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Good morning, and welcome to the City of Colorado Springs work session for Monday, July 27th, 2026.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Making sure you're on your toes this morning.

It's not responding to my there we go.

Appears to be a lag.

Okay.

Councilmember Casey.

Here.

Councilmember Crow Iverson.

Here.

Councilmember Donaldson.

Here.

Councilmember Gold.

Present online.

Council Member Henjam.

Running late.

Councilmember Line Weber.

Running late.

Councilmember Rainey.

Here.

Councilmember Risley.

Here.

And Council Member Williams.

Here.

Are there any changes to today's agenda?

No.

Seeing none moving on to regular meeting comments.

Are there any changes to tomorrow's regular meeting?

Councilman Williams.

President Crow Iverson, I would like to pull the minutes off the agenda for tomorrow.

Those minutes will be pulled.

Moving on to item 4A.

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

City Council work session meeting minutes, July 13, 2026.

Are there any changes to these minutes?

Other than they'll be pulled off.

And we will get those minutes changed.

Moving on to item 5A.

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

Item 5A, Colorado Springs Health Found Presentation.

Good morning, Cari.

It's not.

All right.

Can you hear that okay?

All right.

Let me get all my stuff organized here.

All right.

Well, Council President Crow Iverson, President Pro Tem Risley, members of Council, uh, City Staff, and the public.

Um, thank you for having us here today.

Kari Davis, I'm the executive director of Colorado Springs Health Foundation.

Right.

That's not me.

There we go.

You sure you don't need us?

I can give it a whirl, but I don't think it would be very successful.

We'll give you the right presentation here in a second.

It's it appears to be frozen, so just bear with me one second.

Yeah, no problem.

Well, uh that's coming up.

I just want to introduce uh some of our trustees uh in attendance with me today.

We have board chair Curtis Brown, uh Board Treasurer Kent Fortune, immediate past board chair Jim Johnson, and also Ann Caesar.

Um and I just uh want to thank all of our trustees, but especially these folks who carry a heavy load on our behalf and do a great job.

All right.

We'll go ahead and get started.

Oh, one other thing.

I know council member Gold is online and Councilmember Weber Line Weber is late this morning, but I do want to acknowledge them as our two city council liaisons.

They have been incredibly dedicated, um, coming to every meeting, really providing a lot of insight from their perspective.

Um, so special thanks to Council Line Weber and Councilmember Gold.

Please jump in during the presentation if you have things to add.

All right.

Let's see about that presentation.

Great.

Awesome.

Okay.

So this is what uh we have prepared for you today.

Our goal today is to really look back at the last 10 years of our existence.

That's as long as we've been grant making.

Uh, and also to talk quite a bit about how we assess our impact in the community.

So I'll start with our history, and Councilmember Williams may want to interject here because she had such a significant role in our history.

But uh back in 2011 and 12, um, City Council was really reflecting on the future state of Memorial Health System.

Should it be uh sold, should it be leased, or should it stay the same?

It was a very, very uh important topic at the time, a lot of strong opinions, very difficult thing for city council to engage in, along with uh unelected uh civic leaders and other stakeholders, and ultimately city council determined that they would lease it to UC Health, and that as a part of that, as a part of using the lease proceeds, they would establish a community health foundation to serve the community in perpetuity.

I wanna mention this was a very innovative idea.

It was not something that you see across the country.

And so with that, uh they moved forward, and also the voters uh overwhelmingly endorse this concept.

More than 80% of the electorate voted in favor of this lease and its parameters.

And so here we are uh more than 10 years later with a story to tell.

Um vision values.

This is the place that we always start and end.

I just wanna mention a few things about uh our mission, vision, and values.

Number one, our mission is to target immediate health care needs and encourage healthy living.

What's relevant about this is it is both the urgency of today as well as thinking through how can we build for improved community health in the future.

So you'll see that in our grant making, both responding to issues currently and also addressing prevention.

In terms of vision, what's really important is that we are focused on the entire Pikes Peak region.

I think a lot of people, because of our name, think we're just Colorado Springs, and indeed the vast majority of our grant dollars stay within the Colorado Springs city limits.

But we are geographically framed around Memorials primary service area, which was was and remains El Paso and Teller Counties.

And then our values of integrity stewardship, collaboration, innovation, and leadership really drive the way we do our work.

And I think uh you see that in our grants, but also in the feedback that we've received from our funding partners.

We have two main roles.

Uh, one is to steward the dollars that come from UC Health into the city and then ultimately into our coffers, and to make grants.

In terms of the dollars that we are stewarding, uh, this is a brief snapshot of our investment portfolio and how is it it has grown over time.

I'll mention a couple things.

Number one, uh as of the end of June, we were at an all-time high of that total asset value at about 246 million dollars.

And that's after we've made about 60 million dollars in grants, okay.

And then um it has gone up and up because the capital markets have been quite kind over the last several years, with the uh notable exception of 2022, um, our portfolio has been able to grow.

As I think you're all aware, we have a maximum payout as set by city council.

That's 5% of the average uh 12-quarter average of total asset value, and um we stick to that.

And that percentage is not random.

That was something that the early uh council and um established as a way of saying if we stick to 5% or below, we know that there will always be resources in our community to continue this foundation into perpetuity, which was one of the key parameters.

Um, I'll say a couple words about our grant making approach.

The first thing is that when the founding board, of which uh President Crow Iverson was a part, and thank you for all your service on that, um, we started with the conversation of what drives health.

If our role is to try and influence the health positively in our community, then we better understand what is driving health.

And of course, access to health care is a really critical part of what we do, and in fact, represents uh the plurality of the grants that we make.

But there's other things that influence our health as well, including health behaviors, the environment we live in, and socioeconomic factors.

So you'll see a mix of that insight built in to our areas of strategic investment.

We fund in six different areas.

Almost all of these, five out of the six, have been a part of our world since almost the very beginning.

Healthcare access, suicide prevention, trauma prevention or healing, food and physical activity have really been with the foundation from the start based on community data.

And then about maybe five years ago, uh we added transitional and affordable housing for two reasons.

Number one, we know that access to safe and stable housing is so critical to our health.

And secondly, our affordable housing crisis had reached a new level that we felt it was important to integrate that into our grant making.

And I know later today you're going to hear from your local housing experts in terms of Amy and maybe Katie.

So more on that, I suppose a little bit later.

Why those, why those six?

Well, we look to the data to inform us in terms of what are the most pressing health care needs.

And of course, we look at local data as produced by the local department of public health, also the hospital community needs assessments, but we also look at state and federal level insights that relate specifically to our two county area to make sure that our dollars are being deployed to those key areas.

All right, let's switch gears and talk a little bit about impact.

Um I want to start by just explaining how philanthropic impact can be a little bit more complicated to assess and also very different from impact assessing the impact in a service delivery organization.

Um of the first things I'll say is that a funder's grant is but one of many sources of funding that allows organizations to deliver services and supports and ultimately address a particular health care uh issue.

So in this graphic, you can see as a funder, let's say it's our foundation, we might make one grant to an organization in a year, every couple of years.

They braid that grant together with many other funding sources and use that collective pool of money in order to address a health issue within a target population.

Along the way, they are measuring their impact.

They are usually counting the number of services they've delivered or the number of people that they're serving.

They are also assessing the effectiveness of the work that they're doing.

And so that uh that sort of arc really informs how we think about to what extent our foundation is influencing those metrics.

We do that in several different ways.

Um, and I'll start with the simplest and work down into the more complex.

So at the very highest and simple level, and I'll show you an example of this in a moment, we're just tracking how many grants are we making and how much money is going out the door.

That's really important to just understand and also to understand sort of where those dollars are going.

We also look very closely at grant final reports.

Any organization that receives a grant from us is required to submit a written final report that includes a number of different uh pieces of data, including outputs, i.e.

the numbers served, it includes outcomes, which is the effectiveness of the work that they're doing, and it also often uh includes some learnings.

What are they learning along the way so that they can continually approve, uh, improve.

They also include a financial statement that helps us understand how those dollars were deployed.

Um we take those data and aggregate them, and I'll show you an example of that in a moment.

We also do site visits.

Staff goes out to a subset of our funded partners every year and spends some extended time with them, looking at the work that they are doing, asking deeper questions, things you really can't get at in a written report because you're not in conversation with them.

And while we don't do that on every single grantee every year because that would be unrealistic, it is a great source of information.

I will say though, you can't easily aggregate data from those site visits across site visits because they are unique to those organizations.

