Good morning again and welcome to the regular City Council of Colorado Springs meeting for Tuesday, May 28th, 2026.

We are now in session.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Casey.

Here.

Councilmember Crow Iverson.

Here.

Councilmember Donaldson.

Here.

Councilmember Gold.

Here I am.

Councilmember Hindum.

Present.

Councilmember Lion Weber.

Here.

Councilmember Rainey.

Here.

Councilmember Risley.

Here.

Councilmember Williams.

Here.

All nine present.

So please stand for the invocation and the pledge of allegiance.

And today we are joined by Pastor Hartstock from the first Presbyterian Church.

Good morning.

It's free people.

Today I pray that we pray for one of those expressions of freedom.

Our freely elected City Council of Colorado Springs.

Scripture calls us to pray for our leaders.

Therefore, today I thank you, Lord, and pray with thankfulness for each and every one of our city council members.

I pray for the president.

Linda Lynette Crow Iverson.

For Councilman Dave Donaldson.

For Councilman Ken Casey.

For Councilwoman Brandy Williams.

For Councilwoman Kimberly Gold.

For Councilwoman Nancy Hindum.

For Councilman Roland Rainey Jr.

And Councilman David Weinwitter.

Thank you, Lord.

You raise up leaders and you have raised up the these city council members to help our city, our Olympic City.

Lord, guide them, lead them, give them the wisdom to know the right and choose it.

And I and we thank you that you have called each one of these council members to serve our beautiful city.

In the name of Jesus Christ.

Amen.

Amen.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it says one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

We will now consider the consent calendar.

These items will be acted on as a whole, unless a specific item is called for discussion by a council member or a citizen wishing to address city council.

Is there anyone who would like to pull an item off of the consent calendar?

Yes.

The minutes, please.

And I couldn't push the button just so you know my screen doesn't allow me to push the button to be my screen is also not up, but Councilman Hindum.

Thank you.

I just wanted to pull off the minutes from uh last meeting and um in particular it was in the um the I don't have those minutes up.

It was in the section on um the appointment of Stephanie umstrom, thank you.

Welcome Stephanie to the dais, our new city attorney.

Um acknowledgement I that I was supportive of the um of the vote, and I was but I specifically um made mention of Mark Smith, who was uh leaving service of the city for 22 years, and I just would like that to be reflected in the record, please.

Thank you very much.

That's all I have, if there are no others, I have a motion from Councilman Gold and a second from Councilman Rainey.

All in favor say aye.

Aye, any opposed, moving on to item 5A.

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

A resolution recognizing May 2026's preservation month, Councilman Hingem.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Um, I am one of the uh uh council liaisons to the Historic preservation board, and this is uh May is preservation month across the country, and I would like to read a resolution recognizing May 2026 as preservation month.

Um, and I will be inviting uh Tim Boddington up, who is the president of the preservation historic alliance, um, to say just a few words after I read the resolution uh and before we vote, and also of note, it's um we will be voting on appointing four new members to our historic preservation board this morning, so it's uh very appropriate timing for those appointments.

Whereas since 1973, the National Trust for Historic Preservation has recognized the month of May as Preservation Month, a national campaign to promote historic places, heritage tourism, and to demonstrate the social and economic benefits of historic preservation, and whereas historic preservation is relevant for communities across the nation, both urban and rural, and for Americans of all ages, all walks of life, and all ethnic backgrounds, and whereas historic preservation is an effective tool for managing growth and sustainable development, revitalizing neighborhoods, fostering local pride, and maintaining community character while enhancing sustainability and livability, and whereas the historic places, sites, and landscapes of the city of Colorado Springs tell the stories of our past, connect us to our shared history, and provide valuable educational, cultural, and economic benefits, and whereas it is important to celebrate the role of history in our lives and the contributions made by dedicated individuals in helping preserve the tangible aspects of the heritage that have shaped us as a people, and whereas we recognize vital partners in the city's ongoing efforts to steward our sense of place and history, including trades professionals, design professionals, cultural resource professionals, individual historic property owners, the historic preservation board, city council, the downtown development authority, Colorado College, the Historic Preservation Alliance of Colorado Springs, the Historic Neighborhoods Partnership, and its affiliated members, Colorado Springs Pioneers Museum, the National Trust for Historic Preservation, History Colorado, and the State Historical Fund.

It's a lot of organizations supporting our history.

Therefore, be it resolved by the City Council of City of Colorado Springs.

We recognize May 2026 as preservation month, dated and signed by our uh president, Lynette Crow Iverson.

And um, as Tim Bodington comes up to the to the podium, um, it is our uh 150th uh birthday as a state and 250th um as a country, and so uh a great a great month to uh to honor those um very important uh aspects of our history.

And Tim, if you could just share share a few words about um this particular month and what it means to you.

Thank you very much.

Uh Council President, thank you very much for this opportunity.

My name is Tim Boddington.

I'm president of the Historic Preservation Alliance of Colorado Springs.

We are a nonprofit in our 27th year of advocating for historic preservation and sharing with our membership uh lots of fun tours and lectures that celebrate the history of our community.

And it is appropriate, I suppose, that we should mention uh that we're in a building designed by one of the Colorado Springs' greatest architects, and it's still here, it's still serving its purpose, and it is a wonderful uh sort of uh metaphor for exactly why historic preservation and that sense of place is so vital to our community, and that we remember to honor it as we go through our days, wandering through our downtown, noticing all the wonderful buildings that keep us grounded in the history that made it such a wonderful place to live.

And so uh this year has had some pretty significant uh successes for the community.

Uh we have the addition of the historic resources survey and context plan by the Historic preservation board.

That was outstanding.

Uh adoption of the Parksite Historic District, the city's newest historic preservation overlay zone, uh, the additions to the National Register of some important historic places.

For example, the Dr.

James E.

Moore House, listed as part of the Historic Colorado Initiative to preserve African American travel sites and underrepresented communities.

We have the satellite hotel listed for its mid-century architecture, one of the 150th anniversary over at the very first projects in Colorado built specifically as mixed use space.

And when it opened in 1969, was one of the city's tallest buildings, an architectural landmark on the east side that rises from the prairie.

And we also had funding for an initiative for the engineering plans necessary to move forward to the efforts to restore the Harlan Wolf homestead over on Cheyenne Road, which is a project the Historic Preservation Alliance is supporting with our own treasury and with the help of City Park and Rec.

And we also want to recognize that there are other new homes.

And anybody else who identifies as wanting to support preservation.

I'll bring it back to the dais if there are any comments.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

I want to just express my appreciation to Mr.

Bottington for the work he does.

And it's the city you live in, the neighborhood you live in, has an effect on you.

And if there are permanent things there, beautiful things there, it gives you a different sense than if it's all kind of throwaway fast food uh architecture.

And I'd say people feel better in those kind of neighborhoods.

You look around and you feel like this is something to be proud of.

I like my city.

Uh it's beautiful.

And we shouldn't underestimate the effect that beauty that beauty has on uh on all of us.

So again, thank you, Mr.

Boddington.

I think this was wise for uh city council to do this resolution and uh slow down when you're going by some of these older historic buildings and just look at the detail and the uh thoughtfulness that went into their uh construction, the beauty.

Thanks.

I have a motion from Councilman Gold and a second from Councilman Casey.

Let's vote.

The motion passes none to zero.

Do you think that um there's enough of them we should stay up here or is there I don't think it's we can do that?

Okay, we'll meet you down in front for a celebratory picture.

Moving on to item five B.

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

City Council appointments to boards, commissions, and committees.

First up, we have the Historic Preservation Board.

A vacancy can occurred on the Historic Preservation Board due to a completed term on May 8th.

Council liaison, Kimberly, Gold and Councilman Henjam interview the applicants with the senior planner.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Uh I know Chip is here.

I don't know if Nicole uh John or Shannon are here.

Chip, if you would stand up.

Yeah, please stand up.

Um I have to tell you, uh, Councilmember Gold and I did these interviews a couple of weeks ago now, and we had I don't remember how many applications to choose from, and we did six interviews, and we selected four because uh they were so qualified and uh it was really, really hard to choose.

So we're very, very fortunate to have so many qualified members um who are ready and anxious and keen to serve on a historic preservation board.

And um, Bill Gray, I don't know if he's still here, but uh he's the staff liaison uh for this board, and they do very important work and we're looking forward to the energy that you all have to bring.

Thank you.

Councilman Gold.

And I would second Council Member Hendam's comments completely.

Um I've been able to sit on several interviews for different boards, commissions, and committees, and this was by far one of the hardest uh panels that we had to sit on.

There were so many qualified candidates.

So congratulations, and thank you for your volunteerism to our city.

Moving on to the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Authority, Citizens Advisory Committee.

Three vacancies occurred on the Pikes Peak Rural Transportation Author um authority for citizens citizens advisory committee due to the dissolution of the Citizens Transportation Advisory Board.

On May 13th, Councilia's on Brian Risley and Deputy Public Works Director, City Engineer interviewed applicants.

Steve Murray, Clarissa Stevenson, and John Walter Lynch are recommended for the appointments as voting members.

Councilman Risley, do you have any comments?

Thank you, Madam President.

I don't know if any of the uh folks that we selected are in the room today, but I do want to thank all of the participants and uh the volunteers that were willing to step up and and uh show interest in PPRTA as Council President indicated.

Uh this uh was a result of vacancies created when uh city council dissolved CTAB, the Citizens Transportation Advisory Board, and the the method was that CTAP representatives represented the represented the city at PPRTA.

And so that's primarily why we uh undertook this endeavor, and um my thanks to Gail Stirvent for participating in those interviews as well.

I see Todd Frisbee in the room, and hopefully he approves of the folks we selected because he's gonna have to work with them pretty closely as well.

So thank you.

Moving on to the Pikes Peak Area Council of Government Community Advisory Committee, Council Liaison Roland Rainey recommends the reappointment of Chuck Theobald to the Pikes Peak Area Council of Government Committee Advisory Committee.

Councilman Rainey, do you have any comments?

Thank you very much, Madam President.

And yes, the uh PPACG, uh known as CAC, the community advisory committee, is a very unique committee because it actually encompasses the entire region.

So it's not just uh Colorado Springs, uh, monument, fountain, um, uh Manitou Springs.

There's a lot of different areas that are actually encompassed on this particular uh community uh activity, but also it's all the things that they cover is they cover transportation, military engagement, um, they cover what's happening with our roads.

So I would tell you it was an honor to reappoint these individuals.

But for anyone else in the community, if this is something that uh that you are interested in, I would highly recommend that you keep an eye out for when we have vacancies.

We're always looking for at-large members or members to be appointed directly on behalf of Colorado Springs, or if you live in another part of the Pikes Peak region and that you're interested, uh please feel free to give me a direct call or send me an email or talk to our uh board commission's uh representative, and we can put you uh in contact with the right individuals.

But this is one of the most fantastic organizations I've ever been a part of.

Before being a liaison, I actually was the vice chair and then the chair of the PPACG CAC.

Um, one of the best uh organizations I've ever been a part of here in Colorado Springs.

So thank you very much, madam president.

There are no additional comments.

I have a motion from Councilman Gold and a second from Councilman Henjam.

Let's vote on all three.

Moving on to item six.

Is there any mayor's business?

A couple items uh mostly relating to budget.

So uh just want to thank council for reaching out to the administration with respect to the public safety working group, and uh we are participating in that and appreciate the leadership coming from council on that.

Uh Friday was our second of the furlough days, uh, which are continue to be a uh a challenge because of the impacts that has on the organization.

Um, and then that leads into the final comment, which was we are beginning to work on the 2027 budget.

Uh we do have uh some good news from sales tax, as you're aware, it was projected to go up 1.4 percent uh for this year, and year to date it has gone up 4.1 percent.

So we've exceeded that expectation at least through the first three months.

Um, but we're not sure what will happen in the future.

And so we're planning for the budget in a conservative fashion.

Look forward to working with council and our departments and the citizens to formulate that budget going forward.

So just wanted to advise council of those things.

Thank you.

Moving on to item seven items called off consent.

Will the clerk please read item four BA into the record?

City Council regular meeting minutes, May 12, 2026.

I move that the minutes be approved as and I will make those corrections.

So I have a second or a motion from Councilman Henjam and a second from Councilman Rainey.

We need to vote on 4BA, and the motion passes nine to zero.

Moving on to item A, will the clerk please read item 8A?

Into the record?

A resolution approving intergovernmental agreement between the City of Colorado Springs, Colorado and Happenson Enterprises, Color Response Utilities in Southeastern Colorado Water Conservation District.

Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh, item eight a concerns a contract with the Bureau of Reclamation.

I currently work for the United States Department of the Interior, which is the parent organization of the Bureau of Reclamation.

Although I do not work on water related issues for interior, and I do not have a direct conflict of interest.

I'm recusing myself from consideration of this issue to avoid the appearance of a conflict for guidance from Interiors Ethics Office as well as from the City Attorney's Office.

Good morning, Jenny.

Good morning.

I'm with Colorado Springs Utilities.

I am speaking today on the intergovernmental agreement with Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District for Regional Service Agreements.

So let's go to the next slide, please.

Oh, I have a clicker here.

I'm sorry.

So the Southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District exists as a repayment mechanism for a Bureau of Reclamation project that includes things like the Turquoise Reservoir, Pueblo Reservoir, and Colorado Springs is a beneficiary of that.

All uh beneficiaries of the Frying Pan, Arkansas Project must be within the Southeastern District boundaries, which you can see on the map is the hatched area.

The Southern Delivery System that Colorado Springs Utilities owns and operates, actually connects into Pueblo Reservoir.

As a result, it has a southeastern Colorado Water Conservancy District Nexus as well as a Bureau of Reclamation Nexus because that project is a federal project.

As a result, Colorado Springs Utilities and other Southern Delivery System participants have a contract with the Bureau of Reclamation that governs the use of that project.

Utilities also has regional agreements with water providers within the El Paso County area.

Those are the ones that are the orangey-brown color.

Um we don't have contracts with all of those entities, but the orangey-brown colors are entities that provide water.

Not every entity that utilities provides regional service for exists within the southeastern district boundary.

The paragraph 7D of Colorado Springs Utilities contract with the Bureau of Reclamation specifies that if utilities delivers any waters to entities, they should be within the Southeastern District boundaries or receive some sort of written approval to receive those contract services and utilize the southern delivery system.

Utilities has developed an intergovernmental agreement with both Southeastern District and the Bureau of Reclamation that provides clear guidelines for how utilities may contract with regional entities that are outside of the Southeastern District boundaries.

These regional entities must receive the written approval by Bureau of Reclamation, comply with all applicable environmental laws and regulations, pay applicable out-of-district rates and fees to the Southeastern District, obtain a Pueblo County 1041 permit, and deliver water only into the Arkansas Basin boundaries.

The Arkansas Basin has boundaries at the northern part of El Paso County, and there's a small part of El Paso County that exists outside of the Arkansas Basin.

This intergovernmental agreement, like I said, provides clear direction for how we may enter into these agreements and uh be consistent with both our Bureau of Reclamation contracts and still provide regional water services.

So we are asking for a vote on the attached resolution today so that we may enter into this intergovernmental agreement.

Councilman Hanjam.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh Jenny, could you actually go back to slide two?

I saw something for the first time.

I know I've seen this slide before, but I never really noticed it.

In the in the southeast corner of the city, there's a regional water providers that are inside a significant inside the boundaries of the city.

Who is that and who's providing the water for that portion of the city?

So security, fountain, and Stratmore Hills are all part of the Southern Delivery System and within the Southeastern District boundaries.

So they use those facilities as well to deliver today.

So it's more the infrastructure that they're using as part of SDC.

Yes.

Yeah.

Okay, great.

Well, it's part of the Frying Pan, Arkansas Project.

Right.

One of their sources.

Right.

But we are the actual deliverers of the water inside the city boundary.

Right.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilman Lineweber.

Yeah, it just dawned on me, and I'm just kind of curious with this agreement.

As you certainly know, but possibly the public doesn't know that any water we take off of Pike's Peak, we get to use once.

And as soon as we use that water, we any runoff or whatever might happen, we have to let it go down the river.

But when we take water from the other side of the Continental Divide, we get to use that water over and over and over and over again.

And I think it's important to understand that that we're talking about this water that we're getting on the other side of the Continental Divide of being able to use it again and again and again.

How does that relate to this?

Sure.

So the Southern Delivery System actually pulls water out of Pueblo Reservoir.

Pueblo Reservoir acts as an important storage vessel for water that we exchange.

So exchanges happen when we hold back water in a vessel in the reservoir, in this case Pueblo Reservoir, and we allow a like amount to flow by in this case from Fountain Creek into the Arkansas River.

What that does is it keeps downstream water rights holders whole, but it allows utilities to hold back reusable water supplies and then deliver them in sometimes through the southern delivery system, sometimes through the five through the Fountain Valley Authority, but that becomes a very valuable mechanism for reusing our water supplies.

I guess it gets to that reuse question that I'm trying to think about because we we take a lot of our water from the Arkansas, comes also comes up into uh and we store it on a reservoirs on Pikes Peak and we drink a lot of that water.

Um, but then we can also take that water and reuse it again for a number of different things, whether we're watering parks or whatever it might be.

Um but once we sell that water to someone else, does that end the reuse?

So in these regional contracts, we are actually delivering their water supplies.

It is not Colorado Springs water supplies that we are delivering.

So with regional contracts, we are actually making use of existing infrastructure that we have and space that we have in existing infrastructure to deliver their own reusable water supplies.

So we're not talking about molecules here, we're talking about infrastructure.

Correct.

All right.

I think that's where I was getting a little bit kind of confused about.

Well, you can see where I because of the reuse piece, I was like, How does that actually happen?

So anyway, thank you.

That that clarified that.

You're welcome.

I don't see any other comments.

I have a motion from Councilman Donaldson and a second from Councilman Gold.

Let's vote.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 9A.

Will the clerk please read item 9A into the record?

Reconsideration of ordinance 26-06 vacating the public right away known as East Boulder Street, consisting of approximately 0.92 acres located between North Dometa Avenue and North Weber Street.

Councilman Risley.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, as with the original hearing of this item, I would like to recuse myself.

My uh my company has a business relationship with District 11.

And while I could uh be impartial in this matter, I don't want there to be any perception of impropriety.

So thank you.

Just a few um reminders.

Council will now reconsider an ordinance vacating the public right away on East Boulder, located between North Nevada and North Weber Street.

This is not a new public hearing.

There will be no new presentation or citizen comments.

City council conducted the public hearing for this item on March 10th, 2026.

On March 24th, 2026, council voted to reconsider the item and set reconsideration of the item for today.

Since this item is being reconsidered, we will return to the original motion to approve the ordinance as presented on March 10th.

Council Member Lineweber made the original motion to approve the ordinance as presented.

And I will need a second motion for that.

Are there any council members with questions or comments at this time?

Councilman Lineweber.

Yeah, I want I wanted to kind of bring some clarity a little bit to it.

So I actually have a question for our utilities CEO.

I want to talk about Boulder Street, and I want to talk about the gas main that runs along Boulder Street.

What is that?

And then what kind of infrastructure can be built next to it, over it, whatever.

So when we're talking about building like a bridge over, is that possible?

If we wanted to expand a tunnel, is that possible?

I mean, those are the things I kind of would like you to reiterate.

What is the right-of-way that has to stay applicable here?

Yeah, so I know Boulder City without having the drawings in front of me.

Basically, what they've done is looked at is uh the schools responsible to move all that infrastructure, and I'm pretty sure that we've come to agreements where most of that has been moved.

I'd have to look at the gas plane, but I think that is even being rerouted as well at the cost of you know the project, but I can get back with you for certainty with that.

But I'm pretty sure we've we've come to some uh arrangements of reallocation and relocation of those uh utilities in that area.

Well, it's my understanding of is if the gas main stays in that boulder street corridor, that no infrastructure can be built.

Correct.

So nothing can be built over gas just with the explosive nature of it.

So pretty much any easement there.

There is a setback of six feet on either side of gas.

Can't even have trees planted there.

So anything above that is considered, you know, through the public utility commission as a safety um violation.

It's not our law, that's through FIMSA and the PUC's rulings.

So unless they move the gas main completely, no infrastructure can go on that Boulder Street, correct?

Correct.

All right, and then so I had a follow-up question to uh Chris Lieber, if he's available, and Chris just make sure that green vet is on its benefic this morning.

Chris, I wanted you to kind of um give me some understanding of the expense of moving that gas line and is is the gas line going to be moved?

I was under the impression that it was not because there was such expense uh incorporated with that.

Uh good morning.

Uh Chris Lieber with uh with NES on behalf of uh School District 11.

Let me answer that if I may in a couple of ways.

Uh number one, um we looked at an option that would retain all of those utilities when we explored opportunities to go underneath with a tunnel or to do a sky bridge.

Uh the challenges with that because of the depth of the utilities.

If we were to leave Boulder Street as it is with no changes in utilities, and the depth, particularly with this with the stormwater, that tunnel would need to be essentially two stories underground because we'd have to maintain that utility corridor and go underneath.

If we were to go over the top, um the minimum amount of clearance that utilities uh would allow was 28 feet.

So, in other words, that uh any type of a if you want to use the term sky bridge uh would be almost three stories uh in the air.

And when we looked at then what does that mean for moving the student population, either that far down and under and then back up or across up and over?

Um, both of those options were certainly problematic from a program uh standpoint.

Um at this point, uh the uh with uh the first uh phase, which is the bill, which is the academic uh wing that's under construction, um, those utilities are not being relocated.

Uh however, uh for um uh 1B, which you recall includes the track and it includes the field.

Uh those utilities would be uh relocated with one exception, and that is the uh the storm uh sewer that runs uh uh through there, the storm drain, um, because that needs to be gravity fed, and that has to be uh maintained, so there would be an easement uh that would allow for that to continue uh for uh the city to continue to be able to maintain that uh through the corridor.

Well, so I want to understand um if those things are removed, then we could build on that.

We could build on Boulder Street.

If those were removed uh and all of that, but we still have the issue with the storm sewer.

Okay, so we keep it.

Regardless of the gas, regardless of any of the other water lines, our conversation about a sky bridge and a tunnel and all that kind of stuff to save money and and uh keep Boulder Street open, but but we really I mean it just there isn't a viable way to do that.

Correct.

There's no viable alternative for uh particularly the for the storm um the storm sewer that serves other portions of downtown, quite frankly.

And again, the goal of this whole thing is that if we can get the athletic department moved to the main campus, a majority of kids can stay on the campus, and they wouldn't have to leave or cross any streets at all during their whole time at school, correct?

That is correct, and uh and in the development of the academic wing, which is part of phase one, that also enables the vast majority of students to maintain to be remain on campus all health classes and other functions as was testified um at the last hearing uh would would remain on that uh on the core campus and and fewer trips down to Earth.

So the what we're really weighing here is uh losing a street, yes, that's problematic, but safety of kids is also problematic and and needs to be elevated.

And that's where I think um I think that's where the primary decision really kind of comes down to is how do we provide a safe and healthy environment for our kids, and again reducing any kind of traffic in the center of campus would be ideal.

So, all right, thank you.

Councilman Hanchum.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Um, Chris, I'm gonna have a lot of questions for you, but not immediately.

Um I have quite a few questions, so um just beware, everybody.

Um, and I appreciate those questions.

Uh uh, Mr.

Lime Weber.

Um actually real quickly, and uh maybe it maybe this is for you, Chris.

I'm not sure, but there is a current underpass tunnel.

Um will that be destroyed or taken away?

Will that be moved?

I'm seeing head nods, yes.

It will be moved.

Okay, um, and and I'll get to the whole design and uh because it's really contingent upon a bond passing, um, I believe from from the district.

But I'm I am gonna start actually, Chris.

I take that back.

I'm gonna start with um the things I think you can address.

My understanding is that um quite a bit has been done since our last vote since the vote it failed um on the safety, the intersections, the crosswalks.

That's the thing um that seems to be the primary argument for for us uh passing this uh vacation of boulder.

So could you please speak to what um what things have been designed since our last meeting related to uh intersections, crosswalks, and so forth, and increasing safety.

And it might be that our traffic engineer needs to come up as well.

I don't know, but go ahead.

Well, I guess uh again, Chris Lieber with NES uh representing the district.

Um I'll give a quick summary uh and um that is to say we've continued to advance work on the development plan uh for this uh for this project um and that is kind of, if you will, separate from the uh the the right-of-way consideration today.

That is that plan is moving forward, it will be before the uh downtown review board.

Um, you know, pending outcome of this uh decision today.

As part of that effort, uh, we have looked at a number of intersections uh for uh improving student uh safety and student crossings.

Um and let me begin by saying our first uh goal was to look for how can we simply reduce the number of crossings that take place and uh uh and certainly creating this consolidated campus does that with the individual intersections themselves.

Uh one of the biggest challenges, and uh uh Mr.

Frisbee could also uh speak to this, and this is really the focus of these improvements.

Um, many of these intersections do not have what is called the protected left turn.

Um and what I mean by that is that you either have a red condition or you have a green light condition, and if you're making a left turn, um the pedestrian movements, right, uh that interfere with that left turn are not protected.

When you typically see a green uh arrow, that often will help control uh those uh left movements.

