We secure American freedom.

We compete on the world stage.

We launch balloons, rockets, careers.

We conquer America's mountain and spend time in a garden fit for the gods.

We power the future and protect the past.

There is greatness within each of us and all around us.

We are Colorado Springs, Olympic City, USA.

Morning.

Welcome to the City of Colorado Springs work session meeting for Monday, March 23rd, 2026.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Crow Iverson.

Here.

Councilmember Donaldson.

Here.

Councilmember Gold.

Here I am online.

Councilmember Hendem.

Present.

Councilmember Lineweaver.

He's running a few minutes late, but he will be here.

Councilmember Rainey.

Oh, he's excused until he gets online.

Councilmember Risley.

Here online.

Councilmember Williams.

Here.

Let me make sure one, two, three, six.

Okay, you're good to go.

Sorry, you have a question.

No, thank you.

Are there any changes to agenda for today?

I don't see the online.

I see none of the three of us that are here have changes.

Um are there any changes to the regular meeting for tomorrow?

Um yeah, madam president.

I would ask to call off, I believe it's 4 AA.

Okay.

And I would like to clarify that the uh item for reconsideration tomorrow, the which is the vacation of Boulder Street.

The only thing we will do tomorrow is vote whether or not to reconsider it at a later date, and that will not the actual discussion, the vote um on whether or not to vacate it will not occur tomorrow.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

We will vote to reconsider it and set a hearing date.

Thank you.

Yeah, clarification.

Yeah.

So in that request, and maybe this will be clear tomorrow and we don't know today, but uh will the reconsideration be reconsideration of exactly the same um what was originally presented, or will that reconsideration be the vacation in a in a modified fashion, or do we know?

The council member that asked for the reconsideration will explain that tomorrow during that great.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome.

Seeing any online and and madam president, if I could, the only thing I'd like to add to that, and if your understanding is different, then uh it'd be useful for citizens to hear it too.

Is I spoke to our attorney, and my understanding is that tomorrow we vote whether or not to reconsider it.

If we if the vote turns out to be no, then it dies right there.

If the vote is yes, then two weeks later or our next regular session, we'll consider it.

But at that time, council could vote to open essentially open the hearing again, take new um comment from citizens, change uh we could add additional um uh conditions of record, so things could change if we if we vote to do that.

Hi, Trevor.

Uh Trevor Gloss, the attorney's office.

Um, so for the motion to reconsider.

Uh the the item tomorrow is just the motion to reconsider.

Uh, if you vote no, it will not be reconsidered, it will die right there.

If you vote yes on reconsideration, it will be set uh for the next meeting where it will be a reconsidered.

The reconsideration is a discussion among council and another vote.

It is not a public hearing unless you decide to open it up for another public hearing, which you would need a vote to do so.

Correct, but that could occur on that meeting.

Okay.

Thank you.

Since we're on the topic, I do have a clarifying question because it's not my understanding that the reconsideration needs to happen at the next regular council meeting.

So um I haven't heard or seen that.

Trevor's is that just an assumption you're making?

There is no timeline for the motion to reconsider has to happen at this next meeting tomorrow.

The reconsider it say reconsideration itself and any uh follow-up can be delayed further.

Um I believe the idea was just that uh it would be the next regular meeting to get it uh processed quickly.

Trevor, do we set a hearing date tomorrow?

Yes.

And we set the hearing date tomorrow if it is the date for the reconsideration if it is if the motion is approved.

Okay.

Councilman Williams.

Yes, and and much like council member Donaldson is doing.

I don't want to get people's hopes up.

Um there may be more time necessary.

So I I wouldn't bank on the first meeting in April because in my opinion, if we're going to have this big broader conversation, it's gonna need some time.

So I I'm still working on that date to propose, but it most likely will not be the first meeting in April.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on to item um 4A.

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

City Council work session, meeting minutes, March 9th, 2026.

Are there any changes to these minutes?

Seeing none moving on to 7A, will the clerk please read item 7A into the record?

Agenda plan or review.

Does anybody have any questions on the agenda plan or review?

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

Moving on to 7B, will the clerk please read item 7B into the record update to the City of Colorado Springs community wildfire protection plan.

Good morning.

Good morning, President Pro Present Pro Tim, members of council, Chris Cooper Fire Marshall.

Uh thank you for hearing us this morning.

Uh, we just want to provide an update to the community wildfire protection plan that we're working on.

As you know, wildfire is a great concern for our community, and it doesn't uh take much, you know, for reminder of the fire down on uh south of us, the 24 fire to really emphasize the risk that we have in our community due to wildfire.

And so uh we're in the process of uh amending and adopting our community wildfire protection plan, uh which is a five-year renewal process.

And so I have my staff here today.

Um, Jess McIntyre and Ashley Whitworth, they're gonna present to this uh council as to uh what the changes are to the plan and uh just give you an introduction as to the updates.

So I'm gonna turn over to Jess McIntyre.

Good morning, ProTemp President and Council members.

Um thank you for having us.

Quickly just want to apologize.

My voice is kind of cracking a bit.

So apologies if anything doesn't come out quite clearly.

Um, but yes, today um we're talking about the community wildfire protection plan.

This is a project um undertaken by the wildfire mitigation section of the Colorado Springs Fire Department.

Um and I quickly just wanted to ask before I go into full detail, um, how many of you are familiar with what a community wildfire protection plan is?

Have you heard of this type of plan before?

Okay.

That's totally all right.

Um, it's just something that most jurisdictions have, and it's a really important document for us to have a five-year strategy of what we want to do for wildfire risk reduction and where we're headed.

Um, not only is it a good thing to have, it's a must-have for certain um uh city codes, and there's federal jurisdictions that required as well.

So quickly on the screen, you'll see um a part of our city code.

This is a requirement for us to do every five years.

It's also tied to federal legislation for the healthy forest restoration act.

And this is also a really important um requirement if we're going to go for certain grant funding.

So many grant funding opportunities that we ask for, we'll ask.

Do you have a CWPP or community wildfire protection plan?

Because it lets them know if they're going to allocate funding for us, that we have a five-year strategy of what we're gonna do with the funding.

Um, and also important to note that this plan is how we decide um and how we think about projects over the next five years.

So it's not just addressing risk, but it's looking at what we can do to prior prioritize wildfire mitigation projects.

We do currently have a plan in place.

It was originally written in 2011, updated in 2021, and we're working on the sub the second update to be completed by August 2026.

A little bit more about the background of what a CWPP is.

This is not tied to the operations section of the fire department.

It's really low, it's really planned for wildfire risk reduction in our wildfire mitigation section.

Um, it's not a project level work plan.

So again, these are just high level strategies for the next five years.

And these help us to identify needs and challenges and priorities.

So while it's largely headed by the fire department, we are working with our utilities partners, our parks department to help contribute and write the plan.

We have also circulated the plan already to our partners for review and approval.

So you'll see the jurisdictions here that have seen the document already and help provide feedback at this time.

This is the timeline that we are working with currently.

So we initiated the project in October of last year.

We worked to get a project plan in place as far as how we're going to get this plan approved and in place.

We've been developing the plan between October and December.

We had a public survey out to our community, and we had 298 responses to that to that survey that basically was asking questions associated with what do you feel like are the risks in our community.

So this is not just a plan that was developed internally at the fire department.

We gathered input from the community to better understand what they're concerned about so that we can plan for their needs as well.

In February, on February 24th, we had a public meeting where we had 53 attendees participate.

We circulated the plan also at that meeting, so attendees at that meeting could leave with a copy of the plan to review.

And again, I have distributed this plan as well to our subject matter expert partners.

So right now we're in this open comment period.

So between now and April, the end of April, we are still getting feedback from members of the public and our partners to edit this document further.

And it is our intention that by the end of May that we'll have a fully finalized plan ready for approval, and then we'll circulate the plan between May and August and get that published by our deadline of August 2026.

Just a little bit of a highlight of what our community is concerned about.

I'll say we put this out to our volunteer base.

We also put it out to on our social media pages, and this is the feedback that we received.

Most of the participants that completed this survey live in high-risk wildfire areas.

We have a very strong population of people that care a lot about these topics.

And so a lot of the feedback we're receiving from people that live in our wildland urban interface area.

And a large percentage of those people that care a lot care because they have been impacted by a fire.

And 2% of those people that completed the survey have lost their homes to wildfire.

So when asked what should we prioritize over the next five years as far as education outreach efforts, this is what our community told us.

They want to hear from us more.

They want more public meetings.

They want to have more access and education for some of our resources, like our neighborhood shipping program, and then some of our project work that we do as well.

And then what do you think is the biggest wildfire threat to our community?

And this is what people said.

If you're familiar with word clouds, the larger the word, the more people said it.

So people are worried about the vegetation, they're worried about other people, and then they're worried about infrastructure like power lines, and then also weather and lightning.

Do you feel that you're doing all you can to reduce your risk to wildfire?

And again, as a reminder, these are the people that are out there that care a lot that are doing a lot of the work.

But even some of them are saying that no, we're not doing enough.

Majority are saying yes.

So the public that cares a lot about these issues only think that we're doing 44, that only 44% of them think that we're doing enough.

So I think those public meetings and this education that we want to tackle in the next five years are gonna be really important to make sure the public knows that we are trying our best and doing everything we can.

And uh this plan is currently available.

I know it was provided to all of you, but um it is on our website, just as you're so you're aware.

And this is just a quick overview of what it is contained in the plan.

So in the main section of the document, there's an introduction and description of our city and goes into background about the wildfire history in our area.

Um, it provides uh a very deep description of what wildfire risks we are seeing, and then it tackles the the three different types of mitigation strategies of how we're going to address those risks, how we're going to implement them, and how we're going to evaluate and monitor to make sure that what we're doing is actually making sense and working.

Jessica, we have a question from Councilman Handjam.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Actually, and you don't need to go back slides, but I I was curious about the plan approval and notice that uh the Office of Emergency Management just reviews but not approves.

And I I just wondered, I I would have in my head expected that they would have been part of the approval process if you could speak a little bit to that.

Yeah, I can't give a whole lot of detail.

But this process is fluid, and we would love to have more people involved.

They have that office has been provided a copy and at this time has not provided feedback to the document.

Um, but we would love to have them more involved.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Uh the appendices of the document include an overview of our wildland urban interface, and you all are aware that we're looking to expand that boundary in our city to include areas of the east side in addition to our current western wildland urban interface.

