I guess we better get going.

Good morning, and welcome to the City of Color Springs work session meeting for Monday, May 11th, 2026.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Casey.

Here.

Councilmember Crow Iverson.

Here.

Councilmember Donaldson.

Excused.

Councilmember Gold.

Here.

Councilmember Hindem.

Present.

Council Member Lionber.

Here.

Councilmember Member Rainey.

Here.

Councilmember Risley.

Here.

Councilmember Williams.

Here.

Eight present one excused.

Are there any changes to the agenda today?

Seeing none.

Moving on to the regular meeting comments.

Are there any changes to the regular meeting for tomorrow?

Seeing none, moving on to 4A, will the clerk please read item four A into the record.

City Council Work Session Meeting Minutes, April 27, 2026.

Are there any questions to those meeting minutes?

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

I speak Housing Network State of Housing Report.

Okay, so because are you gonna click or am I gonna click?

I'm gonna click.

Oh my gosh.

I'm gonna click.

So because we have a couple new people here, I wanna very briefly talk a little bit about the organization of Pikes Peak Housing Network.

The organization was founded in 2023 by a group of uh very concerned and um compassionate uh community members who really wanted an organization that was focused twenty-four-seven on our housing crisis.

And so they formed PPHN to really advocate for housing affordability, housing production, and access in the Pikes Peak region.

And we are the only organization in the region accomplishing this mission.

Why are we needed?

Um if you read through at all the uh region's new housing needs assessment, it says we have a housing deficit, somewhere between 13,000 and 27,000 homes, and and that's a lot of homes.

As you all know, the housing opposition of opposition to any type of growth in our community is swelling.

More and more people don't want to us to build anything, they don't like change.

And so we need a voice for those who are really who really need housing.

Our younger residents especially are unable to purchase a home and experience the American dream, and so we are doing all we can to ensure that they have homes.

And without action, the lack of housing, production and affordability in our region will seriously impact our economy and our ability to hire a quality workforce.

Now I'm just gonna go through a little bit of the data.

As you all know.

Some of you did attend our 2025.

Well, actually, it was the 2026 state of housing event where we presented the 2025 state of housing report.

Unlike your housing needs assessment, it is an eight-page document that has very simple data in it that uh any community member could can understand and then share with their community their family, their friends, their colleagues about why we need housing in our region.

And so that report was released.

I'm happy to send it to all of you.

But it's this is just a kind of a compilation of some of that data so that you can see the concerns that we have about our housing deficit in the Pikes Peak region.

This graph you have before you is a nationwide graph.

I couldn't find data locally, but as you can see, the average age of the first-time homebuyer has increased from 31 years old to 40 years old just in the past decade.

And the average age of the average home buyer is now increased to 59 years old, which is my age from 44 years old over the past decade.

This is very concerning, and as I said before, so many of our younger community members are unable to purchase a home.

They are, as we can see, delaying marriage, delaying having families, and we want them to be able to experience the American dream.

So, oh, this graph didn't display quite right.

But so this is our very simple data around how we define and describe the housing deficit in the Pikes Peak region.

Your housing needs assessment has also a number for what our housing deficit is.

This number is in that range, but it is a very simple way for you to share what our housing deficit is with anyone else, and that really is just to say how many housing units we have in our community.

Housing unit can be an apartment and it can be a mansion.

That's a housing unit.

And then we have the number of households, and that is a household can be one person and it can be a family of 10.

And we should have 10% more housing units than we have households.

And so this graph just basically shows the number of households time point times 0.1, that's the need of 331,000.

Our housing unit number is 317.

So when you subtract those numbers, our housing deficit is simply around 13 to 14,000.

Is that exact?

No, there is no exact number, and your housing needs needs assessment adds other things in there, like the number of people commuting commuting into the city for work, the number of people living on their parents' couches, and such as such.

But that is a really complicated number, and hopefully we can all understand this one and share that with those in our community.

This number, this graph really just is the is the one that I if I only have one graph, I share this one piece of information.

And this is over the last 10 years how the incomes have risen in our region, and that is the red line.

They've risen about 48%.

And then what our average rents have gone up, and that is the yellow line at 111%, and then the average cost of a home in our region has risen a whopping 141%.

So this right here in a nutshell is why our community members cannot afford to purchase a home.

We just are not keeping up our incomes with the price of homes.

Now, this is an unusual graph that I probably won't do again, but I I really kind of wanted to understand if what I've been hearing over these last many years is true.

Are we really experiencing a housing deficit or did it begin when we had our downward crisis recession back in 2008?

And so I pulled the permits from regional building over the last 10, actually, this is 20 years, so I could get back to that number to really show this.

And and yes, it is true.

The blue line is single-family homes, as you can see in around 2005.

We were building over 5,500 single-family homes per year.

And then around 2007-8, it dropped down to about a thousand.

It kind of has risen and risen and gone back down, but it's never gotten back to what it was back in 2005.

And the other interesting piece, of course, is the orange line.

That's apartments or multifamily homes.

As you can see, they've just been kind of low all these years, but then because we had a need, a demand for more rental housing because our community members could not afford a home.

That number has skyrocketed up, and in around 2000 2023, those two lines intersected, and we had more apartments being built than homes.

And in the end of 2025, that happened again, where the number of apartments permitted was greater than the number of single family homes permitted.

The other number I'd like to draw your attention to is the green line.

That is the number of condos that we have permitted over the years.

And I don't have the numbers in my head memorized for the last 25 years, but I do know in the last 10 years, we have permitted over 64,000 housing units.

Only 187 of those have been condos.

So don't let anybody tell you that that's a demand issue.

That is 100% quintessentially a construction defect issue that we need to be fixing at the Capitol.

Councilman Hinge.

Oh.

Thank you, Madam President.

Hi.

Well, good morning, Councilwoman.

Thank you for being here.

As always.

I have a question on the multifamily number.

Is that number the number of total buildings or it's not units?

It's units.

It's actually it's actually units, yeah.

Yeah, that would be a huge number of I was gonna say.

Okay, thanks.

Okay.

Any other questions?

I know you have a lot of questions.

A lot.

Okay, so this is just a little data, a little more data about uh single-family home purchase.

I wanted to kind of explain kind of in a more meaty way why community members are not affordable to afford a home.

So at the end of 2025, the median home price was 460,000.

Actually, around August of 2025, it hit 500,000, and now right now in 2026, it's it's like 540,000.

So it it uh continues to go up.

Um, if you have a down payment on that number of uh 20 percent, your loan amount would be 368,000 with an interest rate of six percent, it's higher right now.

Your monthly mortgage would be 2800.

If you add in taxes and insurance, your total monthly payment is 3,400.

And for those who are paying attention, we all know that uh property insurance and property taxes are rising.

So this is kind of a lower number, but uh that makes your total payment of 3,400.

And if you're only paying about 30% of your income toward your home cost, you need to be earning 138,000 to purchase that home.

And so that again is a is an income that uh the majority of our community members are not earning as the median income is about 87,000.

So this just kind of shows in a nutshell a specific reason why people aren't being able to purchase a home.

Um, this is another facet of that issue on this is one of my favorites.

This is a funnel graph.

The left one is based on the incomes at the end of 25.

This is what our community members can afford to purchase, and the right funnel graph is what we the type of prices of homes we are currently building.

So you can see there's a mismatch between what our community members can afford to purchase versus what we're building.

And there is a bright spot to this because this data is actually about eight eight percent better than it was last year.

Our builders who are smart and want to be able to sell their homes, are shifting what they're building to smaller units, smaller homes, more cost of cost-effective and affordable homes.

And so those numbers are not quite, as you can see, a direct funnel, and they are building more homes in that four to six hundred thousand dollar range, which is a it's a bright spot, and it's really good.

Lastly, I added this data at the last minute.

I wanted to you to kind of see what's happening in the rental market.

This is actually at the end of the first quarter of 2026, so I have moved away from your 2025 data.

I hear a lot, and I I bet you do too that we have too many apartments in our community, that we are apartment city.

I've heard that.

Well, this is actually the the fact the average vacancy rate at the end of the first quarter is 7.27.

That's a very healthy vacancy rate, as any of our property owners would tell you.

And as you can see, it is down from eight point and eight and a quarter at the end of 2025.

Also, your average rents, which uh you could understand as demand goes up from the lower vacancies, um, the pro the average rent is going up.

It's now at 14.10.

It was right about 14 at the end of the calendar year.

So we are now seeing rents ticking back up.

Uh, if you looked at that that data that I showed from the from the permitting, we do have more complexes coming online probably in the next year or two.

But we we do need to continue building more rental housing, both uh market rate and affordable to meet the demand, especially because we continue to have concerns around the ability for our community members to purchase homes.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh, to your very point, uh, because I do get a lot of feedback on this in regards to um having too many apartments uh that are going up.

So, question I have specifically to the data that I'm looking at.

I think you mentioned it already, but just for my clarity, where is the data being pulled from?

Sure.

Oh, I did I guess I didn't add that onto here.

So I get my data from several different sources, but for this particular data, I get it from a company called Apartment Trends.

The apartment association of this of Southern Colorado gives me that data or gives me their quarterly report every month, every quarter.

And uh to keep the data consistent, I consistently use the same source.

Okay, thank you.

You're very welcome.

That concludes the data portion of the uh presentation.

This is uh really just one slide about what we're doing.

Are you moving my just to kind of share a little bit more about what we're doing to to help with this concerning data?

And as you know, we advocate for all housing properties, especially the controversial ones, to ensure that our decision makers have the facts about this data and the need for housing in our region.

We also actively lead on policy changes, land use changes that can help us to build more housing, things like accessory dwelling units and such.

We, of course, create a lot of data, articles, messaging, talking points to share with our communities so that everyone else has that same information.

We build media relationships.

I want to be the first call when the media has a question about data so that I can help fulfill and share the facts around the housing issues we're having.

And we host a lot, well, we host several events to um share all of the information around the need for housing in our community.

As I mentioned, some of you attended our second uh state of housing event, and we are hosting our first housing conference on October 1.

It is called the what is it called?

The how what did I call it?

Housing matters, housing matters summit.

And um, we have a really great um housing advocate coming in.

His name is Jim Hyde, I believe you've met him, council president, and he wrote a book and about um building small and it's a toolkit for for building in our community.

He will be our keynote speaker.

We'll have a couple breakouts, and um then we'll have a happy hour.

So it will be a great afternoon, and I hope you can join us for that.

Lastly, we are just trying to build a huge list of housing champions in our region, and those are the folks I reach out to when there is a controversial project or a controversial policy issue to get them to also speak up and speak out loudly about why housing is needed.

And if you are interested in becoming a housing champion, you can click on that really cool QR code to the right there.

I know you're anxious to do that.

And with that, that ends my formal presentation, and I'm happy to take any more questions you might have.

And um thank you so much for giving me the time today.

I I really appreciate being able to share the 2025 data with you, and uh, I will try to reach out during the year to update you on all things housing.

Councilman Williams.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

Good morning.

Um, even though you don't like your silly graph, I like your silly graph, the one that shows all of the housing and what's coming and what's not coming.

What I think would be interesting.

Go back to it.

Yeah.

It'd be interesting to see, not starting at 2005, but how much how did we build in the 80s?

This is like our community.

How much did we build in the 90s?

What was that trend line like?

Because having lived here forever, I know it goes up, down, up, down, up, down, but it'd be interesting to see if it ever went down below 2000 and what that looked like and how we were covered, because that's a drastic change on what the trend could have been for the previous 25 years.

I I completely agree.

Um, PPR PPRBD only goes back 20 years.

So I couldn't go back any further.

Maybe I'll debug the HBA and see if they have some member box or something.

Somebody's got to have a clue.

Yeah.

And that would be good to be interesting to see if if that was a trend and we were able to fill those houses up until the last 20 years.

Well, we're growing, and we just need to be ensuring that we are building everywhere in our community to meet the demand for all of the community members who want to live all over the city, close to their jobs and their schools.

And so it's I it it is an interesting.

I mean, I would be interested in knowing, you know, just the growth kind of information about that piece.

Yes, and we're lacking condos, as you can see, and that's a great way to get started in the um real estate equity, on that policy issue at the state.

Anyone else?

Councilman Risley.

Thank you, Madam President.

Hi, Jill.

Thanks for being here.

Mr.

Protam.

My uh my observation about this graph, similar to council member Williams, I think it's a really telling uh piece of information and equally interesting, uh, not just the numbers, but if you look at the numbers relative to the proportion of population, meaning as we glow, right?

We now, you know, in 2005, we probably were a city of maybe 300,000 people.

Right.

350, and now well over, well, not well over, but over 500,000.

Yeah.

And so I think again, if you look at those numbers as a proportion or a percentage of population, I think it tells an even more compelling story that we're building fewer houses now for a larger population than we were building 20 years ago for a smaller population, and and to her point about what that looks like in the past, you know, in 1985 or 1995, what was the population and what was the percentage of housing being built at that time?

Yeah, that's a good data point that I should try to figure out like 20 years ago.

What was the what were the percentage of people owning versus renting to today?

What is that that same percentage?

And and that that's a loss for our community as people aren't putting down roots and building equity in our region.

Right.

And I'd offer too that even though PPRBD doesn't have those building permit records available online, they certainly have them uh available if you go in and ask that would be great.

A person to do some research.

So, Councilman Hingem.

Thank you, Madam President.

Jill, actually, another graph that you uh showed was the funnel graph.

Could we go to that one?

Yes, ma'am, there you go.

So um, and I I recognize your organization's focus really strictly on the housing stock portion of the bigger challenges related to housing.

Um, but I think I think this is such an important one because while our builders are adapting and making those changes, that's fantastic.

There's such a bigger context here that stock alone, in my opinion, anyway, is never going to address, and that is there's some severe income inequality, and people are really working hard just to keep the homes they have.

We have more and more people who are homeless.

I visited um Crossfire Ministries uh grocery last week.

They're serving 450 families a month who are coming to get groceries so that they hopefully can stay where they're living.

So I I'm glad that the shift is happening in the building.

I think that's super important.

But there are these other bigger contextual things that are happening in the world in our country and our economy.

Um, and then locally, you know, just the the concerns you you mentioned um people kind of fearful of change.

Um, and I think it's important that we educate folks and and take take all of that fear into consideration.

Um, and we also, you know, need to build in a way that takes into consideration the constraints in our um in our region around water and um some of the infrastructure challenges that we're facing as a city.

So I think this is a really uh gnarly challenge, and um really do appreciate the work that you and your organization are doing.

I just feel like it's important to name, while it's a very important part of addressing the challenge, it's not the only part.

I I hear you, councilwoman.

There are, of course, other organizations that are part of the just the housing continuum working on on all of these issues and me just being a one-man band, this is this is my lane here.

Um I will add that apartment properties use less than half the water as of single-family homes.

So they are always a good environmental and choice.

And of course, this graph doesn't uh speak to the rental housing piece and what we're building, but we are of course um shifting to building more more um rental housing because we need it in our community, and we're building more affordable housing too, which is very much needed, and there's always a need for more funding for that.

Thank you for your work.

Yes, ma'am.

Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Could you go back to your previous chart?

I think the one that we all like.

Yeah.

That one there, yes.

Yeah, no, I just thought it would be interesting to see, you know, from 2005 to 2025 what uh the rise in construction costs look like, the root uh the rise in land costs look like.

Are there any other factors that you think about other than just general affordability that might um be driving uh what we see on the chart?

Yeah, that's a really good question.

I I can't really speak to where the if the land costs were a piece of it.

That's something I I'd like to know though.

I mean, it's I really try to focus on infill, trying to build more inside our existing city because it it costs the city less for infrastructure maintenance if you can can infill.

However, those land costs are typically more than building on the edges of our city or to annex new land.

So there are trade-offs there.

Um, but you know, I'm gonna do a little research on that and see if I can at least maybe target a couple years in there to see what uh if there's any trends there.

Thank you for that idea.

Thank you.

Thank you much for your presentation today.

It was very um, it's always good to see this at least once or twice a year.

Um I don't have a question, but to your point, the bigger problem is more of the regulation that's being passed down.

It's not just we can't build affordable housing.

The regulation that goes into it costs more money.

The construction defects is keeping half the younger people or even older people out of the market because condoms and townhouses were a starter home or a finisher home.

All of the, you know, new changes with electrifying everything and being forced down is very expensive.

So I think advocacy is probably the most important thing we can do right now, just to get the ball rolling, which I know you do.

I know you're up there all through the session.

It's almost over.

Thank God.

Today, tomorrow.

But having said that, the advocacy, I mean, it's just, I mean, yes, there's a lot of things we can't do with inflation and that are gonna come and go.

And you know, we've got how many Fortune 500 companies leaving the state because of our regulations.

So there goes some really good jobs that pay people a lot.

So while I appreciate your efforts very much, and I'm glad you will continue to do them.

There's a lot more that goes into this than just people aren't building affordable houses.

That's exactly right.

You should come work for me.

There's actually an article in today's paper about a new bill that is now coming.

I'm sorry, that you now have to honor around hardening your homes and spending more on fire resistant materials on new new bills and any retrofitting of your homes.

So the I don't I don't even pretend to know what that's gonna add to the cost of home building, but it's not good.

Yep.

Well, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Moving on to item six B.

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

Hey neighbor presentation.

Good morning.

Hey, morning.

I'm Kelly Bull.

I'm the executive director of Hey Neighbor, and we're working really hard to build social infrastructure and connection in our neighborhoods and throughout our city.

And my goal today is to let you all know what we're up to at Hey Neighbor and how you can use us as a resource as council members, and how you can refer constituents to us as a resource as well.

Um so you may have known us previously as CONO, and last year we went through a rebrand to really fit um the direction that we are heading in and some changes that we've made.

Our mission and our vision is the same.

Our vision is that everybody loves their neighborhood, and the mission is to inspire neighbors to create vibrant communities.

Um we do that through these three steps: making connections, building relationships, and creating change.

And we do this through primarily joy and fun.

And we have found that you build stronger relationships, more resilient neighborhoods when neighbors first initially connect over fun.

When you have thrown a beanbag back and forth at your neighborhood cornel tournament before you actually got into the nitty-gritty of problems in your neighborhood, we find that neighbors really respond better when they've built those relationships over the joy and the fun.

And we're really working on being um proactive towards problem solving and finding solutions and finding those upstream solutions.

So a more connected neighborhood is a safer neighborhood, it is a cleaner neighborhood, it's a more fun neighborhood to live in, and um more resilient when the neighbors know each other and they care for each other and they look out for each other.

Um so some of our programs that we have that would be of interest to you is our neighborhood university program, and our facilitator here is here, Amy Miller.

Um, and we have 12 weeks for this course.

We meet in person, two hours on a Wednesday night, and neighbors come to learn about how the city works.

And each night, uh different um specialists comes in to talk to the neighbors about the departments.

So we have city planning.

We've had Kevin Walker has come in to talk about city planning, we've had development night, we have transportation tonight, we have um all sorts of facets of the city, and neighbors get to learn a holistic understanding, comprehensive understanding of how the city works and how decisions are getting made and the intricacies of things so that they have a broader understanding, and so sometimes people come in with tunnel vision on an issue that they're really passionate about, and this course really helps them understand all the different um facets at play and gives them a broader perspective on what's going on.

So, what we're doing is we are finding neighbors, giving them this understanding, giving them perspective, and um giving them confidence in participating in the civic process and um just truly understanding how things work.

We have a comment or a question from Councilman Hanjam.

Yeah.

Thank you, Madam President.

Kelly, um, you know what a huge fan I am of the neighborhood university and Hay Neighbor generally, but I really can't say enough positive things about this program.

Um in particular, I want to highlight that um uh Councilmember Gold and I just did interviews this last week for um the historic preservation board, and uh we interviewed six people out of I don't know, eight or twelve, I can't remember, quite a few, quite a few um applications.

And of those six, I'm confident that I remember two very specifically said that they went through neighborhood university and found it to be incredibly helpful.

And um, you know, there are people who are in, and we recommended it to another um uh candidate who mentioned that they really want to figure out how to plug into the city, and this course is such a great way to do that.

So I just think it's so fantastic, and and I wanted people to know that I think it's really starting to yield.

You've been doing it for about two or three years, no, longer than that.

I think four years, four and a half, yeah.

But I feel like there's you're you've you're reaching a bit of a tipping point in that sort of critical mass, um, that's helping to create neighborhood leaders.

And um, and I just see so much positive coming from it, even in most recently in the town hall I did for uh Pape Ton Cragmore, and they have really, really strong leadership in their neighborhood and are are finding all kinds of positive connections with the city and just among themselves as neighbors, and so it's it's really fantastic.

Great, thank you.

I don't really have a question.

Thank you.

Councilman Gold.

Thank you, Madam President.

I also don't have a question, it's more of a comment.

My apologies is I can't be there in present uh in person.

I have a plumbing issue at home today that I'm trying to get taken care of.

But I do want to give my kudos to hey neighbor, um, especially neighborhood university.

I think the the education that's happening there is tremendously helpful to residents so they can understand how our city operates and how they can be their own advocate and get uh change done.

Um it's really empowering, and um thank you just for the hard work and um wanna make sure if I I'm not sure if I heard it, but if you mentioned the 150 tables that are um project that's gonna be happening this summer, fall.

It's coming.

I'll mention it in a minute.

Thank you.

