Good morning.

Welcome to the City of Car Springs Work Session meeting for Monday, November 24th, 2025.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Bailey.

Here.

Councilmember Cutter Iverson.

Here.

Councilmember Donaldson.

Here.

Councilmember Gold.

On her way.

Councilmember Hindem.

Present.

Councilmember Williams.

Here.

Councilmember Lion Weber.

Here.

Councilmember Rainey.

Excused.

Councilmember Risley.

Excused.

Six present.

Are there any changes to the agenda for today?

Seeing none, um, item three, are there any changes to the regular meeting for tomorrow?

Seeing none, we'll move on to item 4A.

Will the clerk please read item 4A into the record?

City Council Works Session Meeting Minutes, November 10th, 2025.

Do we have any changes to these minutes?

Seeing none, we'll move on to item six A with a presentation from the Trails and Open Space.

Will the clerk please read item six A into the record?

Trail and Open Spaces Coalition presentation.

Good morning.

Hi.

Make sure the green button is on so we can hear you and start state your name for the record.

Thank you.

Yep, you can run that yourself.

Uh let me make sure she's on and ready to drive.

Okay.

Testing.

There we go.

It's yeah, it's a little laggy.

One sec.

Alex is gonna come and just make sure it's turned on for you.

And if we can't get it working, it's I have the same one.

It's on.

I think it's just a smidge laggy.

We need to go back to the slide.

All right, you gotta let me go back into it now.

I'll take a look at it.

I'll be right.

Okay.

Sounds good.

Should I just give you the advanced slide notion?

Okay, thank you.

Um members of City Council, my name is Glenn Carlson with the Trails and Open Space Coalition.

Um thanks for giving us the opportunity to come give you uh what'll probably be a pretty high-level overview of uh maybe a year on review and maybe looking ahead as well for the Trails and Open Space Coalition.

Um, you may or may not know, but we were founded in 1987.

We are a nonprofit here locally, so we've been around for uh you know almost 40 years.

Um and I'll I can read you our mission up there, but um, you know, essentially we advocate for the creation and conservation of our network of uh trails, parks, and open spaces across the region.

So you know, we work with our city partners or county partners, parks and wildlife, this day, uh, and then obviously friends groups uh and other nonprofits in town to kind of make sure that our park system uh is the best that it can be.

Next slide.

So did you know just real quick uh Corral Bluffs was supposed to be a dirt bike park?

I'm not sure if any of you have been out there ever, but um one of the rarest set of fossils in the entire world was found right in our backyard at Corral Bluff, so it's a very special place.

Thanks, Alan.

Beautiful.

Red Rock Canyon was actually supposed to be a golf course, and I like to golf, but I think Red Rock Canyon turned out pretty nice the way we have it today.

So very appreciative of that.

Uh and then TOPS, which not to be confused with Tosk, um, was the uh one of the original sales tax programs that some of our early founders fought to create and have since fought to renew over the years.

Um it's created uh over 8,000 acres of open space here, 70 plus parks and 50 plus miles of trails.

And actually, those numbers, even in the last two weeks, are are wildly outdated because we have a couple of great acquisitions coming online that you guys probably have visibility to that are gonna uh uh augment this system uh in a wonderful way.

And there's actually been more open space and more parkland created as a result of TOPS, the sales tax, the point one percent sales tax, than there has our traditional general fund parks budget now.

And so that program obviously is wildly successful.

Glenn, we have a question or a comment from Councilman Hincham.

Okay.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

And and Glenn, um, actually, I I wanted to highlight, I was actually uh hiking Saturday in Red Rock Canyon, and um was telling some uh actually new family members who moved here less than a year ago.

We were hiking out there and explaining to them the original plans.

And I don't know if you've ever been to, I can't remember the name of the open space in Douglas County, where it was originally supposed to be a development, and they have when you walk up to the trailhead, this is what it was going to be, and this is what it is now based on your support of however Douglas County does its open space.

So I share that with you.

It's maybe more of a comment to our own parks department, but I think one of the things that we could be doing in our open space is to create signage that really helps people understand where those TOPS tax dollars are going and what they're creating for the public, what could have been here, and what is here now, and really um uh highlighting the appreciation for for that tax.

So I share that with you.

I know you all do a lot of advocacy, in particular, Alan, uh, with the around signage on our trails in open space.

And I just want to throw that idea out there that I think we could, with what we already have and very little cost, we could continue to raise awareness for the power of that tax.

Thanks.

Yeah, we certainly agree, and it's an undertold story.

And you know, at Tosk, we believe uh awareness equals appreciation and appreciation will generally equal funding for things that are valuable.

And so those things go hand in hand.

But yeah, absolutely.

Um the last point I wanted to make, especially relevant to this conversation to that is that TOSC receives no government funding.

Uh we are a member and grant uh grant-funded organization only.

So what does Tosk do?

Um really kind of three things in a nutshell.

You hear the term advocacy a lot, and obviously you've seen a lot of us at at the parks board meetings and and at city council meetings and uh meetings with the mayor's office and et cetera.

But um, you know, we have a large membership and donor base, and we we represent those people uh to you.

So there's a kind of two-way flow, if you will, uh, to make sure that their voices are heard and uh you know, tax dollars are spent uh where we want to see them spent, and our system can again be the best that it can be.

Um sometimes that advocacy process, um, especially at what I would call kind of the entry level part of that equation, is um is accountability too.

And so, as my buddy Alan says, sometimes we poke with sharp sticks occasionally to make sure certain projects get done or certain things are are you know if if promises are made, they're kept.

Um I'm gonna skip just a smidge, but uh we do a ton of engagement in town, and yes, it's one of the funnest part of the job, parts of the job.

We get to go on hikes, we get to go on bike rides, and we do grand openings for parks and ribbon cuttings and take volunteers out.

Um, but you know, again, we want to highlight our spaces to make sure that our residents uh and visitors know that you know we have a great system here and we need to continue invest in it.

Um the expertise part portion is really uh um really important as well.

So we have a lot of land use expertise, a lot of GIS and mapping, and a lot of collaborative experience across multi-jurisdictional, multi-partner type efforts.

And then the second part is where I think um Tosk has an opportunity to evolve um uh into the future.

And so that's augmenting our park system.

And so that is uh working to create um more opportunities for for funding for special projects uh and and get things done, um, help out the master planning process a little bit for uh a little bit more, speed those processes up and make sure um make sure they're funded and not just promised.

So that's a little bit of what TOS does in a nutshell, and again, we're 38 years old, so here's our team.

Uh there's five of us, small but mighty.

So um there's Alan is here with us today.

He's our community engagement coordinator.

Um, Mike Rigney is really instrumental with his GIS and mapping experience, especially surrounding the Ring the Peak project.

Ariana Rogers is ours, one of our program coordinators, and then Erica Bells um make sure the ships were on time.

Uh and then I'd like to invite Alan up to talk about our programs just a little bit.

Okay.

Good morning, council.

Alan Beauchal, community engagement coordinator for the Trails and Open Space Coalition.

And I've had the privilege of working for this organization for about seven years now.

This is a very high-level overview of three of our major programs.

Get out and get healthy.

Uh, you see some of the stats there.

Um that's our opportunity to engage people and get them out and in a sense get them healthy, but also get them educated.

I've done a lot of work with many of you over the years.

And that is district level advocacy is what we call it.

So it's taking our counselors out with some of your constituents and touring particular parks, trails, open spaces in your districts.

This year alone, we've had over 840 participants over the years because I've been very deeply involved with the Legacy Loop Project.

I've been around the loop well over 200 times, and over a thousand people I've guided around the legacy loop as we've watched that vision come to fruition.

And it's been uh something that our organization is really, really good at.

It's connecting people to the spaces that we are advocating for.

We look forward to doing that even more into the future.

Awareness equals appreciation.

So many people, we talk about these places, we see maps of these places, we see uh uh news articles and what have you.

But until you actually get out there, I like to call myself an experiential educator, and that's where I kind of come alive in my role with the uh Trails and Open Space Coalition.

And the one bag challenge, the second one, that is something that we launched, and it kind of came out of COVID.

We were looking for things to do and how to engage the public.

And after the first year, it caught some traction.

It's a micro cleanups.

So we do these major cleanups, which are very valued and very needed, but we're also we have um ultra users, those are those people that are out in the parks on the trails constantly.

And we're looking for a way to engage those people and say, hey, when you're out there, if you see a little bit of trash, could you pick it up?

Because if our people went out, our ultra users especially into our parks, trails, and open spaces and picked up a little bit every time they were there, we would have far less need for some of the major cleanups.

So Aaron Rodgers, our program coordinator, has run with this program.

He set a goal of doing 100 micro cleanups this year.

He has surpassed that.

I think we're up to about 105 now.

And it's a program to where if you do a major cleanup, you're looking at four hours, you're looking at 500 uh uh man hours and just in lots of logistics.

This is grabbing groups, organizations, family units, uh church groups, things of this nature, going to places that they know and love and creating a 30-minute cleanup.

And in that time, over 800 volunteers this year, over 7,000 pounds of trash.

And then what I like about it is that they all come back, they dump it on a big green sheet, and they take a look at what types of trash.

When we do this with families, we're able to educate the children on the number one type of trash, which is usually single-use plastics.

But it's also fascinating to see where the different pieces of trash are.

And this has been a very impactful program, and we're looking forward to expanding it.

We are also proud supporters of Keep Colorado Springs Beautiful, and we um yeah, keep Colorado Springs Beautiful.

We are the primary partner for the city for major cleanups for next year, and we will be shepherding four of those with the city.

And so those are the major cleanups, but we'll also be doing these one bag challenges.

Um, and then we also do crew leader training with uh Rocky Mountain Field Institute and the city.

And so each year we do about 30 crew leaders, and those people are making an impact all throughout our city on volunteer trail days.

The other one is boat, building outdoor, building outdoor advocates of tomorrow.

And this is something that has kind of grown organically.

We started connecting with UCCS and CC, uh, the Air Force Academy and working with students, and they would help us define or we would have a problem, and then they would help us define a solution to that problem.

Could be a growth of a program.

It could be uh strategic direction for the organization for the next few years.

And so it's been great to work with these young people, and it's actually gone down into the school age uh realm.

I work with the RISE, uh Resilient Inspired, Strong and Engaged, and the Youth Advisory Council, and it's been very, very inspiring educating our youth, educating our next generation on the importance of our parks, trails, and open spaces.

Many of them, they don't they don't hear that and they don't quite understand it.

And when their eyes are opened up to the places that are special to our residents here, it's great to see the level of commitment that they want to bring to bear.

And so uh that's basically our three programs.

Are there any questions about those?

I have a question about the trash pickup, which is disheartening.

But you said you open it up and show students is there a theme?

Is there the strangest trash that you get?

Uh oh, yes.

So every every time we do it, we do that analysis.

One of the other things we've done is we've taken to using Chat GPT a little bit.

We take a picture of it, and we have Chat GPT tell us what the main uh waste streams are, what types of things that are there, and how long they will take to degrade in our typical Colorado environment.

And within about five minutes, you can get a really comprehensive list, and then we always say who picked up the weirdest thing.

And then we always say who picked up the weirdest thing.

Uh one of the other things that Aaron has done, because he's he's a great educator himself.

Um they're called litter critters.

So he bought himself a little baggie of those uh googly eyes.

And so, especially when there's kids involved.

So, what we do is we bring all the trash back, and then we have them create a litter critter.

And so it's just putting eyes basically in and making this thing.

So it's a great way of connecting afterwards, kind of talking about the trash.

We're wearing gloves, so it's safe.

Uh, and then it takes pictures of him, and he's made wanted post wanted posters, and so he posts that out via our social media.

And so it's a it's an unfortunate thing that we have so much trash in our environment, but it's a fun spin on why it should be should be so important that you're engaged in picking it up because many people go out there and they say, Well, you know, that's that wasn't my trash or dog poop, you know, the little bags you see everywhere.

