[Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do do do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] uh the study session for the aurora city council for monday uh november 15 2021 is called the order of clerk please read the rule mayor kaufman mayor pro tim bergen councilmember berzins here council member coombs president councilmember gardner councilmember gruber councilmember hiltz here council member mercano president councilmember lawson here and councilmember mario present there's a quorum and mayor can we do the announcement please proceed good evening thank you for joining tonight's aurora city council study session if you are listening on the phone please note public comments are not taken during study sessions the phone line is in listen only mode city council welcomes comments from residents at regular council meetings on both matters appearing on the agenda and during public invited to be heard sign up open from those evenings at 6 00 pm thank you mayor versus hello she doesn't reverses thank you uh can i ask uh a question for legal before we get started with the questions please receive okay uh i i see several lawyers on here we did decide that our candidates for this committee would be screened from now on is that correct that is correct okay now is that social media screening to or not and i'm gonna let the city clerk answer because they actually did the backgrounds on this okay so so they're different even within the city there are a variety of levels that we go through and i'm not sure which level we actually used for the commissioners okay so will all the candidates for this committee from now on be told that if you put your name in the pot and you're chosen for an interview that you will be screened absolutely that's your requirement okay perfect thank you sorry that's okay i was just gonna um say on the application it does state that they're gonna have a criminal background check and it might become public record so it is on the application and also after council chooses who they would like to interview i send a memo to those applicants and it outlines the criminal background check process and when they can withdraw their application if they wish to not move forward and have the criminal background and check done and make public if it you know if we have a public records request for it that was my next statement so somebody can follow quora and get their background check okay thank you thank you mayor for letting me ask that mayor if i might do a follow-up yes please please uh let me pretend thank you and i guess for katie as well um i think last week because we had some issues um last interview around were we not going to do the google search so what we presented during the study session was to include the additional questions on the application that council requested and also to do the criminal background check and so that is what we did and we made sure you know that they fit the qualifications as being an aurora resident a registered voter and so that's the the background check that the city did we do not we did not conduct any kind of google search on applicants okay thank you very much all right well um this is how we'll proceed uh i will recognize uh each of the uh three applicants uh for a two-minute uh overview of their background and why they're interested in in the position uh then i'll go to questions uh i would ask that uh each uh council member and the mayor patreon asked the same question in the same manner to each candidate out of fairness uh and then um i will conclude by recognizing each of the candidate for two minutes for uh for their closing statement so with that um mr thomas mays is the first candidate to be interviewed are we bringing mr mays up and mayor mr mays is um online right now and his video is up okay very well um mr mace well i can't see him though i was at katie i don't have a visual on mr mr mays if you go to layout on the top right of cisco webex and change it to grid you might be able to see him i think he'll also tell us okay thank you uh mr mr mays um you are now recognized for for to introduce yourself uh and give an overview of your background and why you're interested in this position well good evening and thank you for giving me an opportunity my name is thomas mays i'm a aurora resident i've been in aurora now a resident of aurora since 1984. worked closely with the aurora police department and the fire department and various commissions uh with the city i am very much active in my community i i've worked closely with um i think four different police chiefs and uh worked on the recruiting side of it my daughter was at one time a aurora police officer she was one of the first recruits that i can credit my efforts to so i'm excited about that i am um pastor of the living water christian center where i've pastored the last 34 years um i'm part of the aurora community response team one of the charter members when it was founded back in 1991 work closely with the naacp their religious affairs chair and i enjoy the opportunity to better my community that's what i've been doing for many years working with the homeless uh trying to make sure that they are fed especially along the colfax corridor where our church is we've worked with the residents of the different motels uh even before we started uh the renovation of uh redevelopment of the colfax corridor so i worked closely with that worked closely with the job link project hooked up with the anschutz community to get jobs to some immigrants and some people with low income to get them in the foot in the door and low-income jobs but at the same time providing training so they would understand that the possibility of upward mobility so those are some of the reasons why i or some of the activities i've been involved in the reason i would like to be on the civil service commission is because i i feel like our aurora police is probably one of the finest that we've ever had i worked with the all-america city project traveled on behalf of both the aurora police and the city of aurora ensuring that people know that we have one of the finest police departments i want to ensure that they don't get a bad rap want to ensure that they never get defunded and that they are supported by our community and by our city government in every way that it can at the same time maintaining that balance with the community to ensure that the community's voice is being heard with the uh city thank you thank you oh katie are you timing these yes i am okay because uh that was i appreciate uh his introduction but it was over two minutes yes sir it's giving me a few more seconds to finish so i'll give the next candidate a few more seconds as well now when you're talking about three minutes is that three minutes uh from the beginning of the question or three minutes simply for the answer that would be three minutes including the question and answer very well uh mayor pro tem bargain please proceed thank you mr mays for joining us tonight and for applying for this very important commission my question is when commissioners conduct disciplinary hearings do you think that they should consider public opinion when making those decisions and what information would you consider i would consider community input i don't know that i would consider just opinion input would be those uh given that are actually facts okay thank you very much certainly uh councilmember you are not recognized for three minutes thank you um and this is this is a two-parter um as you know mr mays and thank you for being here tonight um our candidates will be screened before we vote on our choice we just discussed that is there anything you're currently doing or in the past involved with that might make you being on the civil service convention questionable to us or the media not that i can think of no okay thank you can you do you feel like you can be completely objective in hearings and and discipline appeals absolutely i believe i can and i know that i will that's one of my strong points of being open-minded and um being fair i'm many times called the balanced man okay thank you councilmember coombs you are now recognized for three minutes all right thank you mayor and thank you dr mays for joining us this evening for this interview um my question is around the investigations that the city has conducted and has undergone from other entities most if not all of them have placed pretty significant scrutiny on the operations of the civil service commission so should changes be required of the civil service commission and to the way the civil service commission operates how will you adapt to any changes well it would not really be a lot of adapting necessary and that most of those changes probably will take place very quickly i am a person who likes to go by the letter of the law however the changes come in i work with those i i'm not a fighter to fight the changes i am a person to believe in the letter of the law which is determined by the people uh through their votes and through the city council in uh their decisions that they make i align myself with those decisions i don't hold back my opinion in fact there's been times when i've been told that i'm brutally honest so i will certainly uh give my opinion but whatever is decided by the majority that's the way our country has been run for years and it's run uh i think it's ran pretty well um so i will be able to go with the majority and uh adapt to whatever our city our community our city council and our government adheres to uh council member garner you're now recognized for three minutes uh hi pastor mays thank you for being here tonight um thank you my question what unique skill set or strengths do you bring to the commission that other candidates might not well not knowing the other candidates it's difficult to answer that what they may not have i know my strong suit is my community involvement and experience but also in the within the military as a vietnam veteran my expertise was an administrative specialist so i'm very acutely aware of how important it is to fine tune everything that we say and everything that we do and that we understand uh the ins and outs of our uh responsibilities and our accountability so i not sure what their strong suits might be or what i may have that they don't have but i do have the experience working with the city both on both sides of the city and the community and also my skills as an administrator and a trainer as a leader so i do leadership training with the john maxwell program so i have those things and i think those are my strong suits thank you appreciate it councilmember gruber you are now recognized for three minutes good evening pastor mays good evening could you describe any experience you have in mediation processes between management and labor organization with labor organizations we're referring to the unions i have not been involved in any mediation between uh any employer and and their union or uh i am very much a union person i've worked uh 17 years with the government besides my uh six years in military and uh we have a strong union within the uh postal service where i gave 17 years so i worked closely with the unions there so i'm a union man thank you councilmember hilton are now recognized for three minutes thank you um and thank you for being here we heard a little bit about why it is you wanted to apply for the civil service commission and my question is what do you hope to accomplish during your term i i hope to accomplish very um close analysis of where we are where we've been and where we're going i want to be um i consider myself a change agent so i want to be a part of any change that has to take place our government feels needs to take place to make our city continue to be one of the greatest cities in the united states and all american cities so i want i i think my where i am at this point my desire is to be a part of positive change and um i'm sure that i can do that customer lawson you are now recognized for three minutes thank you dr mays for being here i appreciate your time my question is to you is what reforms do you think the commission should consider within the current civil service application process that it could improve the deficit of diversity in our police and fire academies and department i'm careful to answer that but i would say any type of i like it to be more governmental and not political and i'm listening to some of the scuttle but i'll put it like that during the time that the applications are out there and people are talking about it it became a bit political sized and i don't i don't do the political part i really love that it just stay community and government our government works for our community and our community works along with the government rather than it be become any type of political issue i love for it to be truly bipartisan that's by heart thank you dr mays i appreciate your answer councilmember you are now recognized for three minutes uh because mercado i think you're muted can you hear me now yes okay sorry about that all right so thank you dr mays for joining us this evening and for your interest in serving on the civil service commission um so could you describe the current involvement of the civil service commission in the hiring and backgrounding process and what if anything would you like to see changed in that process the hiring and uh i think the process i understand it to be with the civil service commission that it's more of an investigative type of entity uh to make sure that the we get the finest uh people are qualified disciplinary i think right now they review everything that the police chief would give out as far as discipline and they give back their recommendations and then they make the final decision on whether the um discipline is appropriate the only thing that i would that i know right now but as i would get would get in the office certainly i would more know more in detail right now the only thing that i see that i would try to understand or even try to change and that is that the police chief would have more leeway in the hiring process and in the disciplinary process that they would be the person that could say the buck stops here so the relationship between the civil service commission and the police chief i would like to see that to be a closer relationship so that they would be on the same page somewhat while they can maintain their individuality at the same time but i think the police chief who works with the rank and file understands them probably a little better than the civil service commission all right thank you sir all right councilman you are now recognized for three minutes thank you mayor and thank you pastor mays for for joining us tonight i appreciate your application and your dedication to the city my question is can you tell me about a time that your ethics were challenged and how you resolved that where my ethics would challenge i have pretty solid ethics i think they were challenged during the time that i ran for city council and that i am um a christian and that i don't apologize for that so i'm apologetically uh christian and uh i stand for those standards and those ethics and i stand strong where i don't challenge anyone else's decisions anyone else's beliefs i don't allow mine to be compromised i will not compromise what i believe in understanding that i have an opportunity especially working with the city to make sure i can keep separate religion and government that's important but at the same time my personal ethics uh they require me to be honest in everything that i say and everything that i do and to be forthcoming in everything that i um demonstrate the deeds i perform the words that i speak they have to be within my um beliefs um mr mays thank you so much uh for applying for this position uh you now have two minutes for any additional comments your closing remarks please thank you i would just like to say thank you first of all for even considering me and allowing me to apply uh thank you for the hard work that our city does the city council our mayor city manager all of those and city attorneys i look at the work you do and i want you to know i appreciate you i appreciate the efforts the sacrifices and i too i'm one of those people who don't mind sacrificing and giving of myself i am um a person who fell in love with the work in my community not