legislature reform reform done at city council anti-police sentiment lack of support from council are there other are those the reasons or are there other reasons i mean i know some are just you know points that don't feel retirement i think ma'am there's just been a lot of changes and a lot of uh call for police reform which we are we are stepping up in the city of war and we're making those reforms um you know it could be it's a lot of all those different things right i can't say to exactly why because a lot of exit interviews aren't occurring so um i can tell you that there is this is a very difficult job much more difficult than it ever has been at least in my my tenure and so a lot of families are very upset about what their officers are facing whether it's the negative sentiment that they're seeing on the streets uh whether it's the increase in assaults on officers that we're seeing across the nation um i mean ask yourself if you want your loved one to be put in harm's way in that type of situation and so i can tell you that um we need support we need support from this council and we need support from this community saying they support our officers and i need to applaud the cops that have stayed and are saving lives each and every day that doesn't always make the media uh but they're out there i'm doing what they think is right and and and policing with integrity yeah and i think you know just in terms of the ones i mean we want we don't want any more officers to leave us and it's really hard um even when i talk to officers about their you know why would i stay why would i risk my life why would i put my family's um you know entire savings at risk and and then feeling unappreciated and again nationwide sentiment but um i guess from a retention perspective i mean what what can we do to to let them know we need them and and we appreciate them i mean if we cannot end up like many you know minneapolis and baltimore where they're they they defunded the police and then they had to turn around and hire you know contract police because crime had escalated so high and i know from my constituents they're so concerned about the increasing crime that people are even moving out of here out of aurora um you know and and just very upset and of course what i have to tell them is i'm sorry you know we don't have enough officers to deal with those issues um i'm sorry we're losing half our sros i'm sorry we're losing half our par officers um and you know it's great that we have that foot patrol in on the colfax quarter which i know is very dangerous a lot of crime there but i have crime in ward 6 that has exploded as well and no one not no one i shouldn't say that but it's the lack of resources have impacted response time and and so forth so i guess back to my my question sorry i'm rambling um is is on how do we keep the ones that are here with us as well as obviously we're trying to attract them through the academies yeah you know ma'am um you know we're gonna we're gonna go on contract negotiations again uh with the fop as well as city management i think there are some things that we can do um but that is i am not a part of that bargaining that is between city management and the fop but i think appreciation and knowing that this council and um this community embraces these officers and wants them to stay but i can tell you that the ones that are here they're they're working very very hard for you and uh you know they are they're putting their lives on the line and and i just want to say um uh you know i i appreciate them and there is no there is no easy fix ma'am we are being you know there are other agencies out there that are specifically targeting my department to take officers uh from from us and whether that's a better benefit package or whether that's just a better sentiment towards law enforcement and a lot of officers are leaving the state i mean this is this is a crisis and this is something that that we're dealing with um so as of july 15th back to the mayor's numbers i just got that thank you for this we have 691 officers right now and 51 in the academy um our total strength should be at 742. so um that's what that's what we're dealing with as far as losing um and the more officers i lose the less capability i have in not just answering calls for service but actually being proactive ma'am and i and i hear you loud and clear and i hear the community loud and clear that they're tired of it and they want something to be done and we're doing the best we can but again i think you'll hear from um just one section of what we need to deal with which is our youth i think this is going to be a long-term commitment from the city and and talking about gaining prevention programs getting intervention programs and then of course our response is police um our job is to enforce the law and not to to fix a lot of the issues that can be done with non-profit organizations and and helping individuals before they commit crimes yeah and my last point real quick is that speaking to um you know the district attorney and other folks that really a lot of the crime is is people reoffending because they are not put in jail they are so you know auto thefts and and that type of thing up so dramatically it's it's not necessarily like more people creating crime but maybe the same people creating crime so anyway thank you there's a small there's a small portion of people within this community suspects that are recommitting crimes and so you know we have 10 percent of people doing 90 of the crime and so um we need to keep them when it's appropriate we need to keep them in jail we need to keep them behind bars and we need to have um i'll give you an example of an officer-involved shooting we had this person had a long criminal history um he this was just the shooting over at wolf's he had on two ankle monitors and then we ended up getting an officer-involved shooting with him so i'm not um not condemning the district attorney's office or the judicial system but it is a reality that that we're facing um and so this person should have never been out on the street right thank you so much further questions or comments mayor uh councilman mcconnell thank you sir and thank you chief for that presentation and for the work you're doing i know this is a very challenging time as you uh laid out very well i did have a couple of questions for you um the first is about par and my frustration and the frustration of a lot of my constituents with par always being the first to get cut when we you know have to move folks around and i was hoping that you could uh you know educate me and the public here on the model of patrol that we utilize and how come a you know par uh couldn't kind of suit or fill that need and the reason i ask is because there's a lot of information out there a lot of studies that have been conducted on the efficacy of standardized patrolling and it's a show that it's kind of a wash it doesn't really have any noticeable metrics so i'm wondering if we're doing something different here and you have statistics that can demonstrate that the way we patrol is effective and if not why not reallocate those folks to par instead so we can do more of the effective community policing that you know you kind of talked a little bit about that we're seeing in ward one it's uh citywide sure so um we're having to utilize par and all the other proactive groups and um due to the fact that we don't have enough officers to answer call for service right now so the calls for service are in progress crimes that we need to be able to go to and so um you know we can have a presentation down the road in public safety about um our patrol standardized patrol and what are what we're seeing but right now we are literally filling filling spots on patrol to handle calls for service in the different areas so i understand par is a very popular and it is good at helping the community police themselves coming up with solutions and i understand that but i've got to give my patrol officers help they are weary and they are burnt out and they're facing as you all see violent crime each and every night okay so chief oh sorry mayor please proceed thank you sir um so just for clarification then so the only folks that we currently have responding to calls for service are folks who are assigned to patrol no we have we have pulled other officers off of other um specialized units to help answer calls for patrol and we still have a limited amount of par officers but we have to we're rotating them through to have them do their time in the barrel if you will in a patrol and help us deal with the increase in crime and increase calls for service okay as a follow-up you did uh bring up a lot of you know socioeconomic factors that play into you know a lot of the background in the path frankly that is often long that leads people to anti-social behavior and then makes them you know encounter law enforcement um so i'm curious uh pre-coveted we had spoken about socioeconomic status or census tract information for folks that you all make arrests uh for remember we had a discussion in your office when you were still interim chief i'm just wondering is that part of the information that you're gathering now or is that still to be implemented or still trying to figure out a way we'll figure out a way to do that sir we have um i think we've talked about benchmark analytics right now that's in the it portion uh it's working on getting that implemented and then we can create exactly what it is that we're tracking but i haven't forgotten our conversation but i think we can all see without us tracking it we all know that there that that is a problem a socioeconomic and sometimes you have people that are turning to crime because they have no other alternative okay and that responsibility falls squarely on council i think so you know we need to revisit things like wages housing etc to help you all in your job so thank you further questions or comments councilmember gruber so chief just just to reinforce that you arrest people based on crimes committed and not on social socioeconomic status is that correct that is correct sir but what i'm talking about is we're just talking about the city looking at holistically uh prevention programs intervention programs and then of course enforcement and so what i'm trying to say is um i cannot solve the crime issue as the chief of police by myself i need help and i need everyone to be involved in that solution further questions or comments mayor uh councillor combs um yes thank you chief for your presentation i think it was really helpful to understand some of the new approaches that are being taken to try to address issues again proactively as you mentioned and to work together with other entities to be proactive i think that that's probably the most important point which you just reiterated that we can take away is that um some of the proactive things that we need are not things that police can and perhaps even should be doing um and would not fit with the stated goal of counsel to divert uniformed officers away from things that are not kind of in their training and expertise and really keep that focus on the violent crimes and things that are in the training and expertise so with that said um we've talked about youth violence prevention and you mentioned substance abuse mental health um so perhaps you're not the person i need to ask this question to maybe you are um how can we kind of build from some of those programs that we've started to kind of expand that to adults and to adult needs since the comment was made that adult crime is also a major issue so i know um councilmember gardner hilts and lawson all were looking at a restorative justice type program and and i to be clear restorative justice isn't going to work on our career criminals but i