Um, there's an overview of the current community education efforts and uh strategies for more our fuels reduction projects, uh, the working groups and fundings that we are working with.

Also how we assess fire danger and fuels, and then a lot of the other appendices you'll see here are really going and diving into further about how we're going to expand our program.

So we want to expand more into recovery planning, smoke ready communities, which is really tied to the idea of prescribed burning and how that can adapt and evolve over the next five years of tribal consultations.

So that means um working with our tribal partners and consulting them before we're um doing any modifications to the land, and then our volunteer base, um, which is the large percentage of people that completed that survey mentioned before.

So we call them our neighborhood champions and how they're involved.

Um, so that's all I have for the first half of this presentation, and I'll turn it over to Ashley Woodworth to um go into more detail.

Thank you.

Yes.

Um, Madam, excuse me, let me restart.

Madam President, pro Tim and Council members, Ashley Whitworth, Wildfire Mitigation Program Administrator.

Thank you for having us.

Um, so I will kind of go into a few of the goals that we have for the CWPP.

Um, so you guys have seen this map.

Um, right now, the red is our current wildland urban interface, and the green is the east side or what we call the Puoe, but we're gonna call it class one.

Um, so these are just uh the east side is what we're going to be adding into our Rui, and one of our goals that I'm going to talk about here.

So the top, as you can see, that's our current wildland urban interface, a lot of dense heavy vegetation, Ponderosa Pine, Gamble Oak, and then that bottom picture you see, that's the east side of town, our prairie land urban interface.

Not as dense vegetation, more of a grassland, but just so you can kind of see the difference between the west side and the east side.

And so our goal number one in the CWP is fire resilient landscapes.

So we have a map up here.

Sorry, it's a little hard to see, but these are the areas where we've already done mitigation work here in the city, and then kind of some of the planned areas, and we can get a bigger map of this for you guys as well.

Um, but the goal one is we want to identify areas for treatment.

Um, we are constantly doing that on a daily basis in our section and with the 2D Tabor committee that we have as well.

And so we want to reduce that hazardous vegetation, and then we're looking at obviously monitoring and maintaining any of our previously treated acres.

Um that can be on a scale of potentially every year, or depending on how much uh moisture we get, the oak region that can be anywhere between five to eight years.

Our goal number two is fire adapted communities.

So, like Jess spoke to, uh, we put out a survey.

The community wants to see a lot more education.

Um, so we will continue to do our HOA community meetings that we have.

We are going to be doing our town hall meetings this year as well.

We're planning those.

So we will continue to get the education out to the communities.

Um, we're going to establish that Eastern Wildland Urban Interface.

Um we have an online tool that does wildfire risk assessments at the parcel level.

And so we are looking at trying to get that updated as well and potentially get a new tool for that to add in a lot more items like fencing, sheds that aren't already in that tool that we have right now.

Um again, increase audio and visual education materials.

Um we are going to start talking about prescribed fire in the city, uh, getting a process for that.

And then, like Jess spoke to, we meet with uh the tribes when we go to do any type of mitigation project on city-owned parcels.

So we consult with them, see if there is anything that they are concerned or worried about, or you know, should we be staying away from a certain area?

We work with the city archaeologist on this as well.

And then goal number three for the CWPP is just program expansion.

Um, so increasing our staffing.

Um, we need to get a secured uh dedicated facility for all of our equipment.

And right now we have our equipment in about three different areas.

So having it in one centralized location will help us.

Um expand and strengthen our partnerships, and then we're obviously looking at updating our WooE codes.

And then uh we are constantly looking at grant grant funding opportunities to leverage the funds that we have right now as well.

And so our evaluation process, as we spoke, this will this is looked at and reviewed and updated every five years.

We will look at the progress of all our goals and measure those, see if there's anything that we need to adjust for the next year.

Is there any roadblocks that are occurring?

And then the comprehensive review, obviously from 2030 to 2031.

These are just some questions that we would ask ourselves as we start to update the CWPP.

And then, like Jess said, um, we are asking for feedback.

So if there's any feedback from any of the council members, um our contact information will be on the very last slide.

But this is where you can go to download that document and look at it and provide any feedback if you would like to.

And then that's all I have.

If there's um any questions that I can answer.

So you do these every five years, right?

Yes, ma'am.

Um, my question is from, and I did obviously didn't see the first, the last plan, because it's been five years.

What changed the most?

Is it more state legislation on the wooy and puy, or is it just more of a more worry about fire danger?

Like what what changed the most from the last plan to this plan?

So the biggest changes that you're gonna see are the the Puy, adding in that Eastern Wildland Urban Interface.

Um, and then we've added more in about um kind of what Jess spoke to is just really the prescribed fire stuff.

Um, and just some of the services that we kind of offer now.

Um, so really our stipend program is taken off.

Um, some of the enforcement that we have to do for the wooy codes, um, some of the pre-frame inspections that we do when a new house is getting built.

Um, so stuff our program has offered, it just wasn't in the CWPP five years ago.

And so now we've added a lot more of that information into it.

Thank you.

Councilman Donaldson?

Um good morning, Ashley.

Morning.

How long have we done this now?

How many iterations or when did it start?

2011 was the first one that was done.

Okay.

And just to make this clear for maybe people watching, this is totally separate from the uh legislation that's going through now.

Yes, correct.

So the CWPP is just basically um I'm gonna call it it's a roadmap for I say us, the fire department, the city, to kind of know what are our risks in the city and how are we gonna try to mitigate those?

Um, this has nothing to do with the state legislative that is for the community wildfire resiliency code.

That is a completely separate topic that Fire Marshal Cooper will talk about at a later date.

Okay.

And that's all that's all the questions.

Thank you.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you, Madam President.

Yeah, just wondering um how can city council be of support and help to you in this process.

Yeah, that's a good question.

Um, I think uh really just kind of understanding the plan.

Um, and if there's questions, I say asking questions.

Um, we get a lot of questions on, hey, why aren't you doing mitigation work in certain areas of the city?

Um, and so just coming forward, um, talking to us, knowing kind of what what our plan is with some of those projects.

Um, but I think uh the biggest thing here is just um supporting us and understanding um and just being a partner for it.

And I don't know if Fire Marshal Cooper wants to add anything to that or not.

He may.

Yeah, Chris Cooper Fire Marshal.

Uh thank you for that question.

You know, obviously, a program like this takes uh resource and money, and uh this plan is not intended to uh commit us to things that we're not able to do, obviously, but again, the risk to our community with wildfire is great.

And so, in order to continue to do good work that we've done in the community, uh, you know, our wildfire mitigation team is small but mighty.

The amount of work they do uh is just absolutely incredible and how they leverage the funding that they get to be able to do projects.

And so the support of council and consideration of that, uh certainly moving forward for the fiscal considerations about how do we continue to support the program.

You know, you saw the the stats about uh you know only 44% think the city's doing enough to uh mitigate wildfire in our community.

Um that's concerning.

I think we do a lot of work locally.

We're certainly the the flagship around the state.

Um we're looked at as the subject matter experts, and a lot of people look at our program, but that really speaks to you know, we think we're doing a lot, but there's still a lot of work to do.

And so your support and that would be appreciated.

Absolutely.

So uh certainly uh the education around the um the plans and town halls and those kinds of things we can absolutely participate in or invite you to the town halls that we have.

Um, but I'm also hearing the fiscal realities of continuing to serve in this way, we need to continually be educating and uh supporting you from uh from from a financial and and uh perspective in the budgets that are necessary to to do this work.

Yeah, absolutely.

And you know, the 2D money is was huge.

That's we couldn't be where we're at today without that.

Um but certainly moving forward for us to continue to do the work that we're doing, that you know, that'll be important.

I think reminding people of that um that uh initiative that passed uh what it's been four four years ago now.

Four years, yes, 2022.

Yeah, yeah, that's great.

Um absolutely we'll we'll absolutely do that.

And thank you so much for for your work um on our behalf.

Thank you.

Do I have anyone online that has any comments or questions?

I can't see at this time.

I don't see any.

I think we just have uh one more comment that Jess would like to make real quick if we have to.

Of course, you do.

Thank you.

I just wanted to add on to the last question that was asked.

Um, and just let all of you know that um we have about 143 neighborhoods that are in that wildland urban interface, and of those neighborhoods, there's about 250 champions that represent that grassroots effort.

And then if you notice almost about 300 people apply to that or reply to that survey.

So those are our volunteers that are mainly responding, and they're mainly on that western side.

So another way that this um group of people could help our efforts is to help us expand our message, not just to the people that have been impacted by a fire, but to the entire community and especially recognizing that that grassroots effort that we've built on the west side needs to be built on the east side of town.

So we don't have a footprint there at all.

So your help getting that word out is going to be vital.

Thank you.

And I would I would add to that too.

I think last year we had two kind of town hall meetings on the east side of town.

Um, I think the last one we had maybe 10 folks that showed up to it.

Um so, like Jeff said, getting that message out will really help try to engage those people, especially if we do have the code stuff that passes here for the east side of town as well.

Can I ask one final question here?

Um what are what are the big risk factors for a uh for a wildfire to kick off or come into the city of Colorado screens?

What what are the risks?

I can think of a couple, but I'd like to hear from yourself or the fire marshal.

Certainly, uh, you know, if wildfire were to come into our community, uh there's financial risk, there's lots of life property.

Chris, really what I was asking is what's going to cause it, what's going to start the fire?

Oh, uh when we think of starts and causes fire, uh, you know, to quote retired fire marshal lacey, three top causes of wildfire in our community are men, women, and children, right?

And uh But there's they're not all the same, like they're not all the same, but certainly we can't say Crow Iverson's gonna start a fire, but I can think of uh some other groups that uh that I have a lot of concern about and sometimes misplaced compassion for them says we should allow them to uh I think you know where I'm going, so I'll I'll stop.

Certainly, you know, and in terms of the uh the unhoused population that we have in our community, uh unfortunately they are uh a very large percentage of our uh what we would call uh outside fire or wildfire type call.

And those could be as simple as a uh, and I say simple, right?

Uh, but from the most basic type of response that could be a warming or cooking fire that uh in very few cases might be contained, uh still is illegal by code because they don't meet all the provisions of code.

Um, but uh what we really get concerned with is the hostile fires, those that are not properly contained that are out of control that cause additional grass fires.

And that is a pretty significant uh amount of our wildfire calls.

Um, you know, those are generally uh detected early and remain fairly small.

