Good morning.

Welcome to the City of Colorado Springs work session for Monday, December 8th, 2025.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Bailey.

Here.

Councilmember Carerson.

Here.

Councilmember Donaldson.

Here.

Go Broncos.

Councilmember Gold.

Here.

Councilmember Hingem.

Councilmember Williams.

Here.

Councilmember Lineweber.

Excuse.

Oh, there he is.

You sneaked in.

Councilmember Rainey.

Here.

Councilmember Risley.

Here.

All present.

So are there any changes today's agenda?

Seeing none.

Are there any changes to the regular meeting for tomorrow?

Seeing none, we will move to item 4A.

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

City Council work session meeting minutes November 24th, 2025.

Are there any changes to the minutes?

Seeing none, we will move into 5A.

Will the clerk please read item 5A into the record?

Christopher Cordova versus the City, case number 25-C Vero two seven two three dash CYC.

Good morning.

Good morning, Rebecca Greenberg from the city attorney's office.

This isn't this isn't um, excuse me, this item is an open item.

When city employees are sued for actions that occurred within the course and scope of their employment, the city is required to provide a defense under the Colorado Governmental Immunities Act and the Peace Officers Liability Act.

These are police officers, and we are here to acknowledge our obligation as the city to provide that defense.

We always retain the right to not pay punitive damages.

Just need a thumbs up and acknowledgement.

Councilman Reim.

Okay, you have thank you.

Moving on to item 6A.

Will the clerk please read item 6A into the record?

UC Health Annual Report.

Good morning, Mr.

Kramer.

Good morning, President Councilman.

How about now?

Yep.

Okay.

Thank you for having me today.

Want to welcome our our new city council members.

I don't know what they told you about the job, but they probably didn't share everything.

Um so thanks for being here today.

So first up, um, thank you.

It's been an exciting year.

Uh a lot going on as it relates to our our state and our city around our our Medicaid, and I'll share some of that with you today.

And we'll highlight some of the uh great accomplishments that we've made this year.

Um first, I want to start with UC Health's mission statement where we improve lives in big ways through learning, healing, discovery, in small personal ways through human and connection, but in all ways we improve lives.

I want to call out the fact that it does not say we improve patient lives.

It's we improve all lives.

So we work very hard to improve the lives of our our city, our staff, our care teams, and so forth.

You can see our values in action.

I'm not gonna read those to you today, but uh we'll move through.

So just to give our our council members a reminder of UC Health.

So we are three regions strong.

So we have our north region, we have our metro region, and then the south region, which is six hospitals but includes our memorial health system.

So overall, we are now 15 hospitals.

We just added Estes Park, so we are 15 hospitals strong.

As you can see our southern region as our largest region with over a thousand licensed beds in the region.

We are about 36,000 employees that are spread across um the state.

UC Health Southern Region makes up 133 locations, including our six hospitals.

As you can see here, we pretty much have the city of Colorado Springs encapsulated there and Pueblo.

So our southern region.

So very, very busy ED here in Colorado Springs.

So a couple of things that we want to point out is UC Health is the only academic medical center in the state of Colorado.

Last year as a safety net uh facility here at Memorial, and we'll talk a little bit more about that.

We saw over 17,000 transfers from our rural hospitals throughout the state of Colorado into UC Health.

That number continues to grow every year, and 17,000 is is quite the number uh this past year.

Our employees uh live and make up uh about 75% of our Colorado counties.

So we have employees spread out throughout the state, and we serve patients from every single Colorado zip code this past year into UC Health.

So this is one of my favorite slides because we hear a lot about Denver Health, and we are grateful for the work that Denver Health does.

But I think sometimes it's misleading uh as it relates to the amount of Medicaid that we take care of throughout UC Health.

As you can see here, um University of Colorado Hospital, 16,000 compared to the almost 15,000 that Denver Health hit did.

And as you can see, Memorial Hospital exceeded Denver Health's uh Medicaid emissions this past year.

So our payer mix is there, kind of shares how we break down the payer mix, and then the uncompensated care, and then lastly the tax funding that Denver Health gets that our UC Health facilities does not receive.

So it's pretty significant number across uh that avenue.

So as we look at Medicaid across Colorado, um UC Health is a critical part of the safety net, as I mentioned before.

71% of the care in Colorado uh hospitals is government payers.

And if you look to the slide to your right there, you'll see that we're two times larger than any other health system as it relates to the amount of Medicaid we take care of.

Uh, our next closest uh would be HCA.

So significant amount of uh cost there.

The slide on the left, the Medicare and Medicaid just shows how much they reimburse compared to the cost to provide that care.

I have a question from Councilman Hinchem.

Yes.

Madam President, um, could you actually go back a slide, Lonnie?

I just can't get this question out of my head.

Why is um UC Health's University of Colorado Hospital so much higher in uncompensated care than all it's because they get more transfers than any other hospital from outside rural areas.

So they see a significant amount, and especially with their also their transplant, their burns, some of the other stuff that we don't do locally.

Okay, thanks.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

Lonnie, um the births you mentioned that hey, we we see a lot of babies being born in El Paso County is uh do you do you know is a large percentage of that from uh military families?

Because we do have a lot of installations here, and that would be interesting to know just because those those families are gonna move on, most likely they're gonna get PCS somewhere else versus people staying in.

I don't have the breakdown of that uh councilman, but I can certainly review that and send that over to you.

Evans still delivers a lot of births here at uh on Fort Carson.

So I think a majority of the uh military delivers at Evans Army, but I can certainly send you over my numbers.

I wasn't even sure of that.

I wasn't sure if they were still doing that or not out at uh Evans.

Thanks.

Happy to review that.

Thank you.

So moving on here.

So the change in the Medicaid landslides landscape.

I think I've shared this with prior city council, but we continue to see this climb.

Uh as you can see on the left there, uh, from 21 to 24, an increase of 116 million dollars in uncompensated cost uh to UC Health, and then the decline in Medicaid enrollment continues to rise also just since 23.

We've seen over a half a million Coloradans fall off of Medicaid, um, which means they'll go into self-pay or uninsured, so it continues to grow.

HR1.

I get this question a lot here in Colorado Springs, and I'm sure um my colleague from Choco will share this as well.

We are seeing that uh the HR one will see a significant uh increase in the number of uh individuals that fall off of Medicaid due to the work requirement and six-month um revalidation of work.

We're estimating anywhere from 100 to 150,000 more Coloradans will fall off of Medicaid just due to this piece.

One of the major concerns that we have as a health system is it's estimated that uh the state will need about 57 million dollars invested both in staff and in technology to even validate the every six-month work requirement.

As you know, with the state's budget, this is a big number to look at.

Um so we're not sure how the state's going to address this at this point, but we know that is a big gap from today's budget that we see in the state.

Also with the chase fee for those that don't know, that's uh a proportion tax that uh hospitals pay into chase, and that money is matched federally and then redistributed to hospitals based on the amount of Medicaid uh patients that they take care of.

Uh with HR one, that fee is going to be reduced down to three and a half percent by 2032.

That is estimated to pull 10.4 billion dollars out of health care across the state.

Um that's a big number.

10.4 billion.

Um I'm worried about we're worried about our self uh ability to continue.

But more importantly, our rural hospitals uh see this.

If they're a critical access, they're gonna be okay, we believe through that.

But a lot of our our hospitals across the state are not um critical access.

Counselman Lineweber.

I want to jump into something that's just kind of it it this is political.

I'm just sorry.

But um I saw and I saw an article uh showing that a substantial amount of undocumented um citizens use med have been using Medicare, and that a lot of work visa type um also is using um Medicare.

And that prime there's a lot of trying to say, hey, you know, Medicare should be for our citizens is kind of the whole comment.

And um I'm curious about are you required to not report that or how do you deal with that political landscape that's kind of going on to understand because we hear about Medicare being cut, but then we also hear that, but we you know we're cutting it from people that aren't contributing to society, like they're not volunteering, they're not working, you know, just like you've kind of said.

I I tend to not have a problem with some of that stuff, but at the same time, I want to see people to get taken care of.

So there's a delicate balance here between trying to, you know, have citizens make effort towards a benefit.

I'll try not to be political either, uh, Councilman Limeweyer.

So we do we are not allowed to ask um as far as documentation or undocumented.

Um the only numbers we we would ever see is if they voluntarily informed us that they're they're not legal citizens.

Uh Mtala federally, we have to take care of everyone regardless of their ability to pay.

And even with HR one, um, that's just gonna mean more patients that are uninsured.

So this is a significant problem because you know, if people choose not to work or choose not to participate in a 38-page application, then they're still going to get health care.

They're going to come to our EDs and you're gonna see that number continue to climb, which will clog up the system because those resources are limited based on 29%, as I showed before, is paying for our healthcare system.

So that 29% will see a larger burden as that number continues to grow.

Well, I think that just shows the challenge in this whole thing is we're trying to balance it, right?

We're trying to kind of be responsible with our tax dollars and have them go towards the right things.

Um, but at the same time, we want, I don't care where the person's from.

And we if they need help, we need to help them.

So and I appreciate that.

Um, and you're caught in the middle a little bit in this whole conversation.

So um, and I I I understand the challenge, but I again it's it's trying to weigh all of this out because um it is, I mean, Medicare is one of our fastest growing costs by far.

And how do we contain that?

And so that's what's really, really difficult.

Yeah, this this challenge has continued to grow in my career of 30 years, I can tell you, because as we look at you put the word health care into anything that we purchase and the dollars are high, right?

Whether it's our MRI machines, whether it's our CTs, no one's controlling the cost from vendors and so forth that that we see, nor the cost of construction.

The city's seeing that as well as we continue to try and serve uh more of our patients and build clinics and have these places for these patients to show up.

That cost continues to go up.

So that paradigm shift is getting bigger.

That gap in between the cost of care and uh what we can deliver is gonna be greater.

Uh, we're already seeing um delays, meaning access to care is difficult.

Um, several of you have called me and said, hey, is there any way I can get in sooner?

Right?

That's a real problem.

Um, and it's going to continue to grow if we see uh reimbursement continue to decline.

Well, I think that's a big challenge because we have such high standards here in America.

And those high standards come with high technology, high expenses, and stuff like that.

And when someone comes in sick, we want to give them best the best care we can.

Um that's a different cost factor than what someone might receive in Mexico or Argentina or some other country because they don't have they don't have the good stuff, right?

Based on quality, though, I think um we still have a lot of work to do in America as it relates to delivering that quality of care for the amount of money we spend.

So there's work to be done.

I don't want to make it sound like there's not work to be done.

We need to do a better job in health systems to decrease our cost, and we're working diligently to find that, uh, whether it's extending the life of a machine, maybe instead of replacing it every five years, maybe we go to eight.

So we're trying to find ways, um, councilman to decrease that cost just to make up for some of these gaps.

Well, I appreciate you taking on this challenge, and we do need to find a solution in our country.

So I don't know how we get there, but we'll work together.

Thank you.

So moving on, this is what we just touched on.

So we led right into quality.

One thing that I'm very, very proud of this past year is the numbers that you see here.

It's probably one of my proudest moments as president of uh the Southern region is the work that we've done.

Uh Pikes Peak Regional Hospital, 99th percentile.

That's not a typo.

There is only one hospital in their cohort in the country that performed better than them.

And I believe that's in Utah, so we're coming after them this year.

Um, Grandview Hospital, ranked number seven in the country, um, not in the state in the country as well.

And then the Memorial Hospital moved up to the 90th percentile in Visiant, the cohort in Chicago this year.

Uh, we received an award as the most improved hospital, large complex medical center in the state with over 2,500 hospitals in Visiant.

So a lot of work being done there.

Eight of our 11 hospitals have moved up to four or five-star ratings from CMS.

And then this past year, U.S.

News and World Report, we moved up from fourth in the state of Colorado to third by U.S.

News World Report and number one hospital in quality, again, four years in a row here in Colorado Springs.

So you can see these are the 13 areas that we were rated high performing by U.S.

News and World Report.

So I had to change this slide just before this presentation.

Um, but we are this is considered now our 16th hospital.

Um, and this is our virtual health center.

So we have invested a ton of money, Councilman Lime Weber, to your point of how do we provide more care at a at a cheaper cost.

Uh, these are all the areas that we're providing virtual health uh from our virtual health center.

So as you can see, there are over almost two and a half million patients touched by our virtual health center since its inception, and now over 2,000 patients a day are being touched by our virtual health center.

Um, so this is a team of doctors, critical care docs, nurses, and so forth that sit in an innovation center uh up north that is using cameras and technology.

Uh, we now are providing primary and urgent care visits uh across Colorado Springs virtually.

So if you haven't tried it, it's pretty cool.

So uh it's it's a way to not have to head to the mountains before you get a prescription field or something of that nature.

So it's it's come in handy.

So as you know, I've I've touted this for three years in a row now.

Uh UCL continues to make uh the most uh significant investment as it relates in behavioral health.

Uh our primary care uh centers has now seen over 46,000 visits uh across more than 50 clinics uh with our new inpatient beds in north and Denver, we now have seen 35,000 or 3500 patients admitted uh to an inpatient psych unit, 13,000 uh virtual health visits, and then we continue to work with our co-responders across for behavioral health.

And then as you know, uh next chapter is doing a phenomenal job here in town with our veterans, and I I can't tell the work that they they've done.

Um I'm not gonna say it, but I'll knock on wood.

We're pretty we're pretty excited that our veteran suicide has decreased uh with members that are enrolled to zero this past year.

So here in Southern Colorado, we have 13 uh clinics across El Paso County that has integrated behavioral health that has seen almost 14,000 patients this past year.

So as we continue to look at our investment in Colorado Springs, we've spent over 240 million dollars in community benefit, and we served over 107 million dollars in uncompensate uncompensated or uninsured care.

Um this past year we worked with over 80 agencies across uh our continuum here in Colorado Springs to help identify uh our community health needs assessment, and you can see those to the right that we continue to invest in as our largest issues across El Paso County uh today.

Councilman Lineweber.

Yeah, I just um I want to commend you on on really a lot of work that you put in to the whole mental health piece, particularly um supporting the next chapter and some of the things that you do with veterans.

The numbers are clear that it we've made huge strides and really improve that.

Um but one of the challenges is is um as a you know, when someone's in crisis, either in addiction crisis or some kind of mental health crisis, they come to your front door and you're charged to stabilize them.

And um, once they're stabilized, how do you treat that patient from that point?

I mean, you're not a housing.

And so once you've stabilized them, do you you give them some meds for a couple of days and you give them some advice and you let them out your front door, I understand, correct?

That is correct.

But we continue to tie them to the resources that are available available, such as our virtual behavioral health center, uh, where they can get their prescriptions refilled through that with by seeing some of our licensed clinical social workers.

We work with Peak Vista and other agencies here in town to make sure that they also feel that they have the support they need from UC Health to help deal with this crisis.

The homelessness we can't fix as a hospital, and we certainly are willing to lean in and work with our city to address that.

But unfortunately, that's an area that we are going to have to lean on one another to improve in Colorado Springs.

No, I agree.

And and you again, uh, thank you, because yes, you help everyone that walks into your front door.

I really appreciate that.

But it I just wanted to highlight the fact that you're not housing.

And um, and so for once they're stabilized, a lot of people are then released on their own accord, and we hope and that they'll get better, but that's it's not always that way.

It's probably like 20%, maybe.

It's a low number.

And so um we have this, you know, revolving door that we have to find some way to plug.

And um, I appreciate your part of it.

And uh we need to, as a city, we need to work on the other aspects of that.

Well, the city council has been very supportive of next chapter as well, and we thank you for that because we results matter, and it's great to invest in something that has a return and that we can prove has a return.

This is this is money well spent in my eyes, and thank you for being responsible with those dollars and making sure that we deliver uh before you spend those dollars.

So thank you, City Council, because you are a member and a partner in that.

Well, we are happy with the ROAC.

Um, me and Lynette helped support uh 1.5 million dollar uh contribution to help support that.

So um it was actually three years, so it's 4.5 million.

Yep.

Oh, that's right, for four or three years.

Thank you.

Sincerely, we appreciate that.

So I have one more councilman Rainey.

All right, thank you, Madam President.

Uh, based on all your collaborative work across all the you know different entities in the region.

What's been the relationship with veteran affairs administration um as you talk about a lot of the programs that you're partnering with, for example, next chapter.

How does the veteran affairs administration roll into that process?

Well, we try to be that substitute partner for them anytime they need it through our defense defense health service agreement and so forth.

So we try to keep military and veterans where they can be served in the VA properly.

When not, we we have a referral system that they can refer into, uh, especially for a lot of those specialties that local VA cannot take care of.

So we're really standing by.

One of the big things that the defense health service agency is really trying to cut costs is around pharmacy, for example.

So even when we see veterans, we're trying to redirect them back onto base to get their prescription filled because they can do it cheaper.

Um, and it's a way to decrease the spend from DHS so they can apply those dollars uh into taking care of more veterans.

But there's several ways that we we work through a referral source to make sure that our veterans are being seen.

So you're pretty much like a bridge between a VA and getting them to the service and the, I guess, product and pharmacy that they truly need.

Correct.

Okay.

And one of the things here is you can see down on the bottom left there that I'd like to just point out is um this past year I signed a partnership with the Defense Health Service Agency so that we can train our active duty members, whether it's their physicians, whether it's our 18 Delta special forces medics and so forth.

They actually work alongside of our trauma uh surgeons and our staff to make sure that they're prepared in time of need.

So when they get deployed, as you know, many of the clinics across the United States or military installations are now turned into clinics.

They don't have the robust health system that we have, such as Evans.

So right now we have an Air Force Academy surgeon that is assigned to our ED every single day.

That's their duty station, so that that individual is prepared and ready to serve our active duty military in time of crisis.

But our 18 Deltas are doing that.

They're trauma surgeons, they're orthopedic surgeons.

So God forbid if they ever have to deploy and are faced with taking care of our soldiers in the battlefield, they have seen and have had that experience through the level one trauma center.

So we believe we're creating better uh better trained um military service members so that they're prepared.

Hopefully they never have to use it, but if they do, it's there.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

And uh Lonnie, you can you might want to save your uh God forbid for something else, because it will happen with the 18 Deltas, I guarantee you.

Right now, there's guys around the world using what they uh practiced uh with you.

Um, when I was going through, you know, they they send the 18 Dults through paramedic school.

I I did it down in San Antonio.

I treated so many gunshot wounds down in San Antonio as a paramedic, right?

In an ambulance, shotgun blasts, shot in the neck, all kind of stuff.

And that's invaluable experience here in the United States, which uh makes you more proficient when you know in some foreign country somewhere.