In other words, you have a push butt pedestrian push button that gives you the right of way as a pedestrian to be able to cross before that left green phase uh uh turns uh turns on.

Um and so that's one of the primary uh improvements that will be taking place at six different five different six different intersections.

Um and again, this is all relevant to the development plan and uh is being included within within that development plan.

So um uh at kind of first level of priority, and this again came through conversations with public works, um, uh protecting those uh those students.

So we would now have pedestrian actuated buttons, and we would have those green protected uh left turns.

And then at certain uh intersections, uh there also would be bump outs.

If you're familiar with that with that term, uh a bump out would mean elimination of a right turn lane, which again um protects uh students, eliminates that uh that movement, uh, but then also shortens uh the amount of distance, and then also at uh one of the uh other intersections, we're adding a pedestrian, extending the median, uh if you will, uh, to provide additional pedestrian uh refuge.

But the primary uh level of improvement is on traffic uh management, specifically with those pedestrian buttons and with those uh mastheads.

Um and that would not only again the goal is not only to be able to improve safety for students going from the campus down to ERPS, but also as you can imagine, students arriving in the morning or at the end of the day or going to launch.

Uh and so those those improvements again uh address all all of those um all of those concerns.

Okay, um thank you.

You know, I I want to step back and and do a little context setting here that um in the original hearing this failed on a four-four tie.

And I I think that was ultimately a good thing because it it and and council member Williams requested the reconsideration, um, as I recall her saying, and she certainly will correct me if I'm wrong, that there were a number of of things related to safety and traffic and and school zones that uh were not addressed.

And I think what I'm hearing from you, Chris, and we're being asked to vote on the vacation of a right-away without actually seeing a development plan and what those improvements will be.

So right now I'm hearing about those improvements.

Um I've talked with you, I met with you at your office for for almost two hours to talk about this.

So I got a lot of information myself, but I think it's really important for the public to hear.

Um, because again, the the concerns or the opposition has to do with with safety.

So it's really important um to understand exactly what's going to be um gonna be done in these intersections.

And uh, Mr.

Frisbee, I don't know if you have anything that you would like to add, or um my understanding is we're gonna be adding a school zone as well, which means can you come up and talk about that, Mr.

Frisbee, please?

What does it mean to put a school zone formally in and uh speed limits and so forth, and why hasn't it been done up to this point?

Good afternoon.

Todd Frisbee City traffic engine city traffic traffic engineering I cannot speak this morning.

I'll talk specifically about school zones yes we are we are this summer we'll be installing the equipment to establish school zones along um plater and parts of Wasatch, particularly at the Wasatch Platte intersection and school zones on Nevada specifically adjacent to the school.

So that's an effort that's ongoing right um uh right now uh and um you know Chris I think did a good job of describing um some of the recommended improvements uh in the development plan so I don't I don't think I need to address those uh any further um and I think the other part of your question was why haven't been installed now uh if we remember a few years ago council um authorized additional funding to expand expand school zones along at our middle schools and high schools uh and so since then over the last couple years we've been uh working to build that build that out we can probably do four to five zones new school zones a year based on the budget and the funding that we have and um uh and so uh so Palmer High School and other high schools you know this area was slated at this time to get those get those improvements those were already in the works or at least in our planning prior to a lot of um uh the planning for the high school and things like that so once the school zone and the additional infrastructure is uh put in place Todd what will it mean for a driver coming into downtown by by Palmer High School during the sure so when it's active it's only active during um before um 40 minutes before the bell 10 minutes after the bell so typically we have these school zones flashing for like 50 minutes to an hour depending on uh on pickup and drop off activities so if you're entering into downtown along Platte um for example and you cross Wasatch you will hit a 20 mile 20 mile per hour speed zone uh for that during the pickup and during the drop off times during the during the day um we can also run those flashers at school uh during lunch times if that's if we feel like that's a need uh and again um they would operate you know in a limited time you know on you know an hour or so so they're programmed to you know if there's a teacher you know if there's no students but there's a teacher in service day they won't go on so we set the schedule every year so they're on you know whatever you know they're on every day that students are in school um and we set that program at the beginning of the year okay yeah and then um just to confirm you will also be putting in protected left turn lanes at the appropriate intersections can you name those intersections yeah um these intersections would be uh plat Wasatch um uh it already has protected left turns but we're adding push buttons to and the reason that's important or we're adding push or the push button allows us to say when there's a ped call instead of allowing that permissive phase that's that phase where you can make the you could you can you can find a gap and make that you'll make that left turn when there's a push button call that permissive phase won't go up you only get the green arrow and then the red arrow that would only be active during um uh during when a push button is activists we'll do it we're we'll have it there we'll also have it at um uh plat and weber as well boulder and um wasatch and make sure um and uh I said I thought and Boulder and Weber and those those are the main those are the intersections.

Okay any other improvements to safety around the school that we have to so um Chris mentioned um some bump outs so um uh Platte and Nevada Avenue on the corner on the school side corner.

So that would be the northeast corner.

They're replacing the curb ramps there as part of their development application in this to the blank of Palmer's uh General Palmer's horse uh yeah, that so that's a good, that's a good time to to bump that corner out uh and get those ramps in and bump that corner out.

Uh we're at it also at the intersection, there's a the refuge island, you know, not the refuge, the median that that's north of the intersection would be extended to provide a refuge area.

It's not intended for people to hang out there, but it's also just a little if you get caught in the middle of a area.

You get caught in the middle, you have a place to stay.

You have some protection.

So um and then um some potential some restriping on Boulder at Wasatch, because you know, east west, there are no left turn lanes there today, so you need to restripe both uh east-west to provide a left turn lane so you can set up that protected left turn phase that I had that we had mentioned earlier.

So I think that was I think I covered everything.

Um I'm just checking my notes to make sure.

Um also plat um at Weber and um Boulder.

Um, you know, that also would have the push buttons, but we would also explore the opportunity of an all red pedestrian phase.

So when there's a call, say during you know pick up and drop off, that signal could go all red to help facilitate movement, especially because that's where a lot of the pickup and drop-off activity will uh will occur.

So that's I think um checking my notes.

I think I got I think I covered, I think I covered everything.

So last question for you, Todd.

Um, in your opinion, with the closure boulder and these improvements, um, will will it be safer than it is now to uh for for students and teachers, anybody coming and going from Palmer High School, wherever they might be coming from.

Uh sure.

Yeah, you've heard me uh talk about safety up here a lot.

You turn you taught and I talked about risk and conflicts, um, all of those things.

If you can reduce risk, or if you can reduce the number of conflicts between vehicles and and vulnerable users, uh, uh, and you do that by reducing the conflicts that are there.

Um, you provide some infrastructure that reduces that uh the opportunity for a conflict.

You're inherently gonna have a safer system for your vulnerable users.

Okay.

Yeah.

Um, so I I I have to say before you sit down, and I know last week we were at man middle school, um, or maybe it was the week before I can't remember.

Yeah.

Um, kicking off more of these uh installing school zones.

But I I also have to say, and we have a lot of people listening right now.

It's unfortunate that we can only afford to do four to five a year because of our budget when in fact every single one of our school zones deserves that kind of infrastructure.

But um take note, folks.

Thank you, Todd.

I think that's all I have for you.

Um Chris, I'm gonna ask you to come back up and talk both about uh and I don't know if you have slides for this, but um we've talked about the concerns about the track and safety of students on the track and also about parking.

Um and uh I got a deeper dive on some of those parking numbers, and I would really appreciate it if you could share uh with my fellow council members as well as the public um some of those addressing some of those concerns because they were not addressed well before.

Okay, uh Chris Lieber, once again for the record.

I'll I'll uh talk about the track first, um, but I need to talk about that track in the context of future development plans, because that's where those details would show up.

Uh the land use plan, uh, that was approved uh by this body at the last uh hearing obviously included that track.

Uh it identified the track in the location along uh Nevada Avenue.

Um as we're progressing with design, we're looking at at more details to understand what that would be.

And again, this is specific to uh future development plan.

Um but we also took a look at the condition of the track and field as it relates to Platte uh today.

Uh as you know, that the track uh exists between um Boulder and uh and Platte.

Um the condition that uh would exist along Nevada is that uh you know we would have um uh parking remains along Nevada.

Uh there would be uh sidewalks, streetscape improvements uh with uh um street trees along that along that corridor.

Uh we would then have a what I'm gonna describe as a retaining wall, a low retaining wall, depending on where you are along that corridor.

Uh there would be a fence to kind of separate.

We want to make sure that we keep uh both students and soccer balls, uh, all of those things inside, and then you then you would encounter the track.

There's actually a buffer, then the track, and then you get to the field.

Um the distance is actually very similar uh to what we would what we have today uh on plat, but there are a couple of key advantages uh that we that we chatted about.

One of those is that the orientation of the field is parallel to Nevada if you're familiar with uh what exists today at the herb site.

Uh it's a shortened abbreviated field, and then there's one section that actually the if you will, the half field, the end zone is uh facing uh a plaque.

So when we think about how those get used from a sports perspective, it's actually better at reduced the number of errant balls, for instance, uh that would find their way um out uh into Nevada.

So from a design perspective, providing a great buffer on the development plan uh to uh provide that safe space, but still plenty of room for for pedestrians and uh keeping again students in those activities uh safe.

Um that will be part of those uh future uh future development plans and a lot of the thought that's gone into that.

And of course, I I get that again we're just talking about the vacation of a right away, but these other things are very intertwined.

And uh, Chris, you were able to show me some pictures, and I get that it's a future development plan.

Do you not have those to share today?

Um I guess I would I want to be very mindful of council's process.

Um that isn't an option if if council wanted to do that, but I guess I would ask for just a couple of minutes to load this if they're load those up if there's a desire for that.

But uh Madam President, I would look to the numbers on parking, which we heard before as well.

I I mean I I really have a lot of questions here.

Um I'm gonna look to the city attorney.

We will not be adding new information if it's an administrative um addition that's considered new information.

I would like to get that opinion from our city attorney, Stephanie.

Madam Chairman, Stephanie Boster is city attorney.

Um at the chair's uh decision, you can refuse additional information.

Uh otherwise you'll need to open up to public comment.

Um Councilman Hindum, that would be adding additional information.

So at this time, because this is not a hearing, and we're not opening up to a hearing.

Um we're not going to display those.

Okay.

Then Chris, could you move on and talk about the parking, uh, the numbers on the parking and uh again, this was information that was presented before, I believe.

I don't think there were any new slides in there, but uh you went into greater detail and talked to me about the uh all of the investigation you did on parking, and I think it would be helpful if you could review that material, please.

Uh yeah, certainly I can reiterate the numbers that we talked about at the last hearing.

Um the projected uh number of spaces that uh um are needed is approximately between 200 and 250.

Um again, that that 250 number is is consistent with what's been presented before.

Uh we've gone to great length to continue to look at those numbers, monitor the number of uh cars uh associated both with teachers uh with staff uh with students uh to kind of double triple quadruple check.

Um we use aerial photography again, also just to verify um those numbers, and we've done that over time.

And so we feel good about those.

That we know that that number is is uh solid.

Um I think I also mentioned at the last uh hearing that the district uh had been looking at uh additional uh parking, particularly during construction, knowing we've got construction equipment and and uh more pressure on the site, and so um uh the district has an agreement in place uh with First Methodist Church for use of those parking spaces.

Um but what we've realized in watching is that those spaces actually rarely get used because the demand just simply uh isn't uh isn't there.

So those uh same uh parking spaces and I might add um a significant portion of the on-site parking uh that is there today during construction um uh contractor ANP has had uh materials that they've had to stage there and move so though the availability of that parking is kind of come and gone, and still uh the uh availability of the we uh the students I'll call it the diag.

That's that section of Cheyenne Avenue that's been parked uh for um we've gone back at least 40 years, and we know that Palmer has been utilizing that between that and the east lots, um, that has been uh adequate, uh certainly adequate parking.

So we've been verifying that, we've continued uh to do that.

Um the exact number of parking spaces though will be something that will be determined on the development plan again.

Uh that's a that's a key uh key piece to that.

But those overall numbers again that we presented uh we feel very solid about.

Okay, feel solid about it.

Um, there's there's been sufficient parking for faculty for students who do drive.

There's been no complaints about parking in places where they people don't belong.

There's sufficient parking.

Not that I've not that I've received and uh does not appear to be the case.

Okay, so that moves on.

I think those are all of my questions for you, Chris.

Thank you.

Never say never though.

Um so now I I actually would like to talk about because I think this decision um uh we need clarity on the funding for all of this work.

Um, so I have uh I'm just gonna I'm just gonna read some of my questions because they're they're long.

This has to do with a strategy, and this is going to be for district eleven strategy regarding the bond.

Um when the initial vote took place in March, I expressed concern that the Palmer renovation is not currently funded.

In fact, even if the city votes to vacate Boulder today, the district still does not have the funding to complete the renovation and make full use of boulders closure for the entire development plan.

I'm not talking about one or one A, but the entire aspect of it.

As the district has said, they are relying on the passage of a substantial bond estimated at 775 million dollars.

Given how crucial the bond's passage passage is to this proposal, I would like to know more about the district's strategy to promote the bond to the voters.

For example, given the clear implications for Palmer, have any town halls been held at Palmer or with the Palmer community specifically?

I'd like that question answered.

If so, what was the turnout or response?

So if I could hear about that, please.

Good morning, Council Brandon Comfort.

I'm the deputy superintendent for School District 11.

Um Brendan, did you say?

Brandon company.

Brandon.

Uh, I'll start with your your uh ending question first, Ms.

Hendrick.

In fact, there was a a town hall that the Palmer staff hosted just last week uh all about the bond.

Um I would say it had attendance that is similar to a variety of our our bond events, which is uh decent for the community, but it didn't, it wasn't a full room.

So I want to be true.

How many people were at that May 19th meeting, Brandon?

Uh I don't know the exact number.

I can follow up and provide that information.

I've heard there were two people there, but I would like uh clarification.

Understand.

Uh, and I believe you had a question about uh overall engagement.

Um we've identified a community bond liaison at every single site, uh every single school in District 11.

Uh, they've been working to engage the community.

We had a board meeting that um I'm sure if you'd like, you can uh watch the recording of in which we presented uh some of those findings in terms of uh project selection.

I think something that's very unique about this bond initiative is that we've allowed each school community to make some decisions on how they want to see renovations happen at their school site.

Our communities have been very excited about that.

Uh and we had a a number of bond liaison show up to our last board work session and express that gratitude for both that uh decision making as well as the uh the engagement.

Um, in terms of continued engagement, uh, our board still has not decided whether to uh put a ballot on on this November's election.

Uh, and so we're still actively working with them on that.

Uh we're we're uh addressing the financial structure of the bond at a meeting tomorrow night with the board of education.

Um we will obviously, if the board were to consider uh putting that on the ballot, we would go through a really uh robust um communication with our larger community, but we feel really confident in the engagement that we have with all of our uh schools so far, so that the council's aware every single data point that we've utilized to identify allocations is completely uh public on every single school's website as well as the district's website.

As I said, every single school community has identified their project list, which is also uh fully transparent now on every school's website.

Um, and so anybody who's interested in understanding what's going to happen in their local school community can go to their that school's website or the district website and see that information.

Okay, so should the board decide not to go or not to go now, or should the bond fail, what is the district's contingency plan specifically for Palmer?

Yep, so uh I I believe you mentioned uh 1A and 1B.

Uh, the district has, we do have in our capital plan right now, uh, the completion of the track and field as well as the movement of students taking PE and health classes out of the ERPS location and up into the main campus.

And so, regardless of the bond, um, we will have the funding to complete the field, and then we will be removing students from daily activity.

There will still be baseball games and and all of those things on the ERPS campus.

But in terms of students having to take a PE class and cross two blocks to go down to ERPS, that will be moving up to the main campus, and we will be doing that work uh on the existing footprint of the primary campus.

Okay, so regardless of the bond, the district has the funds to ensure that on a daily basis, all student learning activity minus some out of school hours games that could potentially happen on ERPS field, they will not have to leave or cross over across uh Wasatch, I guess.

That's correct.

That's correct.

Okay.

So thank you.

Um, and now if you could clarify the district's intentions with regard to the lot on Wasatch that houses ERPS and gyms, the ERPS Gym and Field.

I've heard conflicting things over this the course of this project, and I really want to be super clear.

When Superintendent Gall initially introduced this project to the school board in a work session, he said we have three lots.

We believe there is a myriad of different answers that exist on any two of those different locations, in our best interest to think about which ones get us the highest return on investment.

If we were to say part with some of that land, there is interest for Area 3, ERPS Gym and Field, for what we call workforce development or affordable housing on behalf of developers for the city.

It is our largest lot, it is the lot closest to where the residential already exists.

It's probably the highest value piece of property that we have because it's almost twice as big as any other piece, and there is a lot of interest in the community right now for expanded affordable living options in the downtown area, unquote.

However, just last month, the district issued a newsletter that said, quote, there are no plans to sell the ERPS property for housing or any other purpose.

The master plan includes a full-size baseball field, softball field, and tennis courts on that site.

The plan was approved by the Board of Education.

It is our full intention to carry it forward.

A project of this scope is certainly dynamic with shifting priorities and goals, and I understand that things change over the course of a project like this.

So having said that, given the discrepancy between uh the superintendent's initial comments and last month's newsletter, is District 11 committed to not selling the ERPS block.

Yes, uh, as uh Council Member Hendrium, you noted on the master plan, it does show that that there will be athletic facilities uh on that lot.

Um I think it's really a matter of timing.

Uh, before there was the creation of an entire master plan, I believe the superintendent made that comment.

Since that date, we have had no conversations about the selling or donating or anything else with the ERP slot other than the fulfilling of the master plan, which includes ERPS.

Okay, so I took a look at the district's website last night to see if this was already addressed online, and in the FAQ section, it said I came across this text.

While it is too early in the process to determine the exact uses of all plots of land, we are committed to a transparent process where the community will be engaged in all decisions about the property use.

We currently have no plans to sell any land.

Our sole objective is to provide the best possible experience for Palmer students, staff, community.

We will only entertain future conversations about partnerships or alternative land use if it has demonstrable demonstrable benefit for the project and the students and staff of Palmer.

So this language and what you just said mirrors that very well.

That there are some circumstances in which the district might entertain the sale of land.

So again, I'm just gonna ask one more time.

If the bond doesn't pass, would the district entertain the sale of herbs for the remainder of the Palmer renovation on Weber?

The district is not interested in the district.

The district is only interested in the completion of the Palmer Master Plan.

Um as you mentioned, uh Councilmember Hendrium, a bond is required for parts of that.

Uh, but we we right now have no intent on doing anything other than providing great experiences for kids on all watts for Palmer.

Great, Brandon.

Thank you very much.

I have no further questions at this time, Madam President.

I have a motion from Councilman Line Member and the second from councilman Williams.

Let's vote.

Sorry, I'm not ready to vote.

I saw I didn't know there would be other questions.

We're done.

I have one more comment.

Oh, I thought you said you were finished.

Well, I was finished with my questions.

I didn't know if anybody else had to do that.

Okay, continue with your comment, Councilman Henjam.

Um, so again, I I want to say that I think the fact that this failed on a first vote actually hopefully has has made it better.

Um, we learned about improvements in a development plan still to come to us, um, that have been basically essentially promised here in this meeting.

Um, and I think that's important.

Um this project really matters enormously.

Um, Palmer is really a historic anchor.

We talked about preservation this morning, a historic anchor for our district and our city, and its students deserve facilities worthy of their potential and its legacy.

But I want to be clear about what a yes vote does and does not do.

We are voting on the disposition of a street and a path to a facility.

We are not, and actually, we cannot vote on what happens inside the building.

The environments that support meaningful learning and development are created by people, by the leadership of the building, and by the leadership of the district.

Walls, streets, and dollars are necessary, they are not sufficient.

Our community has witnessed students demonstrate courageous and respectful leadership during their graduation this this past week.

For those of you who watched it or heard about it, um, you should go check out a Fox 21 news story about it.

It's pretty incredible.

I won't share it right now.

But what they did, what those students did was they led by example that culture inclusion and how young people are treated matter as much as a structure or a policy.

Our students understand this, and so should the adults entrusted with their education.

So I am going to change my vote, and I'm going to vote in favor of this project because the concerns have been addressed.

The changes are necessary, and I will support that building, but things that happen inside that building matter as much if not more.

And a nice new building and a shining building may bring some more students for a few years, but it's what happens inside that building that really matters.

My vote is for the facility and its future.

It is not a comment on and definitely should not be read as resolving the separate but critically important question of district leadership and culture, which this community has rightfully raised, and which deserves its own sustained attention.

I will keep holding space for that larger truth.

Best facility in the district still depends entirely on the quality of leadership and culture within it.

We owe Palmer students both, and I intend to stay in the conversation.

Thank you.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

Just a few questions.

Um, I'm not sure who this should be directed to, but it I think our our staff presenter is probably the best person.

Um does the um what we're about to vote on, and the and the um development plan that was that we voted on last time, does it include a uh clause that the um right of way uh returns to the ownership of the city if D11 uh chooses to dispose of the property?

Thank you.

That's one of the questions, uh good morning, Ryan T.

For Teller Urban Planning Manager.

The draft motion in your packet, and actually the motion that is still on the table for reconsideration, does include three conditions.

One of which is that should the school district uh dispose of their campus and the right-away specifically that it can be returned or would be returned to the city.

Of course, the city has the ability to um uh refuse that return if we were to decide that it was uh not in the city's interest to uh regain that right away, but when you say can be or or would be um it's our decision whether or not we would receive it back, but they would be required, we would have right of first refusal.

Essentially, yes, okay.

Um another question, and you might understand this one, Ryan, or be able to answer it, is there was discussion about well, it's not really practical to do uh a bridge over Boulder, and we can't do a tunnel because that would be too deep.

What is the level of the current tunnel that's under Boulder is is in relation to the gas line, which I think was the reason that the tunnel would have to be so deep is to make it impractical.

I'd have to defer that that question to perhaps D11 or Chris.

Does anyone uh maybe does Chris know?

Does anyone know?

Uh Chris Lieber with NES once again.

Um it's my understanding that that tunnel um goes underneath all of those existing utilities.

Um I would I've been in that been in that tunnel, has have have countless students.

Um, one of the big challenges that that does uh create uh currently uh that tunnel is not ADA accessible, and again, once you're in the tunnel, you're in the tunnel, and that's fine.

The challenge then is uh how students um uh right now would get to what there's an auxiliary gym on the north side, and then kind of the academics uh uh on the south the south end.

Um, what I've seen and witnessed there, uh, and I again you have other experts here, but it it it is a bottleneck in the way that students traverse from one end of the campus uh uh to the other.

And it's because of, if you will, this both the size of that, but also the students having to go down the stairs.

Uh if you can imagine all of those students heading down the stairs, going underneath and then climbing back up those stairs uh on the other side, and while adding an elevator uh would help from an ADA perspective, it does not change the dynamics of how that how the school um functions and the movements that would really need need to take place.

So that's I don't know if I've act accurately, I may look to others in the in the district to more accurately describe that.

Uh our school principal.

Uh is that accurate, that's accurate.

It's currently not used, right?

No, it it is currently used.

Okay.

How many students, you know, uh go through the tunnel in a day?

Just roughly, you'll need to come to the mic for to be on the record, please.

And state your name.

Good morning, Christa Burke.

Principal Palmer.

So currently on the north side of the tunnel, we have our um, we have some PE classes in the aux gym.

I think there are two.

Um, and then we also have all of our culinary arts classes and all of our interpersonal relationships and child development classes.

So 180 per course selection.

Like I don't have the exact numbers because I didn't know that question was gonna be asked, but all of those students traverse the tunnel every single day.

And then our cafeteria is temporarily in the aux gym, and so some students use the tunnel, others go above ground um and cross next to the construction zone to go to the the cafeteria right now.

So I couldn't give you the exact number, but everybody who goes to culinary arts uh it is ADA accessible on the south end, uh, but once you get to the north end, you can't get upstairs to the aux gym.

You have to go outside.

Okay.

You know, we heard uh testimony or or just um statements from prior students that are adults, you know, adults now, saying how for them it was never a problem, and and uh they thought it was fine, but but thank you.

Um and then the next question might you know I might look over at the attorney.

We we've heard that uh hey, we won't have any new information today because then it would create a new hearing, we'd have to open it for public comment.

It seemed to me that a lot of the information we received about crosswalks and bump outs and uh uh protected left-hand turns and no more right hand turns was all new information uh to this council.

Um so that I'm a little confused on that.

If we were not going to have new information, it seemed like I heard a lot of things I never heard at the first uh hearing, Madam President.

Through you to council member Donaldson, Stephanie Boster's city attorney.

I apologize for the confusion.

What I meant to say is there should be no additional evidence offered to the council during this matter unless the council wants to open up for a public hearing.

Uh the council can ask questions of individuals, including the district, and receive that information.

Okay.

Um then my question that'll follow from that information about the traffic is you know, taking away uh right-hand turn lanes, and I'm trying to find Mr.

Frisbee, he's out there somewhere.

Uh, over there.

Um, please.

Uh if we take away right hand turn lanes, we remove boulder, we narrow the road, we now have timed left turns.

