Brighton City Council Study Session - June 25, 2024
Brighton City Council Study Session - June 25, 2024
The Brighton City Council held a study session on Tuesday, June 25, 2024, starting at 6:00 PM. The meeting included presentations and discussions on the Brighton Legacy Foundation funding request, a proposal for youth membership on city boards and commissions, and an update on the Lutz Reservoir project with a proposed Fourth Amendment to the comprehensive funding agreement. Policy items were also introduced.
Discussion Items
Brighton Legacy Foundation Update
- Yvette Martinez and Rihanna Collins (co-chair) presented the Foundation's activities. They reported that 2024 grants totaled $145,000, while requests were $161,500. They requested a 10% funding increase ($15,000) for 2025 to better meet community needs.
- Year-over-year data: 2021 awarded $107,525 (requested ~$145,000); 2022 awarded $124,000 (requested ~$140,000); 2023 awarded $105,000 (requested ~$155,000).
- Administrative costs are capped at $5,000 annually and have never been fully used; unused funds go back to grants.
- Councilmembers discussed stabilizing funding as a percentage of budget or revenue, supporting the increase during future budget sessions. Councilmember Johnston emphasized protecting the Foundation from future elimination.
- No formal vote was taken; the matter will be revisited during budget discussions starting August 27, 2024.
Youth Membership on Boards and Commissions
- Youth Services Manager Tanya Russell and Youth Commissioner Paula Acosta proposed an ordinance change to allow youth commissioners with significant ties (e.g., attending school in Brighton) to serve on adult city boards, not just those living within city limits. This aligns with existing residency requirements for the Youth Commission.
- Currently, youth have voting seats only on the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board; other boards (Planning, Historic Preservation, Legacy Foundation) allow non-voting youth seats. The proposal does not create new seats but expands eligibility.
- Council debated the potential influence of youth members; most expressed strong support, emphasizing the value of youth voice and learning experiences. Councilmember Johnston encouraged active participation and disagreement with limiting influence.
- Next step: first reading of the ordinance on July 2, 2024.
Lutz Reservoir Update and Fourth Amendment to Comprehensive Funding Agreement
- Deputy City Manager Marv Falkenberg and City Attorney Scott presented. Lutz Reservoir is a 20-acre non-potable water storage facility west of Home Depot, part of a larger 120-acre open space and trail system.
- The project is designed to reduce peak potable water demand by 10–15% (from an estimated 42.7 MGD to 38.4 MGD at full build-out of 135,000 population).
- Civil design is complete and bids have been posted; construction is expected to start around August 1, 2024 (after a federally protected raptor nest is vacated). Trail connections and a parking lot are included.
- The Fourth Amendment to the Prairie Center comprehensive funding agreement (originally from 2005, with total commitment ~$157.9 million) will ensure a separate non-potable rate, dedicate existing systems to the city, transfer ownership of the Lutz parcel, and make certain improvements eligible for reimbursement. The city will complete the reservoir, trail, and open space improvements.
- Estimated project cost is ~$9 million, funded by the city.
- Councilmember Johnston expressed distrust of the design engineer (JR Engineering) but was reminded that the design was already awarded and completed. No vote was taken; the amendment will be considered at a future regular meeting (likely in about four weeks).
Policy Items
- City Manager Martinez introduced three new policy requests: (1) a dog park discussion, (2) review of the tree department, and (3) noise complaints at the Oasis and speeding on Jessup Street. These will be brought to future study sessions.
- Councilmember Johnston requested an update on the tornado siren, scheduled for the July 23, 2024 meeting.
Key Outcomes
- Legacy Foundation: Council expressed support for considering a funding increase (10% or percentage-based) during upcoming budget sessions; no formal action.
- Youth Membership: Council directed staff to prepare a first reading of the ordinance for July 2, 2024.
- Lutz Reservoir: Staff will finalize the Fourth Amendment and bring it to a future regular council meeting (approximately one month out).
- Policy Items: New topics were introduced and will be scheduled for future study sessions.
Meeting Transcript
Welcome to our study session for Tuesday, June twenty-fifth, twenty twenty-four. And we have the pledge downstairs, so we'll go straight into our study session items and we'll go on to the presentation on Legacy Foundation updates. City Manager Martinez introduce our guests. Rihann and Yavett are here to give an update on all of the great things the Legacy Foundation is doing this year. And with that, I will turn it over to them. Thank you, Mr. Martinez, City Manager. Thank you, everybody, for joining us or allowing us to join you tonight for your study session. My name is Yvette Martinez, and I've been a member of the Brighton Legacy Foundation. I'm I am proud to say from the beginning with Wilma Rose. And I took a couple of years off or so, and um and have come back, and to my right is our co-chair Rihanna Collins.org. And uh keep in mind that we as a foundation always are mindful that our applicants are indeed serving the residents of Brighton, our community, our children, our elderly, our hungry, our homeless. And so as we read through grant applications, we definitely want to make sure that we are good stewards of the monies that you endow the foundation. So you'll see the list of grant recipients in 2023 and the amounts each that each received from the legacy foundation so with that I'll turn it over to our co-chair, Rihanna Collins. Thanks, Yvette. Okay, if you will take a peek at this new flyer that we handed out, you've got your 2024 grant recipients in your packet. This one is a little bit updated. Um some of the numbers were a little bit off, so we went ahead and made some updates. So this does show our 2024 grant recipients. Um I do want to point out um Calvary Chapel that was awarded the 10,000 and then in the emergency grant recipients of a thousand is um our food bank here in town. Just to clarify, that's Calvary Chapel um food bank. So you'll also see um on this paper that we were also able to do some youth funding. We've um got some recipient um recipients of our mini grants that we were able to do as well. Um our total funding for 2024 that we were able to award was 145,000. So the majority of that funding is coming from the city. We are um as a as an organization, we are not really equipped to do large amounts of fundraising. So we do a little bit here and there. We work with Lulus in the fall at their Chili Fest. We provide their liquor license for them, and they in exchange provide us $750 for that. We do we've done Amazon Smiles in the past. We have all of our board of directors have um Brighton Legacy Foundation as their nonprofit of choice for King Supers. So that does bring us um a little bit every quarter, but we are depending on the city for the majority of this funding. So, like I mentioned, 145,000 is what we were able to grant for 2024. The amount of grants requested, however, for 2024 was 161,500. So that brings me to what I want to kind of touch on. Um now I'm gonna talk about year over year what we've been able to afford just for the last couple of years, what we've been able to award, and what has been requested of us. So for 2021 to 2023, we had funding um available to us of 110,000. We got a really nice bump last year and 2024 up to 150,000, which allowed us to of course grant um more of those requests that are coming in. So I'm just gonna go through the numbers here really quickly on what we were able to award and um what was requested for the last couple of years. So 2021, we awarded 107,525 requested was just under 145,000. In 2022, we awarded 12400 requested was just over 140,000. In 2023, we awarded 105,000. Requested was just over 155,000. So like I mentioned, um, we got that really nice bump um up to 150,000 in 2024. So that funding is incrementally increasing. Um, as you are aware from those numbers that we just talked about, the grant requests are also increasing along with those funding increases. We want to continue to meet the needs of our nonprofits in our community, and we need the city's help to do this. Myself and our board of directors would like to recommend a 10% increase in funding for an amount of $15,000. This will allow us to um more effectively fulfill our grant requests and in turn meet the needs of our community. That's okay.
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