And so being able to go out on a regular basis, and then I love it when we do it with the children because I know for a fact every time, and then we give them a nice little reusable bag.

That's probably one of the keys.

Like you'd like to pick up trash, but you don't have anything.

Well, we supply those.

And so you know every time the kids are out with their parents in their favorite place, if they see some trash, we gotta pick that up.

It's the one bag challenge.

And so if we can get people doing that on a regular basis, we'll have a far greater impact across many of our parks, trails, and open spaces that don't see the major cleanups.

So they're kind of a little dingy and dirty around the edges.

And so this is a way that we can impact that on a regular basis.

That is fascinating.

Excellent that you do that.

Thank you.

We have um Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, madam president.

Alan, is it are you only doing this on say trails, open spaces, uh parks, or do you also do it on just walkways through the city, uh sidewalks, et cetera?

It can be done anywhere.

Uh one of the yeah, and one of those is that what you do though?

Are you also doing it on those other areas, or right now you're focusing pretty much on trails and we kind of do it when the groups come to us?

If they excuse me, if they're looking for a place to do it, we might suggest one, but many of them have a place in mind that they would like to do one.

One of our uh organizational sponsors is Snooze, the AM eatery.

Everybody do you know where that is up on North Academy?

There's not a park, a trail or an open space anywhere near there, but they have a uh corporate culture of recycling and and and taking care of the environment and what have you.

So we actually did one with the employees of snooze around that area, and it was shocking.

We didn't find any snooze trash around the edges or in the gutters or you know, under under bushes, but there was a unnamed um fast food joint that also shares the uh parking lot with them, and it was shocking the pieces of trash that we picked up, styrofoam, plastic, things of this nature.

So, yes, we do um all areas, any whether anywhere that there's trash that people frequent on a regular basis, um, we've probably touched, but I would say mainly parks, trails, and open spaces.

You mentioned you give them these reusable bags, and I've had an idea like this for different neighborhoods.

Do you also pr provide or or uh some of you guys have those grabbers?

You know what I'm talking about, so you're not touching with your hand your your yeah, yeah.

We have a we have a collection of grabbers, we have the gloves, uh, we do a safety briefing anytime we're going to launch people out into the environment.

Uh we have a sharps container.

So you always do that, you always have a sharps container on every one of these uh deals.

Yep.

I have one.

Does it get does it get used pretty much every time you go out doing this?

All depends on where you go.

Uh-huh.

And it's shocking the places that you will find um syringes.

Uh and but there's also uh pieces of metal nails, all the little things you don't want children touching.

Yeah.

And so okay, thanks.

Okay.

Any other questions?

Excellent.

And then please consider this a personal invite from me with district level advocacy.

If there's a park, a trail, an open space that you would like to tour in your districts or anywhere in the city for that matter, um, please reach out.

I wouldn't I would love to facilitate that for you.

And the best part is you can invite some of your constituents out.

And so I know it's going into winter time, so it's probably not as not the best season to do that, but for springtime, please use us as a resource.

We would love to connect you with your constituents into places that they value in your districts.

We do have another question from Councilman Gold.

Thank you, Madam President.

It's a comment, really.

Um I just really wanted to say thank you to you, Alan.

Um, a few, it feels like a few weeks ago, but I think it was only a week ago.

Um, we had the chance to do a bike ride and you gave us a ride of the Southeast, and I was able to see the Southeast from a different lens because it's completely different being in a car and being on a bike.

Um, and I was even exposed to some parts that I was um a little deflated after I after I saw it in regards specifically to trash cleanup.

Um, so we will be organizing something to kind of help clean that up.

But truly thank you for for giving me the chance to see the district through a different lens, and I hope my fellow counselors take advantage of that in their respective districts, or the whole city in Councilmember Line Warper's case.

I hope you plan a whole weekend camping bike trip with Alan.

Thank you.

Yeah, I would do it.

So any uh okay.

Councilman Hingum.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

I I actually just I was not gonna say anything, but uh, you know, Alan, you and I have done the legacy loop I I don't know, many, many times now uh with constituents, and it is really a commend to my other fellow council members, it's a great way to connect with your constituents.

But mostly I want to say with other people in the room here, that Alan Beauchamp is like one of our city's heroes, and he is probably one of the finest, um, most dedicated uh community enthusiasts and uh community engagers that I've I've ever met.

And the impact, the positive impact he's had on our city and our trail system and our parks and on people's health and well-being and accessibility is is I don't think I don't think it's quantifiable.

So, Alan, thank you so much for what you do.

And we're we're so deeply fortunate to have you in our community.

I appreciate your kind words, thank you.

And so, Alan, just one more question, and then I think we're finished.

Um, before COVID, the legacy loop had a lot of attention on connecting that.

And now it seems like it's not there's not as much attention on connecting that.

Is that just an is that just perception or are they are they back, are there a lot of people still trying to get that connected?

We only have 15 minutes if you keep me talking about the legacy.

But um, so yes, there was a uh a robust PR campaign, I think, in the earlier days of the legacy loop to really get people to understand what it was.

Uh they also needed to get money for it and grants and things of this nature.

And so while it might seem that there's not quite as much information out there about it, I am very happy to say our parks department has been rocking.

Colorado Springs utilities has been rocking.

The whole entire North connection, the the northern connection that connects the Pikespeak Greenway to the Shooks Run Trail was a multiple year project, probably five or six years.

People used to hammer me all the time because I would say, hey, parks it next year we're gonna do it.

And they didn't do it for a variety of different reasons.

Some funding, then the project kind of got even larger with uh more uh retaining walls and things of this nature.

Well, when that project was done, uh we did a ribbon cutting for it, but a major chunk of the legacy loop connectivity was completed.

And so we are down to right now, and it's you'll hear about it here in just a minute.

Um, out of a 10 mile loop, we're down to what I call the most complex quarter mile.

So the legacy loop is fully continuous all the way around for about 9.2 miles.

And then literally there's a quarter of a mile from the end of the Shooks Run Trail to the Pikes Peak Greenway, and it goes over the railroad tracks that are by Royer Street.

And that is going to be a very challenging piece of connectivity.

The city's working on it right now, multiple different departments.

They've got uh the right consultants on it, and everybody knows the railways are very difficult to work with.

And at the end of 2026, they're gonna close Royer.

That railroad crossing that's been problematic for you know decades, basically.

When they open up the Twin Bridges Road that's south of that, that has a new railroad crossing component.

When that goes live, they're gonna close uh Royer and fence it off.

And so it will become very important because all my legacy loop tours go over Royer Street.

There will be no legal way or safe way to cross that quarter mile gap, basically.

And so there's a lot of emphasis being put on that right now, and we are starting to kind of ratchet up our PR campaign.

And but there's only so much you can do to force the railway.

So if any of you have a solution of how to get the railway to say yes to a box culvert going underneath, let us know.

Well, I'm really glad to hear that.

Um councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thank you.

Um this might be more of a a question for Glenn, but could you talk about uh your volunteer network, like how big it is, um any possibility of of uh working with parks or with the city as uh over the next few years when it looks like our budget is is gonna be pretty tight.

Yeah, um that's a great question.

I'm glad you guys asked about that because it's a it's a huge part of what we do day in and down and toss being a member-based organization that's been around for 40 years.

We have a gigantic email list, a gob of web traffic, and an even larger army of volunteers that are looking to engage in these types of things, whether it's cleanup or basic trail maintenance or or working within waterways.

Um we can bring those folks to the table.

For example, manage the volunteers and do all the coordination.

And you know, most volunteers are probably at work during the week.

And so they want to volunteer on a Saturday or a Sunday where most park staff, aside from a select few, are at home, right?

And so there's a lot of logistical nightmares and um and kind of arranging this.

But what I have long thought, and I especially as budgets are get cut get cut, uh, is that the city needs what I would call, you know, in the private sector distribution, um, a layer of partners that are trusted to handle this type of work.

Uh and and you know, I think Tosk is certainly willing to be one of those partners, but maybe what I would consider uh just a little bit more formal but easy to manage type program with a layer of partners that can handle some of these efforts is where I would like to see it go personally.

And are are you uh is is Toss speaking with parks about this now, or is there any there is?

Yeah, yep.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we've we've kind of brought this idea up to the park staff, and uh, we've had some conversations back and forth about it in the past couple months.

But as most of you know, there's been a lot of changes at parks, and and and you know, we're about to lose a wonderful asset and Britt.

And now another wonderful asset with Todd as well.

And so the system is gonna is kind of undergoing some changes right now.

Okay, it it seems like a potential for a win-win there.

I think so.

On the city side, thank you.

Thanks, Glenn.

Yeah, and I there, you know, well, one other part of that, Dave's uh Rumus O'Donaldson, sorry, is that there's um um uh an interesting um bit of passion and civic pride that comes out when a person gets out in their city and does work for free uh to clean up their own trails, uh, to go pick up litter in their neighborhood.

Uh and that's what I you know, I think it's lightning in a bottle.

And I think opportunities to capture that um creates a culture, you know, and a little bit of a fire storm, and then all of a sudden um you have what they really have in Japan.

I'm not sure if any of you guys have ever studied that, but phenomenal cultural of cleanliness.

Um, and so I think there's an opportunity to build something like that here.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

How much time do I have?

Uh are we over?

Can I interject, President Crow Iverson?

Of course, Councilman Williams, please do.

Thank you.

Um it's a lot harder without um councilmember Risley in the room.

I just wanted to echo um councilwoman Henjam's sentiments, Alan.

You have done so much for this community.

Alan, you will do so much for this community.

Um, right before I ended up in the hospital a second time, Alan was kind enough to take me to that last section of the legacy loop, um, the hardest quarter mile of them all.

And uh one of the questions Mary Yemi asked me early on after I was elected is you know, what is one of the goals that you have?

And it's really to get the at least the paperwork done and and everything that we need to get that last quarter mile taken care of.

So now that I'm feeling better, Alan and Glenn, we can touch base again.

Thank you for putting that all together and and really bringing that to the forefront.

And it's just constant phone calls.

And and yes, I do know people with the railroads, so we can have that conversation.

But I think if we could get that done, you know, centuries later, then that would be a huge accomplishment for the city.

So thank you both for all that you're doing.

Great.

Thank you.

I think I probably have a minute left.

So I'm gonna blast through a couple of high-level do I?

You're good.

We take in some of your time up, so go ahead.

That's okay.

No, these are great questions.

I wanted more QA to be honest.

So, you know, just a couple uh projects that you guys are familiar with.

We've already touched on some of these.

We're working with our partners over at Pike Speak Outdoor Rec Association.

Um, or sorry, is it alliance or association?

Jeez.

David, it's association, right?

Alliance.

Alliance.

I I said association, and I knew that too.

Um still working on Ring the Peak.

That's a multi-year endeavor.

It's gonna be a tremendous asset once uh, you know, once that trail system gets built around there.

Alan spoke about legacy loop.

Um, and then sorry, I got a lag.

Um we wanted to introduce to you guys today uh Marlowe.

This is our web tool.

Um, we're going to uh asset and inventory, every park trail and open space in the region and display it on a web page and show all of our users, uh residents or visitors, every way that you can use those assets.

And so it's a tremendous project.

Um we get a ton of comments and questions on, you know, is this park ADA accessible?

Is there an off-leash dog area here?

What's the difficulty of this trail?

And we wanted to build something very hyper local that you know, if you could kind of picture this as it sits in between like all trails and COTREX, which is very engineering in my mind.

So I want to uh we'll look forward to rolling this out.

I know I'm limited on time, but that's kind of a little bit more of what it looks like.

Um and you can dive into each of these spaces, and this is what that councilman Hingem.

Yep, sorry.

Sorry, no, it's okay.

We we we've got time.

It's okay, Glenn.

Um, on the asset mapping.

Um, I just wanted to make sure you know, and I know you have such great communication with our parks department, but I was just meeting with Lana Thielen on Thursday or Friday of last week.