think that um there are programs that we can do to try and facilitate different options things that can be to be proactive as well as to try and rehabilitate but there is going to be a section of you know a criminal element specifically uh what we're seeing is a large gang element that we're dealing with and so um we're like i said the district attorneys and i and my team were all having these discussions on how do we take these violent criminals the ten percent that are causing you know the majority of the mayhem within our city how do we get them off the streets how do we get the guns out of their hands and um you know make sure that they're not able to victimize this community any longer for sure i appreciate that sorry mayor i'm not quite pleased to proceed yes follow-up thank you um so with that said it sounds like you're working with the da's office they have some problem solving and other courts are those things that you think would be beneficial to also have down at the city level or do you think keeping them at those um judicial district levels and just supporting them as counseling from within the city is the right approach you know i i think that would be a question uh better answered by say julie heckman mr brotzman or even judge day on whether or not they think that would work within our municipal court obviously like i said as many people that can come to the table to help us as a city deal with the increase of violent crime uh this cannot just be on the backs of the police thank you and then mayor i do have one more please receive please receive so then you said that after the current academy graduation um barring additional resignations or other attrition that we would be at about 742 officers um so that would put us relatively close to where we were before the current levels of attrition is that correct so ma'am exactly your your adding is correct and but we've already i just got a note slip to me that we're already looking at losing 20 to four officers to attrition in that same time frame so we're continually playing catch up and so until that slows uh we are going to still be in the crisis that we're in thank you okay the chief if i understand it right that if you had 72 or 742 officers you would be you would be able to fully staff patrol and fully be able to fully staff all the specialized units is that does that number work uh we would be at a better place sir yes sir that number would allow you to fully staff both am i correct 744 is our authorized strength at this point so yes sir mayor uh mayor pretend i'm sorry yeah no that's me thank you um i i think that number that's the two per thousand consent mandate it doesn't mean that that we don't need more than that because the right population i mean obviously it's okay this is a very good question what do you think chief what do you think can i finish my statement well you interrupted my question can i finish my question and i'll go to you i didn't interrupt you you recognized me no i wasn't done i'm sorry i didn't you didn't say you weren't done okay um chief tell me what the number is to fully staff patrol and fully staff specialized units sir i don't have a number to give you at this point obviously i think the point that uh mayor pro-tem was making is that additional officers would be welcomed uh to deal with this because as i stated when we have these violent crimes when we have these shootings multiple shootings in an evening in a district it takes my it takes staff from district three to help with district one and vice versa so more often i agree but what you're also saying is that to be 100 effective we need to fully stamp patrol and we need to fully staff the specialized units am i correct in that yes sir you are okay so can you give no obviously not now but i'd like to know what that number is okay thank you man for tim thank you um no my point was just that and i'm sorry i didn't think i cut you off i thought i thought you recognized me when i i thought you were done um my point was that just because that's our 2 000 number doesn't mean that that is adequate to deal with the increase in the the violent crime the the very different circumstances that we're dealing with today than than we ever had 20 years ago that was just my point thank you further questions or comments mayor mayor uh manfred tim coons and then um council member hilts council member coombs and then council member hill please all right thank you um so chief on that kind of question of staffing levels um can future presentations on that item include some existing data on recommendations for best practice of that ratio because my understanding is that two per thousand is actually higher than the recommended number for best practices in terms of police staffing um so can and maybe you have other sources than what i've seen but can we get some actual studies that have been done on that subject and some presentations on best practices with respect to police to population ratios yes ma'am we had a staffing study done a few years back that we can uh bring forward again and look at that what was we i know the city had asked for someone to come in and do an analysis uh so we can look at that and so um and then we're going to have to factor in you know the number of officers it takes to safely handle these calls and the crime scene and all those other things so um obviously i'm sorry i don't have numbers magic numbers right now um on what's going to make it better uh hopefully that we can drive crime down so that the 7 44 is going to be adequate but again i think everyone's making good points on you know right now we're just trying to do our best just to answer calls for service counseling um councillor hiltz thank you um thank you chief wilson for the presentation um i know you probably don't have some of those numbers in front of you because this was not a staffing study presentation um for study so i just wanted to recommend that maybe this go back to public safety for the staffing information we did have a staffing study done a couple of years ago we've gotten updates um annually in the time that i was on public safety so if it hasn't been done this year um maybe have that and then also be mindful of when we are looking at that staffing you know regardless of whether we're talking about super thousand or not but understanding that as we are shifting workload to uh civilians that you know that doesn't necessarily mean an increase in additional officers i think if the goal is to be able to respond to all calls the most appropriately that actual staffing ratio would need to be evaluated on an ongoing basis um but i just wanted to to share because i think we've just veered into a completely different topic and i know you know we get to stay on time this might be a really good conversation to have separately um and then and all of the background from the past couple years i think you know chief wilson's aware of it so maybe put together just a you know two-page overview of from then to now i appreciate that ma'am and then the community service officers is really um utilizing our officers dealing with what they're trained to deal with and then not having our our community have to wait hours upon hours for an officer when maybe we could send out a civilian to do the same exact report uh further questions or comments uh what's the um customer lawson and then councilman garner thanks chief wilson thank you for the presentation and for all you're doing and your plan as well i really do appreciate it i wanted to ask you what is the impact when when when we have officers or cadets that get out of the the academy they usually have to go with a experienced officer how is that impacting um you know people going out because usually that's really important especially just getting that field experience and that training um how is that impacting i guess the the workforce the amount of calls as well is that still happening or are we just sending people who recently got out of the academy just into the field and they just are kind of helping to navigate it itself and i just wanted to know the impact of that as well sure ma'am so when they're in field training it's 14 weeks in field training for our basic recruits and they do ride with a training officer so they're not a seasoned officer it's going to take them longer to complete these calls we have to make sure that they're able to develop into a solo officer and so and then they have to it's going to take them longer to write reports it's going to take them longer to do a lot of things and so that is going to affect the time that it takes on these calls and then i think that's a really good point when um you know a lot of times community says to me you know i had six cops show up well that could be three training cars so they're riding with a uh trainee and so it's not that we're you know elevating that call for six officer response it's a trainee car and you're gonna see a lot more trainee cars out there right now as we're trying to keep up with this attrition and so it's going to take longer and they're learning and some unfortunately sometimes we find that they are not able to um perform as a solo officer and then we have to let them go and we're back we're back to the drawing board and getting new people in and training them up and hoping that they're going to be a fit for this career okay thank you for that mayor can i just uh do another question please please receive um and then chief wilson i in your plan um i want to know i know that we you know do to cover we didn't have the night out programs which i think is kind of a unique thing and i know your your officers are tasked and that's kind of hard to probably do um i just think if you if you cut that back up it might be good to have like um some information for the community because i believe that it's everybody we have to come together about locking your cars you know be on alert you know people have these rings i have these rings and there's always oh there's reports fired or something like that so i'm i'm hoping that that might be in your plan as well i think that that's a community officer leadership you know to really bring that forth as well yes ma'am national night out's coming up and then we're also you know hoping to you know work with community groups and help them realize better crime prevention through environmental design what they can do as community members and i would love to see a vibrant neighborhood watch program come back to be honest uh councilman gardner thanks chief wilson for your uh presentation appreciate it um i i want to dig a little bit more into um the term used a couple different times career criminal um and i and i think when you're dealing with that type of individual it's a lot less about socioeconomic factors than it is about other things but i i guess what i'm curious about is can you talk somebody and i i really want to focus more on some of the more violent crimes murder and um and those types of things but how often are you all finding that there's a relationship between the parties um can you talk a little bit more about how you determine if it's gang related and then i guess kind of another part to that are you finding that um that from the public there's a hesitance to talk to the police about what happened in these events and then making it harder for you to determine that it's either gang-related um and or some type of relation between the parties yes sir and that's a great point that you bring up so our i want to assure the public that our the homicide numbers that we're looking at majority of these are not stranger type situations they have whether it's a domestic violence relationship a relationship um where they both be in a gang or they know each other it's not something that is just random um and i and i can