bye [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] uh the study session of the aurora city council from monday february 1st 2021 is called to order with the clerk please call the rule council member gardner here council member gruber here councilmember hiltz here council member lawson here council member johnston here council member marcano president and council member mario president there's a quorum uh there's no mayor's update are there any issue updates uh seeing none if i can have um approval of the consent calendar to move items number two a and two before is there any objection to that i'm seeing none that items two a and two b will move forward um uh civil service uh commission interviews uh i want to defer the clerk to talk about the process that we're going to undergo yes mayor there will be approximately 20 minutes allotted for each interview and the in the whole interview process will last approximately 20 hours the candidate will have two minutes to introduce themselves and explain why they are interested in serving on the commission there will be ten quest questions asked each candidate and council members will rotate asking questions in alphabetical order there will be two minutes allotted for each question we try to ask that the same questions are asked of each candidate the candidate will be given one minute to provide any final comments they would like to make i will be keeping track of a lot of times and will let the candidate know when they have reached their two minutes discussion of the interviews and the appointment of two commission members will be done at the february 8th riger council meeting to be interviewed as leandra steed okay lee andrews d um you have two minutes for opening remarks we're trying to get her on the line right now okay so i'm sorry it seems like she's having some challenge getting on the webex so she's about to call in so i'll just be one minute excuse me mayor the papers are getting allowed feedback if you're able to mute i don't know if my headset or anyone else is getting that thanks mayor i have a question mayor cartenberger i guess since the first candidate is not able to get on camera would we possibly consider moving the order of the interviews i think it's helpful to have them on camera when we're asking questions and getting answers um let me defer to the clerk but i believe uh the candidates have been given specific times yes i don't know if she's having technical difficulties she's not able to to download webex and so she's calling in right at this moment is she on the line now no mayor she hasn't we just got off the phone with her and she let us know that she was calling in right now so i'll give her one more minute okay so come here she's on the line right now okay uh uh lee understeed uh you have hi how are you i apologize for me being uh struggling in the uh no it's not necessary uh let's just get going here and uh for now you have two minutes uh this is mayor mike hoffman you have uh uh and thank you for joining us you have two minutes to give an overview of your background and why you're uh interested in this position hi my name is lee steed and i am a longtime um see uh resident of aurora i am a graduate of hinckley and my daughter is um going to graduate from hinckley as well i feel that the reason why i would like to be a part of this commission is because there are just some things i think we need to be open-minded about about hiring when it comes to um taking uh looking at things that through a different lens and i think that i do possess that i know that i am a woman of color i have um and i have i work currently with great education colorado and i know that we are really bringing in that conversation of equity i'm also the education chair for aurora naacp and um and i've did i've done countless other works throughout our community and and the state and so um i feel that what i bring to the table is just a different view of of what policing should look like i feel that police is not just a one-way street i think policing when you're talking about policing a community you need to have all voices in this conversation and i feel that that's what i do bring to this to this commission mayor you're muted mayor protam berlin for the first question uh thank you did you meet me bergen mayor protemberger thank you um well thank you for for applying for the commission um this is really an important position so my question is when commissioners conduct disciplinary hearings do you think they should consider public opinion when making their decisions deciding on a case brought before the civil service commission is akin to jury duty uh i do believe so because it impacts the community if any any dealings with um with um people in your neighborhood in your community it should have that voice in there as well so i i yes i do okay thank you very much you're welcome second question to councilmember bergens thank you thank you for coming tonight i know it is tough to get on webex sometimes we we all go through that and especially if you're not used to it it can be a real bear sometimes right i'm a zoom kind of girl i think we all are pretty much but yeah yeah we we do it all and they all have their problems but but thank you i appreciate you coming um and you know i don't know how much you know about the civil service commission but it's really like uh no other commission that the city has and that you get paid you hold the careers of people in your hands and it's not only them but it's their families too so it it affects it affects a lot of people and it also reflects on the city uh so this is a really really important commission so i just have a simple question in today's world are you confident that you can be objective and unbiased in discipline hearings and the hiring process processes and why i think i um can be um i think i have that lens because of just and i and i say this due to my age i've seen a you know seen a lot and just have just seen how when things are and not to say that age is the is the major factor but but i um but i've just seen a lot in my lifetime and i see what happens when you hire people who are ill-equipped to to do the work you not only harm the people who you are um supposed to protect but you harm the community's trust and so i feel that that is a major issue that we all need to understand that this is absolutely this is very this is critical this is more critical than probably any other position that i will ever um ever step into so this is an opportunity i think to to take that into consideration take that inconsis and just into consideration that yes like we are we're dealing with human beings we're doing with lives we're dealing with um not just the here and now but in our future and so thank you that was your two minutes i'm sorry okay no problem thank you thank you third question councilman coombs thank you mayor and thank you leave for joining us this evening um so my question is with respect to equity um we have seen from presentations in our uh public safety policy committee that the city has a much higher rate of not completing the process or not making it through all of the steps for applicants who are people of color in aurora when we're trying to hire police officers in particular but this i think applies to both police and fire which is just what are your ideas about what we can do as a city not only to attract qualified candidates from diverse backgrounds but also to ensure that we end up hiring qualified candidates from diverse backgrounds well i think probably we may have to stretch beyond um beyond the aurora boundaries we may want to look into you know go out to denver even go into other cities to recruit some of some of these talents that we are missing out on and um and also too we may want to my recommendation is to start young i think kids don't see themselves in these positions because they don't see a lot but i think we we have an opportunity to change that if we start talking to kids now talking and grooming them for this position letting them know this is a possibility this is something that you can do you can achieve and and also too we need to walk people through this process we know that a lot of kids um you know they're struggling in school right now so we want to make sure that maybe what we can do is bring in the police department bring in the school system and and create this kind of union where we are actually being intentional on the recruitment of these children and and and and moving forward thank you councilmember gardner hi leandra thanks for being here um so my question serving on the civil service commission may require you to make disciplinary decisions based on evidence presented rather than your own opinions and preferences so tell me a little bit about how you would approach decision making process if you were on the civil service commission uh when reviewing disciplinary action taken by the police or fire chief i think you have to hear all stories and you have to have all the evidence and and you have to be just mindful of what you're looking at if you don't understand absolutely reach out to people who do know who have done the work and um like you said like once was said before these are people's lives you're dealing with so so to make a haphazard um decision is is not beneficial for anybody and so i i'm definitely bringing in for me because this is something new i would definitely ask as many questions as possible and bring in all views of this of the issue thank you you're welcome uh councilmember hiltz thank you hello and thank you for applying um i was going to ask about hiring but since we already talked about that i'm going to pivot a little bit um as you know we have a a rank structure in the police and fire department so my question is two-fold do you believe that a commanding officer's directive should ever be questioned and do you believe it's the role of the commission to question those directives um i think that's the commission's work i mean that's why it's put into place that's my assumption that we have to question even those people who who don't feel they they should be questioned absolutely everybody has to be held accountable and um and this is this is an opportunity for one that individual to tell their story and um and so and we can get some clarity on what whatever the issue may be councilman gruber good evening and thank you for joining us commissioners have or commissioners review background investigations and findings on applicants to determine who's hired for the police and fire department please describe any experience you have in this type of hiring process i have no background in that and i haven't to be honest i have not done any type of hiring such as that so thank you member johnson thank you um thank you lee for for applying and being here um i want to talk about uh the civil service commission staff it's it's different than other cities um for us as council we don't oversee staff the city manager doesn't um the city um civil the civil service commission actually does um with the administrator so i'd like to get your thoughts on having some accountability with the civil service staff that we have and and how you would work to communicate ideas that you may want to see implemented and then also have an accountability evaluation system for civil service staff um i think how i would just take it it would definitely be something that i would want to know each member and um definitely to have an opportunity to like have a coffee with and just sit and know that individual know what know their background just as i would like for them to know mine as well and i think that right there we would we could be able to talk some issues through even if we you know we have to maybe agree to disagree on some issues and that's okay and being respectful of each other's background and each end of who we are and what we also bring to the table and don't discount that as far as um um let's see um councilwoman johnson what was the second question i apologize no i i think you actually um touched upon it it's just that it's unique in terms of accountability or evaluation all of our other structures within the city you know the council or the manager oversee that staff and with the civil service commission it's the actual the administrator of the civil service commission um is i guess overseen by the civil service commission but i've just noticed that there's just some you know it's not always as formalized as with those other entities in the city but i think you touched upon it unless there's anything else you wanted to add no i'm sorry councilmember that was the two minutes thank you thank you uh councilwoman hi lee sorry how are you thank you for applying um i guess one of my questions uh it was already taken about about the hiring process so with that in mind can you tell me about an experience or thoughts on what it seemingly is a race blind process but has disparate outcomes repeat that again can you please tell me about an experience or thoughts on what seemingly is a race-blind process but has disparate outcomes a race-blind process and as you know let me kind of just explain a little bit the civil service commission i mean it has a race i mean it has a um seemingly blind race blind process however there are okay because there has been outcomes that are disparate outcomes so as it relates to that i see i see like just like like removing their their name uh i see and their race and looking up on that um gosh um councilwoman lawson i i to be honest i have to um that is difficult for me to answer and um i'm looking i'm i'm trying to think here um how you would level the level the playing field well maybe how would you um put it into a policy or process on the civil service commission okay what would be something that you would do or something that you would support to deal with that issue i think i would um just to see how individuals answer different questions i mean um not everybody is going to answer questions correctly i would like to look at the way they act the way the questions are asked um and that's just like like looking at your school like cmas you know they have a huge disparity in in that process too i would love to see what the questions are and um how individuals are are um are dealt with in that process um just looking at the hiring process or looking at the testing process that is that that is um that is given to the individuals and i'm sorry we have about five more seconds okay i and i think that's it for me thank you councilmember mcconnell thank you mayor and thank you for joining us lee my question for you is that the fbi has long been concerned with white supremacists militia extremists and sovereign citizen extremists attempting to infiltrate law enforcement and other public service roles if appointed what changes if any would you suggest to the backgrounding process for the civil service commission in order to discourage these kinds of individuals for applying for civil service roles in aurora oh wow um i would think i think you would have to really to do uh to do background checks on individuals such as that i know currently what we're seeing is people them going into their social media accounts and looking into that maybe asking um you know friends and neighbors and uh maybe going even further back to to what they have done in as far as high school goes um that is i mean a lot of things fall through the cracks and when i feel that once you are once that is brought to your attention immediate steps need to be taken and and that needs to be um and they need to be removed absolutely i hope that answered that okay council member thanks mayor hi lee it's good to see you thank you for applying um as you know one of the objectives of the civil service commission is to meet the city council's goal of providing a safer community can you define what a safer community means to you i think a safer community you know what we all would want is to um one not be afraid of the people who are out who are here to protect us that's number one um have have that trust in in those in that role and also be able to um i mean just the basics able to you know to go out after a certain time able to not be concerned about if you're if you're um if your vehicle is is vandalized or stolen um but i think one but i think it's really going to have to start from the top and when it comes to people's trust a lot of people have that no snitching rule and and i think that it it's i mean it stems from a lot of things it's like okay do we even trust the people who we're talking to and and i think that this is an opportunity where we can where the police commission and the police department can work with community to build that trust and i think it starts it's going to start it's going to start small but we have to start somewhere thank you they seed i want to thank you so much for being with us tonight for applying for the civil service commission and uh you have uh one minute for final comments um i just appreciate you all allowing me to um to say hello and to speak this evening and i'm looking forward to to working with this council um even on the commission or otherwise so i appreciate you all and um and that is my time thank you so much thank you very much um clerk do we have um brooke gabrielli she is on the line there and she's she's ready to be interviewed is she on the phone line or is she going to be uh webex i am on webex hello okay accept uh we don't have a visual oh there we go okay somewhat there we go there we go okay good good evening okay well brooke thank you so much for joining us tonight and thank you for applying for the civil service commission and uh can you um yeah you have two minutes to uh tell us about your background and why you want to be on the civil service commission okay great thank you well first of all i just want to say thank you for the opportunity and for the time to be here and i'm excited to be able to chat with all of you tonight about what i can offer to the civil service commission i've lived in aurora nearly my whole life i was born in aurora and then grew up in an unincorporated arapahoe county that became centennial but for my entire adult life with the exception of one year when i was in arizona i've either been a renter or now a homeowner in the city of aurora and more recently i've become a lot more actively engaged and have been looking for a way to just give of my time more to help make aurora the city that can be the best city it can be and so really i'm looking forward to this opportunity because when i decided to look into joining a commission or a board it was really important to me that i chose one to apply for that i knew i had the skills and background and experience to support and to really give something to so along with that my personal background i work in education i've been in education for close to 13 years now i have a bachelor's in english with a minor in government and a master's in school counseling and i've both taught in an english classroom and i'm currently a school counselor and so i think that brings a really unique perspective for me to the commission both in regards to equity and a systems approach that i use in the schools that i think i can really bring to the commission so i'm excited to get started thank you mayor i think you're muted first question from mayor protembergen thank you and thank you brooke for applying uh to the civil service commission it's a really important commission my question is when the commissioners conduct disciplinary hearings do you think that they should consider public opinion when making their decisions and uh just real quick and deciding a case brought before the civil service commission is akin to jury duty okay so you're just that second part was just a kind of follow-up explanation yes i'm sorry okay all right thank you yes um i think that with disciplinary action it's tough to include public opinion within that because there's so much that the public doesn't have an opportunity to know and when looking at disciplinary action it's really important that commissioners are focusing on the facts that they are laying out every side of the situation in front of them and i think we know that in the court of public opinion it's rare that all of those facts are available to those who have that opinion and i do think that as a commissioner it may be tough to try to avoid that public opinion but that's something that if appointed i would really work to make sure i'm working through any bias that comes from that public opinion and truly focusing right on those facts um so to answer directly i would say no i think that we would need to be careful of bringing public opinion into disciplinary hearings simply because no one is going to have full access to all of the information necessary to make an educated decision on that thank you very much councilmember bersin's next quest next question from councilmember bergens thank you and thank you brooke for coming tonight um i don't know how much you know about the civil service commission but it's really not no other commission that we have in the city because you get paid and you make decisions that not only affect the person who's either applying to get hired or disciplinary action that you affect them and their families and what you decide reflects on the city too it's not just you it's not the commission it's the old city so um simple question in today's world are you confident that you can be objective and unbiased in discipline hearings and in the hiring process and why yeah but i think that's a really important question so thank you for asking it and i am confident that i can be unbiased that i can be objective and there's a lot of different reasons for that one is because of everything you listed at the beginning of your question this is something that i take really seriously in serving my community and serving my city i know that i have to come back and answer to my neighbors who i'm close with and other citizens in our community and probably also the aurora sentinel and everything that makes up the community and so it's really important to me that i'm being thorough and as objective and pos as possible but we know it's hard to be objective and it's hard to be unbiased and that's where um i would be very conscious of those things and of the necessary duty involved in my role as that as an educator i have had a lot of training and a lot of experience and how to recognize bias and how to work through implicit bias and um that's something that i would absolutely bring to the commission in in all roles um but i think as you mentioned you know it's particularly important in discipline hearings and really making sure that i'm recognizing that and you know i've mentioned a lot the need to look at everything as a system and i hope that that's something that if it's not already occurring that we could bring some of that training into the entire commission as well to really look at how do you make sure you're eliminating any bias that you may have and remaining objective fully within that council mama combs thank you mayor and thank you brooke for joining us this evening and taking the time to interview my question is about equity in the hiring process our police department has a disproportionately large number of people of color who don't make it through the civil service process and so i'm wondering what you think the civil service commission can do to ensure that we're recruiting and also moving through the process a more diverse pool of employees to serve as both police and firefighters yeah absolutely and this is something that i'm really passionate about and it's probably the number one reason why i chose to apply for the commission and i could go on for a really long time talking about this so that's an open invitation who wants to chat about it further whether i'm appointed or not after the interview tonight but um you're absolutely right i spent a lot of time digging into the data and was was pretty um jarred to see just how distant the data is in regards to um particularly applicants who identify as black we see that latino applicants are actually performing a little bit higher performance not the right term but being hired at a little bit higher rate um and so for me as i've looked through the data i think that we need to look at an entire system overhaul and you mentioned recruitment as well and i think that that is a major piece of it is what are what is happening at the recruitment level um what are we doing to recruit internally from citizens in the city of aurora and to retain those citizens into our civil service positions and so when i say it's a whole systems approach i think that we really need to look at recruitment and then the civil service commission process for appointment and then also looking at the departments working with the chiefs and the city council at looking at reform and retention because as civil servants are retained more then that starts to bode well for the department as a whole and becomes a more appealing department for applicants so that's on the system level but on um a more fundamental level i think that there are some flaws within the system that really need to be reviewed and i can't say fully tonight what all those are because i would really need to sit and be in it and have conversations and do really deep and thorough research i can tell you one thing that i've been questioning