I can't remember which day, but um, talking about within the parks department specifically, and it's a different maybe type of asset management than what you're talking about, but uh really making sure you guys coordinate those efforts because um they are switching their model and actually creating a whole asset man you you know, you're nodding your head, so you know what I'm talking about.

Okay.

Well, I was very happy to learn about it because I think the city needs to be doing that for the status of in particular parks with playgrounds and so forth and picnic tables.

So I I'm glad to hear you're working together.

Just wanted to make sure you knew about that.

Thanks.

Yeah, there and their asset management project is really focused on you know, every kiosk, every sign, every trash receptacle, every bench, and understanding what is out there, what maintenance it requires, and how do we look into the future?

And so I would I would say that's a part of this, but a little bit different as well.

This is really kind of user focused.

And then my probably my favorite part about um uh about this tool um is the ability uh to pull in partners uh such as the city, county, but other nonprofit partners uh and really you know highlight like if there's trail closures, does this thing have a laser on it?

Yeah, you guys can't see it, but ah but there's a couple of bars up there, notifications.

And so, for example, if Fountain Creek watershed district during Que Creek Reek Creek Week wants to do a cleanup along the front range trail, we can host that event and handle registration and everything and drive attendance all on this page.

And so there's no creating new web pages.

Uh, there's no creating new, you know, constant contact campaigns and all this new stuff you gotta recreate every time.

Like this is kind of gonna uh be a home base for all of us to live.

And because we get in an insane amount of web traffic currently to these spaces, uh, we think it's gonna be a pretty handy asset for the region.

And then one of our kind of more dreamy projects is uh Toss thinks it's long overdue for Colorado Springs to have a botanic garden.

And so obviously that's on the Drake site.

I can confirm with you that is not happening.

This is Chat GPT gone wild.

Um it was one of the sites we looked at early on, but have since found that there's a massive amount of infrastructure that still reside under that site.

That's a long, long ways off, and I don't want to move that slow.

Um but you know, when Denver built their botanic gardens uh in the 50s, Denver and surrounding areas was about 510,000 people.

And uh obviously you know we're well past that.

And botanic gardens have incredible programming, fantastic open space, conservation uh utilities, uh mission-related type activities, um, events and programming.

Um, and you know, the Denver Botanic Gardens is a 75 million dollar machine that gives a ton of money back to the system.

And so Tosk is currently kind of in the exploration and visioning stage of this right now.

Really the hardest part is finding land, and we think somewhere between 23 and 25 acres uh it is is necessary for for what we want to build here.

Um we're confident we have the right partners, we have people that would pour money into this.

Um, and it's really just about just about finding where at this point, and then we can start to drum up the machine and get the balls rolling on this.

I don't know, I won't read that word for word, but really it just says why not.

Councilman Gold.

If you were to get those 23, thank you, Madam President.

If you were to get those 23 acres or so, how tomorrow, how long would it take for that botanical garden to open up?

I love that question.

Um, I think when you think about projects like this, I think a lot of people think, all right, now we got to do several years of fundraising until we get all the money we need, then we can start, you know, break ground.

And for me, I think it's more of a gradual process.

For me, I think you can invite your community partners because we have um, I don't know how many uh small community gardens we have, but there is an army of garden aficionados um that would pour their heart and soul into this.

And so I think building a space and then maybe doing it in phases uh is is the right approach.

Um I would like to see some kind of initial garden built.

If if if you had the land right now and it was all yours to do what you want, I would like to start fundraising, which you know, let's say a year after release to get the initial phase, and then maybe within two years they're starting to actually build.

Thank you.

Some of that's guesswork, but thank you.

And I mean, completely biased here, but if you could put in the Southeast, that would be great.

Yep.

Councilman Hindum.

Uh, just a thought on land um a potential partnership, and maybe you've talked with them, but the and I don't know if it's quite enough acreage, but the Union Printer's home, um, what they're wanting to do there.

There's a lot of beautiful trees already there, a lot of open space that might be worth a conversation.

Yeah, that's fantastic.

If you have uh, you know, if any of you have relationships with those folks and they have an appetite to do something like this, we are all yours.

I'm confident we can make it happen.

That's it.

All right.

Well, thank you so much for your time this morning.

This is very informational.

Um, and we hope to see you more than just once a year.

Right.

Thank you for your time.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Moving on to item six B.

Will the clerk please read item six B into the record?

Join Initiative for the Youth and Families presentation.

Good morning.

That's better.

Okay.

Um, it's so interesting to sit on this side.

I don't think I've ever done that as a person.

And it's such a different view.

Just wanted to say that for what it's worth.

Good morning, uh, honorable members of city council.

It's it's my pleasure and honor to be here today.

In just a moment, I get to introduce somebody, but first, I just wanted to um take a minute to emphasize not just the social service issue that faces us um for Colorado Springs as it involves uh early childhood education um and early childhood uh care.

But I believe this is a huge strategic opportunity for our city.

Strong early childhood support leads to stronger workforce, safer neighborhoods, and a healthier economy.

Families, employers, I can certainly attest to that.

We deal with this every day, and educators across our community are all telling us the same thing.

When children and parents thrive early, the whole city thrives.

My goal today is to briefly um introduce uh Sherry Lynn Boyles, and she has a wonderful presentation.

You may not know that uh Sherry Lynn Boyles, who is our fierce leader of Dwight Initiatives, was a licensed attorney in Texas before coming to Colorado and also becoming an attorney.

She has led nonprofits such as Tessa and joint initiatives.

But what you may not know is that for nearly a decade, uh Sherry Lynn led uh political operations um, I believe back east in Texas, not back east.

So I would like to introduce Sherry Lynn and thank you very much for having us here today.

Thanks so much.

Michelle and uh Madam Chairwoman and members, it's so good to be here.

I'm Sherry Lynn Boyle, CEO of Joint Initiatives for Youth and Families.

I'm here to talk about child care, but I think that uh Alan may win the prize for more fun presentation when he talks about litter credits.

We're not gonna be talking about litter creditors.

Um, but I do want to talk to you for just a minute.

I'm gonna start with telling you about my mom.

I have a very special mom.

She uh is a certified teacher who has a master's degree in education, and she stayed at home with me and my brother for our early years, and uh she was spectacular.

She was loving and she tried very hard.

And she had the financial safety net that my fairly well-to-do grandparents provided her and my dad.

And so when I was two, I knew my ABCs.

And when I was four, my mom stopped making the little flannel cutout squares of all the words I could spell because I knew too many.

So thanks to my mom, I was kindergarten ready.

And so we celebrate that there are moms and dads who can stay at home with their um young children and can afford it.

But we know that about 70% of families would choose quality child care if they had the choice, if it were available to them.

And as I've spoken to several of you so far, um, we know that it's not widely available here in the springs.

And so today I want to share with you some grown-up numbers.

So let's see if this is on.

It is 48,000.

That's a big number when you're talking about children because that's the number of children who are under six who are here in El Paso County.

And then if you look at how many spots we actually have for 848,000 children, it's 18,308 at last count.

So we have a very large gap and could use about 15 to 16,000 more spots for our children because we think about 70% of families would use them.

And so here you have the this is the county map of need.

I actually handed out, or I hope it's been handed out this map, which is a city zip code map, and it kind of gives you an idea of where we have a gap or what the need is within the city, since we're talking to city council.

And then I can also lay that over the installations you see here on this map, and you can see the orangiest most arid part of our child care desert would be near the installations.

The Fort Carson having a large number of zip codes with very, very high need.

And I'll touch on the military in just a minute again.

And so let me give you some other big numbers.

The average cost, this has gone up.

If you've talked to me about this before, like a few months ago, you heard 16,333 was the average cost for child care here in this area, and now it's gone up to 20,000, and so in the state it's 22,000.

So that just keeps climbing.

And then if you look at the pay for child care workers, it's 29,000 or about 14 dollars an hour for child care workers.

So the math just isn't adding up.

And then if you look at what the profit margin is, because 80% of child care centers in our community are small businesses.

When you look at the national, I don't even think this is probably probably meets where we are locally, but the national average for a profit net profit for child care center is 45,000, which means we do not have enough spots.

It's too expensive for families, and we lack incentives in the system to build and create more child care.

So without a change in direction, without strategic solutions, we are going to have the same problem of this enormous gap in child care.

Now you can start looking at the domino effect in our community.

And one of the numbers I'll give you is that we have 0.71 workers available for every position.

As an employer, I feel that number.

Colorado job opening rate in the Colorado is higher than the U.S.

average, but here in Colorado Springs, we have a lower job participation rate.

Again, going back to demonstrating that the workforce is absolutely being impacted.

And so again, the UCCS Economic Forum projects that we lose about 308 million dollars a year here, just in our area, which is the fraction of the 2.2 billion dollars that they estimate is lost in the whole state of Colorado because of child care and the lack of availability.

Going back to the military, they are absolutely in the same boat with us.

We are all in this together.

And so if you look at on-based, they can get up to 600 in their in terms of wait lists across installations.

This is for on-based soldiers.

The majority, more than 80% of Fort Carson soldiers live off-base, and they are needing community child care if they have young children.

They are not using the on-based child care, they are relying on what we have throughout the community, and hence you see all the orange around the installations.

And so when we talk to them, they get very excited about seeing solutions.

We have military leaders tell us this is also a readiness issue because if you have soldiers out in the field and they're worried about their families, that's a readiness problem.

And so I want to talk about not only the domino effect we have in our economy, and I could do several other directions in terms of economic impact.

But I'm gonna go on to sort of the micro impact that leads to a greater sort of systemic impact.

And that is that 90% of brain development occurs in a child between zero and five.

That means the other 10% happens over another 20 year period.

And so we are investing almost all of our education dollars, about 95% in the period after their brain has almost fully developed.

So we are not investing when their brains are the most spongy, the most impacted by their environment and their experiences, and what it is we're giving them to learn.

And so we can draw a straight line.

This is a curvy one for design purposes, but we can draw a line between early child quality, early childhood education, and high school graduation rates and juvenile justice crime rates and health care costs and tax base.

We have lots and lots of data out there that demonstrates these connections.

And so I could add a couple more slides that would make this really obvious.

Because there's lots of data, and I passed out another sheet that added a little more data.

I'm not going to read it to you.

But there's lots of data that says if you're kindergarten ready and child care, quality child care helps children become kindergarten ready, then you are more likely to be on track with third and fourth grade reading and math levels.

Then you're more on track to perform well in junior high, and you're more on track to perform well in high school and graduate high school, and then you're on track to enter college and have a career that contributes to the tax base and to society.

And with negative influences, again, lots of data.

I have seven studies right in front of me.

Yes, ma'am.

I have a question from Councilman Lineweber.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, I just wanted to just take a moment and say I came on city council to address the mental health issues that are kind of in our community, really across our nation.

And I didn't expect that one of the things that I would discover quickly is that if we really want to solve mental health issues with our adults, we have to begin with our kids.

And all the research, and I just wanted to kind of inform counsel, everything points to kids.

If kids can learn to play together, it that's that's the building block.

And so I wanted to emphasize how important this really, really, really is because whatever we don't do here, we're gonna end up paying for it, like we are in huge numbers with adults that are not, they just didn't have the fundamental building blocks of how to play together nicely.

And it's such an it's just a simple thing, but I just want to I just want to say everything I've been working on keeps pointing to this, and we've had conversations about this.

Yes.

Um, I I can't tell you how strong this is and how important this is for us.

And so when we look at affordable housing and how adults today, you know, are approaching the age 40 before they can afford a house, we have to look at a larger package of how do they afford to just live.

And child care is gonna be a key component, I think needs to be always considered when we look at housing development and all those kind of components.

So, anyway, I just wanted to highly emphasize what you're going over right now and how important this is.

Thank you so much.

And I'll speak to in a minute that we are looking at a matrix of solutions with mental health being one of them, and in fact, we see communities investing in mental health in early childhood across across the community, and we have a number of partners now working on behavioral health and mental health in early childhood.