the title not the position but the work and i know it takes a lot of work to make a community i believe in the village concept it takes a village it takes all of us and i believe wholeheartedly we're better together so i have one great quality that god has blessed me with and that is the ability to listen and hear and understand everyone whoever they are wherever they are however they are and accept people as they are we're better together and we can do it if we work together thank you so much for this time thank you mr mays uh desmond mcneil we are getting him on the meeting right now mayor just one moment please sure mr mcneil can you go ahead and there you go thank you destin mcneal uh thank you for applying for the civil service commission please introduce yourself and give a two-minute overview of your background and why you're interested in this position hello are you able to hear me yes okay uh good evening everybody my name is dylan mcneil um i'm a father of two um my daughter's name is amaya my son desmond jr i grew up in aurora colorado um i've been in public service for almost 20 years so i've been working i'm a paramedic i'm in leadership in ems currently um i went to smokey hill high school graduated from there i went to the community college of aurora i graduated from metropolitan state university of denver kind of a local boy through him through even though i wasn't born here um like i said i've been in ems for for roughly 20 years and just seems that um lately i just feel like i can help i feel like i have a background in public service i've worked with pd and firemen my entire career i feel like i have a background to really relate to them and being in leadership myself i feel like i know what it takes to uh to interview and kind of pick out some of the good apples out there for people for these jobs and also for promotions and moving up into the different departments i just have i have a lot of varying experience in ems i've worked overseas i've worked locally in the denver metro area i've worked down in colorado springs i'm still i'm in leadership currently um i just feel like i can really help and bring a different perspective to this role when it comes to hiring and and dealing with our public servants and thank you uh member tim burgin you are now recognized for three minutes mayor um and thank you mr mcneil for applying for the civil service commission this very important commission so thank you my question is when commissioners conduct disciplinary hearings do you think that they should consider public opinion when making their decisions and what information would you consider so that's very tricky because public information probably fifty percent of the time is inaccurate most of public information comes from the news and the media sources so i think accurate information needs to be considered and if that's also public then that's fine but i think the important thing is that the truth is considered and that you get all the information from both sides there's always at least two sides to each story so that you get all the information before you can make a decision on disciplinary actions there's also and it's one of the reasons i've applied to this is you have to have knowledge of the job itself when you consider disciplinary actions in ems one of the things we always consider um when we look at negligence is that with somebody else with the same training do what you did so i think that's very important when you talk about disciplinary actions that you consider is this something you know somebody else in your position would do and then i mean public information is public opinion is good but it's got to be an educated opinion and it's got to be based on the okay thank you very much customer versus you are now recognized for three minutes thank you thank you mr mcneil we appreciate your time being here and your application uh this is a two-part question um our as you know our civil service commission candidates will be screened before we vote on our choice is there anything you're currently involved with or in the past maybe you've been involved with that might make you being on the civil service commission uh questionable either to us or social media no i don't think so my social media is pretty quiet i i'm on twitter but i kind of just learned to use it a couple years ago and i don't really post um my facebook is mostly mean so i just try to joke and stuff on my facebook i don't feel like anything on there is um insensitive um i don't feel like anything would uh be embarrassing to me or you know my family my brand however you want to describe it i i try to avoid doing that because i am in leadership so everything i do reflects back on the company i work for so if i say something crazy online it could always come back around so i try to avoid it thank you that's that's good um second part is do you feel like you can be completely objective in hearings and uh disciplinary appeals yes so i feel like and i've always described this to my uh my father for like real broadway to describe this is i feel like i have a high moral code i try to base everything on on what's right and wrong and not personal opinion so i want to get down to the truth i want to get down to what's right in each situation and i feel like if you're going to discipline somebody and especially what we're talking about is somebody's livelihood so we're saying that we're disciplined we're going to discipline a firefighter or or a cop we're talking about potentially them losing their job so it's important that you find the truth and nothing's higher than that and it can't be about personal opinion you've got to be you know separate from that and it's just got to be what's the truth thank you so much you're welcome um um councilmember coombs you are now recognized for three minutes thank you mr mayor and thank you mr mcneil for joining us this evening my question is about our um the civil service commission itself through the investigations that the city has commissioned as well as other investigations that we've been subject to the civil service commission has come under pretty heavy scrutiny in terms of its operations so if you're appointed how will you adapt to any changes that may result from that scrutiny so i assume you are referring to the attorney general report amongst other things um i think you have to be flexible i think you have to move forward i think accountability is important and that right now both of our civil service agencies have lost public um trust so right now they're they're questioning police department they're also questioning the fire department because if you read the report which i'm sure you all have it says that they haven't done they haven't been operating to the standard that we expect so i think changes are going to come forward and that we have to adjust to them to regain that trust and that respect in our public services you have to you have to be flexible moving forward and we just have to be thank you uh councilmember gardner you're now recognized for three minutes uh thank you mr mcneil for your application and being here tonight my question what unique skill set or strengths would you bring to the commission that other candidates might not so um i can only describe myself just because i don't know them but i think the unique aspect that i bring is that i have 20 years of public service experience i think as a paramedic for the last 20 years and that includes i started right around 9 11. so and i've been around the world working in medicine and i've been around the country doing the same thing um i feel like i bring a unique perspective because of that i i bring somebody who's done the job who's worked with these people who've been on the street so i've i've been around good cops i've been around bad cops i've been around good medicine and i've been around bad medicine so i know the difference and i know the standard and i think it's important to have a voice in the room when these topics come up that can say yeah a medic shouldn't do that or that's not the standard that we want to hold them to or collapse pd shouldn't do that and that's not the standard we want to hold them to or they did a great job this is exactly how we want to operate and maybe it wasn't pretty but this is what we're supposed to do so i think uniquely i bring that perspective because i can't imagine you have a lot of candidates that have the same background i have in public service appreciate it thank you councilman gruber you are now recognized for three minutes miss mcneil thank you for being with us tonight can you describe any experience you have in mediation processes between management and a labor organization i'm sorry my my sound just dropped out could you say that again please sure can you describe any experience you have in mediation process between management and the labor organization um not a labor organization i've had to mediate between employees and management above me is not exactly the same i feel like in all situations you've got to get information from both sides and you have to figure out what people want and then try to mediate the differences between what's acceptable and what's not and and find the middle ground between both parties to try to you you can't please everybody but you've got to find a way to to make it feel like everybody won when you come out of the negotiation thank you you're welcome um i think um um councilmember hills reached out to me and uh is having some family things uh to deal with a little emergency and so i'm gonna come back to her and i'd like to change the order and go to council member lawson next please hello mr mcneil thank you for applying for the commission and i'm glad that you are here my question to you is what reforms do you think the commission should consider within the current civil service application process that that could improve the deficit of diversity in our police and fire academies and department um diversity is is very important it's a passion of mine i think some of the the ideas is the outreach so i think you've got to reach out to minorities and let them know about some of these jobs i know and honestly i don't have an answer for diversity for the police department i feel like the fire department um it's always you just have to open it up and you've gotta you've gotta do more outreach to get people through the door these are quality jobs on both sides of the fence police and fire department are quality jobs that people want so you've got to get it out there that it's a good job it's got good benefits you're doing a service to your community i feel like there are a lot of people who want to do these jobs and we need to get out to them that is a good job and we're going to get trust back we're going to you know we're going to back you when uh when our back's against the wall we're going to stand by you and this is a good job it's a good city it's a good place to be we've just got to really advertise and outreach more colleges high schools we've kind of got to start young and just really push the benefits of these jobs because i know i've been in public service my whole life and i love it so i feel like i can explain that and [Music] do that for children trying to get them to reach out councilman mcconnell you are now recognized for three minutes thank you mayor and thank you mr mcneil uh for joining us this evening and for your interest in serving on the civil service commission um my question for you is two-parter first is could you describe the current involvement of the civil service commission in the hiring and backgrounding process and the second part is what if anything would you like to be uh would you like to see changed in that process so um the current process right now i know that um the civil service commission sets the requirements to qualifications for each position and they're involved in the interviewing and hiring process to pick out candidates the thing i would change in that process and i've been through this process before when i was a younger man and tried to join the fire department um there was no um transparency so you went through the process and you may have gotten a job you may not have gotten a job and you really didn't know how you did or what you could do better so when it was over just like you know the fire department jobs are thousands of people applying for 25 to 50 positions and when it's all said and done if you didn't get one of them you just you got your name and your number on the list and you have no idea what you could do better how you can improve what the city's looking for so i think there should be more transparency in the process about what we want uh as a city so people understand what they can do to make themselves better candidates in the future great thank you so much for that answer you're welcome uh council member mario you are now recognized for three minutes thank you mayor thank you mr mcneil for your time today um my question is can you tell me about a time where your ethics were challenged and how you worked through that um [Music] yeah so when i was overseas i was working in afghanistan um doing remote medic work maybe five years ago um our project manager was really um and keep in mind just to paint a picture is that um he's from a different country we're in afghanistan everything's a little bit different it's not like it is here um and i think he was from [Music] eastern europe country something like that no he was from canada he was from canada but he was very um he was vulgar um different things like that he was sexist he had he had problems with the female members of our staff um he just he was very difficult and we're in the middle of nowhere and there's nobody to turn to because he's a project manager um and i had staff reach out to me like we don't know what to do we all kind of feel stuck and we kind of organized um we went to the the managers that were on our base on kandahar and we didn't get a lot of results we reached out to our managers in seattle at the time um and we were we were able to deal with it and we were able to kind of have a we had a conversation with him and then it escalated after that and he was really kind of uh retaliating and ultimately we went through the proper channels um and he tried to get different people on their side including myself and it's just like no man we gotta this isn't right like what you're doing and how you're doing this is not right you've turned this already hostile environment to much more hostile we're in a war zone and we have to wake up every morning and we have to deal with you in everything you're doing um ultimately he um what got him removed is he uh he had an argument with a soldier and when it happened he came to us and he said he wanted us to hide him like hey when you say what happened here don't say everything that happened keep some of this down and we didn't we stood you know and he offered us different benefits but it was just like look no we're not doing that this is what happened and you have to deal with the outcome so we did that ultimately he got sent home and we got a new project manager but you know sometimes you just have to stand on your own moral code and do the right thing uh uh councilmember hiltz yes thank you very much um you're recognized for three minutes thank you um thank you for being here and thank you for um applying you had mentioned that in your in your opening statement why you wanted to apply but my question is what do you hope to accomplish during your term i would hope to accomplish um restoring trust and faith back in our public service agencies i think we have to hold our fire department and our police department to a very high standard and what i would like to accomplish is reaching that we're under a lot of scrutiny right now as a city i mean really nationwide they're looking at us saying what's going on here there's a lot of rules and laws and things being changed based off situations that have happened in our city and what i would like to see is us to be more of a shining example than what's been happening lately so if i could do anything it'll be to improve the trust in our agency and i know that we're short staffed and i would hope that we can get back up to normal functioning levels across the board thank you uh uh mr uh mcdeal uh please provide any additional comments you would