And I'll mention also that Councilwoman Gold is a graduate of neighborhood university as well.

Um, so and to show you what our NU alumni go on to do is this is actually the D3 Town Hall that was hosted last month with councilwoman Williams, and um this is Dave Valencourt, and he is he graduated from the last um cohort of NU, and he organized this town hall and facilitated and um just did a fabulous job.

And he didn't even know I was in the audience, and he plugged neighborhood university of everything that he had learned like five different times.

Um, so they're really going on to do be very passionate about the community and do great work to spread the information that they've learned in neighborhood university as well.

Um, and here's just a another testimonial of um somebody who was very thankful for what they learned.

Um, but I'll move on for time.

Um so the next step for our neighborhood university graduates is then they graduate and then they become a neighborhood leader.

And so what we're doing is we're building a network of neighborhood leaders of more engaged citizens, more engaged neighbors who um want to be part of the process who want to be more involved.

And um, with this network, we are able to um create more of an informational conduit where if you were trying to reach out to a neighborhood, you can reach out to us as council members to say, hey, I'd love to talk to this neighborhood.

Do you have a neighborhood leader we could talk to?

And we're there to then help match you up with a neighborhood leader that you can consult and get information about a certain area or to spread information to that neighborhood.

So we're really trying to bridge this gap between the city and citizens and make information flow more freely, and with neighbors who understand things on a broader level.

So they sign up to be a neighborhood leader when they're done.

Um we also you can also become a neighborhood leader as a more engaged neighbor um in this program without doing neighborhood university, but neighborhood university is our preferred method to get you into being a neighborhood leader.

Um we also have community coordinators, so these are our paid hay neighbor staff that you can reach out to as council members and neighbors can reach out to the community coordinators and we consider them like our community concierge.

That if you don't know, if you have a dangerous intersection in your neighborhood and you have no idea what to do about it, you can call your community coordinator and they will start matching you up with the right person to talk to or tell you which department in the city to talk to.

So it's really when people have no idea where to start, these are a great place to start.

Um, they also help with supporting all of our programs with neighborhood university, with neighborhood gatherings that I'll tell you about in a minute.

Um, but these are really great connected folks in the community that you also can use as a resource.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President.

What's the difference between a community coordinator and a community leader?

Leader.

Great question.

So community coordinators are our paid hey neighbor staff.

Um, and neighborhood leader is more volunteer position that you are um a neighborhood university graduate, or you're a neighbor that wants to be more involved, and you sign up with us as more of a volunteer position.

And the community coordinators are kind of the um main point for the neighborhood leaders.

They help train them, they help um connect them, they host events to help neighborhood leaders get together.

So did that clear it up?

Yep, thank you.

Councilman Casey.

Well, thank you, Madam President.

Yeah, quick question for you.

Back when you were CONO, I think you uh CONO had a role where they coordinated uh different homeowners' associations and kept track of that and the points of contact and that sort of thing.

But I'm sure when you went to Hayden Neighbor that uh that I guess self um at admission kind of went away.

Is that the case or yeah, and the Hay Neighbor no longer um keeps track of that, but it has moved on more to the city to the planning department.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

Um this is uh a picture of one of our neighborhood leader, they do quarterly meetings of meetups to get together um and talk about what's going on in their neighborhoods.

It's often a lot of resource sharing that somebody will be um having an issue in their neighborhood, and they bring it up to the neighborhood leader group, and then they'll talk about it and share resources, and um just it's a great way to connect and get to know each other and have support.

A lot of times our neighborhood leaders feel like they're the only person in their neighborhood who cares about community anymore, and it's kind of isolating.

And when they meet each other and they find out there's other people all over the city who still care about community, it's really a magical experience when they find each other.

We also have a program of neighborhood gatherings.

We were part of the Thousand Gatherings, um, the mayor's initiative.

And um, one of our most powerful programs uh within neighborhood gatherings that would be great for you all to take advantage of is our neighborhood cafe.

And this is actually a picture of Councilwoman Gold's neighborhood cafe.

It is a very low bar way to get people together, and it's magical what has come out of these, where um the premise is if you get six or more of your neighbors together, the coffee's on us.

And um, neighbors just get together, and it is just uh very casual and building those connections.

And at these cafes, a lot of great things have come out of um neighborhoods have then built their Facebook page or they have uh uh scheduled their cleanup.

Um, so just these very simple conversations leading to really powerful um next steps.

Uh we also help with block parties.

So we help people um with the permits for shutting down your road for a block party, which is actually kind of difficult, so we help them navigate that.

We rent out barricades very cheap, so it's safe to close your street down.

Um we have toolkits to help people throw gatherings and kind of checklists to make it very easy.

Um, so we've had them all over the city, and we've been a really great resource for them.

Uh cornhole tournaments.

We also have these cornhole boards, and it is amazing how a cornhole tournament brings people together.

It is very simple throwing that beanbag back and forth, but it is powerful the connections that have been made out of that.

Um we're also doing planting parties where neighbors get together and they transform an entire front yard together.

Um, this is happening in my neighborhood in Stratton Meadows, and uh also very powerful way to connect people.

And then um what councilwoman Gold was talking about is our 150 tables initiative.

So this is kind of the next iteration of the Thousand Gatherings, where we are bringing people together over a shared meal and um inspiring other neighbors to host tables.

So, Hey Neighbor will be hosting our table celebrating National Good Neighbor's Day on September 27th.

And um, then we're hoping there are 149 other willing hosts out there to get people together all throughout the city.

So, this would also be a great way for you guys to meet more constituents in your area if you were wanting to host 150 tables gathering, or if you'd like to be invited to one, I would love to invite you to other um tables that are going on in your areas in your districts.

Councilman Hinchem.

Thank you, Madam President.

Would you go back a slide, please?

Sorry.

That's not it.

To your, yeah, there you go.

Um you didn't mention this, but I would love it if you would talk about your own work.

By the way, Kelly Bull is sits on our stormwater advisory committee, so she's serving the city in that way as well.

Um, but you are very, very conscious of and are helping people with uh really planting water-wise and uh a lot of um uh sustainable kind of uh front yard plantings or whatever it might be.

In fact, um I believe you yourself have a passive stormwater um uh project in your home.

Could you just speak a little bit to that?

Because I think people are so focused on water right now.

Sure.

Um, be great for you to mention that.

My background is in permaculture landscape design and um really water-wise design.

And so specifically in my neighborhood, I'm creating a neighborhood food forest where we're planting fruit cheese and berry bushes and herbs and pollinator plants.

Um, and all of it is watered with the roof water from uh a house.

And so everything is very water wise, um, lots of native plants that don't take a lot of water, and so what we're trying to do in Stratton Meadows is become a demonstration site for other neighborhoods that you would be able to come and tour the houses, the yards that we've redone together as neighbors, and then bring it to other neighborhoods as well.

Um, so yeah, just very very passionate about the water um water-wise landscaping and improving our environment and making our yards more beautiful and bring the neighbors together to do that.

Thank you, Kelly.

Yeah.

Um then that's it.

I wanted to leave time for questions in case you guys um want to know more or and can let me know other ways that I can help.

Um, and then one thing I missed too is one of our goals also for our neighborhood leaders is to start joining more boards and commissions, and they are starting to do that.

I've joined stormwater management.

We have uh current NU student right now who is joining the um citizens advisory committee for PPACG, um, and another one who has joined the cleanup committee, the cleanup costs um within the city.

So we're really working on getting citizens more engaged, and um, so that's it.

Oh, also if you guys ever have news that you want spread to neighbors, we have a newsletter that goes out every month.

Um, I also encourage just signing up for it and reading it because it's always very positive about great things that are happening in our community.

So we would love to get the news out if you are ever holding town halls or you would like to meet with your constituents that we would love to facilitate that and make that happen for you.

Yeah, thank you.

Um, I'm just wondering.

Um, I'm looking at Michael, Michael.

Can we make sure that are you on our um press release list?

Because that's when we announce town halls, and that might be the easiest way to get those notices.

Okay, great, thanks.

I think that was all of it.

Was that the end?

Yeah, okay.

Any more questions?

I don't see any.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

We haven't gotten to item six C.

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

Item six C Pikes Week State College presentation.

Good morning, Donna.

Good morning.

She was tall.

No, I'm not short.

Thank you.

I am, and I have one heels, thank you.

Jesus.

All right, all right.

So, good morning, Council President Crow Iverson, Pro Tim, Risley, all of City Council.

Hi, Sarah, hi Wayne.

Good to see everyone here.

Um, my name is Donna Nelson.

I'm the Chief Advancement Officer for Pikes Peak State College Foundation.

Also here with me is our college president, Dr.

Lance Bolton, who you will hear from shortly.

Um thank you all for making time to hear from us this morning.

We are here to give just a brief update on some of the things that we've done, some of our successes, uh, since we changed our name from Pikes Peak Community College to Pikes Peak State College.

And like I said, this will be very brief because there are so many things that we have done in the past few years since we made our name change that I'm actually gonna try to schedule to come here, maybe twice a year to update you on some of the things.

So we're just gonna go over a few right now, and we'll give you more later.

Also, well, we'll talk about that a little bit later.

So we're also gonna talk about a little bit about our law enforcement academy or LEA as we call it, which could serve as somewhat of a pipeline to help address the manpower issue with CSPD.

We already work very closely with CSPD on different things.

Some of our trainers or instructors come from CSPD, as well as CSFD or Colorado Springs Police Department and our fire department work closely with us.

And you guys, most of you guys know my close relationship with police and fire from my time at the city as well.

So let's jump right in.

Let's see.

All right.

So why did we change our name?

As the saying goes, it's all in a name.

What do you guys think of when you think of community college?

Don't answer.

Just think about it for a moment.

When people think about a community college, they think that it's the place to go if you can't quite make it at a four-year university or maybe something that is a little bit less than, not quite as prestigious are up to snuff.

Pikes Peak State College is anything but that.

And we are out to change that mission and what people think of when they think of community colleges or state colleges.

Um big thing about changing our name is that we decided to offer bachelor's degree programs because in community colleges, they typically go up to associates or two-year degree programs.

We decided to offer bachelor's degree programs.

And if you are a student who graduates with a bachelor's degree, or if you're an employer that's hiring someone that requires a bachelor's degree, and you see that they got it from a community college, that may be confusing.

So that was a big part of why we changed our name from Pikes Peak State College or from Pikes Peak Community College to Pikes Peak State College.

Also, the level of work that we're doing at Pikes Peak State College is incredible.

It is above what you normally think of.

As a matter of fact, we are working right now with some of your council staff to schedule a tour for all of you to come to our 70,000 square foot state-of-the-art medical simulation center.

It is absolutely the best in the state and one of the best in the country.

I guarantee you, when you leave that facility, you will not think anything less of us.

You will be quite amazed.

Also, changing our name helped to increase our enrollment at the college.

We have enjoyed year after year for several years of double digit enrollment increases.

To put that into perspective, about a four or five percent increase at any higher education organization is a big deal.

Again, we've enjoyed back to back years of double-digit increase.

We're on we're set to have our highest graduation class ever this year.

And we will also, we also expect to be back at higher than pre-pandemic levels next academic year.

So we will be increasing well above what we were pre-pandemic at the beginning of our academic year next year.

We are on track to continue to grow.

We're doing great things.

And so, again, that name change helped to increase our visibility, helped to increase people wanting to come to our college.

And you show it shows that it's working.

Right now we have seven bachelor's degrees, and I just listed them there for you.

Our flagship, I like to say, is our bachelor of science and nursing or our BSN.

You got to know somebody to know somebody to get into that program.

We're very proud of it.

Again, it takes part at our simulation center.

That place is so incredible that we have enjoyed up until this past year, a 100% first-time pass rate of the NCLEX exam when they graduate for RNs.

Um last year there was one person who didn't quite make it, but for four years in a row, 100% first-time pass rate.

The national average first-time pass rate, it's about 70%.

So again, what we're doing is incredible at Pikes Peak State College.

Everything that we do is new that is like that.

Our dental center that opened last summer is a simulation center as well.

Dentists who came to that ribbon cutting and saw what we have there were just floor.

They couldn't believe the type of technology and simulation that we have at our dental clinic.

So we have dental assisting, dental hygienists, and we're working on an even higher level of dental training there.

We also started seeing patients at our dental facility.

So you get the best service, best quality at prices that go to scale based on what you can pay for.

Our other bachelor's degrees are a BAS in behavioral health, cybersecurity, which is bursting at the scene, emergency service administration, early education, advanced paramedic practitioner, and then our one of our newest and most popular business and business administration.

Were you about to ask a question?

Okay.

Got it.

So again, we're not stopping with there more to come.

We're looking at some other bachelors right now with I think it was electrical engineering, that because engineering is bursting at the seams as well.

These are these are offerings for careers that are in high demand in our community.

They match with the workforce needs of Colorado Springs and El Paso County.

We know that being able to obtain a bachelor's degree at Pikes Peak State College makes higher education become in reach for many of those who thought they would never be able to obtain it because we're just a little bit less expensive than again your traditional four-year universities.

We're not trying to take the place.

Again, careers that are gonna earn you a living wage.

That's what we like to do.

That strengthens our community.

A lot of times, if you go out in the community and look at or look at the workers that have graduated from our college, they are mostly local students who stay local.

That's a big deal.

We are really the lifeblood of our working community in Colorado Springs and El Paso County.

We're very proud of that, being able to offer that to people wherever they are.

So you know, everybody likes to say, meet people where they are.

We actually do that at Pikes Peak State College.

We're very welcoming.

We're open college.

Our only programs that you have to qualify for are our medical campus programs, our RN program, because it is quite competitive.

So I will bring up our president, Dr.

Lance Bolton, to go into some of our awards and talk about our leadership.

And do you have a question from the Academy?

Yes.

Thank you, Madam President.

No, you asked earlier about what we thought about when we heard the word community college.

I thought about affordable and responsive to local industry workforce needs.

So you've kind of explained why your responsive to local workforce needs, but what about affordability?

As fees, tuition, things like that gone up with the transition from a community college to a state college.

I don't know that they've gone up since then.

I know since I've been there, they haven't.

Dr.

Bolton can tell you that.

Okay.

And the other part, I just more of a comment, my dental hygienist is affiliated with the program that you have there.

And she said the equipment is so good there, sometimes people graduate and have to be kind of learn new equipment when they go to actual dental office because they use older equipment.

So yeah, they're like, what is this?

Councilman, I'll I'll help with the question about affordability just a little bit.

Um the answer to your question is tuition tends to go up a little bit every year because the cost of living and operations go up a little bit every year.

We want to be able to offer raises to our employees, that kind of thing.

So I would say three to five percent uh typically in a year, and the cost of attending Pikes Peak is still well below the amount that is awarded through a Pell Grant.

Almost half of our students attend using Pell Grants, and and that's kind of a mark of you're below or near the federal poverty line.

And so we want to make sure that students who are really low income always have the ability to attend Pikes Peak, so we pay very close attention to keeping the cost of attendance below the Pell uh the Pell Grant award amount.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Well, hey, council, thank you for having us today.

I really appreciate the opportunity to chat with you.

Some of you, Councilman Williams, know a lot about Pikes Peak State College.

Others of you uh may just be learning a lot today.

So just an opportunity to engage with you.

I want to start with an invitation.

Our commencement ceremony is Saturday.

You've all been invited to that.

We would love to have you.

So here's a little information about Pikes Peak that I think just starts with sort of startling people about the impact we have in our community.

This year, for the first time since 2019-2020, when the pandemic hit, we will award more than 4,000 degrees and certificates in our community.

When so when Donna talks about the impact of our college in the workforce, anywhere you go in the Pikes Peak region, you're going to run into our graduates.

This is really the fuel that runs our economy here.

We have to have trained workers, and over 4,000 of them are leaving Pikes Peak State College and going into the workforce this year.

So that's major impact, and we're really proud of that.

So if you can make it, 10 o'clock Saturday morning.

We serve breakfast.

We'd be we would love to have you.

Brandy used to be part of the stage team with me, and we always appreciated that.

If you have never been to a community college graduation, you have never experienced the pure joy of first generation students, young people, middle-aged people, older people, people standing up and cheering for their grandparents who are finally getting that college degree.

It is a day of, I'm not kidding, unbridled joy.

My face will be sore for weeks from smiling so much that day.

And we would love, love to have you experience what that's about if you could join us.

Uh Pikes Peak has been recognized quite a bit with national awards, and I just want to talk about a couple of these if I can.

Hopefully, I get this right.

Uh just this year, a few months ago, we were recognized with the Bell Weather Innovation Award.

And this is a national award.

Uh community colleges all over the nation compete for the Bell Weather Award.

We were chosen as one of ten finalists and invited to San Antonio to present, where we were left with the showcase award for that, and we are really proud of that.

And the award we were received there was for the D2 Promise Program.

Do any of you know about the D2 Promise Program?

So if you don't, this is the only program of its kind in the nation.

It is the nation's only publicly funded first dollar promise program.

So 85% of the young people coming out of Harrison School District 2 are Pell eligible.

If they are Pell eligible, they get a Pell Grant.

It's about $7,000 a year, $7,500 a year to be specific.

They come to Pikes Peak State College, they keep that $7,500 because District 2 pays their tuition and fees to come to Pikes Peak State College.

This tripled the college going rates out of Harrison School District 2.

And we have moved the fall-to-fall retention rates for those young people from 40% fall to fall staying in college to 80% fall to fall staying in college.

So people have often wrung their hands about what do we do to help District 2 and to help low-income families there.

Get them into college, make it affordable, take care of them when they get to college and get them to graduation.

That's what you do to change their lives.

And that's what we are doing.

So we want a Bellweather National Award for that program.

It is an extraordinary program.

Our partners in District 2, and I would be remiss not to mention Superintendent Burr Hansel, who was last year the superintendent of the year in Colorado is an amazing partner.

And together through this partnership, we're doing extraordinary things for kids in District 2.

We've also recently been recognized with a Heat Award Higher Education Excellence and Diversity Award.

Also, we were recognized one of the best places to work in community colleges through the same organization.

And all of these awards and more really point to sort of the national level of excellence at Pikes Peak State College.

And for those of us locally who just started drive by the building, and the building looks the same every time we go by, nothing really changes.

You think, well, it's just there's nothing happening there, and there's so much happening there.

But yes, indeed, as you drive by, it does typically mostly look the same.

Although we do finally have our Pikes Peak State College signs up in place of our old name.

I'll just recognize uh one other award that I wanted to mention.

We won a national gold award for a best marketing campaign, for a marketing campaign, for a promise program for first uh for First Nations.

So it's called First Nations Promise Program.

Native American students can come to Pikes Peak State College and they're guaranteed that their tuition and fees are covered.

We think this is particularly important for Native American students because of the damage and harm done through the name of education to Native communities through boarding schools and things like this, enormous breaches of trust.

Local, locally, in Colorado Springs, Native American students have a 55% high school graduation rate.

We should be concerned about this in our neck of the woods.

We're trying to do what we can.

Oh, I'm so sorry.

I have a plumber at my house, just like Councilman Gold, it's that day.

But we felt really important to do what we could in our local community to help bridge that gap and build trust with the Native American community and education.

Councilman Henjam.

Thank you, Madam President.

And and Lance, thank you for being here.

I imagine you're gonna get to this just by looking at the next slide.

Um I do want to hear the rest of what you have to say, but what you're sharing right now just prompts for me kind of a comment, and maybe you can incorporate it in the rest of your slides.

And that is, by the way, I had no idea about the Bellweather award and what you're doing there with District 2.

Thank you.

That's fantastic work.

Um, really appreciate that.

And this question about what is a community college or what comes to mind.

Um, I my next door neighbor is a professor actually retiring from Colorado College, and I see nationally, liberal arts colleges are struggling really to, um they're losing enrollment, they're they're getting more and more expensive, uh, students graduating are having a hard time finding jobs, and um, and some of it related to AI and just other changes, but um what I love about what you're doing, and you're gonna show another program here, um, just the real practical preparing people for for real real-time jobs that they can earn a living in, which is excuse me, I think fantastic.

And I I think we are in the middle of a big conversation about our educational institutions, what they're for, why do they exist, how do they operate?

And um, and we're those shifts are happening, and clearly you're you're adapting um to those.

But if you have any thoughts on that kind of broadly and impacts of AI and and liberal arts colleges as you continue.

Oh, I I know, and the other question I was gonna ask was um I know that you have programs that connect high school work into into programs that you have as well at the college.

Um, if you could speak to those if they're not on the slides.

Sure.

Thanks.

Yeah.

That was a lot.

We could go uh for a long time on all that.

I'll say we're working a lot with AI.

I was just an invited speaker at the sort of the national higher higher ed tech conference, which is called ASUGSV out in San Diego.

We've moved past wringing our hands about what we're gonna do about AI and really embracing it as a way to increase engagement with students.

We think that's really important.

We know employers want those skills when students are coming out of our college.

So we're working hard at that.

And with respect to concurrent enrollment, about 20% of our enrollment at Pikes Peak State College is concurrent enrollment.

Those are students who are still in high school, taking college level classes.

We do a lot of that on our campus because a lot of it is what we call CTE focused, career and tech ed focused.

So it is hands-on programs like auto tech, healthcare programs, culinary arts, that kind of thing.

And as Donna alluded to, we have a huge effort going on around ensuring that every program at Pikes Peak State College, students graduate and have access to living wage jobs.