And I have in front of me seven studies that I'm sparing you with in detail, but I can send them to you that talk about how the uh the biggest predictor of juvenile repeat crime is life course that starts with early childhood.

And uh we actually, you probably don't know this about joint initiatives, we actually track the juvenile detention beds because we have a juvenile services piece or side of our house.

So we track the usage of beds of juvenile detention in the fourth judicial district, and it is at cap or over cap constantly.

And what we're seeing when we look at the data is it is an increase in violence, and that is a big portion of why that these kids are staying longer and not getting out of juvenile detention, is because of how serious their crimes are.

And so I'm just wanting to point out there is a huge body of data that links early childhood with repeat juvenile crime.

And I mean, we've all heard pipeline, the preschool to pipeline prison, and that came from all of this data that demonstrates that.

So there's lots of domino effects because they are sponges and their experiences are so impactful at these early ages.

And so and so there's a number of approaches that we want to take, and we want to specifically talk about one today.

And it was at the U.S.

Chamber of Commerce Childcare Summit that I first heard this sentence child care is crucial or critical economic infrastructure, and I would add an important public safety design.

So just a second about joint initiatives.

I mentioned we have a couple of sides of our house, obviously early childhood, and I mentioned juvenile services.

And so we do some good things.

We are the home to the early childhood council, which is a state mandated council.

Every community has to have one, and that council is charged with regional planning, and that's why JI ends up working on these types of issues.

And so we manage the universal preschool program for El Paso County when the state lets us.

We work on quality improvement, we uh help new centers start, and we even give scholarships for people to get teacher certified in early childhood education and uh and a few other programs as well.

These are great, but when we're talking about 15,000 spot gap, these aren't going to meet it.

This isn't going to hit scale the way we need to hit scale, and we knew that, and so we held a last year a family friendly summit.

Several of you were there, and we are very grateful for that because several priorities came out of that summit that we are continuing to pursue.

And these are the categories of the priorities, and these actually represent the teams and the leadership of these teams.

And so I also handed out this sheet of paper here that gives you the teams as well, but also on the back, you get the folks who I call co-creators or the organizations I would call co-creators of the family friendly initiative that hosts these teams.

And you can see Liz Denson there is chairing the uh scaled funding.

She actually skipped her holiday break to be here today.

Thank you, Liz.

And they, her team has done a stuff has studied the variety of ballot measures across the country.

There's been 55 that have passed.

Well, that's higher now because several just passed here in Colorado just a few weeks ago.

Um, so probably around 60 uh initiatives around the country in specific cities and counties.

And so they studied those to see what is it that was um appealing to voters, what is it that has worked, what's the ROI on ballot measure funding?

And so they presented a lot of data at our last all teams meeting.

We have about 90 people who come every quarter to our initiative meetings, and uh at the end of that meeting, we took a vote to ask if people wanted to pursue a ballot measure, and I want to thank the people, probably about 15 people here who uh are part of that, who wanted to come and listen and support.

Um, and so we had overwhelming support.

So of the 90 people-ish that were there, we had three vote no's.

Uh, and then afterwards we have a steering committee uh meeting, and prominent leaders in our community said this is something we have to do, uh, and we want to look at the November 26th ballot for a measure.

And so I'm here representing the family friendly initiative who would like me to pursue and have a dialogue with you about that ballot measure.

We took it to the public, we did a um a poll last late spring and asked voters what they thought about this idea.

We first started with um, is this a problem?

So these numbers aren't is it a good idea or do you like it?

It's is it a problem?

So it's a high percentage of folks who did think about 74 percent thought that child care is a problem or affordability is a problem.

That's not without a lot of education.

That's just straight out.

We haven't talked about it a lot publicly what people think.

But we asked whose responsibility, state and local government were quite close.

Um, and then we asked them the money question.

We went we just put it right to them.

What would you pay for in order to pay for child care?

Um, so it's not a whole long, broad um number of choices, but you can see that syntaxes were quite popular in terms of people being willing to pay for child care, and so that is what we're looking at at this point.

Um, we do plan to go back in the field with another poll.

We may test some other um methodologies, um, but right now that one proves uh a very nice pathway.

We actually have an election that supported this already in El Paso County in 2023, six almost 61% of voters supported universal preschool with a tobacco tax.

Almost 61% of voters supported universal preschool with a tobacco tax.

So we practically have had this on the ballot before, and our county voters, and I think cities probably a little bit higher, actually supported this already.

Now I'm not here to support or oppose the propositions that were just on our ballot or make any commentary on their validity, but I just want to make the point that even in this last election a couple of weeks ago that voters supported two tax measures that were for children.

And just anecdotally, I asked a couple of friends of mine, a few guy friends of mine who voted for these measures, who I wouldn't expect to vote for these measures politically, why they voted for them, and they said, because I'm not gonna vote against kids.

Almost verbatim, each one of them separately.

And so we have a population that likes to vote for children.

And I went the wrong way on that one.

So I'm not gonna dive into this.

These are some of the messages we asked about what would convince folks to vote.

And so we actually got some good data.

Um the Y-axis shows what's popular, but the X-axis actually tells you what moved voters.

And so people changed their votes when they learned how unaffordable child care was, when they learned what a smart investment it was, and then some portion of the population was very motivated when they connected the dots between young young families waiting to have children or not having children at all.

That was motivating to some.

And so that just gives you another little summary there of what I just said.

And then the million dollar or multi-million dollar question is how would you use the funding?

And so we have explored again, looking at the ROI across the country for these for these measures.

Um we're exploring, I would say four.

I have three on here today, but I'm gonna add a fourth one because as we've continued to work to research, we'd like to explore a number four.

So capital investment would be a big one.

We are in concert working on wanting to change regulations.

Child care has layers of regulations that makes it crazy expensive to try to renovate or build in new specs to meet code.

You have the state licensing code, you have health care, you have fire, you have building, so you have local and state codes.

Some of them sometimes they contradict each other, lots of stories about having to build things that then you're not legally allowed to use.

Uh, and so we absolutely want to drive down the costs through less regulation.

Um, and so uh the chamber, for example, is working uh with our initiative on a bill at the state capitol to start addressing uh that issue.

But we're still going to have regulation and we're still going to have costs.

But right now, for example, Liz at Early Connections is trying to add 50 class 50 seats uh here in downtown Colorado Springs, and it's a five million dollar renovation project.

We have Discovery Church who wants to add about 150, they could do over 200 child care spots that would make a dent.

It's gonna be a 500 to 600,000, I think probably more uh bill for them.

And that is normal.

And so what we'd love to do is give grants to builders, developers, child care centers, people who want to create child care centers to have them added in as new builds when you're building an apartment complex.

We'd love to give you a grant to go ahead and put in the child care specs.

It'll be a lot cheaper than putting it in later.

But for uh those that already have facilities that would like to renovate, we'd like to have some expenses for that.

That alone, that one-time expenditure or one times throughout the community, would make a huge difference.

And we don't have to have a lot of money to do that.

Uh so just even that would be a big deal.

What we see across the country are people investing in the teachers or the child care professionals by giving them stipends.

I just threw in signing bonuses for fun.

Um, it would it's an idea, um, but we see them give stipends and we see them invest in professional development, and that's had a good ROI for folks.

So it's something that we're exploring.

And we'll actually ask specifically voters when we go back into the field about these specific items.

And then emergency tuition assistance.

If we're looking at a syntax, we're not looking at enough money to pay for free child care.

That's not what's on the table, at least right now.

Um, and so perhaps some emergency tuition assistance, especially with the CCAP freeze in place.

And so the fourth piece that I'll add is that we've also seen communities invest in parent education and parental supports, and so I think we want to also explore, you know, they do play groups, they have reading uh programs, they have all kinds of tools, navigation tools uh for parents, and so that's something I think we want to explore as well, so that we're looking at comprehensive child care, like for you know, my mom today, the stay-a-mot home moms.

So uh I'd like to close with um a little story, if you'll allow me.

And um, it's actually Margaret Sabin's story.

She brought it to me.

Margaret called um different CEOs throughout the community to talk to them about a ballot measure and whether they would support that.

Lots of support.

And um, she called all this hospital CEOs, for example.

It turns out they've all worked for her.

And um, and one of them shared a story, and one of them told her that uh that one day they noticed a nurse was not um their usual self.

And so after some prodding and a little hesitation, uh the nurse shared that her child care had fallen through, and she had made the choice to leave her toddler at home alone.

And um I thought about that and the reality of that, and how you know nurse mom was freaking out.

She was worried, what if the house catches on fire?

What if my baby chokes?

Does she feel abandoned?

And we know if we've been around kids, of course, she feels abandoned.

You can imagine that she is vomiting because of how long she's cried, that she has the hiccups because of how hard she cries or cried, and that she's been sitting in soil diapers for hours.

And if you take that a step further, and you were in a car accident with your child the day the nurse was on this shift, one of 38 car accidents that happen every day here, uh, and your child was hit with debris and go to that hospital.

How would you feel knowing this nurse is distressed and distracted treating your child?

And this is reality.

This isn't a hypothetical, this happened in our community.

I shared this story once before, and several people came up to me afterwards and said I was in that boat.

When I was a parent, I was in that boat.

And so it's probably not typical, and probably doesn't happen a whole lot, but it speaks to the desperation of thousands of young families who are early in their careers, probably making the least money they'll make in their lifetimes, who are trying to support a family and make rent and pay utility bills and feed their babies.

And so that's the reality in our community within your districts and within our city.

And so we need to make meaningful steps, meaningful solutions.

And so is a ballot measure going to solve everything?

Absolutely not.

But it is a meaningful step that can domino effect into real impact.

Those are not remarks.

And so if you have time, we have Margaret Sabin, who I think wanted to share a few Sherylan.

I have Councilman Gold.

Thank you, Madam President.

But I'll I'll wait for Margaret Minor more comments than questions.

Councilman Henjam.

I'll be brief.

I'll also wait.

Thanks.

I'll be brief.

Um first and most foremost, thank you.

What for what you all do?

I know your job isn't always easy, but I know it's always important.

You are the activators to the community safety social net that every community needs to be a good community to keep the most vulnerable of us, the youngest by definition, from falling through that safety net.

After retiring from opening the new children's hospital because they have an incredible team, I know you're gonna hear from them soon.

Um, I made a personal commitment to um knowing now that we have the acute care side solved.

We don't have kids driving down I-25 with parents pulling over on the road so they can throw up from chemotherapy because the only place for treatment was in Denver.

Not acceptable.

We've taken care of the acute care side.

But I saw the end effect of the community safety net not being present in the community, and I vowed to myself that after 16 years of serving the healthcare community here, I would put myself out personally to work with the community and all of you.

And I promise you, my greatest efforts toward this.

The time is now to make a difference to take Colorado Springs to that next level that creates a legacy of ensuring that our children, all our children, have the opportunity to be successful.

Thank you.

Thank you, Margaret.

Um, wow, um, thank you for this presentation.

Um, I just want to point out a few things that um that really um hit home for me in a professional and personal capacity.

I never never really thought about child care as an economic infrastructure, but it's really easy to put two and two together.

If a parent can't work, they can't add to our economy.

So thank you for connecting that for me.

308 million annually lost in unrealized economic potential.

That's that's huge.

And um, and that made me think of something that's a personal story, um, not quite as devastating as the one you shared with the the nurse parent.

Um but my mom was a single parent soldier, and I um remember I actually I don't remember.

Um she was taking me to a child care provider, and she said that when I woke up, you know, she's a soldier, so she had to be at work for physical training really, really early.

So when I woke up in the driveway and realized where I was, she said I completely lost it.

And she had never seen me act in that capacity before, to the point where I went from screaming and terrified to the next thing she knew there was blood everywhere.

And I guess I had worked myself up so much thrashing about in the vehicle that I hit it against some piece of metal and I uh busted my ear open and I required like eight stitches.

I have zero memory of that, y'all.

So I guess that's how traumatic it was is that my brain was like, let's forget this.