like to make uh you will have two minutes you are now recognized for two minutes um for me yes sorry i couldn't hear the first part of that no i'm sorry you were recognized for two minutes for any uh additional comments closing remarks all right perfect i'm sorry about that um i just want to say i appreciate the opportunity um i appreciate i love the city of aurora i grew up here i've been a servant my whole life i look forward to trying to continue to serve in different ways i've been in ems it feels like my entire life i've been ems and i've been serving i'm currently in school i'm switching over into the nursing side of things to just i like to help people that's what i do i've been doing it my whole life um i just feel like we can do better and i want to be a part of the change to help us do that i want to support our agencies i want to get us the best personnel so we can hold ourselves to the highest standard so the people in this city can thrive yeah that's pretty much it and that's me thank you mr mcneil thank you thank you uh everybody schneider we are getting matthew on the meeting now just be one moment please c much okay here we go uh matthew steiner thank you so much for joining us tonight and for applying for the civil service commission uh please introduce yourself and give a two-minute overview up to two minutes of your background and why you're interested in this position very well thank kaufman mayor pro tem bergen city council members thank you for the opportunity and of you for the open position on the civil service commission and for your consideration because by nature i'm a person who likes to help others i always look for opportunities to serve where my knowledge experience and skills can be of use i'm the guy who always raises his hand to volunteer and my application to serve on the commission should only be seen as an offer to serve my city three years ago i concluded a five-year membership on the board of directors of the beacon point metropolitan district i think i contributed significant significantly to that district and because i went off that board i have time available i've spent most of the time for the last four years working extensively at the law firm but i'm looking for another opportunity to serve in the ensuing three years i've also continued to serve the cherry creek school district as a volunteer member of the long range facilities planning committee on which i am now in my seventh year of service been involved in the process of designing multiple successful bond and mill levy campaigns and been involved in building several schools in the district in 2016 i ran for colorado state representative from house district 56 on the as the democratic party nominee i may have run as a democrat by my personal vision in politics a much more popular centrist and bipartisan i've spent years on the other side of the aisle when i lived in texas and so i think consider myself pretty much sent as centrist as far as my politics is concerned i'm a democrat because of issues related to social policy i attended bright divinity school at texas christian university and i'm an ordained united methodist minister i have pastored two churches in the united methodist church one in texas and one in colorado matt i'm sorry to interact you have a few more seconds to wrap up your your first comment about to do it a long time ago in new york city where i was born and raised i served on the new york city auxiliary police force and contemplated their career as a police officer i think that gives me a fairer understanding of the issues that might raise themselves as i serve on the civil service commission thank you uh mayor tim bergen you are now recognized for three minutes mayor um and thank you um mr schneider for applying for the civil service commission very important commission um my question is when commissioners conduct disciplinary hearings do you think that they should consider public opinion when making their decisions and what information would you consider well i don't think public opinion is more important than facts about an issue related to discipline you know i just it's very hard i i understand the environment we live in and it's very hard to divorce yourself from that entirely when thinking about an issue that comes before the commission but i'd like to think that i've built a reputation of being extremely logical and being fact-based i work for a law firm we live in the world of facts only that which you can prove and you know i i pride myself on not being swayed one way or the other by other people's opinions i have an independent mind i have excellent reasoning skills i'm well educated and i'm also well versed in you know politics and the events of the day but i don't think that would ever come into play in the decision that i would make thank you very much sure councilman burns you are now recognized for three minutes thank you thank you for your time tonight and for your application we appreciate it um as you know um our our civil service uh commissioner candidates will be screened before we vote on them is there anything that you have done in the past or currently involved in that might make you your appointment questionable either to us or the media i don't think so um i i mean i got a copy of the same background investigation that you folks should have received today at least i got it today and you know there's there's nothing back there i mean i'm mr boring you know boring is good you know um they're they're you know i ran uh like i said for house district 56 i was endorsed by the euro sentinel um you know that you know they thought i would have made a really good representative um i started to run for uh cherry creek school district uh board um several years ago in the seat that um in in district director d but uh i withdrew simply because the responsibilities i have at the law firm just wouldn't allow for that i'm winding down my career now and uh probably going to retire in the end of march and so you know i have plenty of time but no the the there's nothing back there this time i'm really quite boring i work go to school go to church you know that's about it okay i do have a second part of my question so with everything that you've told us uh so do you feel like you can be completely objective in hearings and and disciplinary appeals yes absolutely i i i don't approach anything you know i mean i if there was something that i thought i could not be objective about i would tell the chair and you know i would basically you know withdraw from that decision but um but no i don't think there's anything that can come up um that i would be jaundiced about thank you so much mr snyder sure because you are now organized for three minutes thank you mayor and thank you mr snyder for taking the time to join us this evening my question is about the civil service commission itself as you probably know through our investigations and the other investigation or sorry investigations that the city has commissioned and other investigations into our police and fire departments the civil service commission has come under heavy scrutiny so my question is how will you adapt to any changes that may result from that scrutiny well it depends on what the scrutiny is i mean i've i've perused the the rules regarding yeah i mean the 95 pages worth of rules for the commission and it's the chair according to the rules the chair is the person who speaks on behalf of the commission so it's not like i'm going to be making any statements to the public you know about anything the uh i mean my life can withstand scrutiny i think my work can can withstand scrutiny so if they wanted to somehow you know cast aspersions on me i i don't think you're gonna find much so you know i i don't know i know what happened with the the prior appointment uh i wasn't pretty um you know like i said i miss the boring and boring's pretty good so i i don't know what can you i don't know if you could give me some more specifics about the question possibly answer that but since i won't be talking on behalf you know you know talking on behalf of the commission the chair does you know i really need some more details to be able to answer this better for you sure so if there were changes to the procedures for example for processing backgrounds or for looking at disciplinary cases would you be willing and open to abiding by those changed processes of course the i mean the rules have been developed over many many years i mean the commission's been around for a long long time i think 1967 so that body 95 pages you know body rules been around for a very long time been amended i think i counted 25 times so and each commission amended them so if there are amendments and i participate in that amendment process you know whether or not it goes in favor of my vote or not and and i think all but two of the amendments if i remember reading the history correct all but two of those amendments um were decided unanimously you know there was only two that was a four to one vote um but i didn't go into what that is so i think i think i would have no problem especially if i were to participate in the rulemaking um i don't have any problem abiding by that uh councilmember gardner you're now organized for three minutes hi mr snyder thank you for being here tonight for your application um what unique skill set or strengths might you bring to the commission that other candidates uh may not i'm sorry could you repeat that please yeah uh what are some uh what's the unique skill set or strengths you might have and you bring to the commission that other candidates might not well i don't know i don't know what the i don't know who the other candidates are and and what they might bring i i assume they're equally qualified or we wouldn't be visiting with you all tonight um but i like to think that i have a really high level of ethics i mean i went to seminary got ordained you know the the backbone of my life has been you know working for other people and i think i have a super highly developed set of you know super highly developed ethical philosophy that guides all of my decision making you know for my life and whether it's business or personal i like to think i'm very well educated i'm very well read like to think i have excellent reasoning skills you know i like to think i have a heart for people and i try to give people the benefit of the doubt where possible but trust is something that has to be earned uh you just don't give that away and i like to think i you know make decisions rationally carefully with due deliberation these are the things that i think are most important i ran a business for over 35 years with lots of employees and you know never in all those years did i have a problem with you know because i didn't reason something out so i those are the essential skills that i bring to this every business acumen that type of thing so i but i don't know what that has to you know would bear on the commission but you know i bring my whole self to this but those particular things i just talked about i think are most important thank you i appreciate it sure because you are now recognized for three minutes thank you for being here mr snyder sure can you describe any experience you have in media in mediation process between management and labor organization sure that one i got a long time ago i was the benefits manager chief plan administrator and fiduciary for the ltv corporation which was a aerospace and defense contractor down in dallas before they went bankrupt and closed so and as the benefits manager i was responsible for [Music] labor relations with the rank and file who were not obviously you know hourly employees and we had lots and lots of them so my job was partially to negotiate benefits and uh adjustments to benefits uh that have been contractually negotiated um it was not easy but uh there was a particularly difficult uh one when i first came on board uh now mind you there are over 55 000 active and retired participants in our benefit plans so that's you know who is who is involved in this so i you know one of the union heads was refused to negotiate with the executive vice president of the of the company because he would not you know at least it was felt he would not negotiate in uh good faith anyway when i came on board i asked for permission to go out and visit with him and uh my boss gave me permission to do that and i had a contract before the afternoon was over and i like to think part of that is because i grew up in a union family and i understand how unions work i understand how union members think i understand what union members want and need and deserve and i also understand i used to fight with my grandfather all the time how could you end up in management anyway so um that's an example of you know i hope that's a good enough answer in three minutes or less but i was able to defuse a very tense situation by being able to uh meet in a an otherwise implacable and tractable you know argument with common sense and good faith and uh resolve the situation thank you mr snyder yes sir councilor hill show now recognized for three minutes thank you and thank you for being here and for applying um my question is you you were already talked in your intro about why it is that you applied so my question is what do you hope to accomplish on your term or during your term i hope to make things easier for all the rest of you i i know how important this commission is and i know that it is a highly visible one that you know the public's eye is always looking at especially in the current environment and i i hope to be able to uh you know be recognized a person who can make a good contribution towards you know restoring good faith especially in the police department and the fire department uh and in the city in general um you know if i can do a good job with the other members of the commission and that causes you less headaches and it makes the city safer and you know more peaceful i think i will have accomplished a lot uh councilmember lawson you're now recognized for three minutes hey thank you mayor and thank you mr snyder for being here i've been applying for the commission my question to you is what reforms do you think the commission should consider within the current civil service application process that could improve the deficit of diversity in our police and fire academies and department well i don't have a full background yet on what the current selection process is so it would be a bit premature for me to make recommendations for changes to a system that i don't know the ins and outs about yet but i think that being said um there isn't enough diversity on the police force you know and you know again in the current political climate i think that's a sense of a sensible thing to do and i also think that it if there was more diversity in the civil service ranks i think that the the citizens of aurora would think better of both the police department fire department and the city in general so any changes that i might suggest or want to recommend after i get into the commission and and kind of get into the nuts and bolts of it would be [Music] you know with an eye towards the equity and fairness that i think needs to permeate every aspect of life um you know so you know but i have to get that background first i have to look at and understand what the process is how the process has evolved but i know just from what i've read just from what i've heard there are there are changes for the better that can be made and i'd certainly be willing to look at anything that would do that thank you um councilmember mcconnell you are now recognized for three minutes thank you sir and thank you mr snyder for joining us this evening and for your interest in serving on the civil service commission uh my question for you is a two-parter so the first part is could you describe the current involvement of the civil service commission in the hiring and backgrounding process and then the second part is what if anything would you like to see changed in that process okay i i kind of had a you had a little drop out there on the people on the first part could you just state that again please sure sorry about that so it's a two-parter first part could you describe the current involvement of the civil service commission in the hiring and backgrounding process and then the second part