We use the MIT calculator for living wage jobs.

We peg it at about 48,000 for a single person in Colorado Springs.

The program is not getting students to a living wage job, we're not going to continue to have that program.

So we're really focused on this living wage jobs as a way of ensuring the students' investment in their education pays off for them and their families.

You bet.

Just going to talk real quickly about the Pikes Peak Law Enforcement Academy.

And I just want to say so the same comments also are related to and apply to our fire science program.

So we've had this program for many, many years.

The students coming out of the Pikes Peak Law Enforcement Academy are going to work for police departments all over the state, but they're not going to work very often in Colorado Springs, which is troubling to us.

Colorado Springs has really high wages for the police department relative to especially some of the smaller departments that they go to.

I will say we have a hundred percent placement of our students, but again, there's a challenge around getting enough students and opportunities in Colorado Springs.

And so we continue to press forward with this that we believe we have a really high quality program.

We know that students coming through the our program also have to do the training with the Colorado Springs Police Department.

We have no problem with that, and neither do many of our students, because that's a paid position when you're in the training academy with the Colorado Springs Police Department.

What I would say about both fire science and the Pikes Peak State College Law Enforcement Academy is that number one, they provide a pipeline of employees to the city, and number two, for those who want the police department and the fire department to look more like the citizens that they're serving.

This is an opportunity because our programs are very diverse.

Many, many of our students in both fire science and law enforcement academy are coming out of the Army into these programs.

And so they're really terrific people to hire.

And unlike recruiting uh police officers and fire fighters from around the country, ours will stay here.

They're from here, they're looking to stay here, they're looking for jobs here, and there's an opportunity, I think, for us to build this relationship and make it stronger.

Um, just a few things uh sort of looking forward.

Again, Pikes Peak is very focused on the workforce needs of our community.

Donna mentioned it, but I just want to say in the last two years, we've started seven engineering programs at Pikes Peak.

We have the state's only associate degree and aerospace engineering.

So we're really proud of that.

We think that's really important to our local community.

We work really closely with a lot of our tech community, really closely with healthcare community as well, and we continue to look for ways to better serve our community and ensure the programs we have align with the workforce needs here, and that goes for the city as well.

We think that there are a lot of employment opportunities, and if there are things that we could do to better position Pikes Peak students coming out of our programs to be hired into fire department, police department, we would be eager to do those things, and that that's what we have.

Councilman Henjam.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Actually, uh Lance, on that last slide and just the opportunities to work with the city.

I'm gonna ask our chief of staff if he would um like to comment on how we might um continue or or engage in conversations with the state college on those opportunities.

We are always happy to have those conversations.

I know that uh our police department is working on some different options and happy to have those discussions with you as we go forward.

Sure.

And sorry, I'm just gonna have to say we've had a lot of those conversations.

I'm happy to continue, but we'd love to see more action following some of those conversations.

Well, I am news, so I can't speak for what's happened in all of the conversations before.

Uh, but I am happy to engage with you going forward.

I think that's an Elvis song, but I won't do it.

Councilman Risley.

Thank you, Madam President.

Thank you both for being here and for your comments today.

I don't really have any questions, but just wanted to make a couple of comments myself.

Uh, first, my company is proud to employ several Pikes Peak State College graduates.

Um, the folks that we've seen come out of the architecture and design programs have been really high caliber and really great, great quality, and I would say uh, you know, equal quality or caliber with um folks that come from four-year and even master's degree programs.

So thank you for putting out some really excellent uh students.

Um we also had an individual more seasoned who used to be a professor uh at Pikes Peak Community College and had always great things to say about the the culture, the work environment, and and sort of just the overall uh sort of tenor, I suppose, uh, of uh of the community there at the school.

So thank you for all of that.

I just want to quickly, and you've mentioned this before, so I'm not gonna belabor the point, but I just want to really underscore a comment, Donna, that you made that that enrollment will achieve pre-pandemic or exceed pre-pandemic levels here coming up, and I think that's really important because going back to some of the comments from uh council member henjam, I think that underscores the relevancy of the programs.

It underscores the fact that you understand how to stitch together workforce development and work collaboratively with the K-12 community.

You've maintained relevancy in a way that a lot of uh higher education institutions institutions just have not.

And so uh again, you should be commended for that and and thank you for your presentation.

Thank you.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President and Dr.

Bolden and thank you both for being here.

I know we've had tremendous amount of conversations over the last several months, specifically about the law enforcement pipeline, uh, is no secret.

Um, I'm a huge advocate for it.

Uh, and to our chief of staff, I will be having uh deeper conversations with you about that also.

I've had those conversations with the chief of police, and uh not only am I advocate for it, it makes sense.

Um what I don't like personally is when I hear people complain about manpower, and we have something at our fingertips, something that's homegrown, something that contributes directly to the workforce right here in Colorado Springs.

So I think that there's something there for us to leverage.

Now, granted, I'm quite sure we have to get through all the nuances of, you know, what does it mean to go through the academy, what does it mean to become a sworn officer so forth in correlation with your program.

But to me, you you definitely leverage and you lean in on that.

So thank you very much for being advocates for that program.

I will continue to be an advocate for that program, uh, because we have a manpower issue, and I think this can actually help resolve that issue.

Uh and I go back to your comment and your slide presentation, and I do love it.

Uh, it's actually up right now.

Cities workforce needs, and I can't emphasize that enough.

Uh homegrown talent, keeping the talent here to contribute right to our city needs.

So continue uh doing what you're doing with your leadership.

And the last thing I I want to say is uh I love how when you mentioned the graduation attendance, which of course I'll be there this weekend.

Uh you said 4,000 degrees, correct?

Correct.

And I go back again, and maybe I'm just in a happy go lucky mood these days.

Um 4,000 degrees in graduation right now, right across the street, another thousand from the Air Force Academy and from other institutes in this area.

Boy, we are awesome ass city.

I'm sorry.

I just gotta say, we are awesome, and we're doing some great things, and I love seeing leadership like yours out in our great city, doing great things with great students.

I actually have a couple of students that in my business uh from Pikes Peak State College, and I I keep you guys are doing great things.

Continue to do it, and I'd look forward to continuing to build a relationship specifically to this law enforcement pipeline.

So thank you.

Council President, may I just Councilman Rainey, we were remiss and not starting with a uh huge thank you and gratitude to you for the invitation to be here and for the ongoing ongoing conversations.

So much appreciated.

And the newsletter.

And the newsletter, yes.

We have a Pikespeak State College newsletter that you're hopefully all receiving that was inspired by a conversation with Councilman Rainey.

Councilman Williams.

Thank you, President Crow Iverson.

I should have this memorized, Dr.

Bolton, but I don't.

So what year did you start as president of the now state college?

2011.

Oh my goodness.

15 years.

So it was when I started.

It was very interesting.

It's amazing for you to have this much inertia for 15 years.

Like that is impressive that you wake up every day, and I can say it's with the same amount of energy you had.

15 years ago, when we first met.

So we are all a benefit to that.

If you could figure out how to bottle that and sell that and give it to all of us, I think we could all then elevate the entire community.

But what you have done and the legacy that you have built is going to go on for generations.

And you're getting those 4,000 graduates, you're giving back to the community, you're making people proud.

And as Kelly said, there's joy and there's smiling.

I mean, you're creating a whole new world and a whole new pipeline right here.

And I definitely can't thank you enough.

I'm not gonna ask too many questions.

I had nine questions, nine years to ask Dr.

Bolton questions because he made me a red shirt year.

He didn't let me leave during COVID.

So I had to stay on the advisory council a little bit longer, which I greatly appreciated.

And Donna, I'm glad you're part of the team now, too.

And all I really have to say is is keep up the good work.

And it's very admirable what you are both doing, and especially your energy and passion year after year after year.

So thank you.

Oh, thank you so much.

I really appreciate the kind and affirming words.

And I echo everything my colleagues have said to her today over the course of years of just watching it go from the community college to the state college.

I actually started in a community college, so of course I am very um passionate about that path forward.

And now seeing an RNBSN in one school would have been nice, but I did have to go to the university and finish off to that to that regard.

I still have my toe in the medical field a little bit.

And I can tell you that your nurses by far are exceed expectations from any nurses of any schools in the state.

They pass their boards first time around, they're critical thinkers, they're very smart, they're very engaged.

And so that is just um because of your leadership in the program you've put together.

I have been through your dental hygiene program on a tour, and it was amazing.

Anyone would would love to have those types of learning tech labs.

Um, they're you're right.

When you go to the dentist, they're probably like, I don't know how to use this equivalent, because it is fantastic, and that that just shows what you put into your students so that they really are good students.

So when they go out into our community and they provide healthcare services and other to the community, they're getting the best service that they can get, which is an attribute to your affording.

I think it was just a couple weeks ago.

I did see some data, and I'm not sure if it was Tatiana Bailey's report or one of the economists that said in the next five to 10 years, universities will close by 50%.

And because of your leadership and forethought, I think it's really going to, you're not just gonna come out of the the pandemic with numbers.

I think it's you're it's going to be much stronger numbers because of that.

Because of that, because you know, things have changed.

People do need their kids to get a job.

They are looking for affordability.

They're looking for um just the things you talked about.

So, and that's that's really to your foresight and thinking forward, not knowing the pandemic, what it would do, not knowing what we know today.

So that that's all to your leadership.

And I stay in touch with Donna frequently on the students and helping kids mentor which way they want to go and the career pathways and whatnot optimize their decision.

But thank you so much for the presentation and what you do in our community, because it really is making a difference, especially in district two.

I've watched that program from the beginning, and it's exceptional.

So thank you both so much for coming today.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

We appreciate your time.

Moving on to item 7A.

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

Agenda planner review.

Does anyone have any questions or changes to the agenda planner?

Seeing none for the record, there are none.

Moving on to item 8A.

So 8A through D are will be one presentation, so I'll read them all in.

Thank you.

8A resolution authorizing the acquisition of approximately 40 acres.

Uh West CMSP parcel one as an addition to the Cheyenne Mountain State Park through the Trails Open Space and Parks Program.

A B ordinance requesting a supplemental appropriation to the Trails Open Space and Parks Fund, up to 162,000 to complete acquisition of approximately 40 acres.

Of property identified as parcel one West CMSP extension for the purpose of public open space and trails.

About 262,000 to complete the acquisition of approximately 40 acres of property identified as parcel two West CSMP extension for the purpose of public open space and trails.

Good morning, David.

Good morning, President Crow Iverson, President Pro Tim Risley, members of City Council.

Thank you for the opportunity to uh share these two parcels for acquisition and to consider them all in this one presentation.

So I appreciate that opportunity.

Um so I'm here today to introduce the idea of this acquisition for two 40-acre parcels into our TOPS program and for the expansion of Cheyenne Mountain State Park.

Just a little bit of background here.

I want to introduce that our park system master plan from 2014 remains our guiding document as we look for these opportunities with open space expansion.

On a side note, we are wrapping up our new updated master plan, and you'll see that here in the coming months.

But we still continue to move forward with this recommendation to expand gaps in our open space network, to continue to pursue opportunities for partnership and really focusing in on these target areas, primarily on this presentation in the Rock Creek area.

So on this map, this is our 2014 Park System Master Plan candidate area open space map.

And the Rock Creek Canyon area shown on that star on the very southwest side of Colorado Springs, adjacent to China Mountain State Park and therefore, I'm sorry, the Space Force Station and Fort Carson.

A little bit more history on China Mountain State Park.

The original acquisition in 2000 was a partnership between our TOPS program and the state of Colorado with about 60% ownership by the city of Colorado Springs.

Through that partnership, the city provided funds to acquire our portion of the property and then the state park agreed to manage and maintain that land.

So it was a really great opportunity to utilize the funds for a TOPS program and then have the state manage those properties.

More recently, back in the late fall of 2025, you saw before you an acquisition of 130 acres.

That was a similar approach where the city acquired through our TOPS program and incorporated an additional portion of that acreage into the state park.

And that partnership was about a 490 acre acquisition between the state and the city.

And the set uh the state has continued to confirm their willingness to engage in these MOUs updates to maintain and manage those properties as they brought into the state park itself.

And this is no exception to that.

So a little bit more focus in on our area.

This map reflects uh the Cheyenne Mountain State Park as well as our Fishers Canyon open space on the southwest side of Colorado Springs.

Highway 115 runs on that right side of the image, more or less north-south.

And then there's two different colors of green highlighted between state ownership of the state park and then the topp's ownership in that area along Cheyenne Mountain itself.

So we're looking at two individual 40-acre parcels, both owned by two separate families.

They contacted us after hearing news of the expansion in the fall of 2025.

And so it's a great opportunity to expand and enhance the state park through this assemblage of property.

It's adjacent to Shine Mountain State Sports Station as well as Fort Carson.

And it provides for this opportunity with additional connectivity, which I'll highlight here in a moment.

Through our TOPS program, we had the opportunity to evaluate the land.

And in that there are several characteristics that came forward, and you can see them listed here between wildlife habitat and those corridors, water resources, significant vegetation, the scenic quality, open space linkage, this passive recreational opportunity, and our opportunity for the partnership.

This photo represents our topps working committee on tour hiking out to those properties.

It was a pretty rugged day, but just to show the characteristic and the really unique beauty that this area provides.

I mentioned the connectivity opportunities, and this is a vision plan that has been in the works for the better part of 15 years as we look to expand the Shine Mountain State Park in the Rock Creek area.

This idea of the Shine Mountain Heritage Trail, which encompasses a trail around Cheyenne Mountain itself, estimated about 30 miles, two-thirds of which are already existing today.

The idea comes from really the legacy trails from Spencer Penrose when he had bridal trails that provided opportunities for guests, the Broadmoor to go horseback riding around the area.

This is an opportunity to really connect the Rock Creek portion on the southern side of Cheyenne Mountain to existing trails on that loop.

The idea too is it provides a figure eight opportunity with the Fisher Canyon plan that we have recommended from last year, as well as this is a side spur to the Ring of the Peak Trail system that is actively in discussion with our community.

So of the two properties, this is our first one.

This is parcel one identified here in the orange highlight.

It's on the south side adjacent to Rock Creek Canyon Road.

It serves as again that mountain backdrop, trail connection opportunities, wildlife habitat, and those regional partnerships from our TOPS program.

We are under contract with the owner, subject to the approval of city council for the appraised value of 160,000.

Two photographs to represent a little bit more of that area and context.

The first one on that left-hand side has a highlight here.

That is the portion of the property.

This is taken from the 789 north.

The summit of Cheyenne Mountains, that rocky crag high point in the image.

And then a photo from the property itself with just the vegetation to show you that ruggedness.

Our second parcel, again, another 40-acre property property higher up on that mountainside, has similar characteristics for those opportunities.

We're also under contract with this property, subject to the city council for that approval.

And it too was appraised for 160,000.

And as we show a photograph again from the south side of Rock Creek looking to the north, properties highlighted in that color swath.

Uh, the Cheyenne Mountain peak, the top of Cheyenne Mountain is shown in that rocky crag on the right-hand side.

And then the other point of reference, if you're familiar with this area enough, the Dixon Trail actually comes pretty close to this location.

Councilman Henjam.

Thank you, Madam President.

Can you go back a slide, David?

I don't know if you know the answer to this question, but the property just to the east of the property that's not owned by the park or the city.

And there's little little tiny pieces there.

Do you can you do you know who the owner of that property is?

We do.

So over the years we've had the opportunity to expand this portion of the property back in the 2007-2008 time frame.

And then in really the 2018 to 2021, we've picked up several smaller properties.

That 80-acre parcel, which is just to the right of the orange color, is privately held by an individual here in Colorado Springs.

We worked with them several years ago.

They were not interested to sell the land, but they did provide a seven-acre trail easement for the Dixon Trail.

And that Dixon Trail alignment is approximated in that white line that cuts.

And then there's a series of privately held properties ranging from anywhere from two acres to the 80 acres.

That little network there was a leftover remnant subdivision from many years ago.

And there are a couple properties that are owned by the federal government that we've researched and haven't found much information on other than that they're identified as federally owned.

And then there are some private properties in that area.

Okay.

And do you have any idea what they what plans they have for that property or um the short answer is no.

We've talked to several of them.

Again, a lot of them have come forward to promote their property and to sell it to the TOPS program for preservation and conservation.

The property that is just north of that yellow box, we actually did a site tour with that family member who is part of the heirs to the Dixon family, which owned homesteading on top of the mountain.

And so we took them out toward the property, so that we were willing to continue a conversation if they're interested.

And he said, No, I'd like to hang on to it more as a um you know part of our family history.

And so if and when they're willing to sell, we'd be able to talk to them.

Great.

Thanks.

Councilman Lineweber, and he's online.

Great.

Hey, thank you.

Um I guess my questions are kind of just similar, you know, because I'm looking at those infill uh properties that are to the right of what you've just highlighted.

You just stated just to make sure I got that right.

Those are owned by some government entity.

The vast majority of those to the right of that yellow highlighted property are privately held.

And then there are uh sections of these smaller subdivisions that are identified in there that identify as U.S.

government, but through our research and our previous employees that had worked in this area, we're unable to identify points of contact.

And so it's an element that we need to continue to research.

Okay.

Yeah, it's just anything that kind of makes something like that whole, and then we we're also, you know, gonna landlock those properties.

So um will they retain any kind of um access rights or anything like that, or do they have anything like that?

I don't know if I can speak to that behalf right now.

Um, can certainly get that answer for you if you would like.

Yeah, I'm just curious about that because it could change the value of the property if they don't if they don't make if they haven't maintained some kind of access um right away.

Um, it could be interesting.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, I'll continue on.

So I'll finish talking about this photograph showing that property.

Um, as we look into our funding, again, we are here on behalf of the TOPS program to incorporate this through the TOPS program funded by the open space category.

And so right now, through the end of 2025, our estimated balance was just over 10.4 million dollars.

Additional revenue from quarter one in 2026, saw 1.3 million dollars.

And then we hold um a 10% reserve on that.

So available funding specific for open space acquisition is 10.6 million dollars.

So just to highlight this is um dedicated funding just for the acquisition.

Again, we continue to move forward with the agreement, the Shine Mountain State Park about maintenance and management of those properties.

So we envision that that would be part of the state's responsibility.

A highlight of our timeline represents uh presentations to our TOPS working committee and our Parks Advisory Board in April.

Last week we had a vote for recommendation from our TOPS working committee, uh five to zero vote, those five represent those that were able to join us on that tour, and who could officially vote on the recommendation.

We will be at Parks Board this Thursday, seeking their recommendation to the council, and then here today for an item of introduction, and then plan on returning for the city council regular work session regular sessions here in May and June.

With all this going well, we do anticipate a closing by the end of the third quarter.

So, as mentioned, there are four different readings.

We have the supplemental appropriation request for 162,000.

That is the purchase price plus the closing cost for parcel one.

We have the resolution for um authorizing the acquisition, and then parcel two represents the very similar language for 162,000 to incorporate the purchase price plus the closing cost, and then the resolution for acquisition.

With that, I will um leave you with this last image taken from the top of Shine Mountain, looking back towards the Rock Creek area.

And both the properties are visible in the the right-hand side of this image, but just as a point of reference, the incredible beauty that this valley holds and the rugged remoteness that it's also encompassed.

So with that, uh thank you for the opportunity.

Thank you.

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

Okay, and if I may request, could it be considered for consent, or would you like us to bring this forward for new business?

Consent.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 8E, will the clerk please read item 8E and 8F into the record.

8E, an ordinance amending Article 1 administration and repealing Article 4, Urban Forest of Chapter 4, Parks, Recreation and Cultural Services of the Code of the City of Colorado Springs 2001 is amended pertaining to urban forest 8F, an ordinance creating a new Article 9, Urban Forest of Chapter 3, public property and public works of this of the code of the city of Colorado Springs 2001 is amended pertaining to urban forest and providing penalties for violations thereof.

Good morning.

Hello, good morning, uh President Crow Iverson, President Pro Tim Risley, and members of council.

My name is Matthew Puckett, and uh I'm the city forester with public works, so thank you for having me this morning.

Um I will be covering both the amendments to Article 1 and the ordinance creating new Article 9, Urban Forest that's on the agenda within this presentation.

Uh before I begin, I want to note that I received word like late last week that our prosecution division has identified some necessary changes to the proposed forestry ordinance.

Um I have not yet received that finalized document outlighting those revisions, but it appears that the issues are manageable and relatively minor.

So I'm just wanted to preface it with that.

So uh today I'll be walking you through the recodification and the operational responsibilities connected to these updates.

I want to begin by emphasizing that the changes we're proposing today is how we already operate.

Our current urban forest ordinance was originally written in 1968, and it was revised in 1980 to establish the street tree program and has had a handful of minor updates since then, but it has never had a comprehensive modernization.

So that is here.

What uh I'm bringing forward to you today is the first modernization in about 60 years of our proposed uh ordinance changes.

So I'm gonna start with just the background details.

I want to briefly outline who city forestry is.

Forestry is one of the few divisions within the city that have legally codified uh responsibilities for both maintenance and enforcement.

We are required to maintain public trees.

We accomplish this through a combination of internal crews who and contracted tree care companies.

We also have staff foresters who inspect trees, work directly with residents, managing licensing tests with contractors, and respond to requests through GoGov and our standard uh phone calls.