tell you that we have a lot of individuals especially if it's gang related that are not cooperating with the investigation don't want to speak to our officers on non-fatal shootings shots fired calls whatever and they may be um concerned about retaliation and i completely understand that and i i know i'm taking time away from christina and her presentation but um you know i think she's going to talk about how the gang element really affects not only our youth but you know how do we get individuals out of feeling like turning into a gang as their only opportunity and so when we talk about the career criminals yes sir um the witnesses in these crimes a lot of times it's a suspect shooting another suspect right there now they're the victim but they were the suspect last week and so um we definitely have a percentage of community uh the crimes that we're seeing in our community that are um gang-related and individuals that do not want to cooperate when we're trying to solve it they would rather solve it themselves and then we have to be concerned about retaliatory shootings and that's when we're talking like i said with denver and other metro groups to get these individuals off the street before they take it it matters into their own hands so to follow up on that is it possible then that a higher percentage of the homicides for example could be game related we just haven't been able to make that connection yes sir and then of course we do have um you know robberies gone bad where people i mean unfortunately a young man lost his life trying to sell a gaming system uh recently so um you know we have robberies where people are taking advantage and things go wrong drug deals going wrong as well but there's that relationship that they meant to cross paths somehow all right i appreciate it yeah further questions or comments persons the counselor persons thank you thank you chief wilson you've you've gone through a lot these past two years and our police department has gone through a lot and you know i said in public safety meeting i've always had the police's back and always will they work hard and they they deserve our appreciation and they deserve for us to have their backs and unfortunately past two years has been very difficult for a lot of different reasons now tonight we've talked about a lot of good things um you know i i love the programs the de-escalation programs and i'm sorry that we're not getting the people to apply that we really need but honestly i have to ask myself if i was in that position why would i you know the elephant in the room is politics has gotten involved in policing and it's gotten in the federal level the state level and in the community level we've been taking away things from police and it's it's very hard on their morale and you know we've we have to know that we did it and they did it the feds did it the state did it and the state the state even came back and took more put more um um issues on on the police this session and that has to demoralize them um but you know we have to think about um what this is doing to our citizens what is this doing to the residents of aurora when they do sit and wait for police to come when they have their cars stolen or their car broken into and they call and it's hours before somebody comes this is affecting you know where the rubber meets the road you know yes it's horrible for our police and our fire because it's affecting our fire department too um but it's it's that it's john q citizen you know they they don't want politics in policing and fire they don't want to be woke they want to be safe they want somebody to to come when they need them and that's what we haven't talked about tonight you know that they don't want politics in policing and you know until until we can get that out um well i don't know if we'd ever get it all out but we have to think about the people it affects um so i you've got a big job you know i i'm all about keeping the equipment that you have i i have seen um over the years where bear has used been used to save lives to keep people safe when out on the road uh in the last snow snow storm and got people out of cars so they wouldn't freeze to death the man that was made allegedly was making bombs um you know you you had to have there to keep our officers safe to get them close you know bear was just shot up uh last week i mean it's we don't need the equipment all the time but when when you need it you need it you know so i i'm a big advocate for that so um i just wanted to say that and i want the the police and fire all the first responders that are listening tonight to know that i have their backs and i will do what i can um i'll tell you our citizens were horrified when um mr trombley's editorial came out you know they think holy crap you know he's he's being more woke than he's thinking about me you know they don't want that they want service they want the police when they want the police and we have to remember there was a guy sitting in washington d.c a few months ago telling us that colfax is is not a high crime area and most of this council believed him you know i spoke up i know colfax it is it is not uh no crime zone you know so you know it it's a huge huge problem and tell me what i can do to help and i will help i'll be there for you and all of our first responders but i do appreciate all you've done and i know you're searching for answers but until we get politics out of out of policing you're always going to have problems so thank you that's all i have to say further questions or comments mayor councilmember i think that council member burson's means politics she doesn't like in policing because politics have always been in policing no i didn't say that okay wait for further questions or comments seeing none chief uh thank you very much and uh look forward to seeing the numbers in terms of the resources that you need to fully staff up control and fully staff up your um your specialized uh groups uh with that uh the time is now 803 we will be in recess until 80 808 to listen to youth violence prevention program update council stands and recess [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] hey so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] [Music] maybe we should all just uh happened foreign okay we are now uh back in session uh and uh i'm number three v youth violence prevention program update uh uh christina and byron let me go ahead and share my screen okay do you all see my screen yes okay great thank you uh good evening council members thank you for having me here today um as uh mayor kaufman mentioned my name's christina i'm the youth violence prevention manager i was hired to the city during the national youth violence prevention week that went from april 12th through the 16th business then have been working to develop the program so today i'll be providing you all an update of the progress and specific accomplishments uh so this program was funded by city council and city leaders after seeing an increase in violence among youth and recognized that violent behavior is a public health crisis chief wilson just provided some examples of data showing the rise in violent behavior specific to youth um in her presentation our city's leadership also recognized that violent behavior is a crisis and we will need a youth and community informed response that is inclusive of that collaborative approach that chief wilson spoke about we'll have to work in partnership with agencies from a variety of different disciplines in order for us to leverage resources and address the individualized needs of our community members which is known as a collective impact so our program will focus on implementing a public health approach which is what chief wilson spoke about in her presentation where we will have to address the community review data identify risks impacting our city and strains that we can build on and taking all of that information to build a collective response as we move forward with developing our program we will ensure to use best practices and programming that has shown to be evidence-based to ensure that we have the highest level of success possible and expand on those efforts to develop short and long-term strategies we will use a combination of prevention intervention strategies to both serve youth and families that are at risk and that are high risk as well as chief wilson mentioned the influences that lead to a lot of the violent behavior that we're seeing are are stable and are complex and addressing this crisis that we're facing will take time and will require us to change the community's norms towards violent behavior um so as you see here these are some of the best practices and evidence-based approaches that have been proven to be successful both locally and nationally these are um this is these are some of the models that we'll review pure violence for example implements a public health approach the comprehensive game model has been implemented and evaluated in different sites across the country and has been successful in violent reduction efforts the review of local efforts is also important as denver has been identified by the department of justice project safe neighborhoods as being one of 10 cities in our country that has been successful in implementing violence reduction efforts chief wilson spoke of suppression level actions that she's taking with her department to address violent behavior so what this program will do is complement the work that chief wilson is doing and implement intervention and prevention level responses to have that larger collaborative response some of these models are linked in our website in case you do want to go on there and learn more about each of these models um so what you see here are goals that have been accomplished um so far in the last four months um some of the accomplishments include hiring program staff to include outreach workers and a coordinator working with our community communications team on program awareness efforts building connections with stakeholders that include system and community-based organizations that are representative of both adams and arapahoe counties that will work together to develop that comprehensive response many of our stakeholders um have not been engaged in the past and so this is the first time for many that um have been engaged and have been part of this conversation in partnership with the city around you with violence and so a lot of them are very engaged very supportive and are actively wanting to move forward in developing this comprehensive plan the initial action table was held last week which was our kickoff where over 50 representatives from a variety of agencies came together to learn about the ybp program and what it means to take that collective impact and public health approach and then next we have developed our youth violence prevention advisory council that has is currently made up of 11th youth that will be supporting the program school to have a youth informed approach and will attend program-led and funded activities you can find a recruitment video on our website if you would like to go to auroragav.org empowerment youth where you can um watch three of our youth advisors being interviewed and who are speaking of very specific challenges that youth face in our city we are still recruiting for youth and so if you know of anyone um please refer them to auroragov.org volunteer so they can learn more about those positions our advisory council is meeting monthly and are the members are being incentive incentivized um our city also signed a regional compact with denver as both cities do recognize that a lot of the violent behavior is crossing both jurisdictions as chief wilson mentioned and the need for us to work together so the the regional compact has been created and denver