Um but when we look at our large hostel fires in our community, again, that population is tied to the a larger percentage of those fires.

And so when we uh look at all the causes of fires, when we look at the human cause, then we look at uh whether that's uh natural with the the lightning or uh potential electrical mechanical failure.

Um, those are the main causes, but to your point, the unhoused is uh a huge part of our run mode.

Yeah, that fire last year, I believe it was uh by red leg brewing just off Garden of the Gods.

I mean, that was a uh a homeless person, a vagrant who started and it burned up the side of the hill and almost got into the homes up there.

We were lucky, you know, because of CSFD's quick response.

They stopped it at the top of the hill.

What do we know what the cause of the 24 fire uh was?

I've heard no cause on that.

It you know, it's obviously out of our jurisdiction.

Um, but um, yeah, we're still waiting for that.

Started right along the road, though, so it could have been a vehicle pulled over and dry stuff or chains dragging or a lot of our fires we see right along the side of the road are cigarettes or top cause, then individuals dragging chains, trailer chains, or some type of mechanical failure on the vehicle, whether it's a backfire or pulling off on the side of the road and hot exhaust igniting the grasses.

Okay.

And this year, I mean, I guess this is an opportunity to um just share information with uh citizens.

We're starting off dry, is that right?

Dry and hot.

We are, you know, our snow pack is about 40 percent.

Um, and so that's concerning.

Uh, we're not gonna have the spring runoffs because that's not just local that's in the mountains.

Uh, we're already seeing high, you know, fire danger or red flags for the year.

I think we're up to about 25 to 30 red flag days already.

And uh, you know, normally we're a couple a month, and so that's concerning being in in March already.

We're not seeing the heavy March snows that we would expect and the high temperatures.

So we are not looking good for fire this year.

You know, it's got the fire department on uh really on pins and needles concerned about.

Would you say this is a spring when our citizens uh should be extra cautious in their activities compared to some springs we have lots of rain, it's things are moisture, maybe it's not as windy.

Can you just add something to that and then I'm done?

Certainly, yeah, this year is is a year to not take things for granted, right?

We're always in a higher fire risk, we're in a high uh mountain desert, we already have arid conditions.

Uh this, you know, and we don't want to bang the drum and and keep people, you know, always saying you guys are constantly complaining about fire danger, but the fact of the matter this year is is time to heed that warning.

Um, you know, we still see people out burning leaves, uh burning debris in their backyard, even though we're in fire restrictions already.

To my knowledge, this is the earliest we've gotten fire restrictions.

We're about three weeks into fire restrictions already this year, and we're already talking, you know, is now a time to look at fire bans, and we don't take that lightly.

Um but the fact of the matter is this year is looking to be very dangerous for our community, and we need everyone to step up and make good choices, heed the warnings.

Uh, this is not a year to uh use fire in any means to clean up your yard to burn yard debris or anything that is illegal in Colorado Springs, always is.

And this year there'll be zero tolerance for anyone doing that.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Well, I don't know this to be true, but I did read that the Nebraska fire was a controlled burn again, just what I was reading.

But if that's the case, that control burned burned Nebraska.

Yeah, I understand that as well.

You know, and a lot of areas, agricultural burning is common.

And uh, you know, we don't have any agricultural areas within the city of Colorado Springs, but certainly our county areas are are subject to the same type of behavior.

And when we have these hot dry conditions and we have the winds that we have, you know, it's just a recipe for disaster.

Councilman Hinjam.

Uh yes, thank you.

I uh appreciate this ongoing conversation.

And you did answer part of my question, which was about the restrictions and ban.

Um what tips you from moving to from restrictions to bans, and then if you could also speak to uh already thinking about Fourth of July and fireworks, and um if you could speak a little bit to uh their legality in the county, and I have a kind of a follow-up question to that.

Okay.

First, uh, we have a matrix that we look at, and so we utilize the science.

And so part of that is our local uh fuel moistures.

Ashley and her team uh throughout the season, they go out and they do fuel moisture sampling, determine what our local fuel moistures are.

We look at the national preparedness level in terms of wildfire.

We look at local resources.

We have a uh weather call every Friday with local partners to include the Forest Service, uh, local fire districts, National Weather Service.

We discuss what we're seeing, we discuss what is the available resources locally, what fire behavior we're seeing, and all those things go into that consideration of do we look at burn restrictions.

In that matrix, we have a numerical value.

And so within a certain range is restrictions when we hit uh a higher value than that would drive us to go into burn bans.

And so again, we try and be scientific of that more than gut feeling, but sometimes it just comes down to saying okay, regardless of what the numbers are showing, whether it's bad behavior from the community or other concerns we're seeing that may drive us to go and uh burn bans.

In terms of fireworks, uh, fireworks are always illegal in Colorado Springs and have been for many, many years.

And this year has us uh really concerned because it is uh the 250th anniversary of the US and 150th of Colorado, and we know people like to celebrate on Independence Day, and uh we are already having conversation about what that looks like.

Unfortunately, as uh a municipality per state statute, we cannot ban the sale of or prohibit the sale of fireworks.

Um we do locally, but we have no influence over the fire districts, and so those sales are outside the city limits, and fire districts do not have the same authority that we have as a municipality to outright ban the sale of those in times of burn bans.

They can certainly put a moratorium on that, but um that is significant concern.

So, along those lines, um, for example, I think about um uh Cimarron Hills, which is really a massive enclave inside the city, people buy fireworks in there, and that's you know, it's surrounded by city, and then we get complaints about people, you know, putting off fireworks in the city when in fact they're potentially doing it in the county.

Correct.

Um can the county place a ban on the sale and use of fireworks?

Could the county make that kind of ban?

The sheriff is the fire warden per state legislation.

They can ban the sale of fireworks um, but not wholesale.

And so they cannot prohibit the sale of fireworks uh during normal conditions during times of burn bans.

They have some increased level of authority to uh prevent the sale during those times.

So if if things are looking as concerning as you are relaying to us and potentially even getting worse and closer to the summer, what are the conversations that the city has with the sheriff around uh broader safety for El Paso County?

Yeah, again, those uh and I failed to mention that uh Luz Floro, who is the deputy fire warden for the county, is involved in those weekly meetings, and those are some of the conversations that we do have.

And so we certainly want to make sure that uh you know, as we move forward that we're sharing those concerns, not only from the fire chiefs, the fire districts, us that we're all on the same page and and can certainly uh you know, hopefully everyone's on the same page moving forward.

Great.

I I never really thought about that communication between those entities and strongly encourage that we continue to keep those conversations going.

Yeah, we're very proud of that conversation.

You know, you don't see that in a lot of areas, but that's an example of the collaboration we have locally.

Thank you.

I don't see any online, so um that would conclude this morning's presentation.

Thank you though.

We appreciate it very much.

Thank you for the conversation today.

Moving on to item 7C.

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

Quarterly financial report.

Good morning, Shere.

I'm not that tall.

Good morning, madam president, honorable members of city council, Shari McDaniel, Chief Financial Officer.

And um I'm here today providing a quarterly financial update for the city council.

I do want to before we even start, just acknowledge and let you know that this presentation is not going to cover all of the items that were listed in the document provided by council leadership regarding items for a quarterly financial report.

But I would very much like to be able to get something on the calendar to start having regular meetings with city council to discuss not only those things, but also in the legislative services 2025 into year report, the council indicated wanting to take a proactive role in the 27 budget process by engaging earlier, coordinating meetings, tracking council requests when preparing work session presentations.

So I'd be very interested to start those as soon as we can if we can find a designated time to do that, and then we can talk through many of the other things on the document that was provided, as well as as we start to move through the budget process.

Unofficially, because I don't have the quite the audited uh numbers yet.

And then for the current year, because of you know, there's an economic activity and then a collection month and then a report month month.

And so what we have is one month worth of information for 2026.

So I just want to acknowledge that for the sales tax portion of it as we start moving through.

And of course, we always like to look at the revenue first and particularly sales tax.

So this rebooting.

Okay.

So I wanted to um sort of level set where I'm gonna start talking about 2026 sales tax.

So this is a slide that was presented at the 2026 budget work session in October of 25 as we prepared for the 26 budget.

And the reason I'm going here is because I just wanted to level set on the 2026 amount and as a reference for then having the discussion going forward.

So for 2026, when we compare it to the orange bar, which at that time was the current sales and use tax end of your estimate, to the 2026 budget, we have a couple values and references that we were making.

The first reference on the 2026 bar, the blue area, was that 1.4% sales tax increase that we had a lot of discussion about that was the increase from the then end of year estimate to the 2026 budgeted amount.

That was that 1.4.

But then you may remember we added, I added in a little bit of revenue of new generated revenue, and that's that small green bar at the top.

And so when you put those together, it's a 1.6 total increase from what was at that time, the end of your estimate for 25.

So when I start talking about 26, it may be this, we have the 1.4, but in total it's 1.6.

So I just wanted to make sure we have that um in the back of our mind as we start to talk about the 2026 budgeted amount.

That amount is 251.8 million of sales and use tax revenue for 26.

So then, as we start talking about that and looking forward into how that's comparing already to this year, I wanted to provide a little bit of update on that left-hand set of columns.

We now have what was the original 2025 sales tax budget, the sales tax estimate at the time of that prior graph when we were building the budget, and then how we unofficially ended the year on our sales tax.

So that sales tax estimate currently, March of 26, is a little bit higher than where we thought we would end when we were sitting in September.

So that upped the end of year estimate just a little bit.

And so now when we look from that current end of year estimate to the 2026 budget, carrying that gray line over, that's a 2.4 million dollar increase or 0.9%.

So that's where we're coming from.

So if you track the orange bar, which was the end of your estimate back in September, that was that 1.6%.

So now because the 2025 end of year estimate came in slightly higher, it requires a slightly less of an increase to meet the budget for 2026.

So that's my whole point of um this slide so far is that we ended a little better.

So the growth from actual 25 to 26 is a little bit less than we thought it was going to be at the time.

So just to um set that stage for how we then talk about the sales and use tax.

And and just to be clear it looks like we estimated to back in September 2470.

But it turned out looking back now with the data that's been collected today that at the close of 25 we actually collected 249 million four hundred and seventeen thousand so about one point seven million more.

Correct.

Right.

Okay.

These slides are a little confusing.

I know that's why we have to talk about colours there's like percentages but we'll just have to go slow and be sure we okay I understand so thanks.

Good.