That's more than when we discussed levels of service at our previous hearing.

Some of that wasn't in there.

So, what impact will that have on the fancy word is level of service, but to everybody in this room what it means is how long you're gonna sit at a light.

Uh are you gonna be able to drop your kids off there and get out of there uh quickly, or is it gonna get very bogged down with these safety measures, which are going, I think they're gonna slow things down.

Uh again, Todd Frisbee City Traffic City Traffic, City Traffic Engineering.

Uh yes, those uh uh when you add left turn phase, you're you're correct, you would add some delay in your travel.

Um, these interceptions are relatively um have a lot of capacity built within them already.

Uh and so adding left turn phases uh will continue to maintain uh that acceptable level of service that we try to achieve uh at our uh at our centralized intercessions.

Um they um uh these are types of improvements that we do all over.

Uh and um uh and uh and they um uh you can uh because of the capacity we have at this intersection, you can get a at a level of safety plus provide, um still maintain acceptable level level of operations, including removing the right-hand turn lanes.

We all are going down to one lane.

We're only uh which right?

We're only removing one right turn lane, uh, and that is at uh Nevada Platte intersection.

There's a little left turn pocket on that corner of the school on that northeast corner, it's less than 50 feet.

Um and so it um uh losing that right turn lane will not have uh adverse effect on operations.

Okay, and then another um traffic question is the we're expecting growth downtown later on today.

We're gonna vote on on an elevate downtown plan, which one of its primary things is increasing density, more density, taller buildings, more people downtown.

So traffic, I imagine, I mean, it's just very reasonable to think on plat is going to every year will get higher and higher.

Is that forecasted?

Have you looked at those numbers for increasing traffic downtown?

Uh uh uh in the traffic study, we had a uh forecasted year.

Uh we looked at traffic in the next uh um I can't remember the uh I can't remember the forecaster, but we looked at an increase in traffic on some of these roads um over um uh in our in the operational analysis, and we still were even with some of the increased traffic in the area, we were still seeing acceptable levels of service.

Can you do you know what the projected growth downtown was projected to be in those studies?

Uh I don't recall off the top of my head, um, I'd have to go back and look at the study and see what we projected, but it was somewhat I mean, I'll have to I don't want to say it from I don't want to say it didn't be wrong, so I'd have to go back and look at the study and see what it would okay.

It would be it would be useful for us to well, maybe the decision is cooked up here anyway, but uh it would be useful to know that because 10 or 15 years from now when uh there are traffic jams downtown and you can't flow through as you can now.

We might look back on this and wish this council had been a little more um slower and thoughtful about uh this decision for that very reason.

If if growth wasn't projected downtown, I think you could look at the numbers we have now and say, well, this is how it's gonna be.

But I did we double in uh apartment units downtown in the last couple of years?

It's grown quite a bit.

Uh I think that's that is the future.

Let me look, Todd, just see if I have any other question for you so I don't have to call you back up.

It's okay.

Um would you be the one to talk about parking?

That's really gonna be uh someone else.

I only do traffic, I don't do parking.

So do you know have have students been injured walking from campus uh down to the current athletic fields by vehicles?

That I don't know.

Okay.

Yeah.

Because I think it it it matters if students are being hurt, you know, uh going to lunch and heading into uh cross um to the west versus what we're really going to eliminate is just that boulder uh crossing um and maybe some traffic down to the athletic fields.

But okay, thank you, Todd.

Yeah, I know the crash statistics show some pedestrian crashes, uh, but um I don't know if they were a student or not.

Okay.

So we received an email uh yesterday from a D11 voter of more than 50 years, and her son graduated from Palmer, and she and her husband have always supported Palmer with votes and uh volunteering um but she had three concerns, one of which the first was traffic, not traffic, parking.

Um Chris, could you could you answer a couple questions on parking?

She says that uh in all the presentations, essentially parking does not appear on the um images or your uh drawings.

Is that and that in it they've been told from the beginning?

Um the current phase of master planning process does not yet delve into specifics of parking.

Parking's a consistent focus for the design team, it will be thoroughly addressed in the next stages.

Um, but she says that just hasn't happened yet.

And she also again raises.

Well, let's just start there.

Do are there are the parking areas now depicted on uh uh the drawings of the project?

Um again, Chris Lieber, uh the uh councilmember Donaldson, the the parking and the scenarios for um one A, one B, and for phase two were identified as part of the land use uh submittal that was approved uh by this body at the last at the last hearing.

And so as you can imagine that those parking scenarios change as the footprint on the campus um also uh changes, and so that that commitment is there, it's part of that land use plan and it's identified uh with uh kind of with with the phasing um that's that's been proposed.

At the end, like when this is if this goes through as uh um you have plans, how many parking spaces will be on this closed campus?

Uh let me see if I have that exact number again.

Um the target that we are shooting for is more than 250, and um we are able to uh 250 based on both on campus as well as using the Cheyenne diagonal lot that has been used again for um for decades.

Um and uh so the existing uh lots, there's a lot on the north end uh of the of the property uh today.

That lot will continue to function both in uh with one A.

Um, there'll be a portion of that that parking lot would be reconfigured with one B because you can imagine we now have the track uh and the field.

Uh the team is looking at what opportunities there may be for some spaces on the very, very north uh end.

Um but functionally uh there are two parking lots that the district has had for uh quite some time that are just on the east side of Weber.

Um those are primarily uh staff and staff parking.

Those would continue to be there and be available, and that's part of the reason for these pedestrian improvements as well to be able to get teachers and students onto campus into the main entrance that now will be at the corner to Boulder and Weber, and then the other larger uh lot um, and we refer to it that way, and the the city does as well, um, but it's the diagonal parking that exists uh there again at at Cheyenne.

And when you pool all of those parking spaces together, uh you end up with a number north of the 250.

And I I apologize, I don't have the that uh that final number in front of me.

But the two large areas you're describing are not on the campus, they're on the other side of Weber, uh right.

How many spaces do you plan on campus at completion?

At completion we have easy.

Do you have got oh thank you?

All right.

We'd have 262 um spaces when we call these on site, that includes the two parking lots to the east.

I'd have to do some math backing that out.

There are 85 spaces immediately across the street on Weber, but we consider those all, if you will, on campus, if that makes sense.

Well, if I make sure I'm gonna make sure you're answering your question.

But they're on the east side of Weber, so okay.

There's a campus is multiple blocks is how we we we view that.

Certainly we consider ERPS still part of that that campus.

Um because there is some uh parking available there, 33 spaces on ERPS, um, and those would be reconfigured with the baseball uh fields.

Um we have the Cheyenne Boulevard, we have the two parking lots uh to the east, and then we'll have some parking that will be determined in the development plan scenario uh for phase two on the very north end uh of the site, and um so and again that is in excess of the two hundred and fifty spaces that we have deemed as being uh needed.

Yeah, just for my thinking.

I mean, the the motivator here seems to be uh boulder is dangerous uh for students to cross.

Let's find a way where they don't have to cross it, but we'll have the parking on the other side of of Weber and uh it would be very good to know but we're gonna increase the the parking on this closed campus so that that the they don't have to leave but they I think a lot of students leave at lunch voluntarily to go other places so they voluntarily run that risk so I'm I'm just I'm not um it's not a decider for me that we can eliminate one street when we accept these other streets um we heard a lot of uh this well we heard from Richard Scorman last time and he he kind of spoke on behalf of a lot of small businesses downtown on the west side of Boulder who feel like it's gonna have an impact um on their businesses to close boulder just because less traffic um has there do you have any additional information on that has there been discussion with uh with Richard or these other business owners no but let me be very clear about the process um that that we went through um that included 18 months of master plan effort with invitations for participation uh the district also went door to door uh uh to uh encourage uh participation to let businesses know uh about about the opportunity and then um um uh furthermore uh the construction company uh an p has been reaching out on a regular basis uh wanting to know how is construction impacting you and your and your business it's it's just part of the sound uh construction uh practice all of those have been uh have happened and have occurred and the primary focus of that has largely been on that section of boulder and on sections of of tajone so that effort has been going on um for quite some time and I want to be clear about about that.

And then I think the final my final questions will be really for the D11 um representatives and and that would be about the bond and sir if you would come back up there you know you mentioned how you have bond representatives or or um I don't think I remember the term right um at each school did you have that at the last bond um that D11 put on the ballot did you have that kind of effort again branded comfort uh with the district uh we did not uh a couple of things we learned from the last bond um that that are we're doing differently this time a in the last bond not every school received allocation so there were kind of winners and losers that's uh not true in this bond allocation every single D11 school um will benefit uh we were also closing campuses we're not doing that um and uh we have turned over a good portion of the money to the each local school community to decide how that would happen that didn't happen in the 21 bond the district said here's the facilities um scores here here are the projects that will happen of course we are doing some projects that that we say need to happen but largely uh schools are are in control of what's happening on their campus and what was the size of that last bond that um I I apologize we 425 I believe was the number okay and this one would be for 775 uh potentially the the board is still also considering other numbers but that is the the maximum number under consideration okay and the funds that you have now you've described it you can still build the track um you can do a partial uh fit the phase one and one a is that right that's correct okay so there have been questions why does why does city council need think they need to vacate this road um this soon when the the rest of it can't be done, but I guess you know your view is you can build the track uh which you need this space for the vacation of the road.

That's correct.

Okay, okay, thank you.

And then uh you know, my my only other question would be for our city attorney.

Is there a wiser way for council to allow them to use boulder um than to vacate it?

An easement or is do you feel this is no legally this is a smart way to do it uh with that um qualifier that we will the only way we get it back is if they sell the property or no longer want it.

If they decide, you know, you know what, we really we're gonna keep the athletic fields where they are.

We're not we're gonna get rid of the road, but we're not gonna use it.

We we do not have a uh the ability to recover the road.

Is that right?

Madam President, through you to Councilmember Donaldson, Stephanie Boster, city attorney.

I would defer to the planning director on this issue, but I uh because he knows the project better than I do since I'm new, but I cannot think of another wiser way to accomplish what the council has indicated it wants to accomplish.

Okay, um thank you, madam attorney and um Madam President.

You know, I I voted no for concerns about the local businesses.

We really didn't talk about the medical transport up Boulder yet.

It's a one one one straight shot to the hospital.

We heard um descriptions from from um Richard Scorman that he had had patients or or patrons uh customers at Poor Richards who had heart attacks, had strokes, and were transported to the hospital, and minutes matter, um, in that in that situation.

Um my vote will remain the same today.

Thanks.

Councilman Henjam.

Um thank you, Madam President.

Uh one clarification.

Um the gas lines do need to be moved.

Is that correct?

Um Travis.

I think they've pushed off to the phase.

Well, we have preliminary designs to move those.

Okay, and and who's paying for that movement?

Uh the school.

School will pay.

Okay, just wanted to make sure that that was clear and on the record.

Um, also, I just want to state my understanding is that you know, we think about parking at Palmer years ago, the population at Palmer was about 2,000.

It's now more like 1100, I think, to 1400.

So it's a smaller population, and I do think that um has a significant impact on parking.

Um, I guess my last question, and I don't know if I have any council members who are willing to answer it, but it's from my own fellow council members, and that is why did we not want to hear this additional information and have a um revisit as a public hearing?

Um anyway, with that I'm done.

Thanks.

Are there any other comments from the dais?

Councilman Donaldson?

Uh Madam President.

Just one final question for for Ta, Mr.

Frisbee.

And um this one has to do with the uh my favorite statue in the city, statue of General Palmer, which I as an appreciating as a person who appreciates our history.

I love where it sits.

Does anything with your traffic calming uh changes for the high school suggest that um we should move that statue?

I again uh council uh top frisbee city traffic engineering.

Uh no, nothing in our analysis would suggest that we should move the statute.

Okay, that that I'm happy to hear that, Todd.

Thanks.

Seeing no other comments from the dias, we have a motion from Councilman Lyon Weber and a second from Councilman Williams to consider the ordinance vacating the public right away on East Boulder Street located between North Nevada Avenue and North Weber Street.

Let's vote.

And then motion passes six to two.

Moving on to item 10A under new business.

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

A resolution approving an amendment to the home ARP allocations plan for submittal to the U.S.

Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Amy, can you give us one second while we wait for councilmember's Lee?

I can.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay.

Good morning, Amy.

Good morning.

Good morning, President Crow Iverson, members of City Council.

I'm Amy Cox, Chief Housing and Homelessness Response Officer, and I'm here today to present to you for approval the home ARP allocation plan substantial amendment.

I presented this to City Council at work session on May 11th.

Today we're presenting the plan for approval.

This item requires a public hearing, and I see several people in the audience who are here to speak on the item.

And I want to thank you all for being here.

This substantial amendment was also presented to our community development advisory committee on May 19th, and it was unanimously approved by that committee after extensive discussion.

Both uh council members Henjam and Gold participated in that meeting, while uh President Crow Iverson and Councilman Lyme Weber and I were in Denver at a HUD regional meeting.

So today I'm going to give you a quick overview.

Let's see, maybe.

There we go.

Explain why an amendment is needed, review the proposed amendment, review the process and timeline, respond to any questions you have, and then offer the opportunity to hear from the public.

So what is home ARP?

The city received about 5.75 million through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021.

These funds are administered through the home partnerships investment partnerships program.

Program was established to address the impact of COVID 19 on housing stability and homelessness across the United States.

Funds can be addressed homelessness assistance and supportive services, including rental housing, non-congregate shelter.

Funds must be fully expended by September 30th, 2023, and the projects fully closed out.

All HUD program funds require an allocation or action plan, and the home ARP plan was part of the 2021 Annual Action Plan, and this requires um changes to the plan require a substantial amendment.

That process is outlined in our citizen participation plan, requires public comment, a public hearing, and city council approval.

So eligible activities for the funds are affordable rental housing development and support.

This could be multifamily, single family, transitional permanent rental assistance.

We can provide tenant-based rental assistance, supportive services, which includes things like case management, housing navigation, there are nonprofit um uh there's non-congregate shelter acquisition and development.

This is emergency shelter, but for the home ARP program, these shelter, you these shelter facilities require private kitchens and bathrooms, and we'll talk about that a little bit more.

Uh, nonprofit operating and capacity building.

The capacity building is specifically only allowable for projects that are receiving home ARP funds.

And then, of course, administration administration and planning to administer the program.

These programs, this program requires fairly significant compliance and ongoing monitoring.

The populations eligible for this program are folks who are experiencing literal homelessness, either sheltered or unsheltered, folks at risk of homelessness, those fleeing domestic violence, and other populations needing assistance to prevent homelessness.

This fourth category is a catch-all for definitions in the federal regulation, other definitions and other programs.

Currently, our home ARP plan uh allocates funds to the development of affordable rental housing and the acquisition and development of non congregate shelter.

We budgeted the full cap for administration and planning and nonprofit capacity building.

I'm going to talk about discuss this more in an upcoming slide.

So I'm gonna move on to the need to keep us moving.

So, why are we seeking an amendment?

I want to start with that.

The fact that the environment has changed since 2021 and the end of COVID.

We're experiencing a rollback of federal programs.

One of those programs is the emergency housing voucher program, which was initially funded through 2030 and will now end at the end of this year, December 2026.

There are approximately 80 households in that program who will be losing their housing vouchers early and who have no other rental subsidy or support.

And without support, these folks will likely become homeless again.

This amendment is only possible because we did not identify projects in other categories.

A medical acuity group met for nearly two years to look at the possibility for non-congregate shelter, either for medical respite or for specialized populations and could not come up with a project with utilizing these funds.

The funding was not significant enough, and the requirements for non-congregate shelter to have a private restroom and kitchen facilities in each of the units made it very cost prohibitive.

We also found that there was limited capacity for affordable rental housing.

Federal funds are typically gap funds for these projects, and so when a developer approaches us, they usually have their whole financial package that stack completely worked out and they're coming to us for gap funding.

We've had many conversations over the last couple of years with developers about utilizing these funds for uh for housing programs to serve people experiencing homelessness.

And about a year ago, we connected with family life services to discuss a transitional housing project that they're uh they're proposing to build on their campus or on their site, increasing from nine to 19 units.

And Tanya Lark is here today to talk about that project.

Um just to put it in context, there's about 1.9 million dollars available in this proposal, and that's about 20% of their project costs.

So, what we're proposing is projects that meet a demonstrated community need, have the pro the capacity to deliver on schedule, and will efficiently utilize these funding, these funds.

So we're moving removing funding for non-congregate shelter, reducing funding for rental housing development, increasing funding for tenant-based rental assistance, updating the methods of project selection to include direct awards, and um limiting uh doing a limitation for that qualifying.

This is very HUD speak, the qualifying population number three, fleeing domestic violence.

We have to do a limitation for that.

I want to focus here just too on the updating the method of project selection to include direct awards.

The plan requires that we identify how we're going to issue or release the dollars, and we know in this case, for example, that um with tenant-based rental assistance, the Colorado Springs Housing Authority is the most proficient and has the most capacity to do this work, and so a direct award makes sense.

We can still do competitive awards, but in order to issue a direct award, we have to identify that in the plan.

This limitation for QP3 is also a little bit um nuanced.

We're required with home ARP funds to make our projects available to everybody who qualifies unless we establish a limitation on those projects.

So this enables the city to limit the affordable housing funds to projects that serve people fleeing domestic violence with children.

This specifically ties to the Family Life Services Project, but we've also included additional data in the substantial amendment that looks at the rates of domestic violence in our community and the lack of resources available to mostly women and children, but certainly uh there are other populations, but mostly women and children in our family.

So we're establishing that limitation for the for these projects.

So this is what it looks like.

Uh the amended plan, increased funding for supportive services to support case management during the two years of rental assistance that we're going to talk about here for that tenant-based rental assistance, eliminating acquisition and development of non-congregate shelter and using those funds to increase funding available for rental assistance.

We're reducing the amount of funding available for affordable rental housing development to match the project that we've identified.

We're concluding some operating funds for the selected projects.

These are funds in addition to direct services that help the nonprofits operate.

We're eliminating that nonprofit capacity building because it was limited only to folks who are receiving home ARP funding.

And so this gives us just more flexibility to support nonprofits who are doing this work.

We're also reducing administration and planning.

We typically maximize the caps on this, but uh this puts more money actually into direct programs.

We will we intend to hire a staff person using these dollars to manage to monitor and manage this project.

So what process we went through?

We had a 30-day public comment period that ran through today.

Um we received four comments, and those comments all supported uh all supported additional rental assistance and expanded access to housing and supportive services for people experiencing homelessness and people at risk of homelessness in our community, and we're seeing substantial increases in the number of people who are seeking prevention services in our community.

We presented to you at a work session on the 11th.

Um today is the vote in public hearing.

If assuming this is approved, we will move to submit the documents to HUD and begin the contracting process.

Councilman Lineweber.

Hello, Amy.

How are you today?

I'm good.

Hey, just a couple of clarifying questions just because of there's big words involved.

Non-congregate um shelter.

Um I want to make sure that people are clear that what that what is that?

We're not talking about um Springs Rescue Commission, correct?

No, that's a congregate facility.

Okay.

Non-congregate congregate shelters, private rooms for people, and it's typically for special populations or people with special needs.

Um, and we saw this a lot more during COVID with the there was either social distancing or more emphasis on non-congregate settings.

What was interesting about home ARP is that it required each of those rooms had to have a private bathroom and a private kitchen.

So typically you'll see you'll see just a private space with those shared facilities.

This is because it was expected that over time these could be converted to either transitional or permanent supportive housing and had to meet housing quality standards.

And uh yeah, this is this is part of the whole navigating HUD.

I think when people see the word shelter, they just kind of think of the broader sense of shelters, and I wanted to make sure that was clarified that people understood what we were talking about.

So this we're we're not reducing funding that or funding stream or anything for any of the current shelters that we have.

No, and I thank you for asking that question because you we have other sources of funds that are more flexible to support shelter.

So it's not that we've abandoned any idea of supporting medical respite or specialized shelter.

Um, but community development block grant is a much if we're going to use a federal source, would be a much more flexible source of funding for those.

And I and lastly, I just want to commend you for really looking at ways of taking taxpayers' money and using it the most efficient way possible to address homelessness.

And and that really kind of leads to the next question.

When I want to make sure people understand that we're not talking chronic homelessness necessarily here.

We're talking about people that got evicted from their apartment.

They they may have no drug addiction, they may have no mental health, none of those things.

They just have some challenges in their life, and they need some kind of assistance, right?

Well, we're talking about all populations, councilman.

Uh, you know, but yes, in this case, these are folks who have um been housed through this program and are facing fairly imminent um displacement.

Well, I think the key, the my key question around that is when we talk about chronic homelessness, we tend to want to have wraparound services and those kind of things, not just put them into a space and and wish them good luck.

Yeah, and in this case, we're also providing wraparound services for folks to transition them.

So the goal here is to transition people who are in housing utilizing these vouchers to self-sufficiency, and that's going to require a period of rental assistance as well as supportive services, help people with health issues, you know, get jobs, housing navigation, all of that.

So they um I probably went over that with past that too quickly because I was trying to get through this for the hearing, but that is the goal of the program, is to move people into self-sufficiency who are currently utilizing these resources, and that is a priority of the federal government, as we heard when we were in Denver.

Yes, we did.

Movement is important, and I think that's the key thing to kind of highlight here is that we're looking to find ways to get movement, not just to stick someone in a room and wish them luck.

Right.

And so although there are a segment of population that just need rental assistance, you know, and that they just they're capable.

They just are they have a time in their life where they they've fallen under financial hardship, right?

And so this is all types of people that are in homelessness, and it needs to be kind of I think determined that there are different situations for different folks.

So there are many different pathways for many different people.

Thank you.

Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh, you said the funding has to be expended by the end of the year.

This funding has to be expended and uh by 2030.

Oh, 2030.

Yeah.

The vouchers uh the vouchers will end by the end of the year, depending on when people came in.

Thank you.

Did you have did you say you had?

Are you finished or did you have a I'm finished?

Um, but there's a need for public hearings and public comment.

Okay.

I have one signed up for public comment, and that is Beth Ralstad.

Thank you.

Good morning, Madam President and Council members.

I'm Beth Rolstad, CEO of Homeward Pikes Peak, and I'm here to voice my support for this home ARP plan.

Um, as Amy gave you some backstory on some of the households that would benefit from this, the um emergency housing vouchers that were issued during COVID were extremely helpful.

We lifted 101 households out of homelessness uh in a year.

The challenge was is that those households did not all get case management services with the way those EHVs were funded.

So some households, I believe we have about 30 that have left the program, some because they um graduated, so to speak, they had good life events and they moved on and didn't need assistance, but others um may have had negative consequences and left the program.

The remaining uh 70 to 80 households need case management support, and that's why I think this tenant-based rental assistance program will be so beneficial for those households who are going to receive case management services to get the support, whether it might be helping them through workforce development or through behavioral health issues.

So I just wanted to voice my support for this plan and tell you how important this tenant bait wrestle assistance program will be.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I have no one else signed up in support or um against 10 A.

Count Council President.

We did have one another, just like uh we had a last minute sign up.

We did have one other last minute request to speak on this item.

Okay, please come forward.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning, President Crow Iverson and City Council members.

Uh, I'm Artie Lale.

I'm the executive director of the Carl Springs Housing Authority.

Um, we are definitely in support of this resolution.

Uh, Amy, who also serves on our board, and I began discussing uh the problem with these emergency housing vouchers.

They were delayed in deployment as everything was uh from the federal government, and so they they weren't deployed as quickly as possible.

We like to see people on these EHVs get about two years to three years so that they can remedy their situations.

Um, as uh Councilmember Line Weber had pointed out, most of the of the folks that work uh with us on these EHVs, um, are not chronically homeless, they are situationally homeless.

Divorce, sometimes domestic violence, and other issues that uh, you know, and a lot of times related to COVID and the economic turndown uh during that phase of their lives.

Having not gotten enough time on these vouchers, they have not yet turned it around.

And with the funding having been cut prematurely, we needed a stopgap measure to get them through the remainder of their uh time to recover and get their self-sufficiency.

Uh TBRA is a perfect use of this.

In fact, we just finished up a program uh with home funding through the city.

Uh we have been very successful with Tibur funding in the past, and I think this is a great stopgap measure to preventing these folks from returning to a state of homelessness and helping them to get uh completed through their cycle of self-sufficiency.

That's all thank you.

Thank you.

I see no other comments from the dais.

I will reiterate that councilman Line Weber and myself did go to Denver with Amy last week, and this falls right in line.

Even though a lot of that funding is to the continuum of care COC, we are doing exactly what the administrative wants us to do in checking off the boxes, and I do think um it's a very good plan moving forward as well to keep as many people off the streets as possible is the most affordable way.

And having said that, I have a motion from Councilman Gold and a second from Councilman Rainey.

Let's vote.

Moving on to item 10B.

Councilman Risley.

Thank you, madam president.

Um, I would like to recuse myself from this item as well because my firm is the architect of record for this project, and I uh although I could be um what's the word?

Impartial.

I uh don't want there to be any impropriety uh perception of impropriety.

So I'll recuse myself.

Thanks.