Moving on, um, I wanted to uh cover if fully staffed our division has 22 team members.

Two are federally funded through 2028 through a uh a grant, and then um we have 13 operational field arborists.

So those are the technical professionals that are responsible for your daily pruning, removal, storm response, and the specialized tree care maintenance.

So there's a lot of data I'm about to throw out at you, just fair warning.

Uh we manage approximately 130,000 right-of-way trees and 20,000 park trees, totaling about 150,000 public trees citywide.

This is the largest number of public trees managed by any municipality in Colorado providing complete tree care maintenance.

With 13 field arborists, each arborist is responsible for roughly 11,500 trees.

The past two years, for example, have been our most productive yet, maintaining around 5,000 trees per year.

And even at that rate, uh we are on a 30-year pruning cycle.

Whereas industry best practice is a seven-year pruning cycle, a target many comparable front-range cities have already achieved.

I have a questionnaire, Councilman Hingem.

Uh, thank you, Madam President.

Um, good morning.

Good morning.

Matthew.

Um, so you I I suppose we could do the math, but given that it's 150,000 public trees, and um we have 11,500 per arborist, with a pruning a pruning interval of every 30 years and seven being the industry target.

Can you just tell me what that equates to in number of foresters or arborists that we are down in the city of Colorado Springs if we were to meet industry standards?

You know, when it comes to proactive maintenance, the hardest part is that initial, you know, getting through the the cycle.

After that, it's it's proactive, and your maintenance responsibility is isn't as high.

But you know, we essentially estimate that quick math that we're looking at four times the staff, um, or you know, increase in contracting budget to uh uh create that uh operational need.

So um, you know, four times in staff would would get us there though.

So 16, is that no?

It'd be four times thirteen.

Uh so for operational staff, yeah, it'd be four times 13, but we typically need a staff forest or two, so that would that would impact the number a little bit.

Um, you know, it'd be 17 times for a give or take.

Well, thank you for sharing that.

And I think it's important for my fellow council members to be aware of that, just because every year when we do our budget, we have to do these really hard prioritizations.

But this is one of those other levels of service that quite frankly, um you guys are doing a tremendous job with the resources that you have.

Um, but there's an impossibility of what you know, there's only so much you can do with the staff that you have.

And uh, and I I just think it's really important that we're aware of that, and this is another example of levels of service that we really are not meeting ideally in our city.

And we get people who reach out to us all the time uh regarding regarding the trees, the city-owned trees.

So thank you.

Thank you for that.

Um another thing I wanted to cover is we also face a significant tree planting deficit.

So between 2023 and 2025, we removed 2200 trees, and at city forestry, we only planted 121.

That's about an 18-to-one tree removal to planting ratio.

Um, so at that removal to planting ratio, the city may not need a city forester in about a hundred years.

But but believe me, that's not the succession plan I am working towards.

So uh regional threats like the invasive emerald ash borer when it arrives could increase and compound this canopy loss if left untreated and unmanaged EAB has the potential to kill every ash tree in about 15 years in this city, and that makes up about 25% of our public tree canopy.

The pest was confirmed in Denver last year and has been progressively moving south along the front range.

Though it has not yet been confirmed in Colorado Springs, that topic warrants its own separate session, but it has major implications for our management and oversight of the urban forest.

So another thing I wanted to cover uh this year through grant-funded efforts, we will complete our tree inventory.

Our goal is to make this inventory publicly accessible in 2027.

A public uh facing inventory will allow residents to view maintenance history, tree species, uh information, notable and historic trees, and we'll provide a comprehensive tool for citizen uh interaction and engagement.

This will significantly improve transparency and support and just community involvement when it comes to our urban forest.

Other front range municipalities have done that already as well.

Councilman Hingem.

Thank you.

Um Matthew, um, and and I did we did have a chance to talk last week about all this.

So um the the ash beetle, I think is something that uh, and we talked about this quite a bit last week, but I would like to just uh make a formal request here um uh that we have a presentation at a lunch coming up about the the realities.

There's a lot more to go into around that ash beetle and the impacts it's gonna have on our city um and our and our tree canopy.

Um so not necessarily for now because it's quite detailed, but um I would like to request that for a future lunch, if I might can I make that request for a future lunch item.

Thank you.

Just whenever whenever you can fit it in, I think it would be great to.

Yep, great.

Thanks.

Perfect, thank you.

Yes, and like I like Nancy said, that is a topic we could talk about separately, and it's uh it's got huge implications on our urban forest.

The next thing I just want to cover for council is just letting them know what is public and what is right of private trees.

Um the bottom, your detached sidewalks.

This is typically common.

You'll find this in the old north end.

And actually, it's one of the most difficult places for a tree to live and grow because typically it's shared easements, right?

With utilities, you have to meet ADA compliance.

Oftentimes you'll have sidewalk displacement.

It's tough conditions for our trees.

On the top right, you'll see attached sidewalk, and it's hard to distinct what is a public and private tree.

You typically have to use mapping tools such as Springsview to determine that.

Um, and you'll find that uh village seven has a lot of this.

Uh in the top left, we have a no-sidewalk public right-of-way.

Areas of the Broadmoor have this, they can have up to 20 feet right-of-way.

So our right of way for trees uh varies uh a lot throughout the city.

So I just want to give you a quick background there so you understand what I'm talking about here shortly.

So I you guys have probably seen some of our trees are in this condition.

Uh citizen requests drive much of our workload because our workload unfortunately is reactive and our canopy is maturing.

Risk increases, older trees sit directly over vehicles, sidewalks, homes, and public spaces.

Unfortunately, the photo here is just one of uh about 800 that's backlogged in our system.

Our top priority is reducing public risk while preserving and enhancing canopy health.

So the highly technical work that you see here does require skilled, trained, and certified arborists and sometimes special equipment.

Sometimes we have to use cranes, sometimes we have to use uh um specialized bucket trucks to access and uh manage these trees.

So this is just a quick overview.

I just want to uh within our standard operating procedures.

This is the level of service that we try to offer our citizens currently.

Five days for initial request response, 30 days for inspections, five days for urgent hazards, you know, similar to the photo you just saw, and uh 90 days for high priority work and our medium and low priority tasks, which would be you know, uh, your smaller trees that need pruning, it's really as resources allow if we can get to it.

So uh moving into um, and that covers our brief background on our operations.

Uh, this is the first ordinance amendment on the agenda, and it is straightforward and only one slide.

Uh city forestry moved from parks to public works in 2022.

Uh, this, of course, occurred under Southern's administrations and aligned more closely with our right-of-way management and uh infrastructure interactions with public works.

Uh, this change has been overall very beneficial for us.

So we are now recodifying the urban forest chapter from once was parks and rec, chapter four to public works, chapter three.

Like I said, this is prior primarily administrative.

We've been part of public work since 2022.

Uh, the next slide here is our definitions.

So our original forestry ordinance did not have any definitions uh from 1968, which made implementation inconsistent.

Um, we are not reviewing every definition today.

I just wanted to put them on the screen of what was most relevant.

Uh, City Forester, for example, or de or designee definition, is especially important because with our uh recodification here, uh, it clarifies who has the legal authority to determine weed tree status, identify hazards or conflicts, issue notice and orders, or initiate abatements.

As well as uh approved planting permits, oversee right-of-way vegetation compliance.

So this will tie into uh the enforcement structure later in this presentation.

So this is uh this is the first one I wanted to cover, and that's duties of property owners.

Um Article 9 uh establishes clear expectations for property owners.

Again, these duties are not new.

This is how we already operate.

Um, we just don't have that enforcement capability.

Um, and we're like I said, this is uh we are updating our code to reflect that of other city departments that have updated theirs as well so they can all tie in together.

So the first requirement is property owners must maintain or remove vegetation the right of way that they planted or allowed to grow that is not on the approved street tree list.

So you may ask yourself uh what is the approved street tree list?

So what this is, this is a dynamic document that can be used and updated as new species proved suitable for our climate.

And this is already a document that we've had for 30 years at City Forestry, it just not it has not been ref uh referenced within our code.

So, what the approved list does, it protects our long-term canopy health by ensuring species are suitable for our climate.

And I'll just give you an example.

About 20 years ago, we prohibited the planting of ash trees because we knew that EAB was eventually going to be a threat for our urban forests.

So that's what this document does.

Um, you know, foresters have years past, they just wanted to plant what grew here, and unfortunately, that resulted in a lot of green ash being planted, a lot of silver maple, and now we're uh we're with regional threats like the Emerald Ashbore, we could lose all of that canopy, um, 25% of it in 15 years.

So this is a very critical document to have because, like I said, it equips our citizens to know which trees do well in our climate, but also which trees do well in an urban setting, right?

We don't want uh we don't want a citizen planting a tree that uh uh is gonna cause sidewalk issues.

We want the right tree in the right place.

So that's uh that's what this document is referenced as.

Um another thing that I wanted to cover and just let uh members of council know is that studies suggest when the right species is planted in the right place, trees can increase hardscape and roadway longevity by moderating temperatures and reducing stress on surrounding infrastructure.

Along with these benefits, trees provide many benefits and significantly enhance the aesthetic quality of our neighborhoods.

A maintain maintained tree also increases your property value.

So I'll stop being a tree salesman, I promise, although I know that General Palmer would probably approve.

He likes trees just as much as me.

So again, these benefits only occur when it is the right tree in the right place.

So how do we ensure the right trees in the right place?

We have a free permitting process for our public trees, and we'll cover that in just a couple slides.

So this is the first example I wanted to show council here.

Um I love blue spruce, they're great trees, but within our right-of-way, they cause uh they can cause visibility issues and accessibility issues.

So if we were able to talk to this resident beforehand, I would communicate to them, hey, let's choose a different species.

If you want a conifer, maybe a ponderosa pine, which is an approved street tree.

Because you can tell the photo on the right that's blocking the stop sign, and uh the photo on the left is blocking that accessibility.

So the the next uh duties of property owner I wanted to cover was planted after January 1st, 2020, uh without a city forester's permit.

So trees planted after January 1st, 2020 require that free permit, and you may ask why.

January 2020, that's when 80% of our tree inventory was completed.

So we manage living assets at City Forestry.

Um allowing residents to plant a tree in the public right-of-way without a permit is like a resident installing a park bench within that right of way, and then now the city has the right to maintain it.

Um so to manage that access, we need the citizens' buy-in and that partnership to know it exists with our limited staff.

We have no clue if if all of a sudden you put an asset that we're supposed to manage without how to well without having that permit, the free permit filled out and approved.

So the 2020 date also serves as practical guidance.

We're not taking core samples of trees to try to backdate and age them.

My staff is committed to educating and working with residents to find solutions.

Ultimately, we want more trees just in the right place.

So I want to.

Thank you, Madam President.

Yeah.

Matthew, on that last slide and the permitting.

Do you have any guesstimate as to how many people residents in our city actually even know they need a permit to plant a tree in the right-of-way?

So we've had this permit process on our website for uh gosh, I'd probably say 10 plus years.

And it was an original code that it was the city forester's uh the city forester had to approve any tree that was planted.

Um, but you know, we've worked with local community organizations and partners, many of which who've written uh letters of support today to get that message out there.

Um so I I will say it's hard, it's hard to give a firm estimate, but um, I would say you know, 50-50% of residents or more should be aware of this.

But we've also talked with uh um communications team and we've explored the opportunities of putting out push notifications as reminders, just making sure every resident is notified.

Yeah, that's great.

And I and I see you've prioritized response in 48 hours just because you're being proactive and trying to with that limited resource, you want to respond quickly to these to make sure the right trees are planted in the right place.

Exactly.

Yes.

And here's a couple more examples where the heart was in the right place, but the tree was not.

So, you know, uh the photo on the left, we have a resident that planted a tree right in front of a stop sign.

Now at City Forestry, they didn't get the permit.

We have to go there and be the bad guy, and it's we want the tree.

Just if you would have worked with us, we could have uh planted it 15 feet further south or whatever it may be to accommodate the residents' request.

On the right, um, I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with willows, but do they belong in a three-foot ride-of-way?

Probably not.

So uh right now that tree is great, but long term it's gonna cause those sidewalk displacement issues.

So, again, we would probably steer them to a different species.

You want shade tree, this is a narrow right-of-way.

Let's do a fruitless crab apple, you know.

Let's let's talk about options with the resident, and that's what that permit process is for.

Because what's even worse is going out there and having to remove a completely healthy tree just because uh it was missing that uh that partnership and that teamwork in the beginning.

So all righty.

Uh moving on, the the next one I wanted to cover is slide 15, which is uh duties of property owners continued.

However, property owners must manage weed trees and sprouts that obstruct or could eventually obstruct uh the right-of-way or damage infrastructure.

So some council members here might be familiar with Siberian Elm and Tree of Heaven.

Those are both common examples of weeds that require control, and they are both listed as noxious weeds per the Colorado Department of Agriculture.

So, and I wanted to show these real quick.

These are quick two examples of of what's happening a lot um within our city is that uh oftentimes citizens will uh zero escape or they will put rock within their right-of-way, and they feel as if that removes them from the maintenance responsibility, and then uh years and years later you will get this.

So, you know, in this situation, if you did zero escape and you did put weed fabric there, you still have the responsibility to go through and and spray down weeds.

Um that's uh but if neft if left neglected, our current code requires this to be ours, and uh with uh with I'm sure many of you have seen this around town, uh adding that responsibility to my staff with our current backlog of what are approved street trees is incredibly taxing.

Um, especially as a lot of these will result in public risk.

You know, if you leave this neglected, it'll it'll block a stop sign.

Um, and this is a good example.

So in 2019, this right-of-way, you can tell maybe it's it's not mowed, um, it's set aside, and in 2021, you can already see the elms starting to take shape.

And then 2024, there we go.

So it's a good time lapse of what what could have been taken care of with just some regular maintenance and mowing in 2019.

And I'll and oftentimes we will get a call and I will have to direct resources from a technical tree removal for uh what's happening here at 2024 because it still is a public safety concern, it is still blocking a stop sign.

Um, however, it could have easily been prevented.

So here's another one, and I have a lot of these to pull from, but we have a rock right-of-way with zero escape as well in landscape fabric, and you can tell 2019 and then 2024.

One more example.

This is actually a before and after.

So before and after.

So and again, like I said, that is pulling the skilled arborist for small trees that don't require that skilled and technical care.

The next next slide here for duties of property owners is uh native vegetation within the right-of-way.

Whether planted intentionally or not, it must be managed when it creates or may create safety or visibility concerns.

Here we have small ponderosa pines that will eventually obstruct traffic visibility, and we understand that native vegetation is common, especially in the interface areas around town.

But in this case, it is more appropriate to work with the adjacent resident to address these trees before they would become a hazard.

Again, these are not issues that my staff would ever be patrolling for.

This is us responding to citizens reporting them.

So another update: uh property owners are responsible for vegetation from their property line to the center alley.

Uh, we have already operated this way for years because chapter nine uh already defines expectations for alleyway weed maintenance, and you can see that there.

We have just further clarified what a weed is that is a weed tree.

So, what is a woody weed, so to speak.

Um, so I just want to put that in there.

Also, trees shown on approved landscape plans must be maintained by the adjacent landowner, HOA or special district as specified in the plan documents.

This was already established in plannings code chapter seven.

We are just adding again that clarity in our chapter because again, uh special districts often have additional funding and unique vegetation requirements.

We have already been operating this way.

Again, we are just updating our code to reflect that.

Okay, uh, this next slide I wanted to show is privately owned trees obstructing the safe use of the right-of-way must be maintained by the property owners.

So both these examples are private trees.

Um on the left, of course, you see the tree encroaching the street and the sidewalk, and on the right, that's a private tree obstructing a stop sign.

Um historically, forestries had no enforcement authority on private trees, which has resulted in city resources being used to prune or remove private trees without no form of restitution.

So in 2025, we spent about 10,000 on private tree care maintenance.

Some years have been higher, but without enforcement tools, when a resident doesn't comply, we must often perform the work ourselves due to safety concerns.

So we also partner with the clerk's office to manage licensed tree care contractors so the public has qualified educated professional resources available for this tree care maintenance.

But like I said again, we did spend approximately 10,000 last year because we don't have that enforcement tool.

It's we we work with the residents and we say, hey, please get this done in 14 days, or we'll do it for free, you know.

And uh that's that's not the best uh course of action or management strategy for city forestry.

So how would we go about enforcing this?

Um this uh recodification provides code enforcement and city forestry with the authority to enforce these tree related issues using the same processes that are already established in code enforcement chapter nine.

We are completely mirroring uh their notice and order structure.

So these are not new fees.

This is not a new process.

Um, it is the same uh appeals or abatement process that code enforcement already has.

And I just wanted to stress again that uh this is very much few and far between for city forestry.

Uh it may only be three to four percent of residents that don't comply, and we have to go through this process, uh, but we shouldn't be using any of those resources of our internal resources on um, you know, private trees, for instance.

So this is how we currently enforce is we always we contact the property owner and we give them a tree and shrub hazard notification.

Um, if there's no response, we'll always verify if it's owner occupied.

If it's a renter, um, you know, we'll we'll work with them and and get contact with the land your landlord uh directly.

If there's we and we give them 14 days to respond to the issue, but like I said, after that, there's no enforcement.

So uh it's 14 days, or like I said, we'll do it for free.

So following that, if they're all what's highlighted here is a new.

So no response.

We will issue a notice and order, we will do the abatement or appeal from property owner in 10 days, and we will follow the code enforcement process.

So, but that's that's that's it for uh enforcement.

Is there any questions?

Councilman Casey?

I just thank you, Madam President.

Quick question.

So if on some pieces of land they're owned by property owners, you can kind of tell that, but what about common areas like you know, that maybe HOA or metro district maintained.

Do you have a way of contacting them to uh deal with you know trees that are needed that need to be pruned or otherwise taken care of?

Absolutely, we do, and oftentimes HOAs metro districts they have more stringent requirements than us.

You know, you may have to plant two conifers in your front yard or however it may be, but um, you know, our process is is if something gets reported to us, we will contact that HOA directly.

We have a list of their representatives and and let them know what work needs to be performed.

Thank you.

Yeah, okay.

Uh moving on from enforcement.

Um, we are getting rid of our street tree program.

So we are striking the original 1980 uh street tree program language.

This program functioned until 2009 when staffing constraints, of course, made it uh unmanageable.

But the language remained in code.

This program used developer contributed funds to um to provide new street trees to home buyers.

While the intention was good, it was very difficult for my staff to administer.

Uh my plan is to use any of the remaining funds to plant trees wherever they are needed most.

Uh, oftentimes that's not in new developments, it's replacement trees.

Um, you know, trees that were removed due to ADA compliance or sidewalk displacement, or come up with a replacement strategy for uh emerald ash borer when it does arrive.

Uh so that's what the remaining funds for the street tree program will be used for, however, that section will be striked from code um and removed.

Okay.

So it we probably we work through this rather quickly, but I just wanted to let you know that this uh recodification is about clarity, consistency, and transparency, and just really trying to be responsible stewards of our resources.

A key comparison to highlight is several front-range municipalities place full responsibility of the right-of-way trees on adjacent property owners.

Their forestry departments only work on park trees.

For example, Denver does that, they place the full right-of-way responsibility on adjacent property owners.

Um we do not operate that way, right?

We manage our street trees.

We are simply requesting for clearer tools to support the way we already function.

Managing approved city trees while ensuring non-approved species, volunteer invasive trees, and private trees impacting the right-of-way are addressed appropriately.

These updates will allow us to focus our limited resources where they belong on the technical skilled care of our public living assets.

Ultimately, my mission is uh for our team to be the best again possible stewards.

So, uh thank you again for your time.

My contact information is on the screen.

And if you have any questions, Councilman Lineweber, and he's online.

Sure.

Hey, this is great information.

I really appreciate you uh bringing this forth.

But um and and maybe I might have missed it, but I don't think I did.

But um what happens when we have a big storm event, and you know, we get a number of trees down on utilities and all that kind of stuff.

Um how does this all affect that if you're not gonna be responsible for those trees?

Are you gonna be responsible when there's an emergency or how does that correlate?

Yes, so because all those trees are grandfathered in, and uh when a storm would happen, yes, we would be responsible for all those trees.

This is just how we're trying to operate moving forward is to catch those volunteer elms, right, when they're young and uh be able to notify that property owner and have uh have them address it.

We're not we're um we would continue to operate as we always have.

Uh like I said, this would just be moving forward.

Everything else is grandfathered in.

Uh, we were just trying to prevent those uh invasive or volunteer trees uh from becoming that issue.

Um we already operate as special districts and HOAs are responsible for their trees, so there would be no change there.

Okay.

Great, thanks.

Councilman Hincham?

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, just yeah, a couple of specific tree questions and on those weedy um Siberian elms.

Um, so I'm curious, do they are they primarily um do you find them primarily in the central part of the city or the older parts of the city, or are they in all 200 square miles?

Uh yeah, second.

Everywhere.

Uh, they are primarily all throughout the city.

Uh, however, uh the farther north you get towards the Palmer Divide and the west out of the city, the more elevation you get, the less you're gonna see them.

Uh, well, they they abound in my general area and neighborhood, and when I walk, um, actually I stop and I kind of do my part.

I try to pull them out because they're everywhere.

I mean, I've pulled hundreds and hundreds, I'm sure, over the time that I've lived in my neighborhood.