Do we need any are there any further questions on kind of each of those things and how we got there?

Just depends on how we're going to use it but I for me I I would say keep going unless you okay sounds good.

And I would just ask if someone online has a question since I can only see the slide just feel free to um jump in.

And really the whole point of this slide in particular is to establish as we start to move through 2026 and we start to look at those sales tax reports when you look at those sales tax reports if you see on that the comparison those percentages that are stated on that sales tax report are a comparison of that month to the same month of the prior year.

So that month to month comparison so if we see that percentage being point nine or more that means we're tracking to budget.

So that's the whole point of this slide.

What we need when we look at that sales tax report looking at those monthly percentages if it's 0.9 or more we're good to go so we can feel comfortable that we're going to meet budget.

So that's really the whole the whole point of this slide is we need a 0.9% increase in that sales tax report each month and if we get that we're good okay and we do have one data point for 2026 so January activity collected in February reported in March and that was a 0.88% increase.

So I'm gonna I'm gonna round by 200th and basically it was that 0.9% increase so with one data point so far in the year we're tracking to budget.

So it's a win I'll take it okay so breaking down sales tax a little bit further um I like to look at the categories these categories the five that are listed here auto dealer building material furniture appliance electronics general retail and restaurants these are the five largest categories they make up about 70% of the total collections those together so what I have listed here in that second column is the dollar change from 2024 to 2025.

So we're looking at how did 2025 end basically and you'll see that and then I have an all other category and that's everything else put together so you can see that every single category except the building materials was green it was a growth and it really is that building material category that has um the decrease which has been pretty consistent through 2025.

And so on a percentage basis when we look from 24 to 25 those positive categories are in the one and a half to three ish range but you can see the building materials is a minus 10 percent so that's drag you know that's kind of dragging that total down but overall we ended the year at a I believe yeah 0.11 or 1.

Um, I just thought of a question I've never had before, and it feels like a pretty stupid question, but um to any of our builders purchase material outside of the city when they're building.

So how I guess my question is how what of it, what kind of an indicator is building materials for our sales tax versus what building materials are bought and used in the city?

Yep.

So a couple of things.

The difference between sales tax and use tax is sales tax is assessed on materials purchased within the city limits.

So, and I'm gonna make something up, right?

If um Builder A goes to Share's lumber yard and that's in the city of Colorado Springs, and they buy all their lumber from Shari's lumber yard, they pay the sales tax at that time.

However, if construction company B buys their lumber from Nancy's lumber yard, which is located in Kansas, when they bring that material into the city and it is used and consumed within the city, then they pay use tax.

So really the difference between the sales and use tax is sales tax is purchased on things that are bought within city limits, use tax is paid on things that were purchased elsewhere and brought into the city for use.

When you look at the um sales tax report, and depending on the table, but the main table is the sales and use tax.

So that will capture all of that.

When we look at these industries, the industry report in the sales tax report is sales tax only.

And so this building materials that we're looking at here is the sales tax portion.

There is, of course, a very large amount that goes into the use tax as well.

Um I'm sorry.

I actually never really tried to understand what use tax was and and how do we monitor or track use tech?

How do we know that builder B is bringing their materials in and we're taxing for those materials that were not purchased in the city?

Uh typically the way we do it is through construction uh monitoring.

So knowing, for example, uh a number of different ways, like the regional building report on uh what has been permitted, then we know if there's a very large commercial project, or uh when we hear about it or we see it driving around, and then uh the sales tax team does some of that monitoring.

And normally any company would just know on a monthly basis, or or what kind of frequency are they paying a use tax to the city?

Uh and yes, all of the construction companies who do work here know that they have a tax responsibility to the city.

And also, sorry to get too detailed, but the frequency of paying either sales tax or use tax is dependent on your volume of sales in a year.

So if if you're a small and I don't know what the construction, I don't think the construction companies fall under this, but if you have some other company has a very small amount of sales, there's they're small and they only do sales occasionally, they can file on a yearly um schedule.

Other companies have to file on a quarterly schedule, and then many of the companies because they make a certain amount uh have to pay on a monthly basis.

So most commonly it's a monthly remittance of sales and or use tax.

Okay, and and last question related to this, and I can do a private session with you if I have more questions.

But um, what other kinds of use taxes are are we um are we getting paid?

What like what other industries I guess would be paying a use tax?

Oh gosh.

Um we have a lot of the same categories in the use tax.

Um I would imagine something like furniture if you're um buying furniture from somewhere out east and it ships into the city and then it's being used and consumed here, that would be a use tax.

I can okay, great.

I can remember this late.

And this is why you actually added some staff to monitor some of these things to make sure that we're getting all the revenue that's correct, and doing audits so that we make sure we're capturing all of the tax liability that is out there.

Thanks, Sherry.

Councilman Lineweber.

Just to be clear on a Monday morning, um there are times though that we um with um construction uh building materials um will return some of that sales use because it's a special affordable housing project or something like that.

Is this the funds that we often might do some kind of return or or or along those lines?

That's correct.

And so any time that we have a project that uh and the way it works here is that when a tax exempt entity, or if we have um tax increment financing agreement, for example, with um some of the URAs where we have agreed to share the revenue with them, the sales tax would then be reduced by the amount that we would owe to either refund for a tax exempt entity or refund or um provide the sales tax for a tax increment financing agreement.

So some of this redu some, but it probably not a large.

I mean, I I wouldn't think it's I mean, the affordable housing projects are usually less involved.

I mean, they're less dollar wise anyway.

So they're probably not making a big impact here, but there's probably a small impact to these numbers, I would think, right?

Yes.

Okay.

So maybe a couple hundred thousand per project, perhaps, and the tax increment financing is a lot more than that.

Okay.

I'm just trying to get a bigger picture since Nancy opened this door, and I was like, oh, maybe I gotta like add to it a little bit more here because not all the, you know, we do return some of this money.

And so this isn't just purchasing, it's that we made an agreement to to waive property tax.

I mean, to waive some of the city uh sales tax, and it's usually returned, they have to still submit like what they bought and what they would owe, and then they get a waiver or something like that, right?

Um the subcontractors still owe tax.

The tax exemption from the tax exempt entity does not transfer to the subcontractor or even the main contractor.

Oh, yeah.

Oh, that's right.

They pay the taxes, and then it's the owner of the project who is the tax exempt entity that can request the refund.

Got it.

Okay.

Thank you.

Sure.

So uh that's mainly on the revenue side, and because sales tax is um the largest revenue source, particularly for the general fund.

Oh, and the other thing, yeah, I say here that is this is general fund only.

Then looking on the expenditure side, I was thinking to myself, how are we going to take a look at our expenditure side to determine are we tracking to budget or not?

In and I'm gonna air quote normal years, I would maybe compare to like what percentage of the budget has been spent to date as compared to prior years, and we know how we ended in those prior years, so are we on track or not?

But I didn't feel comfortable doing that because the last number of years have not been normal years, and we've had various, you know, uh budget saving targets and all the things happening.

And so what I did to look at expenditure side is to look at oopsie um salary and benefits.

And so what we did, um, what I did is because salary and benefits is our largest category of spend, and so this is general fund again, salary and benefits make up 70-ish percent of the budget.

So I thought to look at how much are we spending so far in our salary and benefits.

So here's another, I have to explain the graph.

So the orange-ish line that is going um across the graph is what we call the payroll remaining benchmark.

So basically what we do is we know how many um payrolls there are in a year, and uh what you may not know is it's not exactly 26 every year because we split the payroll based on how the days fall in the year.

So there may be 26.2, or there may be 26.6 or something like that.

And so what we have is after each payroll, we know okay, what percentage of payroll is remaining.

So after February of this year, there's 87.

So that's our benchmark.

That's that orange line that's going across the graph.

Then what we have is by department or by appropriating department, the blue columns are for that particular department, how much of their budget is remaining for salary and benefits.

So we can see across there that everyone is tracking really nicely.

You may notice that fire and to a much smaller degree, police are falling under that line.

So that means they have less percentage of budget remaining.

The reason for that is that we have our old higher pension payments.

That's a closed plan, it's our plan, we have to fund it based on an actually required funding amount.

The entire payment for the year goes out in January.

So for the fire department, that's to the tune of about $3 million, and the police department is $2 million.

So that is completely accounting for why the fire department is showing below that line and why the police department is slightly.

So as we move through the year, as if we were to continue looking at this chart, the fire department would come closer and closer and closer to that line because they are actually tracking very nicely to that benchmark, but because of that one time lump payment, it's that's the sole reason that that's coming down that's showing it below that.

So overall, you know, 70% of the budget is the salary and benefits.

And so when we look at that compared to the payroll remaining benchmark, we're looking really good.

Okay, I'm gonna move on to other funds.

So let's talk about LART a little bit.

Um I again have on the left-hand portion of the chart, the blue column is the original 2025 budget for LART, which was 10.5 million, and then our end of year current end of year estimate for LART, which is 10.2 million, so about 300,000 less in actual revenue than we had budgeted for LART.

In 2026, we have budgeted not quite 10.1 million.

So that's even a little bit less than the end of your estimate.

Why, why, why, why are we seeing this LART?

Um, but let's talk about 2025 first.

I want to give you a little bit of detail because this the graph doesn't really explain how what's happening when we move into the 27 budget.

So I want to just walk through starting at the beginning of 25, what happened for 25, and what we look for for 26.

So at the very top of the chart, that's the fund balance available.

So basically, the I'm sorry, not fund balance, the funds available for LART, because it has its own fund as we started 2025, 176,000.

The 2025 revenue budget, as we just talked about, 10.5.

2025 revenue over, or in this case, under budget is that 300,000.

The 2025 expenditures were the 10.685 million, which then leads us to in the middle of the chart, the estimated funds at the end of 2025, which is a minus 309,000.

Now moving into 2026, when we set that revenue budget, that was all the way back in about April of 25.

So we did not had not realized that 300,000 less in revenue.

So we based that budget based on very early estimates in 205.

So the 26 revenue budget is set at almost 10.1, and our expenditure budget is set at just under 10 million, 9,994.

So what that does is create at the end of 26 to start the 27 budget process, a negative 215,000 in the LART available funds.

So that's the situation we're going to be sitting in as we start looking at the 2027 LART funding.

I do have three lines up from the bottom, 2026 revenue over under with a question mark.

Because obviously, as we move through 2026, we're going to have to be watching that and making a determination about is that coming in even less than the budget again.