So that's a huge asset to our troops.

Yes.

Thank you, council member.

Yeah, I was there as well at the academy, and it's great to see the partnership in our communities.

Thank you.

Any other questions, President?

Okay.

Thank you.

Moving on, our forensic center of excellence.

As many of you know, um, we were the first to launch uh for forensic center of excellence inside uh our trauma center in the world.

So what this is is a nice relaxing area as much as possible.

So we pull these patients, these victims out of the busy ED and provide this passionate care that is unmatched.

I will tell you, if you haven't seen it, if you're one of our newer council members, haven't been there.

If you'd like to see it, I'd love to give you a tour.

Unfortunately, this number continues to grow uh every year as we expand services.

We are now providing services, both telehealth services to many of our rural hospitals, but there are four rural hospitals that we're also traveling to to provide that service into our rural areas.

But as you can see, unfortunately, there's been about a 37% increase in in our telehealth and about a 14% increase year over year in the amount of assault victims that we are taking care of.

We not only do this inside of our hospitals, but as you know, we've also partnered with um Safe Passage.

Uh, I think I have a slide here, but if not, uh, we're also doing that for our our children population.

Um exciting news.

Uh go team USA.

Uh this past year, I was fortunate enough to sign a uh partnership as a um Paralympic Committee and the Olympic Committee as a medical network partner.

We are one of four now across the United States that serve our athletes, and we have over 15,000 um Olympians that train here annually in Paralympians.

So this is great, and this is a lot of pride for our city.

Whole blood.

Um, if you haven't heard, um, we're doing amazing work here, over 100 lives saved.

Uh, this is through philanthropy in partnership with our Colorado Springs Fire Department, and uh, we are truly saving lives.

One life is saved every 72 hours in Southern Colorado thanks to philanthropy and our partnership with Colorado Springs Fire.

We have now launched this in Teller County and in Pueblo as well.

And you're seeing more and more of this across the state because it has proven to save lives.

Mobile Stroke Treatment Unit as we cut the ribbon and dedicated a unit this past year down here.

We went from 182 residents screened through our part-time mobile stroke unit to over 443 patients seen.

And this is where the amulets has the ability to not only do the CT on the scene in a driveway, but also administer clot busting and reversible drugs to reverse the side effects of stroke.

And if you haven't been touched by this, I hope you don't.

But the stories that come out of this unit are remarkable.

And then last but not least, I want to talk about the investment that we're making in Colorado Springs.

As you know, our level one trauma center is often time exceeded uh capacity.

I've gotten several alerts this week, over 104, 110% capacity, and we are landlocked.

So there's just no way to grow in our current footprint at our level one trauma center.

So uh I took this to the UC Health Board and they approved a 442 million dollar expansion of our North campus, which will allow us to push some less acuity care up north and allow us to continue to see the high acuity patients and to serve more of Colorado.

We are going to shell a lot of this space.

Um, so it's not like we're gonna open all this space on day one, but we're building for the next 25 years, not the next five.

Um, so as you can see there, we're gonna open with four operating rooms, we're shelling four, so a total of eight.

We're gonna build eight ED rooms, 50 inpatient beds, and create uh over 200 jobs just in this initial phase.

Um with that, I want to thank you again for having me today, and thank you for all you do for our city, and I'm happy to take any questions.

I don't see more questions at this time.

However, um, thank you for all that you're doing and everything that you do every single day in our community.

It's not lost on me.

Um, and I just think the citizens and my newer colleagues need to understand what it means to have a level one trauma center in our city.

That's extraordinary, as you know.

The type of providers that it draws here is extraordinary.

I've seen some of the stories myself and um the comprehensive stroke unit as well.

It's it's um not an easy task to become a comprehensive stroke unit, as you know, and for that to be in our region in the mobile unit as we know in the medical world, brain is time.

And the more time that um goes by whenever people do have a stroke, a heart attack, or are in this um conditions, it's it's imperative um that we get them there.

So the lives or just the impairments that have been saved because of that.

I don't think that we'll ever be able to count.

So thank you for the effort, the money that went into that because it's not an easy task.

The certifications, the accreditations is a huge lift.

So I just commend you on that.

Um as far as the um virtual and um what did you call it, the virtual world that you had there?

The virtual health system.

I personally um use that with my parents in eastern Colorado, and I track their pacemakers every day because of that.

So thank you very much for that.

That helps me sleep at night.

But I don't think that the Eastern Colorado or even the rural Colorado understands how important that is for those people out there too.

I never thought I because when I first started in this world, I worked in Parkview, now UC Health Cat lab.

Never thought I'd ever see somebody tracking a pacemaker on my phone.

So that that is extraordinary, and I know it firsthand.

So personally, thank you for all that you're doing there and your team.

I know exactly what it takes.

I don't live it every day, but I do see it.

So we appreciate the update.

We appreciate what you're doing with UC Health and behalf of the city of Colorado Springs.

Well, thank you, President, and thank you, City Council members.

Uh, if you want to see any of this or have further discussions, you're welcome to reach out to me.

And I'm I'm happy to sit down and meet you for lunch or coffee to discuss.

So thank you for all you do, and thanks for having me.

Moving on to item six B.

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

Children's hospital annual presentation.

Good morning, Greg.

Good morning, President.

Good morning, council.

Appreciate the opportunity to be with you again.

How are we doing on time?

Do I need to manage my time?

Okay, thank you.

All right.

So several goals that I have today, you can see in the overview slide in front of you.

Really want to remind those of you that have heard my presentations in the past and new members of council, what Children's Hospital Colorado really is throughout the in the region, and especially here in Southern Colorado.

Talk about what we've accomplished over the past year, the phenomenal quality and safety work that we're doing.

Look to the commitment that we have to the community and how we continue to support our community.

Following up with a just a view into the future that Lonnie has already mentioned, the impacts on UC Health are mirrored on Children's Hospital Colorado.

And then I have to tell a patient story, and I'm going to do it best through video if we have time.

So looking forward to addressing our time together in that way.

Children's Hospital Colorado is a pediatric system that is dedicated exclusively to the care of kids throughout the region.

And that includes primarily along the front range of Colorado, but more recently extending to the western slope as well, encompassing 17 different locations.

Three of those physical locations are here in Colorado Springs.

It's the Colorado Springs Hospital that opened in 2019.

It's a pediatric multi-specialty clinic just to the south of that hospital across Briorgate.

There's our TELSTAR location that provides physical and behavioral health therapies for our kids.

And then in partnership with UC Health, our team members provide staffing for the neonatal intensive care unit at Memorial Central.

So our team members are in four locations, but as far as our count of physical locations, we have three here in Colorado Springs.

You can see as a system of care approaching 2800 medical staff members and a similar number of volunteers and a lot of trainees.

Here in Southern Colorado, we've got 300 over 300 faculty members that live and practice almost exclusively in Colorado Springs and that have really elevated the level of pediatric expertise in our community.

And then we continue to be a regional leader in innovation, research, diagnosing and treatment of pediatric conditions.

Lonnie mentioned UC Health's high rankings, both from the state and from a regional perspective, and he uh mentioned U.S.

news rankings.

And that's something that the pediatric world really focuses on because the adult ranking systems, Visiant and others, they're a little delayed in adopting pediatrics because pediatrics is such a small piece of the health care piece of the pie, so to speak.

So pediatrics from those ratings perspective tend to be a little bit behind.

U.S.

news, on the other hand, has consistently ranked pediatric hospitals, and that is the measure with which pediatric hospitals nationally really focus.

What I really want to highlight here is if you look at the 11 specialties that are ranked by U.S.

News and World Report.

And what that leads to is our organization being in what's called the honor roll, so one of the top 10 pediatric hospitals in the country.

That's something we're very proud of.

What's important is I keep saying our system.

All the services here in southern Colorado contribute to that.

It's our stellar outcomes, it's our medical staff members, it's the volume that we take care of, it's the technology that we have in this community and we're providing here locally.

And that leads to not only the number one ranking in the state, but the number one ranking in the Rocky Mountain region.

And you will see from a regional perspective of the top 10 children's in the hospital.

We have a very large footprint with which we have the opportunity to influence state-of-the-art pediatric care.

So we're very proud of the role that we play regionally throughout the middle of the country.

And you can see here that of all of the who's who's of the children in the children's hospital world, uh, we're positioned to cover a lot of square mileage or acreage.

Um, we may not have the same population as some of those hospitals do on the coast, but we're very fortunate uh to have the resources that we do within our organization.

Okay, from a volume perspective and the numbers perspective, there's a lot of different figures here that you can look at.

But what I would really highlight is in general, the amount of care that we provide in southern Colorado amounts to about 20% of what our overall system does.

That's including almost 40,000 pediatric emergency room visits, over 8,000 admissions, and pushing 5,500 surgeries annually.

So who do we take care of?

A lot of times, um, at least from a leadership perspective, we pay attention to not only the different communities that we uh pay or that we take care of, but then also how we get reimbursed for that care to ensure our sustainability.

We're approaching uh 65% governmental payer or reimbursement for the services we provide.

All children's hospitals care for about 45 to 50 percent Medicaid kids.

That's just a national standard.

Colorado is no different from that.

Here in Colorado Springs, the big differentiator for children's hospital Colorado is we have a second governmental payer that a lot of other children's hospitals throughout the country, unless they're in a military or in the defense community, don't see, and that is, as you can see here, close to 17% of the kids that we take care of are on TRICARE.

TRI-Care and Medicaid are very different and distinct programs.

I want to emphasize that.

They reimburse below the cost of care.

As an organization, we think about those populations differently, but then from a financial perspective, we have to pay attention to both Medicaid and TRICARE do not cover our cost of care.

I reported last year at this time that the Defense Health Agency and the under the Department of Defense's direction made the decision to implicate or to implement a Medicare-based reimbursement methodology for pediatric hospitals.

There's only one service in a pediatric hospital that is reimbursed by Medicare, and that is pediatric dialysis.

So we've got an adult-based system that's being used to develop reimbursement methodologies for pediatric services.

That doesn't translate, and that's led to here locally a reduction in 22 million dollars in revenue just in the past fiscal year alone, based on that decision by the Department of Defense and implemented by the Defense Health Agency.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President.

I just want to make sure I understood you correctly because I know that was a very hot topic uh in the media, not just in the state of Colorado, but I know through the halls of Congress, it became a very hot topic.

Um but I thought that was recently adjusted or a new decision came about to make sure that uh you can accept TRICARE.

Has that not transpired yet?

Yeah, Councilman Rainey, a couple different ways to respond to that.

You're absolutely right.

It has been very prominent both locally and at the federal level, and it continues to be.

We've worked with formerly Congressman Lamborn and now Congressman Crank to come to a sustainable solution to reverse this decision, this federal decision that impacts all pediatric hospitals in health care or defense communities, excuse me.

But what you may be alluding to as well is when this rule was put in place, Children's Hospital Colorado is in the position of determining whether we would remain in network to provide benefits to tri care families.

And we made that decision for 2024, and more recently we made the decision to continue that for 2020.

So 2024 impacting 2025, and now we've agreed to remain in network for a year, which is a temporary solution for 2026.

While that brings relief to the families that depend on Tri-ACARE for access to pediatric specialty services, it doesn't alleve the pressures on us to come to a sustainable solution.

So we continue to work with Crow's office, excuse me, uh, with Crank's office and our U.S.

Senators for a sustainable solution.

We're not going to reverse the decisions that that's been made, but we will continue to partner.

We have preliminary language in the National Defense Authorization Act that's been authored by the House.

It's still being evaluated by the Senate.

But again, this is not just a Colorado Springs problem.

It disproportionately impacts us, though, because the amount of kids that we take care of that depend on Tri-Care for access to pediatric specialized care.

Okay.

Thanks for that insight.

Sure.

Councilman Donaldson?

Yeah, thanks, Madam President, and uh good morning, Dr.

DiStefano, correct?

No, I'm sorry, I I didn't I realized I didn't introduce myself.

I'm Greg Raymond.

Okay.

And then I am joined by Dr.

DeStefano, who's here, our chief medical officer.

Okay.

Um, and I had to step out, so that's that's on me.

Um, you mentioned uh Medicare is created as an adult-based plan.

But are we talking about Medicare or Medicaid?

So they're easily interchanged.

Yeah.

So the reimbursement methodology that the Defense Health Agency has implemented is based on Medicare, which is an adult program.

Okay.

So that translates to how TRICARE gets reimbursed.

Medicaid is totally separate.

That is the state-run program that is jointly funded by the state of Colorado and with federal funds, and that's a total separate funding mechanism.

So the confusion is that TRICARE is reimbursing pediatric hospitals using adult methodology based on Medicare.

Medicare.

Okay.

Okay.

We don't need to get into those.

We just keep I understand you're being reimbursed less than the cost of the um uh procedure, the care.

Correct.

That can't go on indefinitely and it has to be made up somehow.

And significantly less than it was before this rule went into effect in October of 2000 2023.

Okay, thank you.

All right, moving along, uh, some of our regional responsibilities, just high highlight things here that outside the walls of our facility, we have uh regional influence and national influence.

And one of the things that uh the pandemic really brought on is how do we continue to educate the providers throughout the world, it turns out, as well as throughout the region, and so we became very proficient in developing online educational resources, including a podcast that's had over 48, 38,000 learners.

We do one in Spanish that is available throughout the world that has a lot of uptake.

The second bullet references our research infrastructure that we've invested in heavily over the past couple of years.

We have uh regional care alliances, and recently we just highlighted Dr.

De Stefano who's with me today.

He and I were able to go to uh Alamosa and work with their health care system and develop a care alliance, which really enables though that care team in Alamosa to take care of those kids up to their level of expertise and to provide them the ongoing education and training, airway management, other types of emergency responses so that those kids in their community have what they need, and then facilitate transport if their expertise is exceeded, and they need a higher level of care.

And then uh talk about regional outcare outreach clinics where faculty members are able to go in those communities, 14 different specialties, you know, push over 130,000 visits, so just some areas that were influencing care outside of our four walls.

So, transitioning to quality and safety.

I want to um share a story, and I'm not gonna do it do it justice.

And I could bring up Dr.

DeStefano and ask him to do it, but I'll spare him uh that.

But recently we had a high school child, a high school kid, I'll call him, uh a young adult, who without any former evidence of any kind of cardiac anomaly, went down in class in one of our high schools.

And faculty members who were attuned to what's going on, knowing that there's an AED on that campus, and classmates originally thought there was this child was having a seizure.

Someone, I believe it was a classmate, teacher, a teacher, uh, checked and realized there was no pulse, and they implemented utilization of the AED and triggered a 911 response.

Without that teacher and without the students knowing what to do, I can say confidently that we wouldn't have that young man with us today.

EMS picked him up, brought him at children's hospital Colorado.

During the course of transport, was shocked multiple times to regain a heart rhythm.

That young man was met in our emergency department by a pediatric cardiologist by a pediatric intense of us to emergency medicine physicians where he continued to require shock to maintain a heart rhythm.

Children's Hospital Colorado has a transport um service.

They were out caring for another child regionally.

So we called upon our partners at UC Health to transport this child up to the quaternary expertise that exists at our Anschutz medical campus, wherein during the course of that transport, he was shocked four more times.

Upon arrival at our Anchutes Medical Campus in Aurora, he was immediately put on ECMO to maintain oxygenation of his blood, and I believe he's home now.

On the 29th, yeah on the 29th, he returned home.

That expertise didn't exist in Colorado Springs, you know, prior to 2019.

But what's equally important is we had schools that knew what to do.

We had transport provided by this the city to get that young man to children's hospital Colorado.

We had the pediatric expertise in town.

We had a partner with UC Health that was able to do a rotor transport to quaternary care, and we had a critical care cardiac in care cardiac critical care unit to take care of this child and get them back home.

That is a significant success story.

We don't have all those services here in Colorado Springs because they don't they're not needed very often.

But as a community, we've come together to meet the needs.

All right.

This is the next couple of slides are sobering for me, and I'm gonna do my best to keep it together.

So bear with me.

Pediatric suicide, we're all aware of the challenges that the state of Colorado has, but equally or more alarming, the challenges we have here in El Paso County.

And what was really a watershed moment for children's hospital Colorado is that in 2015 at a location in the Denver metro area, we had a child that came who had punched a wall and had fractured his hand to the emergency department.

And what did we do?

We took the best care of that fractured hand you can imagine.

Unfortunately, that child returned that to that same emergency room within two days from ingestion from an attempted suicide.

And it really caused us to pause and say, what are we doing here?

We need to treat the whole patient, not just the injury.

And that was really one of those watershed moments where we decided we need to start screening all the patients that come into the emergency room to really understand what's going on, what's leading to their behavior, what's leading to their injury.

Or maybe they're just sick and their parents don't know that they have challenges going on in their lives.

So what you see here is a longitudinal track of the suicide screening, the completion we've seen.

If you put a trend line on that, you can see really going back, and it's about five to six month increments, a significant increase in our ability to screen those patients.

So what does that mean?

In this data provided by the El Paso Public Health Department, you can see that as a three-year rolling rate, uh, we've seen some improvements.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks.

Uh Madam President and uh Mr.

Remy, can you just go back to that previous slide and kind of explain it to us?

Uh what the hell is that thing?

What is that?

Is that an EKG?

What do we have there?

Well, I may call upon Dr.

DeStefano to help.

Or should we just ignore it's not that important and drive on?

So the important piece here is the trend that we become much more proficient to screen, you know, approaching 95% of the kids that come into emergency apartment over the age of 10 for suicidal ideation or thoughts of self-harm.

Okay, so on that uh left, far left axis is a percentage, 95% at the top.

Correct.

And we've gotten up there.

And what's the difference between the red and the blue?

What's Dr.

D Stefano was?

And again, we don't have to go down that rabbit hole.

We'll just say that's a what we call a control chart.

Anything in blue is what you would say your system is performing.

Anything in red is what we'd call special cause or reasons for it.

And so as you see it trend up to the right, there are reasons for that.

Um stats.

So I won't get too heavily into it, but just know that it's outside of what we would expect if we weren't changing our system to make improvements.

Okay.

So for example, on the right side where you see it transition from a blue dot to the red dots, we implemented a hard stop in L in our electronic medical record that forced action.

And so that uh pushed it up to that higher compliance.

So does that suffice?

Okay.

So I I am not proposing that screening kids in our emergency department is the sole contributor to a decrease in the three-year rolling average of uh suicides in our youth age 10 to 18.

But what I will highlight is that over the course of the past two periods, we've seen a decrease in the rate of six percent.

And if you compare it to our peak going back to 2015 through 2017, it's a 41% decrease.