Um but I do have a memory of going to PT with my mom because she had no provider, and um being in the car while I'm waiting for her to finish PT and looking for her in the audience of soldiers, which is impossible because all soldiers look the same when they have the uniform on.

Um and to take it even a step further, um, my mother was a single parent during the Gulf War, and she did in fact deploy during the Gulf War.

But our community values have changed so much since the 90s.

Um she was a single parent soldier who was also an immigrant, so she had no family here.

So I spent a year with a babysitter at during the Gulf War, somebody who took really good care of me.

And while I have deep memories of missing my mom, I also have deep memories of having a great time with other kids and this provider.

Now, fast forward to today, I have a single parent soldier who is um the father of my godkids who is here at Fort Carson.

And because he suddenly became a single parent, and because he does not have the community, he is leaving the military and moving out of Colorado Springs.

And I'm like, wow, that's not okay.

There is a direct impact on our service members and their families that isn't the outcome of my mom when she was a single parent.

So I just really want to thank you for bringing this heavy uh matter to our attention.

And um, I do believe if you want to support our future, you have to support the children that are a future.

So thank you for that.

Councilman Henjam.

Uh thank you, Madam President, and wow, Councilmember Gold.

Thank you for sharing those stories.

Um I guess every time you talk about it, you hear a story.

That's what I'm I'm gathering and making notes too.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um yeah, and I have my own, but I won't, I won't I won't share those.

I I do have some questions though.

Um, Sherry Lynn and one is related to the zip code map, and I appreciate you bringing this up given that um uh city council that's that's kind of helps give us a sense of where we're at within our own district.

Could you I don't know if you can pull it, go back to that map, but could you give us a little bit more understanding of what the map means?

And there's certainly some zip codes where the percentages are very low, all the way up to 100.

And and how let's just fast forward and presume that this council approves putting this on the ballot, and uh and it passes and we start generating revenue.

How will that revenue ultimately impact the numbers on this zip code map map?

Or what's the intention or desire?

Sure.

So this certainly speaks to one of the key problems, which is availability.

Um so I'll just tell you that what you're looking at uh is it shows where children are living, children under five are living, and it compares that to the number of licensed child care spots in that zip code.

And so hence you're seeing um where children live compared to how many spots are where they live, and then whether that need is met.

And so uh, and I don't know if it's using the 70% assumption I could get back to you on if you need the assumptions underlying this.

It's a little bit misleading in some ways because if you look, for example, at downtown 80903, it says 100% need met.

But if you meet with downtown businesses, which we have done, they will tell you that they have a huge gap, particularly in after hours child care.

And so people may not be living downtown, but they are working downtown, and we also have some big, you know, one of our largest centers, early connections has a lot of facility downtown.

So you're seeing a little bit of distortion there.

So it's not a perfect map, but it does give you an indication of where children are living and what kind of what kind of um uh centers or programs because some are home uh are in those areas.

But again, it doesn't necessarily reflect the exact need because we have a need in downtown Colorado Springs.

This map doesn't show you.

Yeah, so it it may indicate like how far you might have to drive to to if you have to get your kids to.

I mean, I know I I am helping to get my grandkids to their daycare, which is definitely not in their zip code, it's a bit of a drive.

So I haven't talked to any family with children under five who don't have a horror story about wait lists and about drives, and um, you know, they they tend to eventually figure it out, but it's str it's so stressful.

In fact, we were just on a panel the other day with a young lady talking about her 40,000 child care costs because she has two children.

My brother's 16 months younger than I am.

It's pretty normal for families to have them together.

Um, and and just how stressful it is to try to meet that bill.

Um so it so you know I think this speaks to you uh the need for more access.

Um and so when we look at the ROI on these initiatives across the country, creating more spots has definitely been one of the outcomes that we've seen, one of the most prevalent outcomes that we've seen of these initiatives.

Great, thank you.

Um a last question is um, and by the way, I was at the summit that you all held at at Alpamar, and that was really great, and where my awareness about this challenge really um was heightened.

And in that process, I met a couple of uh child care providers who were just opening new centers, and um one happened to be in my district and went and met with them and heard the the reality of the this is around the regulatory challenges, and so I saw that you have a work group specifically designated designated to that.

I think uh uh my former council member Tallerico is is chairing that.

Um can you and maybe Michelle would like to speak to this, but can you talk about really specifically what is the kind of what is the legislation that's being introduced?

Because when I heard the reality for this provider, the challenge of just even getting that space open because of regulation was astonishing.

Yeah, it's still in process.

So I'll say that um that Jeff over at the chamber and I worked with some other folks on on kind of a framework around a task force to look at it.

But um, we came across uh Senator Snyder connected us to Senator Bright and Senator Ball, uh Democrat and Republican, um in one's in I think north north of Denver and the other is in Denver.

Um and Senator Bright actually owns child care centers as his business.

So he's a little more ready to address certain categories of regulations.

It's not out yet.

We haven't seen um any draft of legislation, but we actually think there may be legislation that comes out that addresses specific areas of regulation.

Great.

And and what about locally with regional building and I mean, does that go all the way down to the local level and even things actually that perhaps we could do at city council at our level?

Yeah, absolutely.

There's several pieces to that.

One is we have been talking to the city about zoning, and so I think you're going to be seeing a zoning proposal that's absolutely going to help relieve some of the regulatory restrictions around that.

We have residential um areas that don't allow any child care um provision except for homes at all, um things like that, even in uh some of the commercial zones, it would be helpful to have less restriction because again, people go to work there.

Uh and so that will be helpful.

Um, but also when you look at, I mean, kind of everybody's in this boat except we can add the state layer to our situation.

Um, building codes are just fire codes are just very um difficult and and are just creating barriers that make it impossible to start child care centers.

So um I know at the chamber, again, I'm associated with the chamber as well.

We're also looking at how we can work together to address local code as well.

So I'm sure that there will be much more on this topic to come.

And I guess I do have one more question, and that is at what point do you expect to have finished your um polling and determining what a ballot language initiative would look like that would come to the city council?

In other words, when can we expect to see you coming before us with uh look seeking approval to put something on the ballot?

We actually have draft ballot language now that we could share with you for your feedback because we would love to have this be a dialogue.

Um we're looking at polling in January.

Uh and so um we could move that up if we had to, but that's where that's where we're targeting right now.

Okay.

Well, you you have my absolute support, no question about it.

Thank you.

Thank you, councilwoman.

Councilman Williams, and she's online.

Good morning.

Thank you, and thank you for this uh presentation.

Um I'm again sorry, I'm not there in person.

But it sounds like based upon uh your report out, not only do we have portions of the city that are considered food deserts, but at this point in time, we might as well add child care deserts to that list as well.

And I think you're going through the strategic exercise to have the child care meet the needs of the community in which people find themselves, both on the where do I live side and where do I work?

Um, part of this conversation.

I shared it with um Michelle Tallerico, but uh one of the things I didn't have time for last time I was on council was really helping to solve this issue.

Um, you're absolutely right.

Uh, I think you have enough studies to prove that what you're saying is absolutely true.

What happens, you know, later in life is really determined in those early years.

So if you haven't done it already, you should watch the documentary, The Raising of America.

They did an entire study about what happens between zero and five, and then follow those children all the way through life.

So if it sounds like you've got a great team, and when we can crack this particular nut, I think we'll be doing all that we can for our community.

So thank you for your efforts.

Thank you, councilwoman Williams, for that comment.

And I'll just mention you're my city councilwoman.

So I appreciate you weighing in.

Councilman Rainey, and he is also online.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh, hopefully I'm coming across loud and clear.

You are uh one of one of the questions I do have, uh the comment about legislation.

Currently at the state level, is there uh a delegation that you're currently working with, or is it been kind of one off meetings with a handful of individuals?

Thank you for that question.

I would say right now it's one-off meetings, and so we would love to have a Colorado Springs delegation conversation.

If you're hinting at helping with us with that, that would be fabulous.

Well, I I well, I definitely uh thank you for the answer, and uh I'll definitely follow what with you, okay?

Thank you.

And we do we do have you scheduled for Councilman Rainey, you have been voluntold councilman Lineweber.

So um, you know, uh popular saying is how we we tend to um the perfect is often the enemy of the good.

And um when it comes to kids, uh we um always require perfect.

And um that makes it exceptionally tough, particularly in a political environment and um all the different ways and viewpoints of how we raise our kids.

And um it's a it's an area of um if there was a place that I've seen most the most charged lightning throughout the events, it's been around how kids are being raised.

Um there's been a lot of criticisms about past programs like Head Start.

Um there hasn't been great results from some of Head Start stuff that I've kind of looked into.

Um so I'm trying to kind of help and kind of um think and give you the opportunity to kind of say, um, how do you navigate this?

There's there's there's so many people in our community that say we don't need one more government program for our kids.

And at the same time, I hear people say, we don't need less regular race regulations around kids.

We need more, you know, and and so there's this it's this difficult.

And then we have some we have some past history of some child care centers here in Colorado Springs that people remember vividly not very long ago that should never have happened here, but it did.

And so how are how are you navigating that political environment?

Because it's it's it's a tough place to be.

And and yet this is a huge problem.

Um, we see that.

Um how do you look at what you're doing compared to Head Star?

What's different?

Um, how do you what give me some idea of how you're kind of viewing this from a different perspective?

Because childcare has not been something that's not been talked about for generations.

So give me some perspective there.

Well, that is a multi-layer question.

No question.

I'm sorry, but you've got you're a lawyer, so you can get to deal with it.

Making me work for it here.

Uh well, so I would say a couple things is one when you talk about child care regulations, it is going to be uh mix, just a the spectrum of opinions on that.

And so threading the needle around that um will be challenging.

We certainly have folks around the state who will have their own um opinions about how far to go with deregulating or or what we're calling common sense regulation.

Um certainly if we just killed all regulations, they would come back because you would have situations that would happen where people would there would be an outcry for um for more structure and framework.

So we're not looking, we're not at even starting to suggest that but just having more again, more common sense.

Um you know, I could I could give you lots of examples of you know I I love some of Liz's examples because they're right in the middle of renovation, so she's got lots of them, such as the state requiring no, the the local code requiring child uh fountains in their center, and then the state code saying that children are not allowed to use those fountains.

Um and so she has to build in fountains that nobody can use.

Um and so there's lots of examples of these kinds of things, and so it'll be interesting to see what this legislation looks like, because I'm sure it will just run the gamut in terms of opinion.

But what is so clear is we are we are overkill at this point.

I mean, we are just pricing ourselves out of the provision of child care.

Um, and we can just look at the numbers and know that.

In terms of of sort of where we fit in as an organization and all the different um pieces.

Um so we um talk about our the early childhood could the early childhood council represents the 420 licensed child care facilities we have in El Paso County, they're housed with us, so joint initiative sort of carries that forward of representing the 420 licensed, as well as the unlicensed, and we've started programs for friends, families, neighbors, and parents to come participate in as well.

So we're sort of charged with being the advocate or the system builder of child care in our community, and and we have really big um players in the community with Head Start providing 10% of the child care slots in El Paso County.

Um early childhood connections, um again, Liz is here, uh, is the second largest after Head Start.

And so they provide, I think in the 300s of child care spots.

And so then you can just, you know, then they're a whole range of sizes after that.

And so we have built this coalition, not only of early child care providers, so we have a whole range of child care providers who are in our coalition, but as well as businesses, healthcare, uh, the whole range of community uh have become involved from every sector, not every organization, of course, but from every sector.

I hope that starts.

I think that answered.

You represent a wide range of diversity and choices in how parents can choose their child care, and not a particular style or fashion.

This is really a broad spectrum and uh not necessarily getting into that because um uh I it's amazing how many times it just does seem to turn very political quickly around kids when I have conversation.

Um and and so I I just didn't want to ignore that.

I wanted to kind of highlight the fact that you're a broader organization that has an umbrella piece, is I guess what I'm saying.

Absolutely.

We support choice.

Yeah.

And so whether it's a church, a synagogue, um, whatever component it may be, um, you're gonna support that.