is what if anything would you like to see changed in that process well again this is um yeah i don't have a complete understanding yet of the whole process but it's you know if it works the same way as it does on the police department sitting in new york um basically there are two types of two types of candidates that come to uh before the civil service commission there were those that were what we used to call original entry and then there are those who are we used to call lateral transfers from other departments um and basically the process was a little less uh stringent on lateral transfers because the assumption was that you know if you're working somewhere else on another department be it fire or police that the backgrounds background checks have already been done so you can kind of streamline that application it's the original entry uh candidates that are the ones that you really need to examine whether they be midlife career changers or you know first career uh applicants again i don't know all the ins and outs but i know yeah policing is not for everybody it's just not and so it's really important to screen out the people who whether personally or dispositionally you have questions about um it it's too important a position to um be careless about that so i would say whatever the process is and i will learn about it as i get on the commission those are the things i'm looking for is this person who's looking at coming into police work or firefighting work are they dispositionally and personally disposed to this type of work lateral transfers that's pretty routine as long as the person has not been disqualified elsewhere i go on record saying because this was part of my platform in 2016 is i went on record saying that if a police officer has been disqualified in another jurisdiction in colorado and they've had their you know uh first license list that the lifted they shouldn't be serving in the city of aurora um so a few more seconds no well that's about it i don't know if i got it all in there for you thank you sir i appreciate it yes sir customer memorial you are now recognized for three minutes thank you mayor and thank you uh mr snyder for your time and energy and applying uh for this position uh can you tell me about a time when your ethics were challenged um and how you handled that situation oh golly um well as i pointed out earlier in my statements um i'm mr borum and um most people know that i really cannot be bought or bribed or in any way shape or form influenced i've been far too successful for that and i've had the good fortune of uh having developed a very very strong ethical philosophy because i spent an awful lot of my young life uh in religious training and so they're really in my opinion there really hasn't been you know i i really haven't had a crisis of ethics because i always seem to i mean i approach the situation with the totality of who i am and what i've learned and what i've evolved to be and so i i don't run into crisis the crisis of ethics because i always try to be ethical and my i mean people know that about me and so if they try to come to me to influence me they they stop before they even get to me because they know they can't do it um so i i wish i had a better answer for you than that but i i don't get challenged very often because i act ethically and morally in every situation so i try to be ethical and fair and equitable in all of my business decisions um and you know i just that's who i am mr schneider for your closing remarks please provide any additional comments you would like to make you will now have up to two minutes thank you um i didn't prepare any closing remarks um but i i think you know basically what i've summed up for years is a person who is available and ready to serve the city um you know i think you know you've seen from my background investigation that this i would not be a controversial appointment i you know i i met the former mayor the late steve hogan when i ran for hd 56 at a political event and you know steve took me aside and he said to me you know he said look i don't care what letter's next to your name he said if you get elected just make sure that whatever you do you try to help the city of aurora no matter what be it be the best city it can be do everything you can for it and i promised them i would and uh and that's really what's behind you know my offer of service here is that i think i can contribute to making aurora a better city i think i possess the requisite knowledge and experience and skills good character good decision making rationality i think all those things that would go into making uh you know a good commission member mr thank you very much for applying for the civil service commission and for your time tonight thank you sir thank you council members the way i'd like to proceed at this time would be to potentially do up to three rounds and hopefully it won't take that much uh but uh go down um the roster of council members uh may have pretended myself and uh go and tell one of these three candidates has six votes and after in the first round if no candidate has six votes drop the lowest ranking candidate off the list uh and then proceed to the next round is there any objection to doing that i see none that's how it works mayor i actually have a question because thank you sir i thought that we typically handle this during the next regular meeting as opposed to a study session um kd yes that's correctable oh that's right official appointment and voting on november i stand corrected the time is now 6 48 uh we will stand in recess uh until 7 pm uh mayor may i do a quick announcement i'm sorry no that's okay it's not it wasn't scheduled it got a hold of me and said that webex webex is having an issue right now so if someone tries to join using a new device or browser they might not be able to get back into this meeting so i just want to let everybody know in case you have to log off for some reason you might have some trouble logging back in encourage everybody to just stay in uh thomas now we will take a 12 minute recess thomas now 748 we will reconvene at 7 pm [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the study session of the uh city council for monday december 15 2021 is back in session um there's no mayor's update no issue update uh consent calendar is there any objection to moving the consent calendar forward item 4a and 4b seeing no objection the consent calendar item 4a and 4b will move forward um item number five a iraqis for land management iga uh alexandra davis yes casting i am going to try to put my presentation but i was walking through it during the break so that's where i am um let's see share my screen i want to share i apologize now you're seeing my conversation my preparation i apologize katie can you direct me to sharing appropriately yes on your bottom middle it should say share of webex do you see that yes okay and then when you click on it you should be able to share just your presentation i have share my screen share application share your application okay ah got it okay from the beginning okay thank you i appreciate your patience and um yeah okay thank you uh good evening my name for the record my name is alexandra davis i am the deputy director for water resources with the aurora water department and i'm here tonight to present upon a proposed agreement with the u.s department of agriculture this agreement is designed to allow them to help us manage prairie dogs on our rocky ford lands as you know wait as you know we have an office and dedicated staff in rocky ford rocky ford is in otero county way down in the southeast area of the state and it is a rural county where the economic driver is agriculture while that team in the office works on numerous projects including water supply projects water storage projects accounting operations all of these things related to our water supply from both the colorado river and the arkansas river there are two very important reasons why we even have an office there in rocky ford and one of those reasons is to manage about 4 000 acres the land that aurora acquired in the 80s and 90s and to manage that land pursuant to the water court decrees that allow aurora to access over 4 000 14 000 acre feet of water annually the second reason is to maintain relationships in that area of colorado due to the importance of this area to our water supply so when aurora first started buying water in the rocky ford area we were not a welcome participant in the water market and we were not viewed as a good neighbor and as all of you know relationships are critical in the water world and the rocky ford office has been extremely successful in developing positive relationships for the city there the agreement with the usda is to manage prairie dogs on our property and to eradicate some of the colonies while creating an area where at least one of them can thrive do we have can you see my pointer on the map yes so we have the this is the arkansas river running along the north edge the blue and black uh boundaries show the farmland that aurora purchased and has spent the last 20 years re-vegetating this area to the south of our land is all private farmland here the cross-patched area are the areas where the prairie dog colonies exist and you can see and this circle should be over to the right it should be around this area so the circled area is where we want to let prairie dogs continue to thrive and to live and you can see that that area is adjacent to the land between our land and the river which is managed by parks and wildlife as a wildlife area a state wildlife area so that's a perfect place for prairie dogs to be the bigger colonies down here to the south are adjacent to this private land where the paradox have already started to migrate onto that private land and are not only creating a lot of damage to our grasses here but significant damage to the private land as well so we need to take these actions because if we don't the consequences could be severe the water court decrees require us to maintain the land in native grasses and those grasses are being damaged by the prairie dogs and if we don't comply with the water court decree we could lose access to the water until we were back into compliance the city has invested millions of dollars into our revegetation program and in fact the the team down there has done such a good job that our re-vegetation has held up as the gold standard by which other uh court decrees are they want those terms and conditions in other court degrees and other entities who are re-vegetating land are being asked to meet what we've done what the city has done on that land county rules and regulations require control uh and our neighboring farmers have already expressed significant concern and upset um because of the damage that's going on right now so part of our plan is to create an area where prairie dogs can continue to thrive and in this regard this will be a step up because previously the land was all in private farming and prairie dogs were not welcome on any of the lands that we now own but we will have an area where uh wildlife services will be working with parks and wildlife and we will be working with parks and wildlife to manage those prairie dogs in a sustainable population one of when we brought this to water policy several council members had asked for more information on what non-lethal methods we had already used to try to control the prairie dogs on the land several years ago we erected a number of raptor perches in order to increase natural predation and we also continue to try planting trees and shrubs to create boundaries prairie dogs like really long sight lines so that they can see predators and natural boundaries that are very thick and opaque will ostensibly keep them in place and keep them from moving our methods were not as effective as we had hoped and so we need to change our focus we also um in looked at different contractors to do this work and we chose the usda because along with prioritizing the land and managing the colonies with the least cost they are agreed to collaborate with parks and wildlife to protect other species and to reduce any negative impacts as much as possible as well as to reduce negative impacts to the soil and to preserve existing vegetation and they will also help us to keep prairie dogs in that area of the our land that we think prairie dogs would be good for the in our future management we will be using several methods to manage the remaining prairie dogs hopefully very sustainably some of which were discussed in the habitat harmony handbook thank you councilwoman mario for that handbook these methods we hope will help us maintain a good balance between a thriving colony of prairie dogs and really healthy native grassland that is in compliance with our water court degrees so hopefully that will allow this border between the two lands that's just an example of the type of fencing that you might see out there in the future when you go out to visit and that's the end of my presentation so far are there any questions that i can answer one quick question and that is are prairie dogs and invasive species are they needed to the area paradox are native they're native to the plains they're actually keystone species so they're quite important species they are also a species that is in regular conflict with humans particularly farmers any developments so that's it's a difficult this is a difficult project to do because prairie dogs are very important um and they also are the you know the good news is that they read quickly and rapidly so they are not in danger the black cherry black tail point dogs which we have out there are not an endangered species however there is a conflict with our goals and our needs for the land and too many of the prairie dogs out in that in that area further questions uh is there any objection to moving 5a forward i have a question gossip oreo uh thank you mayor um alex thanks so much for your presentation and for your presentation earlier at policy committee um was just hoping you could talk a little bit about um anything that's been done since that last conversation you kind of went into what's been done in years past um but i i guess i recall the conversation um us looking to explore what we could do in the meantime um if you're able to elaborate on um on those efforts so we looked at we looked at the handbook that you provided us which is very helpful and we and some of those methods we had already been looking at i reached out to a couple of the folks who were responsible for that handbook to get more information on what methods were available and how they had been used um and unfortunately the the people that i talked to or that i communicated with by email um well they were listed as the they appeared to be mainly involved they weren't mainly involved in the project it was a little odd and a little confusing but i did reach out to a couple and so since that time we haven't done anything different than what we did before because we have we have a a just a a significant problem with the prairie dogs right now so we have to take some action very soon in order to meet county regulations deal with our neighbors who are quite upset one of the things that we're hoping to do is look perhaps into relocation possibilities we haven't found any i don't know if um anyone else you know would be very open to suggestions of places where they could be relocated to it's very difficult to find a relocation possibility but we continue to to try to think about well how can we do this differently in the time frame that we have and so the options for the immediate future are fairly limited but for the longer future maybe there are more options going forward i have another question councilman thank you mayor um thank you for that um my i think the other kind of threat of questions was getting a greater um sense of what the what being in compliance with um the water courts looks like right so i guess there wasn't like a finite timeline that i was aware of in our prior conversation and trying to just i guess i'm trying to gauge um the flexibility from this water court mandate you know if we reach have we reached out to them have we been able to communicate and kind of express our circumstance our desire to manage this population um potentially non-lethally have we had any of those conversations