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

A resolution planning petition for annexation of the area known as PTAA edition number one annexation consisting of 14.12 acres to be in substantial compliance with section 31-12-1071 CRS and setting a hearing date of July 14, 2026 for the Colorado Street City Council to consider the annexation of the area.

Good morning, Chris.

Good morning.

Uh Chris Sullivan, senior planner for the Land East Review Division.

I am the project planner on this application.

Um, just to kind of start this off.

This is a resolution to set a hearing date uh for July 14th, 2026, uh, and also identifying that the application is in substantial compliance with uh Colorado revised statute 31 12107.

Um I will note that this is essentially a redo uh of a city council decision on this item.

PTAA wasn't in front of this body in September of 2025.

Um, this was an annexation for 14.12 acres to establish a future school site under the MXM zone.

Um part of the due diligence that city staff does uh through the petition and review of the application is to ensure that all of the area within the annexation boundary is owned, uh, that there is a petition for all owners within that boundary.

Um at the time of petition, um, all of the site was owned by SSS Education Corporation.

Uh, but sometime during the review of the related entitlements, uh, there was an exchange of property.

Property was given from the property owner, SSS Corporation, to the City of Colorado Springs uh for uh dedication to mark shuffle right-of-way improvements.

That was not caught in the application.

So essentially in January, the applicant went to finalize the documents, get it recorded, and we invalidated that application due to this issue.

All of the owners, including the city, need to be uh a part of the annexation uh process and uh provide petitions.

Uh through communication with city attorney's office as well as public works.

Uh Public Works has uh provided a ratification document acknowledging the change in ownership that they are now the owner of a 20-foot strip along the frontage of the property, as well as uh they provided a petition uh to be included on this application.

Um I will note that um uh the key takeaways on this uh moving forward, you'll essentially look at just the annexation file only.

The land use plan zone uh establishment will not change.

Uh it's still gonna be a future school site, still gonna be under the MXM zone.

Uh city provided that ratification document and petition uh to legitimize the application yet again.

New legal descriptions are provided uh based on ownership.

So for SSS Corporation, the city, and then an overall boundary of the site, uh the annexation agreement will be updated and provided to you at the public hearing, uh fully executed by staff and the uh applicant.

Uh and the major change in that is going to be the legal description to redefine what is essentially owned by SSS Corporation.

And then I will also note that the annexation plat will also be updated to redefine the internal boundaries to show that city owns this little bit of P this little bit of a property.

SSS Corporation owns this chunk of property.

This is the overall boundary, and then there'll be updated signature blocks to include the city on that document.

Uh so this is more or less a cleanup job uh for your awareness.

Um typically, yeah, you don't usually see the this resolution, but here we are.

If you have any questions, I'm here, otherwise put it back to you.

I don't see any questions at that time.

Just keep in mind we are voting to set the hearing date for July 14th, 2026.

I have a motion from Councilman Henjam and a second from Councilman Rainey.

Let's vote to set the hearing date.

Motion passes a to zero.

Thank you, Chris.

Moving on to item 10 C.

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

An ordinance submitting section 1404 code adopted by reference of part 14 building codes of article four development standards and centers, chapter seven, unified development code of the code of the city of Congress rings 2001, is amended pertaining to the adoption of the Pikes Week Regional Building Code standards for single exits and stairways.

Good morning, Dan.

Good mountain.

Good morning, uh Council uh President Lennet Crow Iverson's fellow members of council.

Um so we'll kind of go through a brief overview.

We do have uh kind of subject matter experts for uh from the Picate Geek Regional Building Department, uh Roger Lovell, as well as Chris Cooper, City Fire Marshal, here to speak on certain aspects depending on the line of questioning here today for this ordinance.

Um as we kind of talked through during work session.

This is an update to code uh with respect to some recent uh state legislation that uh mandated for communities of a certain size uh to uh adjust or modify their local building code to account for a potential construction method option uh for structure of a certain size to have a single exit and single uh staircase in their design method.

Um we do have as part of an overall process in the planning department.

We're going through that uh phase to update of our codes, which you're seeing uh will be seeing here later this year, but independent of that, uh, as is this item, we're doing um standalone ordinances to uh identify or that have identified aspects of the code that need to be updated on a more pressing uh fashion.

Lost the quick.

Councilman Donaldson?

Yeah.

Just a just a couple of background questions.

Um Daniel.

Uh you you said this is this, we're doing this because the state legislature passed a law, and we essentially say we should do this for cities of a certain size.

Do you recall how big?

100,000.

100,000.

Anything over 100,000.

And you said uh oh, and this will require or or I don't know how you said it, but single stairway.

What is our what is our rule now?

Um I'm gonna pause that question and maybe have Roger speak to that more specifically, but if I can run through the presentation, I think he'll be able to answer that and other related questions pretty easily.

Is that okay?

Okay, yeah, I but just to set it for people who might be watching currently, what it is it's a reduction in the number of uh stairways required.

And uh thank you for letting me get that in there.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Not a problem.

Um so yeah, as as noted, uh, this was a House Bill 251273 that specified uh jurisdictions of a certain size has to or should be modify their building codes to allow for a certain construction method with reduced number of entrances uh and staircases.

Um there are still uh within that legislative uh parameter or envelope uh life safety requirements that those new modified structures will have to adhere to.

Uh, as I said, we have Fire Marshal Cooper here to be able to speak to that, as well as some design and construction uh methods that are that need to be accounted for.

Um with this proposed ordinance, um, you know, we are looking at having the adoption of it because it is adopted.

The building code locally in Colorado Springs is adopted as part of the unified development code.

It would have an effective date if passed uh December 1st, 2027.

Um, and with there, I'm gonna pause my I think I said that correctly.

Well, I'm gonna pause here and have uh Roger speak to you kind of the details and specificity of the actual language regarding the construction method.

Thank you, Dan.

Roger Lovell Building Official for Pikes Peak Regional Building.

Dan covered uh a lot of it here again.

This applies to 13 municipalities throughout the state of Colorado with populations uh over a hundred thousand.

Um during the during the work session on May 11th, there were a couple of life safety concerns that came up as part of that work session.

Um, I worked directly with uh President Pro Tem Reasley and Chris Cooper to try and come up with some amendments to alleviate some of those life safety concerns, and just to speak to what those amendments are.

They're not included on on this version in front of you, but um the allowance for type 4 construction has been eliminated.

Type 4 construction is is what's known as heavy timber construction, and it's not a widely used form of construction anyway.

I I really honestly can't remember the last time I saw a building constructed with type four construction, so I don't expect that to have a very significant impact, but it does limit the construction to type one and two construction, which is entirely non-combustible construction, so the combustible elements inside of the building would be primarily the furnishings, furnishings and some of the finishings.

One of the things that came up at uh work session was um the possibility when you have a single stair of people exiting and first responders going up the stair.

So the minimum stairway width has been increased from 48 inches to 72 inches to better accommodate simultaneous egress and first responder access.

Additionally, there's an allowance um in this ordinance and the state statute that allows an increase in the floor area up to 6,000 square feet per floor plate.

Uh provided the egress width is increased.

That exception has been eliminated, uh, at least in the in the draft proposal or the draft amendment, and that would limit uh the floor area to 4,000 square feet per floor.

Um maybe I should back up.

What this, and let me touch on your question, Mr.

Donaldson.

Um, the current building code allows for a building up to three stories serving four dwelling units per floor to be served by a single exit.

This would increase it or provide an option to increase it up to five stories with four dwelling units per floor.

So it exceeds the limitations of the building code, but it does bring in a lot of extra additional life safety features that would not be required if you had a second stair in the building, such as stairwell pressurization, which is a mechanical system that pressurizes the stairwell, keeps smoke out of the out of the stairwell.

The increased stairway width, it also requires that elevator hoistways be pressurized as well.

And I'll move on to another amendment that we that we talked about.

We talked a little bit about uh standby power or emergency power during the work session, and it actually is already required with what's in front of you, but we did add a clarification to make sure that that gets um that that gets taken care of.

So for all uh for all my place here, um emergency systems such as the stairwell pressurization, fire alarms, fire pumps, uh elevators, those would all require emergency power or stand-by power.

Standby power can either be a generator or it can be a separate service from the utilities that provide service for a minimum of of two hours.

Additionally, we've also added uh reference in that section to both compliance with the fire code and the building code.

Reference to the building code is important because it will ensure that all of that emergency power, the standby power, those entire circuits are protected by one-hour construction, one hour fire-rated construction.

So, now uh I guess the other part of this is what does this mean for the for the city of Colorado Springs and what are the options that the city of Colorado Springs has.

Uh, I did a little bit, I dug deeper into House Bill 2025-1273, and I discovered that it is not coupled to the energy code.

So adoption of this ordinance or lack of adoption of this ordinance now or in the future, will not impact or drive the requirement to uh update to the to the latest building or the latest energy code.

So the options that the city has, the city could pass the the original ordinance as before you today.

It could pass the amended version that I just discussed.

Um it could pass the ordinance at a later date prior to December 1st, 2027, or it could choose to do nothing at all.

If the city chose to do nothing at all, then they would be in violation of state statute as of December 1st, 2027, but that wouldn't impact the building codes subject to additional legislation.

Councilman Hanjam.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh good morning, Roger.

Thank you for working on this uh with Pro Tem Risley.

Um so if I understood you correctly, we we are you this is a proposed amendment that does allow for single staircase building, um, but the modifications made does not in fact meet the state requirements.

So our adopting this would um would reduce cost to building um because it's one staircase and not two, um, but for some reason that I still don't fully understand doesn't fully meet the the state's requirement.

There's um thank you.

There's there's actually language in the House bill that I believe does give us the latitude.

I'm not an attorney, but that does give us the latitude to make it more restrictive.

If we chose.

I that's that's my I think we're we're perfectly in line to do that.

Um, with regard to with regard to expense, the elimination of a stair depending on where you look uh can save approximately seven to twelve percent in the cost of construction.

It's my opinion and it's just my opinion that a lot of these additional life safety features that are required in here to include the type one or two construction will greatly exceed the savings.

In other words I think the most economical in my opinion but on building official not yeah I understand yeah um I I think that the most economical form of construction will remain as is with the with the current code the IBC.

Okay.

Now there's also there's there's talk in the 2027 version of the International Building Code which is the code that that the city adopts by reference for all of the the criteria that there will be provisions included in the 2027 version to allow for something similar to this for taller multi-story multifamily buildings with a single exit.

Okay.

Overall I think what we're always trying to accomplish right is to keep the cost as minimal as possible to make housing more affordable while at the same time ensuring that we have housing that's built that um is as resistant to wildfire as possible and who knows where that Goldilocks exactly is I don't know that it exists but those are the tensions it seems that we're facing in our state um and again if I'm understanding correctly that the ordinance that we'll be voting on while all of it isn't up on the screen for people to say is in the um is in the actual agenda um it it does have the modifications that you and and pro tem rice worked on is that that clearly I probably went to the city attorney so that whatever motion gets made at least that's that's the um that's what we have on the floor right now I know I'm not asking you to answer that but yeah but anyway that's that's the the challenge right that we're we're trying to balance here okay thank you.

And I might point out that this isn't a requirement this is an additional option that a builder or a developer could use that is prohibited by the code now so it it does it's an allowance not a requirement but if you choose to go this direction then you have to make sure you follow all of the requirements okay thank you I understand.

Councilman Rainey thank you madam president I have a few questions but for uh fire marshal cooler if you don't mind so one of the comments that were was made earlier uh is basically about other cities that are impacted uh about our size or more do you have any insight to what those departments are any concerns they have uh any ideas on how they plan on moving forward or they plan on uh waiting to respond or especially since uh it looks like we have like almost a clear almost close to a year time to actually adopt this any insight into that yeah members of council Chris Cooper fire marshal well I don't have insight as to what other jurisdictions are doing I can speak to the insight of the Fire Marshals Association of Colorado members of that organization uh did work very heavily on a lot of the proposed amendments that you see on the screen before you today uh the idea was that uh you know protect the interests and the concerns of the fire service and what that means for the safety of occupants uh you know, with these build-ins and why um is I spoke to in the work session, I'm not uh entirely uh comfortable with the idea of a single stair.

And uh I'm even less comfortable with the idea of legislating code.

I think going through a normal code process is the way to do it.

Uh I do believe these amendments that have been proposed by the fire service to the original bill do provide a reasonable level of safety.

And and to speak to Roger Lovell's point, I believe that these really will kind of offset the intent of a affordable option for building these types of buildings.

Um, and I don't see it being widely used due to the cost that's going to go into these structures to uh address the fire safety concerns of these buildings.

I'm glad you mentioned safety.

Uh safety is a very much a big concern of mine.

So while I understand saving some dollars, to go to a single stair is kind of part of the focus, not all of it, but part of it.

Um the egress is where I'm drawing some concern, some hesitation.

Because what I'm hearing is that as fire uh firefighters are going into a building, let's say, the egress is literally could be the same exit, and the only way to address that is just to make it wider.

Is that a is that a factual assessment here?

Yeah, there's a lot of assumptions.

Um, is this these amendments to that bill were written?

You know, we look at the fire alarm system throughout.

The idea is for early notification, right?

That and there's trust that the occupants of the building will heed that notice and evacuate when the alarm goes off.

And if they do that timely, the hope is that they would have effectively evacuated the building before fire crews arrive or as they're arriving, and that would uh limit the impact to our firefighting operations.

This bill requires the sprinklers throughout.

This bill uh requires uh you know pressurized elevator, requires smoking closure for stairways, all these things combine.

The intent is that that protects the egress and keeps that fire in check and keeps it small.

That way when fire crews arrive, that uh should be a fairly small event.

Again, these are all ifs that the systems are maintained that they're operating functionally.

Um, you know, failure of one or two of these elements could certainly change that that outcome.

And so I don't want to sit here and speak and say that even adding a second stairwell is the end all or the solution to this.

However, you know, throughout history, again, we we had single stair buildings on the east coast and we had fatalities.

They added exterior fire escapes that helped, but then you know, as we go through codes change as a result of uh disaster or problems.

Adding the singles or the two stairs allowed that if one was uh blocked or somehow obstructed, that second stair would allow both egress for the occupants and ingress for the fire department.

Um, you know, we've had buildings in town, as I spoke to in the work session where we've had fires and one of the staircases was compromised by fire, whether that's uh someone leaving their apartment door open or debris that was stored under those stairs or an intentionally set fire, unfortunately.

And in that case, we have to perform a lot of rescues out of windows.

That's part of the reason this is limited to larger jurisdictions, thinking that they have more firefighters and more equipment to be able to facilitate those rescues if needed.

You know, we certainly wouldn't expect a smaller jurisdiction to be able to operate in the manner needed to provide the level of response to a building like this.

Last question I have is when it comes to the document itself, is the document a real time document, especially looking at the timeline uh where it has to be adopted, meaning, you know, no matter what the vote is today, if we something came up six, seven months from now, before one December or even 2027 of a change needed to be had, that that document could be updated and does it have to come back.

I know it's an ordinance, but I guess what I'm asking is it a living breeding document?

Or any changes has to come back to council.

Yes.

If this ordinance was adopted by this council, my understanding is that uh becomes law within city code, and any change made uh down the road would have to come back before this body for a amendment to that or a change.

Uh yes, by the bill we have until December 1st of 2027 to make that adoption.

Um thank you.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, and this would be for you, Chris.

Would would you have ever made this these re this recommendation uh without this legislation?

Would you ever have ever come to us and said, you know what, we probably don't need a second stairway?

No, sir, I would not.

And the problem with single stairway, even wider is firemen going up, hoses, equipment, and then citizens, elderly citizens trying to come down and step over this stuff.

And is that part of the problem?

You can't just widen and and make it uh a safe area to exit.

The narrower the stairwell, obviously, the uh the worse that's going to be for everyone.

Um again, in a perfect world, if residents are able to evacuate before we get there, you know, and and we've talked about this many times, not only in the built environment, but obviously in evacuation general, right?

Don't wait.

If there's an emergency and there's a need to get out, get out.

You know, uh material things are replaceable, life is not.

And so the quicker you get out, the better you're going to be.

Those who are not able to evacuate timely, then that requires more resources from the fire department perform that rescue.

Uh, and unfortunately, we hear that all the time, you know, on a typical apartment fire, you know, the the residents don't want to leave for whatever reason, or they see a little bit of smoke in the hall and believe they're trapped, and they don't make an attempt to evacuate.

And again, that uh creates additional need for firefighting resources when we get there, then we become more of a uh you know, with life safety being number one priority, we commit our resources to ensuring the buildings evacuated before we can begin suppression efforts many times.

And and you said a little earlier that uh normally, typically, uh preferentially, changes to fire code are done by not by the legislature initially, but by who is that a local control um item, or is that more a state board gets together and it is local.

Currently, there with a few exceptions, there's not a state mandated code, although we see a lot more effort to move that direction.

And so we at the local level, uh, Roger and myself, we have the responsibility to determine what codes we want to adopt locally locally and make those recommendations before this council.

Uh, we choose to go with the international code council codes that are produced, those are produced through a public process that provides a lot of input from not only industry uh subject matter experts, but public can speak to that.

And that is a uh consensus process to adopt or to create that code.

It's a three-year-long process, goes through several layers of uh voting and approval before that code is published, and then uh we sit down and we review those codes and see if that makes sense for us locally, and we generally adopt every other code cycle just because the amount of time and effort it takes to adopt that.

And so we do uh have some effort locally to where we do make amendments to local codes uh that we think better align with our local condition.

If you think about someone who's writing a uh code that applies internationally, then that code uh you know is designed to cover across the United States and different climates, different economics, different demographics.

And so uh the intent of the code by is to create something that's a balanced code.

We generally try and honor that through our local code adoption process where applicable.

And you said uh, you know, in a perfect world, people get out early, but the world isn't perfect, so that doesn't always happen.

And then there is congestion in uh in a single stairway, or it could be could be um and equipment uh going through there makes it um difficult, especially for elderly people or you know, parents with children.

Roger, did you want to add that you were you were raised your hand when we mentioned local control?

Yeah, um, Roger level regional building, just to to maybe expand on that a little bit.

I'm uh big proponent of local control and the ability to maintain uh control of building codes at the local level.

We have uh we have three codes that are state codes, actually four.

Um we have the lovely energy code, the electrical code, the plumbing code, and then the code that pertains to very or uh uh conveyances, elevators and escalators.

Those are all state required codes.

We don't have the ability to make those codes any less restrictive.

We can make them more restrictive.

When it comes to the model codes like the mechanical code, the building code and whatnot, we do work very hard with any amendments that we have to provide additional options, but strive to maintain that local control, and those codes are rewritten every or reevaluated every three years by the International Code Council locally.

We adopt codes every every six years or every other code cycle.

Um thank you for that.

I don't think you have any other questions.

Um I just would like to say that uh our fire marshal would never have brought this to us uh himself.

We're only seeing this because the state legislature passed this.

Um it is a matter of local control, and I thank you and Pro Tem Risley for your work to try to put lipstick on a pig and make it better.

But uh in my opinion, it's still a pig, and it's like them telling us to take seatbelts out of cars because it'll make cars less expensive and more affordable.

So I I won't I appreciate your work, but I won't support support this.

Thanks.

Well, and I might just add that the first time that this bill was introduced, uh, Chris and I both testified in opposition.

We both testified in opposition, uh, the second time in 2025 when it was passed.

Um my job as building official is to one of my responsibilities is to bring these things to the jurisdictions so that the jurisdiction can make uh make a uh educated decision on how it how it impacts our jurisdiction, yeah.

Thank you.

Councilman Henjam.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Um Roger and Chris, have either of you read the very recent Pew Charitable Trust research on this very specific item that we're talking about right now.

Do you know the yeah?

So the the conclusions of that study um are in fact that this recognizing all the things that you said that based on all of the other things that have been upgraded in code sprinkler systems, the type of building material, that their their conclusion is it does not add a significant risk.

So I'm really struggling with this tension between what we can do to um increase affordability, albeit maybe offset by by the other requirements, and what this study says and and what the two people who work for the city of Colorado Springs and the region are saying to me.

Can you just speak to that study at all, please?

I'd appreciate it.

Yeah, I'll admit I haven't read that study word for word, but I perused it as part of this uh agenda, and um a lot of what's spoken to is words like there have not been a fatal fire in a single stair building that was directly associated with that single stair.

And and where I struggle with that is um, you know, how they gather that information, you know, what was the detail of the reports that were written?

How is that investigated all those things?

Um, you know, we we learn from history and codes change to prevent future history, and just because over a period of time we have not seen a disaster of that uh nature doesn't mean that um that we won't in the future, right?

And the fact that codes have changed and we've we've added a lot to code, you know.

I'm a big proponent of fire sprinklers.

They do their job when they do their job.

Fire alarms are intended to get people out of the building quicker, but there's those that choose to ignore that.

Um, you know, um when we talked about smoke-proof enclosures, all those things are great, but there's always a human element, and there's always failure points, and so we put a lot of eggs in one basket to hope that those things are intact and gonna work uh perfect.

All it takes is a failure of one of those, you know.

Uh up until several years ago, there's a lot of things that said since sprinklers there hadn't been a multi-fatality fire in a nursing home.

Well, that's changed, you know, and um and so there are things that there's always points of failure.

Is the the likelihood and the frequency of those reduced?

Absolutely.

Uh, but we can never guarantee 100% that this will be a foolproof uh solution to the problem.

Roger, have you read the article?

I I believe I've read the article that I I think that's the one, and and I would agree with fire marshal's statements.

Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Probably more of a question for Dan Sexton or Kim Walker, just in terms of uh normally for unified development code changes, there's a stakeholder involvement period.

For the next one we're hearing on the agenda, there was an extensive stakeholder engagement.

Is there been any stakeholder ex engagement with builders or others on this particular ordinance?

For this particular ordinance, no.

Uh based on the timeline uh that was kind of put before us uh from regional building to take up this ordinance or have this body take up this ordinance for consideration in advance of their republishing of the the building code, um, and knowing that it is was fairly focused uh in terms of the subject matter, I'll bet there has been a lot of discussion at the state level uh and with other stakeholders on it.

We did not conduct an independent um stakeholder engagement effort with this.

So the timeline you're uh you're is being driven right now by the publishing of the a new version of building code and not the December 1st, 2027.

Because it seems to me we got 18 months to figure this out.

Um to speak to that.

Roger Lovell Regional Building.

Yeah, to try and to try and explain that and simplify that process.

The the timeline for compliance with House Bill 1273 is December 1st, 2027.

What we are up against right now, regional building, we have until uh July 1st of 2026 to adopt and enforce the now current energy code.

If we do that after July 1st, 2026, then we're on a much more restrictive energy code.

So, what we're doing is enforcing the energy code at the very last minute possible to ensure that we stay on the least restrictive energy code for as long as possible.

That deadline is June 30th, and that will that will result in a second printing of the Pikes Peak Regional Building Code.

So we're just trying to tie everything together and hit it all at one time so that we don't have to do a third printing uh when this ordinance, when and if this ordinance is adopted after July 1st, 2026.

That makes sense.

Thank you for the explanation.

I'm not sure I agree with it, but thank you.

Councilman Risley.

Thank you, Madam President.

Roger, at the work session, one of the things that I asked about was what would what would happen if the city were to move forward with this ordinance and have one set of rules or one set of expectations in the city, and yet right across the street in the county, it's a different set of rules and a different set of circumstances.

Are there any unintended consequences for the building department if this were to happen?

Meaning any differences in fees or any differences in inspection protocols or anything else that you can think of that that would be a trigger um to the building department as a result.

It is the that's a great question.

The the intergovernmental agreement that sets up regional building speaks to consistency of codes across jurisdictional boundaries.

Um to the extent possible, obviously realizing that some jurisdictions are gonna have things that that are handled a little bit differently.

Uh, with respect to this requirement, I don't know there wouldn't be any any change in the fee schedule because the the permit fee is based on the valuation.

The biggest component to this is we just need to make sure that our staff, regional building staff, is aware of these specific requirements and capable of conducting the plan review and the inspections.

Okay, thanks.

Is that while I agree with Councilmember Donaldson, all we're doing is putting lipstick on a pig, this is still bad legislation in my view.

But what these modifications I think do accomplish a couple of things.

I think one, by making modifications to a state requirement, we are asserting our home rule authority, although not to the degree that we would be if we just flat out decided not to adopt this.

But I do think that there's a case to be made that we are asserting that home rule authority through the modifications that have been proposed that you talked about.

Those modifications, in my view, do a number of things.

By limiting the construction type, it does, in my view, increase the safety factor by some, even if it's a nominal uh margin.

Um I think it does help fire operations to some degree to have a wider stairway, although I completely agree with the arguments that are being made that a wider stairway does not necessarily get rid of the potential conflict.

I used the analogy of uh fire operations accessing the situation through one stair while evacuations are occurring through another.

And I think Fire Marshal Cooper responded saying, hopefully, by the time the fire department arrives at the building, hopefully most people are out of the building.

Well, that hope is not a strategy, no offense, sir, but I think you would agree that hope is not a strategy.

Um even though the building code does require backup power uh for a situation like this, I think putting that in the wording of this ordinance, just so that it's very clear if this were to move forward that that is a requirement, uh I think is super important.