So there's a correlation there.

Uh I don't know that we can say that it's there's causation that when we screen kids, I think it's much broader than that.

Lonnie spoke about their investment on the adult side.

We've seen that same investment on the pediatric side.

We've have partial hospitalization program that allows kids to receive an inpatient level of care if they're safe to stay at home and have those resources in their backyard here in Colorado Springs now.

We've got community providers, we've got community partners, a lot of individuals have their hand in this rate going down.

Councilman Hinge.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Do you have a relationship with the suicide prevention uh coalition and um uh Cass Walton and the work that they're doing on in youth prevention?

So our our behavioral health leader, Lauren Eckert, is very involved in that, and she brings in other members of our team, including licensed clinical social workers and others to participate and help inform that.

I'm sure a lot of their work is is I'm there are many, many factors, but I just wanted to make sure that that connection was there.

Yeah, and thank you, and I I'll say it more directly, or I'll restate it.

The it's a community response that's uh resulting in these numbers, and we're all we should all be very proud of that.

But I hesitate, meaning because one's too many.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President.

The data that you're currently sharing with us, do you share that same data with the uh varying school boards in all the different regions and uh if so what's the partnership there based on these numbers?

Yeah, we're gonna talk about our community partnerships here in just a minute, which covers multiple um school districts.

But the the group that council member hydrogen was just speaking about is really the coalition of our community where this information gets shared by the health department.

And so I think there's a lot of tentacles that touch different organizations, different school districts, and all that to try to get this information out.

And probably more important is yes, the information is impactful, but what are the community resources that are available at the school level, at the hospital level, at the church level, wherever those needs may be arising.

So I'll talk about that in just a minute as well.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, my last quality slide.

Uh, we have a pediatric intensive care unit, children's hospital, Colorado, and we've been participating in national uh collaborative really to standardize and evaluate the performance of our pediatric intensive care unit relative to like sized units throughout the country.

And so from an expected mortality ratio perspective, 1.0 is what is expected.

And you can see the light blue is the Children's Hospital Colorado pediatric intensive care unit, and that its expected mortality is fourth out of 17.

I just highlight that to for council's awareness of the expertise that exists here and our ability to take care of very sick and sometimes uh traumatic injuries that find their way to our pediatric intensive care unit as well.

Um Lonnie spoke about community benefit as well.

Looking at this from a system perspective, you can see the amount of community benefit that we reported in 2024.

All of this touches the services we provide here in Colorado Springs.

About 75% of it is financial assistance, as you can see here.

But I really want to talk about the community health improvement work that goes on about 20 mil 23 million dollars.

This is a list across our entire system of care, but I've highlighted in yellow for you those programs that have a either virtual or physical presence here in Colorado Springs.

These are programs that are additive to the hands-on clinical care and really are a differentiator either at the community level or at the individual level to advance health and wellness in our next generation.

From our community health needs assessment, you can see here that our priorities for our current evaluation period spread across both health priorities and social drivers of health.

And I emphasize social drivers of health because we're really trying to reframe reframe that as an organization.

I think the more colloquial term is social determinants of health.

And inherent in that is a finality.

If I have this, then it's an absolute that it's determined, that's my lot in life.

We're really trying to view it.

These are driving a current situation.

That current situation could be changed.

So I wanted to highlight the difference between a social driver of health versus a social determinant of health.

And so you can see probably no surprise to anyone here.

We have action plans associated with each of these.

I'll highlight the URL at the bottom of this.

If you're interested in the action plans associated with these six community health needs that were driven by community stakeholder groups, surveys, parents, providers, uh, I will uh encourage you to go to that, those websites and see those plans for yourself.

Looking forward, and Mr.

Kramer did a great job of outlining it from an adult perspective, and it's not too dissimilar from a pediatric perspective.

But what I'll highlight is is two things is Medicaid, not to be confused with Medicare.

Um, Medicaid is really established for coverage for children and for pregnant moms.

Interestingly, uh, if you look at uh the last sentence in the map of the state, that children make up a third of the program enrollees in Medicaid, but only account for a sixth of its spending.

So a third of the enrollee is a sixth of the spending.

On the right side, uh, you can see that leadership from a bipartisan perspective has typically prioritized coverage for health care benefits for kids.

And those two things together really emphasize that there is some risk going forward with HR one.

We're seeing, and Lonnie spoke to a lot of these.

I I think the important thing that I'll highlight is the rural and the safety net providers have it the uh you know are gonna have a larger Medicaid patient load as more people become disenrolled.

And you may ask, well, what does this mean for kids?

If if Medicaid's set up for kids and some of these HR changes are proposed for the adult population, it could impact kids in that overall there's gonna be reductions in Medicaid reimbursement.

Governor Polis' budget proposes significant decreases.

This is in light of a $800 million budget shortfall already.

Part of his momentum is to reduce payments to providers.

If payments to providers decrease, that's not just hospital, that's primary care providers.

We might have reduced access for kids.

There's an administrative burden associated with that.

As their parents become disenrolled, there's some upheaval.

There's the opportunity for access to kids to be influenced by this as well.

And with that, um, I was hoping if we have got a minute 50 left, I'd like to wrap it up with this video just to highlight uh our role in the community and our partner with the military.

Why it's so important?

Since Evans Army Community Hospital mostly treats adults, children's hospital Colorado came to base to lead the trainings.

Children's is a great partner for us because they help us with elevating our care so that we're ready to do all these urgent procedures.

And ultimately, sometimes we have to transfer them to their hospital, but they really help us with getting the first steps done here so we can support those children.

Tuesday's training was centered around traumatic injuries.

Dropping down at 71.

To make sure all families on base have close access to quality care when minutes matter most.

What we don't want to see is people putting their loved ones in jeopardy and driving them in the back of their car all the way to the north end of town.

About 40 providers, ranging from nurses to active duty, went through the scenarios.

Children, uh, they aren't little adults.

They do have their own anatomy and physiology that is extremely specific in certain situations and with certain mechanisms of disease and injury.

So we're here to help with education for these mostly adult providers who are still committed to doing their best on any patient that walks through the doors.

These trainings are done on a quarterly basis to keep the skills fresh, but also because of regular turnover from deployment.

Our job is to take care of the patients in the community, but we're also responsible for training the soldiers so that when they go and deploy, they're able to take care of the soldiers.

So we have a dual mission here that a lot of hospitals don't have, and we're constantly getting new medics that have just finished training programs.

The team say scenarios they've practiced in the past have become a reality at Evans with positive outcomes.

All right, I had a little slide at the end, but that's uh the end of my presentation.

So thank you, counsel.

Councilman Linewimmer.

So since I have an expert here, and I actually have, and you have support, um, you know, the national media is really talking about the health of our kids just in such huge decline since the 70s.

Um, you know, we've been a lot of talk around autism.

You know, it used to be reported one in 10,000, now it's one in 31.

Yeah, that's a that's a huge change.

And yeah, maybe they didn't account for it very well in the old days, but still over the last several decades, just recent decades, we've had increases in autism.

And then um statistics that um around cancer rates have gone up um 50% since the 70s.

Um, and then obesity rates from 5% in the 60s to 20 percent today, and then um just over 40 percent of American children currently have at least one chronic health condition.

So nationally, we have been fed or being told that there's a crisis going on with our kids, and uh how are you guys, how are you, as our local experts in children health responding to those things?

I mean, that I believe them to be true.

I want to hear from you how you look at these numbers and how we should respond as counsel and and really how do we improve the health of our kids who as demonstrated uh we care about deeply.

I appreciate that question.

So, as the parent of four kids myself, I've experienced, and you know, there three are in college now, and I have one at home, and I've they've been through K through 12 here on Colorado Springs, and I've seen that.

I already spoke about the behavioral health challenges.

My immediate response is a children's hospital success is gauged on how many kids we keep out of the hospital, not how many kids we take care of.

And what that means for those different disease entities or those different diagnosis that you just described, it varies significantly.

As a research institution, as an academic medical center, we have some of the nation's forefront investigators that are really challenged themselves and their colleagues to answer some of those questions to find out what is going on.

It's not as simple as everybody has an iPhone and there's too much screen time.

It's broader than that.

Is it how what does the seditary lifestyle influence that, whether it's diabetes or whether it's obesity?

There's all those different factors that come into it.

So while I don't have specifics to say autism, to speak to autism or to cancer diagnosis or to obesity rates, I can assure you that as an academic medical center with 20, almost 2800 faculty members, some of which dedicate their career to research, we're looking and we're asking those questions, and we're developing the partnerships throughout the country to do that.

And so I I can call on Dr.

DeStefano if you have any additional insight, um, and or if you thought I covered it.

Thank you, Nailbert.

That's the only time the chief medical officer has set up nailed it.

So I'm going to take that.

Well, it's a big concern because I mean, if we look on the world stage, our rankings in the world, we keep seeing a decline and us not providing the same care as other um uh countries.

And so um it's it's become alarming to a lot of citizens about what's happening to our kids and um and the need for you more and more.

Um I guess that's what I'm trying to get at is how are we how how are you helping on that educational side and really kind of leaning into that?

And you've you know, some of the research that you've talked about right now.

Um I mean, I think we have to find a way to address this issue because those kids become young adults and then they become adults, and and and sometimes at that stage, we're well past um being able to do much about it.

Um, if we could um uh I've been working in this mental health piece, and it's interesting how everything keeps pointing back to the fact that if we really want to address mental health, we have to deal with kids at the age of three.

And um, that's where we have to start.

And so that's what I wanted to highlight is what what's what are we doing, you know, that you that you that encourages you, or how are we addressing this issue in a broader sense?

Well, and you've triggered a thought, and just following up on the question that council member Rani brought up.

We have we've embedded behavioral health providers into school districts.

I think believe we're in five different school districts now throughout the city to really help have the resources.

A lot of times the school districts don't either have the expertise or have the funding themselves to do it.

So that's another example.

We lead the injury prevention coalition in Colorado Springs, whether that's water safety, pedestrian safety, um, even so much as providing life jackets at Pueblo Reservoir, given the unfortunate drownings we continue to experience in Pueblo Reservoir.

So there's different ways to go about that.

The important thing is it's it's not just one organization.

It's not just UC Health, it's not just children's Colorado, it's the community and like-minded organizations and convening those folks like we're doing with some of the behavioral health work.

So thank you.

Councilman Hendrium.

Uh, thank you, Madam President.

Uh, thank you, Greg, and and also Lonnie.

Um, I find myself in taking in all of this data and what you have to present, feeling um really grateful, like deeply grateful for um how you show up and how all of the people who work for you show up every day as it gets harder and harder and harder.

And so I also feel grateful, but I feel a little petrified, quite frankly, because I think some of the data that I saw you present, I feel like I'm watching us get it ready to go over a cliff.

And it's the cost.

Um, you know, we're the wealthiest country in the world, pretty much.

We have the highest rates of health care costs in the world per person.

And yet we're seeing declines and uh concerns that we just heard talked about.

I don't expect you to answer uh the solution to that challenge.

I don't know that there is a solution.

Um, but it there's a direct line to what we do here at City Council, things like ordinances around people sleeping in cars, and how long can they stay there before they have to move and where are they gonna go?

So I guess my question for for you, Greg, and for you, Lonnie, if if you have an answer to this, is what are the questions that we city council and the public?

Oh, and I'm looking at Tatiana Bailey, our economic expert who just a couple weeks ago shared information that also had me very petrified about the future of our state and economics.

What are the questions that we need to be asking ourselves?

What are the questions that we need to be asking legislators?

I mean, not only so much of this, I think can be legislated.

Um, but yeah, what are the questions that you have?

Thank you for challenging us.

And so I'll respond on my behalf.

I think Lonnie would share this, but purely from my lens.

A couple different things.

We need to catch it upstream.

What are we doing from a prevention perspective to keep kids, adolescents, and then adults when they get to Lonnie's world healthy with lifestyles that are not dependent on a lot of pharmaceutical expensive pharmaceuticals that are not dependent upon other types of interventions to maintain a quality of life.

That's programs, it's access to primary care in the pediatric world.

I can't speak on the adult side of things, but we still are short family practice physicians and pediatricians, so that people get can get timely appointments.

The more people delay care, the more expensive it gets.

Now there are some incredible, there's this incredible science taking place right now, leading to pharmaceutical interventions in kids.

I'm over pharmacy for our entire system of care.

I approve medications, 1.85 million dollars per dose.

They will save a life and they will cure a child.

I would argue that most people in this room would say that's the best 1.85 million dollars you can spend.

Because it's solving something.

And then there's that child goes on to live a natural life.

But that's where high cost drugs are going.

And we as a community, we as a country need to decide how we want to afford that because it's a great investment.

But for people who are relatively healthy, what are they doing outside?

We advocate at the state level for restrictions on screen time for kids in schools.

All those types of things factor into it.

I don't know, Lonnie, if you want to make a statement.

Councilman Henriam.

Thank you.

I think the biggest piece that we see is over 450 health care bills have been passed in the last five years.

Those health care bills cost us a ton of resources to manage to track.

It takes away from the money that we spend on the bedside and taking care of patients.

I could tell you 30 years ago, I had a finance team that was this big, denial team that was this big, and I I see hundreds, if not thousands, of people throughout my health care system that don't touch patients today that are just managing some of the legislation.

And this is where I I would share with uh Councilman Lineweber.

We haven't improved care just because we pass more bills and we've got more people working on it.

So let's put more care back to the bedside and just ask for a break in legislation for a while so that we can hopefully focus on what's really about to hit us, which is this decline in reimbursement.

So we can work with our payers to try to find solutions.

But if we keep chasing things that are not keeping our eye on the ball as administrators, I worry.

So thank you for the question.

Thank you.

Councilman Donaldson?

Okay, thank you, madam presidents, and um and Mr.

Raymond, uh 95%, 99% of what you do at children's hospital is uh broadly supported.

Every everyone says it's uh it's good.

There is there are some things that I think personally I I'm concerned about, and I know other citizens, probably a big proportion of our citizens are concerned about, and that is uh, you know, transgender surgeries, transgender hormones.

When when you were here last time, we talked about this to some you talked about it for a bit.

Can you bring us up to date on what the status is at uh children's hospital here?

Surgeries going on, still going on or not?

Uh what treatments are being done there?

Yeah.

Children's Hospital Colorado does not provide gender-affirming surgical care at any of our locations, including Colorado Springs.

Okay.

And when did that stop?

So all surgeries stopped in 2023.

Okay.

Prior to Children's Hospital Colorado has never provided gender-affirming surgical care for any patients less than 18 years of age prior to 2023.

Okay.

And then other treatments, well, I don't even like to use that word.

The hormones uh reverse hormones is that um being done.

Children's Colorado has a clinic where they provide medical and behavioral health services to gender-diverse patients.

That is primarily at our Anschutz Medical Center campus, and we have a modest presence in Colorado Springs.

And what age does that go down to, especially for me, the hormones, which I think some can't be reversed, some of the effects it has on the body.

Do you know?

Councilman Donaldson, I'm not embedded in that clinic, so I don't know the absolute age off the top of my head.

And so I I would be just speculating, so I don't know that age.

Does anyone uh here know?

I mean, uh to me, 18 is one thing, 13 or 12 is another uh or or even less.

Yeah, I I don't have that information at my fingertips right now.

Okay, could it be sent to us just in an email?

I'll work with my team and see what I can provide.

Okay.

Okay.

I'll say it again.

I said it last time.

I think we're gonna look back in uh time and regret what we what we've done to some kids.

Uh I know Europe has slowed this way down.

Uh so again, thank you for your presentation.

Thank you for uh the work you do there.

I don't have any other questions or comments at this time.

Thank you so much for the information and what you do for our city and our region.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Appreciate the opportunity.

Welcome.

Moving on to 7A.

Will the clerk please read item 7A into the record?

Informational presentation on the housing needs assessment.

Good morning, Amy.

Hi.

Thank you.

Well, good morning, President Crow Iverson, President Pro Tem Risley, and members of City Council.

For the record, I am Amy Cox, the city's chief housing and homelessness response officer.

And I am pleased to be here today with my esteemed colleagues who I will introduce in just a moment to uh present the city of Colorado Springs and El Paso County regional housing needs assessment.

This document is a comprehensive analysis of both current and future housing needs in our region.

It is very dense.

You were all provided uh hard copies of this.

Before I begin, though, I want to celebrate some recent progress.

In the last two months, 720 new affordable homes have closed in in Colorado Springs with city support.

So it's important to know that while we're doing this planning effort, um, we are continuing to act and we will continue to act on the needs identified in this report.

So here's what we'll cover this morning.

I'll provide you a brief background on the project.

We'll look at the big picture trends that brought us to where we are today.

We'll look at key demographic and economic indicators, our current housing inventory and market conditions.

We'll talk about the housing challenges and gaps identified through the analysis, and we'll review the next steps for the city, and we're very excited about the next steps for our city.

Council approval of this document is not required.

We're sharing this assessment because you are key partners in shaping our housing future.

And this helps our entire community prepare for what's ahead.

Let's just be honest, the challenges are significant, but so are the benefits if we can meet this moment and ensure all residents have the safe and stable homes they need to flourish in our city.

We worked with many partners on this assessment.

We are joined today by three key partners, Dr.

Tatiana Bailey with data-driven economic strategies, whose team examined demographic and economic trends and analyzed homelessness and households at risk.

We have James McMurray, project manager with Matrix Design Group, who led the technical analysis.

And one of my favorites, Katie Sunderland, our housing solutions manager, who does an exceptional job helping affordable housing developers navigate our city programs and successfully close their projects.

This was truly a regional effort.

So there are uh before we get into details.

I want to highlight four key messages you're gonna hear throughout this presentation.

First is that our community community continues to grow faster than both the state and the nation.

We are on the move here in Colorado Springs.

Second, our city's uh 27,000 unit housing shortage has been decades in the making, and this dates back to the great recession and years of underbuilding.

Dr.

Bailey will talk more about this.

Third, we have single-person households, seniors, and low-income residents who face the greatest challenges in our market today.

And finally, this assessment directly informs the 2026 housing action plan, which will outline strategies to meet these needs.

We will launch that uh right after the first of the year.

So this assessment provides a regional analysis of housing needs within Colorado Springs and unincorporated El Paso County.

We also collected data and provided data for the minute the other municipalities within our in our region.

The purpose of this, uh in addition to helping our community understand its housing needs and take action.

This this assessment fulfills all requirements of Senate Bill 24 uh 174, the state legislation that guides communities in evaluating housing needs and aligning policies and strategies, and the state also provided grant funding to support this work, and they'll also be supporting the action plan that'll follow the methodology used both quantitative and qualitative data, quantitative data came from federal, state, local, and proprietary sources using the most current information available.