But my question really specifically is they're even even when they're just a few inches high, they're really hard to get the roots out.

So if you don't get the entire one pulled out, will that route um even as a seedling continue to grow?

You know, if they're if they're at, you know, and it depends on the site.

Um, that's small, typically it wouldn't come back.

Um, however, if you have a larger tree and you just cut it down without using any chemical, anything to uh uh suppress that weed, um it will come back.

Um, the larger it is, the smaller you might be able to get with the seedlings.

If I don't get every bit of that route, I'm probably still doing good as well.

You're probably still doing good, yes.

Okay.

Uh and you know, oftentimes specific to the right-of-way, it can be taken care of just by mowing.

And if it is a rock right-of-way with herbicide application once a year, okay.

And then last question is uh given the two really hard frosts we had after trees had budded.

Um can you just give some general recommendations for how to um take care of those trees that now look like they're dead, but we know they're not dead, but can you just give us a little information?

Because that was tough this spring.

It was and uh on top of that was also tough is just the drought.

So the drought mixed in um with uh with those two freezes because some of those were back to back.

Um, but I will say this trees are incredibly adaptable, and they have what we call secondary or auxiliary buds that typically get pushed out after.

Um, however, you will probably see frost damage hanging on those leaves for for all year.

Um, but some of the best things that you can do as a resident for your tree is give or is apply a two-inch layer of organic hardwood mulch, which we actually give free to our residents at 1601 recreation way.

It's first come, first serve.

Um, but applying a two-inch layer of mulch that helps hold soil moisture, it helps protect those roots from those hard freezes and it gives those nutrients back into the soil slowly.

Um, so that would be my number one recommendation, and then also in times where we're trying to be water water water-wise, it is uh it's easier to replace turf than a tree.

And that's just what I'll say is that if I had to pick one of the two, I would of course add supplemental watering to to the tree.

Yeah, thank you.

Councilman Williams.

Thank you, President Carr Iverson.

You mentioned the dollars that were spent um because of your 14 days, and you know, they just told you good luck with that.

Have you gone through the exercise in sourcing versus outsourcing?

I know 70,000, 90,000, probably a lot to the budget, but have you done the math to see if it's better to hire one of the contractors you mentioned to handle those things, or like you said, have your skilled employees kind of focus on the things that they're skilled for.

Absolutely, and I'm glad you brought that up.

And it really depends on the project.

Um, reactive maintenance is typically not good for contracting because it's higher costs.

Hey, I need you to take care of this ASAP.

So when we when we have uh outsourcing or contractors, we try to plan projects like, hey, there's this big area where we can do some proactive maintenance, and we're gonna put the contractors there, and then for insourcing or things we do internally, that's where we typically have the reactive abrupt.

Hey, I need you at this part of town, and I need you to finish over here because like I said, it's it's more cost effective that way.

Yeah, thank you.

I couldn't do a second.

Um I don't know where that's coming from.

That's it for questions.

I know that um we usually ask, oh, it must be out there.

Um for if you want this on consent, but because you said earlier that there's a few tweaks.

I don't know that that's why.

At this point, we don't need the whole presentation again, but probably when you come back um for the vote, the new information needs to be added.

So I don't think we can put this on consent.

Okay, thank you, Madam President.

I think one month we should be able to provide that information.

In a month, okay, and just the new information.

Yes, just the new information.

Perfect.

I mean, it's all great, but I mean, just I'm just saying I for you, I'm sure you don't want to come do the whole thing again.

So thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 8G.

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

Okay, an ordinance submitting an ordinance admitting section 1404 code adopted by reference in part 14 building codes of article for development standards and incentives, chapter seven, unified development code, the code of the city of Colorado Sweet's 2001 is amended pertaining adoption of pike speaks regional building code standards of single exits and stairways.

Yep.

Good morning, Roger.

Good morning, Roger Level Regional Building.

Thank you for uh thank you for your time today.

Um, we're here today because in 2025, the state of Colorado passed legislation specifically House Bill 25-1273 to require uh single exit stairs or to allow an option for single exit stairs in multifamily buildings.

So, what the legislation does is it allows for a building up to five stories with four up to four dwelling units per floor to be accessed by a single exit.

Uh there's a lot of additional provisions that are included in that that we can go through.

Uh this requirement applies to municipalities over 100,000 population, of which Colorado Springs is one of those.

So, again, it is specific to the city of Colorado Springs.

Uh, the department has worked in conjunction with Colorado Springs Fire, specifically Chris Cooper, who's here today as well, to um address this topic and come up with the ordinance that we have before you today that matches that meets or exceeds the requirements of the state of Colorado.

The life safety provisions that make up for the loss of that second stair are pretty.

Maybe we could go to, I guess.

Do I have control of this here?

Do I?

Yep.

If we could go to oh boy, I gotta read that.

This is a copy of Appendix D or a partial copy of Appendix D, which is contained in the Pikes Peak Regional Building Code with requirements specific to the City of Colorado Springs.

So if we if we start off, this uh this option to build these multifamily buildings with a single exit would be effective December 1st, 2027, in accordance with the state statute.

Again, no more than five stories, including any occupiable roof.

And then the building has to be constructed of type one, two, or four construction.

Type one and two construction are non-combustible types of construction, the type that you frequently see of office buildings, steel masonry.

Type four construction is not widely used, but it is uh timber, heavy timber construction.

Uh we have yet to see any heavy timber construction here in the Pikes Peak region.

The building would have an automatic sprinkler system, a full commercial automatic sprinkler system.

That's an additional requirement on top of what would be required in a in a in a up to a three-story building.

And I guess to be clear, the the International Building Code, which is what we're what we're on right now, the 2021, it allows for a building up to three stories to be accessed by a single stair.

So this provision allows us to go up to five stories.

The gross floor floor area, uh, which is the floor plate area for each floor, can't exceed 4,000 square feet.

Um it can be increased up to 6,000 square feet, but the exit has to move up to 54 inches wide from the 48 inches wide, which is also a wider exit than what the code requires.

Um it limits exit access travel distance.

Uh it requires an emergency escape and rescue opening, which is a egress window in each dwelling unit, uh, and it does require uh smoke control throughout the building, which is a way of pressurizing the stairwells so that you have a safe evacuation zone in the stairwells.

It requires a full uh fire alarm system, uh, and it does not allow for any uh electrical outlets in corridors or the exit stair, and that's for charging of electric like scooters or that type of thing.

Um, I have a question from Consuman Williams.

Thank you, President Caraverson.

Did that 4,000 square feet include or exclude that one floor that was allotted below allowed below grade?

I couldn't tell if it was all five and then the one that was below grade or the below grade floor would be limited to 4,000 square feet as well.

But it's 4,000 total.

No, it's 4,000 per floor.

Okay.

Uh so it doesn't limit the overall area, but each floor plate is limited to 4,000 square feet, if that makes sense.

That does, thank you.

Okay.

Anything else?

Yeah.

I'll just step up here, council members.

Uh, Dan Sexton planning manager with city planning.

Roger moved a little more quickly than I did to get up to the dice here.

Um, but just so to frame this uh consideration of this code uh update uh is within the UDC because the regional building uh code is adopted as part of chapter seven of the UDC, and as referenced within that section, this is where this would be incorporated if adopted.

Um and ultimately post this conversation here today, if we're able to continue to move it forward, this would come back to you at the um, was it the twenty the next meeting this month?

So what is it, the 26th yep so if there's any questions feel free we can ask them and Chris Cooper is here as well to answer any questions regarding fire.

Councilman Risley Thank you Madam President I I have a number of questions that I think um will probably be best answered by Roger and possibly Fire Marshal Cooper but I'll just uh start and you guys can chime in as you see fit.

I have a few problems with this provision um and sort of the first and foremost is that in my view this continues to uh erode and undermine and usurp home rule authority this is yet again another example of the state in their infinite wisdom telling us locally what is best for us and not just us but the other 11 municipalities that have a hundred thousand residents or or more um so on its face I have a problem with that I think that for for a city with home rule authority we need to flex that that authority that is the reason that you have elected officials that sit here and um look out for the best interests of our community and our our residents and our constituents that aside I have a number of significant technical questions and and concerns uh Roger you mentioned right now that we're under the 2021 International Building Code 2021 IBC.

This type of construction and I acknowledge that this this change would not go into effect until December of 2027 but this type of construction would not be allowed under the 2021 IBC as I understand that you just mentioned the difference between three stories versus five stories but on top of that there are a number of other um very in my view significant and critical departures from what is allowed under the IBC currently and and so I have concern with that because if we don't adopt the 27 IBC by the time this goes into play you can't technically legally allow these modifications am I right in that Roger Lovell Regional Building I'm not quite sure I I guess I'm not quite sure I understand the question if so if I came in tomorrow and proposed that I want to build an apartment building with a single stair five stories tall and and maybe I'm proposing a sprinkler system or maybe I'm not maybe I'm proposing you know a pressurized stairway maybe I'm not would I be allowed to proceed with proposing this under the 2021 IBC.

Straight out of the code no there could be a possibility for either variance request uh a variance where you could prove an equally better form of construction would be about the only path which would be very hard to prove in this case because it's it's a pretty um it's a pretty big step away from what the model code does allow uh for the rest of council some of what to some of what councilman Reasley is speaking to is there is a um the the the international codes are on a three-year cycle historically locally we have always adopted every other code cycle so we adopt a new code every six years rather than every three we're on the 2021 now which would mean our next target code would be the 2027 code which is yet to be published but there are discussions and there is a proposal to allow for single exits or an increased use of single exits in the 2027 code.

I don't know specifically what the requirements are along with those provisions um and it has yet to be approved as well so we don't know exactly what it'll look like there are a couple couple difficulties in that when the 2027 code does does come out and is published we will review that and look and try and move towards adoption uh with amendments locally um it could be interesting to see if this if this um ordinance is adopted, how these requirements here before you today play in with what the 2027 code allows.

And as far as um home rule, I completely understand where you're coming from, Councilman.

I think one of the risks that we need to consider is in the event that this ordinance is not passed and the state does uh does force the city of Colorado Springs to um implement this requirement that would be an update to the building code and an update to the building code after July 1st of 2026 drives the uh the cur, well what will be at the time the current energy code which is the Colorado Low Energy and Carbon Code which is a heavily amended version of the 2024 energy code that is significantly more restrictive than the energy code that we will be moving to on June 30th of 2026.

So there's a risk associated with it.

I appreciate that Roger can you talk a little bit about um with House Bill 1273 in your view is this supplanting um prescriptive tried and true measures that have been built into the building code over decades of practice with something that's driven by statute that doesn't recognize the reality of all of the things that go into a building code?

I think the fair answer to that question is yes I believe that building code should be should be written by the people who know how to write building codes which is the International Code Council.

With that said and in full disclosure the this bill was initially introduced in 2024.

At that time it was to apply statewide they didn't have the exception in there for municipalities over 100,000.

They also didn't have all of the additional requirements that are in the in the uh appendix before you when the bill was introduced in 2025 I did again testify in opposition to that bill it did pass but throughout the process it was heavily amended to include a lot of the requirements and at least in my opinion the additional requirements for these buildings do provide an alternative in my opinion an equally good or better alternative to the second stair.

So you said that this was um I guess we're establishing that this is not performance based and I think you made the comment that something like this is probably better drafted instead of by a state legislature by building code officials and and experts in in this realm is that a fair statement I I would agree with that um and I think this that at least where I feel personally on the situation is we were able to effect change throughout the legislature and get some of the additional requirements in here to offset the need for that second stair um ideally these requirements would come from the International Code Council and not the state of Colorado but this is what we have.

So knowing that this would only apply if we were to move forward with the city of Colorado Springs how would you deal with the rest of the member jurisdictions in Pikes Peak Regional Building Department in the event that that a developer wished to build one of these in a in another jurisdiction correct that would require that would require a variance to do so.

So if I'm on the left side of a line out in airmark shuffle as an example city boundary and I'm in the city if we were to move forward with this you would determine that it would be allowable legal safe justifiable but literally across the street would it would it fall into the same category if if the other side of the street is say in El Paso County no it would not be, it would not be legal and and it that variance process would be would be would have to be pretty extensive and robust because uh we'd look for input from the the local fire department or district of are they able to to serve this facility as well?

And and that's one of the reasons that they limited it to jurisdictions over a hundred thousand because of the additional capabilities that come with their fire departments.

Fair at rural fire departments may not have.

How many people do we have living in unincorporated El Paso County?

I can't answer that.

About 250,000.

So it's okay within the city of Colorado Springs, but it's not okay in a county that has 250,000 residents.

Um can you talk a little bit?

And and this may be a little outside of your uh expertise, but I think it's close enough that you can probably reasonably answer.

Talking about um hardened construction materials, commercial grade fire sprinkler systems, uh non-combustive um structural systems, type one or type two construction, pressurized stairways, all of these things.

Is this um what are the speak to the cost drivers a little bit from a construction standpoint?

Cost of construction.

The there's a there's a report that I believe went to council as well from Cal Fire, uh, and they did a pretty extensive and a good report on this type of construction, not specifically this criteria here before you today.

But they estimate that not including a second stair in a building such as this saves in the neighborhood of 7 to 12 percent on the cost of construction.

Um, in my opinion, the requirement for type one, type two construction, a full NFPA 13 sprinkler system, uh pressurization, uh smoke control, uh a full fire alarm, in my opinion, those costs will exceed the seven to twelve percent savings.

Um with that said, I don't believe even, I don't believe that this will be a widely used uh option in Colorado Springs.

It could be more widely used in Metro Denver and whatnot, but I don't expect it to be a popular option here that everybody's gonna be rushing out to to build.

Which goes back to my point that home rule authority should have some factor here that if this makes sense for Denver, let Denver do this.

If it doesn't make sense for Colorado Springs, why should we have to?

Um thanks for your answers.

I appreciate all of that.

Maybe moving to the fire side of things, Chris.

If you don't mind, I I do have a question for you.

Can you speak a little bit to this uh from the perspective of fire operations?

And when I use that terminology, I don't know what terminology you or the fire department uh gravitate toward, but very often in in buildings where you're responding to a fire or a medical emergency or some other situation, um, often you've got two two two paths of travel, one which is the evacuation or egress path, and then another, which often is called the attack path, right?

So if you've got a fire on the third floor of a building, you would ideally want to be exiting people out of one area and having fire operations come in to another area.

Uh am I correct in that?

Chris Cooper Fire Marshal.

Uh thank you for that question.

Um the hope is by the time fire crews arrive that the building's been evacuated, right?

I mean, that's best case scenario.

Um, you know, and at that point, if people are already in motion, uh facilitating what stairway they go down versus what we're gonna do an attack on is pretty difficult difficult to coordinate that late in the game.

Um that said um if I could uh back up a little bit in the fact that every code is written based upon tragedy.

You know, people don't sit around and think about code based upon um, hey, this would be a nice to have in unless you're a product manufacturer, unless you have some ulterior motive, but generally speaking, you know, they speak to every policy has a name associated with it.

Well, every every code generally has some type of tragedy assigned to it.

And um when the code councils work together in through that code development process, you have people who have the ability to, you know, fire code officials, you have building code officials, you have product manufacturers, you have uh firefighters, you have everyone who's able to provide input in that process, and code is written as a result of feedback and input from all those things to include consideration of fire department operations.

Um, you know, and when code is written legislatively and you don't have all those people at the table, then that's a really difficult situation in the fact that you're writing code based upon some ulterior motive, and if it's motivated by cost, then generally, yeah, I stopped short of using the word cutting corners, but you know, the the intent is to reduce uh some overall level of safety as a trade-off for for financial savings.

You know, going back to your question operationally, in Colorado Springs, I can count handfuls of fires where we've arrived and we have report of trapped people because they've opened up their apartment door and the corridor's full of smoke and they don't feel like they can safely get out, say shelter in place.

I can think of several fires where we've had um that common stairwell compromised by fire in the fact that there's no other choice other than be rescued because that stairwell is not capable for the community to use that point or the residents.

And so our response is all hands rescue at that point before we can even facilitate firefighting operations with life safety being our number one goal.

We worked hard to do rescues.

You know, I think at the Castle West fire, which was a very tragic fire, they had three stairwells, but that was uh an arson fire.

Someone uh lit the main stairwell on fire, and our fire crews on a very, very cold night facilitated over 80 rescues out of windows to get the occupants out of that building, and we did have two fatalities on that fire.

Um so from a fire perspective, single stair does concern me.

You know, you can build in the uh, you know, all the provisions that you want in terms of other life safety offsets, but at the end of the day, you still have those problems.

And you know, when we think about type of construction, everyone says, Oh, you know, the building's not gonna burn.

Well, it's generally not the con the building that's burning, but it's the contents that are burning.

And we live in a society with a lot of manufactured products and a lot of chemicals, and so that smoke becomes very toxic very quick.

Um, you know, back when we had single stairwell build-ins, uh the time for flashover, which is when an entire room becomes fully involved in fire because the superheated gas is ignite at the same time, could have been 15 to 17 minutes.

Today you're about a minute and a half to three minutes.

And so if you're not able to facilitate a rescue quickly or evacuate yourself, then you're in a really bad situation.

Can sprinklers offset that?

Absolutely, they can, and that's the intent.

Um, but even sprinklers fail at some point.

You know, and so uh to put all our eggs in one basket, I think it's a very dangerous situation.

Um, you know, thinking about the the history of codes when we went from single stairwell buildings, then uh, you know, we move past that.

People realize this is a bad thing, people are dying because they can't get out of buildings.

So we saw exterior firescapes come into place.

That was an alternate design, uh, but again, we said we can do better.

We moved past single stairwell and um firescapes, and we went to multiple stairwells, and we've seen much better results as a result of that.

Um, you know, sure technology has changed, sure we have new fire protection systems, we have alarms and sprinklers, but I I do worry about the impact to people's ability to evacuate.

I know those a long iteration to your question, but there's a lot of information there.

And I think there's a lot of nuance to your concern, which is important to express.

How often in fully engulfed buildings or when you've got a situation like this, how often is the power uh either partially or permanently interrupted to the building during during the event?

Um I don't know that I have a good answer for that.

Uh, generally speaking, if the um, you know, modern electrical systems, right?

We have breakers, and if the electrical to a given circuit is compromised, ideally that breaker trips, but that is a circuit by circuit, unless it fires outside and impacts the transformer or the source of power coming into the building.

Now that said, as soon as our firefighters get there, one of the things that we do is we will uh secure utilities, which includes gas and electric to the building, we'll discontinue disconnect those because those are ignition sources that can allow the fire to continue spread and also puts our firefighters at risk.

So we will uh very early in the operation shut down those utilities.

And given what you said about smoke and the ability or the risk to both responders as well as occupants in a building to um poisonous and toxic gases.

Um if we're relying on a pressurized, mechanically pressurized system to pressurize a the only way out of the building, um, do you perceive that as being an additional risk?

Because one of the first things you're gonna do when you arrive is you're gonna shut off the power to this pressurized uh mechanical system.

Yeah, again, hopefully by the time we get there, the occupants have had the ability to escape new and evacuate the building.

But the idea that pressurization is that is going to pressurize that stairwell and try and maintain that as a clean environment.

So if you have a fire that starts in an apartment, the idea is the positive pressure of the stairwell, even if someone opens a door, would be pushing into that apartment versus allowing the smoke to come into the stairwell.

So that is the intent of of that.

And again, that works as long as you have power for sure.

Yeah, as long as you have power.

So great, thank you.

Um I don't want to belabor the point, but I just want to underscore as a design professional and somebody who lives and breathes this on a daily basis.

Uh, I can't tell you how bad this is for us if we were to move this forward.

So I would just encourage my colleagues to um seriously consider the input that you receive today from the uh the experts that deal with this on a daily basis, and uh assuming that we bring this forward for a vote, um, I would highly encourage us to uh to decline to put this into law locally.

Thanks.

Councilman Williams.

Thank you, President Crow Iverson.

Um I'm sure there's easier words or bigger words or smaller words, but the only word that came to mind today was extortion.

That it really seems like we, as a governmental entity, are being extorted by saying you need to put these rules in place, or else, and I don't think that's good governance personally.

I did come up with a question as I was sitting here lasting, listening to council member Risley.

If you're developing, and it's probably for Roger, do you have an option to do it what I'm gonna call the old way, the existing way?

Is this a you have to do it like this, or is this an option that you can do it like this?

That's a great question, Councilmember, and I I should have addressed that.

No, this is this is an option.

Okay.

This doesn't force anybody to have to do it this way.

Uh the the allowance to build a three-story building um up to a three-story building with a single stair, or uh a taller building with two stairs will always remain an option.

So they're thankfully not being forced into this because um I heard increase in cost, and I think the purpose of this was actually to decrease costs, but I don't know that that's actually gonna be reality.

That's fair.

Yeah, the current provisions would still be 100% uh allowable uh regardless of what happens with this piece.

Okay, thank you.

And then to the chief of staff, depending upon how we do or do not go down what I'm still calling the extortion route.

If we then say no to this, and as we know there's another domino that falls after this, um I'm not gonna put the mayor on the spot today, but um, has he thought about that and how the city would proceed forward?

Because the same individuals in this room are not quite ready to implement the rules that come if this doesn't get passed.

We're in discussion with city attorney's office on this.