The fact that we are not at risk of impacting the energy code, whether we adopt this or not, I think is really important to understand because honestly, that's probably one of the biggest concerns I had, biggest triggers I had is that would we be uh forcing ourselves into a situation of having to adopt an energy code that we don't believe is correct or right for our region.

Um kind of going back to the home rule authority piece, I I think the idea of having safety codes written by legislators as opposed to subject matter experts, uh, that's a problem for me.

And in the 2027 IBC, when and if it's adopted, that will have been written by experts, people that understand life safety, that understand how these buildings function, that understand how to design and construct things in the most safe way possible.

Um, and then finally, I just want to touch on the fact that in my view as an architect, I can say with a lot of certainty that the cost associated with these modifications will far outweigh any savings that may come from a stair.

Um, that is not a question in my mind.

I think that's that's very evident.

And so, again, going back to this the state's idea that this is being done under the guise of housing affordability is nonsensical.

That's just not that's not how this works.

Making things highly regulated does not make them uh uh cheaper to build.

I can pretty well guarantee that, but regardless uh of what we decide as a body, um, I'm fairly confident that the market conditions here in Color Springs in El Paso County will never support this type of model.

I just don't see home builders uh being interested in building something that is much more difficult and expensive to construct.

Um, and and certainly because we don't have the density of a downtown Denver or some other major metropolitan area, I just don't see the likelihood of something like this ever being built in a way that is meaningful.

Um, so as I said, I was gonna opine a little bit, and I did.

Thanks for listening.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President.

I want to go back to energy code impacts because I want to make sure I heard what I thought I heard correctly.

So in the first part of your briefing, you had mentioned, matter of fact, you kind of foot stomped this in the very beginning, that there's no impact to the energy code, but I thought I just heard you state that after I believe 30 June, that there will be some nuances to uh potential impacts to the energy code.

Help me understand that a little better.

It's uh it's a full-time job to try and keep track of all the legislation at the state level and what those what those impacts are.

Um there is so let me let me try and summarize this.

This ordinance before you is driven by House Bill 1273, and there is an exception in there that says that a municipality that adopts this, you know, this criteria does not have to, it does not constitute an update to the building code, and therefore does not drive the requirement to adopt the latest energy code.

Separate legislation, House Bill 22 1362, uh sets a timeline for in addition to another bill, but sets a timeline for energy code adoption and triggers.

Um the next trigger date is July 1st, 2026.

So one day in advance of that, we're gonna adopt the then current energy code.

So that keeps us on a less restrictive energy code for for three years, provided we don't update the building code.

So we're very cautious about updates to to the building code, such as this, but there is the caveat that this does not constitute an update to the building code.

Okay, that confuse you more.

I might just okay.

No, I actually got what you're getting, what you're getting at.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Council members.

Um so just to to note as a unified or as uh an amendment to the unified development code, um, there are set criteria for for you to consider in weighing this action.

I will note though, uh, because I think it was talked about uh at different points through the recent discussion, um, specifically from Councilmember Henjum whether the packet included the red lines or markups that um billing official uh Roger Lovell uh and Pro Temersley were just uh discussing is it does not.

Your packet does not include those red lines, uh so the published version of the ordinance what will is what was presented to this body at work session.

So if the desire of the body is to motion to adopt the the ordinance, uh my recommendation to you would be to adopt it with some some suggested modifications to reflect the red line edits.

Um alternatively, we can bring it back to the body uh as a clean version at a subsequent hearing, although that will push up against the some of the deadlines and such that we we discussed uh by Roger.

Thank you, Councilmenders Lee.

Thank you, madam president.

I think an email was circulated to all council by legislative staff last week that contained proposed changes privy to that.

Which you would would not be.

Uh, but I just wanted to remind my colleagues that that email was distributed with uh these proposed changes in it.

So um I will certainly defer to the body, but I think if there was desire to postpone until those changes were uh officially adopted in the packet or whatever, that's fine.

But um obviously we can certainly vote on it today.

I think everyone is pretty clear on what we would be voting on if we were to move forward now.

So, yeah, is that all you got?

Yep.

Um, seeing no other comments from the dias, I need a motion.

Um, on one of those criteria of approval.

And I don't have a motion and I don't have a second.

So we will continue to move forward cleaning this up.

Madam President, uh, you know, I would say that the message to take from this is that city council uh puts the safety of the citizens of Colorado Springs as uh is our number one objective, and uh we appreciate the work of of our fire chief and uh and Roger Lovell, but uh you know we're not gonna we won't compromise on that.

Councilman Henjam.

Um actually procedurally, doesn't it fail for lack of a motion?

Okay, I I just think that should be stated for the record.

That wasn't stated that it's is that correct?

Uh city attorney.

That is correct, yes.

We are now going to break for lunch.

It is 12.08.

We will resume for the next ordinance at 12:10.

We or I'm sorry, shoosh.

Good afternoon.

Welcome back to the city council regular meeting for May 26, 2026.

We are running a few minutes late, like eight.

Um, however, will the clerk please read item 10 D into the record?

And ordinance of any Article 3 use regulations, Article 4, development standards, and incentives, incentive incentives, and Article 6, definitions and rules of construction and chapter 7, Unified Development Code, the Code of the City of Colorado Series 2001 is amended as related to permitted locations and standards for each adult or child daycare centers.

Good afternoon, Allison.

Good afternoon, council.

Alright, so uh for the record, Alison Stocker, senior planner with the land use review division this afternoon.

We'll be talking about the proposed changes to the UDC pertaining to adult and child daycare centers.

Uh quick overview of what we're gonna be discussing.

We're gonna talk about the project goals, intention, what stakeholder engagement we have done thus far.

We'll be talking a little bit about the definitions of the different child care types as well as size limitations and some other kind of higher level state and building code kind of requirements.

Uh, we'll talk about our proposed changes first with commercial and industrial zones and then with residential zones, and then we'll kind of talk about some uh further input we've gotten from city council as well as some of our stakeholders, and then we'll wrap up our presentation for today.

Um, the goal and pro of the project is to expand uh child care, which we know to be an economic driver for our community.

Land use uh and planning can of course only do so much to promote child care in our community, however, we're gonna do what we can in through this ordinance to remove any red tape, any barriers that could slow down or make the process to establish new or expand existing child care facilities a little bit easier here in the city.

So, so that's far with this code amendment.

The amendments that you're seeing today, most of which were already targeted for a phase two of the UDC scrub.

These were already things we were intending to do through that process, however, through advocacy of various stakeholder groups.

We decided to push this forward as a yeah, an independent code amendment so that we could get this taken care of a little faster.

Um since the fall, we've been working on drafting this ordinance.

We have done um various reviews with the attorney's office.

We took this public in uh February of 2026 through an open house.

We took in survey data, and we have since then been doing a variety of different uh public hearings to take in as much information as possible.

Some of the community input we got through the open house was that uh the project isn't necessarily fix all the main issues with child care, which we openly agree with.

We understand that you know planning can only do so much of that.

Um, in-home daycare, so our residential child care facilities, um, some of those providers felt that there was not as great of a need as maybe it being presented.

And for those who commented specifically on commercial daycare, that they want it near their homes, they want it near their workplaces and businesses, but there has to be that compatibility and safety component built in as well.

So these are some of the pieces of input we've gotten from the community that we've been trying to take into account as much as possible throughout our drafting process.

So to talk about our definitions real quick, the two you'll see here on the slide are our commercial daycare types.

So these are where no residential component is involved.

So adult or child daycare centers are gonna be your kinder cares, your independent facilities, monastery schools, learning centers, places like that.

So these contain anywhere between six and 15 children for small daycares and above 16 is considered a large daycare, and that's just the city's definitions of how those are quantified.

With this ordinance, we are also suggesting the addition of an accessory commercial child care center type, and this we'll talk about a little bit more, but this is a separate accessory type compared to our residential child care facilities, and those would follow the same size thresholds.

Separately, we also still have our home adult or child daycare centers accessory.

So this is when a child care is in a residential unit and it is accessory to the residential nature of the home.

So no major changes are coming with this particular use type.

I only bring it up just for context, and kind of to compare the size differences with large being anywhere between six and eleven children, and small being no more than six.

So no amendments are being proposed for this particular type, again, just for context.

For a little background, the state does require all of our child care facilities to come and talk to planning before they're able to get a license.

So they do come to us and do a pre-application meeting before they are able to get in a license and establish at a particular location.

One of the aspects of the license process is making sure that the indoor and outdoor space is adequate for the licensing part of the state's process.

So for a commercial child care facility, each child requires about 30 square feet, outdoors, they require about 75 square feet.

I bring this up mostly because this tells us that for smaller buildings that might be an adaptive reuse type situation, we're not going to be seeing, you know, a large number of children try to squeeze into a small space.

The state does have a lot of oversight in this part of the process.

So it kind of helps inform planning on the local side of what we may or may not allow through this ordinance change.

So the big changes to be aware of with this ordinance is that all adult or child daycare centers, so our commercial uses are being changed to either permitted or conditional through the use table.

There's a lot of reasons we are proposing that, mostly because the use specific standards we're adding onto the child care facilities are going to largely restrict where these can be anyway, which we'll talk about a little bit more.

So we thought making the use table a little bit more open-ended would help kind of balance out that allowance.

Secondly, we are also changing our base naming conventions to make sure that all facilities are named adult or child daycare centers.

So that's just more of a cleanup issue.

We're updating our definition section to account for that as well.

We will also be proposing a change for the allowed parking.

So currently it is one per 400 square feet.

We are proposing one per 600 square feet.

There's updates, of course, to the required parking table to account for some errors in the UDC that are presently there, as well as adding in these new child care types we're adding.

And then we'll also talk about the reduction and then the kind of changes to the use-specific standards that I already alluded to.

So to speak to the non-residential zone districts, so our commercial industrial, you'll see that most of them are being changed to permitted.

Those green boxes are where the allowance became more flexible.

So whether it be conditional to permitted or prohibited to conditional, you'll see that that's where those changes have been made.

And then the big difference that we're looking at for our commercial and industrial zones is that addition of the adult or child daycare center accessory use.

So this is distinctly different from our home child care accessory uses.

This is when a child daycare or an adult daycare center is co-located with another commercial or industrial use.

So the intent behind that is to make it easier for these centers to co-locate with certain uses where there is a degree of compatibility already there, and to remove of some barriers that could possibly exist in the zoning code and making it so that the daycare does not necessarily need to be affiliated with primary use in order to get that accessory designation.

So the list of uses along the right hand side of the screen are those that we would be considering allowable co-locations for this particular use type.

Now with residential zones, similarly, the green boxes are where you're going to see areas of expanded flexibility.

We did go back and expand where these uses are permitted in many of the zones.

And this is again a reflection of the kind of more restrictive use specific standards we'll be putting on this use type if this ordinance were to be passed as currently written.

So with the retool project, there was an expectation that daycare would be allowed in more districts.

That did not, of course, happen with retool.

And so there was always an intent to expand those with this UDC scrub.

A lot of that was due to some issues that were created for a number of child care facilities that currently maintain a legal non-conforming status.

So a lot of these centers are ones that have been in place for a long time that are in zone districts that ordinarily would not allow child care.

And as a result, they cannot legally expand or rebuild without having to jump through some significant hoops.

Of course, we understand that expanding the zone districts that allow childcare as a permitted use by right does kind of create some possible scenarios where compatibility will be an issue.

To overcome that and to make sure our neighborhoods maintain that compatibility with surrounding land uses, our recommendation is to restrict the primary access for all child care commercial centers to being a street that is greater than a residential street.

So our residential streets are defined by city traffic engineering.

So there are maps on the city website that show exactly which streets are residential versus collectors or arterials.

So it's very easy for staff to pull this up to find which streets would allow child care facilities and which would not.

Councilman Donaldson.

Thank you, Madam President.

And to be clear, this applies towards child daycare centers residential.

This would not apply to the accessory home child care.

So this would just be for commercial child care where the building is primarily being used as child care, or if it is an accessory use within another commercial use.

But accessory home would allow up to 16.

Is that right?

I'm glad that you have to look because this is so uh.

So home accessory uses, uh, the large allows between six and eleven children.

To eleven, okay.

And that would you they would use residential streets as primary access, that'd be fun.

Okay.

And that is how code is currently run as well.

So this would uh this restriction would only apply to those commercial uh centers, so it is intended to prevent an excess amount of traffic on our residential streets, which are more often affiliated with residential uses, you know, subdivisions where we don't necessarily want to see commercial traffic for these larger centers, and madam President, can I ask one more?

Yeah.

Um, the commercial centers could be placed in a residential neighborhood, if the residential neighborhood is not on a residential street as defined by city traffic engineering and it's an allowable zone.

But going through a neighborhood, if it's on a non-residential street but a collector, um do we are you gonna have some examples of what that would what those would be?

If not, we can call a Todd Frisbee, share we at him.

Um, but and the reason I ask is because that's a significant change in a residential area if you're gonna allow a commercial daycare center where there were only homes along the street previously.

Um, you know, we can just you know put a pin in that, but I would like to hear from some examples from uh Mr.

Frisbee on the on the streets that this would be allowed on.

He can use my neighborhood, for example, if he wants, um, because I think it's there's not that big of a difference between the residential street and the collector street once you're inside of a neighborhood.

You don't really realize uh one or the other.

But uh thank you for a little bit to that.

I mean, please do.

If you I'll have a map later in the slides that kind of illustrates just a snapshot of what kind of an average road network looks like, but the vast majority of the roads in the city are residential.

So some examples of collectors would be things like 19th Street, Uinta, um, centennial, um, North Union.

Um, these are different streets that are above a residential road distinction.

And presently the use specific standards and code is what you'll see here on screen that's crossed out.

So this is more or less just kind of a rephrasing of what the current restriction is.

If you're familiar with Garden Ranch, there's a street that's called Flint Ridge.

And I wonder if that would be considered a collector, and all it has on it now are homes.

But it's a bigger street, it's not as small as the street I live on and the others that come off it.

So I would that might be a specific one for Mr.

Frisbee.

Uh is Flint Ridge in Garden Ranch a collector.

So thanks.

All right, well, I'll go ahead and um keep us moving here.

Um, so speaking, you know, to that a little bit more, um, there are quite a few areas of the city where you have residential zone districts along non-residential streets.

So this is just a list of ones I found while just looking at our city's um planning maps, just to kind of get a feel for what types of places might be zoned R2, but might not be located on a residential street.

So a lot of these are on the periphery and neighborhoods.

They're also pretty well correlated with some existing non-conforming childcare facilities.

So these are the types of locations where planning feels that there is a good reason for more child care to locate because it's on the peripheral neighborhoods, it's on these larger roads that already are engineered to take a higher level of traffic without necessarily disturbing a more insulated neighborhood kind of character.

So these are just a couple examples just to kind of set the stage and show kind of types of places planning is kind of thinking about when we're making some of these suggestions.

Um and here is that map I promised.

So this is an example of the um Colorado College Old North End area.

So the green lines you see here on screen, those are all of our residential streets.

And I would say that this is probably not even a great example of our road networks here in the city because there just happens to be quite a few other collectors and arterials in this area.

But if you look, say on the west side or in Banning Lewis Ranch, the vast majority of those roads are going to be residential and would not permit commercial child care in those locations.

So moving forward, there are some other protections that we are looking to kind of explain through this process.

So in addition, of course, to not allowing commercial child care on residential streets, there's also requirements in code that do say that if you're converting a residential land use to a different type of land use or an industrial land use to say a residential land use, any of those types of scenarios do require a development plan.

This is something that city planning staff would identify through the pre-application process.

If somebody came to me and said, hey, I'd like to convert this home into a commercial child care, this would quickly get flagged for a development plan and we'd have to talk through all of those different requirements.

I know from a couple of experiences where I've had people approach me for this exact scenario, those conversations usually don't go very far because the requirements do put a lot of burden on those providers to make changes to those lots to make them compatible with the requirements of a more commercial oriented use.

So if somebody were to go forward with that, it would require public notice.

So anyone within a thousand feet would be made aware, it would be appealable by any affected parties as defined by the UDC.

So the neighborhood would have the ability to elevate the decision making should it need to be, and then the site itself would be subject to all of the commercial standards defined by code.

So that would include 15-foot landscape buffers between their use and a different use beyond just civic uses.

So if they were next to a commercial use, they would need 15 feet.

If they were next to a residential use, they'd need 15 feet.

So that alone, plus of parking requirements, you know, any reports or studies required, such as traffic studies.

These are all things that would kind of add up and make it in most cases pretty challenging to make that conversion.

And of course, that's not even to speak to building code requirements that would be required for that conversion as well.

So to speak a little bit about some more recent input, um, we did get quite a bit of community feedback during City Planning Commission.

Um this involved, you know, where certain sized daycare should be allowed and what zones, um, also concern around the fact that not all neighborhoods have HOEs or not all HOAs have restrictions around child care centers specifically in those neighborhoods, also general concerns about traffic, parking, noise, and things like that that might make certain locations not compatible with having child care.

So Planning Commission did approve the ordinance unanimously, they did not have any suggestions.

They felt that the benefits were far outweighed by any possible impacts, and then following CPC, we did have some conversations with some stakeholders.

I won't pretend to speak for them today, but they were generally a little bit more comfortable with what was proposed when they had a better understanding of how the residential street restrictions and what requirements the development plan trigger felt a little bit more comfortable about potentially having child day care in the vicinity of neighborhood areas.

So that is what I have today from my refresher.

I'm happy to go back.

I know this is a lot of info, but we could also just jump into uh public comments, um, whatever council would like to do.

Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Can you go back to slide 18, Nelson?

Slide eight.

Yeah, right there.

So the first two comments on there, um, you thought enough to put them on here, they're in some of the public comment we got, but it doesn't look like planning department has incorporated those in any way.

Can you go through the thought process of you received that input but but didn't take it?

Yes, so in this case, um again, planning staff felt that the protections that were already in the code through the development plan section and through the residential road restrictions go pretty far to limit where these uses are allowed.

We did not want to add further barriers because that would kind of defeat the whole point of this exercise.

And then we also felt that by virtue of development plans being appealable, the neighborhood would have the opportunity to have that ability to engage to provide comments if there were ways for a particular site to improve their design or improve their ability to be compatible, and if they weren't, then that project could still be appealed to condition uh to planning commission.

And the difference between uh permitted use and conditional use is they have to the conditional use requests go to the planning commission.

Is that correct?

Yes, a conditional use would go uh it would go through its administrative review, and then it would have to go on to planning commission for a final decision.

So in theory, it's just taking out that higher level decision making, but there's still again that ability to appeal to planning commission, and then you know, even on to council if need be.

Okay, this this slide and slide 12 both mentioned the homeowner associations.

Can you explain what the what I'm not quite clear from the slides what what the uh what the interface is between the planning department and the choice?

Sure.

Um so the city planning department, of course, does not uphold private covenants or homeowners association, homeowners association rules.

Um that is not our purview, but we did make a note of that just because um if you are in a homeowners association, you do have the of course the ability to apply more restrictive rules on your community.

So if you do not want there to be you know daycares within your uh homeowners association area, you could always adopt rules preventing you know home occupations or similar type things in your neighborhood.

Um so that was a point that we kind of mentioned that could further regulate um beyond just the city's um city's rules.

Yeah, the difficulty with that is if you have a permitted use and then you have a covenant.

I mean, then it's up to the homeowner association basically has to pursue legal action, which can cost homeowners thousands of dollars and you know special assessments in order to you know uh begin again, because someone says, hey, it's permitted by the city, the city's allowing it, but now you're you rely on the HOA then to be the one that has to enforce the rules, and that could be very expensive for our HOAs.

It could be, yes, in some cases.

I mean, city staff does do what we can to remind homeowners in any case, no matter what they're doing, to try to check with homeowners associations, private covenants, any of those types of things that wouldn't be governed by the city.

So we do try to make those reminders to homeowners to do their due diligence before going and getting permits before going and doing planning entitlements.

Um, so we do try to, you know, provide that information so they can advocate for themselves, but um at the end of the day, the city doesn't have the ability to to weigh in on those.

All right, thank you.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

I thought that uh there was state legislation, and we had uh an example of this a few years ago, where HOAs cannot restrict um home daycares.

My understanding, and I'll say I'm a little rusty there.

Um, my understanding is that it only um goes for home daycares, so where that's an accessory use to the principal being residential.

So, uh the the note about the homeowners association rules potentially um superseding uh city code is more uh a note in refer in reference to the commercial options that I'm mentioning.

So, like for instance, I live in Briargate and I want to convert my home into a daycare, and that's all I'm gonna use that property for.

Yeah, wouldn't be allowed because of the rules we're presenting here today, but then also a homeowner's association could be an extra layer of protection against that type of use coming into a neighborhood.

And it wouldn't be allowed in your case because you're on a residential street.

Is that why?

Yes, exactly.

Yes, in most residential scenarios, yes.

Okay, all right.

Well, I'm available if any other questions do come up.

Um, but if not, I'll let you guys turn it over to the next slide.

Public comment.

We'll now move on to public comment.

Um, limit your comments to three minutes.

We will start with Michelle Pomelari.

I probably didn't say that right.

Seating time to Sherylyn Boyles.

Is that correct?

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

So, Shreylin, you have six minutes.

Thank you.

Madam President and Council members, thank you.

I'm Sherry Lynn Boyles, and I'm CEO of joint initiatives for youth and families, also known as JI.

At JI, we have two sides of our house.

We have a side that really works with struggling youth and their families, and we have a side that focuses on building the child care capacity of our region.

And so obviously I'm here today to talk about that.

Um I passed out a map.

I'd like to bring child care desert maps whenever I show up.

So you've seen this before, but I'll remind you that we have a lot of neighborhoods in deserts in our community.

And so I'll just also remind you that we have 47,000 children under the age of five in our county.

We we track county numbers, and we have only 18,500 child care licensed child care spots for 47,000 children.

And of course, our incentive is for folks to get licensed and improve uh their their rating score because they're improving excellence, they're improving safety standards, et cetera.

Um, and so we see uh the need for about 15,000, we estimate more child care spots in our area, uh, which isn't going to be done by lots of regulation and lots of limitation.

In fact, I would say we have two major problems causing this child care gap.

Uh, one is the funding system is flawed, and the other is that we have a regulatory framework that is absolutely devastating for folks who are trying to create child care centers.

Um, and so zoning is where we start when we talk about regulation regulatory framework.

Um zoning can allow us to get off home base or keep us from getting anywhere.

And so uh so this is a really critical issue.

Um, you know, I think about uh school zoning, school restrictions, for example, uh schools under current ordinance are actually uh much less restricted than child care centers, and they have a much larger footprint.

Uh they have a lot more children, and it's been my impression that people like living in your schools and playgrounds and parks where there's a lot of uh young children.

I think that's probably generally the norm.

Um, and then you think about those families who uh maybe you have young children, certainly you've probably had young children, people in this room have or have had young children, and they're really feeling the impacts.

We hear that time and time again from young families in our community of what this how seriously devastating this issue is for them, because one, it's high cost, it's about 20,000 a year per child, and two, because they are signing up for years long wait lists, and they are traveling long distances when they can get into child care centers.

And so because this is a serious problem, because it really requires scaled solutions and community solutions.

We've had a number of folks come together, more than 120 organizations uh represented in the family friendly initiative, the FFI, which I represent here today, and there's other people here who represent them as well.

I want to point to a couple of concerns.

I've have talked to folks who who are uh concerned about this and and are they are definitely people of goodwill who I respect.

Diane and Dutch, for example, very lovely people.

Um, and so I don't want to p-poo their concerns, but I do want to speak to them.

One is that uh, you know, I've heard a lot of concern around these are just gonna pop up everywhere and be large and and intrusive.

Um, first of all, I do think this residential street issue is a very serious compromise.

I think it does go too far, because um it is a very broad sweep, and I'm just describing this dramatic need we have in our community, and I think, for example, about churches who are often on residential streets and are trying to provide more and more of these services.

So we're just making a big generalization that we never want these in on residential streets.

These don't just pop up.

It's already been alluded to that it takes a lot of money to renovate these in order to meet code, and it takes a lot of time.

It takes about a year to two years to get through all of the licensing requirements required by the state.

And we're working on the state front as well, but we're always going to have that kind of licensing to some degree.

They're not just going to pop up.

The other thing is it is incredibly expensive to renovate in order to create a center, hundreds of thousands of dollars.

It's just not realistic that a whole bunch of folks are gonna go buy million-dollar properties, spend hundreds of thousands to renovate, and barely break a profit.

That just doesn't happen.

And the reality is that on average it's about a 45,000 dollar profit a year across the nation, and I'm sure people in this room could say that's even generous.

So I would suggest that we are working on every level, saying, Well, there's regulations at other levels.

We need to be working at all the levels, and that's what FFI is doing.

This has rolling impact on our community.

UCCS economic forum released a study that said about 26% of parents are saying they're staying home because of child care instead of being in the workforce.

I'm chair of the GAC at the chamber.

We have businesses saying this is affecting them and able and their ability to hire workforce.

Um, and it's definitely infecting young people, as I've said.

Uh, we say we want to attract young people, we say we want to keep young people, then we're gonna have to be serious and take serious steps about attracting and keeping young people in the city.

Um, this solution is multifaceted.

This is only one piece of it, but it is it is an important uh piece of this.