One of the things that we have taken on over the last few years is that we conduct with an outside evaluator something called an impact assessment project.

And I've got the full report here.

It's available online.

I'll show you an example in a moment.

But this was the board and staff's attempt to try and get at a deeper level than just where is our grant money going.

But rally rather to have a third party take time with organizations to understand from their point of view and through their data how our grants are making a difference in their world and their impact.

And then finally, on an ad hoc basis, we do other evaluation projects.

One of the more recent ones is we've been interested in access to services since our inception.

And so we worked with an outside evaluator to understand that better through the eyes of our funded partners.

I'll now run through just some quick examples of almost all of these.

So at that simplest or highest level, you can see that since our inception over the last 10 years of grant making, we've made about a thousand grants.

Those have totaled about 60 million dollars.

And in a given year, it varies year over year slightly, but it's about 110 grants per year.

On the bottom of this slide, you can see the grants awarded over time.

And for the most part, it's a steady uphill uh curve.

Um, and the reason for that is because fortunately uh our asset base has increased, not just because we continue to get lease payments every month, but also because of those capital market returns that I mentioned a while back.

You may note that 2026 is quite a bit lower.

That's because that was just four months to date.

We expect just under $9 million will be paid out in grants this year.

You're not supposed to be able to read this slide because it's a very tiny.

I have adult versions available if you want.

Uh, but every uh every year we aggregate uh information from those final reports that I referred to earlier.

And we take in information around how many people are you serving, and we try and and uh synthesize them in a way that helps us get a bigger view.

And you can see that even just in one year, we have contributed to many thousands of services being provided.

And on the flip side of that short report, we do pull out some effectiveness measures and results.

Uh again, those aren't aggregatable easily, but it's always good to see not only how many are you serving, but how is it going?

Did you have a question?

I do from Councilman Rainey.

Yes, please.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh, can you go back one slide?

Uh and I guess I'll tie the two slides together.

Uh, last year, of course, uh once again awarded a pretty significant amount, which is always great to hear.

Uh, was there any one specific area that really stood above the others?

Because when I look at the previous years, it seems like last year in 2025, there was a significant jump.

Was there a specific area where that jump happened or no, uh, it's a great question.

It's really um across all of our funding focus areas, and it depends on the applications that we receive.

So this is a little bit uh in the weeds, but um, I'll just say we are a responsive grant maker.

In other words, we don't go out to organizations and say, please send us an application and we'll fund it.

What we do is we allow community organizations to apply to us and then we review what we get.

Sometimes those applicant pools are super strong, sometimes they're a little bit less than that, and that might affect what we fund.

And also they're the ones that ask for the amount of money.

We don't tell them, oh, well, you should ask for this and then fund it.

Um, so I you know, since inception, about uh half of our dollars have gone to health care access.

And if you add in trauma prevention and healing, which also tends to be heavily, heavily clinical, primarily around uh mental health for trauma victims, you're getting upwards of 65, 70 percent of our total total dollars going out, and I think that has been pretty consistent over time.

Okay, thank you.

All right, I talked to you uh or I mentioned this more comprehensive impact assessment report uh that we're doing now every two years.

And the one from 2024, I just pulled out a couple of samples.

Um again, you're not meant to read this, but I just want to give you a feel for the kind of work that our outside evaluator is doing on our behalf so that we can better understand how our dollars are making a difference on key health issues.

The first example is fostering hope.

This is an organization that does absolutely amazing work with foster families and children.

They are getting some of the best results I've ever seen in the literature in terms of prepping or enabling those foster youth to graduate from high school, attain a higher degree, you know, achieve stable housing after they're out of their foster care.

And we fund them very funded them very extensively since 2018, made multiple grants, and are very, very pleased with the results that this organization has achieved that we contributed to.

We can't take responsibility for it, but we certainly helped them achieve those results.

Pikes Peak State College, I know you all have a lot about them, and they're one of our favorites.

We contributed to getting that program started, and since it's been started, it has, as you well know, generated an incredible number of very well trained, highly qualified health care workers that have helped diminish health care access concerns in certain areas.

I now want to turn away from impact and talk a little bit about some of our key community issues or populations that we also support.

And this is sort of a different angle on where our grants are going.

So I'll start with preventing or reducing homelessness.

If you ask us, are you a homelessness funder?

We would say, no, we're not, not per se.

You didn't see that on our funding focus areas.

But a lot of our dollars actually go to support the prevention or reduction of homelessness because people experiencing homelessness are have a lot of needs.

And so this is just a sampling of where our dollars are going in support of preventing or reducing that issue.

We're supporting food programs, a lot of housing programs, not just housing navigation and transitional housing, but also affordable housing because we know that affordable housing or the lack thereof is one of the key drivers of homelessness.

We also invest quite heavily in substance use recovery, and our grants to step helping Step Springs get established and continue to operate have been really a highlight.

In terms of chronic disease, our investments have really been focused more on physical activity and food.

And so we've invested very heavily in parks, both new parts a new park like Panorama Park, but also park renovations, say at Memorial Park or Wide Field.

A lot of grants go toward physical activity programming and organizations like Hillside Connection or Kids on Bikes are good examples.

On the food and nutrition side, probably one of our biggest grant recipients is care and share.

They play such a critical role in making sure that our neighbors have the food that they need, and they work so collaboratively with hundreds of community partners.

We also deploy some dollars to smaller food pantries because we know that Can and Share can't do it all.

They need a network of organizations to push out that food.

Military, we provide grants to a lot of organizations that support military families in part or in whole.

I'll just mention we've been one of, we were one of the early funders of Mount Carmel's Behavioral Health Program when they were getting started, and we've continued to fund them very regularly.

And Craig Hospital has a really amazing uh traumatic brain injury program that's uplocated right next to Mount Carmel.

They have also been a long-standing grant awardee.

Finally, I'll speak a little bit about mental health.

People often ask me what's the most significant health issue facing our community.

And I think if I look back over the next the last decade, I would have to say mental health.

I think we've all read and probably experienced personal personally the decline in mental health among all ages in our community, and that's not just here, it's throughout the state and nationwide.

If you had to pick out one area that we've invested the most in, I would say mental health is it.

It continues to be a big area of interest for us.

And two grants I'll just call out because I think they're really important in terms of making sure that we have the continuum of services that we need here.

Number one, we help start the Peak Vista Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner Fellowship.

That's a mouthful, but essentially that is a fellowship that helps train up psychiatric providers, and many of those psychiatric providers end up staying and working in our community, which is terrific because we do not have enough uh psychiatry experts to help our population.

And then also I'll mention Children's Hospital of Colorado's partial hospitalization program.

This is designed specifically for young people, children and youth in a mental health crisis.

This was a part of the mental health continuum that did not exist before a few years ago.

Children's Hospital, to their credit, said we need it down here in Southern Colorado, and our grant contributed to getting that started up.

And it also helps contribute to keeping it operational because that's a particular program that can't be supported in full by insurance reimbursement.

So just to close up, and then we'll be happy to answer any questions.

I want to thank you.

Um your predecessors had the foresight and the stomach to dream big and to think long term.

They established something that most communities do not have, and it really has already, even in just 10 years, touched countless lives.

I hope you feel proud of the institution, and I hope you fight feel inspired by what is possible, what it shows is possible.

Um this is a good story about vision and a lot of hard work and putting something in place that has been uh implemented and implemented as initially conceived.

We at the foundation are so appreciative and honored to be able to carry out this work, and we thank you for allowing us the opportunity to do that.

And now um I'll stop talking.

Thanks.

And um and take any questions that you have.

Councilman Hinjam.

Uh, thank you, Madam President, and uh thank you for being with us this morning, Kari and many members of your board, I see, as well as Jamie.

Um happy to have you here.

I want to uh actually acknowledge that a couple of the members on our council actually were a part of that original vision, and I I might we might hear from them speaking about that and appreciative of uh both Councilmember Williams and uh President Crow Iverson in that regard.

And I I just wanted to um highlight that one of the things that I've really appreciated about the foundation is that in your assessment of impact, um, not only is that the most appropriate and fiscally responsible thing to do with those dollars, but what I have heard um from the organizations themselves is how much they appreciate the time and attention um that you give them personally, you and Jamie in uh in assessing for impact, you're also coaching and helping them build their capacity and they their capability.

And um, and I think you have a lot of fans in uh in Colorado Springs and in the Pikes Peak region.

So thank you so much for your hard work.

Thanks for that comment.