and aurora leadership has been meeting monthly and will continue to be monthly to be able to look at developing a regional response our program has also began to assess and begin to dive into some of the the current risk factors impacting the community which i will speak to here next as well as the i'll speak a little bit more about the youth pop-up event series so our program has currently funded seven organizations who will be hosting approximately 42 events this summer and fall in different locations around the city the first event was held last weekend and events will be scheduled through the end of october these events aim to provide youth access to pro-social activities structured time safe environments and connections to positive adults to prevent them from witnessing becoming a victim or being recruited into some of the delinquent criminal behaviors occurring in our community as the chief mentioned she is using specific efforts to have more visibility in the community these pop-up events are a perfect example of a prevention level response to increase the coordinated provincial prevention level visibility effort to help reduce some of the violent behavior happening in the community a national base this is based on a national best practice to support community-based organizations to lead these efforts since they have the connections to the community residents they know the community best and so these funds will help build their capacity and will help build fund opportunities that can help them with long-term relationships and ongoing programming efforts um so this is the application process that we followed interested organizations did have to attend a q a they had to submit an application it did work with a review panel of six to review those applications and seven organizations have been identified to receive funding this list here shows the criteria and requirements of the agencies that will be receiving funding for some of those pop-up events to name a few each agency have the opportunity to apply up to for up to ten thousand dollars provide a scope of work we will have to track very specific deliverables based on their specific um programming and attend scheduled meetings with program staff just to ensure that everyone's on the same page that they're turning in the proper documentation and also getting support from us one of the ways that we're supporting these community-based organizations is by connecting them with larger organizations or other city agencies like apd like libraries like parks and rec for those agencies to be able to attend some of those events and inform the community of available resources and also develop other partnerships this here is a list of agencies that will be getting funding and the funding amount again these events will be held in different parts of the city and will provide a diverse range of events some will focus on having safe zones others will be partnering with our schools and when is a faith-based faith-based alleged effort um these organizations have been working really hard to get these pop-up events up and running and the program has been supporting them and giving them the tools to be able to have the capacity to go after some of this funding to be able to develop the structure that they need in order for them to be successful in these efforts i previously mentioned the assessment efforts the program is currently looking into which is really important as the chief mentioned it's important for us to understand what is happening in our community in order for us to develop a proper plan of action so the first partnership that i have is with tri-county where youth and adult survey was created to capture the community's perception around risk factors impacting war youth that data will be used to populate an interactive dashboard that will be accessible to everyone and give very specific information or risk factors impacting the city and in what specific areas such as violent behavior and drug use another partnership i have is with rocky mountain partnership who will be conducting nine focus groups where over 80 representatives ranging from mental health providers parents youth school representatives criminal justice and social service workers will provide their feedback and their input around how violent behavior is impacting the city gaps and services solutions current neighborhood strings and all of that information will be used to inform our strategic plan that we develop an executive report will be written with their findings and will include recommendations for us to consider as we move forward with developing our plan so this is the uh the structure that the program will take um we'll want to take that we're asking our partner agencies to support this is a breakdown of the different support groups that we will need to be able to have that collective impact we need stakeholders that have the expertise that can speak to some of these areas such as substance use mental health community mobilization intervention specific services that can all inform very specific short-term and long-term actions that we can take from an initial review of the city's processes these are six areas that the program will explore to develop a response earlier there was mentioned that adults are the most active in some of the violent crime but we also have to consider how many of those adults are recruiting some of the vulnerable youth in our community and how they're they're recruiting these views to to be involved in some of the organized crime or some some of the behaviors that support some of that larger organized crime and so it's really important for us to keep in mind that some of these youth do come from generational gang families as well or families that are involved in ongoing criminal behavior and so we need to develop a multidisciplinary response to be able to provide a wrap around support not just to at risk for high-risk youth but to the whole family in order for us to change some of those behaviors and some of those norms as a city we also have to consider that there's been larger systems systemic changes outside of cova that have impacted youth one of them being the family spurs prevention service act that has closed most of the juvenile residential centers that have left many high-risk youth in our community that are actively involved in some of the delinquent behavior going on and so that's another reason why it's important for us to have that multi-disciplinary team for example to be able to partner with our organizations our partner organizations um so as far as updates for city council moving forward i will plan on submitting monthly reports on uh for two council and our city leadership on progress made and also highlighting very specific accomplishments i'll also continue to provide updates during the housing neighborhood services and redevelopment policy committee around our program to ensure that everyone has updates of where we are with the program and so that's an overview of where we are with the program some accomplishments some insight into some of the activities that are going to be going on at this upcoming quarter and i'm happy to answer any questions anyone may have the questions there staff council member coombs that was not me uh you i'm sorry counselor with councilmember marcano first customer thank you mayor um and thank you for that presentation christine i appreciate it i did have a question for you because i didn't see it listed in the presentation or the extra slides you showed what's the status of uh keep the lights on and that pilot yeah that's a good question so keeping the lights on we've been exploring that and what we found was that it was a program that was presented to council it wasn't funded i have checked in with our school districts and right now the ask has been for us to look into specific pro social activities that they are that they would like to um move forward with the keeping the lights on project may not necessarily fit the needs of the school districts right now um especially considering some some of the liabilities that they may run into with opening a school to anyone and everyone instead they want us to develop a partnership that's more structured more specific to address some of the needs that they're identifying i have been in communication with aurora public schools and they have been part of some of our work groups and that conversation is moving forward and uh cherry creek schools have recently joined and so i'll be working with them on developing possible partnerships okay great i just wanted to make sure that you had already connected with the deputy super for creek because he was very interested in the program so all right thank you no further uh uh questions or comments yeah uh councilman lawson oh thank you christina for the presentation and also um thank you for inviting me to the action table that we had last week um just i had a couple i have a question for you so we've had some youth um violence um in aurora and i'm wondering how your team is reaching out to the victims and also to the people that possibly are maybe involved um because i know you have all these these different services and organizations but i'm just trying to wonder is that part of this this i know we're setting up the program and we're moving and we're doing that but what kind of action is being done on that level in terms of connectivity with the victims and also possibly the people who are doing the crime and i know that there's there's some things that have to be filled with the police department but i'm just wondering how that out because we do have some outreach workers so how is that being how are you approaching that yeah that's a good question and so this kind of ties into a question that chief wilson was asked um where a lot of the individuals that are being currently victimized by not just the gun violence but aggravated assaults and stabbings are um have had some level of involvement that led to their victimization whether it's dealing drugs um they're involved in some of the gang activity and so what we have to consider is that a lot of these individuals do not want to report they are not engaging with victim services and they may not want to engage with our outreach services so what i'm working on is i am meeting with uc health representatives that have the aim program as well as um representatives from the the apd victim services unit to figure out goals who's working with who who's outreaching to who and how we can support um a couple of things that we have to consider especially coming from the aim program is that they have very specific hipaa regulations they have to follow and so we have to figure out how can we get around some of those hip-hop regulations how can we support the work that their outreach workers are already doing without duplicating some of those efforts and then how can we complement some of the work that victim services is doing so that group has been meeting to be able to identify how the outreach specialist i have currently can support some of the work that's already being done um as far as reaching out to the individuals that are involved in some of the actual violent crimes that's something that i still have to develop um so part of the intervention work group the focus of that group is to begin identifying who do we want to target what is the age range who's currently under supervision who's currently already working with an outreach provider and how can we um then work with some of those individuals that aren't currently um receiving any services okay mayor can i go far well i'm glad that you're doing that because i think that that's essential to this addressing this issue as well um just a question on these pop-ups so basically this is they're not getting the groups are not