So that will, if revenue comes in under budget in 26, that will add to the problem of the 215,000.

Councilman Henjam.

Thank you, Madam President.

So Share, given that at this point, the projection is we'll be under going into the next budget year.

Um and we know we have contracts that we are obligated to fill, and that the remaining small percentage of LART is used for kind of the events.

Are we considering trying to make up that difference in planning for the events for 2020?

Well, so the committee just met for the first time for this year.

Um, and we'll be considering awards over the summer.

Um, and those awards check my thinking here, those awards that will be approved in the 2027 budget year would be for 2027.

Um considering the reduction of that amount for the LART committee's consideration.

Yes, correct.

So what will happen is when we get to the point in this year where we start um into the process when the applications close, that's when typically, and I think that's in the April May-ish time frame.

That's when we'll say, okay, what is the 27 revenue estimate so that we can start kind of assigning dollar values at that time?

I'll start filling in that 2026 revenue over underline, which will update that bottom line of are we 215,000 short or something more or less?

Then the way it'll work is I'll say, okay, I'm starting at a minus 215.

What's my 27 revenue estimate?

So I'll take that 27 revenue estimate minus the 215, and that gives us what we're available to work with.

Then the contracts will come off the top of that, and then we'll have the amount that we have for the events.

Great.

And I know we have, you know, we now have a large administrator and a much tighter process for how those funds are um going to be considered.

I guess a question is at what point do we want to consider um, I guess somewhat giving a little bit of a heads up to the community broadly who are who often look to those funds uh to just kind of be aware that it's very likely that last year they know we had less, and likely going into 27, we'll have even less to start managing expectations.

I mean, how how might we consider using our LART administrator and our website to start communicating?

And I think that that would likely be a function of the council uh with your maybe communications person, because I don't think that it would fall on the LART administrator to do any of those kind of either press, I mean, and I don't know that we need a press release about it, but communicate.

I mean, we can I think it would be the council uh and the LART committee making a determination of kind of what that message might be.

And that message I think should come from either council or the LART committee.

It can certainly be sent out through the LART administrator, certainly, but I think the message really needs to be one of either council and or the LART committee.

So we can talk about that.

Yeah, now that people are used to a LARC administrator, I think that only makes sense because they're used to going to the LARP administrator, so we can't cut her out.

No, that's who everybody talks to, to your point.

Yeah.

But I just hate starting a year in the hole.

I don't know why we can't readjust it before then because I just think I mean we already know we've overestimated from last year.

We already know we're coming in in the under this year.

So I think a better question is how do we get how do we pull back so that we don't go in in 27 and negative 215,000?

That's a concern for me when I think we can adjust it.

And I think that that would um be a conversation with the um pillar entities because if I understand correctly, they've already let those contracts uh for the events for the 2026 year.

And that's why I don't have any you know change in the expenditure budget because I believe those contracts have already been signed.

We can have a conversation about that.

Maybe uh my my fellow liaison and I and and council could have a conversation about this, but I think this is really super helpful and important so that we can um figure out what we want to communicate when and uh and and start to prepare now, and I think using the LARD administrator as the vehicle for that communication is important, but yes, I appreciate it very much.

Thanks.

So then I, like many of you may have been asking yourself why the heck uh is this LART revenue declining the way it is?

So I looked at a couple things.

First thing is hotel occupancy.

And so what I have here are month by month comparisons between 2024 hotel occupancy and 2025 hotel occupancy.

In 2024, average occupancy over the whole year was 64.1%, and in 2025, it was 62.5%.

So not quite a 2% decline.

So in my mind, this didn't quite capture um what was the real problem.

And I know when we talk about occupancy rate, we also need to have in our mind did the um were there more hotel rooms in the market?

Did we change the market?

And over the past 12 months, there have only been about 120 rooms added to the um inventory, so that doesn't necessarily explain it.

So looking further.

This is the average daily rate.

So what is the price of a hotel room between 2024 and 2025 by month?

And um year over year, the average daily rate has declined by six percent, six point two percent.

So really I think that is our main driver.

And I want to acknowledge that I have visit Colorado Springs uh logo up here because this is information provided from visit Colorado Springs.

Um it is uh some information that they have a contract for that they pay for, and so they uh allowed me to use this graph for this presentation, but the credit goes to um visit Colorado Springs with their information and the report that they provided.

So that really looked to me like this is what the driver is um and uh particularly in those June, July time frames, which are really our heavy uh tourism months.

There looks to be a little bit even bigger, you know, the difference is a little bit bigger than even in some of those other months.

And so I think that's really what's driving the LART tax reduction.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

Shrey, you and did you say that it's just it's the reduction in the um that's the cost of a room, right?

Correct average daily rate uh is the driver in the reduced LART revenue, it's not the number of rooms rented.

It's do you know did that go up?

Did it stay the same?

Did that drop?

And so this, and I'm just going back to hotel occupancy because sometimes when we look at is it the occupancy that's driving it?

Was there a big decrease in occupancy?

And we don't necessarily find that, although a little bit, but one of the things we also think about is did the inventory of rooms increase a whole bunch?

And so then maybe occupancy is gonna catch up.

But in 20 um in the last six months, there have been a hundred and twenty rooms added to the inventory.

So probably not that much of a driver.

In the last six months, but we're looking, we're comparing 24 to 25.

How many rooms were added, you know, toward towards the end of 24 and then throughout 25?

It seems like that would be the important well.

This is the last 12 months.

12.

So in the year of 2025, there were 120 rooms added.

So that I don't believe would necessarily be a driver in that change in the hotel occupancy.

Do you know and this is getting maybe minutia, but in the end of 24, the last three months of 24.

When did Polaris open up?

Oh, I think that was well before that.

Before that?

I thought so.

I can't.

I don't I I don't know.

I'm sorry, I don't have that at the end of the year.

Yeah, I don't even know.

I don't know.

Okay, but nothing you know of at the end of 24 that made a big uh move in number of rooms.

Yeah, I did not look back into 20 end of 24.

Okay.

Okay.

Do you know just and I won't go into the too much detail here.

Is this a national trend?

I mean I believe it is.

It had to do with uncertainty about the economy.

People maybe traveled less.

Although we supposedly have this split economy now where the wealthy 20% spend all the money and the rest try to survive.

Um I can see you don't want to uh no, I just don't know the answer.

I don't know the answer on exactly what's driving um the uh average daily rate, although I do believe it is a national trend.

Polaris opened in November of 2024.

Okay, so November of 24.

Okay.

Okay, but this is you believe this is a big piece of it right here.

Just the summer when we have most of lots of visitors, we were charging $20 less a room or so on average.

Okay.

Okay.

And I don't believe that the outlook for 26 is going to be a whole lot better.

So we'll see what happens with LART as we track it.

Okay, moving to um recreational marijuana, the special five percent tax fund.

Again, uh sort of same setup on the chart.

The 2025, and it wasn't really a budget, although that's what I have here, but the kind of estimate for 25 was originally 1.7, and the estimate now is 2.17.

So that came in uh about 470,000 more than what we thought.

And of course, you'll remember um this is a new source of revenue that began um recreational marijuana became legal for sale in the middle of April.

So then the 2026 budget was set at 2.4 million, and that's of course a full year of collection.

So for that budget, um, we have public safety programs.

We have a number of items that fall within the public safety programs category, downtown clean and safe program, police technology, uh, police safety patrol and priority areas, and then uh the fire departments, police uh uh February Academy.

And then we also have the post-traumatic stress disorder treatment for veterans budgeted at 200,000 and if I could, madam president, and and that totals up to the uh full amount for 25 and 26?

Not quite.

We uh kind of intentionally did not use it all.

Yeah, budget the entire amount uh because it is still a new revenue source, and although it has been increasing since the time of its um implementation, I think for the first time in the last sales report it might have not been an increase.

So I think it's just a little bit variable.

So no, we did not budget the full 2.4 million.

That does not add up to 2.4.

There's some remainder there.

What are you gonna do with the remainder?

Just leave it in the bucket until budget.

That's my plan.

No, I know I I don't I don't have full decision authority, but at this point, that's my plan.

Madam President, can you just help me out to understand how all those big numbers don't add up to 2.4?

It's pretty close.

It's only a couple hundred thousand dollars difference.

I'm sorry, I didn't put the total on there.

I can't if I add 1.3 and and 1.3, that's 2.6, and then I've got a seven and a three, that's 3.6, and then I add two, that's 3.8 million.

Oh, I see my problem.

I apologize.

Um it's because the 1.7 um is added to the 2.4, and we actually appropriated that whole um 4.3.

Yes.

So what we're appropriating in 26 was the amount, the 1.7 of budget from 25 and the 2.4 from 26 that combined.

So that's correct.

The actual appropriation is 4 million something.

I'm sorry that I didn't have the tools.

It looks to me like there's about 300,000 remaining from income versus expenditures.

And that's what you were saying.

We didn't spend it all.

We we've got that much left over.

Correct.

Thank you.

I understand now.

Yes.

Sorry.

I didn't make that clear.

I apologize.

Okay.

And that's all I have for today's presentation.

And so I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Um or discuss uh setting up meetings to talk about other items that were on the list of requests for the quarterly financial reports.

Yeah, I think we do want to continue having the conversations to your point.

So we will schedule those.

If there's anybody online I can't see and I don't have anything from Councilman Rainey.

Yes.

I have a quick question.

Yes, sir.

I think thank you very much.

Uh well, Dave, uh Councilmember Donaldson uh has already uh mentioned uh and thanks for that, Councilmember Donaldson, uh, because I was looking at the numbers also and didn't see the matchup there.

So thanks for asking that question.

Uh the quick question I do have, Sheree is uh in regards to the priority locations.

Uh can you quickly highlight if you did that already?

I do apologize.

Uh, but can you quickly highlight what those priority areas are this is the uh from my understanding basically the um kind of to tag on to the safety similar to the safety program for the downtown clean and safe, but in other areas outside of downtown.

And I believe that it would be the police chief who is making the determination about what those priority priority areas would be.

I believe they're um along Garden of the Gods and then uh South Academy type of areas.

Um I don't have the definition of those areas with me right now.

Okay, thank you for that.

Uh I I think I know what uh you're referring to, and that was a conversation between um police chief and the mayor and some other uh stakeholders.

So uh I think I know exactly what that is.

Uh that I just wanted to see if you had any clarity on that.

Um, but I do appreciate you uh attempting to answer for me there.