Absolutely.

We have a church project too, since you mentioned churches to help them activate their spaces.

Um so we are trying a ver so, yes, we support what we call mixed delivery system, including parents providing that's that the child care themselves, absolutely.

Um, and we support uh quality child care.

And I guess just getting to the idea of um, you know, uh the more I look at programs, I'm the more I want to ask, how are you gonna measure and how do you achieve better outcomes?

Um that's something more and more than I'm trying to bring into my conversation or even thinking about processes.

Um how do you expect to kind of do that?

Like what outcomes do we need to start seeing or or how do we get to better outcomes?

Um, because we're not a lot of times we invest in things, and then we don't really expect, we don't like measure or we don't like get to a point where we know we've succeeded.

We invested all these dollars, and yet they're we didn't achieve an outcome.

Well, we the good news is we don't have to reinvent the wheel because we do have 60 other models.

Some have done performed better than others, some have bucks of money, others have very little pots of money.

Um, and so we can kind of see how well how they've chosen to um spend their money and how they've evaluated it.

And so we would certainly anticipate perhaps partnering with the university or third party evaluator to design that sort of evaluation.

We certainly do that in our own organization and see nonprofits do that all the time.

Some of the indications that are used, especially when you're looking at longitudinal research, um, are uh measuring there are measures for kindergarten readiness.

So teachers, kindergarten teachers will often spend the first couple of weeks of school getting a sense of where all their children are.

They often use specific tools to do that.

And so you can look at kindergarten readiness, but we also have testing around third grade reading levels, fourth grade math levels.

And so we actually see when we look at some of these communities, because some of these have passed these measures for quite a while now.

Um, we can actually start seeing they are shifting their third and fourth grade reading rates, and now some of them have had it long enough that they're actually seeing changes in their um high school graduation rates.

So, for example, uh Miami Dade uh has had a measure in place for quite a while, and they spend the most they they've taken the most money, I think it's a property tax, of any of the ballot measures in the country, and they have seen their their graduation rates go to 90 percent.

By comparison, Cottero Springs high school graduation rates are 75 percent.

So that's a pretty dramatic difference.

Um they've also seen a reduction by 73 percent of juvenile crime since the passage of their ballot measure.

And so there are some short-term measures that you can use, and then if it's in place for a while, you can really start seeing the impact down the road.

Thank you.

Um, thank you for sharing that data.

I do want to share also that I recently had the chance to uh go visit with Harrison School District 2.

They held like a legislator's breakfast.

Um, it's always nice when people feed us and give us information.

Uh and I was dismayed to learn that um children are no longer kindergarten ready.

Um, not only are they not kindergarten ready, um, like for but for context, there are teachers who are having to prioritize um teaching children how to use the restroom because they're not coming to kindergarten potty trained.

Um, there are teachers who are trying to um teach children their name because they are going by pet names and not they don't know that their name is Kimberly, they just think their name is Princess.

And um, I mean, I think my name is Queen, but it's a different story.

Um, and they they are no longer knowing how to come in with their ABCs or their basic numbers, or even knowing how to write their name.

And wow, what a disadvantage um right away at kindergarten.

Um, so I that that data was was fascinating to me.

And um, whatever we can do to get these kids up to speed by using child care as the gap.

Um, because you know, unfortunately, um, some parents just don't prioritize raising children um the way that we used to, and uh we really need to invest in these kids.

They deserve a chance regardless of where they're born to I think that goes to we need quality, whatever the choice is.

If you're stay at home all the way to if you send them to Harrison to preschool.

We want quality.

I don't see any other questions at this time.

Thank you so much for this information.

It was very informational.

Thank you very much for giving us the opportunity.

Of course.

Um good luck, and we'll see you at the first of the year.

Moving on to item 7A, will the clerk please read item 7A into the record?

Agenda planner review.

Does anybody have any questions or changes to the upcoming agenda planner?

Seeing none for the record, there are no changes or additions to the agenda planner.

Moving on to item eight A, will the clerk please read item eight A into the record?

A resolution establishing 2026 drainage race and fees, bridge fees, detention pond facility, and land fees.

Good morning, Aaron.

Yes.

Morning, council members and President Crow Iverson.

My name is Aaron Powers.

I'm the stormwater enterprise manager for the city.

Today I'm presenting a recommendation from the drainage board for the annual review of the drainage bridge and detention pond fees.

So City Code 74702 lays out that each year drainage board reviews the fees, makes a recommendation to city council, and then city council takes that recommendation and either passes a resolution or sends it back to drainage board.

These fees, just as a reminder, this is a private cost sharing program that is set up to help fund large infrastructure for stormwater in new development areas.

And so these fees are not city fees, they're shared among developers.

So if somebody comes in adjacent to a channel and has to build channel improvements, they're not bearing that cost solely.

So these fees are assessed by a per acre fee, and they're paid prior to Platte.

They are determined in drainage basin planning studies.

We have those for 73 different basins throughout the city.

And the per acre fee is just the larger infrastructure in that basin divided by the number of acres available to plat.

Each year these are increased.

So past fee increases.

You can see the past few years, 2023, we had a 9.2%, and 2024, 7.6%, 7.5, and 25.

So the recommendation this year is a bit lower.

These increases typically look back for the past um 12 months.

So the increase analysis considers uh CDOT construction cost index, the engineering news record cost data, Denver Aurora Lakewood CPIU, and then the UCCS economic forum data.

Staff also does a survey of local construction contractors, material suppliers, engineers to come up with some local numbers.

And then we also coordinated with the HBA regarding this increase.

So the recommendation is for an increase of 2.2% over the 2025 drainage bridge and detention pond facility fees to include the miscellaneous basin fee, an increase of 22.2% to the detention pond land fees, closure of the park vista drainage basin, and approval of the attached fee schedule effect of January 1st, 2026.

And I'm going to throw out the pond land fees per city code follow parkland fee increases.

And so those were increased.

The community parkland fee was increased by 22.2% in 2025.

So this is just matching that previous increase per city code.

And then the park vista drainage basin, this was closed per recommendation of drainage board.

Um so this is just making sure that the fee schedule is updated to reflect no more fees in that area.

Um the city actually went into to close that basin because there's no more infrastructure left, and then um there's no more fee that needs to be charged.

So that the basin balances.

Aaron, we have a question from Councilman Henjam.

Yes, uh, thank you, Madam President.

Aaron, thank you.

Um on the closure of the um park vista um basin.

It is that because of all the work we've done or or are currently doing on the stormwater there, and so that's that's why it's no longer needed.

Yeah, so that's correct.

That was a small area that had a um drainage plan that was developed in the early 2000s for those channel improvements.

There's a city project that um used funding from the county as well to install those improvements.

So those are installed, and those were the only improvements that were in that basin.

Okay.

Seeing no um further questions.

Um Aaron is asking if this um item could be on consent.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on to 8B, will the clerk please read item 8B into the record?

And please note that this item will be back to back on the regular meeting for tomorrow as item 10 C and Alec can explain why.

Resolution approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city of Colorado Springs on behalf of its enterprises, the Colorado Municipal Airport, and the peak metropolitan district number two related to the reimbursement design and construction costs.

Good morning, Alex.

Can you make sure the green button's on?

I mean, you're loud but not loud enough.

Okay.

There you go.

Thank you.

I'm still learning.

Uh yeah.

First presentation today.

So uh good morning, Madam President Crow Iverson, members of City Council for the record, Alex Schovaj, Director of Aviation for the Colorado Springs Airport with a presentation here of the proposed intergovernment agreement between City of Colorado Springs and Metro District No.

Innovation Business Park.

And this is for uh reimbursement of a portion of the cost of phase one of Milton e ProB parkway rehab uh construction and design.

So to give you a sense of what you're seeing here on the screen, uh Milton eProB starts at uh powers and it's sort of a loop road that goes all the way up to the terminal building and comes back.

It supports both the peak innovation business park and also the commercial airport.

What you see sort of in that uh red rectangle that is phase one of the construction phase uh and that overlaps between the business park and uh the airport.

To give you a sense of what this looked like uh prior to the construction, what you see there on the left hand side as the original pavement.

In the middle picture, you see uh the phase after milling two inches, approximately two inches off the top, and then on the right hand side you see the final product.

The total project cost for this was right under $815,000, and that's both for construction and design.

Again, this is phase one only.

We do intend to break up the rest of the project on two more phases depending on funding.

Only phase one has a contribution for the bit from the business park, and you see that at 59.1%.

And that is based on a study that was conducted by Kim Lee Horn that analyzed the amount of traffic that goes on on uh uh on Milton E.

ProB from Powers all the way up.

The Metro District's portion again for both design and construction is 481,658 and 85 cents, and the airport portion is 333,330 and 75 cents.

That brings me to the staff recommendation, which is to approve the intergovernment agreement by and between the City of Colorado Springs on behalf of its enterprise, the Colorado Springs Municipal Airport and Peak Metropolitan District number two related to the reimbursement of design and construction cost.

And Madam President, that concludes my presentation and happy to answer any questions.

I don't see any oh, I do have a councilman Henjam.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Good morning, Alex.

Um actually, my my question, I don't know if you can really project this, but if you go to the the um slide that has the percentages, and that's basically based on uh usage, right?

Um granted we want our airport traffic to increase and more flights and more people to use the entire loop, um, but we also want that district and more businesses to uh increase as well.

And so do you expect the ratio to stay more or less the same, or do you expect there over time the metro district for future improvements would be borne more by the metro district or more by the airport?

Well, um that's an excellent question.

If I have my way, I would like to see the airport continue increasing as fast as possible, because uh you heard me say this many, many times before.

Leakage is an issue for us, and and keeping our passengers in the Colorado Springs Airport as opposed to going to another airport that you might have heard of.

Uh that would be the preferred alternative.

However, at the same time, as we're adding power to Peak Innovation Park, and as we continue developing there, um both of them I think are gonna continue increasing.

As far as exactly the proportion, um I'm again hopeful that the airport is gonna end up having more of a proportion in the in traffic.

Okay, great, thank you.

Councilman Bailey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh Alex, if you would, I I I think you clarified my first question, which is this is the only piece that um there's overlap with the innovation park.

Yes, sir.

Now is that current or is it future as the park goes up around on the east side?

Will some of that um will they take on some of the burden of the that road infrastructure as well, or this is all that's planned?

At this point, this is all it's planned because the reconstruction was done on both sides of Milton E.

Proby, just past the turnoff to Peak Innovation Business Park.

Okay.

The next two phases are gonna go beyond that.

Up to the north and all the way around.

Right, but it's not anticipated there'll be any other into the innovation park from from the existing road.

Okay.

That is uh a newbie mistake that the airport director made, uh, bringing it to your attention on two consecutive days.

Um it's a reimbursement agreement and the work has already been completed as of October 1st.

Um that is the reason it's a good question.

I'm sorry to highlight it then.

I just wanted to understand why we don't do things, yeah, why we didn't in this case.

Thank you.

I don't see any questions at this time.

And um with no contention, we will have it back to back.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 8 C.

Will the clerk please read item 8C into the record?

A resolution of the City of Colorado Springs consenting to the dissolution of the College Creek Metropolitan District.

Good morning, Kevin.

Good morning, madam chair.

Kevin Walker, um, city planning director.

Uh we have a very quick presentation on this.

This is a very small district that is no longer necessary and is asking for dissolution.

It's the College Creek Metropolitan District, which is basically the fire station 24 and um the inner quest ridge uh apartments.

Uh the uh only maintenance is required by the apartments, and so that's why we're here primarily today.

So it's at the southeast uh intersection of Interquest and Federal Drive.

Uh it's located in District 2, created in 2006.

Um, and right now there's multifamily buildings and a clubhouse.

The land was sold to the developer uh and and this district is completely built out, has no um uh ongoing obligations.

Pursuant to section uh of the state statute to dissolve without an election, the district must wholly be in the city, must hold no debt or retain any financial obligations, must not own any assets, uh, must not be obligated to maintain any public improvements, and all of those are found here.