I'll just mention that's one of the things that we've learned through our impact assessment.

It's not just the hard numbers, which are really important, of course, but it's also that uh our outside evaluator has gotten a lot of feedback on the way we engage with our funding partners.

And the the feedback has been that we're sort of more than a dollar, that um we are happy to partner with them.

We're highly relational, speaking to them on the phone, in person all the time, and that's not something that all funders either choose to do or have the ability to do, and that seems to has been have been very helpful to them over time.

So thank you.

Councilman Lineweber.

Yes, I just want to um say thank you for your leadership and um really all the work that you put forward and the board too.

The board really spends a lot of time reviewing a lot of these documents.

I mean, it's it's thankless work.

Um, but yet it's uh has really substantial impact, which is really, really key and important.

So um one thing um that I I thought was noteworthy is that um I think it was like your third slide in or whatever it talked about some times where the the total base went down pretty significantly, and that's really not because the stock market went down, it's because you made a substantial investment in a project.

So there are times where you have gone beyond the 5% where you've come.

Did you come before council and say, hey, we've got this opportunity?

I mean, how did how did some of those things happen when there was like this large opportunity?

Do you know what I'm saying?

Uh uh to create something that would really elevate the community in such a way.

Because I imagine one of those might have been um homeward pike's peak, but I'm not positive.

I'm trying to think of what they might have been like singles.

Thanks for your close reading of that slide.

So you'll notice that 2018 is sort of a higher bar than almost any of the other ones.

And that's not because we went above our 5%.

It's because we experimented with providing or awarding more multi-year grants.

Those grants are paid over over multiple years.

So in that we have to count them as awarded in their full amount, but they don't actually get paid out for two or three years thereafter.

And that's why you see in 2019 and 2020, the awards are a little bit lower.

It's because of 2018.

We experimented with that.

It's something that a lot of funders do is do multi-year grants.

And frankly, our funded partners really appreciate a multi-year grant because it gives them greater predictability.

But um, and council uh council president Crow Everson may remember that.

We ultimately walked away from that.

We still do maybe one or two multi-year grants a year, but we felt like it was better to stick with a single year grant.

And so that's the big way things have gone ever since then.

Okay, so my reading on that isn't let it there was a big project or something.

It was no, it's it was really the distinction between award and payout.

We the five percent is a payout limit.

It's just a county, an accounting thing.

Okay.

Well, it's also it's accounting, and it's also when the dollars actually.

So has there ever been an opportunity where I mean there's just something substantial that the city wanted to invest in that the foundation would consider going above that 5%?

And is there a mechanism for that to happen for council to actually vote to allow that?

Well, based on our current investment policy and the way it's structured, there we are held to that 5% as a maximum.

Um there has, you know, city has requested funds from the and received funds from the foundation um many, many times.

City's actually one of our largest grant recipients if you add up all the numbers over the year between the parks and uh, et cetera.

Um but uh there hasn't been a case where the city has come to us and said, okay, here's this big project, will you fund it?

That's as I mentioned earlier, we're a responsive grant maker.

Okay, thank you.

Sure.

Councilman Williams.

Thank you, President Crow Iverson.

When it comes to memorial and the health foundation, I really feel like I was just at the right place at the right time.

My first term was only two years, so I did as much as I possibly could in two years.

And this was one of those things that um we'd just gone through a nine-month study.

The recommendation was to keep things as is.

So council at that time reopened the conversation.

Um I recommended a lease, and we went through that process, which thank God there was ways to set it up for an evergreen lease to have it be 30 years so there could be bonding and funding and everything that goes with it.

Um then um, as I said in my interview, I don't wake up every day with the thought of how much money can I make today.

It's just not how I was born.

But I love foundations.

So when this money came about, I thought, what better way to um steward this money that really is the people of Colorado Springs because Memorial Health System was our health system than to put it in a foundation.

Um there were many conversations, many disagreements about this money, but um council stuck to their guns and said once we negotiate para, there will be money left over.

And that money should go into a foundation.

Yes, Amy's nodding.

She was helpful with that very much so back in the day.

Um, one thing I wanted that I didn't get, which is fine because Kari said it was okay, was to wait till the corpus made it to 100 million dollars before we started giving out grants.

Um you guys did just fine without it, and to see it at 246 million is absolutely fantastic.

Um thank you to those initial board members.

Um, President Kerr Iverson, you volunteered to be part of the piece of this puzzle.

And um Kari, thank you.

Um I heard that you applied, and I'm sure I wasn't supposed to, but I didn't care.

I called all the board members and I said, Kari needs to run this organization, and I appreciate the fact that they listened to me.

And and here we are.

Like this is doing exactly what council envisioned, you know, back in 2012 when we had all those long meetings and fun conversations.

And um, none of us are gonna be around in a hundred years, but the goal is for this to still be doing what it's doing a hundred years from now, because that's what backfills this community.

Councilmember Henjam has said it more than once.

We don't have enough dollars to make this city work the way we all want it to work.

And this is a way to help backfill pieces that us that that make it all happen.

And I went to college in Pittsburgh.

They are flushed with foundations.

My goal for Colorado Springs is to just keep adding foundations and keep adding.

I know there's people out there that do wake up every day and think, how much money can I make?

And then we'll put it back into a foundation and put it back into the community.

So appreciate all the hard work.

I appreciate the current board members.

I know that it's got to be a lot of fun and a huge challenge to figure out how to distribute these monies within the community.

Um I will admit I did screw up something in the negotiation.

I didn't increase the payment.

So I may be talking to UC Health and see if maybe every 10 years we adjust that for something.

But uh other than that, I think we did a pretty good job for you know coming up with something that was relatively unprecedented, as you said.

So thank you to all of you.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Ben President.

Kerry, thank you for being here today.

Thanks to the board members and the Anne for being here today.

Um, the vision is to make El Paso County and Teller County the healthiest uh counties in the state.

And you pointed out that this is unique.

Most cities don't have something like this, or they haven't set something like this up.

So, what metrics are we looking at to determine if we're moving in the direction that is the vision for the foundation, which is to make us the healthiest.

Is there something you can point at and say, hey, El Paso County, we're doing better than other cities our size across the country or in this state of Colorado?

Because I think there's a going to be a huge constituency to keep doing it the way we've been doing it because you have all these organizations that we give small amounts of money to.

So they they're all on board.

It's it's very supportive.

But how do we know that we're actually uh moving the needle that that we're different than when we would be without this?

Are we better in the in all these different areas than other cities or uh locally in Colorado or nationally?

Yeah, great question.

Um so I'll start sort of on the more uh granular side and then sort of expand out from that.

Um one of the ways that we've always assessed where we are vis-a-vis the rest of the uh communities in Colorado is Robert Wood Johnson Foundation does a nationwide county um county ranking uh piece uh that looks at a wide variety of health metrics, and you can compare your own community to other communities, et cetera.

And we do look at that, and uh um it is historically shown our community to be roughly in the center of all of the, I think there's 60 counties in Colorado, so it's usually right in the middle of the pack.

Um, and over the years, I don't know what's statistically significant, but it's sort of stayed in that in that general vicin vicinity.

And you know, you might say, oh, well, that shows that the foundation isn't making a difference.

I would have a different perspective on that.

And the reason is because there's so many things in our world and in our country in particular that are shaping our health.

I'll use the example of health care access.

Um, health care access is very much driven in in part by insurance status.

Does a person have insurance or not?

And that availability or inab inavailability of insurance um may allow them to access services or not.

Well, we have a big change coming in terms of our uh Medicaid insurance program starting in the beginning of 2027.

HR1 will be more fully implemented when it comes to Medicaid and SNAP, and there will be big changes for our Medicaid and SNAP recipients in our community.

And so that's an example of an external factor that our foundation has no control over.

We didn't write that bill, we didn't, you know, uh uh uh put in place whether it's you know, we don't have an opinion on whether it's good or bad, but it is going to affect us.

And so our focus, because we can't uh change that at a national level.

Our focus really has to be okay, of our world within our sphere of control, how can we make sure that our dollars are going out to those organizations that are tracking their impact and are doing the best possible job?

And so I think that's why it's very difficult to take some of that national and comparative data and compare it and sort of say, are we doing, are we making the difference we should or not?

Because there's so many other things that are driving those big numbers uh that fall outside of our control.

Do we look at other cities our size uh in Colorado?

Well or close, as close as we can get, because there aren't too many R size or other counties, you know, the 60 counties in Colorado, that in a way that's a good control, because they're all going to experience this change uh in insurance compensation by the state.