It's important to note, however, that not all sources included data at every geography at the state level, county level, and incorporated areas and city, and we note those limitations throughout the report.

There's a lot of fine print about the um the sources of data.

We also held guided discussions with 60 stakeholders across the region, including planners, housing providers, elected officials, military partners, and community advocates.

Their insights provided context and helped us assess the feasibility of future strategies.

So with that, I am excited to I turn this over to Dr.

Tatiana Bailey.

I'm here.

Oh, there you are.

I thought I thought I thought you were going first now.

Go right ahead.

Okay.

This is the big picture.

Yeah.

Awesome.

That's me.

Thank you.

Thank you, everyone, for the opportunity to uh participate in this process.

I'm gonna move kind of quickly just because we're short on time.

So I'm gonna start with demographics.

Um I always say demographics is destiny.

You can see here the green bars show population growth in uh the state of Colorado versus the US, which is the line.

You can see how Colorado outpaced the nation for decades.

And that's great, right?

I mean, we're we're in a wonderful situation.

However, look at how the two lines are converging in the in you know, the last I guess really couple of decades here.

You can see that in 2024, we're at almost six million people.

I'm sorry, I've got something in my throat.

And then by 2050, 7.2 million people.

Now that's a big change because we were originally projected to go to 8 million people when I first moved here 11 years, uh 11 years ago.

So the fact that population growth has been revised downward like that is is significant.

Okay, it doesn't mean we're not growing, we're just not growing at the same pace that we used to.

The other important point for this, however, is that if you look at the difference between the growth in the US and Colorado in previous years, um, you can see that we because we outpace the nation for so many decades, we basically uh our housing deficit in terms of what we built was a lot uh the the gap was a lot bigger.

Tatana, we have a question from Councilman Donaldson.

Yep.

Thank you.

Um is the the demographic date of the from the newest release by the state demographer?

Yes.

Okay, this is the newest stuff.

And there's a water bottle.

And uh isn't doesn't this just kind of make economic sense that you have this period of rapid uh inflow of people and then prices of things go up, prices of uh land and housing as we fill in.

Um, and then that would slow down.

Uh you can't grow to the, you know, I can't grow to the moon.

But so does that does that surprise you that uh these high high rates of growth have slowed, or or do you think well, that's kind of a natural life cycle of a state which was um sparsely populated and is becoming.

Yeah, I think that's a great question.

This is uh this is an issue across the United States, right?

That the population growth has significantly slowed.

Uh I mean, just as a point of reference, uh replacement level fertility is 2.1 per couple, and we're at 1.6 as a nation.

So we've got that.

We've got uh lower in migration, Colorado, that's where most of our population growth has come from in the past, and we don't have that level.

We're a little different than other high-in-migration states in that Colorado has a long history of having a lot of international in migration as well, and that has slowed.

So we've got a lot of different factors, but to your point, I think what you're getting to is you know, wouldn't the decrease in in the rate of population growth bring down prices?

Not necessarily.

Yeah, and I wasn't saying that.

I was just saying that rapid rates like in the past would drive prices up, and that usually you'll have an equilibrium, right?

Like San Francisco's chalk full of nuts, and uh just no pun intended there.

Just there it's very it's very highly uh occupied, so it's expensive.

So people don't move there, they move places that are less expensive, as Colorado Springs might have one or Colorado in general once was, but we've become uh, you know, a a cool place and filled up uh to some degree.

You kind of addressed it.

You but you can you can go further if you want to.

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, kind of like the healthcare uh uh discussion earlier, it's multifaceted, right?

Because we underbuilt for a really long time, we have lower supply.

Lower supply means higher prices.

Now prices are are high not only because of that, but also because the cost of building is so high.

Insurance costs are high, right?

So it all stacks.

Councilman Linewearer.

Yes.

So I've been I mean, there's been a lot of this in the news recently, talking about how Colorado really, I mean, we we're having a negative uh growth rate right now as a state, um, according to something I just well I thought I just read that in Sunday's paper.

No, it's not a negative growth growth rate, it's just lower than it was before.

So you can see like by 2050, our growth rate ends up being about 0.7.

So one of one of the things that it pointed out is that Colorado Springs isn't experiencing the same thing that the rest of the state is.

That we seem to be kind of not as effective.

But if you look over like decades, we all we we always tend to follow what happens in Denver.

You know, we we just it's like something that kind of like whatever is going on in Denver will happen here in two or three years.

And that's kind of been the trend.

And that's one of my concerns is I kind of feel like we're gonna get into that place where we're we're gonna have less companies wanting to come here.

Right now, we have a lot of companies coming here, which is part of the the driving reason.

Uh, you know, we have a housing shortage, there's new companies wanting wanting to live here.

Um I'm just trying to understand all of this, because this is really key to city council.

And so I mean, the healthcare stuff was uh important to talk about, but we really deal with housing.

And so this is a really vital issue for us to really understand about how how do we think about the future really planning for that.

So yeah, I mean, I think that's a that's also a really good point, just in terms of local decision making.

I mean, health care that that's mostly a federal issue at an a state level issue.

Um, but I'll keep moving forward, and and I agree with you that demographics, as I said, I think is destiny in all of this.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks.

And uh I don't want to slow you down too much, but just to address one thing that uh Councilman Lineweber asked about negative growth in the state of Colorado, excluding El Paso County, I believe I know that was true a couple of years ago.

It it's I would suspect it's probably still true.

If you do you know, is that is that correct?

We've as far as I know, we've never had a negative growth rate.

That means you're losing people.

We're just not gaining people at the same rate as we used to.

But if you for El Paso County, we're gaining.

But if you look at the rest of Colorado, the state of Colorado minus El Paso County, it's a net loss.

The rest of the state in total was losing is losing population.

That was a fact a couple years ago.

I'll I'll get the the exact year.

Again, excluding El Paso County.

When you add El Paso County back in, we're a net plus.

Yeah, so I'm gonna because I think this is an important point.

And you know, I'm I'm concerned about time here, but it is an important point.

So the green bars are showing you the rate of population growth in the state of Colorado, and you can see how it's declined, but you can also see it never goes below zero.

But that all includes El Paso County.

My point is if you excluded El Paso County, Denver County, all the others had a total loss.

So there are five counties that are still projected to have decent growth.

El Paso County is one of them.

I've honestly never done the analysis.

If you pull out those five counties, what happens?

But I think that's probably true, Councilman Donaldson for most states in the United States that are still experiencing any growth because as we know, rural and smaller populations are either stagnant or declining in population.

It was when Mayor Southers was still mayor and it was presented to council that excluding El Paso County, the state is a whole lost population, just the one county.

And so it's just interesting to know that while the state of Colorado has this continuous uh positive number here, it's always in the green.

If you take out El Paso County for at least one of those years, it was actually a negative.

That's you know, that's a compliment to El Paso County.

People want to move here.

Yeah, I I would say that it's um I don't know, I would have to see that data.

That surprises me only because up until very recently, just in the last two, three, four years, has it been that um Denver Boulder hasn't been the primary driver.

That population growth, you're right, is declining as well, but it's also still not negative.

So all to say, here we are now for El Paso County, you can see it's kind of the same picture in terms of El Paso County green bars growing at a much faster pace than the US, but also a convergence.

The only other thing I want to highlight here, you know, as I stated in 2050, um, you know, population projections were a lot higher for the state.

And that's also true for El Paso County.

We were over a million, and now we're at 965,000.

So still growing, and like I said earlier, we still have an issue because we underbuilt for so long, but these are important trends to keep our eyes on.

And then the county um, you know, was at almost at one million, but you can see that represents a 35% increase, okay.

But this growth will be driven largely by older adults, and you can see that that's the orange bar there, and new household formation, 30 to 49-year-olds.

That's an asset.

The fact that we still have young people here, if we can keep them here with affordability is a huge asset, but it has two major implications for housing.

Senior-friendly housing and single family housing needs.

And I think that's key to remember as well.

This just highlights what I uh mentioned earlier, which I think we all know.

Look at the dotted line, which is the quote, num healthy number of permits uh that we're, you know, we're supposed to be at uh per year, multifamily and single family, um, if we keep up with population growth.

And you can see the you know decades really of underbuilding that has occurred.

And then if I I just did a simple analysis from 2006 to 2024, the average annual number of permits at about 3,000, and the difference to that threshold of about 8,500 permits, which are needed is about 5,500 permits of being underbuilt.

That is a significant issue.

And it's all you, James.

Good morning, council.

Uh James McMurray, I am the project manager for Matrix Design Group.

Um that's been working on this housing needs assessment.

I have my colleague uh Christian Dr.

Christian Karen here as well, who is our lead data analyst.

So if you have uh if you can if you stump me, I'm gonna turn around and ask Christian the hard questions.

Um let's talk, let's talk about the population trends.

Um just a little bit more fidelity here.

What we're looking at uh on this slide, this chart shows the growth in household numbers, right?

Population is a is a valuable number.

Household is also relevant in that you know that that's the measure the unit of measurement um for housing units.

Um so as you can see, we've added about 30,000 uh households uh to our community in the last 15 years.

The composition of our households has remained basically the same, about 2.4 people per housing unit.

Um same similar breakdown between you know married family singles, um, but we have gotten just a bit older.

Um, we've aged on average by one year um over the period of uh of what you see here, um, which doesn't seem like a huge number, but um when you think about that on the on the large scale of a population of 500,000, that's actually pretty significant.

Um we're also just a little smarter.

We've got we've uh improved our educational attainment by three percent over this over the the time frame shown.

Where do I point?

Oh, there we go.

Okay.

Um so just looking at the population or the demographic breakdown um in a little more detail, you can we can see based on the highlighted numbers in the table, we have a higher share of what I'll call young professionals and and families um in you know, in that mid-range um of 25 to 44, um, as well as our senior population.

Whereas in the county, we have a higher share of households with children.

About two-thirds of our population are homeowners, while one third are renters.

And then when we look at household income, you know, in inflation has gotten a lot of attention, uh, of course, over the over the last five to 10 years, and that has posed a challenge for a lot of people.

Uh the good news uh on that front is that when you control for inflation, our real median household income has increased.

If you look at that chart in the lower left, um in 2018, it was at about 74,000 and now it is sitting at around 83,000.

Um of the primary causes for why the Colorado Springs uh area median income is a little bit lower than the region overall is primarily due to the high higher concentration of single person households, right?

Just with one earner.

We've got a higher number of higher larger student population, and we also have a lot of folks that work in the service industries here in the city.

Uh if you look to the right, um, you can see that about 55% of our population uh earns under 75,000, um, which is a and as you see moving forward, that's going to be a fairly significant significant income threshold as it relates to housing affordability.

So when you break kind of look at all that demographic and economic data, there are three kinds of um groups that jump out in that data that are worth thinking about.

The first are our is our senior population.

Um we have a large and a growing share of seniors in our community.

And so we'll want to make sure that they're able to age uh you know independently uh and comfortably um through through that process.

The second group are what I'm calling our young professionals and our families.

They're really in some ways the economic engine of our community.

Uh we want to make sure that we're thinking about that population and their unique needs.

And then the last one is our single person households.

Think about perhaps the single teacher or healthcare worker that you know provides an incredibly valuable service to sustaining our community, um, but they may have challenges when it comes to finding uh adequate housing.

So let's jump into the housing market uh and look at that data.

So it's gonna be probably pretty consistent with what you've heard and what you might expect.

Um, but it's you know always useful to break this down and understand it a little bit more on the granular level.

Uh the bottom line is that you know our market choice is a bit is limited, and homeownership is getting a little bit increasingly out of reach for people.

So let's take a look at this on this first slide.

Um we've actually done a pretty good job in the very recent history of catching up just a little bit with our housing construction.

We've added about 6,000 more units to our inventory than the uh than our household count has grown since between 2010 and 2023.

But as Tatiana shared, those deficits go back structurally um much further back than that into the you know great recession, even in the 2000s and the 90s.

So it's just been a catch-up problem in that sense.

Um but if you look at the chart on the right, the issue that we're facing now is that housing costs have increased uh 39% between 2018 and 2023, while household incomes, which I mentioned, those are going up nicely as well, but not by 40%.

We're talking more like 12%, and that's a lot of what's driving that affordability gap.

When we look at overall housing prices, um this chart this shows what the uh the overall numbers for both rental and um own homeownership uh you can see that those numbers have come down a little bit.

I have a question from Councilman Donaldson.

Sure, go right ahead.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

Can we go back one slide?

Sure.

And then the uh 40% increase in uh median home value in Colorado Springs.

Do you know what it is nationally?

What it went up nationally?

Um I don't have that number off the top of my head.

Um I've could got the state numbers here as a point of reference, but nationally I'm not sure.

Not first saying about 460,000.

Yeah, 46480, it's average.

Nationally.

Um is that but in a percent, just to compare.

Because I think Colorado Springs is pretty typical.

It's it's sometimes we think uh housing costs have gone crazy in Colorado Springs, but it's sort of the national story.

Uh most places uh cities our size, nice places to live, the same thing has happened, we're not unique.

I would I would expect that if we looked at peer communities in other states that we would see quite similar trends.

Okay, thank you.

Absolutely.

We were we were 16% more expensive than the US a couple of years ago, and now we're at 11% more expensive than the US in median home price.

Okay, yeah.

Uh complete United States, not cities or uh counties with a large city, and I'm I think that's gonna go higher than rural areas.

Okay, thank you.

Sure.

Okay, so let's look at housing prices.

Uh talking about our uh our rental uh our renters first.

So the median renter income uh is about approximately $58,000 a year.

So in other words, about $25,000 less than the area median income uh right now.

Um but the the average asking rent for a rental unit in Colorado Springs as of March 2025 uh is $1,784.

So in other words, um an a household to be able to afford an average priced um rental unit would probably want to be somewhere in the range of about $75,000 to $80,000 a year to be able to afford those average asking rents, um, which is only about one third of people who rent in the city.

Um as far as the owner-occupied market goes, the average housing uh house housing unit in Colorado Springs is $457,000.

Um the average homeowner income is higher than renter, it's over just over $100,000.

Um a household would cur currently would need to earn over $150,000 a year total to be able to afford that average priced home based on current interest rates and and all of those things.

Um again, so only about 30% of our home buyers meet that threshold.

Uh you can see the the price of the you know homes has gone down.

Um that would feel like better news if it wasn't for the fact that the interest rates are what have sort of driven that down and the overall costs you know to the household per month are roughly the same or comparable.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, for me, uh if we if we stay on that slide, there's a real there is no such thing really as the average, like when you go looking for a house, you don't go looking for the average price.

You look for a two-bedroom, or like when my wife and I were first married, we a two-bedroom apartment.

Yes.

That that was our price range.

And so although our income was very low, because I was a junior enlisted guy in the military, we we rented small apartments.

Yeah.

And so I just think it can be a little uh misleading if you look at the average and then you go, look at all these people who are below average in their income.

Well, they're not going to be looking for average in my experience.

You look for what fits your income.

And then uh then you go to uh you know, a small house and you rent a small house, and then you and then hopefully you can buy a small house.

So just what strikes me with this is it can be uh confusing to look at average like this 1784.

That's you know that's just uh something which I'd say it's a data point, but it uh doesn't help us with okay, what are people starting out, those single like two room apartments, how much they if they have kids, right?

You know, how much does that cost?

So just my thoughts.

Yeah, I agree with that 100%.

Uh it is just a data point.

I think it's a it's very useful to know the average as sort of an anchor data point, right?

Because we can base that a relative understanding of that.

But exactly to your point, I'm gonna go on because the next two slides will touch on some of those details here.

So this next one looks at just those things as it concerns the rental uh market.

So like you said, 1784, that's a that number's fine for you know, in isolation to a to a degree, but it does come down to location.

It comes down to how many bedrooms, right?

And so when you look at um the geographic breakdown and the unit size breakdown that's shown on this chart, you can see kind of how that how that works out.

So a the average rent for a one-bedroom unit in Colorado Springs is under $1,200 a month.

Whereas if you're up at three bedrooms, right, a family is over $2,500.

It also is a there's also a geographic component to this.

If you look at the map on the in the lower left, the the teal areas are where the rents tend to be tend to be a little bit lower on average.

That's primarily due to the size of the units and the age of the housing stock.

Um, but as you go further out, the new build costs more to build.

So you end up with those higher priced units out on the periphery.

Taking a little bit of a little bit of a closer look at the home ownership market along those same lines, um, we see those increases, but it is definitely largely, well, not largely, but the number of bedrooms obviously plays a major factor in that, right?

In terms of the level of amenities, the overall square footage of the of the home.

And so a uh a two-bedroom unit in Colorado Springs comes in at about 340,000.

But as you get up into those higher bedroom counts, um, the prices can go up pretty significantly.

So with that, the key takeaways are first that market choice is a bit is limited.

We've, you know, when you look at the overall demographic profile of where we are today and where we're going, right?

Our housing wasn't built in 1980 for the 2025 demographic.

And so we have a little bit of a mismatch.

Uh we have, you know, think of the you know, empty nester couple still living in a four-bedroom home, right?

That would be that would be one um simple example.

Um, but there's you know many other life situations where that type of mismatch might be going on.

The second is that the homeownership is becoming increasingly out of reach for people trying to enter the market.

So as that uh housing cost of housing continues to outpace income growth, we're gonna continue to see that challenge for people coming into the community, people you know, coming that have been you know grown up here and trying to find a place to live.

So looking forward, um want to kind of put all of that together to in terms of the economics, demographics, and housing inventory to look at some of the um the overall needs today, as Amy mentioned.

We're looking at a 2027,000 unit gap um currently.

Um then we're also gonna look at a couple of important subgroups and some of the details relevant relevant to them.

So let's go to current housing demand.

So what I want you to note first of all is the numbers highlighted below.

We have about 200,000 uh households and in the community, about 120,000 of those, or 60% are homeowners, about 80%, or sorry, 80,000 or 40% are renters.

Uh second, if you look at the total households on the left, you see the highlighted numbers in that column.

You add those up, that's about 50% of our current community is uh under 80% AMI.

Um so in other words, half the half the population earns under about $80,000 a year, about half the population earns more than that.

Um there's a larger percentage of those are renters, right?

Seven out of 10 of our of our um households in the city make less than that uh than that 80% AMI, and under, but still 40% of our homeowners are in that same uh category.

So here's the uh the totals for our current housing demand.

This is as of 2023.

So based on the methodology that was used in this report, um, we came to a total of 27,000 units needed in Colorado Springs.