is the idea of maintaining a colorblind process throughout it we know with more recent equity work that colorblindness is actually opposite of what we want to do in regards of celebrating diversity and bringing diversity into an organization um i don't know for sure we have about five seconds left that's all thanks katie thank you councilman uh councilmember gardner hi brooke thanks for being here um my question serving on the civil service commission may require you to make disciplinary decisions based upon the evidence presented rather than your own opinions and preferences so talk to me a little bit about what your decision-making process would look like if you were a member of the civil service commission reviewing disciplinary action taken by either the police chief or fire chief sure so first of all i think that the committee approach is really important and to have a full commission that within that committee that's a piece of those checks and balances you can make sure that the opinion on the personal opinion is being eliminated from that um but similar to what mayor potenbergen asked it would really be focusing on the facts making sure that we're looking at what's laid out in front of us um it is you know my understanding that that's all coming from attorneys um but we can only go off of what we're given and i think it's really important to just focus on those black and white facts as far as what is the situation leading to it um as opposed to potentially bringing in personal opinion now once again as i said bias personal opinion is hard to eliminate and so it's always just recognizing when it's not coming up and recognizing um okay that's a little bit of my opinion coming in i need to turn away from that but that's where i think continuing to chat together with the full commission as a committee approach um makes a really big difference and in making sure that those discipline hearings are fair to all thank you thank you councilmember gruber brooke you you obviously understand the role of the commission given the answers that you have so far so my question uh kind of reviews what you've said uh commissioners review background investigations and findings on applications on applicants to determine who's hired for policing the fire department please describe any experience you have in this type of hiring process yeah so um you i'm just to clarify you're asking specifically about the background investigation questions your experience in hiring oh so just experience in hiring in general okay great thank you i'm glad i clarified that then um so i actually have quite a bit of experience in hiring through the education system and i've had quite a few opportunities at a couple of different schools to be whether it's more of a direct hire for a support position or a committee hire for a certified position and i see a lot of crossover between the two and um in many ways of one they're pretty well the civil servants are more high liability and more high risk than educators but particularly in my line of work pretty high liability the background piece is very important so i don't have experience directly within hiring civil servants but i do have experience quite a wealth of experience in hiring public servants and um see a lot of a lot of crossover and that's where that experience that i have has a lot of it is focused on increasing diversity within the education workplace we are dealing with many of the same issues as police and fire with trying to increase that diversity and make sure that our workforce mirrors our citizens or our students and our population um but i have quite a few years of experience of that and will always always rely on that committee approach and i think that the storming and norman peace and discussion that occurs um throughout the process and after final interviews things like that is really important to the process thank you thank you councilmember hiltz thank you thank you so much for being here um my question is twofold so in organizations like police and fire there's that ranked structure so do you believe that a commanding officer's directive should ever be questioned and is it the role of the commission to question those police and fire directives so the first part of your the first part of your question um can i can i clarify council member hilts when you say should it be questioned do you mean within a decision within the moment or afterward so maybe going back on reflection either one okay we'll leave that to you okay all right fair enough well maybe we'll address both um so i do have a lot of friends and family members who serve within police fire as well as military and i know that within the moment it is sometimes very difficult to question a ranking officer's decision and we know it's high pressure jobs and um that it's it's tricky if you're going to question it in the moment and sometimes can be a result of life death safety situations so i'm not going to say that it should never be questioned because sometimes the right decision simply isn't being made but i think it's a little bit harder to question when it's in the moment now after the fact and in reflection i think that we always grow by questioning that and it would be really hard for someone to come question their superior but maybe that's leading toward growth in the department and growth for that superior as as well as everyone involved and so i think it's less problematic to question in that case when it is more how can we do better and that's something i'm a person who always wants to challenge the status quo and so i will always encourage people to ask that question of how can we do better and i would hope that the chiefs and captains and those in supervisory roles are are doing the same are questioning was this the right choice to make as far as that being the decision of the commission to make um i think that that becomes a little bit more gray area for the commission if it's not a discipline hearing that's coming forward i am not a police officer i am not a firefighter and that is not my area of expertise and so if i don't have that full wealth of knowledge i don't fully believe it's my role to start to question decision making however if it was brought to us as let's have a conversation let's talk about this or let's look at reform with this decision making i would absolutely open be open to the opportunity to engage in that councilmember mcconnell i'm sorry uh staying corrected council member johnson thank you thank you so much brooke for for being here and then applying um my question is about the the structure the staffing with the civil service commission as you may know it's it's unique from our other areas of our city where we don't have the city manager overseeing it or um council in terms of um doing evaluations so i just wanted to talk get your thoughts on having some accountability with the um civil service staff um and that communication and how you would would address that if you were on the civil service commission so you're speaking of staff not fellow commissioners correct exactly yes okay an accountability of staff toward commissioners or commissioners um accountability of of staff toward commissioners but also they set a lot of the the rules and the administration and um we we don't really have a formal process for overseeing that so i just wanted to see your thoughts and shame report to the civil service commission okay great thank you well i look at all this as a series of checks and balances right which is a major reason why the commission exists in the first place and so to maintain that checks and balances um it's sounding a little bit like based off of your question there might be room to clean things up a little bit for lack of better terms to make things more direct and uniform as i've said a few times i'm a big systems person and so that's something that i would probably spend a lot of hours of my own time trying to look at what's the cleanest system how can things be streamlined linear so that there's no question and i think that in any organization that's really important that everyone involved knows exactly what's expected that everyone involved knows exactly how a process works and so that sounds like it's just you know simply adding some systemic organization to it but i i do really want to come back to that one thing that i love and that's a big reason why i imply why i'm applying for the commission is that it is that um citizens working with staff and that that's a really important partnership and so i want that partnership to continue um but just make sure that things are more clear in regards to expectations does that kind of did it talk about it please thought you're asking okay thank you thank you yeah thank you councilmember lawson hi brooke thank you for applying um my question hi how are you my question is you kind of touched on this about race um the race blind process so my specific question is this the civil service commission is seemingly a race flying process but there are outcomes that have disparate impacts can you go a little bit in depth a little bit in depth um in a short time on your thoughts on this and how would you address this issue and if you get onto the civil service commission yeah so this is this is something that i've been spending quite a bit of time looking at and once again i don't have all the answers because i don't think i have access to all of the information right now and so if i was appointed to the commission um it's something that i would really want to look into in depth um because the you know my comment earlier to council member clemson's question regarding colorblindness is um right now that's more it's at the appointment part but there there's also a large process prior to that um through testing through polygraph and much of the systemic it truly very well probably a systemic racism that is built into those processes and um i can't speak fully into what that is or is it particular questions but i have a lot of wondering about it particularly when you look at the minimum qualifications i have the data in front of me right now so i'm sorry i'm looking to decide i believe it's at the ergometrics no it's minimum qualifications is where the largest drop particularly for applicants who identify as black or african american it is a huge drop just through minimum qualifications and so that leads me to wonder do we need to reflect on what are those minimum qualifications and is there maybe some bias or some racism built in to that process right there that needs to be adjusted and i know that you all have gone through some studies and i've been able to review those studies a little bit as well but would really really be interested in going in depth to reviewing that process and looking at how can we be more thoughtful and thorough and um always checking our bias and always looking at that system to make sure that there is not innate racism and really biased towards other populations as well we're also talking about gender we're talking about sexual orientation here there's a lot of underrepresented populations that are not making it through the very early parts of this process so when that's happening that to me in my beliefs that's not something about the people applying that's something about the system that we need to look at and correct thank you mayor and thank you brooke for being here tonight my question for you is that the fbi has long been concerned with uh quote white supremacists militia extremists and sovereign citizen extremists attempting to infiltrate law enforcement and other public service roles if appointed what changes if any would you suggest to the backgrounding process for the civil service commission in order to discourage these individuals from applying for civil service roles in our city yeah that's a really important question and very relevant very timely and relevant right now um i don't this is one that once again i don't have all the answers for you councilmember marcano um but as i've mentioned a lot of times i think we need to do a thorough review of this process and um i don't know enough about the background investigation process to know if that is currently coming up in it or not so that that would be a question i would have to ask i do know that as you mentioned the fbi has information um about domestic servants who are considered extreme or who can who are considered domestic terrorists and so i absolutely hope that that is coming up in investigation and if it's not then that is something that needs to be identified right away um to make that adjustment to the process and um i also do think though that as we talk about looking at a maybe a little bit larger overhaul of this process would some factors that um you know say it didn't say that say someone was not identified in the background investigation that fits the description you're explaining um i hope that we can look at the process a little bit more and some of the questions to see are there other areas along the way that those could be identified i know that right now oral boards are not part of the process and for me what's missing there is the sensitivity piece and um the commitment to diversity piece and how can we interact with people who are different than us speaking from an applicant's point of view and i don't really see an area in the process right now where we as a commission can identify that where we as a commission can identify that the applicants aren't coming to us with a level of racism or bias or the ability to work through that and interact with citizens in a safe way okay thank you thank you thank you thank you again for uh applying for the civil service commission and for being with us tonight and you have one minute for uh mayor kaufman [Music] uh hi brooke thank you for being here time as you know one of the goals of our city council and by proxy the civil service commission is to provide for a safe aurora how would you define a safe aurora yeah um so i think a safe aurora goes much deeper than the surface of you know not seeing crime or um lowering crime rates and things like that um the word safe has a lot of connotations to it and we can go pretty far in depth about what safety means um and so there's of course physical safety and i'm not going to get too much into physical safety because they think that's more on the surface of do i feel okay going out at night in my community and that's absolutely important but we also need to be looking at psychological safety and emotional safety and do our citizens feel okay interacting with members of the city and employees of the city and a piece of that absolutely is our public servants and you think this is actually goes a little bit back to council member mcconnell's question he just asked in my response to that as well if we don't have civil servants who are allowing those who they're serving to feel psychologically safe within their presence then we're not accomplishing that ideal of a safe aurora and that's something that needs to be more built into the process so if a point is a commissioner that's something that i absolutely want to look at i can speak to my own experiences i can speak to many student experiences interacting with civil servants it's both positive and negative where it all starts with that psychological safety and so if we don't have that and if that's not um in the process to make sure the people who we're hiring and promoting are committed to that then i don't think we're ever going to reach our safer aurora that we're trying to create and maintain thank you and now i'm so sorry brooke thank you for applying for the civil service commission and uh uh you have one minute for concluding remarks all right thank you well i once again just want to say thank you to all of you for your time i know that you have a bit of a long night ahead of you so i appreciate you being here and giving myself and the other applicants an opportunity um i hope more than anything you've just seen that a lot of things that are built into the civil service commission are areas that i'm really passionate about and they're areas that i'm really passionate about improving the city of aurora and our public servants through and i really do want to reiterate that whether i'm appointed or not i would love to have these conversations i love to dig into the data i love to talk about how can we do better how can we look at fixing some of these problems within our system and really help to improve aurora as a whole and as a community so thank you again for your time and i'm really looking forward to hearing from everyone thank you very much thank you take care everyone um harold johnson mayor we just spoke to mr johnson and he is about to log on right now we told him that he could log on a little early so if we can just give him a minute oh great thank you okay do you think we should take a five minute break um is it going to take him a little while uh patty's on the phone with him again right now i'm not sure if he was having problems too but if you'd like to take a five minute break you're more than welcome to the time is now 6 25 the council will stand in recess until 6 30. [Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] the time is now 6 30 um the study session will convene um do we have harold johnson mr johnson cannot get webex to work so he's calling in right now we've been on the phone with him okay you know mr johnson is anyone else getting a lot of background noise okay harold johnson is on the line he was having trouble with webex so it's going to be a phone call my apologies and he is ready to go mr johnson uh harold johnson thank you so much for being with us tonight and thank you so much for applying for the civil service commission we'll start out if you can take two minutes and tell us a little bit about your background and why you're interested in being on the civil service commission okay well my name is earl johnson i'm a native uh colorado and born and raised in denver colorado uh 66 years old um my education is that my first nine years of education or catholic school here in denver loyola curious in saint francis de sales last three years i attended denver public schools and graduated from denver south high school in 1972. i went on the university of colorado freshman year and then transferred to northern colorado and greely and graduated from there in 76. i did my graduate work at adam state college in alamosa just dear and dear to my heart so i have a master's from adam state started my work experience uh my degree is from unc uh in recreation and uh worked for denver parks and recreation for 13 years uh came in as a custodial trainee and rose all the way to the rank of uh director of the center so i was a director of the largest center at that time in this part of the country which was glenn arm recreation center uh then left that and went to the fire service and started us in 25 year with the fire service with that i also always coached so back and forth with coaching and uh firefighters have day off that's what they do they you know have a day off job i chose to give back to the community and uh substitute teaching coach so coached here around town have coached at the college level i was head coach at a historical black college and head track coach at langston university in oklahoma in fact it was only two years of my life that i've not been in the state of colorado so uh i think i'm uniquely qualified being a firefighter and then my family my dad all his buddies were police officers so i grew up with police officers became a firefighter know the ins and outs of what goes on with the fire service and police officers too so i think i'm a uniquely qualified uh to to really let folks know what we need in as far as recruitment retention promotion of those said people okay maybe you're muted right now first question from mayor pro-tem bergen okay uh yes mr johnson thank you for applying for the civil service commission it's a really important uh commission for the city of aurora so um when deciding on a case brought before the civil service it's akin to being on a jury duty when commissioners conduct disciplinary hearings do you think that they should consider public opinion when making those decisions no you should be you should be uh aware of and attuned to what is going on with that person at that time the facts uh that's what you have to pay attention to that's the only of being fair and that's the only way to be fair be fair be consistent and that means that you pay attention to the facts of the of what's brought before you okay thank you very much okay next question is from uh councilmember berzins thank you thank you so much mr johnson for coming and applying um you know this i'm not sure how much you know about our civil service commission but it's unlike any other commission that we have you know first of all you get paid for being on this commission um and the decisions that you make um reflect the city and uh it actually holds the careers of the people involved whether they're just applying or whether it's a disciplinary action you hold their careers in your hands and their families also so it is a it's a very weighted commission um i have only have one question [Music] in today's world are you confident that you can be objective and unbiased in the discipline hearings and the hiring processes and why i was definitely confident in that my background what i've done speaks that you know when you're a coach and you literally have the lives of these young men and young women in your hands you have to be objective you have to do what uh what you know is best for them and you know saying what's best for them is if there's rules there's regulations there's things written down that have to be done there are consequences for your behavior both good and bad and knowing that we will have the the the lives uh and of the families of the person's career all of that taken into account you still must take into account what it is that he or she might have done and uh there's you know being being fair is not treating everyone the same being fair is treating the per everyone individually you take every uh situation individually and weigh what happened with that situation with that person what their background is what what has happened disciplinarily wise before this happened and you weigh all that and hopefully together i think there's five people you come to a consensus with what would be the best thing not only for the for the man or the woman who we are looking at but also for the city for the citizens thank you very much thank you councilmember coombs yes thank you mayor and thank you mr johnson for joining us um and taking the time to interview today um in recent reviews of our department's uh data it's clear that we have a disproportionately large number of people of color that enter into the applicant pool to become police officers that don't make it through the civil service process so what can the civil service commission do to ensure that we're recruiting and moving through the process a more diverse pool of employees serving as police and firefighters in our city well you know as a black man who tested for my position with denver fire department when i retired i left with the rank of captain i also uh tested years ago for the police with aurora fire and finished very very high on the test and was not called back as i told you i'm a native um aurora has always had a bad reputation just being frankly they've always had a bad reputation in terms of uh diversity they we must come up with a new way to look at people to recruit people because uh you know as a genius albert einstein said you know to keep doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity something is wrong with the system i think i can really help with that and let you know you know what is going wrong with and why that is happening and if the city of aurora really would like to be on the cutting edge of changing what is going on in this country with police then i'm the person to to help i think we can make changes we can do the right thing um you know pro part of the thing is that you know there's such a uh with fire and police such a a really pressure to go along with what has always happened so we're talking about changing the culture and as a coach as educator as a firefighter i know how to change culture it's it's difficult but you change culture and that means you have to change things that usually comes from the outside you have to bring someone who doesn't owe anybody and doesn't really know anybody it's hard to change culture from the inside all those guys know each other so you promote another guy up the ladder that's probably not going to change we need to change a culture and aurora needs to change theirs and that means changing changing what we do with that test i haven't seen it but i it's pretty much like them because it's pretty much like all the all the departments seem to have a problem mr johnson you have about five seconds left thank you okay okay that's fine for that question hey um councilmember gardner hi harold thanks for being here tonight appreciate it um my question serving on the civil service commission may require you to make uh disciplinary uh decisions review disciplinary decisions based upon evidence presented uh rather than your own opinions and preferences so tell me a little bit about how you approach the decision-making process let's say when