Uh, because obviously, if there is a lawsuit filed against the city with for failure to comply, we will need to make sure what our basis is, and that'll be um I've asked our acting city attorney, and we'll have a discussion with our new city attorney once she's approved by council.

Thank you.

I don't see any other questions.

So we will not be putting this on consent.

So we'll see you back in a few weeks.

You should have known better.

Come on.

You could have guessed that one day.

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

An ordinance amending chapter 7 unified development code or the code of the city of cause rings 2001 is amended pertaining to adult or child daycare centers.

Good morning, Alison.

It's still morning.

It is morning still.

Crazy to think.

Good morning, Alison Stocker Senior Playing with the Land Use Review Division.

Today I'm going to be giving a quick refresher on the child care ordinance, which includes changes to the unified development code pertaining to child and adult daycare centers.

So just a quick overview of this presentation.

We're going to go through some of the project goals, stakeholder engagement, some general things, particularly about child care and how it's regulated in the state and here locally, as well as some definitions and things like that.

And then we'll get into commercial zone districts and how they relate to child care and then residential zone districts.

There are a couple of changes since the last time this body has heard this ordinance as well as uh city planning commission.

So I'll try to highlight those as we're going through so that we can talk about those changes and why those have been made.

So why are we doing this?

You've heard from a number of different advocacy groups over the last couple months about how child care impacts our local economy.

So of course that is something that is very front of mind for planning, and we're looking to make these changes to make the process quicker and easier for getting new child care permitted here in the city.

Of course, planning can only touch on this issue in the capacity that we are the land development regulatory agency.

So of course, we can't do anything about some of the costs and state licensing and building codes and things like that.

But in the capacity, we can make changes.

We're looking to do so.

So a refresh on what we have done so far.

This issue came front of mind back in the fall through different presentations made to city council.

Since that time, city planning has been working on drafts to uh put together proposals on what changes we'd like to make.

As of February, we brought this ordinance draft forward through an open house, and we took in new survey data, took all of that, put together a more final draft, and then have since been presenting it at lunch sessions as well as city planning commission.

Some of the input we've gotten from the community throughout the process has been that the project does not necessarily fix the pressing issues.

Of course, we acknowledge that it doesn't.

We can't again fix the uh financial issues around child care, uh, where those go, things like that.

Uh we've heard from family home daycare, so our in-home daycare providers are concerned that the need isn't as large as maybe it is represented by some groups, and that they have uh recognize that some home daycares do have vacancies still.

So they are worried that changes to land use regulation might um be negatively impactful on their businesses.

And then we've also heard from people saying that they want child care conveniently located to their homes and workplaces, but they want to be sure that these locations are safe, secure, and compatible with those areas.

So before we get into the nitty-gritty, I am gonna go over our definitions just because they will kind of impact how we talk about these.

So our adult and child daycare centers, these are our commercial child care facilities.

These are Montessori schools, their kinder cares, things where we have children being dropped off, picked up, and everyone goes home for the day.

So that is kind of one of the big ones we'll be looking at today, as well as the new use type we're uh looking to add to code, which is adult or child daycare accessory uses.

So similarly, this is an accessory use that would co-locate with other commercial or industrial uses, but the use, the primary use again, would be kind of that commercial industrial components.

Um, these are categorized by large and small daycares.

Large is more than 16 children, whereas small is anywhere between six and 15.

And then similarly, we also have home or adult child daycare centers accessory.

The keyword in here is home.

So these are our accessory uses that occur in the home where the residential unit is the primary use of the structure.

So we're not making any changes to this use type in code.

We're only just kind of presenting this for context, particularly in the size differences.

So a large home daycare is going to be anywhere between six and eleven children, whereas a small is no more than six.

A little background on child care licensing.

So any time a provider wants to open a new child care facility, whether it's commercial or an accessory in-home child care, or they want to relocate where their licenses, they do have to come to city planning to get verification that the zoning allows for that use in that location.

So daycare providers are working with our department very regularly to make sure that these locations work.

And that is the point in time where we check things like parking ratios, landscaping, accessibility to and from the site, things like that.

There are a lot of standards that apply at the state level and at the building code level.

I won't get into that because it's a little complicated, but there are a lot of other factors that do influence where these facilities can locate and kind of feasibility of locating in a particular building or location.

It's important also to recognize that these child care facilities do have minimum floor areas for children.

So 30 square feet is required per child for indoors, and 75 square feet outside for our commercial daycares, and then in-home it's 35 and 75 respectively.

So some general changes we're making to the code.

These include making all of our zone districts allow childcare as our either as a permitted by right or conditional use across all of our zone districts.

So that'll massively expedite and allow these uses to occur in more locations without having to go through more cumbersome applications, more technical applications, such as use variances, zone change, things like that.

We are making sure our naming conventions are consistent across our use types in code.

We are also making sure our definitions are updated accordingly to make sure that all of them are written correctly and then they address the additional use type we are adding.

One big change that we have made since presenting this to you guys at lunch session and at City Planning Commission is we are removing the reduction in parking we had initially proposed, and this is due to conversations we've had with some neighborhood advocacy groups.

And just because that was more of an ask to the community and into council, and we did not feel that that was really at the root of the issue.

We felt that that was a good compromise to make with the community.

And then the last two big things to keep in mind is we did update the parking table just to reflect the new use types, and we are changing the use specific standards to reflect the change in the use table as well as some of the other ways we are like, we prefer to regulate these uses.

And I'll get more to that in a bit.

The middle section is the current way these are regulated, and then the very bottom is our proposal.

So the green boxes you see on the bottom set of rows are where the flexibility has been increased, whether it be gone from conditional to permitted or prohibited to conditional.

These are all areas where we've expanded kind of the flexibility allowed.

Two that did change with some further discussions was we did expand the light industrial and general industrial to allow child care as a permitted by right use.

And this is just due to some of the additional use specific standards we have input into the code, which we'll talk about in a bit, as well as just recognizing that our child care providers are going to be doing the due diligence on their end to co-locate or locate in areas where they feel comfortable based on some of the other state and building code requirements, and we feel that they should have kind of the ability to pick and choose those locations based on their needs.

Councilman Henjam.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um on the bottom row, the proposed changes.

I understand conditional, the PK's park.

Yes.

What is PF?

PF is public facilities.

So those are generally city owned properties.

So the chance that we have any is pretty low.

Okay, great.

Thanks.

Okay.

So the only other big thing to keep in mind for our industrial zones is that adult or child daycare center accessory use we have talked about previously.

So just as a refresher, this is an accessory use in all permitted zones, but it is required to co-locate with one of the use types on the right side of the screen.

So these are use types that planning feels are good co-location options for child care.

So where child care can locate near appropriate businesses, office type uses or residential uses that are frequently in need of child care in their proximity.

So this is distinct from our home daycare because it would not take place in a residential unit.

It would take place in a commercial kind of setting.

So similar to like a kinder care, but in say an office building or in a multifamily residential development.

In certain cases, we would require development plans depending on the context of the situation.

So if a development plan is considered warranted, we would require that at time of pre-application meeting.

And one important detail about all of this is that the accessory use does not need to be affiliated with the primary use.

So if, say it's an office building, the daycare does not need to be run by the office in question, or if it is co-located with the church, the church does not need to be the group running the child care.

It just has to be co-located.

So moving on to residential districts, you'll also note that we did expand the number of peas for permitted in this section, and this is largely due to some of the other kind of controls and mitigating factors we've added to the code to make sure that these can be compatibly located in our residential areas.

So we did make the leap to put P across the board for all of these, and we'll kind of talk about those mitigating circumstances moving forward.

So if a homeowners association does not want child care in their proximity, they can implement those rules within their bylaws.

So councilman Casey.

So those ones at the bottom there, those are not home-based, then or are they?

No, these are our commercial child care.

Um, this we are not changing any of the home daycares through this ordinance.

Okay, thank you.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President.

How are we communicating out to the HOAs?

I just want to make sure that there's no butting ahead where you know someone can say, hey, well, the city said X.

Well, the HOA is telling me something different in which one overrides which, to your point, it is the HOA that can override, but how are we communicating that out to all the HOAs?

So so it's the HOA's uh prerogative to enforce, of course, their own bylaws.

The city does anytime we get a pre-application meeting, we try to uh inform our applicants that they should be checking with their HOAs for any kind of um restrictions or prohibitions, design requirements, things like that.

So we really put that on the applicants to make those checks, because since the city does not have the ability to enforce that, we don't have the ability to kind of catalog and you know keep up with what every HOA in the city is doing.

Um we ask that all of our applicants check if they have an HOA and what they might restrict.

So as the applicant's responsibility.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

Okay.

So um moving back to residential zones.

The retool project that took place in 2023, at the time it was intending to expand, similar to the table we just saw, where residential districts would allow certain uh child care facilities.

That of course did not happen at the time.

And because of that, we do have about 40 different child care facilities that are legally non-conforming.

This is where a lot of the applications city council and city planning commission have seen child care uh applications come through.

There are these legal non-conforming situations where there are no other abilities to expand without having to go through those applications.

So a lot of these changes we're proposing are to fix some of those difficulties and to alleviate some of the expense and time that are required to get these applications approved.

So that is kind of a big part of why we are doing this from a staff perspective and from input from some of the applicants we've had in the past.

With that being said, of course, we do understand that there's a lot of concerns around compatibility, safety, neighborhood protection, and things like that, which is why we are including a requirement for commercial childcare to only be allowed to use a non-residential street as their primary access point.

So this exempts many, many properties from being allowed to have commercial child care on certain properties in the city.

And I do have a map example coming up.

Residential streets are defined by city traffic, so this is a kind of hard uh delineated street type that we do have maps uh that are publicly available that anyone can see which types of streets are located where, so that they can check to see if a child care would be permitted near them, or if they are an applicant trying to find a location that would be acceptable.

And I've included um some information on how the city defines residential street here, but that is our like lowest traffic um type roadways with the uh shortest kind of width um streets here in the city, besides say in an unimproved alley.

So there are a lot of locations here in the city that are zoned residential that are not on residential streets.

So, for instance, you went to Centennial Nevada, 19th, a lot of these are not, they have sections that are zoned residential, they're non-residential streets, and these are the types of locations where we most often will see legally non-conforming childcare.

To me, because I live on the west side, the Ruth Washburn School is the most obvious example on 19th Street.

They're legally non-conforming currently in their location.

So it's examples like this, why we feel that having the permitted use for child care in these zones makes sense when you add in the non-residential street requirements.

Plus, in addition to that, it does encourage more child care to be located on the periphery of neighborhoods where they're going to be accessible to families who need them while also not impacting as much, say, on a residential cul-de-sac.

So having that kind of convenient location with a little bit less impact.

And attached here, we got a snip of our residential, I'm sorry, our street map.

This is the old north end area, kind of near Colorado College.

The green streets are all residential streets, so it kind of gives you an idea of all of the different locations that may not ever be permitted to have child care.

And I would say even this is probably not the best example, because if you look in other areas of the city, you're going to see even more green than you would here.

Sorry, so many people I'm not quite sure what I'm looking at if you what you're trying to show here.

So I know it's a little hard to tell, but the green lines on different streets, those represent the not the residential street type, and then all of the other colors represent collectors, minor arterials, and major arterials.

So if you take out all of those green lines and all those green streets, those are all the areas that could not allow child care because of the use specific standard city planning is proposing.

So just the green, but the light blue, dark blue, and pink all could.

All could, yes.

And I should clarify the residential streets cannot be the primary access.

So in the case of, you know, corner lots where you might be, say, um, let's see, what's a good example?

Columbia and North Nevada.

If you were on the corner, you could potentially still have a child care because your primary access could be a non-residential street.

So our intent is to make sure that you know, say a Briar Gate neighborhood could not have a child care at the end of their cul-de-sac.

Those are the types of situations we're trying to avoid, but say in the old north end where we have these.

There is, in fact, a major childcare on Nevada at about the location that we need, yeah.

That's probably why I was thinking of it.

So that this is just kind of to show an example of kind of the types of restrictions that that use-specific standard can have on this use type.

And then finally, I know there's been a lot of concern from the community around the potential for conversions of residential properties into daycares.

There are a lot of controls within code already that make this pretty challenging, I would say.

So anytime you're converting a use from one use type to another, so for instance, commercial use to residential, residential, industrial, things like that, you are required to submit a development plan for review.

It's considered a major modification, and that then triggers all of the current code requirements for that use type.

So that includes things like parking, it includes landscape buffers, it includes appropriate ingress egress, all of the normal things we would look at for any new build here in the city.

So that would be a requirement should that ever occur and would be a major control for the neighborhood because it would require public notice, it would be appealable, it would have all of these checks and balances we would see for a normal application.

So in the case that this were to ever happen, the neighborhoods would be informed and have the ability to be a part of that conversation, and then finally, I'm gonna leave off with a couple of notes from our planning commission meeting as well as some conversations we've had since then.

So we did get some input from some neighborhood groups, mostly concerned about where large and small could occur.

They did provide some suggestions here on the slide.

I won't read them because I know we're getting close to lunchtime.

Um but there were some concerns with that, as well as not all neighborhoods having HOAs that do restrict child care, or the HOA maybe not having included that in their bylaws already, as well as concerns with traffic, noise, parking, things like that, especially because a lot of child care requires parents to walk their children into the facilities.

So they're worried about some of the parking impacts, especially in the case of the old North End examples.

Uh Planning Commission generally found all of the proposals acceptable.

They found from their own lived experience that a lot of these perceived impacts might not be as scary as maybe they are made out to be.

So they did approve this unanimously in April.

Since city planning commission, we did talk to some of the neighborhood groups about their concerns.

And while I don't want to say that we've addressed all of them, or they're completely happy with the ordinance as currently written, they are generally a lot more comfortable than they were at the time of Planet Commission.

So that's pretty much the presentation I have for you.

I will say this slide is incorrect because the hearing will actually be on the next meeting for this item, which will be May 26th.

And then the second reading will just be a second reading to finalize the ordinance.

Councilman Hingem.

Thank you, Madam President.

So I think you pretty much answered the question I was gonna have about the neighborhoods, and I know that in particular the old North End was very vocal about this.

So it sounds like most of their concerns were addressed.

And are you or should we expect any large number of opposition to show up at the first reading of this?

I don't expect a large opposition.

I do expect we'll probably have some speakers.

Great.

That's that's great.

And I would say, interestingly, this happen that happens to be my neighborhood.

It's created a very interesting conversation among the current board of the old North End and others live in the neighborhood who disagree with the board's position and are actually quite supportive of this change.

And you know, maybe that's a conversation for another time.

Um it's it's been an interesting and I think ultimately positive conversation for that neighborhood.

I'm glad to hear it.

Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Can you go back to um table seven, the residential one?

Just trying to understand.

So let's just for take example R16.

So we're talking residential 6,000 square foot lots.

That's homes, though.

Well, but we're not talking about homes.

So are there, I guess, instances of neighborhoods that have that zoning that have additional buildings that are not homes in that zoning?

There are some uh very very rare situations in the city where we have um R16, R2, um other residential zone districts where the zoning is residential, but there are previous conversions where the property is legally non-conforming, or they went through the process of getting a commercial use, and at the time, you know, it allowed for that.

So the occasions where we are looking at making these permitted by right with the requirement of it being on a non-residential street, these situations we have in mind are more for these neighborhood periphery uh types of situations.

So stuff that should be like MXN or something along those lines.

Something that if we were to zone it now without having to, you know, go through the exercise of rezoning, in theory, it should be.

So it could be like a home that was converted.

I think we had one not too long ago.

Planning commission was a home converted into you know a commercial use.

Um is that what we're looking at here?

Exactly.

That's the kind of situations we had in mind for this change.

Um, so so we don't expect, like I said, a lot of conversions from a residential home to a child care facility by the Sword and Exchange, because we know that the protections we've built in through the other aspects of the code and as well as the existing code through the development plan section.

We know that can making those conversions in a residential neighborhood, unless it's these kind of unique oddball scenarios is very unlikely.

Thank you.

Okay, I think that's it, Allison.

All righty.

So this will not be on consent.

Um, Councilman Line rubber, do you have any?

I see your face.

We are back in session.

At one oh three, will the clerk please read item eight I into the record?

Resolution approving an amendment to the homeslash ARP allocation plan for submittal to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Hi, Amy.

Good afternoon, President Crow Iverson, members of council.

I'm here before you to talk about the home ARP allocation plan, the substantial amendment to that plan.

Before I get started, though, I want to recognize uh Artie Lell, who's in the audience here.

He's the new executive director for the Colorado Springs Housing Authority.

Um, he would be a strong participant in this plan.

And I just have to say that strong PHAs are really, really important to addressing the affordable housing needs in our community, as we saw earlier in Jill Gabler's uh presentation.

So I'm really excited about the vision and the expertise that Artie is bringing to our community.

So thank you for being here, Artie.

This is another HUD program, why an amendment is needed.

We're going to review that proposed amendment, review the process and timeline, and then I'm available, of course, to answer questions for you.

And the funds address homelessness assistance and supportive services, and this includes things like rental housing and non-congregate shelter, which we'll talk about because those will be some of the adjustments we're asking to make.

The funds must be fully expended with projects closed out by September 30th, 2030.

So we're on a fairly short timeline for large capital improvement projects.

This allocation plan, all home funds, as you know, require an action plan.

The allocation plan for the home ARP was part of the 2021 annual action plan.

And changes to that allocation plan require a substantial amendment.

And the substantial amendment process is covered in our city's citizen participation plan.

It requires public comment, a public hearing, and city council approval, which is why you're seeing this.

So the eligible activities in home ARP are affordable rental housing.

This includes single family, multifamily, transitional housing, tenant-based rental assistance, which is rental subsidies to eligible households, supportive services, which include things like case management and housing counseling, non-congregate shelter acquisition and development, and this can be either for emergency shelter or permanent supportive housing.

And it's important to note that those non-congregate shelter units would have to be designed to be permanent supportive housing.

So we require kitchens, etc.

Nonprofit operating and capacity building, and these are funds for organizations that are expected to receive home ARP funds, and there's a cap on 5% on funds that can be awarded for operating and capacity building, and there are administrative planning dollars to pay for the costs of overseeing this program.

The qualifying populations are homeless, so folks who are literally homeless, at risk of homelessness, fleeing domestic violence, and other populations.

There's always a catch-all in there, and it's all covered by a CFR.

This is intended to show you the current allocation in our allocation plan.

We're going to cover this again in another slide.

Important to note here that acquisition and development was originally slated for 20%, not 2% of the grant, and development of affordable housing was programmed for 50% of the funds.

That was where the majority of the funds were put.

We tend to always plan to spend the entire 15% or entire cap for administration and planning.

So that's why you see that at 15%.

So why do we need an amendment?

I'm going to start by saying the environment has changed since 2021, 2022 when we received these funds.

The programs awarded funding under the previous administration.

Many of those have been rolled back under the current administration with a focus on returning people to permanent stability and self-sufficiency.

So we'll see things, especially in this case, the emergency housing voucher program, for example, which helped over a hundred households who were formerly homeless access housing.

Those funds were expected to be provided through 2030, and those were rolled back to end in 2026.

So we have right now we have about 80 households losing their emergency housing vouchers early who are at very high risk of returning to homelessness without some additional support.

When we received these funds, we were committed to non-congregate shelter because that had been a way of protecting health and safety during COVID.

What we found was that the 1.1 million dollars we were making available was just a drop in the bucket to provide that kind of support.

And we met for a couple of years with different groups to try and identify, especially around medical respite and such, some emergency facilities that we could partner to build, and we just did not find partners who could come up with the balance of the capital as well as the operating costs.

And as I said, the requirements there were very restrictive in terms of how those rooms needed to be constructed with kitchens and bathrooms so they could be converted to permanent supportive housing.

There's also a limited capacity for affordable rental development in our community with these funds.

Home R ARP is a gap, and so projects, projects must come with a full capital stack.

And as we saw again, Jill Gabler's presentation today with the Pikes Peak Housing Network, there's a real need for housing at 60% and less.

And this is typically home housing for people who are earning less than 30% of the area median income.

These projects also must meet home regulations, so they have to be, folks have to have the capacity to manage these funds.

So we're proposing to reallocate to meet the current demonstrated community need to have the capacity to with organizations that have the capacity to deliver on schedule and then efficiently utilize these funding, this funding and get it expended and close out by September of 2030.

So, in summary, we're asking to remove funding for non-congregate shelter, reduce funding for rental housing development, increase funding for tenant-based rental assistance, update them, and I'm going to pause there actually because this is the real impetus.

We talked about this 80% these 80 households that are at risk of losing their housing.

The proposal here is to provide those households with temporary rental assistance and case management support to help them make the transition so they don't just immediately lose their housing.

This would require uh support from the Colorado Springs Housing Authority who would administer that rental assistance.

That's one of their many areas of expertise, and then the investment in case management support, housing navigation support to get people permanently housed and stabilized.

I think one of the probably one of the greatest gaps with you know hindsight being 2020 was when we placed folks in those emergency housing vouchers.

We didn't have robust case management for them to ensure that they were making a transition.

So this follows that I think what was anticipated, which was that we would help people transition from homelessness into stability over time.

So we're gonna do that.

This also requires that we update the method of project selection.

Um it would include direct awards.

Currently, we are our plan says that we would do all of this as a competitive process, but we know that, for example, the Colorado Springs Housing Authority is the only entity currently capable of administering rental assistance of this kind, so we have to update our project selection criteria to allow for direct awards.