since the policy committee so uh and i apologize for not walking away from policy committee with that particular directive so i must have either my notes were not complete or but i i didn't and we could have been more prepared to talk about the water court requirement the decree has a retained jurisdiction period and that retained jurisdiction period requires us to have panels of vegetation experts who come out and they assess the the vegetation based on the thickness of the grasses the health of the grasses and they determine what state the land is in and decide when it's rated i think from a one to a seven we had the panel out there and and two years ago so my don't don't hold me strictly to the facts here because i'm trying to remember exactly we just had the panel out there relatively recently and most of the areas except for these areas where the prairie dogs were were in very good shape as i recall the terms of the decree if we don't maintain uh the the levels of those vegetated grasses then our retained jurisdiction continues and as long as our retained jurisdiction continues the court has the ability and any of the opposers have the ability to come back in and reopen that decree and acquire new terms and conditions or ask the court to enforce the terms and conditions that exist i don't want to say too much more because i haven't looked at that decree recently but i would be happy to look at that decree and get you more specific information about the terms and conditions and the deadlines it's kind of an ongoing it's not like we have by this day you shall x it's you shall be doing this for 20 years and then when retained jurisdiction ends then you are freed from the requirements of this degree a follow-up mayor um please receive that yeah that would be information that i would be interested in and understanding more just that flexibility you know would it suffice if we were making significant efforts you know to what like to what degree would we be in compliance with that you know because we know things don't happen overnight they they take time so is there a threshold of compliance that wouldn't put us in jeopardy um with not being in compliance with that um directive from the the water courts that that would be helpful information for me further a response by staff or well i was just curious in understanding that because i i am i correct in assuming uh councilman mario that where you're going is perhaps like is there a different place that we can balance is there a way that we can allow more prairie dogs to be managed or eradicated is that what you're kind of thinking is or what it what exactly are you heading for there yeah so what i expressed in prior conversation was my just kind of moral objection to the the lethal extermination of the prairie dog so you're correct like my my line of questioning is trying to avoid that i mean i understand we're between a rock and a hard place and i understand that staff is very um empathetic to kind of that that situation and that you all have been trying to um you know work around or explore other options and that that would be my my intent and you know maybe it's just to clarify that a little bit more i'm very happy to do that and to try to continue to find non-lethal options um in and would strongly recommend that we look continue to look for those non-lethal options while we move forward with some control due to the our neighbors in particular who are very upset with the impacts to their land and i would hate to see that spill over into more damaging relationships but i i as i expressed earlier i'm deeply empathetic to your position and i agree non-lethal method to be great and certainly our first priority if we could get there mayor i'm sorry uh council member combs um yes so i guess as a further follow-up on that same line of questioning are there any non-lethal ways that we can kind of take shorter term action that helps to address the concerns of the neighbors because i understand there's kind of the the legal issues and then there's also the relationships that we have that are really important in that area so is there a way to kind of manage this population non-lethally that stops the immediate damage to the neighbor's land as we're continuing to pursue these more long-term options i given the numbers in those larger colonies i i think the only alternative would be relocation and and relocation is is difficult as well on those animals just so that people know the relocation process is not very pretty um though most of them survive they don't all survive um but in the interim there isn't any non-lethal method at the moment that we would have an option to do to prevent those prairie dogs from moving at the moment towards those farms they already are i think the rocky ford office gets several calls a week complaining about the prairie dogs and you know frankly it's been because we've been pursuing ways to to not have to go out and just kill the prairie dogs that have allowed a number of the colonies to get as big as they are and sort of pushed us to this point where we felt like we had to take this more significant and unpleasant action brother discussion um i'm sorry councilmember hiltz thank you thank you for your presentation i know this is probably not easy for you to also propose um i i just have i'm very sick so i'm just gonna get straight to the point i have a lot of heartburn generally right now but also a lot of heartburn around me taking an affirmative vote to kill animals generally i mean because that's at the end of the day that's what we're being asked to do to to take an affirmative vote to kill animals and i just um i think councilmember rudio had some good points around you know what are those other options and i understand your points about how exploring those options are what got us here but i don't know that just i don't know that i can do that um regardless of what the um you know benefits are in terms of the larger just in my gut i don't know that i can just take a vote to say yeah go go gas them um because or however it's done i know i know it's not pretty um and worse than relocation i'm sure but i remember this conversation a couple of years ago with um a development and it was quite grisly um how it's done throw your comments questions presents customer presence thank you um alex d were you part of the move of prairie dogs to the east toward the farmers or the east and maybe that was parks and rec i don't know but we did that thinking that we were doing a wonderful thing by just moving the prairie dogs and then soon enough the farmers rebelled we were getting calls from the county commissioners multiple county commissioners and they were destroying crops and hurting the animals so you know i i don't like to kill anything either but i think at some point we have to prioritize you know food and water and um you know what what do we want most i mean that's kind of the circle of life um i know most people are afraid of prairie dogs i would not go walking in a field or on a farm that was loaded with them and you did say that they they made like every day or they procreate recent i mean quickly or whatever so um i i don't think we would ever extinguish a whole colony but hopefully you know we could come up with a plan to save the the the water and and the people around there that that um are having an issue with them unfortunately that's just kind of a an adult decision that we have to make and it's not always pretty sorry thank you alexandra you mentioned uh predators uh how effective are our predators uh in the area and and are there i i think you mentioned that that is one of the options well that's why we thought in trying to find a balance here because we get it we've got everyone's you know the both sides of this equation and and we don't like to kill these creatures anymore they're amazing creatures so we felt that balancing the existing prairie dog colonies by eradicating those that are causing significant crop damage and causing significant damage to our grasses while allowing the ones near the wildlife refuge to thrive which is also a corridor for coyotes we have four raptors going through there so there are natural predators going through that corridor and uh we have kicked around the idea of we have not yet approached parks and wildlife but we've been thinking about you know is there a possibility here of working with them on black-footed ferrets and in those colony areas so there's some options going forward but all of them require balancing the number of prairie dogs that are there and i i understand not wanting to affirmatively vote to kill anything i totally get it and i i think in this situation it's it's a very hard choice to make but it's one that that we wouldn't have brought to you if we didn't feel like we had to make this choice further questions comments uh counselor thank you um alex i guess some of the other alternatives that we've considered are these kind of similar to what we did over at plains conservation after we started getting um you know a lot of complaints from the neighbors out there about prairie dogs coming in like are there other species that we might be able to introduce that aren't even necessarily predatory but would tamp down on the let's say um prolific nature of the uh prairie dogs yeah i'm not exactly sure what they did over at plains conservation center so i apologize for not looking into that earlier um christine actually suggested that i call pat schuyler and i didn't get a chance to do that um but yes there you know our idea was bring in more predators and figure out how to um have that kind of natural selection going and it just wasn't enough okay but i can weigh in a little bit on that so the some of the approach at the plains conservation center was with active grazing uh bringing in goats i think out there so we do have active grazing out on a lot of the properties in rocky ford we have to manage grazing carefully also in order to sustain healthy vegetation but we do have active grazing out there as well and the prairie dogs are still a problem yes further questions or comments uh seeing none uh is there objection to moving 5a uh forward is there objection to moving 584 councilmember combs further objection to moving 5a forward mayor mercano [Music] further objection to moving 5a forward as see no further objection 5a will move forward i was just going to add morillo okay um [Music] um so you know further objection uh uh 5a will move forward 5b uh drainage and flood control uh improvements for the cherry creek restoration at arapahoe road uh if i'm saying this right sorvine uh mirinda thank you mr mayor and council yeah it's surveying your render very good i'm i'm the planning services manager in in the rural water and uh what you have before you is uh an iga for the cherry creek uh stream restoration at arapahoe road and if you can see on the map there the stream actually traverses uh three jurisdictions that's uh the city we have uh southeast metro stormwater authority and the cherry creek water basin authority now this corridor was studied in 2004 and some recommendations were made on stream stabilization some of those projects were actually implemented but not all of them and there's been a lot of development in this area so instead of just picking up the old recommendations what the district and us are recommending is a restudy of this area update the study with the work that we've already done before and then figure out ways of mitigating this uh stream erosion that's currently going on so if we got the next slide so the cost for this uh initial phase of the study which will be a design uh you can see the breakdown of costs there uh raw water and the district will both put in a hundred thousand each and then samsuar and uh the water-based uh samsuar 20 000 and uh 25 from uh the the the water basin authority and uh you obviously there's a gradation in cops the difference is really based on where the erosion is actually occurring most of the erosion is actually occurring in the city of aurora so after the design is complete we will come back with an amendment for construction of the recommended projects so do you have any questions for me no questions to staff let's see thank you very much for the presentation oh god councilman gruber so just had one do we have any water rights on this uh on this area are we drawing any water from cherry i have creek i wouldn't know i would have to uh i can get back with you let me uh uh confer with uh alex and steve okay maybe i don't need it right now thank you okay thank you there uh um yeah just with marshall um being there um i saw that you had popped on not so much about water rights but water infrastructure that we have in the area that is impacted by um this project and related projects yeah i can probably let swerving answer the infrastructure question i was going to help out with the water rights question but we can follow up on water rights later we really don't have any water rights this surface water rights associated with cherry creek there is groundwater nearby that's indirectly connected as for infrastructure i mean this is the creek the creek itself so uh marshall i'm not so sure that we actually have any infrastructure in there apart from any uh flood mitigation infrastructure that would actually put in in the creek for for channel stabilization further questions or comments i was saying none is there any objection to moving 5b forward c no objection 5b will move forward 5c larson farms and feeding llc a farming and grazing lease with water use agreement uh don jewell good evening honorable mayor and esteemed members of the council my name is hector reynoso and i'm the real property services division manager uh in the public works department don i see you you've turned your camera on i don't want to take your take your thunder please introduce yourself i'm just going to thank the mayor and council and let you know that hector rainosa will be presenting tonight okay sure so as we've heard the city of aurora owns property throughout the entire state the subject property for item 5c is actually located in weld county and contains approximately 116 acres of land in 2020 city staff solicited a request for proposals to lease up to 116 acres of land and use the associated water rights for this property the city received new proposals as highlighted in your backup one from john larson and one from dale dilka with your local farmers city staff the aurora water public works departments comprise the selection committee that ranked each bid based on the evaluation criteria so based on the evaluation criteria the proposal from john larson who is doing business as larson farms and feeding llc was ranked the highest city staff recommends entering into a grazing and agricultural lease for an initial 10-year term with an option to extend for five additional years subject to city approval rents will total approximately eleven thousand six hundred dollars six hundred dollars per year so the question for council is does councils moving the resolution for the farming and grazing lease with water use agreement on city-owned land in weld county forward regular session for consideration of approval are there any uh questions of staff are there any comments discussion let's say none is there any objection to moving 5c forward i see none 5c will move forward item number 5d ford farms llc farm grazing and property lease with water use agreement uh gone joel again i can thank you and hector will be presenting okay this time i waited don thanks for that introduction uh honorable mayor and esteemed members of the council hector reno so here again as we've heard multiple times the city does own property throughout the entire state and the subject property for item 5d is actually located mostly in washington county but a small portion of it does stretch into open county this property contains approximately 1199 acres of land for which the city solicited a request for proposals to lease up to 1199 acres of land and the associated water rights in 2020 the city received four proposals for this this rfp as highlighted in your backup jr ford justin curtis billy quaint and marty and jenny pose all submitted proposals city staff from the aurora water and public works departments comprised a selection committee that ranked each bid based on the evaluation criteria