you're reviewing disciplinary action taken by either police chief or fire chief you know i would i would say that would go back to my experience coaching you know as head coaching particularly at the college level you have rules and regulations as i said before there's consequences for your behavior did this person violate a rule or regulation that they knew of that's why it's important to write everything down and i like to have people sign off on they know what the rules are they know what the regulations are then what was the documentation leading up to this charge being brought against this person you know what is the evidence and how much evidence do we have and then of course we still have to take in you know what's the person who is being charged with it what their story is what they say happen and if there's any evidence to back them up and then you weigh those you wear the evidence and you come up with a fair decision that's that's our job to be fair and that's why you have to be objective why you have to look at the evidence and not the person not female not male not white not black not hispanic you look at the evidence thank you council member councilmember gruber thank you and thank you for being with us here tonight harold commissioners review background investigations and findings on applicants to determine who is hired for the police and fire department please describe any experience you have in this type of hiring process um probably close to that i can say is man when i would be hiring my assistant coaches you look at their background you talk to people you get uh when at diff if if they allow that with you folks you have uh you know letters that might be written for a person and then from there you can ascertain whether or not that's the kind of person that you're looking for um everyone deserves i think you know a fair chance but having said that everyone is not going to meet the qualifications um i'm not a person that believes in or uh you know we know we're having trouble right now all across the country i don't believe in the defund police i actually want to spend more money because i want to spend money recruiting the right kind of person all the training in the world is not going to help we need different people a different type of person as a firefighter 25 years every time we had diversity training anything like that the guys would bellyache moan i don't need it i don't have a problem blah blah blah blah and then you check off the box jim went to the class a little two-hour class shirley wins class to our class no we need to recruit different people if that means that we have to pay more not defund we need to spend more money to get the right people that's what i think thank you [Music] councilman hiltz thank you thank you so much for applying and for being here tonight my question is twofold um probably a little bit more personal for you because you've you've been um you know in one of these departments but i wanted to know in organizations like police and fire where there's that rank structure do you believe that a commanding officer's directive should ever be questioned and do you believe it's the role of the commission to question those police and fire directives um say that one more time for me do you believe that a commanding officer's directives should ever be questioned and is it the role of the commission to question police and fire directives generally now when you say the fire commander be questioned you talk about like let's let's just say on the fire on the fire ground or at a or are you talking about the commission uh past something happening questioning the commanding officer both and either whichever way you want to take that so whether that's whether that's a police or fire um questioning that directive in the moment or or after the fact for for for both police and fire in the moment if it is a safety issue you must be questioned i've never minded one of my firefighters saying to me uh captain johnson i didn't know if you noticed but substance of such and such is happening that's what a team does um with police i think it's takes courage and he should please should be on the field as we see sometimes with the george floyd thing someone there one of those other police officers should have called him off he should have been questioned right there on that at that incident and that man would be alive and he wouldn't be in jail or you know well getting ready to go to uh didn't go to it and there's no problem to me with the commission questioning police commanders fire a chiefs about what's going on when where why it's information it's communication when you communicate and you get information everyone can understand what's going on and we also can make adjustments if that's not working because many times when you're inside of it the blinders are on and you're so focused you don't see the other things that might be a better way i think that's what we all want is to do the best job so we should use all resources at hand and the commission would be a resource thank you uh councilmember johnston thank you um thank you so much for applying and and being with us today i have a question on the administration with the civil service commission it's unique and as you may know um unlike other departments in the city the administrator of the civil service commission is overseen by the civil service commission itself so i wanted to see your thoughts on on having some accountability for the staff if you were to be serving on the the commission and your your communication and interaction with staff if you were a commissioner um well my i i think if this is what you're asking um i think that communication is paramount um listening to people is is paramount getting feedback to interact one of the best things you can do is to uh brainstorm with the whole group then so that everyone feels you know empowered to say what they need to say and know that their opinion is valued everyone should be held accountable for what it is that we're trying to accomplish in what is we're trying to do if there's a certain goal that we have and we have a criteria and we have steps to get to that goal then we have to be accountable for what happens good or bad and the accountability is why didn't this happen and then of course the positive thing is it shows why it did happen but um communication and accountability but that that the need to listen to other people to look at the other side to keep an open mind because whereas you might think one thing when we start talking and start discussing and start researching you find out that it's something different but if you don't allow everybody to feel comfortable to say what they believe and and to come forward with what they think is you can't really you can't really do the best job thank you councilmember lawson mr johnson thank you for applying um my question to you is this the civil service commission is a seemingly race blind process but there are outcomes that um that have disparate impacts what are your thoughts on this and how would you address it if you were on the civil service commission well i you know it's when somebody tells me that they're color blind that's just not true we have you know systemic racial problems in this country it's going to come up and uh you know i'm a black man i've i've lived here for 66 years and have worked for the city my pretty much my entire life you know i still believe that uh i am fair and objective um while i know that uh the you know one great thing about coaching you get to meet so many different people when i was coach at carl's school of mines one of the professors told me coach johnson look at the numbers if you look at numbers you can be you can find the answer for everything you can see what is and what's not the numbers tell the truth and the numbers say that disproportionately black americans are treated different having said that i can't let that fact enter into an individual thing that has happened that we're looking at right here i can't let all the bad things that have happened fall down on this officer for what we're looking at right here so although i'm not race blind i know it's either i i see what's going on as you all see what's going on we still must do our best to be objective and look at every single incident individually because there are exceptions to the rule and everyone deserves to have a fair if it's like a trial that we have kind and it pretty much is they deserve to have it looked at fairly and not looked at because they're white or black or male or female young or old what happened right here right now with this incident thank you councilmember mark um i'm sorry uh let's see council member mcconnell thank you mayor and thank you mr johnson for being here with us today uh so my question for you is that the fbi has long been concerned with and i quote white supremacists militia extremists and sovereign citizen extremists attempting to infiltrate law enforcement and other public service roles if appointed what changes if any would you suggest to the backgrounding process for the civil service commission in order to discourage these individuals from applying for civil service roles in aurora i don't know if it's legal but if it is legal i think you know the majority of those people that we're talking about that have that they have a background in that and because of social media um we can we can find out whether that has been whether that's been a uh ongoing thing in their life and i think if we find out that that person has that in their background then we should not want them to be an or a firefighter or an aurora police officer um that type of uh any type of extremism on either side against anyone means that you can't be the kind of a civil servant that that we would want to hire but i think it's really paramount to start looking at that when we look at the what happened at the capitol and now i think they said one of every five of the people who were arrested were police fire military that's just so sad and just uh just really hurts you it hurts me that you know that that many i i know that they were but i didn't know that it was a to that extreme amount and and it's incumbent upon us to look what legally i don't know how much you know we can do but we have to look and search that out and most in and not have those kind of people council uh councilmember mario thanks mayor um and thank you for your time today um harold as you know it is the the goal of city council and by proxy through the civil service commission to create a safe aurora how would you define a safe community a safe community first and foremost i think a safe community is a place where our citizens know that our first responders our police our firefighters our sheriff are here to serve and protect them we need to have our folks learn a little bit about servant leadership and what that means um you know uh it's it's to protect and serve not to harass and punish and that that does go on sometimes to know that those people are here to make you safe we shouldn't be afraid of them our citizens should not be afraid of the police a safe community means that whatever age you are whatever time of day or night you're not afraid to walk the street to go do what you need to do to be where you need to be safe community means to me that you can dial 9-1-1 and know that help is on the way um that and i think that type of feeling uh goes a long way in uh i think in keeping down crime i think in people wanting to move into into our community and wanting to be involved harold thank you so much for being with us tonight for applying for the civil service commission um can you uh give us your concluding remarks you have one minute okay let me see uh oh i wanted to read you something that i like to read people um you know when policing fire i know and i'd be mentoring some of the young guys and i would tell them uh we need people who influence their peers and who cannot be deterred from the convictions by peers who not to do not have the courage to have convictions it takes courage to do the right thing it takes to stand up and stop a group of people who you're with um and i would i would hope that i could help find those kind of people so that we can get to the point where we really uh people around not just the state but the whole country look and they see uh aurora colorado is a safe place to live a place you'd want to bring up your family and listen thank you folks so much for your time i appreciate it look forward hearing from you thank you next we have jeannette early yes mayor we are working to get her on right now so she should be available in a second bye hmm foreign [Applause] okay mayor jeannette is on the line and she is ready to go uh jeanette early thank you so much for uh joining us tonight and thank you so much for uh wanting to serve on our um civil service commission and uh with that you have uh two minutes to tell us a little bit about your background and why you would like to serve on this commission and what you would bring to the commission okay my name is jeanette earley i live here in aurora where i've lived in the community the conservatory community since 2005 i'm retired from the civil service commission of denver where i worked from for 10 years or so but they of course the civil service commission of denver did testing for the denver police and fire applicants which i'm very familiar with with the process there but of course they're willing to learn whatever process that may be applied to the aurora commission but my my uh experience there was working closely with the commissioners and as an administrative assistant i was uh in meetings always when files etc were reviewed and applicants vetted so my interest is to remain active in the community and involved in learning as much as i can and meeting new acquaintances so that is an opportunity for me to serve my community thank you first question is by mayor pro tem bergen um yes and i want to thank you for applying for the civil service commission it's a very important commission for the city of aurora um deciding on a case brought before the civil service is akin to being on a jury duty or is akin to being on jury duty when the commissioners conduct disciplinary hearings do you think that they should consider public opinion when making decisions is that would depend on uh the commissions or depend on the type of case i would think how extensive or it is what it involves or how extensive to involve the community uh but as i said it would depend on the nature of the uh offense or or the case whether or not the community would have to be involved okay uh may or may i just do a follow-up to to that yes um so you've you've sat on civil service commissions at in denver when when you're looking at either the hiring process or the disciplinary process have you do you look at the evidence or public opinion is public opinion part of that oh let me clarify i did not sit on with the uh commissioners the board of commissioners but i was serving in the capacity as administrative assistant where i was interacting with them all the time as far as when they came in to review and discuss and vet files then i was so in the meeting for whatever needs they uh whatever they needed at that time okay but i think i was not a commissioner councilmember berzins thank you thank you ms early for coming and applying um this i don't know if you know a lot about the aurora uh commission but it's not like any other that we have in the city first of all if you get paid for being on this commission and you know what you decide affects not only the people that have applied to be hired or the people in the disciplinary hearing but you affect a lot of lives in their families lives and also you reflect on the city on this commission so i i want to ask you that in today's world are you confident that you can be objective and unbiased in the disciplinary hearings and the hiring processes and why do you feel that way i feel quite confident that i you know would be can be and would be objective because uh i am mature and i have uh i have three sons i have taught school kindergarten through 12th grade and have been in situations where you have to really look in depth at a situation before making hasty decisions and i i just feel that i would be objective in looking at any situation or case or infraction that incurs before making a decision thank you so much councilmember combs thank you mayor and thank you jeanette for taking the time to join us and interview tonight i want to ask a question that relates to equity in our hiring process our aurora police department has a disproportionately high number of candidates of color and particularly black candidates who don't make it through the hiring process even as they have taken the test and entered into the process so what do you think the commission can do to ensure the recruitment and hiring of a more diverse pool of employees serving as police and firefighters in our city well going back to my teaching experience i always consider or bring forth the the fact that number one the test being sure that the test is one that all applicants in the area or whomever is testing that it's it's apropos it's understandable relatable to the particular um job and of course the applicants themselves who are taking the test that is all very well understood that the that the uh it's not i wouldn't say bias but a test that's understandable verbiage-wise word-wise description-wise that uh it's understood by the applicants who will be taking the test and of course i'm speaking of a written test and i uh there's the other matter i i can't say because i've often wondered about the uh disproportionate number but i never really got the number of those who are actually applying you know as far as uh those of people of color versus other applicants to to really take an in-depth look at it but i i was aware of that disproportionate number thank you councilmember gardner hi uh jeanette thank you very much for being here tonight um so my question serving on the civil service commission may require you uh to review disciplinary actions um kind of based upon the evidence that you have rather than your own opinions so can you tell me a little bit about how you would approach maybe the review of a disciplinary action taken by the police or fire chief i'm sorry i didn't understand your question can you tell me a little bit about how you would approach the process um if you were a member of the civil service commission when reviewing uh disciplinary action taken by either the police chief or fire chief so just tell me a little bit about your decision making process how you would work through that scenario where you were reviewing discipline that was taken tell me a little bit about how you might go about gathering facts and making your decision yes okay i i know there are different categories if i might say put it that way but of course there's character there's background i and i don't know uh say how far uh the aurora commission goes back as far as background community activities uh even their school activities involvement uh even community service uh yes i did mention character and you know those are uh basic or important i would say important things that really carries over with the person through their adulthood as far as their character and and things that they may have been involved in or not involved in say from a teenager up to their current adult age but there would be several um categories to look at not just one particular aspect of a person's uh bio or life history to that point if you will you councilmember gruber hello thank you commission uh commissioners review background investigations and findings on applicants to determine who is hired for the police and fire department please describe any experience you have had in this type of hiring process again i would mention that even although i did work for several years for the civil service commission in our neighboring city of denver i was not involved in the hiring process so you know that was a decision that the commissioners made as far as who is and who is not or who will and who won't okay but if i could follow up on that just do you have any other experience in hiring yes i yes i did i did have um quite a bit of experience in hiring through the years past i worked for an engineering and construction firm browning route in houston texas and i was supervisor of a secretarial pool where i hired clerical and secretary employees and trained them for in-house offices thank you that's america hills thank you thank you so much for applying and for being here tonight uh my question is twofold um in an organization like police and fire where there's a rank structure do you believe that a commanding officer's directive should ever be questioned and is it the role of the commission to question those police and fire directives did i okay i think i was not clear on your question should should the commanding should a commanding officers or someone in um a higher up position should their directors are sorry their directives ever be questioned and is it the commission's role to question those police and fire directives oh you're referring to an officer or employee of either department on promotional matters just their directives in general so their policies and procedures um on on interacting in their job well if it's if it's in reference to promotional the uh the commissioners as far as i can understand are oh yeah okay the commissioners were that that i worked with they were involved with the initial hiring of applicants but the promotional aspects were dependent on their supervisors in the departments or areas within the fire and police because they had been supervised and knew uh the person and their skills etc so they were able to determine uh say the promotional aspects etc if that's what as i understand with your question that's yeah that's part of it so thank you councilmember johnston hello councilmember johnston sorry about that i was on mute um thank you thank you mayor and and thank you jeanette for being here today and applying um i wanted to talk to you about the administration of the civil service commission i'd be i'm interested in getting your thoughts with your your perspective too um as you may know it's it's unique where we don't have the city manager overseeing civil service staff and we don't have the council it's actually the civil service commission and if you were a commissioner if you were chosen to be commissioner how would you address accountability and communication with the civil service commission staff accountability for for their work for what for their work for the commission's work for the staff so the the city manager unlike most of our departments um does not oversee the administrator for the civil service commission and we don't they're not they're not appointed by council so it's actually the civil service commission who oversees so he's supposed to oversee this the staff for the administrator so wanted to get your thoughts on if you were on the civil service commission how you would address accountability of their work um to the commission see this this sounds like getting a little bit ahead of you know of how i would address this because i'm not i'm not as i'm not familiar you know with your process and and procedures and as far as supervisory and who supervises whom so that i suppose would have to be taken a day at a time or really you know just being patient to find out how your process works thank you councilmember lawson hi jeanette thank you for applying um my question to you is um the civil service commission is a seemingly erased blind process but there are outcomes that have disparate impacts what are your thoughts on this and how would you address it if you were on the civil service commission okay i'm sorry how would i address what was that word how would i address what so basically when we look at the civil service commission in general it's considered a race blind process um but of course what we see sometimes is we see that there are disparate outcomes or impacts so what's your thoughts on that on maybe the on a race blind process and how it is um i guess you know how do you see it in terms of being on the civil service commission or that process in general do you think there is any kind of racial blind process in the civil service commission or not and if so how would you address that if you do think that there is something that needs to be addressed there you mean as far as the the board of commissioners itself no i'm talking about the civil service commission um that you're applying to um so there's there's a thought process you know the civil service commission is seen as a race blind process what's your thoughts on just race racial blindness um in a system um in a um what's your what's your i what's your thoughts on that i i hope i'm processing your question correctly that you're asking me about the the uh diversity perhaps of the of the uh commissioners is that what i'm getting um no not that um particularly the process itself um when you're hiring um as you know you sit on the civil service commission you'll be looking at applications and as people are applying for um fire in the police so you know there could be a thought process of there's you know this is a seemingly racial you know um bias process but there are some disparities in that um how do you see that do you do