And then finally, we do have a one affordable housing project, a transitional project that we're really excited about with family life services that we've been working with them to convert their facility from nine units to 19 units.

In order to do that, we have to ask for a limitation on those qualifying populations to focus on limit the people served to those fleeing domestic violence.

Typically, those these projects will require a housing project would require that it be available to anyone, any of the qualifying populations unless this limitation is approved.

So we're asking for this limitation to serve women with children fleeing domestic violence, and this is due to the prevalence of domestic violence in our community and the shortage of resources for those families, and that's identified that data was added to the substantial amendment.

So this is what it looks like now.

We would increase uh funding for subs supportive services to be able to provide additional case management.

Um, and we could do it for this program and potentially uh for other programs across the community to try and get more people exited from homelessness who are sort of stuck right now.

We would significantly increase that tenant-based rental assistance.

We would reduce development of affordable rental housing.

We've only been able to identify one project at this point that has the capacity to utilize these funds.

We would increase our nonprofit operating to support that nonprofit provider, reducing our capacity building and reducing our administration and planning to be able to provide those case management services.

So the process is there's a 30-day public comment period for this substantial amendment that began April 24th.

We are here before you today in work session.

We will be back for a public hearing and a vote on May 26th, submission to HUD, and then we select projects and execute contracts.

And that is the that concludes this presentation.

Happy to answer questions.

Councilman Hindum.

Thank you, Madam President.

And Amy, could you go back like two slides, I think?

Yeah.

Yeah, right there.

Um, so just to restate maybe a little more simply, make sure I understand.

So uh this money has to be spent by 2030.

Yes.

Um, there's no way of knowing, it's seems unlikely, but there's no way of knowing if we if other money like this will become available in the future, right?

Right.

So we have to use it in a really targeted way to address immediate needs.

Correct.

Um, so I think that's important to recognize that you know, and when 2030 rolls around, we'll I guess we'll deal with that when we get there.

Um, but uh it goes a little bit too, and I I I totally support the um the thinking and the logic of um really focusing on keeping people housed, but also more importantly, maybe ensuring that that case management is provided so that we don't just you know keep them in there, but we're not helping to make sure that they can stay in those positions, right?

In those uh residences.

Um, so I guess that gets to maybe a question about um, well, maybe it doesn't.

I'm I'm just looking at the capacity building in particular and recognizing that this is short-term money, and we don't really know what will happen.

We'll maybe really hopefully um serve 80 individuals or families from not ever becoming homeless, but what beyond that?

So let me clarify there.

So the tenant-based rental assistance, excuse me, the tenant-based rental assistance and the case management are to move those 80 households.

60, about 61 reside with the Carl Springs Housing Authority.

Yes, uh the balance are with Homework Pike's Peak.

So that's what the purpose of those dollars is.

The capacity building and the development of affordable rental housing is to support a transitional housing program that would serve 19 families, women with children.

Um, and the program has a success rate of about 92% of the people who graduate from that program are housed, uh, are still housed three years later.

So that's where the operating dollars will be utilized.

Okay, thank you.

Yep.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President.

And um to piggyback on my colleagues' comment, because that's one of the areas I'm I'm just kind of zoned in on the slide also.

Um what is your thought process moving into 2027 on looking at these numbers?

I mean, are we gonna try to go back and make some additional adjustments or while I understand this is a one-time uh adjustment?

Have you already started thinking through?

Okay, how do we go back and kind of course correct for making this one time adjustment?

So this um this one-time adjustment is to do the course correction, it is to take advantage of an urgent need, um, and we've done the math on the potential rental assistance that's needed and the case management.

So this should allow us to fully expend that uh the balance of funds by 2030.

So that's what this, yeah.

And this is, yeah, these are very uh rather than when we receive these dollars, we often go out and communicate, right?

We work with our community, um, and we identify what projects might be available.

We've spent a couple of years trying to find projects that actually match the funding the way we initially allocated those dollars, and we were unable to find projects to utilize all those funds.

So that's why we're now adjusting and trying to take care of what we see as an immediate need.

Um that also I believe meets the uh intent of the new administration to help people um help people who are work able and such to move from support to greater stability and permanency.

Thank you.

Councilman Line Member.

Hello Amy.

Hi.

I just want to make sure that there's clarity around this.

And we're really just talking about not losing money that we we can have.

This is by no means um solving homelessness.

This is really I mean I'm trying to think of like percentage wise or whatever this this maybe is 10% of what we probably need.

Maybe I mean I'm just like spitballing it.

Give me some just you can give me a educated guess about in terms of our homeless situation and problem that we have how much how much is this actually going to fit you know help with it just got councilman lineweber um councilman lineweber's a great partner in this and uh in this work I I actually don't have a number that I can give you about that but what I can tell you is that it's 2.4 million dollars to provide rental assistance to about um 80 people over a period of two years that's so that's 80 I should say not people but 80 households over two years plus the case management support which is probably going to be in the range four to five hundred thousand dollars so um it's expensive once people become once people um become homeless uh this gets very expensive so our goal here is to help people achieve stability so that so that we don't have those those ongoing costs for those 80 those 80 households but yeah we need our community needs to look at how do we expand these kinds of programs to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place um and then to help more folks exit who are stuck in our system right now tell me what the what was the point in time count um last year it was 1,745.

So we're talking 80 versus 1,000 whatever.

1,745 go ahead that's really my point we're talking 80 and yet we did a count of 1,745.

So this really isn't um this the we're gonna be very thankful for these dollars and we should use every single one that we have no question.

Thank you.

But we we've got a we still have a bigger problem than is realized and I I don't want people who might be listening to this going oh wow we've got a great homeless solution no we don't we've got we've got a long ways to go still to really figure out our homeless problem.

And I guess that's what I want to try to highlight here.

You can't disagree with that, right?

Absolutely not and you know just um more information will be forthcoming but the city of Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak United Way United Way have recently partnered to um bring greater collaboration within what's called our continuum of care which is the uh group of stakeholders in our community committed to preventing and ending homelessness here and uh I think you're you will actually see in the next um few months greater mobilization around regional planning better use of data to begin to get to these numbers and better strategies but I will tell you what I like about this is that it models what it means to provide people with temporary rental assistance and help them move to greater self-sufficiency and long-term longer term stability.

Well, I think that's the ultimate goal that we need to be paying more and more attention to is outcomes who who is who's winning the fight and making sure we're supporting those programs versus just whatever is out there.

So I think that's key and I I know you're particularly focused on outcomes.

And so that's going to be key as we move forward.

Thank you.

Yeah, thank you.

And I just want to just make one final comment with that.

You know, in the past, uh we have had um we have not had the level of cooperation from our our housing authority as we have now to support things like rapid rehousing or uh this tenant-based rental assistance.

And so I'm really excited about the opportunities that are open now that the experts in delivering these kinds of dollars in our community um are at the table with us and trying to identify how do we solve this, how do we solve these problems and provide people with just the right resource, amount of resource they need to be successful, not just put people into permanent housing vouchers or emergency housing vouchers, and then um, you know, wait and see.

Councilman Hingem.

Thank you, Madam President.

Actually, Amy, I'm glad you mentioned uh the the housing authority, because that was going to be my kind of final question or request and RD of you as well, that um maybe not right now, because this is a very specific item that we'll be voting on, but perhaps a work session uh with Artie uh with the housing authority.

Um, since I've been on council, I'm fairly confident that we've never had a presentation from the housing authority board.

In fact, quite honestly, it's felt like a black hole where we've called and tried to get um support, and it's been frustrating.

So more than our okay.

Yeah, I mean, Phil, if it's all right with the president to come up for just a moment, but I I do think having um having you all present at a work session in the future might be really helpful.

So thanks.

I don't see any other questions or comments at this time, Amy, but I will say that um myself and Councilman Gold are the liaisons to the CDAC.

So we've already seen this and the making of it, and you know, me as the fiscal conservative could not have thought of a better way to stack these dollars.

Um I, you know, 100% keeping people off the street is the cheapest and vested high use of the dollars.

So I commend you for taking these dollars and putting them to where you, there's not that many.

I get it, but I think we will see outcomes with this.

I think you'll be able to measure them this way because you're actually being able to track, and the recidivism is huge.

So I commend you for that with the little dollars that you have that I think you've done a great job.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 8J, will the clerk please read item 8J into the record.

An ordinance amending multiple sections of Article 3 Code of Ethics of Chapter 1 Administration Personnel and Finance of the Code of the City of Colorado Springs 2001 is amended pertaining to the code of ethics.

Good afternoon, Carly.

Hi, good afternoon, Council.

Um, Carly Hoff, senior legislative analyst.

I'm gonna kick it off to Councilmember Risley here first, and then I'll get into my presentation.

That's great.

Thanks, Carly.

Um yeah, I just wanted to make a few comments before Carly's presentation just to kind of frame this in terms of where this is coming from from my perspective.

Um recently I've had numerous conversations with constituents that have uh repeatedly expressed their concern over the inappropriate use of uh city resources for personal purposes.

And many of those conversations have been with members of the Department of Defense or military, both uh retired or active duty.

Um a number of those folks have indicated that had they used city resources in a way consistent with uh the use from our mayor recently, that they likely would have lost their jobs.

Um there's just this recurring theme that that ethically uh the use of resources for personal purposes is is just wrong, and and just because you can do it doesn't mean that you should.

Um I've heard you know some concern that council should be focused on matters that um are maybe bigger issues or that really drive um affordability, housing affordability, uh cost of living and so forth, uh, you know, in an environment here where people are struggling to put food on the table, struggling to put gas in their cars, um, but knowing that this is costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars and in the way that resources are being used.

Uh I think it is a significant issue.

Excuse me, and one that should definitely be addressed by this body.

That aside, you know, as I understand it, according to the risk management department.

City officials may be insured for using city vehicles, but their spouses are not.

And we know of one instance when that occurred, and so the insurance exposure alone to the city, God forbid that there was an accident could be in the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars.

So I think this really is a big deal and something that's worth talking about.

Uh we all know that the mayor recently issued an administrative regulation to try to address the use of city resources.

In my view, that is not responsive to the comments that came from the city auditor's office because it specifically said that the city code was lacking in any sort of definition around these types of uses.

And obviously, an administrative regulation, which is basically a policy, does nothing to change code.

What can change code is the legislative body.

That's us.

And so I believe I really feel that it's incumbent on us as a legislative body to make changes to the code, and with Carly's assistance and the assistance of the city attorney's office, I'm bringing forward some changes to the code of ethics that does that.

The other thing that I want to point out is that as I understand it, and correct me if I'm wrong, an administrative regulation being issued by the executive branch really only can address the executive branch.

It can't address the actions or uh or have any impact over the other branches of government, such as our body at the legislative branch.

So, in reality, even though it may say that this has some purview over city council, I don't believe it actually does, whereas plugging a hole through code uh through an ordinance would address the situation for uh members of council, not just us, but in the future as well.

And finally, I don't think that the uh policy put forth by the administration really has any teeth.

It's a policy.

If somebody violates that policy, there are, as far as I can tell, no uh no implications and and um really no consequences for not following a policy.

Again, I'm looking at this from a long-term perspective.

This is not just about the current administration, the current council.

This is about um plugging a hole that the uh auditor has identified going forward.

And so with that, um Carly, please feel free to present the proposed changes.

Okay.

So uh, why are these changes being proposed?

Um, the office that's the auditor completed their audit report that was 2603 involving allegations regarding the use of city resources by elected officials.

Uh the review identified three a couple different areas where we needed to address uh the use of city funded security and the city owned vehicles by elected officials.

Uh the audit committee recommended a clear and enforceable standards governing elected officials' uh use of city resources.

Uh what's the purpose of updating code?

Um, to clarify standards, the use of city resources by elected officials to establish clear regulations regarding city funded security and establish clear regulations regarding city owned vehicles.

Um and additionally to strengthen transparency and accountability within the code of ethics for elected officials.

So I did print out an ordinance for each of you at the day as there that you can look through and follow.

I'm just gonna go through each section that has been added.

Um so that first section is section one three one oh two definitions.

Um, so you can see the added definition there was the elected officials, which states the mayor and members of city council.

Uh, another added definition was resources of the city.

This is funds, assets, or any other resources owned, controlled, or otherwise used or employed by the city.

Any activity by an individual who acts on city time or any activity by an individual who acts or purports to act in their capacity with the city constitutes the use of resources of the city.

Um the next section, you can see here the bolded language is what was added.

Um, so it existed prior to that.

That's section one three one oh eight in sanctions, clarified the center language.

So center is a formal official reprimand by the city council of one of its members or the mayor was the addition to that section.

And then one three one one three conflicts of interest or confidential information.

So again, that bolded area is going to be the additions to the added prohibition.

So no covered persons or their immediate family members shall miss misappropriate services or other resources of the city for personal benefit for elected officials and their immediate family members.

And then here below is the two additional sections that were added to address the standards for city-funded security.

Uh, one, it is not a violation of the section to use city funded security for official duties or for personal activities where reasonable security risk exists as determined by the Colorado Springs Chief of Police or designee.

Elected officials and their immediate family members may not use city-funded security for personal errands unrelated to safety.

And then two, city-owned vehicles will be used for official purposes only and should not be used for personal errands.

City owned vehicles will only be operated by an elected official unless operation is necessary to support repairs or maintenance.

City vehicles will only be used to transport passengers who are elected officials, city employees or individuals engaged in official business within the city.

So that completes my update on what has been changed within the code of ethics.

If this were to move forward, the next steps would be regular meeting on May 26th for first reading, and then the regular meeting on June 9th for second reading.

And happy to answer any questions.

Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Can you go back to the uh the language, the two paragraphs?

I think it was, yeah, right there.

So I just want the first time I read this on uh part C2.

City owned vehicles will only be operated by elected officials unless operations necessary support.

I think we're trying to say is that no family members, but it comes, I'm just thinking of well, we don't want the elected official who's got a security detachment driving the vehicle.

So is it I was just looking at city-owned vehicles will only be operated by elected officials or city employees.

To me, that made it a little clearer, but I is there different reading of that that I'm not getting.

Yeah, I think Councilmember Casey, you and I briefly discuss this, and and I think the intent is to prevent family members from using vehicles.

I think if we need to change the language to allow um uh city staff, I think we can, however, I would also point out that the current code of ethics and current um uh policy manual allows city employees to operate vehicles.

Um so the distinction here is the difference between a uh an elected official and a family member.

Yeah, when I look at because these are one and two or subparagraphs of I think paragraph C where it just talks about for elected officials and their family members, if you read it from that perspective, it's a little clearer, but okay.

Sorry, the other change I might offer, and again, council memberine, yeah, you may be wanting to speak about this one, but I I think the term personal errands.

Um, I think you had some changes about that terminology, per personal activities, or you wanted to use a different uh a different word there.

Yeah, thank you uh for that uh comment.

Um my recommendation would be literally just to very administrative in nature is just instead of saying personal errands to say personal use.

That was my only per hour conversation.

That was my only request in that particular language.

Councilman Henjam.

Yeah, thank you, Madam President.

And I I too had a question about that uh the language in number two.

Um I don't know if I can repeat what was just stated about the difference in this versus what's in city policy, but my understanding is that um primarily the the car that is um used by the mayor, he's often driven by a security detail in that vehicle.

Is that correct?

Do I understand that correctly?

I would have to defer over either to the chief of staff or city attorney, push that.

I push the button.

So, she asked you a direct question.

You can answer.

Okay.

Thanks.

Just trying to make sure I follow the protocol.

It doesn't come up.

Okay.

I have a number of responses that I wish to provide at some point, but in direct answer to that question, those are two separate vehicles, to best of my knowledge.

Okay.

They are separate separate vehicles.

Okay.

Um, I I guess actually, in my my question, um, that I I did want to ask was if if the chief of staff could speak to um the policy that was drafted and signed by the mayor, um, how it relates or not, it is or is not in conflict with this ordinance.

And also, if you could please share some of the research that you've done related to other cities around this kind of policy.

So we didn't have a lot of notice.

This was not discussed in the agenda preps.

So I apologize that folks don't have a copy of this since it wasn't finalized by me till a few minutes ago.

And Carly, you can sit down as far as I think.

So let me explain where we are, and first, uh the quote actually in the PowerPoint was not completely accurate.

Uh the first PowerPoint you saw.

It says the audit committee strongly recommends that the administration for the city of Colorado Springs establish a clear and enforceable policy concerning elected officials' use of city resources, specifically including police detail and use of city vehicles to ensure transparency, accountability, and consistency.

So that's what the actual audit report says, is that the administration is charged with developing a policy, which is exactly what I began to do within the first week of being selected as chief of staff.

So at the April 27th work session two weeks ago, Deputy City Manager Travis Easton advised council that we were working on that policy.

Next slide, please.

So this is the beginning of the policy.

You'll note uh legal authority.

I'm gonna go into that uh for city charters 410, 440, and 1.2314.

Uh as many of you are aware, things have changed significantly over the last few years with respect to threats and actual violence with respect to elected officials.

Um I can count on on one hand the number of instances I remember for 50 years going after the president.

We've had uh, I can't even count the number that have gone after our current president, both as a political candidate and as a president.

Uh Charlie Kirk, who's been recognized by this council for his sacrifice and his work, uh United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson, even a state representative and her husband.

So lest we think that this only applies to the actual elected officials themselves.

Uh next slide.

So let's look at the actual city charter.

First, the city charter provides that the mayor shall possess, have and exercise all the executive administrative powers granted to the city.

And next slide.

And the mayor shall be responsible for all executive administrative affairs of the city, except those reserved to council herein.

Mayor shall direct and supervise the administration of all departments, divisions, official offices, and agencies of the city.

So that includes both the police department, which is in charge of security, and it includes fleet, which is part of the city administration.

So to say that the mayor has no authority to do this is flatly contradicted by the city charter.

Next slide.

So as we began the task we were charged with by the audit committee and authorized by the city charter and the city code, uh I began to do some research.

And you have a recent report uh found in the police executive research forum, uh, which specifically said that police agents she should strive to have a core team assigned to executive protection full time with a reserve of trained officers available to support the core team when needed.

Next slide, please.

So we then I then began to contact other chief executives officers and their uh the staff of those offices of similar entities.

So the mayor of Denver, uh so I spoke to the Denver Police Department as well as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Denver, the Colorado State Patrol, uh talked to a major there.

Uh and that's with respect to security provided to the governor and with respect to security provided to the Secretary of State.

By the way, that level of security has changed since I served as Secretary of State.

There were not as many threats.

Uh there have actually been convictions for threats against the current Secretary of State.

Next slide, or at least one conviction.

So this is what Denver, Denver, by the way, has an entire uh executive security unit overseen by a sergeant.

Uh there are always two officers.

Uh we do this much more leanly in Colorado Springs, usually with a single officer.

Uh and uh this is a direct quote from the email from the sergeant uh that it's understood that they take care of the mayor's family as well.

And so the executive security unit provides uh constant survey, constant security uh during travel out of the city, reporting any criminal acts, etc.

The way this works is there are two uh, well, some of the details are protected by security agreements, but there are essentially all day for the entire day, the mayor has a security detail.

It's not just a single officer.

And they accompany the mayor to wherever he may need to go.

Next slide.

Talking with Colorado State Patrol who provides security for governors, Secretary of State.

One of the things they emphasized is the person does not cease to be worthy of protection just because they are doing a personal activity at the time.

And so Colorado State Patrol is with the mayor, is with the governor rather uh at soccer games.

If the kid's going, if his child is going to a soccer game, they are there.

They're not coaching the soccer team, but they are present there.

Uh, Secretary State, even when going to political events has had protection provided by the Colorado State Patrol.

So let's so I wanted to find out what the actual context was in the state for similar chief executives.

Next.

So we adopted a policy, uh, a regulation.

Uh this is more strict than what's provided in the existing uh policy 56 of the PPM, the personnel and policies and procedures manual.

And so since I've cited that, let me actually pull it up.

Here's the relevant quote.

Next slide.

Council mayoral pointy who uses a city-owned vehicle may use the vehicle for personal as well as business reasons.

No limitations, no restrictions.

Uh this is not when I was doing the research initially, I thought that this applied to only to some past, but it doesn't.

Next slide, please.

Because this is the current agreement you have as the city council with the CEO for Colorado Springs Utilities.

Uh this is made between the Colorado Springs City Council serving as the board of directors for Colorado Springs Utilities.

Utility shall provide appointee with a motor vehicle for business and personal use.

Utilities responsible for paying for liability, property damage, and comprehensive insurance, vehicles purchase, lease, operation, maintenance, repair, fuel.

So to say that this is not done contradicts and is hypocritical because Colorado Springs City Council specifically provides for personal use, both in a personnel and policy manual and with a specific contract.

Next slide, please.

So it's really two aspects of this in terms of where we look at it.

One of those is protective detail for elected officials.

This is one of the things that the draft ordinance you've been provided with and the policy agree on.

It's the police chief that makes these decisions.

That's where the authority should rest.

I would note in full disclosure, the U.S.

Conference of Mayors recommends it be in the mayor's determination.

But this is one where we agree the police chief is ultimately who should make that decision of what the risk is.

And by the way, that means the police chief may say if a council member is experiencing threats, whether it's at a town hall meeting or elsewhere, that you may need protection.

And the police chief may recommend or recommend that.