Sure.

Um Madam President, if I could okay, Shri, I'm gonna throw you and give you the opportunity to really think about the big picture.

I don't know if you've been following the news, but there's this uh maybe World War III or something's going on right now.

How do we expect how do you think that will impact our revenue here in Colorado Springs?

Sales and use?

Sure.

Anytime that we do estimates on the sales tax or create a budget number, there are always um risks to that budget.

And so many downside risks, some upside risks that can be identified.

Obviously, the risks to this to our current uh revenue estimates are you know, inflation, consumer sentiment, the job market, and global uncertainties, and quite frankly, federal uncertainties.

I mean, which is part of that uh interest rate and things like that.

So we have quite a bit of uncertainty at our federal level, and then obviously any type of global um conflicts or uh global uncertainties would impact it.

And mainly that's impacted the way that we would see that is how the consumers within our city are feeling about spending their money.

So uh that ties in the labor market, it's softening, and so that's certainly will impact the spending behavior of all of the consumers uh within the city, as well as just being uncertain about global uh issues, federal issues, and typically when people are feeling uncertain, they're not gonna spend.

They're not going to uh buy a new vehicle or buy new appliances, or they might remodel instead of buying a new home or smaller remodel or no remodel.

So all of that uncertainty creates uh a constricting typically creates a constricting in spending.

Now, if on, you know, because I'm I'm gonna do some ray of sunshine in there.

If people aren't wanting to travel globally or um take plane flights because if gas is too expensive, airline tickets might be too expensive, they might drive perhaps on a vacation.

And so that may you know help with our local um visitation, just if people are doing kind of staycations type of a thing.

So I think the things that we've seen uh most quickly is just uh gasoline at gas stations.

The cost is like roughly seems like four dollars a gallon now for uh regular um.

Have since you have uh been with the city, has there been another period where gas spiked and then we saw later, three months, four months, five months later that when that happened, restaurant spending went down.

Does there seem to be a uh something you would expect to occur from that?

Not with that much of a correlation.

Um there are even when we have very large events um in the city, even uh, for example, the uh senior golf tournament type of a thing.

When you try to look at, okay, in that month, do I see an impact right then?

Yeah, yeah.

We don't typically, because our sales tax base is so broad, there are so many various um industries in there and and wide variety of um areas that have tax liabilities, then typically we don't have that much of a correlation.

We certainly do have a correlation.

Um, like when the interest rate spiked a couple of years ago, you know, housing building basically stopped.

And so we definitely see that type of impact.

Um, but with the consumer spending, you know, as you mentioned, some people are still spending.

And then uh and and I, you know, I have no idea about who it is that's um driving driving that the economy with that spending, but I can just see it in our revenue collections.

Okay.

And just for my memory, say our sales tax.

There's zero of that on fuel, correct?

Fuel correct.

That's that's totally different.

If we get a state share through the eight highway user tax fund, HETF.

Okay.

All right.

Thank so, but but thank you.

I think that's something to be aware of is when you made these projections, you weren't predicting uh outbreak of large-scale wars involving uh the United States.

So it's gonna it things could change um because that's a big wild card that got tossed on the table.

Correct since we made this.

Thank you.

Correct.

Can I just chime in relative to course comments from council member Donaldson?

That that is precisely why six months ago, when we were talking about this budget, I was very concerned with the idea of a 1.4% increase over the 2025 budget numbers because none of us can ever predict what is around the next corner.

Um certainly at a large scale global level, uh, like the war in the Middle East that council member Donaldson is referring to.

And so I I think Share, that's why not only did I have concern then about the increase in the budget, but I think that's why we now have concern over what is the city going to do to get ahead of this and to get ahead of the potential issue with a not meeting the budget numbers as opposed to being reactionary in the way that we were in 2025.

And I think that's the reason that you saw some questions from council leadership about what is the plan of attack going forward to not be reactionary, but instead to be uh proactive and to come up with a game plan to reduce spending before we get to the situation where you've got to face additional furloughs and layoffs and other major cuts.

And I'm sure you probably don't want to address those now.

Um you indicated that that wasn't something you wanted to talk about today, but I just want to go on the record in again um underscoring my concern about that 1.4% increase because of global instability.

I mean, the stock market's down 10% year to date.

Nobody probably foresaw that.

So I just have ongoing concerns.

Thanks.

Okay, I don't see any questions this time, but we will get those scheduled.

Okay, thank you very much.

Moving on to item AA.

Will the clerk please read it?

Item eight A into the record.

A resolution authorizing stormwater enterprise manager to execute all intergovernmental agreements with the Colorado Department of Transportation related to maintenance of stormwater infrastructure.

Good morning, Tim.

Morning.

Madam President and City Council members, we're just seeking a resolution to authorize the Stormwater Enterprise.

I'm sorry, Tim Bill Keeney, Stormwater Enterprise Capital Program Manager.

We're seeking a resolution to authorize the Stormwater Enterprise Manager to execute all the intergovernmental agreements with CDOT, the Car Colorado Department of Transportation related to maintenance of stormwater infrastructure.

Typically, when we build our infrastructure, we sometimes have overlap onto CDOT's right-of-way.

And CDOT requires as part of that agreement that we enter into a maintenance agreement saying we will maintain that infrastructure.

That maintenance agreement is by way of an IGA, which typically has to come before city council for approval.

But since these are just maintenance agreements with CDOT and Stormwater, we're requesting this resolution.

Any questions?

Yes.

Yes, I do have a question.

How often does that occur?

Uh rarely, I would say maybe once a year, if that.

Okay, so once a year or less.

What is uh what's the benefit of council handing that authority over?

If it was burdensome, if it was happening, yeah, we're up here every damn two weeks asking you guys to approve these things, I would get it.

But if it occurs only once a year or less, is there a benefit in council being aware of what um what IgA we're entering into?

It's just timeliness on our part.

Uh we have projects going, and sometimes these agreements come up.

CDOT will ask for them at the beginning of the project, in which case we can kind of schedule for that, but it has to go through their full review, our full review, and then get signatures, and that all takes time.

Sometimes they come at the end of a project, and we can't close the project out until we get it.

So Madam President, I mean I don't know how I would vote in two weeks on this, but uh because it is so infrequently that it occurs, I I have some concern about council handing, you know, getting rid of other oversight.

Right now, we do have oversight on this every 52 weeks or so.

So there may be a benefit in us uh maintaining that unless I'm missing something, you know.

So thank you.

So that will not be on consent.

I'm hearing that.

Councilman Lineweber.

Yeah, just for clarification, um we're talking about properties that would only be on C DOT property.

Correct.

So we're not gonna be dealing with any properties that like are actually Colorado Springs property, but but that's not actually true.

It'll be Colorado Springs property set touch C DOT.

And so the agreement is really that kind of connection piece, right?

Yes.

Okay, so it it is very minor, and I like to see things, you know.

I I hate to have government in the way.

These are areas that are right next to the highway, is what we're talking about.

I mean, that's the truth of the matter, right?

Um, so we've got the highway, we've got 24, and that's really about it, right?

Correct.

So it's pretty limited in scope, and that's why it's probably so infrequent, also.

So I think this is a very minor thing.

I think we should probably step aside and then just let you guys um deal with this.

So um I I think that that's a pretty valid thing that you're asking.

So thanks.

Yeah, and I think my I appreciate my colleagues' uh view on that.

I can certain I I do have concerns that council can uh uh we're the citizens representatives.

I don't think it's bad for us to become aware of these things when they pop up once a year or less.

If it was going to slow something down, if it was going to cause if I if you can give me that example where hey, this caused a real problem and we missed an opportunity or something like that.

I suspect it has worked fine in the past.

It would just be more convenient not to have to come to council and ask us to approve a resolution, which would probably go through on consent, right?

Uh so I think uh this body should um not abdicate or abdicate its uh its responsibilities.

I can I can give you one example that which is why this is brought up.

Uh, we're currently building stabilizing Cottonwood Creek at Powers Boulevard.

Powers Boulevard Corridor passes over Cottonwood Creek, so that is CDOT right away.

We have a contractor on board.

Uh that project is being paid for through a FEMA grant.

So we have deadline to get it done.

We have the contractor on board.

Um CDOT reviewed our work that we'll be doing in the right-of-way and didn't have any problem with it.

But at the last minute said we want to have a maintenance agreement with the city for this project.

Technically, we cannot have our contractor work in there until that maintenance agreement is signed and sealed, but the contractor's already turning dirt and needs to get moving.

So that's why this came up.

And and the my response to that is we could hear that ordinary resolution IgA today and and then approve it tomorrow.

So it could be done that fast.

And again, I I worry sort of a trend that the council is giving away um responsibility and authority that it has.

If we and I that worries me, so again, I think we should uh consider this.

How long has it been postponed now?

Because you know, you don't have the IGA.

Have you have they had to stop working?

Uh no, we came to an agreement with CDOT to continue the work while we're working on the maintenance agreement.

And I uh hey, I love uh Stormwater.

I think you know that.

I mean, I've had nothing but good experiences.

I think you guys do great work.

Um, council has to look out for the the interest of the citizens, maintain the uh responsibilities of council, and not for convenience sake, hand things away that traditionally have been our responsibility.

So uh I would be have been happy hell to have seen that IgA today and fully approved it tomorrow.

Um I don't if we can still do that, I'll do that.

So those are my thoughts, Madam President.

That would be up to you unless you want to keep it on the regular schedule.

We would have to post it quickly, though.

I I don't have that ability to do that today.

Okay, okay.

Um seeing over the questions, we'll hear it at the next council meeting.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 8B.

Will the clerk please read them eight B into the record?

An ordinance reappealing ordinance numbers 20-44 and 22-33, thereby dissolving the law enforcement transport transparency and advisory commission.

Good morning, Michael Montgomery with legislative services.

Uh, I don't see councilmember Rainey on right now.

Uh, maybe he'll pop on at the end and he can give some closing remarks.

Uh so we're gonna go ahead and give a pretty comprehensive presentation uh on this commission.

Uh, we'll be hearing today from uh chair leadership along with CSPD.

Uh history city council created lead tax with ordinance 2044 uh in July of 2020 to advise and recommend on areas and topics of study related to police operations, best practices, and resource allocation to solicit public input and to promote improved relationships between the citizens and the police department.

So I just wanted to give to the uh the origins of how and why uh the commission was created.