getting the 10 000 up front they're actually having to have some measurements to determine the success and all of that of these programs is that correct and i think i've asked you this question offline but i just want to make sure that that is what's happening we're just not giving ten thousand dollars to these organizations they do have to have some measurements of success of how you know how of the pop-ups what they're what they're actually going to be providing is that correct yes that's correct so that these uh the seven organizations will be reimbursed um based on the supporting documentation that they provide and so that's why one of the requirements for them was to have continued conversations continued meetings with myself and the program coordinator that will be joining our team next month um to ensure that some of that data some of those measurements are being accomplished and that they are providing supporting documentation for that reimbursement okay and then just lastly i know i made this comment to you and jessica prostner as well you know we do have some space here and one of the things that i have brought up to you um is that you know kids need a space um where they can and i understand um you know we have a library that we have a community room that's not being used where they can have some programming some you know different types of things that come into that would interest them um and i know that that is that's something that you're going to be considering these kids need something like entrepreneur how to become that having people who have been and maybe in the life maybe you know training them on certain things or just having people come in in general um you know music art something i mean i'm just trying to figure out is there a place where these kids can go poetry night um you know just different things that they're that would intrigue the kids to have them think about something else than other than doing the violence in the community i'm not saying that's the answer i'm just saying that's some of the thought process that we should consider yeah definitely um and that's a good question and so part of the assessment that i've been doing is learning more about what are current efforts in place in the community and how can we expand on some of those so there's already current efforts that we can help continue to fund and expand one of the agencies for example getting a funding from us for the public events is a really good example where they have a partnership with specific middle schools the funding that they will be getting will expand to serve high schoolers um the other partnership or the other thing that i have been looking into is parks and rec for example they're going to be partnering with our school district to see how they can get direct passes to some of the students um at the the libraries also i know doing some work around moving around some of their space to ensure that it's accessible to youth and so there's a lot that we can build on now um and that's part of what we have to do is who currently has capacity and how can we build on them um especially if they have those connections already with the community and the youth um and those connections are really important because parents will be a lot more likely to have their youth access some of those services um if if it's an organization that's already out there the music for example the poetry street fraternity is a really really good example where that's a partnership that i'm currently working on developing further and and seeing how we can partner with them and expand on some of the programming that they have further questions or comments mayor uh miami thank you um yeah i think you have some really good ideas i have a question on the pop-up um partnerships because there are seven organizations are those located in a certain low area or was this you know city wide with all the wards it was an open invitation to everyone and so it's um they're located in different wards within the city yeah and do you have any that were in ward 6 for example um my northern part of my ward no i don't think we have anything up in that area okay because i have i mean there's there's definitely um kids that have issues that that need assistance as well um you know that live along tower and camden buckley and hampton and those areas uh near those high schools so when you when you say you're going to track the results before you fund them what i don't i guess i'm having a hard time understanding how how can you track them because are these are these kids that any kid can join that organization or is are you targeting certain individuals um so it's different and actually there is one organization that's doing somewhere closer to that region that you're mentioning um which is um new direction i believe they they are hosting some events towards that location and so it's our website and and we can get a full list of all the events and addresses and times but our website does have a calendar events and so you would be able to to get more information um so as far as the measurables they are different based on the the application that the organization submitted um so as an example there was one organization that submitted very specific funding for yoga mental health wellness [Music] self-care approaches and so their measurables will be based on the number of youth the number of youth that engaged in the different activities and access to the long-term programming that they will have throughout the year um another organization for example their measure their measurables will be focused around the number of youth recruited within some of the high schools um because it is a new partnership that they have with high schools they're really focusing on recruiting uh within specific schools but also um among specific the specific refugee community so they're wanting to target very very um specific communities within aurora to ensure that those youth have access to um sports and and people so the measurements are really to get people in the program it's not to measure the outcome of that they were you know that it prevented them from going down you know the wrong road or they kept you know you know what i'm saying it's not it's more on the recruitment i guess yeah and and the only reason why we can't attract that level of of measurable is yeah is it spending very specific a very short period of time and it's it's meant to find a pop-up event so we're not providing a direct service necessarily that can track some of that behavioral change okay thank you for your questions or comments mayor uh councilman combs um so thank you for this and for the updates um i know you said that there's a calendar on the website that we can find for the specific or for all of the events will there be any type of marketing for specific individual events that we can share out on social media um yeah i'm working pretty closely with our communications team on marketing efforts so it's something that i can take back to them and see if we can do definitely thank you further questions or comments saying no no thank you very much for your presentation christine thank you have a good night uh number three c capital infrastructure master plan uh parks recreation and open space uh brook bell good evening if you um bear with me for a minute i'll share my screen adrian do you see that did you see the presentation yes we can see yes thank you my name is brook bell and for the public on the director parks recreation and open space at the june 21st city council study session i presented the pros capital impact or what i'm sorry the pros capital improvement master plan that is also known as the cimp the first half of that the plan tonight i will present the second half of that plan the cimp is a consolidation of pros capital projects and maintenance needs that do not have a foreseeable funding source and so to move forward these projects in any combination would require a bond initiative and potentially a mill levy increase to fund the capital construction maintenance and operations with that i'll start for uh this is a review of a slider presented on the 21st of june this shows what typical capital allocations or funding sources the prose department has open space we spend about six million any given year on capital projects conservation trusts 2.5 million conservation press star lottery funds these are ongoing funds that we receive annually gifts and grants and parks development funds are one-time resources and grants come typically from arapahoe county great outdoors colorado and adams county development fund uh fees are our development comfort uh developer contributions and again they're one time and so if you live in an area where there's significant development there'll be more cat of parks development fees accumulating for projects in those areas so we'll start with open space facilities the first one is plains conservation center improvement there was a master plan done on the planet conservation center in 2019 with significant public input from the neighboring community and they the master plan includes building a visitor center and there would be a need to bring in utilities so gas and electric and water so the expense for that master plan is on the order of 37 million dollars of one-time cost and then increase the operating cost of about six hundred thousand the aurora reservoir improvements if you've been to aurora reservoir it's it's very popular in the last year here today we're up 30 percent on our visitation which is amazing compared to last year where we were up again um compared to 2019 if you've been there and you've queued up on that one entry into the reservoir it could be on a weekend you could be waiting in line for a while for people to leave the parking area and come back out on that single entrance and so the aurora reservoir master plan would include a second primarily a second interest into the facility and also additional parking and could create some area for larger scale special events the quincy reservoir improvements are more modest they would include improving the boat ramp the beach upgrading the beach area improve the loop trail add restrooms and expand the ranger building that is out there star k ranch now there's a lot of improvements that go on there that we can fund because they're again modest improvements but this would include improving the interior of building repairs creating a nature play area expanding and repairing the parking lot so 1.7 million for that problem delaney farm improvements this would include addressing a historic repair of the historic buildings improving trailhead connection making a larger parking lot uh yeah and then now this is trails for trails highline uh canal crossing there are a lot of below grade and above grade crossings that require attention the above grade it would primarily be for safety and so we're looking at about 16 million dollars for that process highline canal opportunity areas these have been reviewed in the past with city council has to and they are consistent with a high line canal framework framework plan and they would improve a include improving some areas as you see on the map here to create some areas for people to stop enjoy the area and then rest and just you know develop some of the the uh signage and create uh some seating areas and such the best at the bustling buffer trail if you look on the map here we purchased uh with the help of numerous grants and multiple agencies over the year many open space properties surrounding buckley to create a buffer to protect the mission at buckley against encroachment from development and also to protect the area for natural resources and wildlife on the map the uh buffer trail that would be near e470 that uh will not happen because the e-470 