Um do we do that?

Well, I we look at the Robert Wood Johnson County Rankings report that I mentioned just a couple minutes ago, and we see that.

Um, but I think what I'm trying to say is that when you look at communities comparatively, you have to be thinking, you know, what are what makes this apples to apples, apples to oranges, or apples to something else comparison.

And so in that sense, I think it's hard, uh, particularly when you have states and communities doing things so differently around, I'll just use healthcare access again as an example, insurance, um, you know, all sorts of things that would drive that.

Okay.

Um which makes it difficult to know if you know, if we're really moving the needle then as far as are we moving up in the rankings of uh healthiest county uh in the state of Colorado or not.

And uh so we had a good conversation uh uh in a in a small group um about that.

And so okay, I think you've answered it as best you can.

So thank you.

Yeah.

I mean, I would point to, and I know we talked about this perhaps when we met, is you know, are we making a difference?

Well, I think you could look at this annual report in terms of the kinds of services and supports that we're um investing in and ask the question, and the counterfactual is hard.

You mentioned that the counterfactual is very hard.

But if we weren't here, if we weren't putting out this year nine million dollars in grant and and supporting these different organizations, would there be as many services available to people in need in our community?

And I think that the short answer is no, there would not.

Yeah, and and that I think everybody I can grant you that one, but does is the service changing our uh outcomes in El Paso County versus the other counties, or is it really we're just kind of the same as everybody else as far as you know lifespan, uh whatever you want to measure uh access to care?

Um uh could the $80 million um be targeted differently and have a have a different impact?

Because there are some, and we discussed one, which is a concern of mine, uh uh an expensive um an expenditure which has uh a medical application every single day of the week, multiple times uh a day, perhaps every 15 minutes, you know, uh they're responding and uh they're responding in very old vehicles that uh need to be replaced.

And um, you know, how how can we get that done quickly?

So thank you.

Thank you.

Councilman Henjam.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Um Kari, I hadn't thought about this until uh my fellow council member just brought up, you know, where we stand among the counties and uh this county rating.

And I don't think I've ever asked this question before, but I think about El Paso County and the health department resides within the county and is under the purview of the county commissioners.

Can you speak to how does our foundation work with the county and the county board of health and uh and the county public health division?

Yeah.

I think our primary interaction with them is through the use of their data.

Um we rely very heavily on their data.

They also convene the healthy community collaboration and other large groups that help us understand what's happening in the community from a health perspective.

Um we don't have much interaction with the county commissioners or the board of health, et cetera.

I mean, I have presented to them in the past.

Um, but because they're sort of focused on different things, uh, that hasn't been a focus of ours.

Um, but certainly we are heavily heavily reliant on the health department for providing that really critical local data that tells us where we are and where we aren't and allows us to um integrate that into the way we make grants.

Thank you.

Well, it strikes me that um you know, potentially for the future, continuing to work and striving to build uh greater partnerships with the county could make um help us move the dial given that we are really working from city hospital funds um to you know kind of create some force multipliers, although I'm I'm sure that um poses some challenges, but something to strive for.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you so much for your presentation today.

Um, just are some context for my colleagues whenever um this the founder the founding board worked two years without a CEO.

Um just trying to figure out the gap.

So when you see the um vision and mission and the and the gaps of where they're funding, that came from two years of city of these um volunteers on this board looking at the gaps in the community, and that's where that came from.

So I just wanted um my colleagues to understand that wasn't something that happened after or it was actually the gap in the region.

Again, this is another example of a good regional partnership, and it was the region.

We went to tell our county, as you know, we went to Monument.

We did a road trip places for sure.

Um as well, I just can't help but mention that sixty million dollars in granting these organizations did help organizations as you said that wouldn't be here today, but um not quantifiable, but I can imagine so much of that took a lot of heat off of the city services in the mental health steppe springs, for instance, which is upstream, um, a great organization.

Um that you know, transitional housing, what does that do for our city services?

The mental health, what does that do for our city services?

You saw the parks.

Um so again, we're not quantifiable, but I I think um it's more than sixty million dollars if you really looked at the expansion of what that is taken off of our city services into these organizations.

So I just want to commend you for that.

Um I think you're doing a great job.

Um, I'm really glad you're at the helm of it.

You're very fiscally conservative when it comes to these dollars with a very little staff as well.

You don't see that in all those other organizations.

So um thank you for the presentation.

Thank you for all that you're doing.

Thanks to the board members who continue to carry this legacy on.

Our city is very, very lucky in our region to have this um from again.

We just some of us just came off of a two-day water tour across Western Slope.

And just looking at the visionary that we had with water, it's the very same thing here.

This is very visionary for our community.

Um, I'm really glad we're keep growing the corpus because it will continue to expand what we give out in the future.

So um again, thank you so much for your presentation.

Um 10 years, we'll see you in 10 years where that where that is, where that could grow.

Um longer graph.

That's a bigger graph.

Uh for sure.

Um, so thank you so much for your presentation again.

And thanks to the board for being here today.

Really appreciate it.

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

Item six A, agenda planner review.

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

Yeah, Madam President, there's uh just something I wanted to point out for really for this.

You know, the the folks who live in District One that on August 11th will be voting uh, you know, for the first time on two ordinances that are qu quasi-judicial land use items that occur within District One, and one is uh an ordinance, they're both rezons.

Uh the first one is a rezone where is that one?

It's uh the address is 5325 Mark Dabbling Boulevard.

It's kind of on the opposite side of the creek from the Costco uh near Nevada, if you can imagine where that is.

And then the other rezone is multiple um lots on Buckingham Drive, which is just south of Garden of the Gods uh before Centennial, before you get to Centennial.

So not too far away from uh where the data center is, and that would be rezoned from business part to light industrial with conditions of record.

So again, on the 11th is just the initial one that sets the date.

And then on the 25th, we'll vote, we'll have the hearings and vote on them.

But because we don't have the hearings the first time, I want to point that out for uh the citizens that live in district one that that's gonna occur on the 11th.

Thanks.

Councilman Casey.

Uh yes, thank you, Madam President.

Uh, for the the ones that are listed under the regular meeting for August 25th uh on the consent counter items one through 16.

I just want to verify are these the first readings to set the hearing date.

None of them mention it, but they normally do.

Normally it would say it.

Right, but there's quite a few major items listed on there.

Kevin Walker, City Planning Director, yes, they this would be the first readings.

And we'll denote them correctly when we get to the agenda.

Is it the same for the development standard ones?

No, they will not be.

It's only the zoning actions.

Okay.

That's what's and the and the master plan changes.

Thank you.

Moving on to item six B.

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

Item six B informational presentation on the annual point in time and housing inventory count.

Good morning, Amy.

Good morning, President Crow Iverson, President Pro Tem Risley, members of council.

I am Amy Cox.

I am the chief housing and homelessness response officer here today at your request with a brief presentation on the 2026 point in time count and the housing inventory count, which happen at the same time on our agenda today.

I'll also include some information on the Colorado HMIS report, which came out at about the same time and had slightly different information.

Teaser, two things can be true at the same time.

Then we'll also talk about the COC update.

Super excited about that.

Our supportive housing plans, some key takeaways, plenty of time for questions.

So the point in time count is required by HUD annually.

It takes place on a single night in January, usually the third week of January this year in Colorado Springs.

It took place on January 25th, 2026.

It was very cold that day and that night.

It counts both people who are sheltered and are unsheltered, and it uses two different methodologies.

So the sheltered count looks at people enrolled in emergency shelter and transitional housing programs, and that information is collected through HMIS.

So it is a it is a pretty um robust data source there.

The second part counts on sheltered individuals, and it is a census.

So volunteers go out into the community to areas where they're likely to meet people experiencing homelessness, and they ask, where did you sleep the night of January 25th?

And then there are a number of demographic questions that they also ask in order to be able to de-duplicate that data later.

This is not a comprehensive representation of people experiencing homelessness in the area.

Did you have a question?

Councilman Lineweber does.

Okay.

Yeah, I just like to clarify.

Actually, the first question is can I ask you a question?

That this is correct.

This is very important because it's an opt-in.

It is an opt-in.

No, thank you, uh, Councilman Lyme Weber.

That is the first question.

Um and so somebody can refuse to answer that question.

Um and it's all that people need to self-identify being homeless.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

Um Amy, is this done it's done nationally on the same day?

It's nationally in the same week.

In the same week.

Yeah.