um and based on that criteria the proposal from j.r ford doing business as ford farms llc was ranked the highest so city staff recommends entering into a grazing and agricultural lease for an initial 10-year term with an option to extend for five additional years subject to city approval minimum rent will equal forty eight thousand nine hundred and seventy five dollars per year with the potential to earn an additional up to an additional twenty four thousand six hundred dollars per year dependent on the number of cattle that the proposed lessee brings onto the site rent reconciliations will be made on an annual basis though the question for council is does council support moving the resolution for the farming and grazing lease with water use agreement on city-owned land in washington and logan counties forward to regular council session for consideration of approval are there any questions of staff any discussion i see none is there any objection to moving 5d forward see no objection 5d will move forward item number 6a 2021 false supplemental uh mike thanks good evening mr mayor members of council i'm here to talk about the 2021 fall supplemental it's staff's first opportunity to make adjustments to the budget uh within this supplemental we have about 113 million of net appropriations that's offset by about 47 million in revenue of these totals three of the adjustments make up the vast majority there are three accounts are familiar with 30.8 million for the general funds uh capital projects for the i-70 piccadilly interchange projects 12 million uh for the erp system and 19.8 million for the early payments of uh water debt so that makes up the vast majority i'm happy to take any questions on additional details questions to staff uh discussion is there any objection uh to moving five i'm sorry six a forward saying no objection 6a will move forward number 6b uh council review of staff's recommendation for allocating american rescue plan funding you know what this is why do we take a uh the time is now uh 38. uh why don't we take a break until 7 50 and uh uh we will reconvene at 7 50 to this will be a fairly involved uh section it's our last agenda item of the evening with that council stanza recess [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] do [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] uh tommytow at 7 50 p.m and the study session for the aurora city council uh meeting of november 15th is called back in the water uh item number six to be uh council review of stats recommendations for allocating american rescue plan funding uh mike franks can i have access to oh all right great can everybody see my slides um let's give a view provide some history and rescue plan council has seen that before we're also going to have chris canoles from housing community services talk about the community engagement component a little bit more give some more detailed um analysis of exactly where folks came from and get into some of the quick wins the council specifically requested as well as some of the long-term thoughts in terms of how how to allocate the funding and then jessica prosser the housing community services director will talk a little bit about the engagement process related to some non-profit funding so just for context and reminder um the law was signed on march 11 2021 a significant amount of funding some of which was directly given to localities city of aurora receives or will receive 65.4 million total we've already received our first payment and we'll receive our second here in may of 2022. there are a variety of factors that we've talked about considering the idea that we should really focus on one-time projects for short-term initiatives the reality is these funds are only one time in nature so i'm committing ourselves to ongoing obligations it's just going to tax the operating budget does provide an opportunity to develop regional partnerships that's something we continue to identify a lot of opportunities within the region to kind of build those transformational projects we've also talked about the fact that we need to consider the impact of federal legislation this is something that continues to be an impact and we recently had the infrastructure bill approved so as we dig into that a better understanding of what might be funded there obviously we don't want to duplicate funding efforts with that turn over to chris to talk a little bit about the survey piece thank you michael and good evening mayor members of council i just want to give you a quick highlight from our community engagement process and as a reminder when we presented to you october 4th we were only part way through the engagement so i wanted to show you some of those final priorities from our community we were out there for about six weeks in august through october we were able to put out a survey on engage aurora as well as post idea boards that allowed for more open-ended engagement uh through that process we heard from about a thousand people on the survey and that was both on engage aurora and the paper surveys that were translated and distributed throughout our community we had about 200 people contribute to those idea boards with more open-ended comments about what were their priorities for recovering from the copen 19 pandemic and they submitted over 500 ideas and so during this engagement process we really were trying to get a good cross-section of our community to hear a bit more on the feedback and what their priorities were and so you can see from this graph we had pretty even representation throughout the six wards of our city and i i will note that some of the survey response respondents did not know their ward so you know that's a snapshot but we're still seeing pretty even distribution across the city you can go to the next slide now when we went out to the community with this survey we asked people to rank different items within our three funding categories of community assistance infrastructure and service preservation and so we'll start by looking at community assistance and the items that we had the community rank and so in when we're asking folks to rank from one being the highest priority to five the lowest we see that even at the end of our engagement efforts it stayed about the same from when we presented to you in october with affordable housing family assistance and mental health supports being our top categories in in the rankings i do want to note that in our open-ended feedback we heard from our community that under this particular bucket all of the items were really seen as huge priorities for our community and so people did have a hard time with those rankings because they believe all of the items were important and so you can see there is a good amount of variation between the two boards and that the the rankings are fairly close together but we heard loud and clear that community assistance was important because it would directly get funding into some high impact areas next slide please so under infrastructure we had the same exercise to rank the different items and you see a bit more alignment between the different wards here with rodent street maintenance broadband infrastructure and water system enhancements really coming out on top and just a little bit of variation with a couple of awards on a few items but here you're seeing a bit stronger of correlations with the top three rankings next slide please under service preservation we saw complete alignment across the wards which was really interesting and a much stronger correlation for the top three rankings of support to our public safety and essential workers non-profit assistance and restoration of lost city revenue and services and i do want to make a small note that midway through the engagement process we learned that the debt service repayment was not an eligible arpa expense that ended up not being a big priority for our community but we still want to really focus on those top areas that were a big priority for our community and again seeing the alignment across the awards for this one was much stronger next line and finally we had the community rank the three different funding categories of community assistance infrastructure and service preservation and here we see a good amount of alignment to across the wards where community assistance really was a priority for a lot of folks getting those funds out into our high impact areas next slide please in the open ended feedback we were able to call through all the responses and we heard a wide variety of comments from folks really the top themes were around affordable housing services to our homeless population and mental health supports but again we heard a lot of these other themes that we do want to highlight and you know throughout the engagement process we wanted to keep these top priorities and themes really front and center for some of these funding allocation recommendation discussions so that we could make sure to elevate the priorities of our community next slide with that i'll pass it back to michael thank you so that highlights what the community thought we wanted to also just kind of bring everybody up to speed in terms of what already happens so previous actions the council has taken we did include 8.6 million in the 2022 budget so we had a variety of different funding options or items there the 5.2 million for affordable housing gap financing and housing match software 1.7 million for safe outdoor space and uh aurora day resource center renovations almost a million dollars for infrastructure requirements from the court system 500 000 for a disparity study and 247 thousand dollars two positions to assist with leveraging grant funding and grant monitoring and compliance so we had already taken some action within the 2022 budget we've also gone through a process working with departments where we asked them to submit potential artwork projects when going through the uh eligibility um and the different options and the idea that we were going to try to get the funding out into the community so looking through that lens departments had opportunity to make projects then compiled a cross-departmental team who reviewed the projects using established criteria so equitable outcomes is 25 um you know is the project going to benefit historically underserved or marginalized groups community 25 evidence-based outcomes are they using evidence-based interventions of the track record of success i would note those are two items that we are actually required to report out on within the federal reporting process so we're going to have an annual report related to our bus these are the things that we'll have to be talking about within that report uh 25 cost benefit and the thing we were really honing in on here is what are the long-term costs again these are one-time funds so making sure that if we were going to include long-term recurring costs that the benefit was going to be there and then 25 community input based on all the work that karis and her team did to engage the community want to make sure that was obviously factored in so the committee provided a recommendation to management that will serve as the guide for what we're talking about tonight and also future recommendations that we'll bring to council so chris hit on this a little bit but wanted to remind everybody these are the spending categories that we used as part of the cares act we've continued to use them with arpa so we have the community assistance bucket infrastructure service preservation and that's how we're gonna again talk about them tonight what we did was really focus this first round on the quick win piece that was the input council provided last time you know what can we do to have a a impact on the community that was also what we heard of in the um surveys uh so we focused on you know what can we do to have a quick impact um this is the summary of that so in the first bucket community assistance it's 15 million dollars and this is by far the most significant allocation um in the quick win piece as chris mentioned um you know the community was really focused and staff agreed on getting funding out um and being able to have a real impact on the community those that were impacted by equipment 19. so we have 3.8 million in community activities this includes 2.5 million for a competitive non-profit grant process jessica prosser will talk more about that incentives to subsidize the impact of getting the vaccine for our residents so this is something that um is even more important now that the vaccine is out for people age five to um eleven so basically helping those individuals be able to get vaccinated within the community that might be having a hard time two programs that will have a positive impact on the community city hall to go and community connector program so city hall to go is will be housed up in housing community services and would allow staff to have all the technology infrastructure required to go out at community events different board meetings and provide that virtual or hybrid work environment where people can participate either remotely or in person um as well as different potential events the community connector program is hiring positions to go out temporary positions into the community and really trying to get and engage specific groups within the community we also have 50 000 for the virtual library expansion folks have continued to use the library more and more as the pandemic has gone on so this would allow us to enhance the uh the catalog of services that are included within the virtual library we have 6.7 million you know the housing homeless bucket so we have the 5.2 that we included in the 2022 budget so the 5 million for affordable housing gap financing in the 200 000 for the housing match software you also have funding included for the safe outdoor space again that was included in the 2022 budget a million for cold weather sheltering options and again 200 dollars for the uh aurora day resource renovations which was included in the budget and then 4.5 million dollars for economic development so two million dollars for a restaurant assistance program um obviously restaurants were one of the industries here particularly hard during the pandemic so this would be one piece and then a work broad small business grant rescue program of 2.5 million dollars in funding so again of the about 20 million dollars that was allocated for the quick win piece 15 million dollars is in the community assistance piece with the idea of being of getting it out into the community the next bucket is infrastructure and what we focused on here are various infrastructure items with the goal being to again help counsel the community and staff connect and to enhance those efforts so we have what we've called aurora next but programming here is again going to be able to help council and the public um engage and also have staff do that so we have 240 000 for conference rooms with hybrid meeting capability 1.5 million for laptop and hotel cube equipment to help with the process of staff going back into the office and technology and ada improvements for council chambers of 250 000 we also have the infrastructure component that we talked about that's primarily in the court system um that will again help the court system do their job and help the residents of aurora you know connect with services the last piece of the quick wins is reven service preservation so 1.7 million we have revenue replacement um so this 100 000 would sure up um some of the programs in the court surcharge program um we have lower and lower ticket revenue based on the nature of covet 19 and other factors so this one-time infusion would help uh help secure that funds we have 880 thousand dollars for essential personnel support this would reimburse employees for the furlough days that were taken into 2021 there were several that were included in the 2021 budget they were ultimately canceled but two of them did occur and employees were furloughed for those days then we have the grant management support which we already talked about which will allow us to help develop those regional partnerships help us monitor and remain in compliance and then long term those positions will benefit uh the city as we continue to have different grant opportunities obviously with things like the infrastructure bill passing where there might be competitive grain processes