has built the high plains uh trail along there so there's not a need for that trail now however the trail on the western portion of buckley that would be about seven hundred thousand dollars to construct we also have a regional the possibility of a large regional trail connection and this is through the triple creek trail construction project which would construct 12 miles of south surface trail through the eastern eastern part of the city as development occurs we'll gain more of these properties and we're looking at 11 million dollars at one time and then everyone wants toilets on these trails and so we would be looking at an additional 12 vault toilets and open space sites and then with the items i've reviewed in the past as far as the undeveloped parks the cap of the park renovation projects and the open space projects there always comes maintenance requirements and so the next series of slides and i won't spend very much time on them there's just a significant need for parks and open space to have additional maintenance areas as we grow and so these would be maintenance renovations at existing phillips facilities or adding buildings at newer sites and so for example at the seams uh at the same facility site that is currently under construction with the lower water eventually pros would want a building to sell and the cost of that would be approximately 35 million give or take depending on the size of that facility recreation events and facilities we have some beautiful new recreation centers that i know you're all familiar with moorhead recreation center the central recreation center and the southeast recreation center is under construction we have smaller community centers and the back recreation center and also utah aquatic center some of these require renovation and there is also opportunity there could be opportunity to build new recreation centers identified four here we don't have specific locations for those those would require a study we also require public input but if we're looking at four recreation centers um the cost here this was done a few years ago and it was based on 2019 pricing it's gone up significantly recreation centers are costing anywhere from 40 million to 60 million dollars each especially if you're looking at some of the newer facilities that have been done uh in the metropolitan area in northland and thornton they're on the order of 60 million if you look at the southeast recreation center we budgeted 42 million for that facility these facilities could be large recreation centers they could also be more modest and be focused focused on a specific group whether that be our older adults um or it could be our teams there's a number of things that could be done with recreation centers or they could even be focused on a theme meadowood remodel if you've been to the meadowwood i would call it a community center it's also referred to as recreation center it's oddly it is oddly arranged and while the footprint that it sits on and the park it can't be totally scraped off and rebuilt it could use some updates that would improve locker rooms meeting space classrooms and just make it more enjoyable to use and actually accommodate larger uh interest groups as well the beck pool uh aquatics renovation that pool is has reached its end of life and so we are facing renovating that pool one way or the other in the next few years um if not sooner um and we're looking at about four million we've talked about multiple ideas and it would include community engagement but we've also talked about can you focus it more on therapeutics and our older adults and that is the population that seems to use it quite a bit more utah pool edition so the utah pool aquatic center there is space on this site now a significant there is space on this site in the southwest corner and there have been some renderings and thoughts put into expanding the aquatic center to include a gym um some meeting space and turning it into a full-service recreation center that's where would sit where connect to the utah pool is in the parking area and then the parking areas would shift to the southwest corner this is a concept it would again require a bond initiative to do that uh update we will be looking at again these are 2019 process of prices that's 23 million it would be somewhat more of that based on current construction cost of the field house this has always been you know this has been discussed many times based on some of the history i looked at this would be a field house at the aurora sports park off of colfax and it would be it's been envisioned as a 60 000 square foot building there have been some studies about that it would include tens two sorry not ten two synthetic fields fading cages restrooms concession and again when this work was done uh several years ago it it may some of the amenities uh could be would be um addressed republicanly and i believe this might be the final i item city of rural could benefit from the event center whether it's cultural or it's uh pros or you know others we could um benefit we would benefit from an event center would be what's envisioned here is on the order of 50 000 square feet we don't have a spot or a location i think there are a number of properties that could be looked at as far as placing this amenity that it's a future future possibility as well oh we do have one more thing it's called glove that is an enterprise fund so it needs to pay for its operation and we do transfer a small amount of capital i'm sorry conservation trust funds to the fund to help with their capital uh investments and um but they do primarily pay for their own operations and they have significant uh irrigation replacement needs and and new equipment cart storage part path of improvements they do manage to every several years replace parts and different courses and and can continue to do that based on current play and revenue but for these larger capital projects they wouldn't even support oh and i said we were almost we were done we're not quite the rory hills clubhouse this has always been an interesting staff and a few council members what can we do to update the aurora hills clubhouse it is a very busy facility and if you pop in there on any given day even during the week that place is just um full of people enjoying the restaurant and so we would be looking at a little over eight million dollars to renovate that and that completes the pros capital improvement master plan list any questions fair persons uh councilmember persons thank you well brooke you you saved the best till last the aurora hit [Music] you know that's been on my wish list for 12 years and it hasn't happened yet so hopefully something will happen and get it done because you know it's easy to see it needs a refresh it does need a refresh and we do a little bit as we can afford it so thank you thank you so um a quick question uh well first of all in the event center any ideas about how to fund something like that not not well again any number of these as i said earlier would require a bond initiative i i we have not explored if there is ability to do public private partnerships um it you know it just these are big projects not only the event center but the others as well it really will take a significant amount of work to determine when the city center area be the logical place for something like that you know we haven't possibly we haven't we haven't discussed the the locations here okay so my last question is on the golf course and that i just have a concern i mean i i live not far from a golf course that was a private course taken over by the city because it failed financially a very long time ago and so uh i'm just you know as you know uh private interests keep building golf courses in the city i worry that we're going to be in that position at some point in time to have to take one another one over that might not make financial sense to us and so um we're in the trajectory of golf in terms of the number of players i know he had a spike during the pandemic but the national numbers i read are trending down but i wanted to comment on that so prior to covid the national numbers were trending down about three percent um aurora was trending down i believe about one and a half percent if i were making the number corrected this is prior to copen you're correct there was a spike and we're maintaining those higher levels right now what would be really interesting it would be for me to provide an update six months from now once we're at through the end of the season and now that so many of our competitors or um have reopened and what i mean by competitors competitors for the dollar spent in housing on on recreation or or other activities whether it be eating out or going to the movies or going to class golf whatever it be so it'd be interesting to see what it looks like six months from now and have we maintain that increase in visitations of the golf course i i would share with you that doug mcneil our manager of golf shares were concerned about having other golf courses uh built either near or in aurora because of the competition um the generations the younger generation has not been playing ball as much as the older generation has and we consider the market saturated or it had been prior to kovis and i don't you know he would say he would want to be cautious that it's not still oversaturated okay good further questions or comments mayor yeah uh man for tim thank you um brooke i know you and i had discussed earlier last week about the funding part um on the parks that are you know we have the undeveloped parks and then we have the partially completed parks um you had talked about where the funding comes from out of the impact fees and then also out of the park development fees and park development fees are are assessed per home um so it's kind of distributed community by community basically the impact fees i think you said would that are that are paid by developers only apply to i thought you said 100 acre parks which then really restricts where the money goes because i don't even know of any 100 acre parks possibly signature and thank you um and i did get more information on that councilman and so what i can share with you in all of council is that the question was how can the capital impact fees be used and the answer is and i've got the list here and they could be used on regional parks that would be like aurora reservoir they could be used on large urban parks large urban parks are typically the 100 acre parks and we have two we have one developed which is sand creek park and we have the undeveloped property that we call signature park and that is the one that is along alameda avenue and um if you're going east from the amc that big stretch of property that's near buckley air questions oh okay okay so then they also capital impact fees can also be used on what we call um special use parts and so examples of those and that's where the variety is and so i apologize conversation that we had last week um the variety is um coops park would be crooks park sports park olympic park um fall fields so olympic park and highline canal ball fields are considered special use parks oops park the basketball park on sixth avenue is considered a special use park um grandview dog park so dog parks are considered special use so when we reviewed engine on shooting plane first when we're viewing some areas there is also the area that's at quincy enhanced that's not quincy hampton it's at quincy and it's by the lowe's store at quincy and buckley i believe there's a piece of property i hope i have the intersection right um thank you for your patience so i don't have that quiet question that's okay it's a little store in the southeast and it's a piece of property that is created as a session park so capital impact needs to leave that at that