This measure today is a nice step, but I consider it nice.

I think we need to take bigger, more serious serious steps.

If we want to keep young people, if we want to keep military services and we want to meet those needs, if we want to attract federal dollars like Golden Dome, all of these are considerations when it comes to child care.

So I think this is a pretty serious measure, a somewhat serious measure.

I think we need to get more serious, but I do seriously hope you'll pass it today because we need to move forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Liz Denson.

Good afternoon, council members.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today.

I'm Liz Denson, and I'm president and CEO of Early Connections Learning Centers, and I also sit on the steering committee of the Family Friendly Initiative, which Sherry Lynn referenced.

Today I urge you to support these zoning ordinance changes that would allow child care in more areas across our city.

In Colorado Springs, we have nearly 47,000 children ages zero to five, but only about 18,500 licensed child care slots.

That means tens of thousands of families are competing for care that simply doesn't exist.

When families can't find child care, the impacts ripple far beyond the home.

Parents turn down jobs, reduce hours, miss work, or leave the workforce entirely.

Employers struggle with recruitment and retention, businesses lose productivity, economic growth slows.

Child care is not just a family issue, it's workforce infrastructure.

And access matters just as much as availability.

Even when care exists somewhere in the community, it may not exist where families live, where they work, or along the routes they travel every day.

Zoning plays a direct role in whether child care can realistically meet the needs of working families.

This issue is also personal for me.

When my daughter was born five years ago, I was already well connected in the child care industry.

I know people, I know directors, I know providers and people across the field.

And even with those connections, I struggle to find infant care.

Every center and licensed family child care home, excepting infants had wait lists that were months long, if not over a year.

I ultimately lucked into a licensed family child care home that was 30 minutes from my work and over an hour from my home one way.

And that wasn't a short-term solution.

That was our reality until my daughter turned 18 months old and was able to enroll in one of our centers downtown, much closer to work and home.

I remember sitting in my car thinking, how are families without connections, flexibility, or resources able to make this work?

And the answer is often they just can't.

These zoning changes will not solve the child care crisis overnight, but they are meaningful and practical, practical steps in the right direction.

They remove barriers.

They create opportunities for providers to open and expand, and they help bring child care closer to where families actually live and work.

Most importantly, they move Colorado Springs closer to becoming the truly family-friendly city we all want us to be.

I respectfully ask for your support, and thank you.

Councilman Lineweber.

Yes, I have a question for Liz real quick.

Yes, sir.

I'm picking on you because I think you can answer this because you know, when people hear child care, unfortunately now, they think of Minnesota and they think of fraud.

And um, and so I want to kind of address this kind of head on.

Um, the idea here that we're making it easier to have more child care.

Some citizens might interpret that as an opportunity to have more fraud.

And I wanted you to clearly define the separation.

Like, what is it like really require to be a child care that could apply for these federal grants, and that that's no small task, right?

But I can't speak to that because I don't do that.

You do that every single day.

So I want to really address the fraud issue that's been in the media so much, and really help us understand that there is a crisis, we need more child care, and this doesn't open us up to more fraud.

Yes, sir, and thank you for the question.

I actually had the honor of um speaking to the United States Senate help committee on this in January.

And um what I shared with them is what I'll share with all of you.

Here in Colorado to commit fraud in child care would be an incredible onerous feat as a child care provider.

Um, I truly can't even imagine how an organization like Early Connections and what uh Councilman Lineweb is referring to as fraud in this child care subsidy system, how we would even begin to to move down that path.

The amount of oversight that we are required to follow at the state level, which is ultimately reporting to federal level, of course, is um is incredible.

Uh, and and then the the coordination it would take between parents, um, the provider themselves, we aren't able to um unilaterally decide that this child gets care or this child gets subsidy or this child doesn't.

We have to work through the county system, which is ultimately working through the state system.

Parents are having to verify their attendance twice a day.

Um, then providers are then having to um justify and support those attendance records every day, every week that are then reported to the county, which are reported to the state.

I think, of course, I can't speak to what happened in Minnesota specifically, but I know that here in Colorado, as a CCAP provider as a child care subsidy provider, being able to enact such levels of fraud would be almost impossible with the amount of oversight that the state of Colorado already has in place.

So, just to be clear opening up opportunities.

We're reducing barriers because we need to address this crisis, doesn't necessarily, or actually, what you're or you just said, it does not open us up to more fraud opportunity.

I really don't see how that could be the case.

I think that there are bad actors in every industry, right?

Unfortunately, but in this individual case, what we're talking about is standing up child care capacity, not necessarily talking about standing up child care capacity that opens ourselves up to um fraudsters taking advantage of state or federal dollars.

Thank you for bringing your expert opinion on that.

Thank you for the question.

Next up, we have Sam Clark.

Thank you, Council President.

Uh, my name is Samuel Clark.

I'm the executive director of the Pikes Peak Real Estate Foundation, and I'm here in my work capacity.

I uh am also the father of a four-year-old.

Uh, and quite frankly, I'm not like a child guy.

I'm here because I actually care about the sort of workforce and economic development uh issues related to child care.

Uh, we've had the great pleasure of working on the development of two child care facilities.

One was very momentous, it opened today, it's downtown, it's the new Alice Bemis Taylor Center.

Uh, and to that earlier point, my wife asked me, Did you take a picture on the first day?

And I sent her a photo of the building, and she was like, that's not what I was looking for.

So I really look at this like how do we create a community and an economy that is supportive of families, keeps people in workforce, and sort of builds that next generation of our workforce.

So uh we have worked on two projects.

One of them is downtown, and there's a couple lessons here.

Uh, I will drive in a blizzard to get downtown and drop my kid off at child care, and that means I return to the office.

And I think this was a big part of the real estate foundation strategy to figure out how do we work on downtown child care as an economic vitality to make sure that the folks that are office downtown have a reason to come downtown every day, and the folks that are moving to downtown have a reason to stay downtown because they're connected to their child care.

We've also worked with the Bradley Ridge project.

We own that land, and our condition for the 99-year ground lease to that developer was they had to build a six-classroom early childhood facility on that campus.

And that was that was actually brought to us by the policy recommendations of the Family First Initiative, which said there is not enough child care in this part of town, and we have the Pikes Peak Innovation Park.

We have the airport.

How do we create a solution that allows those families to go to work to every day, reliably so, to make sure that they have high quality child care?

And frankly, the developer likes it because this is a really sticky incentive that keeps people in those apartments and those neighborhoods.

We also have a personal experience.

I live in El Cairo City on 29th and Pike's Peak.

There's a new child care center that is opened on our block, Havenstone, and we welcome it.

It's a multi-million dollar uh investment on the corner of our block that has been a church that has seen better days in terms of its physical infrastructure.

Our experience is that these amenitize our neighborhood, it's gonna increase our property value.

It creates a connective uh community facility, and so I think the perceived threat of what this would do into older neighborhoods, uh, maybe doesn't live up to the current conditions of these are big investments that are happening in our neighborhood that are good for uh you know essentially our community connectivity, uh the monetizing our neighborhood, and also the property values that uh we'll see increase as a result of that investment.

So I appreciate your consideration of the measure.

Thank you.

Next up, we have MJ Beninetti.

I didn't say that right.

Mim Jay, you're gonna have to correct me.

It's okay, Madam President.

Thank you very much.

Um, members of City Council, good afternoon, MJ Benanati, director of government affairs for your chamber and EDC.

As a young parent with two kids under four, I've experienced the difficulty of finding and paying for child care in the city firsthand.

When my wife was pregnant with our first child, we applied and interviewed for facilities around the city, hoping to make it onto a waiting list.

The decision on where he ultimately went to daycare was not made based on where we lived or worked, but instead on which available location had the best quality of programming available.

I drive 20 minutes west to drop my kids off in the morning, followed by driving another 20 minutes south to get to my office, repeating this process at the end of the day, each day every week.

While I remain impressed with the level of service in the our children receive at their daycare, we end up paying more annually for our children to go part-time to child care than I did for my annual schooling at a large university.

My wife and I both work and still have a hard time.

My wife and I both work and still have a hard time managing the cost and logistics of child care.

I cannot imagine what it is like for families in more challenging circumstances to make it work, especially when there was such a shut a shortage of child care slots in our city.

By supporting today's code change, we increase the supply of our child care in a way that allows parents to return to the workforce if they wish and provides care and education to our most precious commodity, our children.

Thank you very much.

Next up, we have Jackie Luhan.

Please tell me I got that one right.

You did get that one right.

Yes, all right.

Well, good afternoon, city council members and community members.

Uh, my name is Jackie Lucon.

I'm the owner and CEO of a local child care center here called the Lighthouse Early Care and Education.

Um, I'm here today in support of expanding child care zoning allowances across all residential zones because obviously child care is not a convenience, it's a critical infrastructure for our community.

Um, as someone born and raised here in Colorado Springs, this issue is deeply personal to me.

Um I didn't open the lighthouse simply to run a business.

I opened it because I saw firsthand how many families were actually struggling to find safe, reliable, high-quality child care that they could actually access and afford.

Um, we're currently living in what we considered a daycare desert where the demand for care far outweighs the available supply.

Um I also want to speak from personal experience regarding the whole zoning and neighborhood concern because I'm actually a testimony of that.

So I opened my first daycare center at 506 East Moreno, which is literally just right down the street from um outskirts of downtown.

And um, it was a building that was historically operated as a child care center originally, um, but over time it had been rezoned for different use.

It was actually considered um when I applied for the zoning part of it, it was considered to be zoned for an apartment complex over the years.

And so when I pursued opening my center there, I had to go through a whole zoning change variance process in order to legally operate my child care center.

That process took several months and significantly delayed my ability to open my doors and begin serving families in the community, all while still carrying that financial burden of paying rent and operational expenses during the whole entire approval process.

The process included public notices, I had to do signage posted on the on the property and opportunities for neighbors to voice their concerns or objections to the child care center operating there.

Thankfully, there was not one complaint filed at that time.

We worked hard to ensure our operations were very respectful to the surrounding community by properly managing parking, traffic uh flow and noise, and throughout our time operating there, we were never received any complaints from neighboring businesses or residents regarding our child care operations.

That experience did show me that something that it was important that child care centers can absolutely coexist responsibly with communities when providers are intentional, professional, and properly regulated.

This ordinance is not about placing disruptive businesses in neighborhoods, it's actually about removing barriers that will prevent families from accessing child care and preventing providers from expanding services where care is deeply needed.

So when families can't find child care again, parents are forced to leave the workforce, employers struggle with staffing, children lose access to early learning opportunities that are again proven to impact long-term success, and communities uh suffer economically.

So I truly believe early childhood education is the workforce behind the workforce.

Um, and at the Lighthouse, we have seen the life-changing impact that excesses child care can have for families.

So I encourage City Council to support this ordinance and continue investing in solutions that help families thrive, strengthen our workforce, and address the child care crisis facing our city.

And thank you guys for your time.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Creed Spillane.

I'm Creed Spillane, owner and operator of Quantum Residential Group.

Uh believe it or not, there were folks who, when we go to sell their homes or help them buy the home of their dreams, they put us on hold because they are on hold waiting to find out if their child has been accepted into the daycare center.

And we can't move anything until that letter comes in.

That's a real variable.

It doesn't matter how good the house is, doesn't matter how much they like the school district.

Until the child's taken care of, their needs will be second.

Okay.

So that's one thing I'll speak to on the professional side.

On the personal side, I have five children.

Five.

I have over 25 nieces and nephews in El Paso County.

That's not counting the children of my clients and friends and family and neighbors, etc.

Just the nieces and nephews.

Okay.

As with anything, we appreciate the opportunity of choice.

We appreciate the opportunity to choose better, more viable options.

I don't go to McDonald's when I have better options.

If I'm having to settle for McDonald's, then I do not have options.

This is one more mechanization that allows us to have better options in our community, better locations of those communities within those communities.

And so I would encourage you to support this measure as it moves us forward as we walk through with one piece of the solution.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Jill Gabler.

Good afternoon, President Krill Iverson, pro tempore Risley and Council members.

Um my name is Jill Gabler.

I am the executive director of Pike's Peak Housing Network, and I am here to speak in support of this ordinance because there is a definite intersection between housing and daycare, affordability and the quality of life of our community members.

Allowing daycare in our neighborhoods is truly a necessary mixed use for so many of our families living in our community.

Many of them who are living in a child care desert, which is a term I've just recently learned.

We purposely place neighborhood schools inside residential areas so families can easily walk or drive their kids to school with the added benefit of being able to build community with the other families who attend the school nearby.

It also allows many families to walk or bike to school, increasing physical activity and reducing vehicles on our roads.

No one complains about their neighborhood schools, where there are often over 200 students, even though drop-offs and pickups are hectic, all happening at the same time.

There's brief but significant road congestion, congestion, and in fact, most people are pretty sad if they learn their neighborhood school is closing for lack of attendance.

This is unfortunately happening throughout the central core of Colorado Springs, and these unoccupied schools have mostly been repurposed into great light commercial uses, like bakeries, restaurants, coffee shops, and breweries, and hopefully soon daycares.

So families can easily drop off their kids and head directly to work instead of adding 20 to 30 minutes to their commute to work each day because child care is located far from their home and employment.

This added commute reduces the time families are able to spend with their kids, increases family stress, transportation costs, and from the government's perspective, wear and tear on our roads.

Further, the number of children attending daycare rarely exceeds 25, which significantly limits any negative traffic issues on our residential roads, along with drop-off and pickup times being sporadic as parents don't arrive all at the same time like they do at the neighborhood school.

As the land use decision makers for our city, I encourage you to ensure our zoning and land use rules meet the needs of all our citizens, to include not those just who have lived here for 30 years, but those who have lived here for six months, not just those who own their homes but rent their homes, and those with young children who are struggling to find more hours in the day while they raise their kids along the way.

Thank you for your generous time today.

Next up, we have Jeanette Caproon seeding time to Diane Bridges.

That's right.

Okay, thank you.

Yep.

Thank you, President Crow Iverson, President Pro Tem, and Council members.

Really appreciate you.

Diane Bridges, Chair of the Historic Neighborhoods Partnership.

Oh dear.

Excuse me for just a moment.

Now I'm wasting time, eh?

Oh, here we go.

So quickly for those of you who do not know who we are.

We are a nonprofit volunteer group, largely a neighborhood advocacy group, largely neighborhoods that do not have legal covenants or HOAs.

I know districts six and two largely HOAs.

We sent you a discussion paper last week.

I hope that you've had an opportunity to read it.

Sorry we couldn't get it to you earlier.

I want to point out that what we're saying today, along with that discussion paper.

We did not have it done in time for Planning Commission.

So what you're hearing is different.

We support daycare.

We are passionate about that.

We agree that there's a need to increase opportunities.

And as we have said, and as others are saying, it's important to address both availability and affordability.

In fact, in our discussion paper, we provided 11 ways to address affordability.

We agree that UDC is important to address.

It's not the only thing.

So and we support for the most part many of the code changes.

We ask you for a solution that is balanced, that is reasonable.

You know, Aristotle's Golden Meme says all good things in moderation, right?

Too little is not good.

Too much is not good.

We're looking for the sweet spot.

That's what we ask you for.

So again, yes, we have a resounding yes.

We support daycare.

Uh uh, Council Member Donaldson, you talked about the home base.

In fact, 64% of home-based care in Colorado for uh uh children zero to five is home-based.

We support that, licensed and unlicensed.

The new items of the small daycare, we support that.

We support the new item of accessory daycare co-located, we support that.

We are advocates and ask for conditional use in the residential zones in OR and MXT.

We are also asking for and appreciate, excuse me, the primary access, primary access needs to be defined.

We appreciate the primary access restrictions to residential, and we also are supportive of retaining off-street parking with current code.

We believe these changes will significantly increase opportunities and as well provide, you know, a community that is supportive of daycare.

It's a matter of how far we want to go.

That's really our point.

So, our issue is large-scale, unlimited commercial operations in residential areas.

That's our issue.

Our issue is also a blanket across the board shift.

You saw it on the use tables, with the exception, I think of some parks areas, permitted by right use, regardless of size of daycare.

That basically removes citizens' rights to actually talk about whether or not something is fit or compatible right next to their home.

We'll have more discussion on that.

So again, the ask is balance, really, balance, right?

Finding that sweet spot.

We believe we've gone a little bit too far.

Residential is not the same as commercial.

Scale matters, intensity matters, right?

Residential zones are intended for uses compatible with residential scale and intensity.

And again, I'm repeating myself, but I want to want you to hear me, please.

In home daycare and small neighborly daycare centers, those are compatible.

Small is 15 or less, right?

Large scale, 16 with no upper limit is commercial, that is not compatible.

Even our own purpose statement in the UDC talks about that.

Ensuring private property that what's done is compatible, right?

As well as Colorado State, uh, the organization of early childhood.

On their very first page of the requirements, they say centers are typically located on property zone for commercial uses.

A neighborhood is not a commercial corridor.

That's the bottom line.

We've been asked in some discussions that we've had.

Ah, geez, when we say large is the challenge.

The question back is, well, what do you think is the likelihood of that happening, right?

What do you really think a large commercial center will be uh right next to your home?

If it's really insinuating it's not likely, if it's not likely, why are we making the code change to allow that?

We were also asked, well, we can have these large centers unlimited in the code.

Well, the state top-down regulations will control it.

Well, I know you all uh, you know, we believe as you and in local control.

Why establish a change in our code where we're reliant upon top town stipulations to control what we do in our city?

So last but not least, we did a survey.

I don't know how much more time I have.

Uh we did a survey here.

Basically, yes, we're supportive of daycare.

Basically, again, 80% said small, right?

Um, so uh yes, there were 20 percent uh uh uh large, that was largely the downtown partnership and businesses downtown, encourage foreign-based zone.

Anyway, again, the bottom line is how far to go.

That's really the bottom line.

And and one other encouragement the city did not ask about daycare in residential zones.

They only asked about daycare and commercial.

So, so really, if you want to hear what your constituents want, do another survey.

Thank you.

Thank you for allowing me to go over.

Next up we have a um Tim Scanlan, seeding time to Dutch Schultz.

Let's see what slide we're on.

Um Dutch Schultz, president of the Old North End Board.

However, I'm speaking here as a board member of the Historic Neighborhood Partnership, which means I'm talking about all the older areas, not just the old North End.

We've heard the demand for daycare, and it's absolutely true.

The problem is not zoning, but the problem does exist, so how can we help it?

The market is responding to that demand, and it is responding in an unconventional way.

Presently they are building mega daycare centers right here in Colorado and on Colorado Springs, over 10,000 square feet with capacity to occupy more than a hundred children.

You know what that looks like?

That looks like a lot of cars twice a day.

Previous life, I was a director of marketing for Briar Gate when it was mostly antelope.

We got sued because we put a child entertainment center playground too close to somebody's house, and it wasn't shown specifically that in the master plan, and we had to remove it.

So not everybody loves having kids next door.

What we're really talking about here is the shift and removing people's ability to come down here at City Council and talk about their concern of something that's going on in their neighborhood or next door.

It's not about preventing child care, it's about the commercial use in neighborhoods.

This is a reality, and if you give it a permitted by right, you have unleashed a legal right to put it in.

Think about that.

No hearing, no green cards.

You're about having people come in here and talk about their concerns, and then you pass judgment, weighing the options either way.

So we are not against daycare, we're against the process that is being proposed.

Residents have the right to come down here and talk about what's going to happen next door to them.

See if I can get the next slide up here.

There we go.

This shows a list of the two differences on the right, excuse me, on the left is permitted use, all right.

Permitted means you don't have to go through all the applications of a hearing.

If you have a lot, and single family resident is permitted on there, you don't have to have a hearing about building a house when you allow permitted use in a development.

That means you don't have to have a hearing to put in a child care center that's greater than 16.

And by the way, plus 16 doesn't mean that.

What it means is it goes on with no upper limit.

So we're requesting conditional use.

Conditional use means you get a hearing.

For large daycare.

That's the bottom one.

And that's very important.

There are some other things that are important.

I say there's not a traffic problem.

The current code doesn't even address one of the major concerns in historic areas.

And that is a use of an alley to access the daycare.

It may not be the primary access that the development plan if we submit it shows.

But two cars at either end can clog an alley because they're narrow.

And people go to work, they open their garage door and drive out, and all of a sudden it's clogged in both directions, because down at the end of the block, they got a large mega decrease.

That's all we're requesting.

That's what we need.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next up, oh, Councilman Risley.

Thank you, Madam President.

Dutchman, feel free to sit down.

I had a question.

Maybe the planning department could answer Alison or Kevin.

Could you just respond quickly to some of the comments that were just made in terms of the approval process?

The idea that if it's a permitted use that the citizens have virtually no say in the matter.

I'd like to understand the appeals process and some of the other things that maybe uh would come into play should there be concern about something that might be approved administratively, and then also uh if you could just address the comment about alley access and how that uh may factor in.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, so with administrative approvals, so typically it's things like development plans, um, there is definitely more of a focus on the technical components and meeting code criteria and things to that nature.

Um there is a public notice built into all of those.

So as soon as the application is in for review, anyone within a thousand feet is going to receive a postcard, more or less the same time staff starts reviewing that application.

All the materials are always publicly available online, so anyone in the community can look those up.

They have our contact information, they can call us if they need help accessing any of the application materials, and they have the ability to provide public comments and provide suggestions, raise concerns, all of those things that we would see if an item were to be brought forward for public hearing as well.

So really the kind of difference there is just rather than the decision making going to the city planning commission in the case of conditional uses, um, the decision making would be done by a city planner, but there would still be an opportunity during that administrative review for public comment.

Um there would be an additional public comment period prior to a hearing if it were a conditional use, but it doesn't by any means reduce the ability to be able to comment.

It just the occasions where notices go out is less.

With any application, the appeal process, there's 10 days for anyone to appeal.

There is a pretty specific set of standards for who is allowed to appeal.

Usually you have to be within a thousand feet, or you've had to previously comment on an application.

So assuming that a neighbor received a public card saying, hey, this application is being reviewed.

Please provide comment.

They provide comment to staff planners.

We take that into consideration and integrate those comments to the best of our ability.

We pass those on to the applicant.

The neighborhood typically what we do as planners is when an application that might be having um you know a lot of public engagement, even if it is administrative, typically I tend to respond to those commenters and let them know when that application is approved or denied.

So that way they have the ability to activate that appeal process if they choose to.

So that's something that we try to the best of our ability to keep people informed throughout that process.

So I think that answers part one of that question.

With the alleyways, almost very, very rarely do we ever allow alleys to be used for a primary access because most of our city alleys are not built to city traffic and fire standards required for primary access.

So I know alleys in my area of the town or on the west side.

Most of them do not meet the width requirements.

Most of them do not meet the surface material requirements.

So we would look at these, of course, on a case-by-case basis on whether or not an alley would be allowed to be the primary access, but I would say that the chance of that ever happening is very, very, very low.

So I think that addresses that question as well.

I hope it does.

Yeah, thanks.

And I apologize for the multi-part question.

You handled it well.

Any other questions while I'm up here?

Councilman Donaldson.

One question, but then I would ask Madam President that in the future we don't have staff come up and rebut citizens immediately.

Uh during during the middle of their citizen comment, which I think is happening right now.

Um my question would be, you know, you mentioned Ali while you were speaking that it that there are occasions when notification goes out less.

Do you recall that?

What would you were you saying there?

So with a development plan, there's one occasion where public notice goes out.

With conditional uses, there would be two occasions where public notice goes out.

So either way, there's opportunity for engagement, you're just getting a postcard less.

Can the um manager of the planning department waive the need for a development plan?

If it is a conversion from say a residential use to a civic use or or some other similar situation where that criteria is triggered, no, it would not be uh something that we would waive.

In what we're discussing today, um daycare centers in residential areas, uh, and it's a permitted use with a development plan.

Could the um the department head waive the requirement for the uh uh development plan?

I don't believe so.

I don't believe that that would be an option in code, nor do I think that that would be the type of precedent we would set.

I would have to defer to Kevin, but then the notification goes to zero, I think.

If there was no development plan, um, if there was say a major modification to a development plan, there would be a notification.

So even if it is, you know, major changes on the site, there would still be a notification.

But I'll let Kevin.

Councilman Casey.

Just one clarification.

You talked about the postcards going out.

I just want to clarify those go out to property owners within a thousand feet, not necessarily residents or renters or other people there, correct?

That is correct.

And that's just based on the fact that we have to use the El Paso County property appraisers information for those mailings, but then there would also be poster requirements on site as well.

All right, thank you.

Kevin Walker, city planning director.

Um, if there's a change of use from residential to another use, that is not something that we can waive.

We can't we are not allowed to waive that.

So a development plan would be required in all circumstances.

Okay, Kevin, uh here's a scenario.

They the uh a home is purchased, they're just gonna level the home and they're not gonna change its use.

They're just gonna level it and then build a uh large uh child care center on that.

Sounds a lot like a change of use.

Okay, that would be considered change of use.

All right, I appreciate your humor, but you know, maybe that much.

Maybe that much.

Okay, thank you.

Next up, we have um Lewis Connor seating time to Mike Anderson.

That's nice.

Okay, thank you.

Uh good afternoon.