Uh City Council revised the name of the commission through ordinance 2233 in June of 2022, which revised the name from the law enforcement transparency and accountability commission uh to the law enforcement transparency and advisory.

So just switching out the word uh of advisory for accountability.

Uh wanted to highlight some of the accomplishments of the commission.

Uh crisis response team recommendation in July of 2021.

Uh, this was LETEC's first uh big recommendation uh that they recommended to city council advocating for the expansion of the crisis response teams to improve behavioral health crisis response, reduce resilience on police alone, and support de-escalation and enhance overall safety and service effectiveness.

Uh this recommendation was included in the mayor's budget, and we did see an increase in these CRT teams.

Oops.

Uh next we have the CSPD use of force study recommendation.

Uh this was a multi-hundred page document uh that the commission looked through uh at CSPD, had their use of force study.

So LETTAC recommended that city council support and prioritize implementation of key action items from the independent assessment of CSPD use of reports prepared by Transparency Matters, including improved transparency training, accountability, and community collaboration.

Uh the commission, along with transparency matters, uh spent several meetings going really line by line and section by section of this report.

Last week of the 2024 CSPD budget considerations, LEETAC provided formal budget recommendations to City Council for the 2024 CSPD budget, reflecting community input and commission analysis of other priorities.

Now I'm going to turn it over to the chair and vice chair.

They're going to discuss a recommendation that they presented to City Council earlier in March.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of council.

I'm Deb Walker, and I currently serve as the chair of LeeTech, and I am the last remaining original member of the commission.

And Andrew, my colleague.

Morning, Andrew Hoskins, serving as the vice chair of Lee Tech, and not an original member, but so a few months ago, I would say in late fall, Andrew and I, when I assumed leadership, I'd been on the vice chair rule for the um two previous chairs of Lee Tech, started having a conversation about relevance and whether or not the existing ordinance was really the right tool to serve the community moving forward.

Ultimately, we had a conversation with council member Rainey, who was our current liaison in February, and decided to move forward with a recommendation to invite city leadership to really revision what will work for the community moving forward.

So ultimately on March 2nd, uh the commission approved a recommendation that had three components.

First is to disband the commission as it exists today under this ordinance.

And then most importantly, the second is to really determine what the appropriate model will be moving forward.

What we know is that nationally there are all sorts of cities that are using all sorts of different models.

And you know, before the original ordinance was approved, there was lots of thought and consideration going into what might serve the community best.

That got a little derailed with national energy around the George Floyd killing.

There was lots of protests happening.

And the ordinance that ultimately was passed was done, I believe, a little bit in a hurry.

And so we would like to take a step back, go back to the drawing board, invite city leadership to see what other communities are doing, what's working best nationally.

And then finally, we we want to have you create that entity, whatever that looks like.

So those are the three key components of the recommendation that was made.

Just as a side note, I'd like to Michael did a really great job at the down and dirty accomplishments, but we have done much more over the years.

There have been other recommendations.

I think we actually made three different budget recommendations over the years.

That we've tried to really embrace the community engagement portion of the ordinances that exists.

And that's been challenging for a lot of different reasons, but we do see that as a very important part having some sort of entity that might not be council comment that people can bring their concerns to.

That we'll take some questions.

Councilman Hindum.

Thank you, Madam President.

I don't actually have any questions, but I do have a few comments to make in Deb.

As you may remember, my husband, Steve Kern, was appointed to the first LEETEC and was co-chair with JJ Fraser.

And that was actually before I ever even considered running for city council.

And it was in response to things that were happening nationally, of course, the creation was.

Um and I also want to uh just say that the recommendation of the CRT, the crisis response team, and um that was maybe one of the I think kind of best things that really came out of the LEETAC.

Not to say that couldn't have happened in other ways, but that was a um I think something that uh the LETAC can be very proud of from uh from the time that LEETEC was uh was in service, assuming that we choose to vote in favor to dissolve tomorrow.

Um but I I want to uh thank you for that recommendation and and encourage um you know, I I believe our police force and uh fire to continue to um create those kinds of or support those kinds of efforts when we're responding to crisis because mental health challenges are such a part of many of those experiences.

Um then the support actually of LETTEC on what was police initiated, not recommended by LEETEC, but the Transparency Matters and the use of force report, which our department has been putting into place many, many of those recommendations over the last many years, and I think has been very successful.

And quite frankly, you know, now there's a lot more transparency.

We have the release of the body worn camera footage that that happens very quickly after an incident, and I think there's a lot of improvements um that have been made uh thanks to the police force and and hopefully um also for from the support of the LETAC.

So I just want to um say thank you for for the time and effort.

And you know, I I know that um that commander uh commander chief asquez and the and the police department do have a number of citizen uh related um uh committees and and groups that they work with, and um trust that those will continue to support us and um perhaps other ways that we might continue to stay engaged with the public, um, which reminds me of the very last thing that I did participate in even long before LETAC started.

Um, it was a partnership with the police and the Center for Creative Leadership and the Illumination Project, which I was a facilitator in that um in my work with the CCL for for a long time.

And um that came out of an idea based on what happened in Charleston and the it was Charleston, right?

Not Charles, I was thinking about Charleston.

Charleston.

Um, the the horrific tragedy that happened there.

Um that illumination project kind came out of what we had seen another city do.

Um so I I guess I'm just saying uh in in reflection in the support of the work that you've done and and all the members who have served.

Thank you.

And um, and I certainly support this uh your recommendation of the dissolution of the LEETAC, and thank you for your service.

Thank you.

Do I have anyone online with any comments?

I don't hear any, so I think we're good for today.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, to uh wrap up this presentation.

Uh I'm going to invite Deputy Chief Jensen up.

Uh he's going to highlight uh several of the improvements and changes within the department uh since the formation of the commission uh good morning, City Council President and City Council members.

My name is Jeff Jensen, Deputy Chief with Coloral Springs Police Department.

Um I'm going to assist in providing additional information in three key areas references presentation regarding our department's efforts in community engagement transparency and oversight.

My needful assistance in advancing.

Okay, there we go.

So this slide highlights the extensive community engagement efforts by CSPD that are in place across the entire city.

These include neighborhood watch meetings, the chief's annual town hall, youth engagement through school resource officers, and direct interaction with residents through the through mayoral and council member events together.

These ongoing activities demonstrate that strong direct channels for community input and relationship building are well established in our community at this time.

Next slide.

Here we see the significant progress made in transparency and public access to information.

Department policies are publicly available, and the CSPD data hub provides open access to key data sets for independent analysis.

In addition, multiple avenues for public feedback, such as the Go COS app, email, and surveys, of which nearly 650 are completed each month, are in place with regular reporting shared both internally and with the public.

Finally, the entire reports from outside expert studies that was mentioned earlier to include transparency matters and the police executive research forum on use of force are also publicly available and on the CSPD website.

Next slide.

Finally, this slide outlines the robust oversight and innovation mechanisms that are currently in place.

CSPD participates in independent audits and maintains national accreditation through the commission on accreditation of law enforcement agencies, also known as CalEA.

Accreditation enhances public safety.

I'm sorry, accreditation enhances public transparency by requiring clear, publicly accessible policies, documented compliance with national standards, and regular independent reviews.

The structured oversight ensures accountability in key areas like use of force and complaint processes, making our operations more consistent, visible, and open to external evaluation.

Additionally, CSPD continues to adopt new technologies such as AI powered language translation and our body worn cameras to improve accessibility and community transparency.

And I can uh take any questions at this time.

I don't see any at this time.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Chief.

All right.

We will wrap up the uh presentation with the next steps.

Uh first reading of this ordinance will be on April 14th.

Uh, and then we'll have the final vote and recognition of current and past commissioners at the April 27th or 28th uh regular meeting.

So happy to answer any questions as well.

See me.

You know, the only question.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thank you, madam president.

My only question is it takes two votes to dissolve the commission.

Uh yeah, all city council appointed boards and commissions are done through ordinance.

Okay.

And so yeah, they're they're all done through through two votes.

Okay, thanks.

All right, we'll see you back on the 14th.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 8C.

Well, um will the clerk please read item eight C into the record.

A resolution adopting the city council's annual report to the citizens April 1st, 2025 to March 31st, 2026.

Give us just one second while we have our pull up our presentation and have our staff member join us.

Uh good morning, City Council, Council President.

Thank you for having me today.

I'm here to present your annual report to the citizens.

This is the first draft, and um the report that I'm gonna show you today is about 85% done.

Um, this report runs from April 1st, 2025 through March 31st, 2026.

So we still have the end of the month to go.

We aren't quite finished yet, and we're still wrapping up a couple little sections here and there, um, working through typos and all sorts of things like that.

This publication gets distributed throughout the entire year, and it is a uh conglomerate of our entire staff that helps put it together.

We all write sections for it, uh source pictures for it, everything like that.

So I'll go through this.

Um the theme for this year's report is focused on the future.

Um, this last year, council took an increased look at the budgeting system and had extra meetings with departments and um various department heads about about budget, and we wanted the report to reflect that this year.

Uh, we start off every year with kind of a summary of or every report with kind of a summary of the year, as long along with all of our current council members.

And then this year, with the new um council being sworn in, we highlight all of our council members that were sworn in, whether new and returning.

Uh this page is a little funny.

It says strategic plan at the top.

There's gonna be a strategic plan um dual page that will be in place of this one instead of that strategic plan header.

But then the next two pages will be the city budget that you see, and then the other in-depth city budget review that you see.

The buy the numbers page still needs to be updated quite a bit.

So the Xs are uh just stand uh placeholders standing in until we know what our final public comment numbers are, our tours and visitors numbers, how many resolutions and um ordinance get adopted and passed, uh, board appointments, all of that.

We will also likely add in more pictures to that page as well.

The next page over is our presentations page, and that is the uh the list of all of the presentations that come through city council work sessions uh throughout the last year.

Um with the last city council, uh, with how this report lays out is um you vote on this in the first meeting in April.

And during that uh meeting in April, before the new city council is sworn in, they actually had three big projects that came through.

So all three of those were noteworthy in the annual report, but we wanted to make sure to show that it wasn't technically this council that voted on those.

So that's what this first page is.

The second page is um starting of new council stuff of what this current council is.

So we do a lot of land use through city council, we check out um different uh projects that come through, zone establishments.

Uh we worked on the UDC quite a bit this last year.

And then we also worked on uh legislation that came through.

So there was the vehicle camping ordinance, um, the sorry, the retail marijuana sales tax appropriation ordinance, and then we had various uh policy resolutions that came through as well.