So you we can compare uh like if our population went down, you can look nationally and say, well, everybody's population went down, or these five cities went down, but everybody else went up, and you can look at those five cities.

So you could you could pull some uh comparison data out and try to look for things that might be working in cities.

Is that right?

Yes, that's correct.

It's the most consistent estimate of homelessness across the country.

So it's got its flaws, right?

Um does does that happen?

What I just suggested that a we try to gain ideas about what's working and what's not working, like it keeps going up in California, but it's going down in Texas, or whatever that is.

Does that happen?

Is there some kind of analysis that comes out, or is it just individual specs all across the country and nobody looks at the big one?

Big picture.

So the all of this information is fed into a annual homelessness assessment report that goes to Congress that allows us then to look across the country what what appears to be working, what is not working.

Congress looks at that and makes us that information to make decisions on funding and policy.

So that is a very comprehensive report.

It comes out.

The the challenge with point in time data, the challenge with any annual reporting, which has been the basis, most of the data that we've received, and we'll talk about that because things are changing.

Is that it looks back, right?

So what's happening on January?

We take the census on January 25th.

We get the reports in June.

The annual report doesn't come out.

It's you know, it's we're years later.

So it doesn't, it doesn't tell us what's happening in real time in our community, but it is an important data point, and it is to your point the national estimate that we use in our to make policy decisions and funding decisions.

Okay.

I'll wait till the end, you know, but I'm curious if there are national um best practices or is are there things that are being noticed about in some states or cities.

It might be city specific.

They seem to have lowered the numbers significantly, or or what?

But so yeah, thanks.

Fair, that'll be that'll be a good conversation.

Um, I'm also happy to bring more information.

You know, this is a very uh big topic, and I'm also happy to meet with you in person or at your council lunch or in another session like this.

So the point in time is not a comprehensive representation of people experiencing homelessness in the area.

It is a reliable measure.

Um, it is affected by who agrees to take the survey.

It is affected by the weather because we'll either find that more people might be in shelter or folks who are unsheltered might have found some temporary place to stay.

So it's affect it's affected by the number of volunteers, but again, it is a very good and consistent measure.

So this year, um, and I provided some extra slides for you at the end of this presentation that compares more year over year.

But this year there were 1,413 people counted.

This was a reduction from 2025 when 1,745 people were counted.

Um I think it's interesting here to point out that almost 18% of the folks included in this count were children under the age of 18.

Um we found no, we counted no unsheltered folks under the age of 18, no children under 18.

But um, but that is that is a fairly uh that is a number that should concern us about the number of children in our community experiencing homelessness.

So uh we have a total count, um, again, a 19% decrease over 2025.

The unsheltered decrease was the most significant decrease in the count.

Um it went from 522 to 308.

Um that uh could be factors of uh the weather, right?

People might have found other places to be.

Um we we don't know entirely, but that was this significant area of in uh decrease.

And then we saw more people in transitional housing, another 54 people, which is also really this is a positive.

This shows a positive in our community that we're seeing more people entering transitional programs that are helping them to um achieve stability.

I want to point out that we also saw a notable decrease in chronic homelessness.

Um it was a decrease of I believe 41%.

Um the reduction from uh of 361 from 2025.

This is likely because of the reduction in the unsheltered count generally, because folks experiencing chronic homelessness are often unsheltered.

You'll see that they're 40% of the unsheltered population that were counted.

Councilman Henchum.

Uh thank you, Madam President.

Uh sorry, Amy, on the previous slide, there was safe haven was added in the final column.

And I can you just tell me what sheltered safe haven is.

Yeah, I mean, she I this is a um I need to track this down.

Safe haven was a type of shelter that we actually you can't start now.

So I don't know why that nine safe haven is there.

It should probably be in the emergency shelter category.

But I I noticed that too while I was going through it.

I, you know, looking at the larger numbers, I wasn't looking at the nine, but when I was going through that the comparison on the back sheet, all of a sudden we're showing safe haven.

Yeah.

And we sh uh according to HUD, we shouldn't be investing in safe haven projects now.

So um, so thank you for asking that.

Thanks.

Let's see.

Um, where am I at?

Uh yeah, so we're showing more folks in transitional housing.

Okay, so back to the chronic numbers.

People experiencing chronic homelessness have physical, mental, or developmental disabilities and long terms of homelessness.

And I think this is a really important thing to remember.

A lot, there are a lot of different taxonomies that people come up with with the different types of people experiencing homelessness.

When we talk about chronic homelessness, we are talking about people with additional needs because of physical, mental, or developmental disabilities.

Again, um, 40% of the unsheltered population was experiencing homelessness.

This was a reduction from 66.5% in 2025.

A bright spot is 131 veterans were counted.

This was a decrease in the number of homeless veterans.

And we believe this can be attributed to our built-for zero work and really taking extra effort to go out and identify veterans in our community using veteran case conferencing and connecting veterans to veteran-specific resources.

And to your comment earlier, Councilman Donaldson, this is one of those best practices that we can actually see reductions when we are counting people in real-time case conferencing and connecting them to those specialized resources.

And this comes out of this point-in-time count, right?

This number did, yeah.

How do you verify that they're a veteran if the guy says, yeah, I'm a veteran?

Well, we're seeing just his word, it's just if he says he's a veteran, he's a veteran.

Uh for the if it's unsheltered, likely, but I will tell you, we also, because of our built-for-zero work, we have a list of veterans in our community.

We've identified veterans who are experiencing homelessness by name, and we case conference and connect those folks to resources.

So this is not out of line with the data that we collect there.

This is consistent if we're triangulating.

And these are uh unsheltered or not.

This could be either this could be um sheltered or unsheltered.

I'd have to look at the data.

Um I could go back, we could go back and look and see how many.

I don't know if veterans were in this.

No, but we have we have that information, councilman, if you'd like it.

All right, thank you.

It's a lot of numbers to keep in one brain.

Um at the same time that the housing inventory is completed, uh, I'm sorry, the point in time is completed.

We also conduct a housing inventory count.

Uh, this count is an inventory of beds and units in the COC region.

So that's in our community, uh, El Paso County in Colorado Springs, dedicated to serving people experiencing homelessness.

Um the HIC uh helps us with things like estimating need for different types of units, and we use it, we use it specifically in um projecting the number of shelter beds that we need.

Um, those units we count emergency shelter, transitional housing, rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing, and other permanent housing.

About a third of our beds are in emergency shelters, and about 40 percent are in permanent housing.

So we do try to provide a pathway for folks from um from shelter uh to transitional and permanent and permanent destinations.

The HIC showed a small increase in year-round and seasonal units, which we do want to see.

Um the expansions came expansion came in transitional and permanent housing options.

The system, however, still lacked enough beds for everybody on that night of the point in time count.

So we needed another 195 year-round emergency or transitional shelter beds to be able to accommodate all of the people counted on that point in time count night.

So even if everybody who we counted experiencing homelessness had looked for a shelter bed, they would not have found it in our community.

And this is important for us again in terms of how communities respond to homelessness.

And again, Councilman Donaldson, I'll just continue to bring this up in terms of best practice.

Across the country, we hear about communities who are putting work-able people into permanent housing.

And in our community, the 80 set almost 87% of the folks in permanent housing are highly vulnerable with disabilities and long histories of homelessness.

And the reason why this is important is because when the federal government and the state government and others make changes on how vouchers that fund those units are funded, um, it affects us deeply.

And we're trying uh right now, City Council recently approved a substantial amendment to some hut for some HUD funds to try and transition people who are losing emergency housing vouchers from their uh some from their subsidized housing to self-sufficiency.

And we're trying to provide a bridge for that through tenant-based rental assistance for another two years.

But it does our community really prioritize prioritizes the most vulnerable in our in our in our region.

But were you saying that that has fallen out of favor with HUD doing it that way?

That uh you were going fast, so I didn't pick up all the the words, but can you just repeat that piece?

I don't want to spend a whole lot of time on it, but that it's it's now focused on work able.

Maybe that was the phrase you used, something like that.

Yeah, so there's been a shift in uh thinking at the federal level.

Um, and there is more emphasis now on transitional programs that are shorter term and not permanent programs.

So during our COC, which is our continuum of care program competition, which is where many of those, and we call things generically vouchers, but where those programs are funded, there is a shift away from permanent supportive housing.

We also saw that emergency housing vouchers, which were issued just post-COVID to make sure people who are experiencing homelessness during COVID could be housed.

Um, those were cut short.