My name is Mike Anderson.

I'm with the Historic Neighborhoods uh partnership.

Um, the slide that we have up here in front of you is uh deals with uh primary access.

Um the uh we appreciate the fact that staff has proposed that daycare centers use residential or cannot use residential streets as a primary access, although interestingly enough, there's a technical issue.

The term primary access is not defined in the UDC.

We couldn't find it, and apparently, in the proposed ordinance, it's not addressed.

But we do appreciate the fact that staff has included this in there to reduce to reduce impacts.

However, that proposal is far from being a cure-all, as it falls short in terms of ameliorating impacts and raises equity issues for residents who actually do reside on minor arterials and collector streets.

The example of Owen was brought up earlier by the city staff.

We actually did the calculation in Owen.

45% of homes are on arterials and collectors and own it.

A lot of the older neighborhoods, Middleshooks Run, Historic Uptown, Bonnieville, West Side, areas that have grid systems, you're probably going to find similar similar percentages.

Also, in terms of the sampling in terms of minor arterials and collectors, in which large daycare, any kind of daycare would be limited, would include such areas as North El Paso Street, Platte Avenue, the residential areas of Platt, Hancock, Boulder, UNTA, Cash Lapuder, AstraZone, Shelton, Jetwing, North Care Free, South Care Free, Cascade, North North Nevada, even Cheyenne Boulevard and Cheyenne Road and Lake Avenue are all either a minor arterial or a collector and have significant residential uses that would be impacted by that.

In addition to that, homes, homes along those corridors would be bearing a disproportionate portion of the impact.

We support, as mentioned earlier, and that's a change that apparently was made over the last week, but we support one per 400 square square feet of gross floor area in accordance with the current code.

We did an evaluation of a small center, say 15 children with about 500 square feet.

And when you do that 600 uh square feet per one space per 600 square feet, it results in a shortfall of two to four slots.

In fact, at one per 600, it wouldn't even provide enough parking for the required staffing for the facility.

But most important and concerning is any reduction from the current one per 400 would simply serve to make large daycare centers, large commercial daycare centers more feasible and likely in residential zoning districts.

Staff has indicated in in some of our previous conversations with them that one of the reasons for the citywide code amendments is to address issues with the 40-plus existing daycares.

As has been pointed out today, a number of those are have not are non-conforming.

They cannot expand or rebuild without a considerable expense as well as a public process.

We have two suggested options to address that issue.

One is to simply rezone the 40 properties into a new zoning district with uh use and development standards that prov and and also provide incentives.

Such incentives could include waiving development, uh development fees, utility fees, providing property tax rebates.

In essence, treat them like you treat economic development prospects.

That's one option we believe, or second is to establish a new care uh daycare zoning uh district and ask those uh those entities to join it if they'd like to join them.

So there are options available out there.

In summary, uh the HMP uh we support small centers, we support co-lacing uh accessory centers and in-home care in neighborhoods.

Most of the proposed ordinance we support.

We believe these changes, plus those in non-residential areas, more importantly, significantly increase opportunities.

We don't support large unlimited scale commercial operations in neighborhoods.

A neighborhood is not a commercial corridor.

Plus, we believe it's wrong to establish commercial use in residential areas as a permitted by right.

And obviously, if it's not on a conditional basis, there is no public hearing unless an appeal occurs.

That's important to note.

We think it's wrong to diminish citizens' rights at a time when they're most impacted.

And bottom line, we ask for a balanced and reasonable solution for all.

And last of all, we thought we'd share with you a table that just basically summarizes the changes and recommendations that we have.

We've included the the six legacy residential uh districts, as well as office residential and mixed use transitional.

And the reason we offered uh we're offering up our OR and MXT as well or including it in our proposal.

We have a lot of that zoning in our member neighborhoods, uh, probably roughly uh five 500 to 600 um 600 parcels in those.

Basically, the changes that we're suggesting from what staff is suggesting is for small centers, it'd be a conditional use, be allowed in all districts, but a conditional use.

And for large, um, we don't believe it should be allowed in any of the uh any of the zoning districts.

Thank you very much.

Uh and we appreciate your time.

Thanks.

Thank you.

That concludes public comment on this item.

I'll move it back to the dais for any more comments or questions.

Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh follow-up question for Allison.

If you could put up your um table from chapter seven.

Yep.

Did you want the non-residential or residential districts?

I think non-residential.

I just want to look at um.

Yeah, that one.

So I just want to point out that so all so for OR, we already have conditional use now, and correct, and for MXT, it's already a permitted use.

Just going back to the last gentleman's comments on the about not wanting, so that would be a change, right?

We'd have to reduce that from that proposal.

So, yes, it is currently conditional and OR and permitted by right in MXT.

So the only ones we're actually proposing to change of those two districts is the OR and making those permitted.

And the idea is that office residential, there's some expectation for some amount of compatible commercial uses in those zones.

All right, thank you.

Councilman Lineweber.

Yeah, I want um, I just want to have some clarification around churches.

Um, as a church itself functioning, um, they have different rights and uses and laws and stuff like that, but you can't really necessarily govern that much.

I mean, they have Sunday school, yes, that's great.

And so um, they come, don't they come under a different set of rules if they function primarily as a church?

If they function primarily as a church, yes.

I'm not gonna pretend to be an expert on the Arupa statutes.

Um, I'm sure our attorneys can jump in if you have specific questions on that.

The issue we were running into fairly often pertaining to child care and churches was that we were having providers who were distinctly separate from the religious organization who wanted to lease space within a church and use it during the week.

The church had no affiliation with the actual child care besides the fact that it took place in that building.

So that is where some of the um uh tension came from in some of the items you've seen before you here in the last couple months.

Um, and that's also kind of the catalyst for why we're proposing to introduce the adult or child daycare center accessory use is to get around that issue of um child care trying to co-locate with other uses, but not necessarily being truly accessory to that principal use.

So I think I hope that gets to some of your question.

I I you're getting closer.

Um I guess my I mean, I don't think we can actually limit what churches want to do within their own framework.

As soon as they lease their space, I think we do venture into a new territory, and we clearly venture into a new territory if they choose to sell their land.

Sure, right?

So but what we're really talking about is a church itself, if if the congregation wants to respond to a child care need, they they do fall under separate rules as long as they are the primary leader of the effort, right?

Or help me understand that.

I think you're correct with that.

Um I'll look to see if anyone wants to nod their head no.

But um with churches, if they are themselves as the congregation, as the um kind of group moving forward with child care, that child care would be accessory to the religious institution and not require having to go through, say, a zone change to allow that child care because it wouldn't be a separate use.

It only becomes really a point of tension when it's a separate operator working out of a religious institution structure or building.

So uh yes, in your case, a church could move forward with daycare facilities if they are the ones initiating it.

So that's already it's that's happening.

That is happening, so it gets into who is actually running it, right?

And and but that's the place where a church may say, you know, we're not, we don't have the expertise that some of these organizations might have.

Can we partner with them or hire them?

We would still be the foundational, so the church still is the primary, but they could certainly hire a service to help them facilitate that, right?

Sure.

It's really who's in charge, right?

To a degree, yes.

Of course, we we take all of these as a case by case basis.

Um, but this is a lot of the reason why, again, we're adding the accessory use, but also making the caveat within the use-specific section use specific section of code saying that the accessory use of the child care does not have to be affiliated with the primary use.

So that kind of is meant to avoid that issue altogether.

But in the case of churches, they could work away to have that as an accessory use under the religious institution umbrella.

Well, I think it's important to protect neighborhoods, and certainly I don't want a thousand kid child care center, too, you know, two houses away from me, right?

Um if at all possible, um, although I love kids, but um I still like quiet.

And so, but um, but that's where I'm trying to understand is that right now, if you've bought a house next to a church, there's kind of a degree of understanding that you bought a house next to a church, just like you bought a house under an airport, you're gonna hear airport noise, right?

So I think there's a degree of that.

Although most churches are quiet during the week, certainly a lot of churches responded to this child care crisis, which bravo for them.

Um, but still it's it's it's in the nuance of it.

I think that's kind of important here.

That is absolutely a large part of you know what was motivating the changes we are making from the planning staff perspective, is because we were seeing these issues where somebody wanted to co-locate with a certain use, and because the underlying zone district didn't allow it and they weren't affiliated with the primary, it's a big old messy web situation.

So, anything outside of the church being the main person, right?

Then it would is gonna require some kind of zoning change or something like that.

Once a lease agreement is set or a buying of property or whatever, like that is a land use change, period.

Right.

You might remember the revolution church project that came forward a couple months ago that Molly O'Brien uh provided.

That was a huge kind of push for us internally to make these changes is because if that child care facility was affiliated with the church, they would have never gotten before this body.

It would never have been a need.

But the hope with these changes we're presenting today is that situations where that, you know, reasonable compatibility exists, we can avoid having to go through those processes.

Because just that project alone, that was several thousand dollars of additional application fees, public notices, several months of additional requirements just to get the approval to even allow them to move forward.

That's not to mention any of the other applications.

They still had to do with planning after they received approval from this body.

Okay, thank you.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

I'll try to make it pretty quick.

Um first uh Allison, I want to thank you for a very clear presentation measured.

I I appreciate the way you present the material, makes it easier for council.

Um but to go back to use uh permitted use versus conditional use, is it accurate to say that if it is a conditional use, um that it can be appealed just based on um the impact it has on on the neighborhood.

Whereas if it's a uh a permitted use, all you can really discuss at that point is the specifics of the building or or things like that.

So planning staff or or an approval body is meant to make their decisions based on their approval criteria.

I don't have those in front of me.

Um I know that the conditional use approval criteria does speak, of course, a lot to compatibility because that is kind of the idea behind a conditional use application is determining compatibility in those particular situations.

There are some criteria points in the development plan application that do speak to how a use interacts with their neighboring properties, so there is some ability for um commentary on kind of scale, uh density, things like that.

Um but of course it is still a use by right, so we still have to kind of work within that framework.

Um, but that also leaves space for the appeal process if a neighbor disagrees with staff that you know it could be elevated to.

But my understanding is that you can't appeal it for incompatibility with the neighborhood if it's a permitted use.

You can only appeal it because it's like too close to the property line or it's too tall, a specific criteria like that.

And that I think is the concern of the neighborhoods is if it goes um to just permitted uses that their um ability to uh discuss uh is it compatible with the neighborhood either diminishes or goes away.

I think it's further down.

It says one right here.

Well, in the purpose of the development plan, there's a comment 7.5.515A to minimize potential adverse effects of proposed land use by preparing by proposing specific site design characteristics, and so we interpret that as being if there's an impact, they are required to somehow mitigate that.

So if we identify an impact in a neighborhood, uh then those requirements are you they have to go through the process.

We would not approve it without some kind of uh mitigation, and they can appeal it based on that.

And I don't want to get tied down on this because it's gonna get boring.

Everybody's eyes are gonna glaze over.

My eyes are glazing over.

I mean, so you said it, it's a uh site something.

There's like these specific small criteria you can appeal about.

You cannot appeal because of competition site design, yeah.

Specific site design, but not compatibility with the neighborhood, and that's a pretty big difference.

Um, in the rights of the neighborhood.

We can say this isn't compatible with this street.

There's nothing like this on this street, it's too big for us versus this site-specific detail, and I think that is what uh the neighborhoods are concerned about.

So that but that's it.

I don't think we're gonna be able to drill it, make it any clearer than that.

Um, can I just ask Alison?

You want to read that?

Go ahead.

What is the objection to doing what uh HNP asks and make these um uh it's conditional?

It's getting late in the day.

I'm starting to forget stuff.

Conditional use versus permitted use.

Why does the city say no no we can we should not do that?

So again, the the main reasons behind kind of planning's perspective on this is that we feel that the development plan and the use-specific standards that we have in code go a long way to making sure that these already cannot locate in places where incompatibility is almost inevitable, but then also it still leaves room for staff to enforce code requirements, so things like making sure there's sufficient parking, making sure that ingress and egress is safe, making sure that queuing is safe.

We still have space for traffic reports to be required through the development plan process.

And if uh say traffic finds that okay, this site's not gonna work, that would get next right at the development plan level.

So so there's a lot of a lot of analysis and a lot of oversight that goes into those development plans, with still the option of public comment and appeals.

So that is the perspective that we have on this.

And then the other question would be about the large unlimited scale commercial daycare operations in residential.

Um, we have citizens saying that they think that's just uh the scale is too big for residential areas.

It would be fine that in uh commercial areas or others, but not in residential.

What is what's the response to that?

So, with the use-specific standards, a commercial uh child care facility, whether it's accessory or a primary use, would not be allowed on a residential street.

So as I mentioned before, that would remove the ability for commercial daycare on many, many, many of the roads in the city.

I wish I had the map to show you guys and just scroll around, but um it would prevent these to be located in a vast majority of the city.

Can I ask one one question?

Have we found out if uh Flint Ridge in uh in my neighborhood, if I can think of the name of that thing, Garden Ranch uh is a collector.

Yeah, I think Todd uh confirmed that it was a collector.

Okay, so there's a street in in my neighborhood.

We can call it a collector, it has no nothing like a large uh industrial.

Well, maybe that's not the word, a large commercial um daycare center.

People walk on it, it's pretty quiet.

It does lead into the neighborhood, but people walk their dogs, they ride bicycles.

A large business on there.

I just have a hard time with.

I don't want to put words in Todd's mouth unless he wants to get up your the uh, he wants you to.

He wants me to.

The difference uh there are some of the older the in the older way of defining streets like Flint Ridge as collectors, they did have allowed residential uh access in the newer configurations, the newer criteria, they do not allow residential, um, at least have to have access on them.

And so there's a uh uh a difference in the older neighborhoods versus the newer neighborhoods, and so I think that's kind of the difference.

Oops, looks like I didn't quite get it right.

Yeah, it's uh it's up to you, Todd.

And then I I've got one other and I'm done on the questions.

I came all the way over here, so I might as well answer answer a question.

You took uh you took a uh a residential path right there.

You didn't come out here on the collection.

Lots of driveway access points.

Uh undestructed, yes.

Uh Todd Frisbee's city traffic engineering.

So the question is, you know, residential collectors, you know, collector street.

What Kevin uh was referring to in a lot of our modern criteria, development criteria, we have this very strong hierarchy of residential collector arterial, and it's very clear.

Your residential streets home space, drive and you have driveways, you know, collector streets, homes back to those streets.

Arterials are for moving traffic.

Um so that's a very distinct hierarchy that starts to break down when you get into the areas you mentioned, you know, areas around downtown, the west side, it becomes uh that distinction between residential collector and arterial goes away, and really the distinction comes down to what's the function of that street.

So, you know, you can take Nevada Avenue, for example.

It is an arterial street that has homes fronting it, one block over on Tejone Street, homes fronting it is classified as a residential or a low, we would use the term local street, not residential.

Um the difference is Nevada provides connectivity, Tejone doesn't, it dead ends at this college and at the um uh at the hospital, for example.

So this becomes um uh defining what a residential street is not as clear as you think it could be based on our classifications, but for me that is a problem uh using that as the way we're gonna protect the neighborhoods by saying that we just we won't allow these commercials on residentials, we'll allow them on collectors, but in my neighborhood, a collector is like a residential.

And so I, you know, that won't work for me to uh to support it, that has to change.

I don't know if we want to go back and try to fix that or uh just make it uh conditional and not um uh permitted.

Um but I think the neighborhoods need protection on that because again, there's an example.

I walk that street all the time.

A big business, you know, even a daycare, a large one wouldn't would be totally out of uh character for that street.

So small neighborhood ones, just fine.

Yeah, and my problem, okay.

Is that it?

Okay.

It does, yep.

And then my final question, but it would be for Allison.

Allison, what about the idea of hey, we've got the problem with these 40 buildings, we they can't uh be updated the way they ought to be, just rezone those 40 and make that uh like zoned large daycare, whatever you guys come up with the verbs or the names, um, and we go from there, then we can do other things to encourage uh their success.

We could I mean that is always an option, of course.

Any property owners always allowed to request to rezone their properties.

The the issue uh which is kind of why we you know wrote the ordinance this way in the first place was that that creates you know a process and cost that end up usually being passed on to those homeowners or those commercial entities.

So the city doesn't typically rezone people's properties for them because we cannot of course do that without their consent, and you know, there might be other reasons why they don't necessarily want to.

Okay, um, and then of course, just the rezoning in the zone districts is just one piece of kind of a greater puzzle with that, because um, like in the case of say the Ruth Washburn school, that would have been you know, multiple planning applications beyond just a rezone.

So it can get a little confusing with these, but by making it permitted by right, it just take me takes one to two applications just off the table.

Okay, and um I'll I'll offer some amendments once this thing is motioned and seconded, but uh in the ordinance it's one parking space per 600 square feet.

Is that what it is in this ordinance or is it 400?

It is one per 600.

Okay, okay.

Okay, thank you.

That's it for me.

Seeing no other um comments from the dice, I do have a motion and a second.

Um councilman Donaldson.

So if you were going to offer amendments, okay.

Um, first amendment I would uh offer is uh to have a one um per 400 square foot uh off-street parking requirement versus one per 600.

Uh and so I move that amendment to this ordinance, and ask for a second.

I see your motion.

I don't have a second.

Going once, okay.

My next uh uh amendment which I will offer is to remove the large unlimited scale commercial daycare um centers in residential um and or I have a motion, but I don't have a second and thirdly um would all would be to remove the uh uh permitted use and um replace it with conditional use and residential uh NOR.

I don't have a second.

Okay.

Well, uh it's been nice talking with all of you.

So I have a motion from Councilman Henjam and a second from Councilman Gold.

Let's vote.

And the motion passes eight to one.

I do have a couple of requests from council members to take a quick break um before we start the next item.

So we are that's okay.

We are back in session.

Will the clerk please read item 10E and 10 F into the record, but we will vote on them separately.

10 the approval of the elevate downtown neighborhood plan and update to the 2016 experienced downtown land use master plan 10F resolution for approval of the elevate downtown plan of development and update to 2016 experienced downtown plan of development.

We will start with a presentation from the planning department and then um a presentation from downtown partnership.

Um Ryan.

Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, Council President Carl Iverson, Pro Tem Risley, Ryan T.

Fertiller, Urban Planning Manager.

Um, I do have a handful of slides.

I'm going to try to run through them fairly quickly because I know that uh both Chelsea Gondek and Mark Del Torre uh will have some additional comments and much more detailed information for you.

So um please feel free to interrupt if you feel I'm going too quickly, but in respect of everyone's time, I will try to be brief.

Um before you today are two applications, two items to vote on uh as we're read into the record.

They both are related to the elevate downtown plan.

Um actually let me say one more thing.

The uh map on the screen illustrates the uh primary focus area, roughly one square mile of downtown Colorado Springs.

Uh there are plan elements that are slightly more broad and dealing with things like legacy loop or public safety and transportation networks, etc.

That go beyond the one square mile, but primarily our focus today is the area shown on the map.

Um, right in the heart of Colorado Springs.

Um the items today are considered an update to the 2016 experience downtown plan that uh was adopted by City Council roughly 10 years ago.

Um both the experience plan and the elevate plan are made up of two volumes.

The first volume is what's considered a plan of development for the downtown development authority.

Uh state statutes require that a DDA receive council approval of a plan of development due to the fact that DDAs have the ability to uh collect mills uh on property taxes as well as use uh tax increment financing or TIFF uh to make improvements and uh catalyze development uh within their district.

Uh volume two in both cases is a more of a neighborhood plan, what used to be referred to as a master plan that provides a high-level guidance to city staff, investors, property owners, residents, and others that have interest in the success of downtown Colorado Springs.

The plan includes a vision statement, which I won't read, but you'll see in the upper left corner of this image, as well as five primary goals.

This is a slightly pared down from the experience plan 10 years ago.

A few have been consolidated and simplified, but cover a wide range of issues that are critical to the success of downtown Colorado Springs.

Again, you'll hear more about these from uh Chelsea and Mark.

Volume two again is the traditional land use plan.

It has seven chapters that cover a wide range of issues like land use, economic vitality, parks, trails, mobility, et cetera.

I should note, and I probably should have done this earlier.

Um, in your agenda is a link to the planning commission staff report regarding this project.

That staff report goes into significantly more detail on all these issues.

So hopefully that uh was uh helpful in assisting you uh reviewing the the plan.

Um the document was initially submitted in February of this year, however, the efforts to draft and um refine and finalize these this document uh goes back over a year.

I think the project kicked off roughly a year and a half ago, and throughout that process, there's been significant coordination both with the planning department as well as other agencies uh throughout the city.

Um public notice and public, I should say public participation involvement has been significant.

Again, you'll hear a lot more about this from Chelsea and Mark, but there have been many focus groups, multiple online surveys, community events, uh significant email and social media outreach.

Um there's really been significant effort to make sure the community knew about the creation of this plan and had the opportunity to participate in its development.

Um issues that uh were fairly common from stakeholders include support for small businesses, downtown amenities like grocery stores uh specifically that serve uh the uh growing residential population that we've seen downtown uh uh over the last 10 years or so.

More transportation options, certainly safety and cleanliness was a uh common topic, um, activation in parks and and housing and homelessness.

Um again, city uh departments from from uh throughout the city were involved in reviewing earlier drafts, obviously public works folks, utilities, fire and police parks and and others.

Um of the key elements for planning staff to use to evaluate this plan was the plan COS, the city's comprehensive plan.

Again, there's significant discussion in the staff report regarding the various chapters of plan COS, including vibrant neighborhoods, unique places, thriving economy, etc.

Uh ultimately staff found that the um elevate downtown plan is highly consistent with plan COS.

It's also highly consistent with a number of integrated plans that have been adopted over the last uh 15 to 20 years.

I'm not gonna go through them all, but uh certainly there's some discussion in the plan and documentation of all the research and efforts that were done to make sure we were furthering the goals and policies and strategies of all these other plans uh that many of which have come before city council in the past.

Um the review the review uh the formal review for the plan primarily focused on the purpose of the unified development code.

Again, I won't read through these items, but there was some discussion in the staff report regarding compliance, and ultimately staff did find that the elevate downtown plan is highly consistent with the purpose of the UDC as well as with other relevant guiding plans and plan COS.

Um there are some motions, obviously, for you uh in the agenda, both for adoption of the land use plan, the elevate plan, as well as a resolution that's been drafted uh for council's consideration for um adoption of the plan, the volume one plan of development.

With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

I will actually say before I open it up for questions, I do want to just thank uh Chelsea and uh Jessica Thompson and uh the all the folks at MIG that were uh so helpful and patient in working with the city uh and all our stakeholder groups to uh bring this to where we are today.

With that, I'd be happy to answer any questions.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yes, thank you, madam president.

Um afternoon, Ryan.

Afternoon.

This is our last item, so you know, you're what stands between us and the door, I think.

So imagine downtown master plan uh 2009, that's when the foreign-based code came in, right?

That is correct.

Okay, and that's when we went to not having an actual height limit in the city, at least in the downtown core.

Prior to 2009, we had what was called the high rise overlay, which did regulate height.

There was a maximum, however, it did obviously support the construction of tall buildings, including our tallest buildings today.

Absolutely.

But there was a, you know, you have to draw a line from the middle of the road and it ended somewhere.

Correct.

Um, and then in this in page 166, well, or 1170 1177, it says central sector, uh, and this is about foreign based code.

So the central sector encompasses the majority of the downtown foreign-based code zone and geographically represents the heart of downtown.

The primary goal, and this is important sentence right here.

The primary goal for the central sector is to increase downtown density, create an iconic skyline, and establish a high quality pedestrian environment uh at the street level.

What does that mean?

Create us an iconic skyline.

Um, well, uh I will say that that statement is actually um uh sentiment that was included in the 2016 plan.

Uh the term iconic skyline was I wasn't here then, so you you know, you're gonna have to catch questions now.

I uh and and I I will uh attempt to answer the question, but I also did want to just point out that it was uh this is not a new sentiment that this is something that's been in place for the last decade or so.

Um but I I think at the planning staff level, as someone who has to interpret what that means, iconic means uh exceptional, uh unique, interesting, diverse, that it's something that um people would recognize, uh visitors to our city, residents of our city.

Um, when you are headed south on I-25 and you uh come past the Fillmore Hill and you get your first glimpse at at downtown, it's something that you um uh uh value and have interest in.

How do we do that?

How's that gonna happen?

I think it's done through um uh varying building heights.

We don't necessarily want all our buildings to be identical in height.

Uh it's done through interesting, unique and varied architecture, uh materials, styles, um, angles, uh, those types of things.

We we also really emphasize uh 360 degree architecture, so no matter what direction you're looking, whether you're looking to the west and seeing our mountain backdrop or your um hiking at Red Rock Canyon and looking to the east that uh the buildings you see are interesting from uh all different angles and perspectives.

Okay, my my concern there would be that uh, and I appreciate everything you just said, but that it means we gotta have some more tall, really tall buildings to get some variety in the in the uh sky the uh skyscrap, skyscape.

Um, is that the right word?

Iconic skyline.

So, but I hear everything you're saying.

I'm gonna force myself to stop at uh 3 30 here.

So I'm gonna go kind of fast through some of this.

Right now, the foreign based code is being written rewritten.

Is that right?