you think that there is something within that process or or not or just oh okay i i think it's i think it's a little bit clearer now okay i i certainly feel that in in say in the commission as is in other uh say boards or where decisions have to be made regarding the lives or livelihood of other people that there should be at least a balance of uh those who are uh reviewing and making decisions you know regarding that person the outcome of that person's uh say i would not say punishment or whatever their delinquency was but i think there should be uh as much as possible a balance so that people can relate can relate and and and have open minds to to know the differences you know of people's minds attitudes actions livelihoods their neighborhood et cetera so i think having as much of balance in say and i would say in diversity of the persons who are making decisions that would help tremendously council member mcconnell thank you mayor and uh thank you jeanette for being with us tonight uh my question for you is that the fbi has long been concerned with white supremacists militia extremists and sovereign citizen extremists attempting to infiltrate law enforcement and other public service roles if appointed what changes if any would you suggest to the backgrounding process for the civil service commission in order to discourage these individuals from applying for civil service roles in our city oh my god to discourage them from applying is that what that's what i said yes ma'am yeah okay oh my gosh that's that's that's really that's that's a tough one there because here again that's why you have the uh civil service commissioners uh to determine situations such as that and and really vetting the person's background etc but uh right now and i'm thinking that is the way because we could not say you can't apply because you live 10 miles away instead of 6 miles away or you live in another town or another state or another city or even though you've been in this country 15 years you can't apply because you won here five years ago so as i said that is one reason for the commissioners uh to determine after looking through the person's file background etc all right thank you councilmember mario thank you mayor um and thank you jeanette for your participation tonight um as you know it is the goal of our city council and as a result of that uh the civil service commission to create a safe aurora how would you define a safe community oh my in this day and age they're all at the table with us so uh my gosh how would i define a state community a community where there is number one respect for each other who live in the neighborhood and having respect for that having uh just as we have which is wonderful in in the aurora uh metro district uh communication with uh say a community officer where we can relate and get feedback from what is going on identifying in the neighborhood to make us aware but working closely really working closely with say law enforcement that really helps for a more safe uh or safer neighborhood because then you are more aware of what's going on in the neighborhood to protect yourselves or be aware of to protect others well thank you very much thank you so much for being with us tonight and thank you for applying for the civil service commission and you have uh one minute for concluding remarks well i i'm i'm just happy to have uh had the opportunity for this interview and i look forward to hearing from you all and i just hope that i will have the opportunity to serve by hopefully because of the pandemic things are just kind of stifled as far as getting around seeing people interacting with people and i would like to remain active in my community and involved and i see that this is an ideal way and would feel an accomplishment there oh thank you um chris steele has withdrawn his uh name for con for consideration uh eric mulder he is being added to the line right now mayor one moment please so um okay he has joined and he is ready to go oh eric mulder hi mr mayor all right thank you so much for uh joining us tonight and thank you for applying uh for consideration to be on the civil service commission uh could you uh take two minutes uh uh in two minutes tell us about your background a little bit why you think you're qualified to serve on the civil service commission certainly members of the aurora city council my name is eric mulder i've been an off and on resident of the city of aurora since 2010 upon honorable discharge from the united states army i've been actively involved in the city of aurora since 2016. i've been on the veterans affairs commission for two years from 2017 to 2019 and in that time i have attended the aurora citizens academy the leadership aurora course and graduated of the class of 2019 and graduated from the aurora citizens police academy i'm applying for this commission today because i believe that due process is an ideal that we should all strive for within our country and within our city the idea being that when it comes to promotions or to appeal disciplinary proceedings that everyone involved should be able to present the facts as they're aware of them make their case before a governing body and that body should make a decision based on that information i thank you for your consideration and i'm looking forward to your questions uh thank you uh mayor pro-tem bergen thank you mayor uh yes and thank you for applying for the civil service commission i appreciate it and thank you for your service deciding on a case brought before the civil service commission is akin to jury duty when the commissioners conduct disciplinary hearings do you think that they should consider public opinion when making their decisions ultimately thank you councilmember ultimately i believe that the most important thing that a commission like this one can do when it comes to making these decisions is ensuring that all decisions are made based on information that's available such as what's presented in videotapes such as what's presented in sworn statements and things of that nature i know the public can certainly absolutely make their voices known and it's important to make sure that the commission is listening to what people have to say but ultimately making their decision based on evidence that's presented to them such as tapes such as witness statements and things of that nature thank you so much thank you councilmember bergens thank you and thank you for uh joining us tonight uh mr mulder um and thank you for your service too um as you know it sounds like you're familiar with what the uh the aurora civil service commission does um but it's like no other in the city first off you get paid for for your time and that's unusual um but you hold the careers of people in your hands those that apply for whether it's for a job or a disciplinary hearing it's their it's their lives and it's their families lives and it also reflects on the city what you decide reflects on on the city through our civil service commission so i i want to ask you i want to be certain that in today's world that you are confident that you can be objective and unbiased in the disciplinary hearings and the hiring processes and why certainly council member i would state that when it ultimately comes to the hiring process and the promotion side of the things i believe it's a good idea to look at candidates who embody the four core values of the city of aurora integrity respect professionalism and a focus on customer service so making sure that we promote people who embody the core values of our city will absolutely reflect very well on not only the commission but also on our city and ultimately it's going to give us leaders and emergency services in the fire and police department who can actually foster community trust and who value that community trust and i have friends in law enforcement who have taught me that public trust is absolutely essential to making sure the job could be done correctly so when we have people in those positions who can do those things and embody our city's core values that's absolutely important okay no yeah i asked why you felt that way mayor can i ask um mr mulder are you on webex uh yes i am council member is there any way you can turn your camera on we we'd prefer that if possible oh i am so sorry i have that off let me get started there thank you i need to flip that camera around just a moment here okay oh for goodness sakes that is just spinning it around you can show us your cat or your dog or whatever slime i wish i absolutely had a cat oh there it is let's click surface camera right all right excellent how's that all right thank you not a problem happy to do it thank you councilmember coombs yes uh thank you mayor and good evening eric thank you for joining us and taking time for this interview my question is related to equity in the hiring process our police department has a disproportionately high number of applicants of color and particularly black applicants that do not make it through the civil service commission process to become members of our police and fire departments so what do you think the civil service commission can do to ensure that we're recruiting and hiring a diverse pool of employees to service police and firefighters in the city well i certainly believe that having diversity in aurora's law enforcement is absolutely important i believe i've heard it from outgoing and well actually a longer district attorney for judicial district 18 george brockler and others that one out of every five persons in aurora is from another country and we are a very diverse city here in colorado this was an idea i actually heard back in 2020 from an attorney by the name of juji carmenaty i want to say i'm getting that name correctly who has stated that randomized applications that don't have personally identifiable information on the resume like doesn't have the person's name or any of those other features when those are taken away and presented before a hiring body they have found that statistically that body is able to actually make much more diverse hiring decisions just by taking that name off and taking those descriptors off the resume i also heard of a case a few years back where applicants would sit behind a screen to be interviewed by a hiring commission and what they found was that there was still a disproportionate number of men to women being hired in that process but then what they found out was that the footwear that's commonly worn by women would actually make a clacking sound when walking across the ground so when they carpeted the ground and the hiring body could not actually hear the person's shoes walking across they were able to rectify that situation immediately but ultimately i'm not the only person who makes hiring decisions on the civil service commission so i would state that i would love to bring that idea forward and i'd have to hear what my other commissioners would have to say about that and ultimately take a vote on okay um councilmember gardner hi eric thanks for being here tonight um so serving on the civil service commission uh means you'll have to review disciplinary decisions oftentimes based upon the evidence presented rather than your own opinions and preferences so can you tell me a little bit about your decision making process let's say you were faced with reviewing a disciplinary action by the police or fire chief just talk through a little bit about what your decision making process would be how you would gather evidence and work through that so i would state when it comes to evidence gathering i would probably go about it the same way i would prepare for a nation of interest briefing i would try to gather information that's available to me ultimately depending on what the commission's jurisdiction is i would like to see if anyone on city staff would be able to provide us with that information like for example if there's a disciplinary matter relating to how an arrest occurred my first reaction would be do we have video evidence of what happened do we have witness statements do we have anything of that nature ultimately though we are also not attorneys so we can't and excuse me we can't conduct our own investigation in the same way an attorney can we can't exactly conduct discovery like you would for a trial but ultimately it's an investigation is just like gathering information for a presentation that you would do you would gather information based on what's publicly available that you're able to find i would try to get information from as many sources if i'm able to because there's one source that has something else and another source might have another piece that may be missing from another area thank you uh councilmember gruber hello eric commissioners review background investigations and findings on applicants to determine who's hired for the police and fire department as we've discussed please describe any experience you have in this type of hiring process in terms of my experience in the hiring process i've never been responsible for directly hiring individuals but i have undergone a similar hiring process through the military when i was going through the army i had to receive a background check i had to make sure i could pass that background check and i would make sure that i had to make sure all my ducks were in a row have my proper documentation making sure i signed all the correct things that stimulated i agree to this background check and i agree that the information found here can be used in the decision to whether or not to hire me so in terms of that i understand that there's very important things that have to be done through the letter of the law especially with regards to the lautenberg amendment making sure nobody has prior convictions that would disqualify them from legally carrying a firearm things of that nature thank you councilmember hiltz thank you thank you so much for applying and for being here tonight my question is twofold so in organizations like the police and fire department there's that ranked structure so do you believe that a commanding officer's directive should ever be questioned and do you believe it's the role of the commission to question those police and fire directives thank you council member when i was in the military we were taught that an unlawful order is anything that is illegal immoral or unethical and that we had a legal obligation to disobey unlawful orders because the good soldier defense that it was popularly known as had become no longer an acceptable defense under the uniform code of military justice which is the specialized set of laws that the military has to follow so i would state when it comes to orders that are given by a superior within the police or fire department i would say the same principle applies you have a legal and moral obligation to disobey an order that is illegal immoral or unethical thank you councilmember johnston thank you mayor and thank you eric for for being here today and applying for this this position um i want to talk about the administration part of the civil service commission specifically um as it relates to the staff and the role of the civil service commission as you may know it's it's unique where the city manager does not oversee the administrator and the council does not the civil service commission does so if you were serving and you were selected to be on the civil service commission how would you address accountability of civil service staff communication accountability any of those issues interacting as a potential commissioner with the civil service staff thank you council member in terms of addressing accountability i would ultimately for my understanding of accountability is that it's like president harry truman said the buck stops here so ultimately the commission will be responsible for decisions that staff makes and even though the commission doesn't necessarily make those decisions because staff is working with the commission and the commission is the aspect that the public can interact with talk to and speak to and request answers from the commission ultimately has to answer for any matters of accountability in terms of making sure staff stays accountable accountable to the commission it's important that we have a good working relationship with staff making sure that we're on the same page and we have a good working relationship with one another and that we're constantly in communication with one another i constantly communicate with my boss at work making sure we're on the same sheet music we know what's coming up we know what's on the agenda so that way neither one of us are blindsided because when the commission or staff get blindsided by something nobody wins so it's important to make sure everyone's constantly communicating as best they're able to and making sure i'm working with my other commissioners to make sure that the vision they have for accountability is gelling with the one i have as well because you don't run a commission by yourself you don't work by yourself and the aurora police and the fire departments don't certainly don't work by themselves so it's always important to make sure you're in that team mentality where it's like if i've been flying solo too long i need to think to myself all right i haven't checked in with somebody in a minute so let's see if i can check in with someone make sure we're on the same page here thank you councilmember lawson hi eric thank you for applying and also thank you for your service um my question to you is the civil service commission is a seemingly race-blind process but there are outcomes that have disparate impacts what are your thoughts on this and what would you how would you address it if you were on the civil service commission all right could you state your second question again council member sorry um the second part of that is what are your thoughts on the question what i stated before and how would you address it if you were on the civil service commission in terms of color blindness i often disagree with the term itself not because i disagree with the spirit but because i disagree with the idea that we can't see individuals as they are there's a really good social experiment that was done by jane elliott i want to say called the brown eyes blue eyes experiment that basically indicates that color blindness is something that while good in theory ultimately denies a person's uniqueness and denies an integral part of their identity sometimes so it's debate it shouldn't be about color blindness but it should absolutely be about accepting people's differences and accepting who they are and keeping that in consideration when also considering the merits of their promotions or their disciplinary hearings looking at their record based on their evaluations from their superiors their peers and any other objective evaluations that we have council member marcano thank you mayor and thank you eric for joining us this evening my question to you is that the fbi has long been concerned with white supremacists militia extremists and sovereign citizen extremists attempting to infiltrate law enforcement and other public service roles if appointed what changes if any would you suggest to the backgrounding process for the civil service commission in order to discourage these individuals from applying for civil service roles in our city when i was in the united states military that was also an issue in dealing with supremacist and extremist organizations attempting to infiltrate important positions within the military i believe that to the best of our ability we absolutely need to make sure that we're keeping an eye on all applicants and taking those background checks absolutely very seriously another thing that has come up lately in the 21st century that i think the federal government and government in general has been slow to embrace is the importance of people's social media usage because when i was in the military one of the biggest lessons we were taught by the army public affairs division was that there is absolutely no such thing as off the record if you have a uniform if you have a badge or anything of that nature every single possible thing that you can say is going to be on the record there is a matter where a private group was set up in the department of homeland security that was filled with a couple of tsa agents who said very absolutely disgusting and inappropriate things about the passengers they were screening remarks that were nationalist xenophobic and even racist about passengers that had screened in the past so things of that nature should absolutely be taken into consideration when making a hiring decision because if a person is saying these things where they believe nobody can see them or nobody's looking it's one of those things that's absolutely a concern so the idea that what you post and what you say privately is absolutely in play when it comes to the decisions on whether you're hired or not i believe is something that should be adopted council member mario thanks mayor and thanks eric for your time this evening um as you know it is the goal of the city council and by proxy the civil service commission to create a safe aurora how would you define a safe community i would define a safe community and thank you for your question council member i would define a safe community ultimately by the idea of do i feel comfortable walking around on my city streets do i feel comfortable being out and about in general public and i would state that the best way to promote safety as best as the city is able to is making sure that we have emergency services who understand and value public trust because i've had friends who've worked in law enforcement and i have friends in the criminal justice side of the house advocating for criminal justice reform and they have all stated that when public trust goes down people aren't willing to come forward with information that may be needed when it comes to an investigation or things of that nature if you don't have that repertoire with the public if you're not getting out to people and listening to them where they're at public trust can break down it's like in the movie the you broke the circle of trust focker because once that circle of trust gets broken it would take a very long time if almost impossible to repair that trust it takes it takes a lot more effort to fix something after it's broken then to make sure it doesn't get broken in the first place so making sure that our emergency services are conscientious of public trust would be very helpful and going a long way towards public safety eric i want to thank you so much for being with us tonight and for applying uh for this very important position and you have now one minute for concluding remarks thank you mr mayor and thank you to everybody on the city council for your questions like i've stated i believe very much in due process that when it comes to our emergency services they should be able to receive a fair hearing in matters on promotion and demotion and making sure that all of our actions are taken in regard to the city's core four values integrity respect professionalism and a focus on customer service because when our emergency services embrace those values and embody those values we make a better city and i believe ultimately that's what all of us working for the city of aurora want is just a better city of aurora thank you so much for your considerations and please feel free to reach out to me anytime if any of you have questions thank you very much that concludes our interviews uh for the civil service commission uh the time is now uh 7 49 7 49 why don't we take a look we'll take a recess until 7 55. bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] oh much me [Music] uh the study session for the aurora city council is uh now in session back in session with clerk please read the title of item number 4a item 4a is for an ordinance of the city council of the city of aurora colorado creating chapter 135 of the city code pertaining to oil and gas and repealing certain sections of the uniform development ordinance mr moore the floor is yours you very much mayor and i've asked for permission to share my screen here i'll open up my slides while i'm waiting on that uh good evening to to you and to all the council members thank you so much for your time tonight i'm excited to be able to share some of the positive changes that we've made in our oil and gas regulations for your benefit and uh for the benefit of the public that's listening by phone my name is jeffrey moore i'm the manager of the oil and gas division here at the city of aurora and the um vision statement that we've set for our division is that we steward access to the natural resources under our authority with integrity and respect for our citizens businesses and the environment and if i can just get permission here to share my screen we'll get those slides started all right we're good all right uh very good making sure that everyone can see my screen yes excellent all right so i am very excited to be at this stage of considering new regulations for the city to get here we implemented a very robust stakeholder engagement process which i'm going to describe to you this evening we have literally several thousand hours of staff time that have gone into the creation of this oil and gas manual these new rules and regulations we have 175 pages of regulations that were based from the best management practices contained within the operator