Um of the kind of more striking anecdotal um notes that came out of the report that I wanted to share is that the shot third bullet down that says that the ratio of low-income jobs uh per affordable unit.

So this using you know some functional definitions of $35,000 a year or less, that there are currently eight uh workers for every one unit in that price at that price point at that income range.

Um you can see that the the larger share of renters are in the lower income tiers, where that uh current demand is, um, whereas about that about two-thirds of the renters are in that 80% or lower.

Um, whereas about that about two-thirds of the renters are in that 80% or lower.

Uh, where on the uh homeowner side, it's the inverse.

About two-thirds of our perspective or current homeowners is where that is where that shortfall is.

And so we have that deficit across all income types, all demographics all the way across the board.

When we look at that uh future housing demand, um using that same methodology projecting against against our uh demo, you know, projected growth.

Um, the that deficit is 60,000.

And now that's the total number.

It's not 60 plus 27, it's 60, including our current 27.

Uh and so if you look at the numbers on the the left that are highlighted in that column, you total up the those four percentages.

That's 70% of our total house of our total uh community, the housing need is is there.

So we're talking about that 80% AMI and below.

Um the thing that's that kind of one of the things that stands out here, and as I just mentioned, is every every income level has a deficit.

One out of six of our uh units needed of that 60,000 is almost is there in our upper income level for homeowners, almost 10,000 of those.

So while the low the low end of the spectrum gets a lot of attention for good reason, um there's there's there's no such thing as a you know area where we can say, oh, we're we're just fine, there's no need for housing in this particular area, um, in terms of the socioeconomic uh group.

So looking at our seniors, um, there's a couple of interesting things here to note as far as our senior housing goes.

The first is when we talk about mobility, we're talking about the ability for people to buy and sell their home, move to another location within the city.

Um, accessibility, closely tied to the idea of being able to move around inside your home, right?

So when we talk about mobility, um we look at a measure that is referred to as being overhoused.

Now that's a little bit subjective for some people.

They might not feel like they're overhoused if they live in a three or four bedroom unit because they're making use of that for a home office or whatever.

But there are there are definitely cases where folks are in a mismatch.

And that that chart on the right, if you pay it, if you note the overall, it says that we have 34,000 seniors.

27,000 of them are technically overhoused.

Now, of that 27,000, 7300 roughly are overhoused and have a housing burden.

In other words, they would probably benefit and be it'd be an advantage for them to find a better situation that matched their income situation.

So the true level of need in terms of over housing probably falls somewhere between, I would say that 7300 and that 27,000.

Does that make sense?

Councilman Hincham.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Hey, good morning.

Morning.

Uh this is actually somewhat of a personal question because um I'm in a house with very, very steep stairs and I'm aging, and I'm starting to think about um while I your very first slide talked about aging in place and that that was a goal.

I but I guess my question is does aging in place mean I don't leave that house, or I age in place in a smaller home, so someone with younger uh bodies can move up and down those stairs.

That's a good question.

I would I would say that aging in place um certainly, you know, there's there would be folks that would love to be able to stay in the home that they've lived in for you know a long for a long period of time.

Um, but I think aging in place could also be looked at as being able to live more or less within the same um area of the city, or even within the city itself.

So if we're not, you know, people that are able to stay connected to their neighborhoods to their friends without you know being you know, suddenly in a whole whole totally different situation.

So there's no hard and fast definition of that.

I might suggest a you know, the thought, my thought process would be by zip code, but that's just an arbitrary kind of concept.

Okay, well, it was when you had it was I think it was on your first slide or one of your very early slides, it really was a question in my mind.

It's like, what does aging in place mean?

Does it mean not leaving the house that you currently own?

Tatiana.

Come up to the mic, please.

Yeah, we did an aging in place study uh a couple of years ago, uh, thanks to David Lord and um Pikes Peak Housing Network.

It typically means staying in your own home.

That is the general definition.

So a lot of the communities that have been able to address this most effectively have had huge massive campaigns to say we have a team of people that can help convert your home so you can stay in it longer.

Okay.

Well, that c contradicts a little bit of a message I've also heard, which is seniors who want to downsize and not be overhoused and go to a smaller location so that a younger family can come move in that house.

Are these just both desirable and it just depends on the situation?

Again, all of the above, you know, so enabling families to, you know, older households to do that.

And of course, we all know that the the lock-in, so to speak, of low interest rates and you know, houses that were bought at 80,000 versus you know, that can't buy buy you anything now is a lot of what's also keeping seniors in place uh when they don't want to be in a five-bedroom home anymore.

Okay, thank you.

Councilman Lineweber.

Um I actually that's that's my experience.

I want to speak to that.

And that's where me and my wife are empty nesters, and we have a four-bedroom house.

We would love to downsize.

But by the time you look at I mean, it's just not interest rates.

I mean, interest rates is a big part of that.

But then you have to look at costs of real, you know, realtors involved, and then moving costs, and then all the other costs that are associated with just picking up and going somewhere else.

When we looked at it, it it's not even close.

It's like, no, we're staying where we're staying.

And so I think I think there's a lot of people in my situation, empty nesters, and we have big homes.

We we can't afford to leave.

I mean, it just makes no financial sense for us to move.

So that's there's no incentive for us to do that, I guess is what I'm saying.

So it's uh the we're not gonna that we're not gonna free up our four-bedroom house anytime soon because we we there's no it just doesn't make sense.

Yeah, I'd think there's a lot of folks in just in that situation.

Council McDonaldson.

Yeah, thanks, uh, Madam President.

You know, there's the bullet on here.

Many seniors would be likely to downsize of affordable, appropriately sized options were more widely available.

Where's the data on that?

So one of the data points is right there on the slide where we talk about the the seniors that have a cost burden, right?

So for folks that have a five-bedroom house, but it's not really a big deal financially.

Would they like to be smaller?

Sure.

Do they have to be from a financial standpoint?

There's not that push factor, right?

So for seniors where there is that financial incentive, that's one data point that's worth keeping tabs on.

How do you?

I'm sorry, I'm didn't mean interrupt you.

That's fine.

Go right ahead.

How do you define cost burden?

Cost burden, I'll get to that in a future slide, but cost burden is is defined as um having 30% or more of your income that's dedicated to housing payments.

And but we're using that for everybody from an 18-year-old to a 90-year-old.

And I can tell you now, as a retired guy, my expenses are way down from uh when I had kids at home and we were paying all kinds of other uh costs.

So I could actually, we don't, we paid our house off, but I could spend more on housing now uh during at that age.

So I don't know that the same definition really um is appropriate.

Uh and it made me wonder too when we showed on a previous slide income levels and how look at how many people are at a low income level and look at the cost of housing.

But some of those people may very well be senior citizens who are no longer working, they're on uh social security and paid their house off.

So and we're in that situation.

We're sitting in a house and uh we have a HELOC, but we're about to get rid of that.

So our income is down, but our expenses are way down.

So I mean, this is complex, but uh just uh an assertion like that.

Many seniors would be likely to downsize of affordable appropriately sized options were more widely available.

I just don't know if that's true.

And people like their neighbors, right?

Uh our our street is very closely knit.

People don't want to move from there.

They'll move when they have to, when they're when their uh health care is so when their health uh is bad enough to where they just can't make it in their own home.

They know where the stores are.

Uh they they live in that part of the city, and you're kind of getting at that.

I think you're gonna suggest build the the other uh housing options, you know, in in all neighborhoods so they can have a choice.

But that's my thought with that.

Um I'll call it an assertion.

Uh, I would need to see data, and I don't, you know, I don't even understand the uh uh cost burden that 33% because that changes with all your other expenses.

If we were younger, we probably always spent more than 33% on housing.

Um, but we spent a lot less on cars and things like that.

That was our choice.

But thank you.

Sure thing.

Councilman Risley.

Thanks, madam president.

A few of my colleagues already alluded to some of the other things beyond just financial drivers, um, such as wanting to live in the same neighborhood and familiar familiarity with friends and places to shop and so forth.

I would also challenge the this assumption that uh uh folks are are overhoused from the standpoint of again sort of a lifestyle thing.

A lot of older adults probably like having additional space in their homes for uh family that are coming to visit grown adults, grandchildren, craft uh rooms, things of that nature.

So absolutely I certainly understand that there are some that maybe are overburdened from a financial standpoint, but I think that there's a whole other aspect of it from a social standpoint that isn't taken into account here.

Absolutely.

This is just the data.

But I agree with what you're saying.

All right, let's talk about military for just a minute.

So there's been a lot made of the uh challenges facing the military, and that that is definitely the case as the data shows.

Um what you can see with this uh in this table, the first, I'll just kind of go visually here.

The first and third rows of that table that are you know largely orange and yellow, those are our that's our enlisted population.

So most of the the housing challenges are particularly acute for our enlisted um households.

Now, the the very junior grades, they probably have access to you know, barracks and on-based housing.

They were their needs might not be acute until the point at which they might have dependents and have to find a place out in the community, at which point um that's where the real challenge is.

Um and remains so for um those with or without dependents that are trying to find housing in the community through all sort of um rank uh and income levels.

Um there are you know different ways that this can be mitigated, but the bottom line is that um unless you're single, dual income, or you know, more senior how office, you know, in the senior ranks of the of our officers, you're probably having some kind of a housing challenge as a military member in our community.

You're looking at you know making trade-offs with you know older homes or maybe a little small, or maybe in a little bit of a you know, part of town that's further away than you want to be.

And so our military members are having to you know consider those trade-offs as they come into the market very often.

So, in summary, um we've are we've got a current housing need of 27,000 units and a future housing need of 60,000.

Um as you go back to the number that Tatiana gave us, um through we're building at about a rate of 3,000 a year historically, in order to get to catch up to that gap by 2023.

We would roughly need to double production of our housing stock um here in the city.

Um the large majority of that housing is needed for households making under 120,000 of the area median income, which is about a hundred thousand dollars a year.

And there are no segments that are that are um adequately served by the market today.

So, in other words, there's no such thing as bad housing.

All housing is good housing.

Um there are a couple of appendices that I that are noted here on the slide.

We've touched on those in these, um, looking at our um, you know, supportive housing needs um relative to homelessness as well as military housing.

So let's talk just a little bit more about some of these specific challenges um before we close out.

So this is the here's the data on our um cost burden, uh face the the cost burdens that we face in the community.

Um as I mentioned, cost burden means 30% or more of your income, while severe housing burden might be for um households over 50%.

So if you look at on the left on that top bar, um over 50% of our renters have a c have a housing cost burden or a severe housing cost burden.

So one out of two are in that situation of being over 30 uh over 30 percent of their um income needed to cover rent.

On the homeowner side, it's it's not quite as high.

It's just under 30 percent.

Um but there's that's still a large share.

And as you look at the numbers breakdown as you look in the dig into the report, um one thing I'll call out as you as I looked at these numbers, I kept seeing this in lots of different situations and you know, could you know the data presented itself that 75,000 is a key inflection point when it comes to household household income?

Households making under 75,000 a year.

That's our you know, our teaching teachers, nurses, right?

Our um, you know, people in public safety, that's you know, that's them.

Um and so that's a that's a key number to just you know kind of keep in mind.

I'm gonna turn it back over to uh Tatiana who did the deep dive on our homelessness and let her uh talk speak to that for just a couple of minutes.

Thank you.

So uh this is a smaller but very important part of the entire analysis.

So I think we know nationwide we have a homelessness issue and an increase in homelessness.

So at a local level, we were interested in looking at this to say, okay, first of all, what is the magnitude of the problem today?

And then, you know, what implications are there for uh the cost of housing uh locally and how this might impact homelessness in the future.

So we looked at a couple of different things.

The first is the uh point in time analysis, and that's your first column, PIT, as it's commonly known.

And that count came in at 1,146 individuals.

But I I know from public health days and econ and so forth that, and I think we all know that Pitt is probably an undercount of the actual number of homeless people simply because it is a point in time, uh, also done in the winter, uh, which is makes it even more challenging to accurately capture the number of homeless people.

Uh I did a literature search, and the second point uh bullet up here shows that the the studies show that uh Pitt undercounts by a magnitude of somewhere between 2.5 and 10.2 times the actual number of homeless people when more comprehensive methods were used.

Now, in 2025, thanks to some local efforts to um to make Pitt more accurate, that number did come up significantly to 1,745 individuals, up 52%.

Um, you know, mostly uh because of those volunteers and and other efforts.

However, this is helpful, but not really meaningful if indeed we're undercounting by such a large magnitude.

So looking at some other counts can help inform that.

So one of the things that we looked at first and foremost was SNAP, um, food stamps.

Because when people call in to the county to say, you know, we need uh our family needs uh food stamps or they do something online, um, they actually give data on whether they are housed or not.

Uh one of the first questions, and thanks to El Paso County uh Department of Uh Health and Human Services person who said uh, you know, this is actually known to be a very good count locally as well.

But one of the first things I asked her is is there any incentive?

Would people say that?

Does that make it more likely that they can get food stamps?

And the answer to that was no.

So we decided to look at that data for 2024.

Uh we came up with 6,900 912 households, which translates to a roughly 8,500 individuals.

Um and then we also looked at some other um other indicators to kind of validate that, and they they came in at a pretty close range, and that's where we looked at McKinney Vinto at schools, which of course not all homeless people have children, but we did, you know, we did look at various other uh other sources.

So um that that is the main point that uh we have on this on this particular slide, and then here you can just see that for um for SNAP the increase that we've seen since 2019.

Um so this is an important thing because then we tried to say, okay, well, we have really good information from Matrix, uh, which is you know, census data really on the percentage of people who are um at risk.

How do we define at risk of becoming homeless?

Well, you look at the cost burden uh of people in terms of um you know how much they're paying towards rent or towards um their mortgage, and you're not wrong, Councilman Donaldson, that that definition has changed over time.

Is it 30%?

Is it 40%?

We all know that a lot of households today are spending more than 40, 50% of their income towards uh to rent or or ownership.

Um but highly cost burdened or severely cost burdened is a very good indicator of whether someone is at risk of becoming homeless.

So we're not talking about the 30% threshold here.

We're talking about a much higher cost burden.

So what we did is we said, okay, well, what percentage of our local population falls into that category of being severely cost burdened, and then applied probabilities from uh a literature search that we did that that those individuals, a portion of those individuals might actually become homeless.

So beyond those already experiencing homelessness, an estimated roughly 1,500, 1,551 households or almost 4,000 individuals are at quote high risk of becoming homeless due to severe housing cost burdens and low incomes.

Uh so you know, is this an exact thing?

No, it is not, but it gives you some type of indicator of of what may happen if we don't address housing costs.

And you know, I always try to step back and do sort of a reliability check on this.

When you look at some other communities where housing costs have gone up, you see an increase in homelessness.

So, you know, is it going to be you know 1,551 households?

Probably not, but we know that there is definitely uh a you know positive correlation between the two, and that it is not an insignificant number of people in home households.

Um Councilman Hinjam.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, Tatiana, or maybe Amy, I'm not sure.

Um, why do we use the point in time count, given that we really are pretty confident that it is nowhere close to the number of um people who are unhoused in our community?

Uh Amy Cox, um Chief Housing Homelessness Response Officer.

We use the point in time count because it is the count that HUD uses.

Those numbers are reported to the to Congress every year.

It is the only um census we have of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness in our community.

So it is not meant to be this the data point that we are building our entire response on, but it does help us see trends um in our community and over time.

It is highly dependent on the weather and the number of volunteers that are available on the night.

Isn't all homelessness unsheltered?

No.

No, there are many people experiencing homelessness who are sheltered.

They're living in shelters, transitioning housing, um, they might be doubled up living in a vehicle.

So for the purposes of HUD, we use point in time, but in practicality, we could be when we're talking about the reality that we're addressing.

We could be using the six, seven, eight thousand number um more realistically.

Yeah, I mean, this this has been a big challenge in our office, and it's one of the things we've been tackling this year is how do we use our homeless management information system, which is a much more robust collection of data in our community and share those numbers.

We look at how many people are entering homelessness.

We can look at this month over month.

How many people are entering homelessness?

How many people are exiting?

How many were active?

Where did they go?

Who increased their income?

What are their uh what are their health uh general health diagnoses?

I mean, um, or conditions, I should say.

Um so there is a more robust data source.

It's really getting into that place where we're flexing that muscle and using that um to provide a more accurate picture of who's experiencing homelessness in our community.

So okay, thank you.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, I'll just say I I think it's important to keep that in mind because the point in time counts are when for most people, and I'd say most citizens, if you say homeless, they think of the guy sleeping in the uh, you know, along the trail, which they go hiking on the big camps along our creeks.

And that is uh we've got so many technical words.

We used to call it a vagrant, vagrancy.

That's somebody who's kind of drifting around, uh, doesn't have a job, uh living outdoors like that.

The rest of it is is uh, you know, if I fell on hard times and went and stayed with my brother, I would be officially by these definitions a homeless person, right?

It depends on the source.

Well, we see that because we've got multiple sources here.

But that's what we're counting.

We're counting that to people who are staying with others or those that are in the shelter also SRM.

So I'm just saying that because this is very confusing to regular citizens.

And the numbers can become overwhelming.

They'll think, oh, now we have 7,000 people sleeping in the streets, which isn't really true.

That point in time number is probably the closest for that, that uh specific activity, essentially vagrancy.

Um the rest is folks.

A lot of young people this this happens to, right?

They can't afford their apartments, so they start couch surfing at their friends uh apartments.

Uh it's not that unusual, but but technically they'd fit into this.

So that's enough out of me.

Thank you.

Councilman Lineweber.

Yeah, I just want to give you the opportunity to talk about the complexity of the HMIS system because it's easy to throw that number out there, but the reality is that there's a lot of privacy concerns around it, and so it's a restricted data point.

Um, not everyone can have access to that.

And a lot of facilities, like a rescue mission, don't use it.

Or they don't know, honestly, don't fully embrace it, maybe is maybe a better term.

But there's a lot of, you know, a that a lot of agencies that are dealing with homelessness that don't have access to it or aren't aren't participating in it.

So it's it's we it's still a number that we tend not to, it's we can't bank on this is the number because we haven't gotten everybody on board.

And and I wanted you to explain that really to help me define to understand it more simply about the complications both around participation and then also about restrictions and privacy concerns.

Okay, I'm gonna do two things here.

I'm gonna start with answering that question.

Um and then I I just have a some comment that I want to make too.

But the um so HMIS is a is the region's system for collecting data, especially for HUD-funded programs because HUD funds a significant amount of programs in our community, and they want to see the data collected and reported, right?

So HMIS is our source for doing that.

To have a robust homeless management information system, we also have to encourage entice enroll people who uh programs that are not HUD funded, so we can get a good picture of what is happening in our community, how many people are entering the system, how many people are exiting the system, where are they exiting from?