Um and this shows you uh for the period ending September 30th, 2025, uh there's no money in the bank.

Uh, and that's one of the primary requirements.

Um there's supporting materials in your packet, unsigned city council resolution, uh, the district's cover memo, resolution of the board of directors, and a certified financial statement.

And I'll answer any questions.

Councilman Bailey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh one question from me.

I've seen at least one of these in the past where the responsibility for maintaining the uh uh roadways, medians and things like that kind of got left out.

Is this one where we're pretty content that uh all the public roadways the city is now responsible for and the just anything within that that apartment complex is gonna be maintained by them?

I don't want to see the little orphan areas where the weeds are allowed to grow.

No, there's yeah, that that's one of the primary criteria to make sure that they're not responsible for any further public infrastructure or private infrastructure for that matter.

Okay.

So um we're certain that this one is relatively simple.

Um district and never really had anything to maintain in this.

I just saw one recently somewhere else in the district where that wasn't the case.

It was it apparently wasn't fairly simple because somebody, you know, we are gonna be seeing in the next couple of months several of these um uh where they're a little bit more complicated.

Uh but uh all of them have all of them meet the criteria and are just trying to uh make sure that their operations and ongoing costs are no longer a burden to the taxpayer.

Good, good.

And it's always good to highlight the process that you go through to make sure that when things come to us you've crossed all the pandemic.

Right here.

Very good.

It's somebody else did.

Thanks.

Seeing no other questions, um Kevin would like to have this on consent if nobody opposes to this.

All right.

It's on consent.

Okay.

I gave you one.

Are you happy?

I'll take it.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 8D.

Will the clerk please read item 8D into the record?

A resolution of the city council, the city of Colorado Springs, Colorado, establishing that the city of Colorado Springs does not intend to adopt an ordinance or resolution in accord with CRS 31-23-3162AI or two AI2 concerning electric vehicle charging system permitting procedures.

So again, a relatively uh quick item for your review um prior to bringing this to you uh for a resolution uh at formal.

Um this is a uh um a resolution concerning the electrical vehicle charging systems.

The state statute uh passed in August of 2024, requires municipal action by December 31st.

Uh it primarily is trying to make sure that all local jurisdictions have some kind of EV charging uh procedure.

Um, and it gives you the option of taking the states, creating your own, or simply doing what you've already been doing, which is what we are proposing to do.

Uh so we have our EV charging systems that are reviewed via a building permit application uh and relies on an intergovernmental agreement with Pike Speak um uh regional building department to implement.

And um these are the options that are in the legislature, so it can incorporate standards uh that the state requires.

Uh it can incorporate um uh standards that are uh established by the county, or it can does not intend to adopt an EV charger model code or adopt the standards and administrative review process required by the act, but instead will continue to utilize the covered counties or covered municipalities existing permitting review process for EV charging systems, which we already have in place.

Councilman Hangum.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

So Kevin, can you go back a slide, please?

Just so I understand.

Clearly, we already have a process and we don't we're not intending to change it.

Um that makes perfect sense.

I guess my question is is our process, if I understand the options that were given by the state, um that there are less restrictive standards possible.

And are we are our standards more restrictive than the states?

And and but we just don't want to change our process.

No, I don't think they're more restrictive.

It's just simply trying the state's simply trying to make sure that the uh um the jurisdictions all in the state, all of the jurisdictions in the state have some kind of process by which an EV charger can be uh can be permitted.

We already have that, and so we're just basically continuing to follow the same one.

That makes sense.

Thanks.

Any other questions?

I don't see any.

Can I ask another one?

You may or may not know, Kevin, but I know there are two EV users on our dais here.

They might know.

Um at the uh uh Lincoln School uh that's now you know a uh brew pub and and bakery and so forth, they just installed like I don't know, eight or ten Tesla chargers, like that take up it feels like almost half that parking lot.

And uh I just wonder why so many Tesla chargers in one parking lot and can only Teslas use those chargers and is it free for Tesla users to charge there?

Yeah, I just I know this has nothing to do with parking.

I'll take whatever help I can get on that question.

I I just have been so curious um because it's not that big of a parking lot.

Yeah, well, I can't speak to why so many, um, but I can say as a Tesla owner that um non-Tesla owners are able to use those as well with an adapter.

Um and as much as I wish that supercharging was free, it is a hundred percent not.

And they not only charge you, which they should, um, but if you stay over the amount of your time that it takes to charge, um you also get an idle fee of like it's ridiculous.

The idle fee is a large fee.

Okay.

Um, is there someone in planning who could just at your leisure help me understand why there's so many um Tesla spots in that lot?

I will see obviously.

I will see if the Johnny just on you know.

If he knows, he can answer.

Otherwise, I will come on up.

Well, if he knows now, but he may need to look it up.

It's fine.

Okay.

I I'm just super curious.

Well we'll be back in touch.

Okay.

Okay, thank you.

Um moving on.

Um do you want this on consent?

We sure would like this to be on consent.

Thank you.

Councilman Linewilbert Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, that's fine.

Thank you.

You're welcome to today.

Two today.

You should you should be happy.

I'm happy.

Moving on to item 10.

Council member reports and open discussion.

Are there any council members with reports?

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, this will go more in the uh category of discussion and open report, but in the two weeks since we met last time, I've been contacted by a couple of citizens asking about citizen comment and did council take that up and and what was the decision.

Some of them have been told we voted on it or informally voted at lunch.

And uh so I thought I would bring that up.

I don't I don't I don't really believe I don't remember us informally voting.

So I would ask that uh we do that here.

I mean, we're missing a few members today, but that we do an informal vote uh so citizens know you know where different uh representatives stand on that issue or do something more formal or or have it come to us at a work session.

So I don't want it to just disappear with no uh public action where where the citizens understand Councilman Gold.

Thank you.

And so if I could, Madam President, could could I just have a response on what we plan to do with uh citizen comment?

Yeah, we did have a lunch um discussion.

Right.

Um Emily was there if you want to chime in.

Yeah, absolutely.

So we did a little over six months ago, legislative services brought this item to city council for for discussion, and there were some changes made by the current leadership, those changes were implemented at that time.

We did say at the six-month mark we would bring that back for consideration to see how things are going.

Our constituent response specialist provided data um showing that there really has been no impact um to having moved the discussion time in the agenda.

And we did bring that forward at a lunch and did sort of a thumbs up, so maybe that's what you're calling an informal vote and the decision was made at that time by the majority of council to leave it as it's currently stands.

I don't recall a thumbs up vote.

Uh I remember speaking at that lunch.

And I'll say this that although the numbers may not have changed very much, who is speaking at public comment has changed.

I've learned an awful lot about Stephen King assassinating who did he assassinate John Lennon.

John Lennon.

But the the kind the citizens who are able to, and for those listening, there's just a gentleman who comes and talks to us about that pretty much you know every two weeks.

But working folks and parents with kids are the ones contacting me, and they find it very difficult to participate in in citizen comment when there's no fixed time.

And so I'll I'll ask again that we go back to a fixed time or put it at the very front of our sessions, our regular sessions, so that citizens who work, citizens with kids uh have an idea of when they need to be here.

Right now they don't, and um, it has impacted who is able to participate.

So I would like it to to be done where citizens know which of their elected representatives don't support that and which ones do.

Not just something done at lunch when nobody sees it.

Councilman Gold.

Oh, my mic was already on.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, just a few quick things.

One, I'd like to um start on a high note and um officially say happy birthday to our council member Rainey, whose birthday was last week.

I won't call him out on his age, but just happy birthday, Councilmember Rainey.

Um, happy belated birthday.

Um two, on a not so high note, um, just want to point out that last week was the anniversary of the Club Q shooting, um, a really tragic day in our community, and um my heart still goes out to all of the victims and our community who have been impacted by that.

Um and the last thing, I actually do want to thank Councilmember Donaldson for um starting a robust conversation on our neighbors experiencing homelessness.

Um I have had so many conversations um in the last few weeks and look forward to more collaboration, more conversation on how we can get to some really great solutions for our neighbors experiencing homelessness.

Thank you.

Councilman Henjam.

Uh thank you.

Actually, to go back to the citizens' comment discussion.

Um I I do recall as our city city council administrator uh shared that sequence of events.

What I have heard though, and um I would like to bring it up, I didn't I haven't heard it directly um uh from leadership, but that there was some conversation about possibly um exploring maybe some quarterly or I don't know what would the the um monthly or quarterly um town halls uh at at City Hall that is specific to just having the public come and make comment in an evening session that was uh devoted to nothing but hearing from the community and perhaps at that time we could um potentially be in even a little bit more dialogue given that the entire focus of the meeting would be devoted uh to that kind of um opportunity to connect with the public who wants to speak with council.

I personally would be very open to exploring that um idea.

I I don't know if I dreamt that or or I can't remember exactly who which of my fellow council members told me about that.

Um but that to me would be um an idea worth pursuing as opposed to uh changing the time back to earlier in the meeting.

I I do appreciate that our meetings have been very efficient, and um so that's my thought on that.

Councilman Bailey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Just on on that note, the question that's been interesting to me over the last several months is just what we're trying to accomplish by citizen engagement or public comment.

Um can be measured and and assessed in a lot of different ways.

And to to have the to have the data that we got, I'm very convinced that uh in terms of the numbers and and oftentimes in you know there is some significant overlap in the people who did participate when this old system was in place versus the new system is in place.

I'm I'm fairly confident that our citizens have the ability to contact us to make their concerns, make their opinions known to us here.

We often bring them back up, and um you know, as councilmember Donald Donaldson does very often.

People come up and not just you, but everyone else is my constituents contacting me about this problem.

I think it's important.

Let's make sure that we talk about it.

I I wish citizen engagement was more robust and more productive than it is in this city, but I think that that's uh that I don't think we are unique in the type of engagement that we have.

Um maybe someday that'll get better, but uh I I don't know that we'll we'll do that here.

Um I for one am confident again that uh the engagement that we have currently that the system we have in place right now works.

Um there may be there may be a um an opening or a possibility of doing something else that is specifically geared toward letting people come in, and if they um if it's important that their message goes out with their video and their audio to the rest of the world, then um maybe we give them that forum.

Um but uh I I think that the that the citizen engagement thing is something that we're we're doing now and we're doing it fairly well.

I'll shift gears just a little bit and uh offer a couple of couple of reports.

In in the last week or so I was able to participate with the uh um uh the the city administration in their strategic doing efforts to look at what their what their priorities are for 2026, and likewise with the utilities board, we sat through and listened to and participated in a discussion of the utilities um strategic plan and their efforts going forward.

And I just want to say that I think it's important that citizens know that the city and the utilities, both things that we here on this dais have a responsibility for governing, um are making efforts for forward-looking strategic thinking.

I think there's some great potential for um the two different organizations to learn from one another because I think there's some best practices, there are some things that uh the that each could do to make their processes just a little bit better.

So I encourage some discussion about that, not necessarily from us in our role, but for the people that are actually doing the strategic planning that is so important to the governance of a city.

Um just what uh couple other things.

I was we uh opened a new park, a renovated park, Rampart Park up in uh up in my district.

Uh it was a great opportunity to see the efforts of the uh parks and recreation parks, recreation and cultural services department gave me an opportunity to uh pass on my uh thanks to Britt Haley, the director, as she's getting ready to leave.

She's done a fabulous job, has a great team, and I want to say thank you for that.

And last and most importantly, I want to give a little shout out to my new friends in the third grade at Academy International Elementary.

I got to talk to them on Thursday morning.

Great group of kids, good good uh um conversation, very interesting to get their perspective, and that was productive community engagement.

So uh like to like to say thanks for that.

Councilman Lineweber, are you still on or off?

On.

Councilman Lineweber.

Uh a couple things.

I'll first comment on the citizen citizen comment piece.

Um I I believe that it's really, really important that we have efficiency in government, and I think the new system that we have has really provided for that.