agreements and i would also point out that those these regulations are in addition to the rules and regulations from colorado oil and gas conservation commission which also must be followed by operators uh in the future the tonight i'm going to walk you through the oil gas manual by topic so we're going to talk about things like water quality air quality permitting i'll explain to you very carefully at the changes that we've made since the operator agreements were put in place uh the new new things we're proposing and give you a chance to answer questions of course on that as well the ordinance that is associated with this does two things the first is it removes existing oil and gas regulations from the unified development ordinance and then it creates a new chapter 135 in the aurora city code now there's two other things i want to mention before we get started and that's the first thing is we do have well locations that are approved by operator agreements and for those wells and locations those will continue to be guided by and regulated by the operator agreements in the future uh until such time as those operat operator agreements reach the end of their term which in general is at the end of the last uh wells life uh that's that's approved under the operator agreement so the what we're talking about tonight is going to be for new rules or new wells and new locations that will be coming into the city absent an operator agreement uh the second thing is when we first envisioned the manual it was intended to be a stand-alone manual and i numbered it as such in line with other city manuals like the roadway specification manual along the way city attorneys recommended that we actually put the whole entire manual into city code so that's the way we've structured the ordinance is that the entire manual all the rules and regulations will be in the city code as a result we did some renumbering uh to match existing city code i do have both of those sets with me tonight but if you would notice uh the oil and gas manual that's attached has a different numbering structure than what the ordinance has and that's the reason all right as i mentioned this has been a very robust process that we've engaged in i began with the city on march 2nd of last year and started working on this very soon afterwards one of the first major steps that we had was a legal review of six weeks after i created the first draft of those best management practices from the operator agreements we had some good changes from the legal review the next step was a 60-day public comment period in the summer and we had some great input there i'll be discussing that next uh in the fall we took a short break while the crgcc completed their rulemaking series and we were able to capture those changes and make some changes into our rules and regulations based on what we saw at cogcc we were a ped uh on january 13th and here we are this evening that public comment period that i mentioned was 60 days from june 24th to august 23rd we had four town halls during that time two of those were dedicated for oil and gas two of those were in conjunction with other council members existing town halls we have 29 comment emails specific emails but don't let that fool you several of those two organizations as well as the oil and gas advisory committee provided full redline versions from the draft manual so all together we had over 500 pages of comments to read and consider as a staff we also had some additional verbal comments at the town halls we had comments from individual citizens other local and state agencies such as arapahoe county buckley air force base uh cd phe and we had comments from environmental advocacy groups industry groups and aurora staff obviously aurora staff were involved in the creation of the operator agreements but i wanted to give them a chance to to refresh their memory on some of these things and go back and see if they had any additional uh suggestions for change so i'm going to begin now and we're going to walk through the oil and gas manual by topic and my suggestion recommendation is that let me go through this slide on each topic uh the first one's on water quality and then once i am complete with that i'll open it up for any questions on this topic i hope that will keep our our conversation more streamlined and focused on the topic that we're discussing the first topic is water quality and the big thing under water quality is we're requiring a new water monitoring well to be drilled on the oil and gas location that would be able to sample discreetly all the aquifers that are below the surface now in the past operators were required to look at existing um water wells within a half mile of a proposed location and attempt to sample those what that means is if they went to a uh a homeowner and said can i sample your water uh for this permit and the homeowner said no then that was the end of the of the requirement for the operator so in many cases uh wells are drilled and we did not have a good picture of baseline water quality even when samples were obtained typically most domestic supply wells only produced from a single aquifer not from all four and so the new requirement is a dedicated water monitoring well on a location uh that's in the downgrading direction so that we can sample those both as a baseline and ongoing during operations and production and determine very quickly if there were any issues with water quality i'm a licensed professional geologist and i feel like the water quality and protecting our water quality is one of the most important things we can do uh the reason is that if water groundwater is contaminated it can't be remediated but it takes time effort and it's not easy to do so i feel like this is very important the next thing in water quality is we've added a setback of 350 feet from domestic water wells we are requiring critical infrastructure to be shown on applications critical infrastructure is things like water supply lines that belong to the city we want to make sure that we are aware of how those operations may affect that critical infrastructure we've also added some new categories water treatment plants dams levees and reservoirs to that list of critical infrastructure we're requiring earthen berms to be lined we've clarified the purpose of our baseline water sampling clarify what kind of water can be used for dust suppression and we've updated our prohibition on disposal of wastewater within the city to specifically uh prohibit a frac flow back and produce water to be uh disposed off within the city and that is the key things there that we've changed in water quality so um mayor if it's okay for you am i open enough for questions from council members now uh please do uh questions uh mr moore i have one mayor uh a man pretend bargain yes uh thank you mr moore um on the water monitoring wells which are now required to be on the location so did you have any discussions with any like crest stone for example that has the operator agreements in place are they um are they okay with being able to to uh do that because i don't know if the cost is is exorbitant or if it's reasonable but were they okay with that uh yes two considerations there the first is remember that uh wells that are drilled under the operator agreements these rules don't apply to those wells the rules under the operator agreements are the ones that would apply to the operator agreement wells nevertheless we have spoken with crest stone and they are intending to to utilize this process they have a a particular system called a west-based system that allows them to drill just a single well and still isolate each of the aquifers and sample them discreetly for for sampling purposes a further question uh further questions mayor dave gruber uh councilman grover jeffrey just to verify the uh could you tell us the depth of the water aquifers in general and the depth of the um uh the oil wells and how deep those are yes sir the water wells will be a maximum of 2000 feet in depth that covers all four aquifers that are listed by name and we have those mapped uh as far as through aurora water the wells themselves the target zone and this area is around 7000 feet in depth so the operators are drilling those horizontally so they're drilling down and then curving and moving the pipe drilling the pipe drilling the wells horizontally for some distance to cover their mineral interest but that horizontal section is around seven thousand feet in depth okay and mayor if i could just follow up then when they drill down to the seven thousand feet do they encase the well uh to protect the water aquifers yes that's correct there are multiple strings or a pieces of casing that isolate the freshwater zones so the first step is to drill actually through the freshwater zones and set what's called surface casing that's then cemented into place that isolates those freshwater zones in the shallow section and then they come back and drill through that and then drill onto their total depth in their target formation thank you further questions all right councilmember combs um thank you mr moore for your presentation with respect to water although this is not as much a water quality issue i just wanted to also highlight the issue of water use um and water reuse by operators drilling in our city and the water that we're selling to them so what kinds of provisions are in place with respect to the sale of water from the city or acquisition of other water from other sources when permitted the primary provision is that for wells that are drilled within the city of aurora they are required to source water through the rural water department um that is the primary requirement and where water there's a water delivery agreement that's required as part of the process that's outside of our oil and gas rules and regulations that's part of aurora water but they are required to source the water through our own department and there's also a rural water has recently worked with state regulators to allow some additional use of reclaimed water in oil and gas activities which is a great benefit to the city uh please uh further questions i've seen none please proceed mr moore thank you uh the next section is air quality um we now require a baseline air monitoring for five consecutive days before construction any construction on the oil and gas site we previously just had five days and we were concerned that perhaps operators might pick and choose the days that they did their sampling on so we want to make sure that we had a nice five consecutive days that requirement is also must be completed the baseline air monitor air monitoring sampling must be completed 30 days prior to the construction of the patent that gives the operator time to collect the data provide it to the city we verify that they've collected it that it's it's good data and that we're ready to go now the next line you'll see on your screen here is in red font the items that are going to be in red font this evening were those that were recommended or discussed by council members during the ped meeting so in this case there was a question about from a council member about what happens if the air quality in general in the area we've had fires and sometimes the air quality in the region is very poor what happens if an operator samples on one of those days and then um the air actually cleans up after they produce the well it's a very valid question and we're looking at the opportunity to compare the operator baseline data with aurora in general baseline data so we kind of look at more of a regional basis for what the baseline is and make sure that we're getting good values in terms of what the operator's seeing versus what we might be seeing here more in in the urban area of aurora i will also add that there is a difference between um the particulate matter which typically comes from fires and the types of um of uh items or gases we might see in the atmosphere sourced from petroleum so really when they do the air quality monitoring the baseline monitoring they're looking for hydrocarbons vocs follicle volatile organic compounds that might be coming from hydrocarbon sources we've added an additional air monitoring requirement during production phase the operator agreements required and only during drilling and completion we've recorded now during production phase we've defined the time frame for control of odors to 12 hours we require quarterly reporting of our air quality data there's a prohibition on venting of natural gas except for emergencies and required maintenance and then we defined continuous air monitoring as at least an hourly sample and 24 hours a day that's not specifically described in the operator agreement so continuous air monitoring was really at the discretion of the operator for what they're sampling what might look like and then finally we require reporting of air quality results and eldar data which is leak detection videos that come from an optical camera sensor instead of making it at the city request we are intending to request all of that data so we just made it part of the rules and regulations that the operator must send that data to us once it's collected questions on air quality thank you sir uh jeffrey thank you so much for all the work you and your team have put into this i do have a couple of questions on this topic on a couple of other topics but i do want to relay one from a constituent here um could you tell me please how the cogc currently defines continuous air quality monitoring and if that differs from what we're doing um that's a great question i'm not sure i know the answer to that in terms of their new rules and regulations i do know that in some cases you know hourly samples there are other there are more frequent type devices that can sample more frequently and i believe even chris zone is currently sampling more frequently uh than that what they report to us um would be more on the hourly basis but they're able to sample more frequently okay um mayor may i follow up please proceed thank you uh so the askgarmacan constituent here is basically to do as close to true continuous air quality monitoring as possible and she is concerned with the just you know hourly sample because as you know you can have uh intermittent events that might not be captured depending on when those samples are gathered and i think that is kind of where she's coming from on that so is that something we could change in our definition i think we can let me look at that and better understand the uh the types of equipment that are being used uh then that are available for use and the sampling frequencies and let me see if we can if we can change that to something more frequent than hourly all right thank you further questions i say none then uh please proceed mr moore thank you the next topic is surface quality uh in this area we've added wetlands to the list of required permits to metal materials we don't have a lot of those in aurora but there are some areas that are considered wetlands we've added a new 350-foot setback to parks recreation and open space areas we've added a requirement to provide an alternative location analysis to match cogcc rules so essentially if crgcc requires an alternative location analysis which is required in certain situations then we require that same thing as well during our permitting process we've added some new landscaping requirements um some specific reporting requirements for files and explosions previously we required uh spills and incidences to be uh reported but did not define what constitutes an incident so we've we want to make sure that if there is a fire or an explosion at a oil gas site that it's it's definitely reported to us and that we know about it um if that were to happen there's a there's a robust set of requirements in terms of what the operator must do the data they have to provide to us about the cause of that uh incident and what they're going to do at that location and other fuel locations they may have in aurora to prevent that situation from occurring again we've added provisions for temporary portable lighting if needed for safety and we're allowing some flow lines to remain buried in place if they're properly abandoned to avoid further environmental disturbance the flow line is typically the the section of pipe that attaches to the well head and then connects through the the site to a meter in some cases usually after the meter it's considered the gathering system so the flow line is pipe that's very close to the wellhead in many cases in the past uh sometimes those were buried in place improperly there are certainly new rules at crgcc about how to do that properly and so we we follow those uh but and some sometimes we don't want those to be removed because to dig them up uh means further disturbance of the area uh particularly if they do go off the uh the location and so we're giving the option to leave those buried in place questions mayor councilmember mcconnell thank you sir with regards to incident reporting um could you tell me what the thresholds are from the cogcc uh to trigger a report compared to what we currently have in the operator i'm sorry in our manual so in the manual we don't have uh levels um or or triggers um we require all incidences of any size to be reported um that's what we want to know uh anytime that we anytime there's a spill there's a leak anything like that we want to know about it um i don't have the offhand the levels or the trigger points uh at crgcc i do know that there was a spill recently on a crest stone site that did not trigger uh the cogcc reporting uh but it was reported to us and it was a produced water that was spilled it was not hydrocarbons no mayor can i take a quick follow-up uh councilwoman thank you sir um so i just want to make sure then because again the same constituent wrote that this is same day to the city and all of these incidents are open to the public record with a complete list of all chemicals and materials used on the site that may be involved in this incident correct i do know that we that in our manual we do require a full listing of chemicals used as well as a list of prohibited chemicals i just want to make sure that that is in fact included in there yes our goal is to have all recent inspection reports in the future available for public um use they would be available now i mean but you have to request them so as you know as we've discussed um public education and an update of our website is a major push um initiative that we're beginning later this year that's going to be a map based website so members of the public can log in or not excuse me log in but access the site um zoom into an area where of a well of interest click on that well and they'll be able to eventually see all the permitting documentation any inspection reports uh for that well and any of the data that we have for that well so everything is available and will be available to the public and that's our goal is to make that much more transparent we have a lot of work to do in that regard um what we have right now is is not anywhere near the level of what other jurisdictions have but we are it is in the works all right thank you so much other questions mayor uh councilman combs and then uh mayor pretend bergen all right thank you mayor so in talking about um flow lines being properly abandoned what does that constitute and what kinds of provisions are in place for any long-term potential for contamination good question thank you um the primary thing is to make sure that all the hydrocarbons that might be in that line are are removed and so there's provisions in place that help to uh make sure that the hydro garments are removed from the line and that the line typically is filled with an inert material uh so that there is nothing else in the line uh no hybrid carbons at all uh that we certainly want to avoid um you know issues that have happened in the region in the past with flow lines being being uh hit and during construction and causing explosions and that that was a real real risk in some cases and we are doing everything we can to avoid that uh bergen yes thank you can you explain um the 350-foot setback to your pros areas is that additional to the cogcc 2000 foot setback um it's it's additional in the sense that crgcc does not have this regulation so it's an additional regulation it's not added to the 2 000 feet to make it 2 350 feet it's an additional regulation so in a case where you might have a park recreation area or open space where there are not residences nearby the 2000 foot setback you know from the residences would not apply in that case so this isn't a case where uh you might be having a well drill closer to a recreation area that does not have uh residences nearby or at least doesn't have those yet okay thank you for the clarification further questions mayor um is it um johnston oh councilmember johnson thank you mayor and and uh your immunity members thank you oh that was weird that did it by itself okay um thank you jeffrey for for breaking this this manual down into this presentation with all of these different points it makes a lot more clear i just want for for the public to know um so i have two parts that if the cogcc does have more stronger standards that the operators for the operator agreements would follow follow those rules as well as us incorporating those into our manual that's correct our rules both the operator agreements and the new rules apply to permits that are being obtained by the operator from aurora in addition ours is not the only permit the operator must also apply to crgcc for their permit and their permitting process is going to be based on whatever rules they're in if it was supplied for in the past it would be their previous rules if it's something they apply for now point forward since january 15th uh it would be under the new rules uh that crgcc just implemented thank you and then another another part and we had um started to looking into this because i believe the cogcc did not address it and it was um my concern constituents concerns of proximity of drilling near hazardous sites such as the lowry landfill and i know when we were looking at the map any of the the permitted areas right now are actually in arapahoe county not the city right now and and they're doing some some due diligence and homework based on the questions that we're asking but just seeing if that's going to require another step just in the future if it does apply to the city that we can um address that if if the state does not or in the epa does not thank you for the question um the last slide i have this evening is a list of topics that we are considering for the future and certainly um those superfund sites and in other areas like that are something that we are addressing as you mentioned specifically the lauren superfund site is not within the city limits of aurora and so we don't have um authority over that site and then if you look if you think about the effect of drilling horizontally underneath that site um we don't have authority over the subsurface downhole operations either that is exclusively reserved for cugcc the state legislature has never granted local authorities authority over the downhole operations they've only given local jurisdictions authority over the surface impacts of oil and gas operations so anything that's on the surface or impacts the surface is where we have our our authority but we are that isn't a list for future consideration thank you i just did one follow-up to that thank you and and jeffrey i appreciate you pinpointing those issues because even if um and i know it's going to be a future issue but just the advocacy we may need to do with our state partners or county partners to make sure that's addressed in those areas as well thanks for identifying that too you're welcome further questions i sing now and uh mr mark please proceed all right the next section is the permitting this is the actual application process itself and i have two slides here to discuss um the first major change in the permitting section is that we are requiring the operator to demonstrate financial and operational capability to comply with the oil and gas manual before the pre-op meeting and submit a list of any previous violations in the past three years again a statement from or a question from the ped meeting and a council member what how do we how do we how does an operator demonstrate financial capability um is it stock price or or what is it um the type of things i'm looking for would be a balance sheet uh cash flow statements and a statement of how the operator plans to pay for things like permitting operations and remediation obviously those things can change over time and companies can change their their business model or their operational plans and funding strategies but at the beginning we at least need to have some clear picture that the operator that's coming to us has the financial ability to carry out the project that they're proposing an additional question that was raised at ped which i didn't note on here specifically was about the time limit the three years of looking for previous violations um my perspective on that we selected that time frame as a staff and my perspective on that is operators tend to be of two different types either it's an operator that is conscientious they're concerned about the regulations they want to follow the regulations they don't want fines and violations and