Uh this is all for the purpose of defining a problem so that we can solve it.

And I think that um in some of the conversation here, what I don't want to get lost, right?

We talk about data as a generalization.

A lot of these are broad numbers.

I think uh Councilman Donaldson has raised some questions about hey, there's a lot of nuance, right?

There's a lot of nuance in every individual experience.

But what I can tell you is that um when we get the data, the data is one, that quantitative data is one point.

We go back and we triangulate, we look at other studies, we talk to people in the community, we do surveys, and I will tell you that there is no room that I walk in where housing is not a concern in the conversation.

Parents concerned about what's going to happen to their children, businesses concerned about where people are going to live, right?

How are we going to recruit employees to our community?

And I think that when we talk about homelessness and people being unstable and traveling around our community, maybe living with friends and such.

Um, this is this is a challenge for creating the stability and the flourishing that we want to see in this community.

I can tell you my son lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

He's looking at, he looked at coming back to Colorado Springs.

Rent is higher in Boston.

You know what also is higher?

Opportunity, and there's also transportation.

And so he, when you start to make an assessment when you're a 22-year-old kid and you're like, where am I gonna live?

He's gonna live in Boston, Massachusetts, because while it's challenging, there's also all of those other benefits.

So I want to make sure that we are not losing track of really, really the message here.

We're trying to bring data so we can define a problem so we can solve it for our community.

And I think I might have just given Katie's presentation because that is our next move is the uh action plan.

Councilman Hindem.

Well, thank you, Amy.

I mean, I think I had put my name up to speak before you shared your thoughts, and you really addressed, I think what I was am struggling with in this, and I think what we all struggle with is what is homelessness?

What does it look like?

What is that face?

What who are those faces?

Where are they?

It is much, much broader than the vagrant living on the trail, right?

And it is a systemic issue around stability and where people sleep at night.

And um, so I appreciate you broadening the conversation for us and helping us see it in a much more holistic fashion.

Yeah.

I mean, the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness is uh those folks are very visible, but it's a smaller part of the population.

I do, you know, to uh councilman Donaldson's point, however, I mean, this is where I say humans are generally right.

We are generally productive, we are generally clever.

We figure out how to solve a lot of these problems.

We have a lot of people who are uh unstably housed right now in our community, who are just spending a lot of energy trying to figure out how to stay or to keep from being homeless in our community.

And I think it's a really important recognition that we do find ways, human beings do find ways to solve these problems.

And maybe that's not the point you were making, sir, but um I certainly appreciate that.

Yeah, my point is that uh that's always been a part of uh the human condition.

You stay with your brother when you're in hard times, or you stay with your sister, or you go back and you stay with your parents.

And so to give that a special definition now of homelessness, um, I think it can distort what we're thinking about.

The the vagrants living outside in Colorado Springs are a uh a visible sign of chaos to our citizens that we can't even deal with this little problem.

But we're really here to talk about housing.

And I think I was even surprised to see this tacked on to the housing part.

Um I I see what you're what you're attempting to do, uh, which is to say this this can help with homelessness, you know, bringing the prices down.

But the what I'm gonna call it vagrancy is driven, I don't think by housing costs, it's trigger driven by drug addiction, mental uh problems uh largely, not 100%, but largely.

Yeah, I just I want to clarify something because it is true that different sources SNAP, uh point in time, McKinney Vento, HM, I mean they all have their ways of defining homelessness.

None of the sources I looked at said because you're living with your brother or you're staying with your parents longer, you're considered homeless.

Um that that was never in any of those sources.

Probably, if I'm remembering correctly, the one that was sort of the most liberal, if you will, was McKinney Vento at the schools.

Uh and that was the one that's that asked the question, you know, are you housed?

And and you know, I don't have the exact terminology, but basically it came down to if you said that you were evicted as as an example, and you were staying somewhere for a couple of weeks, but you had no future plans and you didn't know how you were going to be housed moving forward, you fell under under the category of sheltered homeless.

So it, you know, I I just wanted that as a point of clarification because I think you know, if we included, I mean we I think a lot of us would have a couple of homeless kids at home right now if if we included, you know, individual family members who uh who were um staying longer.

The other point of clarification really quickly, I just wanted because I pulled up the most recent numbers uh because there's a big difference uh between average and median home price.

Uh and you know, it that gap gets bigger as as homes get more expensive, right?

Because the people who can afford the million dollar homes, right, they're gonna pull up that average a lot.

The Q3 median existing single family home price, which I think is a better indicator in Colorado Springs was 474,000 uh at the at in uh during Q3, and in the United States was uh 427,000.

So I just wanted to uh show, you know, bring that to everyone's attention as well.

And I think it's back to you, James.

Just a couple of last notes before I pass it over to Katie to talk about what's happening next.

Um one other particular aspect when we talk, you know, on the spectrum, right?

From large single family homes to homeless is the supportive housing need.

And so as you can see here, um there's the estimated um uh number of supportive housing units that's defined as, you know, not just the housing unit, but provides the types of services needed to rehabilitate in the case of you know addiction potentially or other types of social services.

Um that's estimated that that estimated need is at about 30 percent of homeless individuals.

Um and so you can see the numbers break uh the number breakdown here.

Um that there's based on the amount of supportive housing units that we have in the community now.

Um, against what that total need is, it's about 2,000 supportive housing units uh would be needed in the community.

Okay, I'm gonna turn it over to Katie Sunderland.

Hi, good morning, Council Katie Sunderland, Housing Solutions Manager.

So now our next steps here.

We have a lot of the what are our needs, and so we're really looking at how are we going to address them.

So we're only talking a little bit about housing action plan.

But before we get into that, I want to just dive into we have a huge deliverable for this project.

We have a housing needs assessment that's 314 pages long that each of you have on your desk.

Um, this is going to be posted on our website.

We're gonna split this into sections so residents have a really easy way to navigate through each of these sections that James and Tatiana went through.

Additionally, we have a dashboard that's available.

We have two separate dashboards.

One of them presents the key findings from our housing needs assessment, and this is by municipality, and so this will be including the Green Mountain Falls, Calhan, um, unincorporated El Paso County and the city of Colorado Springs.

And then additionally, we have another dashboard that takes into account census track data.

So this is pulling from our census, um, and you can explore um different data analytics at a census tracked and neighborhood level.

Um, some of these include like housing cost burden, housing diversity, et cetera.

So the where you can go to find this information is Colorado Springs.gov/slash housing needs assessment.

So within our housing needs assessment, there's also a broad brush overview of our policy and program recommendations.

Now, what this is isn't what we're going to take into our housing action plan.

This is a toolbox of many tools that are available to address housing needs in our community.

And as we move forward, we will be um pulling certain specific techniques and actions to move forward in this action plan.

So, what is included in this housing action plan?

And now, this is part of the Senate bill requirements, um, and is also partially funded by the state of Colorado.

And so what we're going to be doing is taking a recap of what we have found in the housing needs assessment.

We are going to do another round of public engagement with our stakeholders, our community, and then we're going to come up with housing goals and strategies that we can then measure our progress against, and then we're going to um outline an implementation plan.

So are there any more questions?

Councilman Bailey.

Thanks, Madam President.

Um, you know, I I know my colleagues all agree that this is an issue that we need to address.

I'm not gonna quibble with the statistics or the sources or any of those kinds of things.

What I want to really do is get to what you had on the policy and program recommendation slide.

And and I would be interested, probably not right now, but sometime fairly soon to get a to get an assessment from you as to how well we're using these things and where we can leverage for the best um benefit.

Um we've dealt with some of these things.

We know that some of these things are not popular.

Um, but we we should look at how what we're doing to actually solve this problem.

Um we spent an hour and a half talking about the problem, and we've just spent about 30 seconds looking at what we're gonna do to actually fix it.

So for me, as the way to try to start to fix this, is let's look at how effective we've been in using these tools and highlight a couple of them that we can really sink our teeth into and and try to make some progress.

I've been here eight months or so, and we've talked about housing, the needs for housing for a lot of that eight months, and I don't think we're any closer to getting there, but uh I hope we can actually start moving the ball forward.

And what you just said is exactly what this action plan is going to be outlining, is really taking a look at all of the existing plans we have, what we've been able to make progress on, where our opportunities ripe in our community specifically.

And just for clarification, this is an action plan specific to Colorado Springs.

And so these will be tools that are um within our community that are from our city that are from our partners.

Yeah, I guess I just I I don't see the I don't see the the sp specificity that I'd like.

Oh no, this is and this is what I'm saying.

That's the next part of the conversation.

So this is really just the framework for how this action plan is going to be set up, and we'll start this work in quarter one of next year.

Councilman Lightwurber.

So one of the one of the things that I kind of see kind of missing from this is um public sentiment.

And um, and I I want to highlight that because um for a lot of people, um, supply and demand in any industry is what drives prices.

And um, and so I'm kind of looking, you know, from you and maybe from Tantiana and others.

Um there's a belief that if we build a lot more houses, then we'll have a glut of housing, and my home value will go down, which will affect my retirement plan.

And so I don't want housing prices to go down.

I want them to go up, right?

If I'm thinking about my own, now that I'm here, I want to protect what I have, right?

I'm I'm here, I don't want anyone else to follow.

And um in a lot of communities in Colorado, I mean, Breckenridge started this, they went to no growth policies.

And there's a sentiment in Colorado Springs about no growth.

And we saw it at the ballot box with an annexation that we um felt was really, really important to our Southeast community of really rethinking the Southeast.

And that got voted.

That the public voted that down because of public sentiment and really trying to understand no growth.

What does that actually mean if we really embrace that?

What's going to be the long-term consequences if we don't look for solutions to tackle this housing shortage that you're talking about?

We have to find a way to educate our public, or we're gonna have more ballot initiatives coming up to to put down whatever we put forward, because again, they're trying to protect their nest aid.

They want they want everybody wants their house value to stay as high as possible, and that's supply and demand.

It's that simple, right?

Um, but how do we communicate to the public that that that actually is a false narrative and that is a very dangerous um idol uh uh uh very dangerous um component for our community to be kind of considering that because if you don't have growth, you die.

And how do you explain that?

Trying thank you for that comment.

Well, I mean, so okay.

How are you going to implement?

I mean, public sentiment is like a huge piece and it's missing from your action plan.

So it we have a survey that we did in the housing needs assessment portion with it, we had about 1900 respondents from it, and so we have a ton a huge data set that we'll be analyzing and putting into implementation the action plan piece of this, as well as additional community input.

So I understand the input piece.

Yeah, there's an education piece that I'm trying to get at here.

And I think that that would be a strategy within the action plan is education.

That's typically as well.

I want to see that as number five.

Okay.

Okay, I understand.

This what you're seeing up here is the outline for what the state is actually requiring of us, but I can make a note of education.

Because I think it's a big, I mean, we just saw a loss because we lost an annexation that that was very, very critical to our military community and other at another segment of our population.

And I believe that the community didn't understand the the real story behind all of that.

So I'd I'd love to hear from Tanta Anta and see if she could comment on this.

So Katie, I think it's I think it's important, and you and I just talked about this on a call uh a week or two ago, talking about NIMBYism, because that's really a lot of what it comes down to, right?

You either physically don't want more housing close to you, or you don't want your home values to come down.

And one of the things we recently talked about um in this in this action plan was looking at GIS mapping, because until you put this in like what does this mean for your neighborhood, you know, people everyone's like, yeah, housing needs to be cheaper.

Yes, I want my kids to stay here, but in terms of how you're gonna do that and where you're gonna do that really needs to be addressed.

So, to the credit of the city right away, that we talked about that, and it was like, yes, we're going to make this part of like a map that people can get their arms around to see what type of growth are we talking about, and is it impacting your neighborhood?

Number one.

Number two has to be the messaging that goes with that to be able to say our population growth is slowing.

This is a national phenomenon, but part of the reason is also because we're really expensive.

So we have to look at these different strategies and bring it to the public to raise that awareness because you're right.

If we don't grow, we die.

That all the data shows that, right?

You don't just kind of stay steady, you actually start to decline.

And actually, the number of new jobs that we've been getting in the last uh two, three years is not nearly what it was for the previous seven years.

Uh, so that kind of tells me something about the the you know growth trajectory or lack thereof if we don't address uh housing costs.

That messaging has to be part of it as well.

And I do think that the mapping has to be.

Well, I think that's really really key is because as businesses look to relocate, they want to move to communities where they know their families that are going to work for them can afford to live.

And housing is certainly a component of this.

There's other pieces we've talked about child care health costs earlier.

I mean, there's a lot of different factors that go into all of this.

Um, but housing is a big, big piece of this.

And our community, you know, I'm I'm afraid to say is trying to protect their home value.

And and I I don't, again, I I'm not saying um I I disagree with that, but I it's short-sighted, and that's what I how do you get the I understand that it's very short-sighted because if we don't grow, our housing values will go off a cliff.

And we will trying to recover from that cliff will be a lot more difficult.

I also think it's all it's targeting.

So, for instance, targeting the messaging, because you know, we have an increasing number of seniors and getting that messaging to seniors, right?

And in how they they vote and they perceive this topic.

Um, but I I'm gonna give uh Katie and and Amy and and everyone credit on that because yes, this is the state mandated, but there's a lot of conversation right now on how we're gonna actually get this out to the public so that something can actually come from it.

Otherwise, it's just a report that's sitting there, uh, and messaging is gonna be a key component of it because every community is having problems with NIMBYism.

Yeah, I again uh me and a lot of people up here clearly understand it.

But as was demonstrated, our city didn't understand it and voted against the last annexation.

So there could have been a lot of other factors involved too with that.

I will agree.

But still, um we have to look at ways how do we grow smartly.

Okay, we don't want to just sprawl completely.

We have to find different methods and stuff like that.

And I think that's where the conversation has to go.

We have to engage with the public and get them to have buy-in so that when we do vote for something big, it's not gonna get reversed.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

I think it's uh it's dangerous for us when 82% of our citizens vote uh in a certain direction for us to blame that.

Well, they just don't understand they're a bunch of NIMBE.

I think that vote on uh Carmen Lynd had to do with concern about its impact on Shrever space for space, very legitimate concerns, and and the quality of life of the citizens of Colorado Springs and the citizens out there in the county.

And if if we're gonna just say, look at those foolish NIMBE, they're worried about their quality of life, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Uh that that is uh proper.

They're worried about their commute times, traffic in our city, they're worried about uh vagrancy, homeless people all over the place.

They're worried about crime, and they're they're worried about the condition of our roads, and they're worried that tacking on more and more um acreage to the city of Colorado Springs isn't gonna help that.

It could make it worse.

So I'm I'm just gonna uh put the counterpoint out there.

Uh try to understand uh what the citizens are are voting on.

I don't believe that was about the value of their homes.

That was serious concerns about Shrever.

Uh the the rosy projections uh from the pro side were not true, and uh their quality of life was gonna suffer.

Councilman Rosley.

Thanks, madam president.

I'd just like to point out I know this isn't a presentation about Carmen Line, but I would just like to point out that development is moving forward in the county in unimportant in unincorporated El Paso County outside of the city limits.

So all of the development that is going to happen out there will have the same impact to this community that it would have anyway.

It's just that we don't get to benefit from any of the uh uh tax uh income, tax revenue.

So um I think again to Councilmember Line Lever's point, there seems to be a lot of misinformation, misunderstanding, lack of education about how development happens, why it happens, and what the implications of that development are thank you, council members.

Go ahead.

Um that concludes our presentation.

If there's any more questions, um I'm just on the as a personal anecdote, excited to move forward within this action plan with our current consultant team with Matrix and DDES, Dr.

Tatana Bailey.

Um, we have a wealth of information that we can pull from here and really engage residents and service partners and development partners who are all looking forward to taking um a piece of this and taking a stab at figuring out how we can really move our community forward.

And so looking forward to engaging you all as we uh continue in this next year.

Councilman Line Weber.

So um, from that statement, I'm sure you're integrating plan COS, Annex COS, all those different aspects that are going to be kind of rolling out.

Um, but again, I I want to I want to emphasize education needs to be number five.

So thank you.

Um, this just the morning went on longer than we thought, and I need to give some council members a break.

So we will um bigger items, and I don't think we can push through in time.

I am so sorry to the citizens that have sit here for the delay.

But um please come back.

Please please come back.

But we are now going to adjourn for lunch, and we will readjourn at one o'clock.

So we are now.

I'm here today to share the proposed updates for our policies and procedures manual or PPM as we refer to it.

Before we get into the proposed changes, I would like to provide a quick overview of how the PPM change process works.

We make updates to the PPM for a variety of reasons.

New laws or legislation changes, updates to reflect current best practices, the need to remove outdated or unclear language.

When a change is needed, I collaborate with many stakeholders within the city, including representatives from fire, police, HR, finance, city attorney's office, and our compensation team.

We meet monthly to draft updates to work together to finalize those changes.

Once the changes are completed, they are reviewed by our chief human resources and risk officer before they're brought to mayor's office for approval.

After that, typically we meet with the PPM liaison from City Council to ensure you fully understand the proposed updates before we bring them forward during the work session.

Prior to the work session, the PPM draft uh is sent to all of employees for a 10-day comment period, allowing the staff to ask questions or provide any feedback on the changes.

This year, the employee feedback actually led to revisions in one of the proposed policies, which I'll highlight here in a moment.

Finally, we present the update to you in a work session, and then we come forward to a regular session for a formal vote.

The first section I'm bringing forward today includes clarification and legal updates.

These updates are intended to promote a consistent understanding of workplace standards across the organization.

Today we're proposing multiple changes across both our sworn and civilian policies, as you can see here to improve clarity, incorporate legal requirements, provide specific behavioral examples, and correct any inaccurate or redundant information.

This year we had the opportunity to meet with each of you to review these policy changes.

Are there any additional questions on these policies?

Thank you.

The next section here uh covers the update to our disclaimer.

We updated the disclaimer in both our civilian, our sworn and our drug and alcohol policy and procedures manual.

This change makes clear that these manuals do not create an implied contract or enforceable promise between the city and its employees.

Sworn policy 19 and civilian policy 28 have been revised to include clear language and defining key terms related to job and pay protections.

Since we last met, this section has been further refined.

During the employee comment period, it was noticed that the sworn policy contained a typo.

It referenced 720 hours instead of the correct 1,220 hours for our sworn employees.

These updates are designed to streamline content, enhance precision, and ensure adherence to legal standards for public record management.

The goal of these revisions is to make the policies easier to understand and apply consistently while aligning them with Colorado's record keeper law and best practices for transparency and accountability.