So those were those vouchers were supposed to expire in 2030, they're expiring at the end of this year, which is why we are moving dollars around to try and provide some rental assistance to help people make a transition.

It also speaks to the need for additional services and case management in these programs, and we are looking into that uh with the supportive housing plan that we'll talk about in a couple of slides.

But yeah, there has been a shift.

So 90% of the funding that comes through our continuum of care is for permanent supportive housing.

Um that has been reduced to only 60% can be used for permanent supportive housing.

So we have folks who are at risk of losing their their housing.

How many people is that that shift from 90 to 60?

If it's hard, if you don't have to do it right up here at the house.

If you don't, if you're not sure, is it roughly a hundred or a thousand or ten?

It's well, it's more than 10, I'll tell you that.

Yeah.

Um, but I'd have to look at the numbers.

I don't want to, I don't want to just and is there an action you're gonna come to council uh requesting based on that the shift in the funding there?

So we uh council already approved a substantial amendment to some funding we received.

It's called home ARP.

Um it was COVID era funding, so we'll be uh we're we're putting additional funds into tenant-based rental assistance.

That action has happened.

We're also uh implementing or we're developing a uh supportive housing action plan that will come to city council as part of the housing action plan.

All right, thank you.

Councilman Linewever.

Yeah, thank you.

Um so from my understanding, it the national effort was really to put um more um emphasis on effort.

Um in other words, that the homeless person would make some kind of effort.

So one of the pieces, and and I'm curious on how we've engaged in this, is that they could just instead of just working, they can actually commit to volunteer hours.

Have we looked at trying to kind of leverage that in some shape or form?

I mean, can we get some kind of volunteer type program that these people could get involved in that would still make them qualified?

Um I I'm not really I just again I don't know it fully.

I'm not gonna say I'm an expert on that, but I do know that there's a component of work hour hours or volunteer hours.

So it's kind of they're trying to make it to where people just don't apply for funds and do nothing and just sit on their, you know, the yeah, there's uh there's a lot more emphasis on case management and on people engaging in services, and so the COC will be measured based on um services not being just voluntary but being required.

Uh so that is part of what I think the new continuum of care, and we'll talk about that for because we are making a a very big shift in our continuum of care uh to bring new leadership and address these issues.

But uh that transition has just started, and so I can't give you details on what that might look like.

Um, and projects have not been selected yet for this year's funding, or at least that hasn't been anything.

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that there's the requirement on the homeless person that they have some kind of work requirement.

But there's also with that that they can do volunteer work to submit to to meet that um volunt that meet that work requirement, it can be volunteer work.

So it could be you know simple things like just picking up trash or something like that.

Um have we engaged in any kind of like effort to provide volunteer opportunities for these people so they can keep their funding.

Uh we're not there yet, David.

But yes, I mean, oh I'm sorry, councilman Linework.

We we do we are on a first name basis.

Yeah, we yeah, we also do other things.

The um, yeah, but those are the types of things.

I mean, work, for example, our ability to one of the things we were rated on as a COC, and uh, you know, just to jump ahead, and then I do want to come back to this because I think it's important.

But the city of Carl Springs um and Pikes Peak United Way partnered to provide the system leadership for our continuum of care.

That transition happened officially July 1.

Um, we are the collaborative applicant, which means that we are managing the project selection process, which is competitive, and we have some great projects coming in.

29 letters of interest.

I think 19 of those were moved forward, 16 applications came in.

It's really unprecedented in terms of um involvement, collaboration.

Um we're in the we're managing that project.

They'll include workforce projects, street outreach, housing, you know, both permanent and transitional, the HMIS.

Um so we're doing that piece, and then we are also now writing the collaborative application, the narrative component, which is performance based.

So, and and this is not new that it's been performance based.

And it, you know, you're always asking about outcomes and impact, councilman.

Um, and so we've got to look at um, we need to be looking at how many people are entering homelessness, how many people are exiting, how many people are actually getting jobs in our system.

And this is something we report into that uh into that narrative, and it's part of how we score as a community, and that determines uh helps determine the amount of funding that we receive.

So the city of Caro Springs, given our background and our our expertise in grant management and um and understanding these HUD regulations and how all of this comes together is really leaning into the system performance piece and bringing that data quality and data transparency that we have really been reliant on other entities to report information to us.

So now we are we are in the middle of that.

Yeah, I transition.

Overall, I think I I uh I I'm not in disagreement with what the federal government's kind of requiring now.

I'm more in disagreement with the speed.

Yeah, it is it makes it challenging.

Yeah, yeah.

The fact that, you know, it depends on how like what do you believe about human nature?

Well, I believe people are naturally productive.

So, right?

Sure.

So let's find opportunities for people to be productive and express their nature.

And that's really where my question was trying to go to is that I think all these programs are great.

My concern is the speed of implementation has really put a burden and has put an extra burden on us because we're reorganizing our COC at the same time.

So that makes it particularly challenging.

So all these new people that were just hired, which you're gonna talk about, are drinking from a fire hose right now because they've got they've got deadlines that they have to meet that um are federally mandated.

Yeah.

So thanks.

Thank you.

So the release at the point in time came out um after the release of the Colorado HMIS statewide report, and this caused some confusion in the community.

The point in time count is a one-day census of homelessness, who was living in sheltered environments, who was living in unsheltered environments.

The Colorado HMIS state report is a longitudinal, so it looks at at services provided over the course of the entire year of 2025.

Um and so both of these things could be true, right?

It could, there could have been fewer people on the night of January 25th and more people over the course of 2025.

But what we look here, um, what we look at when we see this is where might this increase have come from.

Now it was a 4.3% increase in homelessness in 25.

We were the only COC that showed an increase.

It was 291 people.

Um so I just want to keep that in perspective because it is a still a manageable number.

We saw more folks enrolled in street outreach programs, and so oftentimes when street outreach workers go out, they'll find folks who have not been enrolled in the system.

So we started enrolling more people in the system so we can identify and identify folks in their needs.

Um and we did see more people uh in in um in emergency shelter or 3% increase.

What really struck me, and this is really serendipitous that we follow that great presentation from the Health Foundation, is that where there were more people seeking services overall.

So this year we counted people who were not experiencing homelessness, who were also seeking services, and we saw an 18.8% increase.

Now, on one hand, there is a good, it's good that people are seeking services before becoming homeless because homelessness becomes very expensive, not only financially, but to your dignity um and your future in general.

So people are seeking those services.

Certainly the tension here is that there are more people seeking services in our community than have sought those before.

We did see a reduction in the SNAP benefits, and we do have um uh concerns with medical access, care access.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, Ben and President.

But Amy, those that 18% wouldn't be counted in the number.

Is that right?

This was in the HMIS report.

So it would be or wouldn't be.

The 18%, you said they're not actually homeless, but they're asking for services.

So would they have been counted in this HMIS report?

So there are two reports we're talking about here.

The first one is a point in time count.

They would not have been included.

In the HMIS report, they were included.

Even though they're not homeless and they're at they're just seeking services, we count them as homeless.

No, no, no.

No, no, no.

I'm sorry.

So we have folks, part of the report shows who was experiencing homelessness and the services they accessed.

We also included the over the total number of people seeking services, whether they were homeless or not homeless.

And we just saw significant increase in people seeking services in our community.

Okay.

One other question for you.

What was the weather like on January 25th of 26 when we're counting people outside versus in 25?

And it went down.

So like if there was the weather was like way worse, it was a lot colder, there'd be common sense would tell you you might find fewer people outside.

During the 2026 point in time count, overnight temperatures fell below zero degrees with wind chills reaching as low as negative 26 degrees Fahrenheit.

And snow remaining on the ground throughout much of the community.

What was it like in 25?

Do you know?

Um I it was also cold, um, but I don't know.

I I don't know off the top of my head.

I think that this is part of the challenge with this point in time count.

Sure.

Is that we use it as one measure and we want to look at multiple measures.

We want to look at our longitudinal system analysis, we want to look at the statewide report, we want to look at the point in time.

Those are annual measures where we want to get councilmen is to be reporting on a quarterly basis.

None of this should come as a surprise to our community.

We shouldn't be wringing our hands waiting to see what is the number going to say, what is the number going to say every day?

Just so you're clear, I wasn't doing that.

I wasn't.

No, no, no, no.

I mean, you weren't doing that.

But I mean, the we sit around, we wait and sort of anxiously to know are we having an impact or not.

We can actually we can access a lot of this data in real time.

Is there some funding that's tied to the numbers?