um in general their operations are going to to meet those criteria of the regulations that they live under or um they're a type of operator that doesn't mind paying fines as part of their business strategy their business model and um they're happy to have as many violations as they can get um and just continue to operate the way they want and pay and pay the fines i think that three years is plenty of time to determine what an operator looks like either their type a or their type b and going back more than that doesn't give us more information nor does going back 10 years just to find a single violation of an operator who otherwise is uh is operating thoughtfully in the community we've increased our general insurance requirement from one billion dollars to two million dollars the control of well insurance from 10 million dollars to 25 million dollars we define compatibility with master plans to include impact on current and future development and then we added additional detail to the permitting requirements for clarity we're trying to get all of the parameters that individual departments within the city look at when they consider a permanent application we're trying to get those kind of lined out in the rules and regulations so it's very clear when the operators come what metrics will be using to uh to judge their permit on the second slide on permitting is that there is a new approval step for locations with the planning and zoning commission this is very much in line with the way that the oil and gas commission in colorado does it they have a two different forms the first is for the location itself which is the the pad site where the wells are going to be placed and then the second is actually for the wells for the operator agreement wells and and the locations that were that were included there we consider those locations approved so once it's been approved in the operating agreement then the company comes to us to get their oil and gas permit to allow them to do the drilling of their wells for new companies coming in without an operator agreement that are functioning under these rules and regulations they'll submit about half of their typical submittal requirements up front those will be reviewed by staff and then they'll be sent to the planning and zoning commission with the recommendation once that's approved by planning and zoning commission then the operator submits the remainder of their permitting application submittals uh that again are reviewed by staff and that ends with a letter of administrative decision both of those steps whether it's planning and zoning commission decision or administrative decision are subject to call by city council as all other decisions are here in the city the reason we what two reasons we did this the first is to be in line with oil and gas commission regulations in order for the cugcc to honor the local jurisdiction's approval of a location it has to include a public hearing now previously and and in the future operators are required to do a neighborhood meeting in the local community but that didn't meet the definition of a public hearing so we chose to go to the planning and zoning commission to accomplish that public hearing the benefit of this is it also gives city council additional information it gives them the opportunity to see public comments both during the staff review and during the planning zone and commission hearing and to see the staff report as well as the planning and zoning commission decision that gives the city council more information to decide if they want to call up a decision by planning a zoning commission or not we've also added some additional variance request procedures and quite a few provisions here to make this very clear that if an operator wants to request a variance they know how to do it and what their criteria are we've also stated explicitly that variance requests may not diminish the protection of public health safety welfare the environment or wildlife resources approved permits now have an expiration date uh of three years previously that was not the case um approval can be extended but it has to be reviewed by the city again there was a question here during ped about does expiration mean that that's the end of the line for the operator and that they've lost the value of the the efforts that they put into crafting the the permanent application and receiving the approval based on that we're going to change the language from expiration to renewal after three years there is currently an option to apply for an extension um after review but we're going to change the expiration language and the ordinance that will come forth once this gets to a final council meeting out of study session we're going to change the language from expiration to renewal so it's more clear that the operator isn't losing the value of what they put into the permit application but it is an opportunity for the city to come and say okay we're not so much looking at what's changed on the operator's plans though if they have changed we would look at those but really what's changed around that location uh in those three years that we might need to consider any adjustments or updates to the plan finally there's uh well two more things there's a requirement for the purchasing operator to determine compliance with the regulations so let's say operator b wants to buy some wells from operator a we require that operator b before the sale to evaluate the um wells and whether or not they're in compliance with the rules and regulations and submit a report to us describing their understanding of where those wells are now we don't require them to do any work because the wells aren't theirs yet but we want to make sure that operator we don't get a situation where operator a is running out of money they sell to operator b and operator b doesn't understand that maybe a number of wells or locations are in a violation state and need to have you know additional funds expended in order to bring them back into compliance and then finally we've added language that came from the udo about annexations to be clear on what happens if a well comes into the city by annexation we have had this situation already through crestone those wells were included in the operator agreement nevertheless they were wells that were originally approved by arapahoe county what we did in that case and what we're continuing for the future is that we will honor permits by other jurisdictions such as arapaho or adams county as long as those uh permits remain valid uh in the case of a swamp plan or something that might expire after a certain number of years and has to be renewed that would have to come into the city for an up a new process and renewal ideally the operator can still use the information that they submitted um originally to the to the other jurisdiction and just update it with our forms but we have to have something in our system to show that we have reviewed it and that we have approved it we can't just rubber stamp another jurisdiction's permitting process or approval and that is the last of my permitting questions or uh presentation uh are there any questions questions further further questions uh mayor by jim bergen thank you um two questions and one is with the uh the new approval steps going to the planning and zoning commission do you have any idea of the timeline of that process you know when we when we do just regular development applications we have that that chart this is three to six months and then and then from there and we have actually had um a lot of developers frustrated with the length of time it takes to get approved sometimes taking a year to two years do you foresee how do you foresee that working in terms of timeline that's a great question and you know one of my goals is to try to streamline our operations as much as we can we have hired our own planner uh that works for us here in the oil and gas division that is exclusively focused on oil and gas applications and permit permanent applications that are coming in to the city and so that's his role uh in terms of the the additional step it will require extra time um in general i'm going to say it's going to take about an extra month uh because the reason is even though planning and zoning meets twice a month in the regular meetings that is a public hearing so it requires a 10-day advance notification so that has to go to um to the sentinel and be uh published you know publicly in advance of that meeting there is um there are two different steps now so there's the first step that is a city a separate review for the operator of the location-based submittals and then there's planning and zoning and then there's a second review of the remainder of the items again i don't have an exact amount of time that it's going to lengthen the process and we'll lengthen it probably about a month or so um but we are endeavoring to get those as is done as quickly as possible so since you're you have a your own planner would your department be able to provide some sort of you know chart or something to kind of indicate that process it's visually it would be helpful i think we do that during the pre-application meeting yes originally in the operating agreements those timelines were listed explicitly and that was part of the negotiation of the operator agreements city attorneys advised against including regulations that were for the city in the oil and gas manual because to say to the operator well the city is required to respond to within a certain period of time that's not really an appropriate place to put a rule or regulation on the city so what typically happens is that when an operator comes in and has a pre-application meeting with the office of development assistance and the oil and gas division we provide that timeline to them at that time so they understand our expectation of how long the process is going to take in that timeline is both is every step laid out and it's how long the city expects to take you know for each step of review and how long you know we generally expect the operator to take for their replies to our questions or or comments um so there's there's work on both sides the city and the operator if either party takes too long then it links into the process if we submit comments to an operator and it takes them three months to reply to us then the process has been lengthened but it's you know it's no fault for the cities okay and then sorry my second question was just on the annexations so um you said we would honor your the um the applications of other jurisdictions as long as it was all valid and so forth with that if an annexation because ours is um three or four step process i can't remember but would that be um be known right away when we look at an annexation would it be in the backup material um great question i don't know because i've not seen the material that's associated with an annexation in the past um but i certainly would be willing to include that and make sure that we coordinate with the planning department and oda to include any uh existing well sites that are part of an area to be annexed okay thank you mayor uh councilman thank you sir so i do have another question from my constituent for you jeffrey um so when it comes to risk assessment um here do we actually specify who should choose that and who should pay for that because i looked in uh section 314 we just talked about the need for risk management plan but we don't really go into who is qualified to provide that assessment uh and such so just that's that's her inquiry uh great question yeah we do cover risk management um and that the the operator needs to provide a risk management plan i do not have any details surrounding uh the requirements of who's required to provide that um so if if you have some or your constituent has some i'd be happy to uh to entertain that and discuss you know if there are particular certifications or credentials that we should include um in terms of that risk management plan we do include those types of certifications and other parts of hazard assessments and things like that uh in the manual so it's certainly appropriate uh to include that certainly we do have a risk manager here at the city and um they would review risk management plans they're the ones we work with to understand insurance needs and risk management so that would be reviewed by someone here on staff for those credentials but in terms of creating the plan that's a great perspective all right councilman mcconnell would you have further questions i do um thank you so i that and actually specifically on that point i think part of the concern for my constituent here was twofold one is a conflict of interest potentially um if uh the operator is you know uh putting up their own applicants so she would like us to um be able to you know provide a list at least of qualified folks to do this and second uh her concern was with specific someone that specializes in oil and gas operations risk assessment as opposed to risk assessment more generally just because there are different factors that may be included in here and as a personal note i wanted to thank you for including workers comp and liability insurance i think that having work protections in here is really important and i really appreciate that you're welcome thank you johnsonville mccombs um yes so myself and i think the rest of council received an email from one of my constituents who's a member of the oil and gas advisory committee concerning the inclusion of a city council call up in the process and so i was just wondering i mean it's my opinion that land use decisions are part of the role of local government and that we shouldn't forfeit that so i support having that there but i was wondering if you could give some details for your justification on having that certainly yeah i'd be glad to um so as you know as council members um essentially any any decision within the city you have the right and authority to call that up and there's nothing in the oil and gas manual that changes that you can call up planning and zoning commission decisions you can call up administrative decisions whatever decisions there are you have the authority to to call it up review the decision and um and you know potentially make changes or deny something that's that's been decided um the concern i think this was expressed was that a concern that operators might have to go to uh city council in the new process whereas they didn't have to quote didn't have to go to city council uh in the former process so a couple of comments on that the first is in order to go in the old process with an operator agreement the operator has to come to city council and and negotiate an operator agreement to be approved so in effect that is the opportunity for the operator or the requirement for the operator to go to city council and negotiate that operating agreement to be approved for the locations that are included within the operator agreement so in the old method the operator is required to go to city council and then the after they go to city council and get the operating agreement they come back to staff they submit their permit application for the oil and gas permit it's reviewed administratively approved there's nothing in the current operating agreements that preclude city council from calling up an administrative decision under the operator agreements the language there simply says that the approval can't be unduly withheld it does not specifically address or preclude city council call up of a decision under the operator agreement in the current the future process the way we're proposing it the operator first goes submits to the city uh staff and then goes to planning and zoning commission for the location approval uh and then they come back to the staff for the final submittal of the remainder permitted items that then end in an administrative decision so in the future process unless city council elects to call up one of those decisions the operator does not have to go to city council for any kind of approval city council has the right to make those decisions or make those call-ups as we've mentioned and the purpose uh one of the purposes of going to planning and zoning commission again was to give city council additional information that you can use to decide whether you would like to call up a decision or not did that answer your question yes perfect thank you so much further questions um councilman councilmember gruber then councilmember lawson the so jeffrey as far as the call up on the operator agreements the um if an operator agreement um location is called up uh it can only be con um discussed under the terms of the operator agreement is that correct in other words the new since the new rules don't apply it can be called up it can be discussed but the the terms of the discussion are based on the operator agreement is that correct yes sir that would be correct okay another part i'm a little bit concerned about and if you could help me with the language because i maybe this isn't just clear but but the language says the variance request may not diminish the protection of the environment of wildlife resources okay taken in the extreme you know that means that um you know we're not allowed you know that that if it affected you know the ground condition if it affected a rabbit nest uh or something like that um you know that would be grounds for for disapproving it obviously the city is building or you know we have million square foot buildings being built in the city that they greatly disturb the environment under the building or adjacent to the building and and disturb the wildlife resources adjacent to those million square foot buildings so what's the difference between um what a what a um oil operator would have to do versus say a construction company or a developer putting up a million square foot building with respect to the may not diminish the protection of the environment and wildlife resources that's a great question and really good perspective um any type of development we do within the city is going to influence and impact the environment around that development whether it's a building it's a road it's only gas site whatever it is is going to have an impact on that specific space where the um the development is occurring i think what we're looking for is to make sure that um that in granting a variance from our rules and regulations that we are not in some way um diminishing the protection of those items that are surrounding the the location obviously we you know whatever happens on the location itself when you when you disturb the dirt and build a pad you are definitely uh affecting the environment you're affecting potential wildlife resources uh on that location but it's more about what's happening in the surrounding area to me you know a variance request might be um you know we're 350 feet from a park but uh excuse me the rule is 350 feet from a park but we're 348 feet from a park you know is that is that acceptable yes i think that's acceptable um landscaping plan you require uh one tree and five bushes every 25 feet uh but on this particular part of the pad we've got you know um some reason why we can't quite do that we can only put in one tree uh and no bushes uh that's a variance yes that's a variance request to our regulations it's it's different than what regular regulation requires um but it's something that is reasonable you know to to approve thank you jeffrey councilmember combs i'm sorry councilmember lawson was next thank you jeffrey i just had a question and it kind of relates to what you said about the three years and i understand that i guess my question is on the enforcement piece which i'm not sure all the way through the manual i've been kind of going through it um is there anything in there that there could be any type of um performance assessments um require requirements to do assessments unannounced i mean is that something that is i mean is it in i didn't see it directly stated in the manual but is that something because you kind of in a way you cut it when you said well if there's bad apples or bad apples if they did something they'll just pay fines i don't know i just have a little a little issue with that because it's like okay well there could be a bad operator just says well i'm just going to pay fines because they make they have millions and millions of dollars to pay fines but the enforcement piece how does that pertain to the people that live there or i mean how is that doing good business i guess i just have a little issue with the enforcement piece of it so i'm just trying to see is that something that could be put in ordinances in the future about maybe doing these unannounced type of you know reviews or performance assessments etc great question um the section you're referring to would be inspections and that begins in section 90 after the end of the uh the manual and we have a very uh good section on you know the the uh how we'll do inspections and and providing access for inspections we've recently hired our senior inspector we have our own so we have our own staff member that is involved in inspections and we'll be inspecting all facilities we in the operating agreements there was a 48-hour advance notice that's required for inspections we have reduced that to a reasonable notice and we define that as generally 24 hours in advance but in some cases particularly if there's an emergency situation or a citizen complaint it could be at the at the location you know where we give notice um that we're gonna do an inspection so yes we we want to have a very robust inspection program and uh we've got a great inspector and he is really on top of um you know our goals as a as a division uh and as a city and uh also very uh understanding of the uh operators operations because he's worked for an oil and gas industry in the past he also worked for rural water so he's done inspections in number of different areas for the city but yes definitely inspections are a key part of a process it's a way for us to confirm compliance with the rules and regulations like i said by by by requiring a list of violations that a company's experienced in any jurisdiction in the past three years we hope to be able to weed out those operators that might come in in the beginning and not let them get to the stage of where they're out in the field and fine with with uh you know creating violations um we have fines and penalties that are able to be assigned to those um any violations and um yeah the legal language there is is pretty robust further questions persons councilmember reverses thank you thank you mr moore for your presentation um i like the way you have um put it into different sections and i know you've gotten a lot of questions from um the industry and whatever a lot of people a lot of of uh comments at your public hearings but i i received a couple of questions and i was hoping that maybe you can uh answer them and i i just want to read them so i don't leave anything out if that's okay okay thanks uh landowners are trying to evaluate how this will affect them and their existing land use approvals for example the manual seems to provide the process for moving forward amendments and policy changes like reverse setbacks are there specific reverse setbacks in the manual and what will be the process to determine what is the appropriate distance request at the last slide but i'll go ahead and address it now since you've raised the question okay thank you reverse setbacks are a topic of discussion and something that we're considering for the future what that means is that you know the current rules and regulations that that we're deploying to operators and the cgcc you know has for operators means that for example if a residence or a school is already in place how far away does the does the new well have to be placed and so we've got regulations about that the the reverse or reciprocal um setbacks is the opposite situation where the oil and gas well is already in place now how far away do you have to be to build a residence or to build a school or something like that uh one of those surface features and there are really no regulations like that in in the city now some jurisdictions in the metro area are beginning to consider those uh regulations and begin to think about that i'm just in the very beginning a research stage of understanding what other jurisdictions are doing what are the big picture uh considerations that we as a city need to be addressing uh in terms of reverse setbacks and my intent is to come to council uh in a study session in the coming months to uh describe my findings and begin to open a discussion about what that might look like um and and just and again big picture thoughts here you have existing producing wells that may need to be considered to have setbacks from them you also have plugged wells that have reached the end of their life and have been remediated and the site's been reclaimed the wellhead's been cut off below the surface of the ground and sealed and we're finding that in some other jurisdictions they find that you know years or decades down the road those wells may slowly be leaking hydrocarbons to the surface and need to be accessed to provide additional remediation and so we want to make sure that for the future that there's a very small setback around those even those plugged wells so that they can be accessed if necessary okay thank you so you would you addressed