having this positions in the uh within the city are going to have a benefit the long-term um process so that's the quick wins we are going to remain in utilizing the three buckets so we have the community assistance infrastructure and service preservation and basis on the reality of the amount of funding the fact that there's continued to be a significant number of regional partnerships staff thought it made more sense to come back and focus on one of these categories um at a time in future meetings um so having additional touch points um where we can talk and get more in the details about how the rest of the funding would be allocated utilizing these broad categories so you know community activities mental health homelessness housing economic development aurora next effort i.t infrastructure i.t software revenue replacement essential personnel support and grant management so again we would come back and provide more details about the remaining funding at a subsequent meeting for each of these categories and with that i'll turn over jessica prosser who will lead the next couple slides great thanks michael and hi mayor and council so with that and we're thinking about coming back and then also the process for allocating funds in the community i don't want us to lose sight of the leveraging opportunities and so i'll start at the bottom of the slide actually we've laid out the different things that have come to mind the first two are task forces that the state is working through we've mentioned these before the recommendations for these should be out in mid-december um from following along on those and then we'll translate into allocation processes in the beginning of 2022 we have also been meeting with the governor's office several of you came along on the ridgeview tour last week and the governor's office has put forth a proposed budget for a million dollars for homeless service hubs this would be things like uh the first bullet point up here related to a new homeless services campus um you know possibly um you know on the land that's existing on the campus or somewhere close by and then 45 million dollars is called out in that as well specifically for ridgeview both arapaho and adams county both have processes they're going through for allocation of our book funds adams county has a 35 million dollar community assistance bucket that they're putting out initially for their sort of first tranche of funding and we've been in uh you know close communication with arapahoe county as well on the different sort of big uh transformational projects as well i don't want to solute site that the city has also been allocated 4.2 million of hud home dollars specifically for infrastructure related to homelessness so we don't have to decide on that anytime soon but that will need to go and uh into one project would be the easiest for that and then we also have the opioid funding coming obviously you know the infrastructure bill several other things that are coming down the line can affect this so the recommendation from staff at this point is to sort of put a placeholder for the two projects up here at the top in order to have that leveraging ability but not make a final decision on those um you know tonight we're just looking for sort of uh guidance from council on the previous slides that that michael has put together under the quick wins but we want to make sure that we have something set aside when these larger state opportunities come about that will be able to be well aligned for leveraging next slide michael so for the buckets that we've just talked about in terms of community assistance we know there's many nonprofits service providers businesses that are looking to the city and saying you know how do we get some of your arpa money some of them have already you know made pitches to us and so we want to make sure that that's a structured um in you know fair and equitable process and transparent moving forward so the idea would be that we would have an application process um we would use the arpa eligibility to sort of frame that the applicants would choose a category that their project would align with i've listed some categories here below they would submit a scope in a budget to us in kind of a simpler application and then we would have review teams for each of these slated review the projects pick ones that score well and then have an opportunity for those different entities to come back to council and make short presentations um kind of like a public hearing where they could come in and sort of pitch their ideas and their projects the exception would be the affordable housing gap financing process we already have a community investment process in place for that and so that 5.2 million that was approved through the 2022 budget would move forward utilizing that process separately to really fund some shovel ready affordable housing projects so for non-profit assistance business assistance homelessness mental health that would be in this part of the funding category you can go to the next slide michael so the timeline is still a bit a little bit tbd we want to you know get um you know have this first conversation with council about the idea of utilizing this type of process very similar to what adams county is using right now very similar to what we've done for some of the previous rounds of cares funding in different ways that we've allocated funding uh previously throughout covet so we would come back with another touch point with council in december before the application is released at that point we would have the exact amount of funding in each of the buckets we would shore up the evaluation criteria which i've listed some here that we've used for these other arpa projects to prioritize we've used some of these with cares and other processes that we have these are just kind of general categories for evaluation and then from there we would put out an application to the community and like i said get some ideas in not make it a super cumbersome application once we choose projects then we would get all the specifics and details from those different entities and ultimately have to have an agreement with each of those and structure what that you know funding situation looks like so i think with that that's all we really had to share tonight i can turn it back over to michael to kind of wrap it up but i think at this point just looking for um you know council's buy-in on this sort of approach to the quick wins and then the process for allocating funds in the community um and i know we're all happy to take any questions since the staff uh on the quick win part let's do the quick wins first uh questions from staff on the quick ones mayor yeah all right councilman um yeah so on the um improvements to the council chambers um i know part of that of course is being able to do hybrid meetings um but i know we were also supposed to receive a presentation on the accessibility issues or the accessibility improvements that were being made to council or i mean being made um to the council chambers and from the information that we received prior to the presentation that we didn't end up having um it looked like mainly the improvements that were going to be made with signage as far as the lift and so i have some serious questions and concerns about that um the use of the lift is part of the inaccessibility of our chambers because it requires a staff member to escort someone and use a key to get down to the floor to speak if they use a mobility aid and that's very concerning to me i think if we're going to talk about accessibility and inclusion um that's not inclusion when someone has to take a separate entrance to get to the space that anybody else can access so i don't know who is the right person to answer that question um but probably someone from public works but um whether or not it's ada compliant and whether or not it's actually inclusive or two separate things and i would like to discuss and address that and talk about what it would take to make it actually inclusive which is something i've been asking city management about for two years um thank you councilmember coombs cindy collett public works director and we are updating that presentation and we'll be bringing it back to you understanding some of the concerns that you have expressed so we'll be doing that we've talked about maybe after the first of the year um but definitely understand your concerns and we're planning to reach out and chat with you about them uh separately if that's okay sure thank you further uh further comments further questions on quick wins next question mayor um uh thank you um on the the 15 million where it says new homeless services campus and then the ridge view academy was one to two million was the one to two part of the 15 or a separate mayor protemberg in two separate projects so the new homeless services campus would be replacing the day resource center and current uh overnight shelter of comitus to be in a new more you know efficient safe trauma-informed building either on the campus or somewhere close by so that would be a new homeless services campus and again the the state is doing set-aside funding for those types of campuses they'd like to have one in denver probably one in jefferson county and then one on the east side of town so aurora's well aligned to leverage that funding and then the ridgeview academy would be something totally separate that would be a transitional housing campus with that workforce development and you know housing placement um so one is kind of an emergency shelter and day resource center like we currently have the other one would be transitional housing and when asked the state i specifically asked you know how much funding are you looking for from each of the different partner jurisdictions for ridgeview academy understanding the state is putting aside 45 million they said you know a couple of million would be helpful to really show our support and engage in that project so the state's really trying to cover the rehab and then the operational piece of that facility okay so my question on the the day resource center so we i mean we just renovated that several years ago i can't remember how much we spent i think several million um you cannot i mean the day resource center we're using for the day primarily sometimes we use it for cold weather activation as well are you are we i mean i don't even know where this proposal is so when you the other ones you have application process for example over a mental health campus would be an application process but the new homeless service campus is not part of the application process so this because we currently own that building it's a city facility um i think it's being looked at a little bit differently in terms of how we replace that so a service provider may not own the building they would be the operator of the building so this one's being looked at where the city would still have an ownership interest in owning that facility that would be a combined facility of a day resource center um you know possibly in a multi-story type of building with a day resource center and then separate sheltering for families and individuals and things so are we going to get a presentation on exactly what that campus looks like before we spend 15 million dollars um i do you know in your community survey it looked like homelessness was kind of at the bottom of the survey for a lot of the awards or towards the bottom i can stick to that too okay i would just say that the uh it's very preliminary at this point all we did is some very basic costing to try to understand what it would be and this would be you know a multi-year process to look at but we would get details before we allocate the mummies right okay and then my second question sorry taking too long um on the infrastructure i'm really kind of amazed that we are only spending three million on infrastructure um can you tell me what is that all that's included because i thought water infrastructure was was part of the infrastructure package for our funds am i getting that confused with something else no it would be um water infrastructure was eligible these were just the the projects within infrastructure that were identified as things that could be implemented quickly and have an immediate impact so there would be potential right almost that would be yeah i just i have a real issue with when we raise uh water rates on our citizens and we have not anything in here for water yet we're spending hundreds of millions of dollars for water infrastructure pipelines for um you know just so many water projects but yet there's nothing in here for water like was that looked at did water even make any recommendations water did include a project um i believe maybe even a couple projects um but and it i guess maybe included in the long-term recommendations they weren't identified as things like i said they could be done fairly quickly so we were really just trying to focus well and am i i guess overall all most of the money is going towards social services and yet i don't really understand the actual core services that the city provides to our citizens don't seem to be in any of these buckets because i mean we're supposed to take care of roads police fire water critical services and yet it's all on the social services that are really more county i'm not saying i'm against any of this because obviously we've we've prioritized um helping homeless as well as um you know some of these other areas so i'm not saying i'm against it i just a little bit surprised that we could have more in infrastructure are there um jessica has a follow-up to that um in all and if as well as other other staff and chime in this is going to be one time dollars are any of these one-time dollars going to establish a program uh a new program that is really that's going to have a subsequent cost operational cost to it go ahead michael within the item submitted um within the quick win piece um there are not many items that would have a long-term operating cost i mean though things on infrastructure might have replacement costs um the positions within the grant management would obviously have some sort of long-term cost if we could take those positions um and there are some potential cost um but no for the the vast majority of these items it would be a one-time cost or a program that um would be kind of uh with looking at it to explore the impact um and then making a decision well i'd like you to identify which ones uh because using one-time dollars for something that creates an operational liability for the city in terms of an ongoing cost just is not a smart use of this money and so i like those ones specifically identified that have an ongoing cost associated to them after they're established with our products so the community connector program if we continue the program would have an ongoing cost if we continue to have that staff um i can let jessica weigh in i think we've gone back and forth on the long-term cost of the safe outdoor space component but that would be the other one that would potentially have an ongoing cost yeah the understanding would be that we're purchasing the infrastructure and then the operational costs would have to come from service providers other pieces medicaid other funding strategies for these and that's been that's been communicated this far and that would be something we would be very clear about in the application we put out to the community that these are one time really infrastructure type of costs not for you know operational needs some of those other you know state funding or other options would be the operational piece sure yeah my concern is if it comes from marginal fund further questions of staff well i'm sorry i think councilman gardner was next and then councilman thank you mayor so my question is related to i guess what what the ask is of staff tonight is the expectation that we are going to agree to move this forward and and i'm asking because if so i have concerns about that i i don't want to speak for the rest of council but this is the first time i've seen this since that the digest you know over 20 million dollars in spending um in a short presentation is is difficult and frankly i think um in some ways staff might be veering into the policy making arena and so i i guess i want to know what the expectation is tonight are we