Do you want this on consent?

Yes, we would like this on content on consent for the January 13th meeting if that's okay.

Okay, we'll put it on consent.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on to item nine A.

Will the clerk please read item nine A?

I believe I'm in 9C, 8C.

Yep.

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

Just as a point of clarification, do you want me to do 8B, the resolution first, or do you want to jump to the audit plan of um 8C?

Oh, 8B.

Yep, I click the page.

Sorry about that.

No worries.

A resolution of the City of Colorado Springs consenting to the desolution of Gold Hill Mesa Metropolitan District number one.

Sorry, Drew didn't try to push you to the back.

No worries.

Good morning, Council members.

Uh Drew Fox, City Planning Department, Planner 2.

Uh, today we'll be discussing the requested dissolution for the Gold Hill Mesa Metropolitan District number one.

This district is located uh southeast of Highway 24 and South 21st Street.

District is located in district number three.

Uh council district number three.

The Gold Hill Mesa development consists of three districts in total.

Uh district number two still exists today, and district number three was dissolved in 2022 by resolution.

The initial service plan for the Gold Hill Mesa Metro District number one through three was approved in 2004, and the most updated service plan was approved by city council in 2006.

At that time, the intended structure was for district number one to function as an administrative and oversight district responsible for coordinating financing, authorizing governmental agreements, and supporting the operations of the residential and commercial districts.

This slide presents the statutory criteria for dissolving a metropolitan district for Gold Hill Mesa Metro District number one to effectively dissolve this criteria must be met.

The district no longer holds any debt, nor does it retain any financial obligations, nor does it own any assets.

Finally, the district is not responsible for maintaining any public improvements.

Supporting materials, the packet that has been provided for this work session includes the following supporting materials.

The unsigned resolution for dissolution of this district, the district's cover memo, which again attests to meeting the statutory criteria for dissolution.

A signed resolution by the district's board of directors to dissolve, and finally the the development's reimbursement agreement, which shows that the financial obligations associated with the gold hill Mesa development have been assigned to district number two.

And that concludes.

Yeah, I just want to confirm this is really just the creek corridor that's um at the bottom.

I think that's what I tried to get from the map that you had.

Uh prior the pre-court order for recommendation for you all for dissolution.

Yeah, correct.

Yeah, so this is the creek corridor, but there's quite a bit of stormwater infrastructure that's down there.

So what if that stormwater lie, you know, fails?

Um would that the met is they'll still start they're still gonna be responsible for that, but just in a different um the the number two district number two is taking on responsibilities for uh maintenance of the infrastructure.

Okay, that's kind of what I because there's quite a bit of storm water um components that are in that piece that really comes from the entire gold hill mesa.

As far as their uh service plan obligations, the maintenance of that infrastructure will be taken on by district number two.

Okay, great.

I just wanted to confirm that in my head.

Thank you.

Yep.

I don't see any other questions.

Are you asking this to be on consent?

Uh yes.

All right, it'll be on consent.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Now moving on to 8C.

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

2026 audit plan endorsement.

Good afternoon, Natalie.

Hey, how are you?

Council President Crow Iverson, Pro Tim Risley, and members of City Council.

I'm Natalie Lovell, the city auditor.

The purpose of today's presentation is to seek council's awareness and endorsement of the 2026 audit plan.

We'll cover a variety of topics, including how we produced the annual audit plan, staffing, budgeting, and the process itself.

The purpose of the Office of City Auditors to provide independent risk-based advice, insight and foresight through objective assurance and advisory services designed to add value and improve the city and its enterprises operations.

The Office of the City Auditor conducts two types of work assurance, which are commonly called audits, and advisory, often referred to as consulting.

Assurance or those audit services involve an objective examination of evidence to provide an independent assessment of the organization's governance, risk management, and control processes.

Advisory services, also known as consulting, are generally done in consultation with the area under the consulting engagement.

The Office of the City Auditor assists city council and management to achieve their objectives by testing and reporting on the effectiveness of internal control systems, risk management and governance processes.

Our mission is to encourage responsible stewardship and accountability for public resources through independent and unbiased audits.

We seek to be trusted advisors who drive positive change through independent insights, integrity, and solutions that strengthen public confidence and address emerging risks for the benefit of our community.

And we hold accountability, principled behavior, service to the community, continuous improvement, and people as our values.

It's a fairly large mandate for us to achieve.

Of these, 17,300 hours will be for audit execution.

Approximately 2,500 hours will be for management leadership oversight, and approximately 3,400 of those hours will be for strategic initiatives such as the implementation of our new standards, audit execution, modernization efforts, and so forth.

In 2026, our plan also accounts for approximately 800 hours of furlough time, which reduce available capacity but are not expected to make a significant impact in audit delivery.

We are in the process of restructuring the office from three audit teams to two under two acting supervisors, each with an IS auditor, two auditor twos, and three auditor ones.

In 26, we restructured to better support frontline operations and strengthen succession planning.

And those frontline supervisors will help us to have better uh day-to-day oversight, uh, clarifies responsibility and uh provides continuity and leadership development.

The proposed 2026 budget for the Office of the City Auditor is $2,081,440, of which approximately $53,000 is allocated to operating and maintenance expenses.

The remaining budget, approximately $2.03 million, supports salaries and benefits for the audit staff.

An assumption of approximately 17% overhead has been used in our model, which brings the planned budget for the office to just a little over $2.4 million.

Outside of code required audits, the audit plan is based on a risk assessment model, which informs the division of costs among the different departments that we audit.

Assuming the current division of costs, in the audit plan today, utilities will pay approximately 1.3 million of our budget.

The city 961,000, and the airport 164,000.

One notable change that you'll see is an increase in audit hours dedicated to the Color Springs Airport.

This adjustment reflects a shift in the risk profile and supports expanded audit coverage of both the airport and the adjacent business park, peak innovation.

The plan includes returning back to key engagements such as looking at rental car concessions and audit services at the airport business park together.

Although the historical split has remained relatively consistent, you will see that our overall budget this year has declined, and that is due to two drivers.

The first one is the reduction in our overhead from approximately 2020 to 17%, and then a shift in a staffing structure where we have prioritized entry level positions, resulting in more staff hours at a lower salary level.

Together, these changes have reduced the overall costs, which in turn have lowered the proportional amount to each of our entities.

In preparing the audit plan, I considered both explicit requirements outlined in city code and the way that requirements have historically been interpreted by prior city auditors and myself.

For example, the code mandates post audit reviews, and we have interpreted these to include periodic reviews of major financial and IT systems, which might include disbursements, payroll, billing, accounts receivable, and so forth.

An example of an explicit requirement would be our annual review of 2C spending.

In addition to these recurring audits, I also saw input from staff, city management, enterprise leadership, and city council.

I further consider community perspectives while sitting here listening to public comment or attending public meetings.

This broad engagement helps us ensure that the audit plan reflects current risks, operational priorities, and community sentiment.

Outside of the formal process, we also gather potential risks through our post-audit review forms.

Those are those forms that we complete at the end of an audit engagement to identify where there might be additional areas where we would like to look at.

Regular audit training and staff development, engagement in the community, looking at peer reviews, peer audit shops and emerging trends, and then another area where we get quite a bit of information is through the fraud, waste and abuse hotline.

Potential audits are scored on a risk-based model using the attributes that you see on your slide.

And for example, an audit engagement where there's been a system upgrade, say in an IT system or an accounting system, would score higher in that risk model than say a system that hasn't been upgraded recently.

Similarly, a program of 100 million would score higher than a program of 100,000, for example.

Payroll, credit, and collections, these are high liquidity areas.

Of course, we want to look at those controls on a regular basis.

Interviews, post-audit review forms, broad waste and abuse hotlines.

We then score those in our risk-based model.

We look at and consider the staffing, the budget, and the third-party contracting, and I shared with you all the resource plan a couple of weeks ago during our required communications.

And then at the bottom of that slide, we build the plan.

It starts by backfilling in the required audits by code, the charter, the ballot, the governance, that 2C audit, for example.

There's others.

And then the city auditors' duty to audit.

So those are those post-audits.

Those are those major engagements that I talked about, financial and IT systems, for example.

And then those that are required by the standards, for example, we do an annual audit of all of the recommendations that we've made throughout the year.

That would be called our follow-up audit.

And then we from there do a risk-based priority audit based on the risk profile that I just shared with you.

When we start 2026, the proposed annual audit plan accounts for 17,300 hours, assuming a fully staffed audit department.

And the majority of the plan is risk-based as it is required by the audit standards.

To maintain responsiveness to emerging priorities, the city auditor has historically set aside 1,500 or 1,500 hours annually for unplanned projects.

Those hours can be used in a variety of ways.

So those hours are just to account for emerging risks and trends that we see.

Not all projects on the 26 audit plan will be completed in the calendar year of 2026.

Some will carry forward.

That's not unusual for us.

So again, I'm seeking council's acknowledgement and endorsement of the 2026 annual audit plan.

This reflects your support for the proposed priorities while recognizing that the plan may be adjusted throughout the year in response to emerging risks, organizational needs, or requests.

The plan fulfills the requirements specified by city code.

The details of the 2026 audit plan were covered with the audit committee at a working session on November 7th and was formally presented for recommendation on at the November Audit Committee.

The audit committee has reviewed and recommends the 2026 audit plan, and they are here today if you guys would like to speak with them.

Otherwise, the audit plan shared here in your council packet will be posted to the website, and we will begin preparations for uh getting underway.

With that, I'll take any questions.

Councilman Hinjam.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Um Natalie, when was the last time that the annual audit plan was presented formally to council in this way in a public forum?

I'm gonna go back in my memory.

It was either 2020, maybe 2019, 20, 2021.

Probably 2020 is my guess somewhere in that.

I think it was before 2021 because it hasn't been since I've been on committee.

It has been a while.

Yes.

Yeah, I actually um do have some questions, but it's really for your um a couple of your audit committee members who are present.

And uh I would just appreciate hearing from either you uh Jim or Barry Um your your thoughts on the plan, how both the content but also the process, how we got here, um, you know, just just some general reflections on uh just acknowledging um you know it was about a half a year ago.

There was a lot of focus on the auditor's office and a lot of uh a lot of attention to it.

And uh I think it would be helpful if you would just share your perspective.

Thank you for your question.

I'm Barry Baum.

Um I'm the longest serving member of the audit committee as a citizen.

Um with me today, Jim Godfrey.

And we will just give you a brief overview of um our assessment and review of the audit plan.

Actually, by city charter, we report to city council as advisors.

So we have never presented to city council before uh as members of an audit committee any assessment of that plan.

So Jim and I uh other audit committee members were not available, participated in the November 7th 2025 detailed review of the proposed 2026 audit plan.

That review um that review included a review of the potential risks for the city, airport, and Colorado Springs utilities.

And that was several hundred items long that were assessed.

A risk score for several factors common to all risks was scored with input from the audit department personnel, some comments from Jim and I as we were there to develop an overall risk score for every potential risk.

That risk score was then used to prioritize the 2026 audit plan.

And that audit plan was played against an audit department organization and staff manning plan to determine available 2026 audit hours to determine how far down that risk ranking could realistically be accomplished in 2026.

And that's what Natalie explained to you.

I'll turn over some additional comments to Jim.

Thank you.

Jim Godfrey.

As Barry said, this meeting was very informative for us.

First time we had been to this level of detail since I've been on the audit committee.

And so we thought the 26 audit and staff manning plan was very thoroughly developed.

And it seems to have the full support of the entire audit office.

Everybody is on board with this plan.

And that was impressive to me in my background and experience to have everybody on the same team, not just management making decisions.

And so I was we were impressed with that.

Barry and I would also like to add that we were impressed with the level of detail and the data-driven analysis that went into the development of this 2026 audit plan.

Natalie used some multi-level charts of data with formulas that gave her numerical values that she then went through a thorough and thoughtful evaluation of that data to rack and stack the items in that audit plan.

She analyzed the staffing levels and the skill levels of the office, and you saw that reorganized chart.

She's also assessed available work hours and those existing policies and procedures and created what we believe to be a very strong team of capable of accomplishing that audit, this this audit plan as it was presented.

We were truly impressed with what she has accomplished in such a short period of time.

I'll tell you, I was uh aware of all the confusion that went on uh when she was hired, and um and I was a doubter as well.

But after seeing what she has done in such a short period of time and the level of detail that she and Sean and the other members of the office have developed, we were totally impressed.

Um, and we have the 26 audit plan um has the full support of Barry and I, and I'm sure other members of the audit committee would feel the same way had they been able to attend that workshop that we did.

Um so with that, um, we'll be glad to answer any questions you might have.

I I guess another thing I'd appreciate hearing from you is just um given that the primary topics are the city, um the airport enterprise and our enterprise of utilities.

Um can you talk a little bit about how the plan incorporated or worked with those entities and or was independent to determine what elements of those organizations that you'll be focusing on?

I don't think we have that level of detail in terms of what elements each of those audits would take place, so we would defer that to Natalie to answer.

Go ahead, Barry.

Uh yeah, just my comment.

I mean uh when we were shown the detailed list of all risks that had been accumulated over many years from prior city auditors from input from city council from various organizations like the city itself, the airport, um, various departments, utilities.

Uh it was an extensive list.

And to bool that down into something that is comprehensible and digestible with the staff and manning and level of capabilities that they have was very, very impressive.

And the the way that that was done by it was looking at each individual risk, and then going through and looking at common elements uh that would be across all those hundreds of risks to develop a score for that risk.

And Natalie can go through that detail with you and more, but that that um data-driven analysis is what Jim and I were most impressed with.

It was um, in my opinion, not political.

It was not any emphasis on we haven't looked at them in a while, we need to look at them just because we haven't looked at them in a while.

It was really based on a risk analysis.

Great.

Go ahead, Jim, and then I have another follow-up question for you.

And I think that the expansion of the amount of time and hours at the airport is a result of looking at all of those additional risk factors with that business park and the other things that that carried a value that needed to be addressed, and she saw our risk there, or the staff saw risk there and that.

So I think that's an example of how doing that data analysis helped uh improve the hours into that.

And both both of you, before you hand it back over to Natalie, what what a year from now, when this audit plan has been essentially completed, what do you hope or imagine you will see perhaps differently, or what's your expectation about what you'll see in that, you know, at the end of the year?

I think both Natalie and the audit committee will have a much better understanding of where some of the risks are in the city based on the reviews and this specific audit plan of what it's attacking, what it yields in its results and findings.

There were things and risks that will show up that will need to be able to substitute in there.

But I think we'll learn, all of us will learn a lot from this year's audit plan and how well we assess the risks going forward into the 2027 audit plan.

And uh where were did we find any surprising results that uh may have really underestimated or overestimated the risk as we go through this.

Jim?

Yeah, and I and having spent a career in financial management, um it's uh it's still very important to have someone outside the organization to come in and look and identify where these risks are and where things are.

You get caught up in doing your own thing and your internal controls, as good as they may be, you're still gonna overlook things.

And so having someone come in to identify where you can make improvements, especially when they're on your team and not from an outside agency or somebody coming in.

And so what we see here in the strength of this is the buy-in, excuse me, the buy-in uh from the staff that everybody is on the same page.

And so those folks that are actually going to be going out and doing that audit are aware, they've been cross-trained, they're working and they all know what their goals and assignments are.

And I think that's going to carry through with a quality of a product at the end of the year where the plan is gonna have some substantial notices to it, and hopefully not a whole lot of major errors.

But we see the strength all the way down and across the staff in that.

Thank you both for your service on this committee.

Councilmember Henchman, would you like me to address it please?

Go ahead.

Um, I believe your question was what has been done to kind of engage the auditees that we that we audit.

So this year I um developed a new process.

Our standards, the new 2024 global standards, require that we do a collaborative approach with senior management.

And so this year, um, leading into the audit plan before the audit plan even went to audit committee.

I drafted memos to the executive leadership at Utilities, the executive director at the airport, um, and the same for the city.

We met with the mayor and his um chiefs of staff, and we went through the audit plan and we talked about those risks to make sure that they and I are on the same page to make sure that that risk assessment that I'm doing is truly valid, and that helps to ensure that I'm bringing them along with us on the success in the journey of this year.

And so I think it is truly what um the council um audit committee's members are saying is it's you've got to have buy-in all the way through the whole chain in the office, but you also have to have it from this board, um, the board that I report to, and then also to the senior management.

Any other questions?

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

Thank you very much for the presentation.

And thank you for the committee members for coming and sitting through this long day and and your um input is very important.

So we do appreciate you coming today.

Moving on to an item A.

Will the clerk please read an item 9A into the record?

An informational presentation on the annexation policy checkpoint on the proposed Kettle Creek Edition number one annexation.

Good afternoon, Chris.

Uh Chris Sullivan, senior planner, land use review division uh on the South Team.

Uh so what we have today is an annexation checkpoint session uh before city council here.

Uh this is known as Kettle Creek Edition number one annexation.

Up on the map, you can kind of see where the site's located.

I put it on there, but it may be a little weird to look at.

It's not a typical square lot site.

Um, it's 19.88 acres.

And I believe to the southeast is Pine Creek, something like that.

As I said, it's an annexation.

We have an annexation application in along with a zone establishment and a land use plan with the intent to rezone the site from RR5 RR25 to R Flex Medium Streamside Overlay and Air Force Academy Overlay.

RFlex medium is the residential flex zone medium scale, allows between five to sixteen dwelling units per acre.

And the intent is to do residential.

We do have, in addition to these sets of applications, we do have a development plan in Platt, maybe just a development plan on file.

You can kind of see within this general area, there's a mix of land uses given that we're on the border of InterQuest and some residential neighborhoods to the east and southeast and south, which is additional enclave.

And I will also note this is adjacent to probably something most of you have seen on council.

It's that little R5 zone, which is just kind of in the cutout.

It's approved, it has a land use plan and approved development plan, I believe, uh with the intent to do multifamily.

So that's uh it's a most immediate adjacency and most recent land use action that's occurred in this area.

Um so today we're really looking to address these 10 uh checkpoint criteria criteria points.

Uh we have CSU here with the presentation, and we have the applicant uh uh representation from NES who will also give a presentation to give you a little bit more detail.

Uh other than that, do you have any questions for me?

Not yet.

All right, I'm ready.

It's gonna be the US.

You thought this was gonna happen in the morning, didn't you?

I did.

Good afternoon.

Um Todd Sturdiment, Customer Utility Connection Manager.

Let her get the slide.

I can do it here, right?

This gives you a little um bit of an idea of a zoomed in of the area up um on the top right where we kind of highlighted the Kettle Creek edition number one for the vicinity map.