the first part of it as well as the last part of my question how do they how do landowners evaluate you know and make plans now when we don't we don't know so i guess great question would be you have to wait when you say a landowner do you mean like a developer yeah okay yeah yeah a great question so when when developers come into the city they have their first pre-application meeting the oil and gas division is evaluating all of those applications now that come in and so we're helping these developers understand what's the oil and gas situation around their property do they have plugged wells on their property do they have existing oil and gas operations on their property or within the area they need to consider um they there are no rules and regulations now i can't tell you what they might be what city council might approve in the future um but i the first place i'm starting is with the plugged wells and making sure that developers are aware of those because not only is it something that we need to access in the future it's also a construction risk for a for a developer if they start going out and and using a grater or a scraper on land and they they come across a steel pipe you know buried in the ground that can damage their equipment and so we want to make sure that they're aware of what might be there so that they can make appropriate plans there is a notification provision in the city rules and regulations currently which is remaining in the udo and that simply states that if a a residential property is being developed within an existing state setback which the 2000 foot crgcc state backed or setback would apply uh if that residential development is within that state setback the developer is required to notify the first uh purchaser of that property of that that fact uh within their closing documents and so we're notifying developers of that uh currently thank you very much i have a follow-up a question kind of uh manpower tim burton thank you so you said you know developers can come for the pre-op meeting but if if you're a land owner and you bought you invested your money in the land and you expect to derive mineral rights from your land but you you're maybe years away from from whether whether it be an oil and gas operator uh you know producing or drilling versus or or if you are a landowner and you decide you want to develop with housing or commercial or whatever how are they able to plan for their investment if they don't know down the road you know that they may not be able to even utilize their land correctly based on all these setbacks i mean is it kind of that you kind of get into a takings at that point you certainly can and we have to be careful on that you know city attorneys have had discussions with our city attorneys um along those regards and under making sure we understand that that's something that again these aren't the reverse setbacks are not regulations that would be part of the oil and gas division or the oil and gas regulations because they don't apply to oil and gas operators they apply to developers of other types of properties and so these would be more in the building code and that part of the aurora city code and so that's going to be questions that you as city council have to decide in the future i'm sorry i can't provide any more firm uh decisions on that at that point at this point but that is these are the types of things that i want to present to council uh in the future to be able to say this is what we have to to think about you know uh and all these things are very important that you're mentioning not only the reverse setbacks for for health's sake uh but also you know potential takings and what does that look like from developers so it's a valid concern and i that's something that is on the list for future consideration further uh questions or comments i've seen none uh please proceed sorry mayor i was muted i did have a question oh um sorry councilman marcano thank you sir uh and jeffrey this might be a really quick one um is this the appropriate place to discuss residential notifications or do you have a slide uh dedicated to that um let's discuss it now do you have a question yes so i have another follow-up from my constituent um specifically around public notices she brings up that excel puts out public notices regarding what to look for when there are emergencies around ga you know natural gas leaks and she is wondering if we could do something similar uh for oil and gas operators to put out you know kind of like educational information for nearby residents as to what to look for in terms of sites uh you know explosions uh odors things like that um that might warrant reporting yes there are multiple opportunities for resident communication with residents um during the process some of those are initiated by the city we send out once the permitting process is open we send out notification to everyone within one mile of the of the only gas location letting them know they can comment on the application and then they're different points where the operator is required both with the city and co2cc to make notifications as well the part you're mentioning is a is an additional part that we're working on as an educational benefit that would be more along the lines of once the permit the project is approved you know providing education to the residents what to look for in terms of emergency issues or things to be concerned with and so that's not something that's in the manual but it is part of our practice that we're developing in terms of the educational content co2cc does this all the time they develop you know one page flyers that operators have to send out with certain things so my expectation is that we as a city as an ole gas division would develop that material and then require the operators to send it out to the residents at the appropriate time okay thank you and i do have uh one more question mayor hi councilman mcconnell thank you uh so with regards to resident notifications specifically i think the language that is used in our manual is uh surface owners and hoas basically get notifications so who are we considering a surface owner here are you talking about the actual like owner of a residential property or just people that have a stake in the minerals it would be the legal owner of the property is what is currently uh required uh yeah not the minerals the uh the surface surface property okay my concern with that and i have experienced uh this having been a previous homeowner in an hoa you're then relying on the hoa to disseminate information to the residents and that does not always happen so i'm wondering if there's a way we can change this so that you basically have to send something to each mailbox you know for an owner or for an occupied property within a mile of a potential site as opposed to relying on the neighborhood organization or something like that i know that's an increase in postal costs but otherwise i'm not sure you'll actually get notified or everyone will actually get notified right that's that's the current that's the current rule so we notify the homeowner association just as a courtesy but every individual property owner within that area is notified as well now the the i suppose one caveat would be if a particular property let's say a house is owned by someone that perhaps doesn't live there they're renting it out they live somewhere else if they have a different mailing address they're going to get that notification there so there may be some opportunities um for review here that i could add tenants as well um so that every every actual residence or dwelling you know gets a notification for sure even if the even if it's a rental situation where the actual property owner uh uh lives somewhere else yeah and that was what i was getting at was notifications for tenants basically so thank you i'm gonna add that and i will review there's a couple of different places where there are notification provisions in the manual and i can add that in um for the next version of the ordinance that would go to uh future council lead great uh further questions uh discussion i say none please proceed very good uh we're nearing the end so good news thanks for your patience everyone um there is a after all the well regulations there's a whole section of pipeline regulations we call midstream uh regulations and in many cases they're similar to the wells but there are some key differences because this is the gathering systems that are all generally pipelines underground they do connect to the wells on the surface and some other points of transfer around the area but in general everything is underground we did remove some regulations because on upon review by the legal team they were found to be in conflict with federal and state regulations now that was fine to include those in an operator agreement when it's an agreement between two parties but once we move for regulation language we had to remove those those are generally around pipeline safety because those are all federal rules and regulations we've added a one-mile notification radius for a central gathering facility and associated facilities so anything that's above ground and a 350 foot notification radius for gathering lines which of course are all below ground we require midstream operators to only use water from aurora water i think we mentioned that before and another question from ped was we did clarify that we're only talking about the use of aurora water within the city limits of aurora some of these pipelines do go from the city uh outside the city limits into an incorporated arapaho county or adams county and so we do not have jurisdiction over those sections of the pipelines the operator has to apply to the other jurisdiction for those sections of the pipeline and then just some clarification appropriate separation distances on pipes during construction depths of burial and then we change picking of flow lines from quartilated routine i'll explain that picking is a process of essentially cleaning a line where you insert a device into the pipeline that then is pushed through the line it cleans out the any build up of hydrocover material it also removes water that may have settled in the natural gas line previously we required that to be done quarterly even though crgcc requires every three years we change that to routine the point here is that operators tend to do picking whenever they find an operational need to do that if they have reduced um or increased pressures on the line they will do that whenever you do this process you do have to open the line up which exposes hydrocarbons to the atmosphere so to reduce emissions we've brought this more in line with that routine rather than a specific time period questions that's uh seeing none please proceed all right this is the last slide of items and public comments this is the other section everything that didn't fit somewhere else uh we added an objective at the beginning to be in line with senate bill 181 it just states that the purposes of our regulations are for the protection of public health safety welfare environment and wildlife resources future updates to the manual will only be by ordinance and after review by oil and gas advisory committee so if we have future changes we first go to the oil and gas advisory committee for review and then we come back to city council for an ordinance we've added an annual inspection fee of three thousand dollars per well site plus fifteen hundred dollars per well this um is not to generate income for the city it only pays for our expenses in terms of inspector salary and equipment that we need for the inspections we've added some clarity for fines and penalties to be charged requiring reporting of non-compliance within 24 hours and some additional requirements and emergency training and of course we've updated many definitions and other provisions questions questions mayor uh councilmember o'connor thank you i guess since we're kind of like in the other slide i did want to bring something up that i noticed in section 3306 um outlining the chemical disclosures um i think we're just referencing bennett in there and not the bennett watkins fire rescue or their protect fire protection district i'm not sure which is the appropriate one but i just wanted to bring that up in case it impacts something um and i did have another question we use impermeable i'm sorry impervious as opposed to impermeable and i understand that they are both synonymous uh in architecture engineering we tend to use uh impervio impermeable surfaces and membranes when discussing this i just want to make sure there's not like a legal distinction between the two and we're you know talking about regulatory framework i don't think there's any difference in the language this was simply taken again we started with the best management practices from the operator agreements as the base and so uh we started that whatever was there i i left there unless there was a you know reason to change it and so i think that was the term that that came from the operator agreement all right thank you i'll research that if it's more appropriate to using permeable we'll use that all right thank you further questions uh saying none uh uh please proceed unless this is your last slide uh now i've got one more and this is just considered for the future we've discussed some of these already cumulative impacts is a big one and uh when we look and evaluate a permanent application we're looking at just that one well site and what are the parameters around that well site but when you start to get multiple well sites in the area kingdom of impacts are something that we do need to consider cgcc has new regulations on cumulative impacts and a new requirement for reporting or application i guess for cumulative impacts i would like to wait and see what they're proposing and how their new rules and regulations really affect uh or how what changes they make and approvals based on the cumulative impact material that's submitted by the operators and at that point we'll be able to judge um whether or not we need to add some some more stringent regulations or not um we have some additional air quality regulations requirements that we're looking at in the future uh increasing the continuous air monitoring frequency is one of those and then we're also looking at installing some air quality monitoring that will be operated by the city uh in the future um setting effects of oil and gas on disproportionately impacted communities this is something that i think the reverse setbacks is an area where that falls under this this this bullet point um considering additional financial bonding for surface remediation we have to be careful here because we don't have authority over the downhole operations of the wells that's where the bonding that cogcc requires comes into play we don't want to assume their authority over the downhole plugging so we have to be kind of careful in terms of bonding that we require for the surface and make sure that we are very specific that it's only for surface remediation but we are doing some analysis on that to understand um we have some wells that are being plugged within the city um currently and so i'm excited about that and we're going to try to keep uh apprise of those processes and make sure that they're happening appropriately and that we're not finding a need for uh for surface remediation before we make that decision and then of course we're always discussing with emergency services to better prepare for incidents public notifications we discussed that already drilling your special hazard sites uh and reverse setbacks so these are all things that are being considered for uh the future the ordinance uh very simply creates new chapter 135 in the rural city code we remove all the current oil and gas regulations from the udo we give planning and zoning commission authority to make decisions with oil and gas location and then of course as i mentioned previously this notification provision if a residence is being developed within an existing state setback still remains in the udo so in summary i'm very proud of our team we've worked very hard to make these regulations the very best for aurora i believe we have what i wanted from the beginning which is not a carbon copy of some other jurisdictions but uh the rules and regulations that are best and most appropriate for aurora's people and our environments and i would request your vote to move this ordinance forward to a regular council meeting and if you give any further questions i'm happy to answer those now or or in the future further questions are saying none the question before us is whether and not to move the oil and gas manual forward uh to first rating is there any objection uh seeing that it won't move forward thank you um with the clerk please read the title of item number 4b item 4b is a support letter for board of directors of e-470 public highway authority uh mayor pretend bergen yes thank you very much mayor um so this is simply a request to sign of letter support to the e-470 board and i had asked the city attorney um how to uh proceed with with a letter of support he advised me that it did need to come to study session and then with a majority vote um then the letter would be able to come from the city of aurora on city letterhead to uh to the e470 board um i'm looking in the in the packet i did have a revision to the letter so is that available just i'm just wondering if that's included in our backup we were gonna nailed it today i know it was emailed okay um so yes i did make a revision um and the reason i made the revision to the letter is i actually had um a couple council members that that had a concern about how it the second paragraph read so um i did change that um do you want me to read it mayor please okay um so i'll read the entire letter to the e-470 board of directors on behalf of the city of aurora i write to officially express support for our duly appointed e-470 board representative and for the position taken by our representative at two separate meetings of the e-470 board regarding an unsolicited proposal sent to and evaluated by the e-470 board specifically the city of aurora supports our representatives vote at the august 8th 2019 and june 11 2020 board of directors meetings to reject the rhodes proposal by the e-470 board of directors the city of aurora feels that the decision of our representative to reject the unsolicited proposal is in the best interest of the city um well first of all let me just say i will not be signing i will not be supporting this and let me say why and that is that i was a state treasurer for seven years and i get that some of these are complicated uh but you always get unsolicited proposals i mean you get them all the time anything that is that you get you receive where you don't have you you didn't do an rfp for you get and i always got them and i always evaluated them not on the basis of whether or not it affected somebody's job as i think this is being evaluated but what is in the best interest of the taxpayers and that you know and you do two things then you then once you do the financial evaluation then there's a decision tree going two different ways is it negotiated deal or is it a competitive deal and obviously um this would be something that would be written as a competitive deal not a negotiated deal uh and so you take the elements of it and and then you and you write it as a competitive uh deal but i don't think the evaluation was ever done uh in terms of um i think what should have been done and so uh i will not be supporting him okay mayor may i please respond manpower time please yes so i just want to state that um the eight board members um completely understood the rotus proposal it was carefully reviewed and analyzed we did go through it and it was gone through twice and i think it's insulting to cut to the county commissioners the mayors and the council members that sit on the board of e-470 to insinuate we didn't understand or review the proposal i understand what you're saying about unsolicited proposals but it's not just because it was an unsolicited proposal it's because it is not a good proposal and the board like i said rejected it twice unanimously and we are a single purpose entity we're not a state entity um i i want to say for the public that even the uh the overs or the committee that was formed to review it they even admitted that e-470 is very well managed and is very financially sound we're not a troubled asset and typically a proposal like this that came forward is typically for a troubled asset that's not true it is true and rtd and you can talk about hpte those were troubled assets that needed financial backing we don't need it and i want to just also say that we have done an excellent job we froze the toll since 2018 and we are we were actually looking to reduce tolls we will be looking at that we are recovering from a pandemic thank god that e-470 was run so well financially that we had reserves and we were able to get through this pandemic and still still be able to provide to the public excellent roads do the projects that we promised we're on time we're we're in budget and this the debt for the e-470 is is uh going to be paid off in 21 years so i just want to say that um it's not true that it wasn't carefully um considered it was carefully considered and right now we have six of eight jurisdictions have already signed on to this letter and we're waiting uh one more and we're and us tonight so i just would like to know if i have any objections from the rest of council mayor are there any objections for the rest of the council councilmember combs i don't object i just want to make a brief statement um you know i do not believe that it would be responsible for us to auction off the future of our infrastructure for the sake of short-term gain um nor to reduce our ability to turn this into a public road which is of greater benefit to the general public than a private toll road which i believe this deal would do um based on past instances of toll roads that sold off their rights to uh to outside entities and then remained toll roads for longer into the future than they planned or intended so i absolutely support the e-470 authority and mayor pro-tem bergen as our representative there in making that choice to put our long-term goals plans and assets um above short-term gain and it does revert back to the state over back to the authority over time uh further questions further discussion mayor persons councilmember versions thank you i you know i just like to say that they did come to um a steady session um rodus came and uh e-470 also came and uh they gave presentations and that's when mayor laguerre i think he was the mayor then and i believe it was a unanimous vote that we would um not support it because we saw the short shortcomings of rhodes and it's not that it was unsolicited that i mean that i don't think that had any anything to do with it but i i just wanted to say you know i was there maybe some of you others were there and but the presentation was not something that we wanted to happen for our e-470 and like i said i think it was a unanimous vote to to say no to rotus uh further discussion uh very well is there anybody besides the mayor in strong opposition uh seeing nine minute wall then it will move forward and mayor yes so i just want to clarify that letter i would like to know when it will go out because it's already um been drafted been typed and so uh it needs your signature and i would like to know when it will go out to the e470 board please i believe you um i believe the mayor protempton signed no it well i we have ten council members that are approving the letter and my understanding is with a majority of six votes or more that the mayor would sign the letter that's what i was told by the um this question for the city attorney and mayor that's correct the council rules actually if it's brought to the study session and approved it goes on council letterhead with the mayor's signature very well i will sign it under protest uh please what's up mayor i've got a quick question i was are there two letters that are being considered was there a second letter that was it was a second letter that was sent and that is the letter that um i am asking to be signed and i have the ten council members exact clarification [Music] with going down please read the title volume i'm number 4c item 4c is council rules updates so 4c1 is a resolution of the city council of the city of aurora colorado to modify the rules of order and procedure for the royal colorado city council fsir change okay um if there are no objections what i would like to do is is that if there is anything that really requires a substantial debate i would like to defer that specific item to the next study session is there any objection to doing that oh very well uh um let's see uh luke uh good evening mayor luke palmisano intergovernmental relations manager i'm here to present on a rules of order resolution related to the council rules for the federal state and intergovernmental relations committee with directions from fsir chair lawson rachel allen and the city attorney with the city attorney's office and i work to create an update to the rules related to the fsir committee there's a specific council rule that addresses the fsir committee that recognizes the committee has to act quickly in order to take a position on legislation and outlines