Is there money that's tied to it?

Yeah, so there will be there are that the um COC program dollars are tied in part to our performance as a system.

It goes into the factoring of how much money we receive.

So there's an annual renewal demand, we get 60% of that.

That's considered tier one and non uh competitive.

It's about two, I want to say it's about 2.2 million dollars.

Then there is a um, then there is what's called tier two, which is competitive portion of our annual renewal demand.

I mean, this is all uh and this is all very complex in that way.

Um, and then our tier two dollars are based on the quality of the projects we put forward and the performance of our system.

But is it tied to the exact numbers that you come up with on that night?

There is one measure of the the point in time.

They look at they use uh HUD uses the point in time count as a measure of the number of people experiencing homelessness.

So that number is uh does get included in the point in time count.

So they want to see reductions in that number.

Okay, thanks.

Yep.

Councilman Hencham.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um, Amy, I know you're aware of the care program that is sunsetting at the end of August.

Um, the court assisted eviction I what is it called?

Uh court assisted recovery from eviction program.

And um they reported to us that since 2023, they served 6,000 people.

Um, if we can assume, and and they they didn't share numbers of how many people they actually prevented from becoming homeless, but um anecdotally, very very impactful program.

If they even prevented 25% of those people who are facing eviction from recover from going uh experiencing homelessness, that's like 500 people a year that would be entering potentially the streets or wherever they might go.

Um, I'm just curious, based on the prevention services that are available in this program going away.

Um have you thought about do you know, are you planning for what what is the impact going to be the loss of that program in our court system?

You know, I haven't done an analysis of the impact of the loss of that program.

Again, we have been deeply focused on the transition of this continuum of care so that we can continue to do this kind of work, do deeper analysis, provide better data quality and data transparency, use it in real time.

It was it's a good program, right?

Preventing eviction.

We do know that representation can help a lot of tenants who are facing eviction, um, prevent eviction.

And we want to prevent homelessness wherever we can.

And I think the numbers of people seeking services overall would indicate that prevention should be a priority in our community.

Um, our office receives about 500, we receive 500,000 in funding for human services that we distribute, and then we receive about 400,000 from the federal government for public services.

That's what we have to invest.

I think the challenge with the care program is that the only funding they could get was from a local government.

Um so when we were asked, we just we don't have the resources to finance um that program.

Right.

I I do appreciate that, and and I know you have very limited funds, which you're which you're dealing with.

I guess that constraint of their ability to receive money from local government only is uh is so unfortunate because we're gonna lose one of our upstream um prevention um interventions.

So we do, we have in the past um invested in um, and we have a strong relationship with legal services, uh, the economic defense project, um, to provide training on uh renter rights and responsibilities to try and help folks prevent eviction.

We've done there there's been some funding of rental assistance in the past.

That's just sort of like a uh that that's a pretty big bucket of need there.

Yeah, I do want to say I know that they, while they won't have provide the services with personnel, they are um offering some kind of you know electronic or online support, which will they will share more with us about.

So yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Councilman Lineweber?

Yeah, I think we have to revisit terminology because sometimes, and particularly for those people that are listening online, because um we interchange the the groups that we're talking about.

When we say homelessness, we're talking about a much larger group.

This is someone that just might have not been able to make rent and they come home and there's a note on their door that says they're out.

Um and and that person um there could be services and stuff that they can access, but they don't know how to access those things.

There's a lot of information that they don't aware of.

So that's a bigger group.

I I've heard you say upwards around 8,000 people and stuff.

That's homelessness, which is a larger piece, right?

And then you you're now getting into this place that is chronic homelessness.

And there's actually a definition for that that I'd like you to define.

And then there's another subgroup, which is really where you're trying to get to, which is chronic homelessness with a disorder.

So either mental health or drug addiction or just a number of different things that really bring them to a place.

This gets into play with the rescue mission that has a low bar.

So there is a bar.

That means that there are some individuals that cannot go to the rescue mission because they're unsafe and they have they have virtually some kind of things.

Can you help kind of explain the that to your come pretty close or where are we at?

Well, I mean, I think that we we typically look at um homelessness based on a duration, um, which might be transitional, right?

Very short term, episodic, it might happen uh a little more frequently, but not, you know, it might happen a couple times over someone's life.

And then there's chronic homelessness.

Um chronic homelessness is defined as somebody who has a physical developmental or uh mental disability that is also experiencing long terms of homelessness, and it's the disability that is preventing them from being stably housed.

Um and there are degrees of that, right?

So there are folks who are chronically homeless who also can no longer or uh go to a shelter because of certain suspensions or such or behavioral issues.

But that's sort of great, you know, that's the that's a variety in uh amongst the chronically homeless.

I would say that we we also work on prevention, try and prevent it.

It's much easier to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.

Um so to keep folks stably housed is uh is a priority, and it's also a priority that this community very much uh supports, as we know through like our spacious skies, looking at mental health, work and prevention as high priorities.

So I I'm not exactly clear.

I mean, we have we try and have a variety of strategies because for every individual, every episode of homelessness is really individual.

So we have try and have a variety of strategies for people based on needs.

Some, you know, some it's a very quick rapid rehousing, just some payment of rent, some support, some it's longer term, they need a transitional program.

Um some folks are going to need housing for the for the rest of their lives.

Some folks might need just housing for a very long period while they're recovering from addiction, getting a job, et cetera.

Um we we engage in a number of different spaces.

Well, and that this gets to your point about case workers and really managing the individual because you can't really just do, and that's really what I'm trying to get at.

There's not a blanket thing.

Um, like I said, I think we've looked at 8,000 people, but a lot of those people, I mean, I'm sure all of them have us because of the challenges in their lives, they're having some kind of mental health breakdown in some shape or form because they didn't pay, they they couldn't make rent, right?

Um, and so, or they lost their job, or or there could be there's some breakdown, it's not always.

Yeah, sometimes it's structural, yeah.

Yeah, that's correct.

And so I think it's important to see that there's a degree of people.

Some people can help themselves, and then that we get to the part where I think we have some people who can't help themselves.

And and that's where we're when we look at this 291 individuals.

Um, I that's really trying to break it down to show that these are the more serious group, is what I'm trying to get at.

That it's a larger group of 8,000, but this is the ones that really probably don't they need some extra stuff to come alongside of them in order for for us to kind of make any kind of degree of improvement.

And that is the that is that built for zero model uh councilman.

The um it's identifying people by name, uh knowing what those needs are, case conferencing to those needs and helping people move along.

It's not just sort of aggregated data, you know.

This is generally what somebody experiencing chronic homelessness needs.

Uh the the best practice, and we've seen it with veterans.

We did it, I did it with youth in San Diego, is um is really creating that by name list and working that list on a regular basis so that folks are getting access to the care that they need.

And that is very um, that is intensive.

It gets to your point about case management and the need for those services.

When we met with providers in this community, um, the mayor convened a number of providers during the uh the the pause and snap and just asked what one of the you know, what are your greatest needs and case management support was one of them.

We don't have enough resources to come alongside people in the way we need to to help them navigate a system that is very complex and often a little bit um broken in terms of the gaps.

Well, and that's um finally that's where I want to kind of get to also is that um the HMIS system is probably the thing that we have to rest on because data is everything.

And to councilman Donaldson's point earlier, HIMS definitely tracks the fact that they're a veteran or not a veteran veteran.

Um, because there's so many different programs are available in there.

And we when we have dozens of agencies that are all trying to help Bob, okay.

It's so helpful for one agency to be able to pick up where the last agency dealing with Bob was at.

And so this HMS system creates a center piece around Bob.

So there's a historical perspective that different agencies can tap in and go, oh, look, Bob's been here for quite a while.

He's been doing this kind of treatment, or he's a vet, or he's this, or this.

That information helps so much in terms of the case management piece and why data is so important when you're managing on an individual level.

Would you agree?

I would absolutely agree.

And it's as if you read my speaking points because the next uh the next phase for us is really around um data quality and transparency transparency as priorities of the new COC.

I mean, we uh and I should see the new COC system leadership.

So when we met with those providers who said case management was a high priority need, they also said they need access to system data and they need greater system leadership.

And so with Changeline um wanting to get out of the business of leading the continuum of care, the Pikes Peak United Away, and the city formed a partnership to to lead this effort.

So this Pikes Peak United Away is now our system lead.

They are managing that homeless management information system database.

They will be providing the um they're prioritizing folks for housing.

So that's the coordinated entry program.