expected that we're going to move this forward or or what is what is the ask for staff the staff's task was for council to provide feedback in terms of the preliminary quick wins council's request at the last meeting was to come back with some ideas in terms of what we would allocate for um kind of getting money into the community so staff wanted to provide this as an initial starting point um receive council feedback and make adjustments as necessary and i i appreciate staff preparing this but from my perspective at least i think there needs to be time to digest this i mean this is a lot to process you know without having had it in our read ahead beforehand so thank you further questions discussions because i have a bit of a concern about the way things are being graded it would seem to me that that the most important thing that would happen on any investment is what is the result in other words we will give you x amount of hundred thousand million dollars and as a result of it we're gonna and and then due to that money this is the result we have this to show for this because again we're talking investment money so we're essentially buying something whether it's a building whether it's the tents whether it's the temporary shelters and then and then also some sort of discussion about return on investment in other words we spent this money because it was better than uh spending it in this other location so i saw the the evaluation criteria and it seemed to me very soft it was very you know it was very difficult to grade i think that if it if it changed to say you know as a result of this proposal and as a result of council's decision to fund it we are going to end up with something tangible this is the result and then from a return on investment discussion this is we think this is a better result than if we had spent the money over here because in that case we would have gotten something else which isn't as good as the thing that we that we received a discussion like that i think would make it easier for council to make calls as to whether or not to support or not support us a particular uh investment staff um i would just note that the criteria used was we were focusing on a couple different things as i mentioned two of the criteria were specific like part of the the long-term process of what we have to report out on to the federal government um and within the overall intent of the funding um in terms of what what the state of goals were um in terms of having an impact and helping um being alleviate issues impacted by covenant 19 are made worse like i've been 19 um and then just point out that you know it was just a framework of the process we wanted to be able to have a process that was um transparent and that uh the people could kind of understand but it's by no means the final decision making process and the these were going to be vetted management and final decisions were going to be made based on management's decision it was just the initial process to god guide the process and establish the framework mayor if i could respond please i appreciate that and i think that i think that we can say the same thing i think we can compromise on this and pretty much say the same thing in other words you've got a few criteria down there that are required or due outs to the federal government but within those due outs from a council perspective it's still based on a result we are investing x amount of dollars this is the result this is how that result compares against the federal guidelines and a result that better compares to the federal guidelines as opposed to one that doesn't compare as well is obviously not the best result the one that compares best to the federal guidelines but the one that council can understand uh will have the biggest impact on the city uh is where we need to be and that's the discussion uh that well i probably won't be here but that's the discussion i think you should bring back to council because that'll be a more robust discussion as to how the money can be best spent the optimum way of spending the money understood uh further uh comments or questions on the quick wins and then we'll go to the other sections urgent council of roses thank you yeah i i too appreciate all the all the time and effort that you put in um i do want to ask a question on the 880 000 payback for furlough days the reimbursement does that include our police and fire i believe that it does but i am not 100 sure so i'm gonna remember what else is on the call that could land yeah no that that doesn't uh council member we're having some discussions internally about police and fire this is this would just cover career service employees at this point that's the proposal uh but we like i said we're in discussions internally about police and fire and we would come forward with that also i hope you wouldn't exclude him pay some and not pay everybody that doesn't seem right um but you know i i just want to remind you showed us those charts and affordable housing seem to be number one um all across the board but yet we are i don't see them spending that much money on affordable housing it's for homeless support so i i think we need to go back and and rethink some of these um and and send this out this was not in our backup or at least it wasn't in my backup um you know could we get that so we can start thinking about it and exploring you know what what we think of it and how we might want to change this around a little bit yeah we can send it out i would point out we did have the 5 million for affordable housing that was included in the budget but your point is well taken yeah i mean then you've got 15 million for something else that's not low income housing okay thank you just a question of the city manager uh um the career civil service uh uh got days off they're basically being paid for the furlough days which were days that they didn't go to work i don't believe that i think police and fire worked through the pandemic and did not get furlough days am i correct in that that's correct okay very well um for any further questions uh or comments on the quick wins this is councilmember lawson guys um i do agree with my colleagues i do think that this should be sent out so we could conceptualize because i definitely have some questions on the 15 million for this campus um but i i need to probably get more information on that but my question is um one question i do have is we already have engage aurora so this award nexus 2.0 is that just an extenuation for this 2 million that we're going to spend for the engagement tool for for residents to participate into the city process i'm just trying to understand is that a continuation or are we getting rid of engage aurora for this aurora next i'm sorry i didn't mean 2.0 but it's an extension of this or is it so can someone explain that to me what what's going on with that is it is a engager war not effective and we're moving to a more robust civic engagement system or is this something different something different aurora next is the broad effort to um i guess come back with from the pandemic in a hybrid work environment to the the broader effort of what what technology will look like and what on the city's operations will look like post post the pandemic so is this a study that's going to be done or is this just what what's in what's in this that's two million dollars so the city could come back from the pandemic so a significant portion would be the laptops and the hotel cube equipment that would allow the the city to have the proper infrastructure for staff to have the hybrid work environment um that has been conceptualized as part of the long-term plan to come back um tell cubes that would um this would allow us to that model i would just add as well council member lawson to make sure that our rooms are set up for community groups to come in and have their own hybrid meetings so that we can have hybrid meetings also having those different locations throughout the community set up for hybrid meetings so um you know town hall meetings could happen in that hybrid environment where people could come in and then also um be at home also um you know customer service centers things like that so that people are able to have the best customer service they can um while some folks are working in the building and some are working at home so separate from engage aurora this would be you know we would absolutely continue to use that tool um as an engagement effort as well okay thank you for that further questions or comments on the quick wins mayor uh county councilmember mcconnell then mayor pretend all right thank you mayor uh i just wanted to say that i do agree uh with my colleagues that this should be sent out to all of us for review but i also wanted to say that i really appreciate the work that went into this because i think from my perspective staff did deliver uh what i thought that we had asked them we have a framework and we have some priorities that were identified through feedback from our community um i will need some more time to digest this but i did have a question on the economic development section specifically the restaurant assistance program and the small business grant rescue program um what i'm hearing and what i'm seeing when i go out to eat i just was at a store of india last night with my wife a lot of restaurants and small businesses have customers again but they don't have they're really struggling to hire folks um i think it's a wage matter so some of which all are proposing here is that something we'd be able to utilize that money to like kind of help supplement wages uh to a certain extent uh until like restaurants can actually i guess absorb the increased i guess expectation from our labor force in terms of pay i do believe that the restaurant assistance program included operation costs but let me confirm that and respond i think that's a good arpa question technically to to research and get back to the members um do you have any uh councilmember mcconnell do you guys i do just one last comment but again um i still want to digest this a little more and maybe we can talk a little more about the housing er uh specifically um i'm all i'm all for affordable gap financing i mean that's you know a very quick way to get shovels and dirt um but i also want to see what we can do from a longer term uh perspective on that maybe you'll have that as a separate presentation that we're about to see but when this is all said and done i really would like a copy of all of this okay okay um let's see um yeah so same thing i agree with everyone i would like to get this it was not in our backup and it was really hard to read the little teeny print probably had my face like big time in your screen um so but then within that is there any way to get a little bit more details on a couple of the things like the day resource center just maybe what that would look like um i don't know if there's an additional piece you could you could put with with this presentation yes that could have some additional context um thank you mayor i would offer that maybe we could um send this out send a little bit more specific description with a lot of these different projects and then come back for the first study session in december after everybody's digested it we could also put a little more context around the process for allocating out in the community so i just wanted to offer it i think that's a good point no i think definitely more detail you know i happen to think it's a good starting point and what i would encourage the members to do is to as we get more detail to you know if you think um a one um program or project is a priority over another you know move the money around and offer that if we use that as a basis to start a discussion and so really in effect offer that as a de facto amendment uh to do that and see if you get the requisite number of votes um to to be able to move the money around let's go to the next section uh now now that we've done quick wins um great i mean let me just say the three projects that i really would hope that we would go forward with is the on the homeless issue is working with the state on ridgeview for transitional housing uh on the middle of aurora mental health campus to to go forward with that and work with partners leveraging those dollars for the state and with the county uh and then um what we can do uh on in terms of addressing affordable housing i think those three projects are certainly what the governor has expressed to me a desire to work on those three projects um further discussion on uh um this section i lost this as i thought we were going to get details on all of it like including that part oh we will i just want to see if there's any discussion right now in this section is there any discussion on this section we just lost the i don't have a screen up on it for this mayor i think the question was around um just the idea of putting forth an application to the community for those different buckets um for people to submit projects and so just getting some initial feedback on that idea um and then being able to bring those projects forward so when we come back in december um we could put some examples of what those types of projects could be we probably wouldn't be ready to put an application out until about the first of the year okay because because obviously i think early in the year the legislature is going to be from a state perspective we'll be doing doing you know making their decisions so um further any discussion on uh leveraging funding here um let's see uh councilman mcconnell then councilman combs oh sorry um the screen went black at the time that you asked me so i just wanted to add one more thing which was and this would apply to the whole process if we could find a way to do uh some better data visualization with this i think it would help us make decisions like to get a clear idea of how much is being spent where as a proportion how much is left over it helps us and it'll also help the community understand what we're doing so i think both of those things are important thank you good point uh councilman um yeah so i think before we decide where we're going to be sending big chunks of money which i think this is actually the intent from staff i think these were just kind of ideas about how leveraging may work i think we need to have the actual detailed information and the opportunities for folks to give presentations because we haven't received presentations from everybody that has an idea to bring forward so i just think we need to get all the information and that is the intent of the leveraging funding is that it's longer term further discussions mayor um council memorial yes thank you um no i just i just wanted to express my my support of where this process has started i think it's a really strong foundation um we asked staff to come up with a framework and recommendations on how we might spend some of these dollars so i like that it's informed by some of the initiatives we already have going on that we want to really um try to be effective with um i really like the idea of leveraging dollars as well um and like the fact that you know this is just kind of teeing up where where this conversation could go and that we're gonna have you know lots of opportunity to ask more questions to have more information um but i'm i'm excited to see that we're trying to be strategic around leveraging other revenue sources i know that that's something that uh i've heard from my colleagues i myself have always um wanted to hear more of and i'm excited to see that that's kind of a proactive part of the plan and i like that we're not spending all the money all at once like for no reason right so we're being strategic about how we're um accomplishing short-term goals um and then we still have money set aside for other worthy projects that might not be quite ready to to go or to be funded right at this moment um so i i just wanted to express that thank you is a great starting point um further discussion uh seeing none then i think we've uh the the direction has been given to staff uh in terms of providing uh more detail on all these specific items and then we'll come back for further discussion um are there any other matters to come with themselves sessions saying none thanks to everybody media adjourned [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you