a process for the committee to hold emergency meetings however the current rules do not explicitly allow for virtual or electronic meetings the proposed changes takes the committee's current and past practices and aligns them with the council rules this rule chains would allow for virtual meetings with the appropriate 24-hour posting and would ensure that the committee can utilize email to conduct business since that was not explicitly clarified in the rules i'm asking for council approval for this item to move it forward to a regular council meeting uh discussion uh is there any objection to moving it forward uh seeing none item um a 4c1 will move forward thank you uh 4c2 with the clerk please read the title of item number 4c2 4c2 is a resolution of the city council of the city of aurora colorado to modify the rules of order and procedure for the aurora colorado city council administrative changes a discussion uh susan barkman thank you mayor and council members um good evening the this particular change was um not discussed as a part of the rules committee however um mayor pro tem or then mayor protem johnston asked us to bring this forward as time kind of was wrapping up with that particular committee so this um proposal does a couple of things the first one is it adds a little bit of language around the travel process and what happens with credits and refunds and things like that the other part to it is that it just moves some things around in the rules we kind of figured if we were making couple changes it doesn't really change anything there's not a language change outside of the travel pieces it just shifts where it is and it actually makes some of these things show up as an appendix which makes it easier for us to find when we need when we need it quickly uh discussion on item number four c2 mayor um councilmember hiltz oh johnston the council member johnson that's okay um yes i just wanted to say i definitely support this as susan said i wanted to make it easier for um our next mayor pro tem and for council and for staff um that there were just some cleanup language things like table sponsorship and travel as susan said and some of those things that we don't have to to go through at length and and this resolution addresses all of that and i wanted to separate it i'll speak a little more on the the next part which i don't know if we need to really um go into necessarily this evening because i think it's a bigger discussion but for this um these are things that we got consensus over or that staff just made for administrative changes so hopefully we can get unanimous support for moving that forward further discussion on item number 4c2 uh councilmember versus thank you um you know i i do a lot of traveling going to conferences i i guess councilmember lawson and i do the most um um i i you know i i'm not sure what this means when you're talking about gosh it's in such a little print um miscellaneous um let's see it's let's see if i can find the page it's on page four of seven when you're talking about other travel related expenses may be reimbursed if requested because not everyone asks for per diem some some of us bring back receipts and sometimes we ask for per diem um and it says a rental car parking fees blah blah blah but it says uh equal or greater than 25 dollars so i'm i'm a little confused if i fly into washington and i get an uber and it's 24.50 does that mean i can't be reimbursed for it why did you put a 25 dollar uh cap minimum on it um council member bergens it's not a cap what it's saying is that um if you have an expense expense that's over 25 um it does require a receipt if there's not a receipt then we have a missing receipt form um that needs to be filled out so it's not a cap it's not any type of limitation or anything like that okay it's just you have to have a receipt for it yep okay all right and i had something else back up on um when we're when we're reserving a table i can't find it it's so much in here and so much uh when we're when we're going to an event and it's the 60 percent rule i've been to events and i couldn't get a seat because everybody brought their spouse you know and maybe it's a table of eight and there were only four council members and people brought their spouses do we have any rules for that um we do may or um council member versions we have um the way it kind of works is where council members are supposed to have um the first kind of dibs if you will um on the seats at the table and then i think it's a few days before the event if we don't have um all of the seats filled then we open it up for council members to bring guests so i'm not really sure um what exactly happened in the in the times that you're referring to well how do you tell the mayor they can't bring his wife you know okay okay is there any further uh discussion on 4c2 bergen uh councilman mayor pretend bergen thank you mayor um so in this section um of the study sessions section five i know we i know we decided on the calendar which increases or changed us to having the study sessions on on the mondays and then the other two regular council meetings but these study sessions are beginning to be like four to five hour long study sessions is there anything in here uh on time limits or is it just is it just more managing the agenda i do not believe there is anything in there on time limits and if we they're certainly not in this um changes for the administrative ones for this particular resolution i do not believe there's anything in council rules okay so if we wanted to make changes would it go to the next rules committee then um just to put some sort of parameter i think you all are discussing rules um so we can certainly add that in as part of this process i think most well maybe i don't know if my colleagues want to weigh in um mayor uh uh councilmember combs yeah i think if we're going to have any further conversation about time limits we should defer it to uh rules committee okay uh let's let's uh is there any objection to uh deferring that uh that so that it would come up in in the next um study session the issue of time limits okay mayor i'm sorry can i clarify please um not in the next study session but in i assume we're going to resume the rules committee because we did not address everything um uh let me defer to the mayor protem and actually um you know we didn't do that when we did all the other board assignments i knew um we were trying to get through that so i do need to reconvene a rules committee and then i guess we need to find out who wants to be on the rules committee so yes i would i would like to to uh set a date uh and reconvene reconvene the rules i'm just trying to think how would we uh are we going to ask for who wants to be on it by email are we allowed to do that or do we need to do that today well let me um defer to uh council member johnston i believe it was just ad hoc whoever wanted to be on it was one was on it am i correct we actually had regular um members on it um occasionally other people would be on it but i know council member mario coombs marcano lawson gardner and um and persians were were fairly regularly on it um but the the first names that i gave attended every meeting um of course every and then mayor you were you were at about it i think every meeting as well um so it was a large it was a large policy committee meeting okay um well there may be a question for the city attorney on this i assume that it's going to be a while um well we could delay bringing this forward to first reading to give the um uh the committee uh time to meet uh to be able to come up with some a final version mayor uh uh councilmember johnston um and and if i'm if i'm understanding this correctly the issue with the timing for study session could could be in the addressed at a future um rules committee meeting but under 4c 3 this 4c2 is um more administrative staff recommendations so i think that could still go through if that's okay okay is there is there any objection to moving 42c forward i have a question councilmember morrison's i guess it's more of a comment and when we're talking about um when we're talking about the calendar and rescheduling i know it's in here somewhere um remember i told you that several weeks ago that the accelerate colorado trip would be the end of june and we have a meeting a council member a council meeting scheduled that monday so i i just wanted to make sure everybody remembered that and either it's going to have to be rescheduled with a hundred percent of us voting or you might not have a quorum so i just want to remind everybody of that if we can go to washington in june okay um okay is there is there any objection to moving i'd remember 42c forward uh 4c2 i'm sorry forward uh c9 item number four c2 will move forward with item number 4c3 updates to the city council ad hoc rules committee ms barkman okay thank you so these changes are the ones that were discussed by the ad hoc rules committee and i don't know um mayor former mayor protegn johnston i don't know if you would like to elaborate more yes thank you these are issues as we went through obviously um we had we had different opinions so we put different you know strikeouts some recommended language um that sort of thing i'm i'm actually asking my colleagues for us to break talk about this at a future study session there i know it says 45 minutes recommended honestly it would be even longer than that um and i don't know if it's even something that the new mayor pro tem wants to just review or have i'm not sure but i think my opinion is having this whole discussion on it tonight after we've been meeting for hours mayor uh uh mayor patem yes and thank you uh councilmember johnston i i agree i would prefer to let's just um move this uh you know or just defer it for now um okay uh is there any objection for deferring that and then it would be a subject to uh the the new mayor pro tem uh to decide uh how to proceed with it because i believe it's the mayor pro tem that schedules uh the schedules that aren't on um study session on the agenda is there any objection uh seeing none then in four to four c three um uh will then uh lay over uh subject to the mayor pro tem uh councilmember gruber i didn't want to bring this up in a discussion after you had already asked the uh the question but the first element of the uh the rules uh change our oath or have a recommended change of oath where we remove the phrase uh so help me god from the oath uh if we if you don't mind i would appreciate uh sending this to the aurora community of faith to have their input uh since it's already a draft proposal now uh and then we'll bring that back to the rules okay and that's in 4c3 correct so you have that discretion as as a member of council to to do that and so um that's something that you can do as an individual member all right thank you mayor okay mayor uh councilmember combs i'd just like to make a brief comment on that issue which is just that i want to remind us that there are many faiths represented in our city and so perhaps we can look at this issue being one where each member convenes with the chief judge prior to giving the oath to determine which position of faith may be appropriate to them rather well i think i think that's the one that represents not all things if we could go back to the the um i don't know saying it's a motion because we formally can't do motions here uh but but it'd be defer is there any objection to deferring item number 4c3 uh and then having the um mayor pro tem uh decide how to proceed with it uh seeing none then the the mayor pretend we'll decide how to proceed with item number 4c3 items from the the city manager um item number five with claire please read the title number 5a 5a is for housing and community services department update regarding new programs okay i believe this is informational only um jessica presser good evening mayor and members of council um this is really just a short update on the new programs um both the mental health correspondent program as well as the youth initiative the youth violence prevention slash empowerment as we're kind of referring to it at this point um where we're at with sort of where this these programs will be nested within the organization and where we're at in terms of uh recruiting for these uh positions so i will be pretty brief um just wanted to kind of go through the things that that we've done i'll show an org chart we have taken a position that historically was the supervisor of the neighborhood liaisons we've reclassified that position to be more focused on overall community engagement this is something that's coming out of strategic planning it's also coming out of a lot of the needs we've seen related to coven and how we're kind of getting feedback loops from the community so this was a vacant position that we've been able to restructure that would be able to work with these programs that are all focused on engaging the community and then with the two new programs a total of six positions that we've created as part of the youth violence prevention program and then one physician under the mental health correspondent this may be a little bit small this is just sort of a overall org chart of my department with the focus really here being on the new division where it's highlighted in yellow wherein we've nested the mental health corresponds the youth violence prevention and our two existing neighborhood liaisons and adding a third neighborhood liaison like we've had previously under that division um that division will obviously work closely with our homeless programs with our housing programs and our different community partnerships that we have through those other programs and so quickly this is kind of an overview of what the community engagement manager will do we're going to be looking for somebody that's had previous experience working with youth programs in the community working with community partners running grant programs understands rfp processes and so uh and can also help create kind of a community engagement framework um for the organization and how we outreach not only in this department but others um so this position is uh has a job description and has gone through the budget process and is ready for recruitment the youth violence prevention empowerment um the program manager position is also ready to go this was uh hr worked with other cities pulled other job descriptions together we looked at alignment across the organization as well um the the manager position will really be responsible for fully creating this program working across the organization walking working with community groups to define what the goals and objectives are pulling together you know an action table of key folks both internally and externally so we've started to have some of those collaborative meetings internal to the organization and then we'll be pulling that out externally once we have this person hired we're also going to begin recruitment for two outreach specialists the funding allows for up to six positions we think that it makes sense to hire them the program manager and two outreach specialists to begin with again sort of define what's needed as part of the program and then with the intention of hiring the rest of the positions by the end of the year once we have a more clear vision of exactly what they will be doing these folks will be really out in the community coordinating with other entities and really you know working across both this department as well as others to work with at-risk youth so all these positions are are ready to go for recruitment and we intend to post them um you know within the next week or so um and we'll certainly let council know when we've done that so um if you all have different people to sort of share that out from a recruitment perspective that would be helpful the mental health correspondent position we're still working to refine the job description there again we've talked with several other cities about their programs what's helpful and will probably most likely begin recruitment in mid-february and again this is kind of the org chart and that's all i really had for a presentation tonight to just know that we are moving forward with those programs um and um at this point we're ready to to begin recruitment and i'm happy to take any questions from council council member houston uh councilmember hills thank you um i just wanted to point out that this is not a co-responder program it's the opposite of a co-responder program the kahoot style program that we funded as a pilot is just a it's a mental health response but it's not corresponding with the police that's the crisis response team that we already have um so i just want to be really careful how we talk about that program because right now it's it's titled as something that undermines the intent of what we of what we funded in council member hilts we can certainly work on it the exact wording we're thinking of co-response in the sense of paramedic and mental health um provider going out and those two being a co-response together um but i i will definitely take your point into consideration in terms of exactly the branding and the terminology and again i don't think we're quite ready to roll that out into the community and have some meetings set up this month to try to help us refine you know the language and how we want to want to talk about that even before recruitment yeah great thank you because because what we call the co-responder program is how the current crisis response team has been branded for years and so in order to make sure that we can build that community trust in the program it needs to be its own distinct program and this makes it sound like this is the exact same thing because it's the exact same language that the police department uses when they're promoting the crisis response team which can make it really difficult when we're trying to collect data so that we can compare the two programs at the end of the pilot okay um mayor pretend bergen yes um jessica i don't understand why we're creating a new division i understand that you know you want to remove the youth violence from from being under the management of the police but why would this not just all fall under the neighborhood services manager because it's community engagement community outreach rather than create new ftes and a new division so the the neighborhood support manager is really um code enforcement and so that division is focused on more specifically code enforcement the neighborhood liaisons have traditionally sort of been their own division um when their supervisor left in late 2019 that the neighborhood liaisons moved under code enforcement it's kind of a temporary situation and so we've had that position vacant um so it's not really creating something completely new in the sense that we have had that group in the past within the housing and community services department part of the reason um in in the you know youth violence prevention it was supposed to be a new program with multiple new fte we want that program to be really well supported um and so having um kind of an overall manager that's looking beyond just youth at the other initiatives happening both within the department and the organization helps provide leverage with funding it helps provide leverage with outreach um and we think will make the program more robust um than just completely standing alone all by itself so can i ask okay so two questions where where was it supposed to go when it was proposed to us the uh youth violence because i thought it was supposed to report under something else and then the neighborhood where are the neighborhood liaisons where do they fall right now the neighborhood liaisons would be within the community engagement division along with youth violence prevention and the mental health program oh there oh neighborhood engagement at the bottom is that what it is yes those are our current liaisons we have two current and we would be hiring a third we used to have three and so is margie cannon the manager still so she was the supervisor over the neighborhood liaisons and margie's position is the one that is is essentially this community engagement manager position that's okay we reclassified the position okay thank you further discussion uh councilmember lawson um jessica i know we kind of had a discussion about this i what i don't want to get lost is within the youth violence prevention and empowerment program that we make sure that we do whoever that manager is has that a grip program underneath there because i just don't want that program to get lost and what was in part partially what was part of that programming that we had so i know we're reinventing but i'm just i'm just kind of a little bit nervous that we're not going to incorporate that anti-gang piece into this youth prevention i know we're talking about you know outreach and all that but i i do want to make sure that that that is a focal point within um this youth violence prevention empowerment program absolutely and council member lawson that is very clearly stated in the job descriptions okay thank you further discussion mayor dave kruber hi councilmember could we have the city manager's thoughts on this please i'm i'm you know i agree with uh uh councilmember lawson we've got uh many moving pieces we've applied a lot of resources um i just would like the city manager to to provide comment on this sheriff excuse me sure councilmember what what exactly would you like me to comment on well the organization we've got again we have neighborhood services we've got good enforcement we've got this new area we're talking about we've got police and fire just your thoughts on the um we don't want you know and agree again i agree with councilmember lawson we don't want to tie a grip and and uh you know the the newer programs under the police but we do want to have some coordination with the police but but we i i believe council may have um added complexity and i'm just wondering how you a city manager want to deal with that complexity within your organization well i think you know having this community engagement manager will allow us to have someone who's overseeing you know the they are somewhat different functions that are in that organizational chart but will allow one person to oversee those different functions you know i i guess i'd say that it makes sense to me i think we do want to have these outside of the police department but at the same time knowing that we'll be working with the police department on some of these a further discussion mayor uh um councilmember johnson all right thank you um jessica i just wanted i i guess i'll call it the the mental health responder or the the kahoot stasher program um what's the timeline of when that will be rolled out so councilmember johnson like i said we're finishing up the job description i hope to have that posted very soon um we're also having uh discussions with you know other communities and how they're set up um i believe we're working on setting up setting up a scoping meeting with both bulk and aurora mental health where we completed some agreements with them related to this program and so now we're getting down into the details of exactly how it will function how we will communicate the rollout to the public um getting some community feedback in terms of you know anything from what it's called to you know letting the public know that this exists and so um you know reasonably on the timeline i would say we're a couple months out but not far we've got some you know initial agreements put together and um and just you know really coordinating with dispatch and coordinating with our internal departments and then the rollout to the community is kind of the next steps thank you further discussion mayor uh councilman mcconnell thank you i've already had uh some non-government organizations and like some faith uh community members reaching out about wanting to partner with our uh keep the lights on program should i just be sending them to you in the interim until we get all that stood up jessica that would be fine and i'll also be um you know coordinating um with claudine and the police department as well on some of these programs but happy to be the point of contact in the interim until we get a program manager hired all right great thank you further discussions uh seeing none is there um well there's there's no action item on this it's for informational um all rights from the city council uh seeing none uh collapse of council policy committee items i'm sorry those are number persons you didn't give me time to unmute um i was wondering when are we going to talk about the covet and the homeless that situation when when are we going to discuss that or get more information um um jessica sure councilmember bersons i'll be prepared with another update on wednesday during the covid call um a lot of the next steps depend on um testing that was done yesterday by colorado department of public health and environment that we should be able to have results about tomorrow so i do plan to provide an update during the covet call on wednesday okay great thank you uh miscellaneous items i've seen none are honest removed from the agenda if any saying none uh thank you everybody meeting is adjourned [Music] here with you all night i'm getting lost in your eyes can you hear me [Music] [Music] can you hear me [Music] close to me close to [Music] can you hear me [Music] you