so could could a special use park be within a different park i haven't done that question i haven't i haven't asked that particular question i don't think personally i would say that if you built ball fields in a community park they would not qualify as a special use park okay it's a community park and ball fields in a community park are considered an amenity of community parks okay thank you further discussions questions yeah that council comes um so i had a couple of specific to certain parks questions or certain projects um and so the plains conservation center i think all of those improvements are great one thing i've heard from folks that live on the other side of the xl easement which i'm sure you're aware of is a lot of concerns about the prairie dogs kind of migrating over into their yards and neighborhoods so are there any kind of improvements that can be made there in the park in the plains conservation center that can help address that migration across that easement and into the neighborhood i would have to get some information for council to answer that question there is a practice that the parks development works with the neighborhoods and we need significant neighborhood support i think it's almost and that's what i can't remember if it's a majority or if it's all um in order to mitigate for prairie dog um so i'll have to get some information for council members to give you the specifics on that okay save your email i'm sorry i don't have that with me today no that's okay and some of these may not be answer right now questions in fact most of them probably are not um another question that was raised to me was in terms of having the field house at the sports park and having the town center field house being constructed that puts them somewhat close together at least in terms of the full geography of the city so are there any other options for a site that might put the city's field house in a location that wouldn't be well served by the town center's field house so i would like to say about this review it was built on projects that were in 2019 before field house usa and so your comment is is a great comment anything that is being developed or or considered recreational a recreation center or the field house there should be some type of evaluation on the revenues that would come in and and is it competing with field house usa and so would it be appropriate to have that type of facility um near field house usa i um or not and i would i think what you're saying is it it requires further discussion and these these ideas and their locations are just that these were things well just that and so fieldhouse usa does change the landscape for developing any type of uh amenity near field house you look like okay thank you i just want to say on the fieldhouse issue of concern that uh you know i'm just thrilled that they are willing to make the investment and that investment will help stabilize uh the town center mall and in malls we know across the country uh need activities like that to make them viable to bring people in and so um boy you know and they're going to be paying taxes to the city that's the private sector entity so i'd be very concerned about any competition the mind undermined i understand i understand mayor and i would i agree and um yeah i agree thank you uh councilman oh mayor i had one more oh please proceed i'm sorry oh thank you um so the other one is with respect to golf you mentioned that the golf cart replacement happens periodically with the existing funds that um that the golf fund generates um my question is if we wanted to look at golf cart electrification in order to reduce emissions and environmental impacts of golf in our city would that be something that would require a capital investment or is that something that the existing golf cart replacement program can accomplish so it does require some capital investment i will i will be responding to that particular question um as part of the capital part of the budget review that you all have been exploring i can i believe and i may have this factor on them i believe that two of our fleets are electric now the capital investment that would be required as a spring hill golf course and it would require a cart barn because those parts are currently stored outside their gas driven and so to have them electrified would require a heart burn installation with the electric charging stations for those golf courses um with regard to murphy creek we have had electric cars at that golf course but as the batteries age in the current state of batteries and those carts often cannot make it around along the working creek buffers with the current batteries and so they have gone back to gas driven or gas fuel golf carts and so the interest there would be to see advancements in batteries for the longer course thank you i think battery technology is improving further discussion questions councilman mcconnell thank you sir uh so brooke thank you again for uh finishing up the presentation today um i did want to circle back to utah park and just remind me the original master plan did that actually include the future expansion into a rec center a full service rec center i got a message no no they had a message okay okay so either way um whether it's a rec center or you know some of our or some of my constituents have asked for a basketball court so that's that's going to be part of what's posed to the community then as the option and that's uh that is a project that was currently working on here too we'll start engaging the community on yes all right great thank you and then um i actually wanted to echo the mayor's sentiment about an event or performing arts center at the city center i think that's a logical place to put it the the conference that we went to in carmel uh last month really demonstrated i think how a great public investment like a performing arts center or something like that can really spark a lot of private sector investment in that area and frankly um in that 20-year span that we've had uh you know going back 1996 when carmel started their project and looking at that same area today in aurora they have a full-fledged city center with you know a whole medley of services and residential and we're still looking at basically empty fields populated by prairie dogs so i think that the sooner we can get something done there uh the better and i'm really excited to hopefully have more of a conversation on that questions or comments about prairie dogs okay okay uh thank you very much great presentation thank you thank you um i'm number 4a intergovernmental agreement with ccwcd for well augmentation alexander david alexandra and davis i'm sorry thank you mayor it's been a long evening for you all already so i will be pretty quick that i can answer any questions this iga this agreement is in front of you because it is an iga it is a simple agreement it is a relatively small amount and the reason it's an iga is because central water conservancy district is an a quasi-governmental entity and as you are well aware any contracts that the city enters into with another government and governmental entity must come before council so this particular agreement is to provide augmentation for a well we had purchased you may remember a little bit ago some water rights with those water rights um 15 to the 15 shares of the farmer's independent and came 144 acres of land property owned by the booze so or the bose boos so i think we call it the bose the bose um property and because we still own the property we have leased it to a farmer to keep the water in use until we need it for municipal purposes and there's not enough water on the land to actually irrigate on that land this well is a supplemental well we also own the well came with the property and this contract with central water conservancy district will provide augmentation water for that well to allow the farmer to fully irrigate the crops for as long as we deem necessary to lease it to that farmer we could do our own augmentation plan for the well that would be very very expensive and we don't intend to necessarily use that well for the long term so this is a much more economical option to allow the farmer to use the well while he leases our water and land until we can put them into the municipal system the cost of the contract per year is approximately sixteen thousand three hundred and fifty three dollars um the rate can change if central water conservancy district changes their prices but they will do so with appropriate notice and it will be continuous until we either move the water off or for whatever reason choose to do our own augmentation plan with that i will pause and see if there are any questions there's just one question and just want to be clear um are these surface water rights or groundwater rights so we purchased the surface water rights the well is groundwater rates so the farmer will have access to both surface water and groundwater rights the augmentation is for the well so the augmentation is for groundwater okay other questions and comments saying no alexandra thank you very much uh item number four be advanced meter infrastructure update and presentation uh marina uh lurch lar tch yes sir thank you for allowing me to present this evening if you can just confirm that you can see my screen yes thank you so much i don't see your presentation actually no i don't either we can see you well hello let me escape out of here and give that a try again here see if i can get it to come up better there you go excellent thank you very much let me just get that slideshow going here from the beginning okay so thank you again this is marina lurch i am a manager with the aurora water department and i just wanted to give an informational update on the current status of our meter reading system update a little history for those of you who weren't um here in 2016 at least when we started this we'll talk a little bit about our old uh or our previous metering system that's currently in place as a partial hybrid at the moment we'll talk about the new ami metering team that we're going to be stepping up and our update that's occurring we'll review the installation plan for 2021 and future as well as talk about a few bumps in the road that we've experienced of course we'll highlight some success stories and then certainly have some room at the end for some questions at the end our previous meeting replacements for your information are we certainly started a long time ago with walking our manual reading in 95 during the installation of 1995 we went to the automatic meter reading system which is our current amr meter system and that's the drive by as usual the aurora has always been very innovative and at that time we were the largest utility west of the mississippi to commit to the amr program uh as we said as a drive-by system it certainly reduced the number of meter readers at the time for the new technology that was in place we also had some benefits of reduced workman's comp injuries and then of course great improvements in our meter reading accuracy by just taking away some of the the data you know errors that could occur and we are still receiving one reader meter read per month in 2005 we began installing the second generation of amr and by 2011 all of the city's large meters were converted to the meter reading that we currently have in place right now um just to kind of go through some numbers just to see what the city looks like right now we are approaching 91 000 meters uh points for aurora water um over 98 of those are our water potable meters and then the varied ranges and sizes from 5 8 inch meters all the way up to a majority of 12 inch but then we also have one very large one at 20 inches and as we said we talked about the drive by system that's where we currently are and