Um I've I've seen countless times where we have high paid employees of the city sitting and waiting and waiting and waiting to do the business of the city in past legislation.

And I think the new system creates a sense of uh efficiency.

Um, and I think that we want to keep to that.

But in terms of a particular time set, um, I do think that it's challenging one o'clock in the middle of the day, it's kind of an interesting time.

Now I've proposed, and I missed the lunch meeting.

I was not a part of that.

I was, I believe, in Utah and camping, and uh because I'm the outdoor guy.

Anyway, um uh I do believe that it that we could look at some kind of quarterly um evening session.

I don't know if that was discussed or not or brought up.

Um I think that's something that we could look at, that we create some kind of regular quarterly event that we would you know open up at a time certain um, you know, during the evening where uh families and people that have um have work can come in and and express whatever concern they might have, whether it's the street in front of their house or you know, something with their community center or whatever it might be.

Um so I I I would like to kind of push that as a possible solution um to kind of maybe address this and and open ourselves up to more opportunity to engage with our community.

Um I also want to say that I think um uh all of us should be looking more to do these uh town halls type events within our districts.

I think they're very, very important.

And um I think those town halls can can really be a key component to this whole aspect.

And so um I think we should probably kind of look at those kind of things too, where we're actually going to the community and listening to them and that sort of thing.

So anyway, that's my comments.

Um I currently like the present system, but want to entertain um maybe some kind of quarterly um evening session, and maybe we can have you know coffee and donuts in the evening.

I don't know if that's a thing, but um something along those lines.

Um the other uh couple of different updates, and just something that that's kind of struck me.

I was able to attend the West Side Care's open house um event, and um uh something interesting I learned there, and I didn't I actually hadn't uh understood it.

85% of what who West Side ser Westside Care serves are housed, and I had in my mind an impression that they deal mostly with homeless folks because they do deal with quite uh you know still 15 percent, but um, but they're really helping people stay housed.

And um I'm really um giving I guess uh giving them a call out for some of the great work that they're doing um to again addressing homelessness, but at the root, like helping people stay housed.

Um and so I thought that was kind of a really important thing.

They had a really really good um open house session, which I really um enjoyed.

Um I have some other updates that I'm gonna probably um share, but I want to just thank all count um majority of council who supported my um passionate plea to kind of support the outdoors.

Um I think we have some tremendous opportunities before us with the state.

There's kind of more to follow.

Um some things have kind of already started to happen and um really exciting, and um, I think we'll we'll hear some of those things kind of being released over the next couple of weeks.

So anyway, thanks.

Council McDonaldson.

Yeah, madam president.

There's different ways that citizens communicate with us.

Emails is uh is a big one, occasionally the phone calls.

Um, but citizen comment has been a useful way for citizens to communicate with us.

Right now, it's broken.

It doesn't work.

We uh you know, we we it's been said that we look out and we see you know, our chief of police or other high-paid city people sitting there while the citizens are are speaking.

Well, we also we don't we we don't see it very often, but there are citizens that sit here for hours waiting to the end of our session, which they don't know when that's going to occur, so that they can speak.

So it's important to remember we're not elected only to serve uh those who are in the city government, but all citizens.

And so when regular citizens, those not in the city government, if we that's the wrong word to use, but uh uh when they're here, their time is valuable too.

And there is a way to do it where our city uh employees aren't sitting there waiting while during citizen comment.

We put it at a fixed time for a fixed duration, one hour at it could be nine o'clock tomorrow.

It could be at uh 11 o'clock tomorrow.

It could be at one o'clock tomorrow.

And then citizens know, and then our city staff doesn't need to be here during that time.

If it runs short, we can go to our offices and work.

But it sends a message to the citizens if we do that, that we value their input and their time.

Right now, it's just what whoever can sit here all day and wait will uh will listen to you.

And it has changed who speaks at citizen comment.

The folks who contacted me, and I believe they either have or are gonna contact everybody.

Uh Diane Bridges from Historic Neighborhood Preservation is one of them, has real input for for city council, and it's it's useful for organizations like that to know when they can come and speak to us.

We've had in the in previously, before it was at the end at some unknown time, um, we we had citizens come in here and talk to us about road conditions where they live, and it was immediately addressed.

I I remember this by chief of staff and city staff.

We've had crime concerns or um neighborhood services uh code enforcement concerns, and they got addressed right away.

And that is uh shows citizens uh are our priorities.

Right now, our priorities is you come last, it's more efficient for us uh because we can't figure out a way to have a time for you when you'll know when it is.

I think it's it's a mistake.

We send the wrong signal to citizens, and it's one more way they perceive us as not not really caring.

Uh we you can't put efficiency in the in front of the trust of the citizens.

Councilman Henjam.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

And and I want to actually thank you uh uh President Crow Iverson for actually just the simple change that you made in how we approach this agenda item.

Um in the previous four years, it was always kind of go down the aisle and report out what you did, and it really wasn't open discussion as the actual agenda item says.

And I think what's helpful about it is of course we can talk about these things at lunch, but this way our conversation and our thoughts are shared with the public, so people can actually see um it's on record now, public record, how we think and feel about these things.

So I I appreciate how you've how you've done that and are allowing this.

Um I so just to add one more thought on this public comment, which I mean I agree with Councilmember Donaldson.

Public comment is and and people being able to come and speak to us in various different ways, be it personally or town halls or emails, but also this public forum is one way that for some people is very important, where it's on record.

Um I I really do like the idea, and I would really ask that we have a conversation at lunch uh sometime to really talk more about one the question that council member um Bailey asked, which is what are we trying to accomplish with that particular type of public comment?

And and two, um, what are some ways that we could do it where I I mean I hear from people like I don't like that you meet during the day because I work during the day.

So I like this idea of exploring um some kind of evening session that is devoted simply to public comment and no other city council business.

Um and the frequency would be the question, and you know, what what time of the evening and how often, you know, how often we should do it.

But I'm I'm very open to that idea and addressing that need that councilmember Donaldson has um highlighted.

And I also uh want to say, and and uh um the West Side Care's open house was was very impactful, and uh um thank you for for bringing that up.

Um Councilmember Lineweber, um and Councilmember uh Gold for highlighting the conversation that has really started around um camping and uh in cars and so forth.

And and I happened to meet at that open house one of the volunteers who um who just said, tell me more about your volunteering and what you do, and she told me her story, and I said, Well, how did you come to become a volunteer?

And uh she said, Oh, well, actually, I I use West Side Care Services, and I was homeless for a period of time, not very long.

Um, but her very first night sleeping in a car, she described to me and um uh had a brain injury, had a very productive career of over 20 years working in an optician's office, and um circumstances just changed for her.

Um, and she was very appreciative of the dialogue that we're having uh around this ordinance and how to approach it in such a way that we meet both the needs of the neighbors who are concerned about people parking in their neighborhood, but also how we can uh address the needs of of people who need the services and don't want to be sleeping in their cars or camping.

Um so anyway, again, I I appreciate the the open dialogue.

Thanks.

Emily, can you assure that on our January lunch we have this town hall discussion?

Thank you.

Councilman Gold.

Thank you, Madam President, and thank you for ensuring that that's on our January lunch.

I am I would like to um just say I'd really love to continue the conversation and get to a solution.

Um all nine of us are public servants, and that requires uh service and that requires sacrifice, and sometimes that's a sacrifice of our time.

Um so I'm completely open to some evening town halls.

Um I think that would be a great way to make public comment more accessible for our entire community.

Thank you.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thank you.

Adding quarterly or uh some other time frame evening listening uh events.

I think that's probably that's fine.

That's a good idea.

But it shouldn't replace what we have traditionally done here, which is let citizens come every two weeks and and speak to us.

Because if there is a problem they want to speak to us about, waiting for three months uh I don't think is good enough.

And I don't want us to dodge this by saying we'll do we'll do quarterly meetings.

Also having this discussion at lunch will will have the same result as what we did four weeks ago or whenever it was, which is citizens don't really know who said what or who believes what.

And uh that's that's a problem.

And I I think we should do more here at the dais.

If we're gonna discuss substantial things, I mean, someone someone asked me this question well, isn't that conducting business at lunch when it's it's uh uh it's not televised or recorded like this.

We need to record our lunches if we're gonna do uh business at lunch, like decide on our policy for um citizen comment.

And again, I mean we can all be quiet right now and just say we'll talk about it at lunch, but that's the problem.

Councilman Lineweber.

Yeah, I just want to make it clear.

It doesn't uh you know, sometimes um citizens watch this and and they go, Well, yeah, we need to have comment.

Well, they do.

Um when we have an agenda item, when there is an item on the agenda that is making policy change, we always embrace citizens' comment as part of that.

It's not not true.

So there is always citizens' comment on the particular agenda that we're working on in this moment.

I think what Donaldson is trying to address is citizens' comment uh on agenda item on items that are not on the agenda, items that maybe we have dealt with in the past, or items that we need to readjust for the future.

And I think those things aren't time certain and could easily be adopted within a quarterly type session or a uh regular town halls, um, those kind of things.

Um I what I don't what I didn't like is the unstructured approach to our agenda.

I like the way that we are efficient in the way we do the city business right now.

I matter I really like it because it's it gives our staff an opportunity to be time certain on kind of how to handle the city business.

And um before it was very unstructured and um uh quite honestly, it was not very efficient.

And so um, so to be clear, we absolutely provide citizen comment on any agenda item.

So thanks.

Councilman Bailey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Yeah, I just want to want to echo that.

I mean I haven't heard anybody suggest that we don't value input from our citizens.

Um that's what we're here for.

And there are many ways to get that.

Currently, we have an hour at the end of every one of our sessions, every two weeks, we have plenty of time for people to come and talk with us.

There's potential for other mechanisms, because the only argument I've heard that really has any relevance is that some people can't make it at an undetermined time in the middle of the day.

So we can very easily set up another mechanism to accommodate those people, in addition to the ubiquitous 24-7.

You can send me an email any time, and I'm gonna get it, and I'm gonna communicate those concerns to the appropriate people.

I don't know that the guy who emailed me about uh um road conditions along Voyager and Ridgeline on Sunday afternoon.

I don't know that he needs to stand there in front of all of us and tell us where the potholes are, because I already sent that over to public works.

Is it how much value is there to have a uh if it's truly a problem that needs to be addressed, there are better, more efficient ways to do that.

And our job as city government is to balance the efficient running of our government and the input from our community.

We get all of that now.

And um uh again, I I appreciate your passion to try to make this the way it was, but the way it is seems to work for me.

Councilman Donaldson?

Yeah, no, no, that's the problem is it works for us.

But uh what we should be worried about is does it work for the citizens?

And we have professionally um accomplished um very serious citizens who who want the opportunity to come in here and address council, um, Diane Bridges being one, but they don't know when that is, and they can't sit here for an undetermined amount of time, hours waiting.

We find we we I've heard today that and I've heard it before, like that's not right to do that to city staff to make them just sit there.

Well, let's have that same courtesy for uh our citizens and have a fixed time.

The fixed time can be at nine o'clock in the morning.

It can be one o'clock p.m.

right after our lunch.

It could even be later, it could be 3 p.m., but let's fix it so they know when it is.

We can you don't have to say we don't value the uh uh input of citizens.

If you have some roaming time where they can't tell when when their opportunity to speak is gonna be, that sends a message all by itself, no matter what you say uh orally, you've send a message just with the scheduling um what's important and what isn't.

So I would ask my colleagues, please consider that.

Don't just add a meeting in the evening quarterly, but let's think of a way where we can have a fixed time so that citizens can come in.

There are certain things that uh are time sensitive that they want to tell us about.

Um you know, citizens a lot of times say I never get a response.

I don't get I don't get a reply from from city council.

Um so they don't know what you what we have done with uh uh the email they sent in unless they do get that, even if we forward it on to someone else, when they come in here and speak directly to us uh with a chief of staff or a deputy chief of staff sitting there, they they do know.

And some things to them are important enough to where they want to come in here and do that, and I think that opportunity should be there.

Seeing Noah.