So City Code 12.4.305B requires city council provide water service outside city limits.

This is our uh water ordinance.

So approval must be based on substantiated and rent record demonstrating one of the following.

Um the 128% of the existing water usage.

Um a unique or extraordinary event of circumstances that necessitates an extension of water service, or there is in an enclave.

There is zoned by or leased by the city, or the extension will have a de minimis impact on overall city's available water supply.

Um the the application to it is our uh current reliability reliably met demand and existing usage.

So we have uh without going through the whole slide, we've seen this a number of times.

We have 4,985 acre feet per year, and this one falls as you can see over at the bottom left at uh the 29 acre feet, which uh makes it the de minimis.

So city code uh requirements of annexation, the groundwater rights, uh water rights, um, the current conditions, owners submitted the water rights and well inventory.

These documents are being reviewed by CSU.

Um, then the right-of-way anneasements.

Um this does fall in service area overlap for electric, uh, the Kettle Creek edition number ones look located entirely in Mountain View Electric Service Territory.

The Kettle Creek edition number ones look located entirely in Mountain View Electric Service Territory.

So MVA MVEA will be entitled to just competition compensation per Colorado revised statutes.

And the natural gas is in Colorado Springs utility service territory.

Here's a further zoomed in when we get to the individual services.

So you can see there on the electric kind of hatched area that is the over and the just below the green hatch area is Springs Utility Electric Colorado Springs Electric Service Territory.

And the overlap is shown with MVEA.

Oops, did I go the wrong way?

Water and wastewater on the left is the water.

So you can see some of the connection points to our mains down at the south.

And then the dashed area in the green is uh the developers requirement for distribution.

And uh over on the right side is the wastewater, which is similar, um a little further extension down to that bottom left to get to our wastewater main uh natural gas on the left is um tying in at the south, possibly uh uh tie in kind of to the northwest into that subdivision if needed, but there is tie-in points relatively close for the distribution mains.

And then uh the electric, there will be some requirements of mainline extension, um, either on InnerQuest or up to the north when we get further into design that'll be determined um to feed feed the site with the distribution.

Um the capital cost estimate at a high level is is low end is 700,000, high end is a million for the springs utilities estimated cost.

I zoomed through that pretty quick, but if you have any questions, not yet.

Good afternoon, Madam Chairman, um, president of city council and city council members.

I'm Andrea Barlow with NES here to present on behalf of the applicant.

I won't be long.

Promise okay.

So as has been pointed out, uh, this is the location of the site.

It is entirely surrounded by the city boundary, so it is an enclave within the city, a county enclave within the city.

There is existing office industrial immediately to the northwest, and then the larger uh Victory Ridge development, which is a mixed-use development, including residential and commercial uses.

Uh, to the south, we have some rural residential that's in El Paso County, and then other residential further east um within the city.

The eastern boundary, it's not very clear from this plan, but you can kind of see it winding through is Kettle Creek.

So this property is separated from the um uh residential to the east by Kettle Creek itself.

And the zoning context, which uh Chris has already explained.

So we've got a business park to the northwest, and then the R5, which was an area that was recently annexed and zoned into the city um immediately to the east.

We're proposing to rezone to RFlex, um, which accommodates a mix of detached and attached housing types.

Uh the density range for the RFlex is five to sixteen units per acre.

They're the um standards that are allowed in the R-Flex medium.

We will also be incorporating the streamside overlay due to the proximity of Kettle Creek, and also the Air Force Academy overlay and due to proximity to the Air Force Academy.

This is our proposed land use plan.

It's uh a site that's just short of 20 acres.

We'll propose a medium density residential in that five to 16 unit per acre range.

As Chris noted, we do actually have a development plan in process that is uh showing a 6.19 unit per acre um density.

So it's very much on the lower end of that scale.

And within that, the land use plan is showing 1.7 acres of open space adjacent to Kettle Creek.

That is to preserved as a mouse habitat.

So that is a habitat protection.

There is through the development plan much more open space proposed for amenity areas and so on.

And then stormwater detention there in the in the bottom right hand corner.

Indre question from Councilman Henjam.

Yes.

Thank you, Madam President.

Hey Andrea.

Can you I see just two things I'm curious to know more about?

One is the understanding the Kettle Creek Road to be vacated and then the homes to be removed.

Can you just share a little bit more about that?

Yeah, so there are some there are existing homes on the property.

There are two basically two parcels here, and the existing homes are to be removed.

And Kettle Creek Road is to be vacated, but it is to be realigned through the property.

So it's it really only serves this this property as current as it currently as it's currently designed.

It doesn't serve any other properties.

So the intent is where you can see the green circle on Old Ranch Road to bring Kettle Creek Road in at that point and then loop it around through the site and then connect through these other access points.

And I think my next slide actually shows this a bit clearer.

So the development to the east, which is already approved, is actually by the same developer, two different branches of the same developer.

One deals with multifamily, which is the property to the right, and then this property is a single family branch of the same development group.

And so they are going to be interconnected with access, and uh because of the uh constraints of actually the the project that's already been approved from an access perspective.

Um this was kind of considered as a combined project early on.

Out of curiosity, you may not know the answer to this question, but what happens to the actual land that was rowed?

Does it just get it gets incorporated into the it gets incorporated into the development?

It will be developed on.

Okay, yes.

Oh, the one the other thing I want to point out there, there's 13 feet of additional right of way, um, which will be dedicated for old ranch road for future widening.

Um, that was the same that was as required for the adjacent property, so there are plans to uh widen Old Ranch Road in the future.

Umnexation status, obviously we hear before you for our check-in.

Uh, it is uh the remainder of a former larger enclave, so this is the last uh parcel.

Uh the petition was accepted back in June.

Uh fiscal impact report has been provided uh by the city of Colorado Springs, which shows a positive accumulative cash flow, primarily due to a sales use sales tax revenue from uh residential construction.

And uh we are here with like I say, with the uh check-in and we anticipate um our formal hearings early next year.

So this is the process we're at the policy checkpoint, as this is the newer newish process that was implemented a couple of years ago.

And these are the guidelines that we are considering.

I'm going to go through them in a little bit of detail.

So, first of all, logical extension of the city boundary.

I don't think you could get much more logical than this.

It's an enclave entirely surrounded by the city and encouraged by Colorado revised statutes to annex those types of enclaves.

Uh diversity of housing, as I note, we are proposing an R flex medium zone.

This particular project is anticipating compact single family detached and two family attached housing.

So it will be uh smaller lots, so very much having sat through the housing needs assessment presentation earlier, very much meeting a need at that uh entry-level portion of the market where people are trying uh to make their income reach those um uh lower end of the housing market for sale market.

And then it planned infrastructure, as I noted, the additional right of way for future widening of old ranch road.

We've got our access proposed of Old Ranch Road and via the adjacent development.

Um I talked about the realignment of Kettle Creek.

Um Old Ranch Road is a minor arterial, so it does have sufficient capacity for the additional anticipated traffic, and the TIS that we submitted with our um development plan is recommending a left-turn deceleration lane at the site access on Old Ranch Road.

Um, planned public safety.

We um when we start an annexation process, we have an annexation committee meeting at which uh police and fire are both present.

Um they uh didn't have any concerns about this development.

Um they the site is currently served, even though it's in the county, it is currently served by Colorado Springs Fire and Police from Mutual Aid Agreement.

It does fall within the tri Tri-Lakes, oh sorry, it's not called that monument fire uh district, but the few that mutual aid is served by the city services and uh the nearest fire station is uh three miles north.

Uh proximity uh to employment centers, there's quite a lot of um employment center activity in this area, a lot of concentration of commercial, um businesses, offices, Pikes Peak State College is very close, and um so it it is a good focal point for additional residential development to support those employers in the area.

Diversity of development again, a very broad range of uses in this area, so it adds to the mix of already existing development and helps to support the existing business park and office uses and the fiscal impact uh showed a positive cumulative cash flow as already mentioned.

Uh utilities um the uh CSU has already addressed the utilities.

Um we have relatively good um connect connections with uh transit for this area.

Well there is a bus service along Voyager Parkway that goes to the college, and we're close to we're on a minor arterial, close to intersections of other major roads, including I-25, um parkland open space.

That is to be incorporated throughout the development, but as I noted, we're preserving uh just short of two acres of mouse habitat adjacent to the creek.

And they uh it's not decided yet, but either a metropolitan district or the developer will fund required public inf infrastructure improvements.

Um with that, I'm happy to answer any questions.

I don't have any questions for you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, I do.

Councilman Risley.

Not a question, but since it's at the conclusion of uh what's being presented, I thought I would just comment or remark that from my perspective, this seems like a very viable annexation.

I I think it makes a lot of logical sense that uh this would be uh a prime candidate for annexation into the city.

And of course, obviously, as we go through the process, there may be some additional information that's presented, but uh at at the at this point in the game, um I I for one think it is viable and worth pursuing.

Thank you.

Yeah, seeing other questions.

This is a checkpoint.

Um, so I would like the council members to acknowledge with a thumbs up if they would like to this checkpoint to move on to the next step.

Okay, it looks like it'll be moving on.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 10, council member reports and open discussions.

Do I have any council members with reports this morning?

Oh, it's this afternoon.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thank you, Madam President.

Um first, I'd just like to say thank you to one of our Colorado Springs Police Department um sergeants who had his retirement ceremony just last week.

And that was Sergeant Um James or Jimmy uh waters, and he'd been with PD for 28 years, served in like pretty much all the different uh positions you can, including the SWAT team.

Um he was a dog handler, patrol, uh crimes against children.

Um so a very full career.

Uh gave a great uh speech, you know, as as he was recognized when he retired.

And so I just wanted to recognize him.

And then also what I what I would like to do is just show a few pictures from uh, you know, as everybody knows I represent District One.

District one is uh largely on the west side, so that's what everybody thinks of mountain shadows, things like that.

But it also comes east and goes past UCCS.

And I live in neighborhood called Garden Ranch, and that is just north of of uh Palmer Park.

So just to the north of Austin Bluffs, uh between Academy and and uh uh union.

So those are the three roads that make a triangle and garden ranches in between Austin Bluffs to the south, uh Union to the west and academy to the east.

And so when I don't run, you know, days I'm not running, which is most days now.

I I go for a walk through the neighborhood, and uh start off down by Palmer Park, and then I come back up union, and so I'm heading uh north, and union is uh uh if you're driving on union, go in north and you go across Austin Bluffs.

This area you'll see pictures of is on your right hand side.

There's a Mennonite church there, there's Austin Bluffs open space.

So what you see here is three three carts, shopping carts, which uh is kind of part of the topic of the day.

Vagrants or homeless or whatever we want to call them, uh leave there.

They push them from supermarkets nearby or malls nearby, they dump them here, and then they walk down that trail to the left, and they go back in those trees and and uh you know, they have their little tents and things.

You're gonna you're gonna see a picture of a I'll call it a nest, but it's a little campsite.

That'll be on the right hand side of this stormwater ditch, and it's right next to the road.

That stormwater ditch, or or uh it's not the wrong word for it, but infrastructure uh is important because you're gonna see damage in these photographs to the fencing that is supposed to keep kids out, uh, protect the our infrastructure.

So this was just Saturday, I guess, on top of some other stuff.

Um I I asked a neighbor who had a pick up truck, because I have pushed carts back to these to these uh malls, you know, by hand often, but uh there were just too many.

There were actually four.

There were these three plus another one.

Can we go to the next picture?

Oh, look at that.

And so there it is.

So my uh neighbor and I put all four of them in the back of his truck.

Two of them were from Walmart, Walmart at uh Austin Bluffs and Academy, a little bit to the east of that.

That one is from Target, one is from O'Reilly uh auto parts.

Uh the owners of the uh stores were happy to get them back.

And I guess we can go to the next one.

And the reason that that matters, like, well, who cares if those carts are sitting there?

You know, it could it's sort of the broken windows theory of policing.

It's just a sign of disorder, and then others see it and they think, you know, no one around here really cares.

We can do other stuff.

Uh we can camp here too.

Why not have some graffiti?

You can see plenty of graffiti's been put there, but it's covered up.

Um, and other activities.

So this picture is actually from a couple months ago, and this guy was walking down in that uh stormwater infrastructure.

And on his right, like where his right pants pocket you you know, you can see maybe something dark right there.

On my phone, if you look at this picture, he has a very large knife, like a bayonet sticking uh out of his pocket there.

And so I took his picture and uh he became irate about that, you know, because I was gonna send it in to uh to PD to the to the hot team.

Um can we go to the next one?

And so he came after me and uh, you know, he wanted me to stop and and have it out, but I didn't want to go to a knife fight with an iPhone, so I kept going.

And uh today and today's, and this is we'll get to this too.

This is part of the infrastructure damage.

In today's um, you know, that summary of news which we received from uh the city, I just want to read you a couple sentences from an audiologist on the west side near the Hope COS shelter, and he uh is talking about with that Hope COS shelter over there.

He says, quote, I can't tell you how many times I've had someone challenge me to a fight to the point that it at that now I don't even tell my wife about it, says Dr.

Kablib Bennett at Apex Audiology.

And he also says, quote, I've been urinated on a couple of times.

I've had to dispose of so much trash, and you know, so much drug paraphernalia, and it's really unacceptable at this point.

So this was a report from it's KRDO, channel 13.

So I'd ask you to my colleagues to look at that.

But this is what's happening to our stormwater infrastructure because these folks don't like to walk around it up to the Mennonite church and over to the sidewalk.

So they come from the open space and they just basically pull the fence over.

Uh that large bar on the top there, they've taken off and just thrown down into the ditch now.

And go ahead and go to the next one.

Here are some of the homeless.

No, that's us.

Okay.

So I guess it gets to be too much to climb over the fence.

So why don't we just cut holes in it, which is what they're what they're doing now.

And there's multiple uh holes cut through this uh infrastructure, which you know used to serve again, keep kids out of it, keep animals from crossing over from the open space onto union, um, protect the infrastructure.

But it's damaged in multiple spots, and I'm gonna try to go out there and walk it with stormwater, see if they can repair it.

Go ahead and go to the next one.

That's really the same picture we saw from earlier.

But that's not the only spots.

I want to point and make sure everybody understands that.

If you walk along Union, the sidewalk there, it's just repeated damage down the fence multiple places.

That area across in the back, if if you scroll back a little bit.

That's where uh they live.

A little bit to the south here, but still in this area, a fire was started uh in early November.

It was the day that Holly and I got back from uh Montana, and uh we heard that, and it was actually Randy Royal that told me, hey, we had a fire uh over there at near Garden Ranch.

And it at the southern end of this, you know, where the sidewalk is, there's homes right there.

So if CSPD hadn't been so fast getting there, it would have burned, uh burned the homes.

We can go ahead and go to the next one.

All right, go ahead and scroll up a little bit.

You might notice what it says there on that cot.

COSOEM.

So whoever this guy was, he's taken this perhaps from uh one of those Hope COS shelters, because there's one not far from here up by East Library, uh, and the sleeping bag also uh it was uh uh OEM sleeping bag there.

And go ahead and go to the next one.

So as a good former military guy, I secured that uh non-secured property and took that to my house.

You'll notice the shorts there on the grounds in the lower left corner and the uh beautiful pattern they have on them.

And so when we wonder what's this all about, is it's uh you know mothers with children?

Is it uh the cost of housing?

Well, I think we have a little hint there, what uh at least part of it is about.

Go ahead and go up further.

And here's so if you go back down a little bit, Emily.

That is Union right there, uh, the road.

That's the curb, just 10 feet away or whatever.

And this is in between a couple trees.

Can you go up a little?

Perfect.

If you'll notice here in the lower left, that's a big hammer, is what that is.

And this stuff had been there for a couple weeks.

I had walked by it time by time.

You couldn't see it from the sidewalk, but when I climbed up the you know, the hill to the left of me, uh, there was all this stuff up there, including a sheath for a big knife.

The knife wasn't there, but the sheath is uh a leatherman tool, if you know what that is.

It's also another knife, you know, that's a folding knife, that uh hammer and just a bunch of stuff.

Uh clothing and blankets and uh garbage and all that.

I think that might be the last one.

Is that right?

So hey, why does this matter?

Because I'm not even out looking for this.

This is just walking in my neighborhood and garden ranch.

What do you come across?

I don't think it's uh I think it's dangerous that citizens have to face guys like that that were down in the ditch.

Um I think it's it's wrong that we allow this kind of garbage to accumulate all over the city, because this isn't down near a creek bed or anything like this.

This is really, you know, close to UCCS in the central part uh of our city and in what's you know considered a nice residential neighborhood.

So this is the level of disorder that's occurring in our city.

I mean, that's wrong, and citizens deserve better than this.

So, you know, I ask everybody else up here to help me uh address this, and part of that is through enforcement.

So that's my uh my report this week.

Thanks.

Councilman Rainey.

Um the very first one is uh happy opportunity and pleasure to visit our gas propane and air plant uh in my district.

Um and the representative from CSU who provided me that tour, Mr.

Jack Justin.

Uh absolutely did a phenomenal job.

I actually believe it's Justin Jack.

Um did a phenomenal job, but also highlighted the importance of that facility and what it does and how it supports our city.

So I just want to take the opportunity to highlight him and the rest of the team out there, especially as we get into these uh winter months right now.

Also had the opportunity to uh spend some time with the Grand Peak Academy Cub Scouts.

Uh every so often they are required to engage with an elected leader.

Uh I happen to be that individual.

Uh, and what a great opportunity.

Briefed well over 40 uh Cub Scouts.

And you want to talk about questions.

They came readily prepared.

Um matter of fact, I thought a lot of these questions might have come from uh public comments.

Uh these young bright minds were very invigorated to engage with an elected leader and some of the most uh profound questions I've ever heard out of uh a lot of young individuals.

So kudos to uh that particular Club Scout and the then leader uh Kyle Labora who brought that event together.

So thank that uh entire group also.

Uh and also uh had the opportunity along with uh other city uh leaders, the mayor, the director at the airport, uh fellow council members, uh Dave Lineweber and Nancy Henjam this weekend, uh to ride the float in the Festival of Light.

What a great opportunity, and more importantly, the citizens that came out to be a part of that event.

Uh yes, it was a little uh frigid, but everyone braved the cold weather to celebrate uh the holiday as a city, and we had a tremendous amount of citizens that came out.

So uh major kudos to the entire city of Colorado Springs for coming together to uh begin celebrating the holidays.

And I just want to leave uh just one final note.

Uh I will be holding a town hall, the last one for 2025.

That will be next week, and more details will be coming out today about that particular town hall.

That is all, madam president.

Thank you.

Seeing no other council member report out, um, we are adjourned.