we are proactively replacing replacing those meters and for good reason because we are certainly getting end of life as you guys have discussed in a couple of previous presentations end of life is happening with our meters we want to make sure that we don't have mass failure before those meters are replaced in 2016 we conducted a meter replacement study to select the next generation of meters and with support from the council we were allowed to adopt the advanced meter infrastructure system which is currently called ami the benefits of ami very easily go from the walker to the drive-by and now to data cellular reads where we're able to receive incremental reads every 15 minutes with data for your water system uh obviously improved leak detection potential we are also able to identify if we have any tampering or any theft out in the system taking place we can see it we can ask for demand read so we can see something happening right at the moment and then the benefit for the future if we choose to go down this route is the smart city applications that affords us with changes in technology you obviously have impacts to your staffing situation and so when we were a walk by well actually at the beginning of the amr world with drive-by meters we used to have four meter readers we have recently reduced down to three and anticipate with as ami is installed across the city uh the the reduction of two more meter readers we want a meter reader who will manage any follow-up needs that we have out in the field that take place we anticipate about 35 000 meters once we hit those that number installed then we will be able to reduce one meter reader as we currently see it and then as i stated those three current meter readers would be down to one and that one would be taking care of any issues that we have out in the field that we need to manage and it talks about zero ftes but really there's one that's retained but adopted into a different area in my section that would help with meter reads this number is back from about a month ago we are currently about almost at 22 000 um installed ami meters and obviously reaching that number a little bit closer here as we start to do installations and and we'll talk about some of the bumps in the road that have slowed that system down a little bit just to give a quick view of what the the meter body looks like um you're seeing the meter body in gold here just so you can kind of identify what we're talking about especially when we talk about some of the bumps in the roads the register up on top which does the reading and tracks the water use such as black and then the gray end point that we talk about is where we are actually getting the water system information into our collection system and that's battery operated hence the bumps in the road as we'll talk about here shortly as i said we've got about over 69 000 amr meters still installed that we are going to be transitioning out our goal is that we are doing more than no more than our minimum yield as far as per month we don't want to make sure we don't infiltrate too many installations being transferred out so our maximum allowed that we are allowing these dollars to do per month is 2400 with a maximum per year of 28.8 be able to start doing installations so this is a four-year project or as we state in the in the profile here it's a 48-month project project we started on april 21st of 2019 actually actually 2020 april 19th 2020 um and so we are just a little over a year into our first our installation project feels like 2020 disappeared so it's hard to remember that year altogether for your information for council's information if you're kind of thinking about what about me thought process right now we wanted to put in our installation plan for the remainder of 2021 and you can see in here our anticipated plan as long as things roll out as planned we should be hitting the colfax to i-70 peoria to piccadilly area colfax to sixth avenue as well as chambers road to airport boulevard we have plans here in the next couple of weeks to be infiltrating the buckley space force base to be able to take care of the housing on that base as well as the mississippi to mexico and buckley to tower road areas and then early 2022 you'll see we should be transitioning into the hampton smoky hill and buckley to chambers road area um bumps in the road as uh we certainly found out a lot about our city from an infrastructure standpoint uh as we've been doing this transition to these new meters we've got a multitude number of the way the hoods are built out there as well as many different lid styles that are out in the system what types of yokes that we have and so a lot of our bumps in the road have really been about asset identification and truly identifying what we have so when we go to install them we understand what we're what kind of problems we may have or what fixes we need to make in order for the installation to be nice and smooth as we are experiencing aurora as well as many other places our installation company the badger meter company has also had their share of problems with maintaining staffing in order to do the installations luckily that is all starting to pan itself out and we've got a good staff to be able to do installations at the rate that we anticipated we had some you know identification and and trust in the lids that we were using out in the system so trying to really get comfortable with the the producers of the lids that we're going to be having which are now composite compared to the previous manufacturers which were a heck of a lot heavier and sturdy uh the composite lids are much lighter and in order for our signal to go out we need these composite lids in place so the lids are all being changed out in addition to the meters the obvious covet impacts we've had with increased costs and supply shortages which we're running into and one main point that we're kind of starting to come out of right now is just the ability to get the chips for our endpoints to be able to read so that stalled us a little bit but we've fortunately received quite a few meter shipments recently with full parts in place so hopefully we're starting to come out of that bump in the road i want to talk a little bit about success stories so you know what's coming your way especially as these ami meters start getting installed uh we reached out to some of our large partners in the city to take you know take advantage of this new technology and so our gaylord engineers are using ion water which is the customer portal to be able to evaluate their needs in their system and to support the hotel environment out there we have been finding leaks very proactively before they cost large dollars to our citizens as well as a lot of our commercial entities out there and in here i have an example about our aurora reservoir we found a leak underneath the uh the bathroom the restroom facility out at aurora reservoir which took quite a bit to fix this past summer we've been we finished that project up but that was a large league we would never have been able to identify without the ability to see what was happening when we couldn't see it conservation team has also been approaching commercial properties to make sure that they're taking the best benefits out of the ami system for those who have had it installed and and the ion water portal which is accessible to many of you already but also going to be accessible to anybody who has the ami system in the future to be able to take a look and put alerts for themselves as customers we can take a look and see what's happening on a daily use basis for ourselves and also identify leaks before they become major financial impacts to us a great example of these benefits of the ami system right now is the february deep freeze we had here in 2021 we were able to identify leaks within 24 hours to 72 hours which you know and in the past you wouldn't see until a month to two months later the even better portion of this is the majority of these properties that were are identified on the screen were vacant or tenant occupied so the impacts are you know multiplied you wouldn't have noticed some of these leaks and these properties until water was coming out the front door so we have we've already seen some great gains with the ami system so we appreciate the investment in that system i also wanted to throw in a custom customer customer kudos that we have received especially from the property manager environments commercial environments where you know some of the stuff that they now understand how important that customer portal is to be able to sign up be active on it and find out what's happening but as well as when we've started the irrigation planning for the season as customers have been opening up their sprinkler systems they're identifying leaks on their own and solving some problems before they become you know very costly for a lot of our constituents which is one of the best gains out there and i can tell you we have um that i threw a few up on this big screen but we certainly received many more than this as we go along and it's only going to get that much better as the installation progresses through the system so we're looking forward to what the future brings for us with the ami system and with that like i said we are hoping we're three years out from being able to finish that installation and i'm happy to answer any questions that you need questions of staff mayor i'm alberto uh yes thank you for the presentation um i was excited when this was first announced uh years ago um so it and we're one of those families that has toilet leaks all the time and we don't find out until we get a big bill when when do you anticipate you said what was the end date of when they would all be done we are 48 months out from we're about 15 months in right now okay um so you're still about three years you said their battery operated what is the the life of a battery on these systems they they currently it's an excellent question because we are battling a little bit of some of the technology that's happening right now where we're installing and we're having some battery failures pretty quickly um but badger is coming out and taking care of those we're reinstalling them without a problem and i believe it's a 14 year life but i will verify that okay and then on new development do those automatically go to that new system right away before the home's built yes ma'am as soon as the first meter that's installed on any new builds is going to be the ami meter and we've been doing that now for about 18 months okay thank you very much you're welcome further questions or comments um when you used when the city used the people to do the meter you mentioned workers comp injuries for those dog bites oh dog bites jumping fences i can imagine uh there's probably hopefully probably less dog bites than anything though okay okay further questions or comments i see none thank you very much for the presentation thank you uh i'm number 4c a six-month funding agreement between the city of aurora colorado and aurora arapaho battered women's shelter incorporated dba gateway battered women's services lana dalton well thank you mayor my name is lena dalton i'm the homelessness programs manager for the city so this is an extension of funds from when we initially started these funds in january we had to do six month agreements this time due to the lack of surcharge funds from 2020 and so with that we're bringing this back to you to fund the next six months for gateway domestic violence shelter questions to staff see no no thank you very much for the presentation uh i see no items from the city council no call-ups uh no miscellaneous items uh and no items removed from the agenda uh with that uh thanks everybody meeting adjourned nigel [Music] so [Music] [Music] you