Uh I think rewit re rewritten is probably a little bit strong, but we are in the process of um drafting some proposed updates to the form-based code, yes.

Does any of that have to do with height height?

Yes, there are um proposals to create some additional design guidelines uh relative to uh further that that desire for an iconic skyline and as many of the things that I already talked about.

Okay, because you know you'll remember back a few years ago, we maybe it wasn't that many years.

We were talking about should citizens get a chance to vote on do we want taller buildings?

We want to kind of go down the Denver path.

Uh there's some that say, Oh, we'll never do that, it'll just be one building.

But we this was when we were told we'll wait until we redo this plan, elevate uh downtown.

That's when we can talk about this.

But then when this came along, it was no, no, no, we'll talk about that in the uh form based code rewrite, I guess.

So I'll I'll just be looking to see when we actually get to that uh topic.

Because I still think that's something citizens have have uh a real interest in because it will change, you know, the iconic, it's recognizable to us now that live here in Colorado Springs, and I think people like it, they like the biggest small town in America feel.

Um, look, a couple pages farther, it says finally, as the form-based code is updated, special considerations should be taken to potentially expand the existing boundaries of the code to ensure all of the downtown is included.

And so another thing that caught that caught my eye because we were told, hey, this is just a small part of the downtown.

Everybody relax, you know, put the fire, put the fire out there, relax.

It's just a small portion.

But now we're saying maybe we move this to the entire downtown.

Correct.

Uh I I don't I respectfully, I don't believe the word entire downtown is in there.

I could be wrong.

I I have not reading that exact passage.

It says it says the existing boundaries of the code.

Well, to potentially expand the existing boundaries of the code, the form-based code, to ensure all of the downtown is included.

Okay.

Um the uh as staff continues to work on updates to the form-based code.

I can speak to a couple minor expansion areas that are being considered.

For instance, in March, City Council rezoned the Palmer High School site to form based zone.

We now have uh property immediately to the west across Nevada, um, Carls Jr.

and some uh commercial properties immediately north of Carls Jr.

that are not in the foreign-based code, but perhaps they should be, given that we have form-based code to the west and to the east of those properties.

Um a couple other examples include uh the catalyst campus area has acquired some vacated rail right away.

They most of what they own is form-based zone.

Some of their new acquisition is not.

I think it would make a lot of sense to add those properties to the form-based zone as well.

What concerns me about what we're gonna do here today, which is we're gonna vote, and you know, I suspect it'll be eight to one to pass this thing, is that we don't know what's in here, right?

Because you weren't even sure that it said that.

Like, well, does it really say the entire downtown?

Because there's so much.

There's so much in here.

Yes, and you know, then it will get used to justify things in the future, and that's what will happen with it.

Um, there's a picture here when it's talking about form-based code, and you guys can't really see it, but it shows this building with you know different articulations, and I don't think most citizens of Colorado Springs would really want this building downtown.

But it's it's highlighted as an example, I suspect, of kind of the future, or not necessarily exactly this, but we'll go in this direction.

So, I got five minutes left.

On page under public space, uh on page 171, it says establish parking maximums to limit the amount of downtown deactivated by parking.

So that is a goal to reduce parking downtown.

And that is, you know, on page 171 or 1182.

Um I may uh defer to uh Mark to help expand on that, but I think that might be listed as a possible consideration.

It says public space enhancements.

And then these are just bullets below that.

And uh so I would ask, do we have too much parking now?

And we're gonna we need to reduce it.

And again, that is my concern with what we'll do here today.

We're gonna just we're gonna vote yes on this, and God knows what's really in here because you know it's too much for us to consume.

I read some of it last night, the parts I thought maybe were most important, at least to me.

Uh I would, you know, when we did um the UDC with Peter Wysaki, we went through chapter by chapter, and he kind of went through it with counseling and laid it out what's in each chapter, and then we knew what we were voting on.

And that's not that's not happening here.

I'll go with a couple more.

Who actually wrote this anyway?

I mean, we hired a consultant.

Is that him?

You're responsible.

The downtown development authority uh can uh hired and has a contract with MIG that did most of the drafting.

However, there was a lot of review and participation.

I understand.

But again, it just you know, it's just I think we have almost too much because we don't even know what is in here because I'm throwing some things at you, and you're like, what?

What does it say?

It then and you're the expert on it.

I'm not.

I mean, we've got 25 things on our plate over here.

I'll skip forward to community and culture.

So you know this will be pretty good, um, and right out of the gate it says public art should strengthen community identity.

What is our community identity that we're gonna strengthen?

I I think uh um most uh residents, business owners, visitors to downtown Colorado, Colorado Springs value the public art that we have uh downtown.

Um, our murals, our sculptures, uh our art on the streets program, is something that is um widely associated with downtown Colorado Springs, and I think the plan is just trying to emphasize that we should continue to uh develop that program.

And the program, I think we can all agree.

We I think most people like art and different forms of art, but it's what is the art going to represent, or what is the art, what are the standards gonna be?

Is it going to be beauty?

Um aesthetically pleasing to the eye, or will it be something else?

And that's what there's some hints in here, but the hints didn't make me comfortable.

A little further down on this first page, which is page 188, it says, talking about safety, and it says a successful downtown requires creating safe environments for all people and addressing the root causes of safety concerns.

So, you know, maybe I guess that's crime, right?

The root causes of safety concerns, criminals, crime.

No, it's limited access to housing, health care, and economic opportunity.

I don't I don't think really that maybe even you know what's in here.

Um, and so you it might be frustrating.

Well, he's pulling out stuff that we don't really agree with either, then it shouldn't be in here if you don't agree with it either.

But so for me, those are the root causes of uh public safety concerns, health care.

I just don't agree with that.

Um I'll just go to one or two more and then I'll let my colleagues pick it up if they have anything.

This is one where it says just on art, and then we'll go to the homeless, because there's a good section on homelessness in here, which I would recommend all my colleagues read.

Um, to build an existing placemaking, to build on existing placemaking strengths and continue to support the creative economy.

This plan recommends, and one of the things is integrating art into everyday streetscape infrastructure like crosswalks, light poles, and benches.

But what will that mean?

Will it mean that they're elegant and graceful?

Will it mean that they're just shocking to the eye?

Uh what does it mean?

It says increasing opportunities for local creatives and those who belong to underrepresented demographics.

What does that mean?

Underrepresented demographics.

So, I'll just jump a forward to the homeless section.

You know, one of the recommendations here is to ensure adequate public restrooms, but my concern is why won't they just be damaged if we put more restrooms, uh, public restrooms out there?

So there's not enough time in this format to go through this.

It's like you just have to like blast out some stuff.

That's 10 minutes right there.

Uh, if all of us did this, we'd be here for you know an hour and a half.

And I wish we had gone through it like chapter by chapter, and you really presented it to us.

Maybe we can still do that in the future.

Like, what's actually in this document?

Uh it would be I really I think it's it would be responsible for us to know that before we vote yes on it.

Thank you.

And if I could just respond briefly, uh the document is large, it's over 200 pages long.

I am familiar with the plan.

I've read the plan, I participated in the creation of the plan.

I don't know every statement and every sentence and every word choice, certainly.

Of course.

Um, I do think that you'll hear a lot more about the details of the plan from both Chelsea and Mark, and perhaps many of your questions or concerns and other council members' questions and concerns will be answered here shortly.

But certainly I'm I'm happy to come up and try to respond to any other questions uh as they come.

All right, I didn't realize they were gonna give another they probably don't even want to do it now.

Just like after that, forget it.

We're not gonna say anything.

Okay, thank you.

Councilman Rainey.

Thank you, Madam President.

I'm gonna wait for the other part of the presentation.

Uh I think Councilman uh member Donaldson actually he covered a couple of things that I had on my mind, but I'm gonna wait to see if you covered a transportation.

I had a question specific to transportation that was mentioned earlier.

Good afternoon, President Crow Iverson, council members.

My name is Chelsea Gondek, and I have the pleasure of serving as the CEO for the downtown partnership.

Um I'm here today after over a year and a half.

Funny enough, we actually launched this kind of the end of 2024, so well over a year and a half of hard work to present the culmination of the Elevate Downtown Plan.

In that time, we have had vast amounts of community input.

Some of those community members are actually here today, and I would like to thank them.

And also thank city council for your active involvement, including of course the questions that we will get today.

And of course, the city staff, as Ryan mentioned, have been a huge part of this process, as well as other local organizations.

Truly, I believe that this plan is better because of all of the involvement of this wide range of stakeholders.

We took this plan on at the end of 2024 after seeing an incredible impact from our last plan, the experience downtown plan, an impact that was to the tune of over 2.6 billion dollars of investment in our downtown.

That included everything from the proliferation of businesses to what we have dubbed neighborhoodification, as well as a greatly changed downtown market and environment from when that last plan was approved in 2016.

I do believe that this plan is going to set us up for success for the next decade and well beyond.

With that, I would like to bring up Mark with MIG, who is our consultant, and he is going to highlight where we've landed since the last work session that we prevent presented to you guys, and then of course, happy to answer any and all questions.

Madam President, Council, it's nice to see y'all again.

Uh I'm going to try and balance the request for depth and kind of technical rigor and the exploration of some of these topics with knowing that I'm the last thing standing between you and getting out of here.

But in that my name is Mark Delatoria.

I'm the principal at MIG, who's a project lead for the project.

Uh I did not write every single word on that.

I'm supported by a great team, senior project managers and engagement specialists.

We also have local engagement partner, Jessica Thompson here who helped us along the way, as well as other technical experts at economic and planning systems, repeats and consort engineers who worked with us along the way.

A lot of this information, because the draft plan was initially out for public review during the December and January time frame, is going to be building on what we already talked about during our last work session.

I'm gonna really try and focus on the areas of divergence or where we took a deeper dive more specifically.

As Ryan noted, two major parts of this updating two existing elements or volumes of the plan, the plan of development, and the downtown plan itself.

The first of which is more governance of the DDA, the second is more of a traditional planning document, all of which is rooted in really deep community engagement.

We're at the end of that process now, moving into obviously the adoption period, but started as both Ryan and Chelsea noted over a year and a half ago, and engagement was woven throughout.

Throughout that process, we engaged with numerous uh focus groups on very either specific topics or areas of interest or concern.

We had robust online surveys, garnering over 2,000 responses, large-scale in-person events, pop-up events at existing points of activity in the downtown, and the draft plan public review period, which I noted occurred during December and January of the early part of this year.

Those priority topics, as Ryan noted, range from small business support and arts and culture to housing and homelessness and that ever elusive downtown grocery store.

Um, and the last phase of community engagement is really focused on reviewing the plan.

All the the detail and depth of that, and that occurred over about a month period through the winter, where we had over a thousand active readers in that, and about 80 of which provided, or 30 of which provided specific comments of how they would suggest refinement.

A lot of that was actually identifying what had been documented already in terms of support for um downtown amenities that already exist, as well as new amenities, uh, like a grocery store, uh that elusive uh public restroom as well, uh, concerns around homelessness and the impacts that has on quality of life and safeties and concerns in that regard.

Um, but a lot of it consisted of what we'd heard throughout the entirety of the process.

There weren't a lot of um curveballs really at that stage because we had been out in front of the community for so long at that point.

As Ryan noted, two major elements.

We have volume one, plan of development, volume two is the plan itself.

I'm gonna sip through some of the higher level pieces of the first part of volume one, and then I'll talk about the volume two aspects as well, which at this stage or this kind of iteration of the plan where we had imagine experience now elevate, adding new elements including economic vitality, community and culture and infrastructure and utilities.

And that first volume there, the DDA's plan of development there, the assets really, which you had 10 years ago.

There are a lot of those same assets.

There's some new ones, right?

Recent residential development, the expansion of the sports economy with the addition of widener fields, well as other uh sports creation, but a lot of the other places around um pedestrian prioritize spaces, um, local business and entertainment destinations, or a lot of those seeds that are part of the previous assets that are still very much true today.

We're thinking about challenges, but we have, you know, assets we can leverage or build upon.

There's still certainly challenges in every downtown around the country.

Um everyone's special and unique, but everyone has a series of challenges.

They're all navigating in different capacities.

Some of it in um in Colorado Springs, for example, is the impact of tax exempt parcels in the downtown as it relates to funding opportunities.

Some of it is the ongoing high costs of development, uh, restricting the types of products that maybe the community wants to see.

And there are other elements and uh that we want to address from a challenge standpoint as relates to diversity of housing being offered to residents in downtown, both existing and new, as well as the retention of a diverse workforce.

We think about the positive side of that same coin, the opportunities, and again, a lot of this uh is really an update, the targeted update to you know what uh was put forth in 2016, but starting to refine that a bit further as we think about downtown as an innovation and education hub, thinking about the role of downtown and the greater kind of tourism market, as well as a more unified approach to homelessness, which again is a is a consistent uh talking point for both the community as well as our conversations with staff and understanding of best practices.

As Ryan noted, every plan's got a vision and goals.

Uh, here I'm not going to read these words.

These are largely reflective of information you've read already or I've presented to you in the past.

But in that, and the focus I want to maybe note specifically is that goal number one, the heart of the Pikes Peak region, that really is kind of core to how we think about the downtown Colorado Springs amongst the not just the larger Colorado Springs kind of city boundaries, but the role it has in the regional standpoint.

So when you think about that first goal, it's really about positioning and championing downtown as this destination for all types of uses and the empowerment of local retailers through whether financial support or otherwise.

We think about downtown as a neighborhood more specifically, it's uh bolstering great programs that we have, like the clean and safe program, which started throughout during this process, actually, in addition to the diversification of housing and the support of neighborhood-based amenities for those who live downtown, both now and again in the future.

And there's a lot of really great balances when we think about the other goals.

This kind of urban life with unmatched access to nature is really unique for Colorado Spings.

A lot of Colorado can boast that, but I think the urbanity and access to nature is really unique in Colorado Springs, and that happens both in the public spaces that are throughout the downtown, as well as the activation of maybe new amenities like legacy loop or underutilized amenities like Creek Access.

When we think about the other parts of downtown, the balance of creativity and athletics, there's a celebration of the types of arts and culture and destinations that exist already, in addition to the expansion of the creative economy.

And then there's also the athletics component of that, not just in the Olympic City USA brand, but in all the other great assets that have come to the table in the past 10 years.

The last part around design is really about the seamless quality of the user experience in both mobility, access, and the activation of the ground floor plane.

And again, that was that was fast, a lot of quick words tied together, not new content for y'all.

This is all stuff that we're hopefully in review for the first part of that planet development.

We'll start to get to some more specific aspects that were updated based on y'all's guidance from the work session as well as guidance from the community during the broader engagement period in the draft plan review.

So into the plan itself, seven major chapters, as you'll saw from that earlier slide, three of which are new.

The first chapter, which you'd expect in a plan of this nature, land use and character, major topics include historic context, land use, pardon me, districts and gateways, catalytic sites and big ideas.

Some of those are parts of the prior plan.

Some of it's new, like density and building heights.

There's specific guidance within the plan itself that it articulates the economic benefits and activation benefits to density while noting concerns and considerations for impacts around view sheds, shade corridors, things of that nature.

There's also additional guidance around upper story design and rooftop activation, knowing that unique building forms as you move past the ground plane provide new opportunities for not just private users but as well as the public.

The evolution of the catalytic sites map is built on a greater foundation of economic and market feasibility, as we updated from the prior 2016 plan to the current plan.

Some of which is that those some of those developments have already come online.

Or feasibility over additional analysis proved to not be viable as we moved into a post-kind of post-COVID market.

The sites that were identified there were organized into a couple different categories as it relates to catalytic site.

Some of them are development opportunities, others are desired uses, like that grocery store.

Some are enhanced or reimagined sites, so really building on great assets that exist today and giving them a little additional love as it relates to either the type of use or the public realm amenities.

And then there were a few other influential sites or influence sites that were adjacent to the downtown boundary that were important considerations as it relates to how that changes the built form, the energy, the amount of people, traffic, and so forth.

That downtown grocery store, which came up at the start of the project and at every stage of the project, was an important thing that we identified early on.

We pivoted to provide additional demand analysis with potential grocers in the downtown.

By establishing site needs and selection criteria, we're able to identify nine potential sites.

The plan itself also provides guidance for incentive options of how you might go about procuring one of those users in one of those particular locations.

Districts and gateways, again, an important element of the prior plan, updated to reflect new boundaries and new gateways that have either been identified from the community or have come about through the development over time in the past 10 years.

Thinking about not just connections to and from downtown, but within it as well, as not every piece of downtown is the same.

We know there's a lot of unique characters as you move from the north end to the south and everything in between.

Second chapter is economic vitality.

Again, this is a new addition to the plan.

2016 plan did not have one that tackled this specifically.

Based on our engagement with the broader community and additional technical analysis, some of those categories are required additional guidance and rows to the top are around small business support, employer, employer and employee retention and attraction, tourism visitation, and then neighborhood education.

Really, the idea that downtown is a neighborhood and should be able to provide for the residents that do live here today and may live here tomorrow.

As it relates to small business support, there were guidance around the expansion or supplement of the current building enhancement grant program, as well as guidance in leveraging additional funding resources specific to small businesses.

There's some more nuanced recommendations as it relates to collaboration with brokers and the curation of specific tenant mixes to satisfy some of those gaps or needs that might exist in the current retail or service provisions, as well as some more nimble strategies around temporary activations and site cleanups.

There is a goal of incentivizing a modern class A office space.

There is also guidance there as relates to amenities specific to folks living and working downtown and partnerships that should be further emboldened or or bolstered with both the chamber, the Colorado College, and other employers in that market.

Chapter three, parks, trails, and waterways is an update.

We had this in the prior plan.

Obviously, there's a lot of success here in the expansion of the legacy loop system since the prior plan and the downtown parks.

The legacy loop completion is a big part of that focus.

There's been significant improvements, obviously, since the 2016 plan, and there's really just a small remaining gap in there that's really important to almost complete, almost there, but a really critical one.

When we think about the role that urban, both uh trails and waterways provide for both amenity, both residents living in downtown as well as folks kind of coming to downtown.

Um, the waterfront activation piece is part continuity from existing plan guidance.

As Ryan noted, there were four 87 plans.

There are a lot of plans that we were to try to reconcile because there's a lot of guidance you have to date, and the idea of planning for the sake of planning is not fun for me or y'all or anyone in the community.

So we wanted to make sure that the guidance that you had to date was built upon, and we added additional tools and maybe contextualized it for the downtown area.

So there's uh guidance and uh acknowledgement of new projects around Monument Creeks restoration, uh, specifically America, the beautiful park, as well as a few other conceptualizations for park adjacent, potentially the redevelopment or enhancement, or sorry, creek adjacent uh redevelopment or enhancement.

Trail-oriented development, you've probably heard of TOD, transit-oriented development, the idea that mobility is an amenity and higher capacity mobility is a greater amenity.

So, transit-oriented development.

Trail-oriented development's actually a really critical part of that consideration as well.

That building new residential or commercial uses near amenities, help to greater leverage kind of the investment that the city and and others have aid in those spaces.

So there's a focus on trailing development around Monument Creek and Fountain Creek and Chooks Run, and there's some very specific guidance as it relates to trailer and development from both regional and national MPOs on best practices to achieve that.

Chapter four, the mobility network.

I'm talking real fast.

I'm gonna slow down as I get into the section.

I know you had some mobility oriented conversation or questions for me.

There's a few major elements in the mobility network section around the framework, different street typologies, active transportation, parking, and safety uh improvements, especially for uh those major intersections.

Um there's an updated framework, which is a prior guidance term from the prior um from the 2016 plan around placemaking streets and active transportation priority streets.

There's additional bike facility recommendations, safety improvements at key corridors, and um critical intersections that have uh documented safety uh issues or concerns.

There is a detailed sidewalk gap analysis of where people currently can or don't walk, and then there is additional guidance for mobility hubs and micro mobility support, both from a TNC rideshare standpoint as well as very nuanced kind of um micro-mobility hubs.

I'm gonna let's go actually we'll keep going.

I'm gonna keep going.

Okay, yeah, okay.

Uh street types, I noted the place making streets and the active transportation priority streets already as part of that system network that had been established in the prior um 2016 plan, the expansion refinement that here.

It's also one other kind of unique street element that I'll note in there the residential garden streets that was really uh is more so about the extension of livable outdoor space, the the landscaping and traffic calming nature of those types of streets and the importance of that as opposed to um the conveyance of different modes of transportation specifically.

Intersection and safety improvement.

Oh yeah, oh, there you go.

Yeah.

Councilman Rainey.

There you go, right on cue.

All right, all right.

So once again, it was mentioned earlier about walkability, but then the comment that was made was more trans options.

I believe it was actually slide uh eight.

Besides biking and micro mobility, what other because this goes back 10 years.

I'm gonna be honest, I think it goes back a little bit longer where we did these downtown transportation studies.

So where are we at?

Is that something that has been integrated into this plan?

Is there a deeper dive, at least not that I saw, of very specific types of transportation that you would like to target versus more of an overarching umbrella of the various types that are out there?

Yeah, certainly.

So I can start that and I might give space to for transportation to join me up here.

Or otherwise, one of the important parts of a plan like this that is a kind of a uh what's the word I'm looking for?

A combination or confluence of a lot of guidance.

The goal is not to be overly duplicative.

So there is a common holistic.

Oh, there it is.

Thank you.

Holistic, holistic.

Um, the goal is not to be overly duplicative for plan guidance that's already in the books for other types of plans that guide transportation staff and otherwise.

Um, in there, the if you kind of track the placemaking streets and active transportation priority streets, there's additional guidance in the plan of where the different types of mobility would be best suited specifically as it relates to alternative transit option or transportation options, bike and pet are obviously at the top of that, but there are other considerations for potential micromobility beyond bike and pet.

Um I'm not sure if you have any additional comments to add to that, or if Chelsea does.

I can I can censor.

Good afternoon, Chelsea Gonex, CEO of Downtown Partnership.

I will note that in volume one of the plan, a new transit center is identified and does incorporate some of those prior cities that were done.

So as opposed to making specific recommendations, we recognize that downtown is a mobility hub, as noted on a um slide or two ago, and the opportunity for various uh types of transportation to get people downtown.

So we mostly um in what Mark is going through here, talk about getting people around downtown once they're there, but we recognize the importance of how people are getting to downtown, whether that's a single occupancy vehicle or using public transit.

We recognize um potential rail opportunities in the plan as well at a high level, saying that we would um support those opportunities because they would enhance people's opportunity to get into and out of downtown.

So when you may when you make the comment, a new transit center, are you talking about in addition to what we already have, or something that will replace what we currently have?

I think it could be either or and that's where we don't get into being um blanking overly prescriptive in this plan.

It really is visionary.

It's intended to be visionary, recognizing that we need these amenities and ways that uh work in 2026 and beyond, as opposed to here's exactly where it should go, how it should be built, kind of down into the design.

Um, that's where we get on a project by project basis.

Speaking to development plans when a project comes forward, where we would kind of review it at that stage as opposed to within this.

Based on that comment, would I be accurate to say this is more of a very high-level visionary plan instead of something very prescriptive?

Correct.

That is the intent.

It's really to be an overall guiding document as opposed to specific projects.

Let's say there are aspects of it, right?

Slider forward or back where we identify some opportunities for safety improvements.

This is not to say that these are all that we recognize.

There are safety improvements on a many more intersections, some of which we spoke about earlier, right?

That we would advocate for kind of with that umbrella of overall desire to make um walkability or micromobility safer for individuals downtown.

Thank you.

Two some of the specific examples here, high priority areas that were identified based on crash data from this planning effort as well as building from uh data and documentation from prior planning efforts include Kiowa and Bijou, Platt, Colorado, Simran, and those areas and as well as others identified in this section about the blue corridors as well as the kind of point-based um uh identification nodes around the downtown map there.

There's specific safety countermeasures that build off of existing transportation staff guidance as well as other best practice of how to go about addressing safety in a manner that is um uh conducive with the land use, with the traffic, and all the other kind of elements in that in that space.

Chapter five, public realm and urban design.

Uh, key elements here, form-based code is largely teed up as Ryan spoke to earlier.

That's something that staff would be diving into kind of on the tail end lagging this and moving forward outside of this and after this planning effort.

Um, a public space is also expanded upon there as well as district identities.

Uh, the form based code recommendations specifically to the plan in terms of the downtowns uh, not position on that, as noted, the revisions currently in process.

Uh recommendations from this plan specifically are about zone alignment with downtown districts, which you can see identified uh in the map there, central sector, corridor sector, transitions one and two.

You can see that consolidated under existing kind of areas of height and density and towards the rail in America the beautiful park, and then tapering pretty significantly as you move both to the south, north, and east.

And then that same uh recommendation of the plan, clarity uh around use definitions, which I think there was a conversation on an agenda item before I came up around use definitions, uh, and architectural uh diversity, environmental sustainable design, attention to the upper floor, which I noted in the density and heights section as well.

Uh community and historic preservation, uh again, new uh addition to this plan.

Uh that wasn't addressed in detail during the prior one.

Uh there's specific mechanisms that are noted as potential avenues to ensure that downtown remains accessible for existing residents and neighbors as we move forward into the future, whether that's aging in place or otherwise.