So they may choose to use those resources in order to provide protection, because as we've seen, it's not just a chief executive who can have threats regarded there.

So it clarifies, and this is this we're more specific than the proposed regulation is saying that while the security may accompany the elected official to a particular event, if it's of a personal nature, uh they will just be there to provide security.

They won't do any of the personal tasks.

They won't choose carry and load or unload groceries, but they will be there solely to provide security.

And that's the purpose, and that's what the police chief is authorized to do.

Next slide.

This follows, this is more restrictive than what your personnel policy adopted by city council and more restrictive than what you have provided with respect to the CEO at Calor Springs utilities.

And this says that if it is, if the trip is outside the city of Carro Springs or within the city solely for personal purposes, the elected official will reimburse the city at the IRS mileage rate.

That requirement's not there for other ones that are there.

And then tracks with respect to the IRS fringe benefit, which tracks uh both the current practice at CSU and consulting with the CFO there.

Next slide.

Family use, not permitted to drive except in non-exigent circumstances.

To reason this is worded, what happens if the person has a medical issue while they're driving to an event?

Can they can someone take over?

With respect to insurance, I would note that in Colorado, any drivers required to have insurance, that insurance would still apply.

Uh we're working to get the exact details of how the city currently provides insurance or CSU currently provides insurance, but they are not driving without insurance.

Um just to clarify, I mean that'd be city insurance, might be personal insurance.

You all know this.

You've rented cars before.

When you rent a car, you're asked, do you want our insurance?

Do you want to keep using your own?

That's because your insurance still applies when you're doing that.

Next slide.

Okay, with respect to the policy, um, that that explains why we adopted the policy we did.

Again, this is more stringent than what city council has in the past accepted and applied and has in contractual agreements.

Um with respect to the other provision of the council uh ordinance, uh, I am not sure how one group of elected officials censoring another serves any possible purpose other than to uh reduce the ability of the city to work together for the taxpayers and its citizens.

I don't think the mayor writing a letter of reprimand or city council issuing a censure has any practical reason, any practical purpose.

You can't strip the mayor of his duties under the city charter.

What city council does internally is an entirely different matter.

You may choose to make decisions concerning your own membership.

Can this person serve in an office?

Can they still serve as vice chair or whatever the case may be?

Um, but I don't see any authority in city code for that.

But I think the bigger issue is I don't think it serves the taxpayers to a tit for tat going back and forth.

Uh and so that's a separate issue that got thrown into this, not requested, by the way, by the city auditor in any shape or form.

Um but that is why we went through the process.

I've been here for a little over two weeks, and or the three weeks now, and so I saw the report, said you got to do it, and so we did it.

And we let you know we were doing it, and we followed through and done exactly what the audit committee told us to do.

So, to the extent you don't believe that's responsive, then you disagree with the audit committee recommendation, which said the administration shall issue a regulation.

So I appreciate the chance to respond, and uh I am happy to go into more detail if folks need more detail.

So thank you, Mr.

Williams.

I I um I do still have a question that was very helpful.

Um two questions really.

One is in your reading of the ordinance, um, do you see like what legally would be um subordinate to the other, or is there are they a conflict?

The the policy, as you outlined, is um where the authority for that policy comes from with this ordinance, what's the conflict?

Um to the extent city council purports to be able to control the use of the police department, the use of fleet through the adoption of an ordinance.

Uh I think you set up a situation where uh there may be a legal dispute, which the city attorney's office will have to resolve, or if not through litigation.

But again, my view is that's not the best use of taxpayer resources.

So it it's possible, or I would I would hope, actually, I would request that that we evaluate that before this comes to the city council for a vote, because I would not like to get into a legal dispute about this based on what we've all been saying, or at least most of us have been saying there's more important ways to spend our time and our money.

But to that point, I heard the President Pro Tem, and I'm very concerned about this reference that that this might cost hundreds and thousands of dollars to the taxpayer, um, without this ordinance.

And I'm I'm kind of just I don't know if you had a reaction to that or um I didn't quite know what the hundreds of thousands of dollar cost would be.

Um I'll let the President Pro Tem respond, but I'll give my response, which is I don't think that's the case at all.

First, insurance is required already, so that aspect of exposure is addressed through Colorado mandatory insurance laws.

Second, with respect to uh the usage, uh I would say that the mayor's usage has been minimal, and he has chosen to reimburse the city for that, um, in accordance with this policy, even though this policy was not applicable at the time the use occurred.

Uh and so he has gone above and beyond with respect to the requirements of this policy, and again looking at that, I don't see how there's a possible claim that that is hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Um there just isn't the case.

Okay, and and I guess at least the the last thing I think I have for now is um I this ordinance written the way it is and without understanding the conflicts and the potential legalities of passing this.

I guess I just simply want to say for a position that is not a nine-to-five job, and to be able to have a family, whoever the mayor is, or or just have a life in addition to being the mayor, I I would certainly expect and hope that when using security detail when out and about from early morning breakfast till late at night um events for the city that running an errand along the way um for the sake of having a life and and not having to completely segment your personal business, that there would be a way for any mayor or any set of city council member for that matter to be able to conduct their daily life while they're while they're doing their work.

I don't know if you have any any thoughts about that, um, but I I just I that's just super important.

I appreciate that.

I would note that that is the same basis on which Colorado State Patrol and Denver Police Department operate, is the mayor still needs to be able to operate in his normal life and uh that possible potential threats exist regardless.

Uh I would also note that uh if you were looking for really specific policies, Denver and the State Patrol have, they have both responded with the same thing.

We're not telling you because that poses a security risk to say, well, this is when the person's gonna be protected and when they're not.

Um, if you look at recent events, uh I'm pretty, if I remember right, I think the Minnesota state legislator and her spouse who were killed were not performing enough.

I don't think they're performing an official function at the time.

Uh certainly threats have been made.

Um you can argue whether a parade in Dallas is an official function.

Um, but certainly security is provided for uh other executives under similar circumstances.

And so I would say there are several things that are different.

First, the threat level has changed, and we've seen that with the state's decision to expand protection beyond the governor to the secretary of state.

Again, I used no protection when I was Secretary of State, but the threat levels were different.

Second thing that's this change is it's much easier to find out people's schedules and where they're going to be at other times than it used to be.

Um there's not you know, the internet provides that.

You know, if you look at the training uh from security, those of you who have taken it, it says don't disclose your location or where you're gonna be.

Kind of hard to do that when you're the mayor of Colorado Springs and you're speaking at an event.

Uh and that's true, whether that events in the middle of the day or late at night.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, Chief of Staff Williams.

I once again, couple of questions for clarity.

Uh, within your presentation, uh, one of the paragraphs mentioned the recent mayor's conference and uh I guess some conversations that happened there about political violence and protection.

Was there some type of guidance that came out of that conference that went, I guess, nationwide on how mayors should move forward um when it comes to security details and different security measures, whether you're a small town or a big town.

There was uh the guidance recommended there always be uh more than one.

Um we have not implemented that at this time.

Um I will get you a copy of that report.

And um US conference of mayors recently sent out a an indication saying they're happy to provide more details, and so I will forward that when I receive it from them.

But I'll send you the uh if you can go back, Sarah to I think it's slide three, maybe, as I say.

And now go down to right there.

Note next one.

Yeah.

So this is a direct quote.

Agency should strive to have a core team assigned to executive protection full time with a reserve of trained officers available to support the core team when needed.

So that is their recommendation from the U.S.

conference of mayors.

Okay, thank you.

And uh to go back to personal use uh for clarity and uh, of course, uh with you having a legal background also, uh, you're able to expand on this.

Uh one of the comments you made was about the way the current PPM 56 is uh worded about personal use.

Um, and then as long as you're using RSI or IRS rates to reimburse.

Um where I start to get hung up on is because you made the comment about rental cars, but if I go get a rental car right now, I'm paying some rates that you're not gonna pay with the regular RRS benefit rate.

So how do we come to a realization or justification of because the way this is written right now?

I, Councilman Rainey, if I wanted to, I can go check out a vehicle right now.

I'm performing my duties as a councilman right now.

Now, what's the difference between me checking out that vehicle and using it for personal use and going through an IRS rebate or I guess fulfilling that benefit versus me going to an airport and renting a vehicle and knowing I'm gonna pay about three or different, three or four different fees for that vehicle outside that scope.

So help me, I guess, come to rationalize just getting a vehicle from the fleet versus going get in a rental vehicle as an elected official.

Sure.

Thank you for the question, Councilmember.

First, uh, one of the unless the rental contracts have changed since last time we rented car, which was only a few months ago, uh, they generally have unlimited miles.

And so whether you pay more or less depends on how many miles you choose to drive.

So if you rent a car and drive around the country, uh you're gonna actually come out way ahead.

Um in terms of why use the IRS rate, because when an employee drives and gets reimbursed, which is often the way it's done, they're reimbursed at that same rate.

And so if we're gonna say that rate's not appropriate, then we ought to change the rate we reimburse our employees for it.

Because if we have a well, pick parks director since that's on the agenda tomorrow.

Uh not provided a car under the agreement.

If he is driving his personal car from one park to another, he can get reimbursed at a my the IRS mileage rate.

That's the way we reimburse.

And so it seemed that's the most appropriate way.

But if I'm happy to engage in city count, engage city council with a discussion of should we be reimbursing at higher rates for both what we pay and what we receive.

Uh, but that's why we use that because that's what that's what we do when the city attorney goes to a city attorney's conference somewhere and they use their personal vehicle.

If they turn it in for mileage, they're reimbursed to that personal rate.

It's what we use in private enterprise.

It's what I bill my clients or build my clients back when I was in practice because that's winded down for the most part now.

I do it on the IRS mileage rate, and that's pretty standard.

That IRS rate is supposed to account for all of the different cost of a vehicle.

And that's what it's based on.

It's based on depreciation, it's based on uh repairs, maintenance, all of that is captured in that IRS maintenance rate.

So I'd just use the one the city's already using.

But if there's a better rate to use, I'm happy to look at it.

I would just say whichever we could do, we ought to be, you know, if we don't think that's a fair rate, then we ought to make it fair for our employees too.

Well, I agree with you from the sense that we we collectively, the mayor's office, uh yourself as that representative, and council should have that conversation as a collective whole, uh, not the mayor doing a policy or not us.

Let's sit down at a table and let's let's hash it out.

Let's discuss what it should look like that benefits the city.

Um, but I I want to make sure that I don't miss my words here.

I want to make sure the message that we're telling people that are watching, the residents of Colorado Springs, is that as a city councilman, if I want to right now, and this is unrefuted based on policy, I can go check out a vehicle from fleet.

That's what it says.

And the key word in the new policy is personal use.

If I'm going to do that, why should I have a vehicle?

I just use the fleet vehicle and I just re- it, I'll do the RRS mileage rate and get reimbursed or reimbursed, I should say, and I should be good to go.

That's the way that policy is written.

Is that the message that we want to send our residents in Colorado Springs?

And I don't think it is, but that's the way it's written.

It's not the way it's written.

Um we can pull it back up.

It's written exactly that way.

Call it up, please.

Happy to.

When you say personal use, it doesn't say personal use once in a while, or as deemed necessary.

It just says personal use.

And that is the way personal policy manual is worded with no reimbursement.

That's the way your contract with the CEO is worded.

So that is what council has established for its with no reimbursement.

This changes that and puts a reimbursement.

It puts a reimbursement on it.

That's basically declared that's the clarity.

That's the difference right now.

In the past, you can do it with no reimbursement.

Now the policy's changed to say you can still, but you need to reimburse.

And again, in terms of if someone is, you know, let's say you use a city vehicle and go up to this is coming up soon.

Uh, conference.

Right?

You go up to the municipal league conference and use it.

And while you're there, you want to go to a restaurant, and if you use that vehicle and it's a personal use, then it has a reimbursement attached to it.

I am happy to have that dialogue with council.

I had one council member after the announcement by the chief of by the deputy chief of staff saying they wanted to be involved in it.

We involved that council member in the discussions.

Uh, but if you want to have more, we are happy to.

It's a policy that can be amended, but that policy to be amended, because the city charter charges the mayor with in charge of police, in charge of fleet.

Uh, we're happy to work with y'all.

And if you want to do some working together individually or collectively, I am happy to engage in that process.

Um, so I I appreciate that, and I definitely believe that a collective engagement, whatever that looks like, madam president, if that looks like a uh working lunch or um some type of uh collective engagement, I think I think it would be uh appropriate actually.

Not one person having a meeting to figure it out, but everyone having a conversation to determine what is the best course of action for both of us as a I mean we are the 10 member elected body for Colorado Springs, so let's as 10 members and once again as the designee, let's figure out the best way forward to represent not just a city, but to make sure that we're managing and being great stewards of its resources, council member.

I would welcome that opportunity.

Uh as I alluded to uh we had an agenda prep session last week.

This was not the proposed ordinance that I've seen today, was not on that agenda.

I was informed about it uh Thursday by the council president, but was told at that time I couldn't see the ordinance.

Uh, so I'm happy to um engage in that with all of y'all or as many as wish to attend.

So set it up and I'll be there.

Okay.

I appreciate it.

Just to clarify a couple things, that's not exactly what happened.

I didn't say you couldn't see the ordinance, I said it would be posted in the morning on the agenda and you would find it there for clarification.

Second of all, we don't oversee the governor, and I think the governor is a much different elected official than uh than a mayor of a city.

Um CSU, that's an employment agreement for the CSU um CEO that has been in place for many many years.

Um, so comparing those is very disingenuous when that isn't an employment agreement when that CEO takes that position.

You cannot even compare those two completely agree, the IRS reimbursement, as you already know.

I have already communicated to you, that is a much better deal than any rental agreement you can have in town.

And I think it's also disingenuous to say that if you go to a CML conference and then you drive to dinner is much different than a spring break trip for a week across the state of Colorado.

Councilman Risley.

You addressed all the comments I was going to make, so thank you.

Okay, Carly, thank you so much for your presentation.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 10, council member reports and updates and discussions.

Are there any council members with any reports or discussions?

Councilman Hanjam.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, I want to thank uh folks from city staff, um, in particular Amy Cox and our parks department in uh being present at the town hall, uh, my town hall last week and getting input on the um updates and the improvements to Flanagan Park.

Um, that was very successful.

We also had a presentation on the stormwater um levy improvements that and Temple De Gap that will be happening.

It was about 50 people that attended that town hall.

And then we broke out into after that presentation, we broke out into people just kind of went to speak to the city staff that they were interested in talking with, including myself and Sam Friedman.

We had uh conversations with with uh members of the community, and uh we had our police department there talking about how to set up um uh um what do you call it when you uh neighborhood watch, neighborhood watch.

And uh anyway, it was a very successful, and I appreciate the the work of our staff with Alex and Sam in helping me with that town hall.

Um also was really honored to be present present for the I don't even know how many senior accolade awards uh named in honor of my dad, Joe Henjum, and a number of awards were given out uh this year to folks who are working in the senior industry.

Um also was at and I don't know if if the president will speak to this.

I she was uh she and actually council member Williams present um at the beginning of the Health Foundation in that 10-year celebration, um, and the acknowledgement of the 60 million dollars that has been spent um on behalf of our city was very very well done and appreciated being at that.

Um also a couple of great fundraising um for light of hope for uh CASA, which does incredible work with those who are children who are abused and neglected in our in our city and uh um representation that they get in the court system and Pike Speak Hospice also had a really incredible fundraising um event.

Um we have so many outstanding nonprofits in our community.

Um I mentioned earlier uh visiting the crossfire ministries uh uh and and their new actually their new uh thrift store, which actually all of the proceeds from that thrift store go to support the grocery um store that they have for folks who need to use that to supplement their um their budgets and stay in their homes, and that's really really incredible work that they're doing.

And then um, lastly, just want to thank again uh Sam Friedman who does such a job of such a nice job of representing the work of city council and how to be engaged, uh joined myself and council member gold with students at Palmer High School who are very interested in how to be more um effectively engaged in local government, and um, and that was a terrific uh conversation that we had.

So thank you for the opportunity to share those things.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, just want to highlight a couple of items, but the first one I do want to highlight because it's so important for us as an elected body to reflect on some of the great work that people here in Colorado Spring uh accomplish on our behalf and had the honor, along with Councilmember Henjam and Councilmember Donaldson to attend the retirement ceremony of CSPD deputy chief Mary Rosenhof.

After 32 years in public safety.

That's not an easy feat.

I mean, some people just try to get to 20 in everyday jobs, and to be in law enforcement for that many years uh was just uh just something that really, you know, kind of took me back a little bit.

That what all the different offices that she has served in, the things that uh she's accomplished, um, the danger and the amount of officer involved shootings she had uh been involved in.

Um it really was something that I think once again when we talk about public safety, um, those are things not to be taken lightly to folks that are doing great work on our behalf.

So just wanted to highlight that.

Also, uh, I want to take an opportunity to give a big thank you to my community in District 6, Banny Lewis Ranch Retreat community that invited me out.

There's about 60 plus people that invited me out.

And here's what I love about the invite.

The invite was not about here's what's wrong, and here's what needs to be done, or here's how we need to make things better.

They invited me out to hear all the great things that they're doing in their community.

What a treat.

What an absolute treat to just hear the goodness of what people are doing in the community.

So kudos to Banning Lewis Ranch Retreat community for uh inviting me out for that.

Um the one thing I do want to highlight, there's a couple of uh activities that are coming up, and I just want to make sure we don't lose sight of those.

There's the board and commission appreciation night that's uh happening this Wednesday at 5:30, 7 to 7:30 right here in the chamber.

Correct.

I want to make sure the location is correct.

Um, so what a great opportunity to highlight and celebrate those volunteers uh that have given their time and efforts to our great city.

Uh the Air Force Academy River Cutting Ceremony for the visitor center that is coming up this week uh also.

I believe that is gonna be on Friday.

Um so looking forward to that.

And Friday morning, there's going to be the Pikes Peak Regional uh Memorial at Memorial Park.

So that is now on the schedule.

So that is uh been to that event several times and uh highly recommend that uh if you can get out there, please do so.

And uh uh 19 May is going to be the state of the base at Peterson Space Force Base.

So want to make sure that we're still all tracking that to get a better idea of what our airmen and guardians are doing on our behalf for national security, and there's a lot going on uh with the current state of affairs globally, uh the war, and uh of course a lot of uh other important things that are happening in the uh space domain.

So looking forward to hearing what the leadership out at Peterson Space Force Base have to convey to the community.

Um, but we want to kind of leave it right there.

Thank you.

Councilman Lineweber.

Yes, I'm excited to share from the outdoors.

And uh oh, here's my companion, Pat.

This is for Lynette.

Hatch says he's having a great time.

Anyway, um I was able to attend uh the first forum on the impacts of outdoor recreation on our medical health um this last uh week.

And it was actually a remarkable conference.

It's really pretty cool.

First one we've had.

And um, it was um sponsored in part by the Department of Interior.

I got a chance to talk with Doug Bergham a number of times on some of these issues, but others also.

Um, and um, but here's the here's the headline, here's the headline.

Um the average savings per person for spending 15 minutes a day in nature in in terms of health care costs, it's 374 per person annually.

Now, $374, okay.

That's meaningful, but what if you multiplied that over a $500,000, $500 million uh, no, $500,000 population of Colorado Springs.

If you looked at it a community-wide, that is millions and millions of dollars of community health care cost savings for our community by promoting the fact that getting out nature, which we all know, but we've got to get to the point where we elevate it to where it needs to be prescribed.

Like you got to get out, you gotta smell the trees, you gotta take that walk in the park.

You've just you've got to spend some time.

15 minutes a day can be a tremendous savings and really uh improve everyone's health.

And um, it's kind of something we all know, but we've kind of lost track of it.

And um, I think that was the whole intention of the forum is some of the policies they want to put in place and um some of the things they want to change in terms of some of our federal lands and so forth, and in terms of fostering this type of support.

So it's really great.

I made a number of great connections.

Uh talked to previous governor of Montana quite a bit, and um, and then uh a couple of other folks, but anyway.

Um, um I had a I had a great time, and I got some great information from it.

And um, I really think it's really kind of something positive and something that we could probably look at for our community and trying to reduce healthcare costs, which is certainly a big factor for families.

So, anyway, that's my report.

I'm really uh was excited to go and I learned uh just a ton of stuff.

So um, and uh, be happy to talk to individuals, but right now I gotta go get my fly rod and go catch some fish.

So um, thanks.

Councilman Lightweber, I saw you posted that you did yoga on the lawn at DC, but I did not see a downward dog, so did you?

I did, absolutely.

Yes.

I just I mean, it's not like you know, you're standing there on the mall.

It's like I I saw an attendee say, could you just take a picture so someone would believe me that I'm actually out here doing yoga on the national mall?

So anyway, that was that was the picture.

So it was a still picture, no video, that would have been bad.

I agree.

That would have been bad.

Well, thank you.

He's been outside this whole meeting, so good on you there, Dave.

Um, I just wanted to say I forgot to mention earlier in the meeting, I would like to pull off item four B E from the consent agenda for tomorrow.

Thank you.

Item four B E.

Yes.

Okay.

Okay.

Um, there goes Hatch.

You better go chase him.

Well, it looks like that concludes I don't see any more council member updates.

Um, that concludes our work session meeting for today.

Um, so we are adjourned.

Um, I'm sorry.