In our parks department, we had quite a few things that came through too.

Uh this was helped.

Um Parks Department actually helped us wrote this section here.

Uh we had our parks traffic ordinance, we had tops expansions come through, Fisher's Canyon appeal.

Um, and then we also have items that come through on the next page that aren't necessarily they don't necessarily fit into one of the other buckets.

So we had our um Pike Speak Library board appointments, we had the city auditorium lease, and then the net metering uh public engagement with utilities.

The next couple pages are actually kind of fun.

Um this is a quite a bit uh quite a big expansion from the last few years that we've done the inner report.

We've always had in the community pages where it shows all of our council members out in the community, meeting with constituents or engaging in activities.

Um this section is actually going to be expanded.

Uh, in all the last reports, we've only had two pages.

Uh this report, we're gonna have four pages.

That's how much more you guys were engaged this year.

It was it was pretty nice to have so many pictures to go through to choose from.

Our next section is our boards and commissions and committees and updates.

Uh, we always have board chair highlights.

We're still waiting on those to come in.

Uh so the second page is pretty empty still, but that's something that's going to be updated soon.

We have our boards and commissions list of all the boards and commissions that we have under city council.

And then the next uh four pages are Colorado Springs Utilities Board pages, and there will be pictures that will be added to these pages as well.

Colorado Springs Utilities Board uh provides or utilities provides all of these um sections, all of these, uh all the paragraphs written for content.

And I work with them starting in January to get this section written.

Uh the last couple pages are actually gonna be expanded as well.

So the last few years we've had our legislative services page, and then in the little blue section under the legislative services page, we have a small city auditor section.

They're actually gonna get their own page.

So that's gonna be expanded as well.

We will have four additional pages, uh, four more pages than we've ever had in our annual report.

And you uh our city auditor will take one of those pages, which will be really nice.

It'll be a nice refreshing update.

They'll have their staff uh picture on there as well, as well as uh things that the city auditor has done this year.

And then our final page there is our civic engagement page.

Uh, this one's just to invite citizens of the public to um engage with council, engage with city hall, schedule a tour, request a council member, and sign up for at the dice newsletter.

And then our final page is our back cover, and that has the uh city council group picture as well as all of the contact information for city council.

And that's it.

I invite any questions and welcome any feedback.

Uh, you will vote on this in the first meeting in April.

So we still have plenty of time to um look at revisions and fix typos and finish it up.

Councilman Henjam.

Um Thank you, Madam President.

It looks terrific, Alex, and I love the expansion and extension of things.

And it strikes me that I really like the design this year.

And is that in part in just sort of a nod to the 250-150?

Um, the the historical piece, or it it just I I I like the design, it's different, but just wondering if that was the intention.

You know, we we look at a few different designs.

Um, and this is the one that just struck us as well.

It it is kind of a throwback to the 250-150 kind of idea, but it wasn't intended that way.

It was more of the infographics and just being able to highlight things differently.

Yeah, that's nice.

I like it.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

And Alex, this is one of the requirements for council, right, to issue a report annually.

It is, it's required by charter.

By charter.

Is has it been done since um founding of the city, founding of city council.

Do you know when it was added to the charter that we have to do?

I don't.

I could find that out for you.

Any ideas?

Is it okay?

I'd be curious to know if the format has always been kind of like this, where we talk about things that we do, but we don't really give a report on crime.

Like what is crime like this year?

Did it go up?

Did it go down?

And so perhaps in the future year, uh, you know, my remaining time on council, however long that may be.

Um that that's an idea that we give a little more of a, and this is not, I mean, this was exactly what the guidance of council was for this one.

But I just wonder if we've ever given more of a report on the city versus a report on ourselves.

I could add to that that um many of the executive departments produce their own reports.

So I can't speak specifically to what our police department does, but I do know that, for example, FIRE right now is developing their annual report.

Um the airport develops one, so I think parks is as well.

Parks has one so definitely open to conversation about changing the format, but there might also be additional appropriate places for those exactly.

We're the representatives of the people, we're reporting back to the people.

What do we think?

Is crime going great?

Uh you know, there's a pretty atrocious case that just happened here recently in the city.

What what that would be interesting.

Um this is great.

And I I agree um with uh councilwoman henjum that I really like the uh the layout, the kind of more historical feel to it.

Um could always be better if there were more pictures of me, but you know, you did what you could there.

And uh that's true, it's true.

It's just what people want.

Um looks great.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Moving to item 10A.

Will the clerk please read item 10A into the record?

Authorization authorization of out-of-state travel for council members.

I will see if there's a request that um for council members to support the majority to support any um travel out of the state, and we will start with councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

There is a um what do we call them?

There's a meeting of the American Defense Communities Organization in Washington DC in May.

Uh and I haven't attended one of uh their can I don't know if they call them conventions meetings um in the past.

I think it would be useful for council to have uh in the city of Colorado Springs, but council specifically to have representation at that.

And I think it's very pertinent to us, Colorado Springs, with all the military installations we have here.

Um so I would ask for permission to travel.

And in fact, we have money left over uh we because we had bought tickets for me to uh travel out there uh for the chamber event, and uh then we cancel that, but that credit is sitting on uh on a certain airlines accounts waiting for me to use it.

So I'd really just use that and uh hotel.

Yep.

Thanks.

So to support councilman Donaldson's travel, I need thumbs up.

It looks like the majority, so you support it, Emily?

She's in a vote.

Moving on to Councilman Lineweber.

She was supporting.

Um yes, I um actually have uh um two trips.

Um the first one um is looking in May, and um at the national level, um there's the outdoor recreation round table.

They're the political arm for outdoor recreation in our country, which is a 2.2 1.2 trillion dollar industry.

And this year, they are putting an emphasis on the importance of mental health and the outdoors.

And they're going to be launching a national wide program.

Doug Bergum from the Department of Interior will be kind of spearheading some of this.

And I've been invited to attend this summit, which will be the 6th and 7th in May.

And I'm looking to kind of do that and use some council funds to be able to get there and participate.

And then let's vote on the one.

Okay.

So all those in favor for Councilman Linewebber to travel to DC thumbs up.

Could I ask one just one question?

Yes.

Councilman Lineweber.

The two that you're going to request would fall within your your uh allocated um travel alignment, correct?

Easily, yes.

Everything would come in under your amount.

Okay.

That's all I need to know.

Thumbs up.

Okay, thumbs up.

I saw four.

Yeah, Brian Risley gave a thumbs up.

I saw it.

I'm the thumbs up also, yeah.

Yeah.

Four.

Okay.

Okay.

You have um permission for that to travel out of state and your second request.

The second one is actually one that is um funded completely 100% by the Wilderness Society.

And um they are making a call for representatives around the country to come out and help support the land and land and water conservation fund.

If you don't know about this fund, 2% of uh oil and gas that is drilled offshore goes into a fund which goes towards conservation efforts uh for our national parks and um other public lands throughout the country.

It's a major significant um contribution and has been around for years.

And so um anyway, um this um will be um funded 100% um will be no cost to the city whatsoever.

Um they are paying for my travel and food and airfare and everything.

And so um it will be on um April 2st through the 23rd, and um primarily the 22nd is when I will be going around the hill um to kind of support this effort.

If you're not using council discretionary funds, then you don't need um support from the council to travel out to state.

Great.

Well, I'm announcing that I will not be here.

That is wonderful.

And thank you for announcing that.

Well, I didn't I I wasn't sure if I need to bring it up or not.

He can be part of your reports and your um open discussion if you have any more.

We'll just start with you.

Great.

Nope.

Is that it?

That's it.

Okay.

Are there any council members with um Councilman Henjam?

Thank you, Madam President.

Um so it's kind of fun that the annual report, one of the very last pages had to do with civic engagement, and that's actually kind of what I want to talk about this morning.

Um and I happen to see in our audience uh one of the most civically engaged citizens of Colorado Springs, June Waller, who turns 90 in June, and um who received an award from our mayor last year.

I can't remember the name of the award, but um was it the spirit of the springs?

Yeah, so congratulations on that, June, who um I think single-handedly over her many decades of living here, um, has probably registered hundreds of or helped to register hundreds of people for for voting.

Yes, yeah.

And she she anyway, she's she's a an incredible civic, um civically engaged uh person, and I'm really happy to see you.

Um so I also want to say uh along those lines, actually, this Thursday here in Council Chambers from five to seven, we're hosting a learning town hall on um city council at City Council meetings, agendas, how do you participate, how do you speak at a meeting?

Um uh has been uh shared via press release and on my newsletter as well, and I sent it actually um in response to a number uh a question that I got about our the Boulder Street decision to some high school students at Palmer um so they could learn more about um how to participate in in city council.

So that uh I really do hope that uh all council members will consider uh joining for for that town hall.

Um similar kind of thing to what we do for our scouts who come um to City Hall and and learn more about City Council.

Um I ran on civic engagement actually when I first ran, and again, this second time, so it's very important to me, um, which leads to another item of just uh and for information.

Um the uh Soul of Civility is a book that was uh given to City Council by um an organization called Reclaiming Civility, and they are having an engagement at UCCS on March 30th at Burger Hall, and uh that's a Monday evening at 6 30, and there's in advance of that there's a um um a reception um for for uh certain invited guests, and then there will be that event, and then the next morning at our chamber of commerce there will be a conversation hosted at the chamber on um on civility.

And so I I just thought it would be helpful to uh share that piece of information and finally um an opportunity to engage civically.

Our um our traffic department um was funded in um uh by a grant from Safe Streets for All.

Um and they recently, last week, I think on Thursday, did a uh press conference, and now live is the uh transportation safety action plan on our city's website, and it is open now for um for feedback from uh from uh uh folks who live in the area, and I think it's now and through April 2nd, you can review the draft plan and leave comments, and it has to do really, we hear a lot about um traffic safety, crashes, um concerns uh about how do we make our streets safer in Colorado Springs.

So if that's something that matters to you, um strongly encourage you to go out and make some comments on the draft uh transportation safety action plan.

I'm really grateful to our traffic department for uh for doing this, and uh um there's a there's a significant focus on school zones and school areas um which we also recently had a big conversation here on the dais about.

And um, so I think those are all of my things, but thank you very much.

Do I have any council members online that have any updates?

Seeing none.

I see no other updates.

Um it's 11 15, so we will adjourn and we will start our lunch downstairs at 11 30.