Um, and they'll be leading our uh regional strategy.

The city, of course, is a key partner in this.

We're the collaborative applicant, which is one of the roles of a in a continuum of care.

So we're doing the project competition.

We'll be submitting that narrative application that outlines the partnerships and the performance, et cetera, and where we're headed.

So we will be setting a lot of that direction.

We'll also fund the Pikes Peak United Way.

We're putting some funding into matching funds for the grants that they receive.

And we fund the emergency homeless management information system.

So we also have contractual relationships.

So I'm really excited about this and where we're headed with it.

And then our department is also completing a supportive housing plan.

We identified in the in the housing needs assessment a need for about 2,000 additional supportive housing units.

Well, how do you build those, right?

They're for people who are extremely low income or no income who need a significant wraparound services in our community.

We're also looking at how can other types of housing provide deeper supportive services to people to help them move back to self-sufficiency.

So this will be a data-driven roadmap.

We have contracted with data-driven economic strategies.

So Dr.

Tatiana Bailey is helping to lead this.

We have support from a Harvard Public Health fellow, Pratik Nair, who is in our office who's doing research for us, and we'll be recommending some best practices, and we anticipate completion by the end of the year.

And Councilman Donaldson, this will be the uh we'll bring this plan back to City Council.

So just to wrap this up, what does it mean?

Uh the count is the 2026 count, the decrease was encouraging, but we know it's incomplete.

Real-time data, strong regional collaboration are really essential to moving our system forward.

While the city is not a direct service provider generally, we do provide some case-based street-based case management and such through our fire department, but we're largely not a direct service provider.

We do provide leadership coordination and support roles that are critical in helping people move towards stability and in reducing the community impact of homelessness.

None of this progress though could be possible without the dedicated work of our community service providers and their donors whose daily efforts, their compassion and collaboration form the backbone of this homelessness response system.

And I'm happy to take any additional questions or provide any additional follow-up.

Just uh yeah, thanks, Madam President.

Um Amy Just a couple slides ago under the supportive housing plan, it says identify supportive housing needs, expand supply.

Um how do you envision that happening, expanding the supply of supportive housing?

Because the city's now involved in this uh more so than it was before July 1st.

Yeah, well, the city uh the city has invested.

I mean, we do work on um expanding uh access to housing for extremely low-income individuals who are earning 30% of the area median income or less.

So we have invested in those projects before.

The purpose of this plan too is to identify what the role would be for the city and other providers in our community.

I can tell you that um about a 10 years ago we brought in a permanent supportive housing toolkit, and um this the city funded that um and trained providers, developers and uh property managers, and how to build permanent supportive housing in our community.

Um so we do make some limited investment in it uh we through a rebate program, we have some grant funds, but that's the purpose of the plan is to help us identify what those strategies need to be to do this at a bigger bigger scale.

Can you remind us kind of what fits into the definition?

Well, the the word two words supportive housing.

What is supportive housing?

Supportive housing is is housing with wraparound services to help people remain housed um uh stably and safely.

And uh supportive housing could run the gamut from providing some services in a shelter all the way to providing this wraparound uh housing.

So you would be you would have a permanent lease generally and have services on site and available to you to address your specific dress your specific needs.

So that typically includes some sort of case management, could include recovery groups, can apply uh you know, meal support, that type of thing.

So it would be good, it would be um multi-unit housing, wouldn't be individual homes.

Generally, um these would generally we expect these to be multi-family housing.

Um we do have scattered site permanent supportive housing in the community.

Um they're generally individual apartments where folks are uh the services come to them, so they're tenant-based instead of project-based.

Um so we do have that in the community.

Is there this would be my final question, Madam President?

Is there anything that folks who work in the field you work in have learned in the last couple of years, three years that's uh different?

It's a new um realization or you know what, data has shown that this is we thought X, but Y is probably the closer to the truth.

You know, I'm gonna take this moment to talk about diversion programs.

So oftentimes when people are coming in and they've they've become homeless, but they're and they're about to enter a system, typically it'll be a shelter.

Many folks can be diverted from entering a shelter with a very small investment.

Um it's helping people reconnect with family.

It's helping people, hey, you know, could you go back and live at your parents' house if or you're with your roommate if we could provide some funding for some groceries?

You know, there's some interventions that can happen before somebody actually enters the shelter or enters a homeless service system.

That can often prolong homelessness just because of navigating the system.

So in San Diego, they're beginning to actually see reductions in homelessness month over month and attributing a lot of it to diversion and diversion can these can be like you know, you know, 50 bucks, 300 bucks, you know, it might not, it doesn't necessarily take a lot of money.

It's helping people restore their agency, helping to make helping to communicate with family and friends uh so that folks do not enter the system in the first place.

And that's that's encouraging, sounds encouraging, but they're not then on um support.

Like we haven't just changed who we're counting as homeless.

Like we're not now saying this person isn't homeless because they're living with their friend and we're paying them uh to be able to do that.

Or or are they on long-term support, or is it, hey, you know what?

What we're finding is is with three months of assistance, they're back on their feet, so to speak, and able to uh make their own way.

Yeah, I mean, they would still, if they're still on some type of support, they would still be identified as homeless, right?

Okay if you're making a one-time and preventing people from entering the system, they're still homeless at that point.

So they've got to this place.

It's not that they're still housed, it's that they've they've lost their housing, they're about to enter a system, and we can keep them from that system by utilizing their own support networks that sometimes you just forget you have.

Uh so we can do that and prevent them from entering a system, but they are still homeless.

What's really more interesting uh sort of telling in terms of the data is how many people are exiting the system to stable destinations.

That's the number we're trying to get up.

So we were in 2024, 12% of folks entering the homelessness response system in our community were exiting to a permanent stable destination.

That's a local number.

That's a local number.

In 2025, that was up to 15%.

And we think we can attribute that to some of the um additional the the place came online, for example, in 2025.

So we had more units.

And we also have very few people who are actually going back into homelessness once they exit those to those destinations.

So that's really what we want to see is people.

If you're becoming certainly we want to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place, right?

But we want to see more people exiting and how quickly they exit.

Okay, I'll take your answer.

Is what we've learned in the last few years.

One thing is that diversions are helpful, even though they're still homeless, they're not in a homeless shelter, and a higher percentage of them can become self-reliant or whatever the phrase is.

Right.

They exit, they exit from the system very quickly.

Okay, thanks.

Yep.

Thank you.

Next up, we have item 7A.

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

Item 7A, a resolution declaring the intent of the city of Colorado Springs, Colorado, to issue revenue bonds in connection with financing residential facilities for low and middle income families or persons.

Good morning, Katie.

Hi, good morning, members of council.

Um, Katie Sunderland, Housing Solutions Manager for the City of Colorado Springs, Housing and Homeless Response Department.

So the presentation I'm gonna be giving you today is to talk about um our carry forward for our 2026 private activity bond.

So annually I come in front of council to talk about our private activity bond allocation and a resolution to carry that forward for three years, allowing the city to use affordable using its private activity bond cap for affordable housing activities.

So this year we're talking about 33.7 million um dollars in private activity bonds.

So what I'm gonna do is do a quick high-level overview of what are our private activity bonds.

Um I know a couple of members of council have heard this presentation before, but I think it's a great um refresher of what they are.

We'll talk about our 2026 private activity bond cap and then um get to our carry forward.

So what are our what are private activity bonds?

It's a municipal bond that um is issued by a local government and it is exempt from federal income tax on the interest earned.

This is why it's an attractive investment opportunity for private capital.

Um and the city issues these private activity bonds as a conduit issuer issuer, and this is an important point.

Um we offer we function as a pass-through entity and we're not responsible for repaying the bonds.

So the project that we are issuing bonds into is responsible uh for paying those bonds back through the rent that is earned.

Um typically in our case and in cases across the country, private activity bonds are paired with what's called the low-income housing tax credit.

And so you put this tax, it's a federal income tax credit, and you pair that with these private activity bonds to finance affordable housing.

And we'll look at a graphic on the next slide.

Um, well, two sides from now that uh really illustrates when you are layering, we call this lasagna financing, when you are layering these different financing mechanisms together, we're able to reduce the rents in these affordable housing developments.

Um great legislation that passed um this past year was previously in affordable housing developments that were funded with private activity bonds.

They needed to be funded with 50% of private activity bonds for the total cost of the development, roughly.

Um that has been reduced to 25%, with the intent that the this um mechanism can be stretched further, which this will be the first year that we are um working through with projects on this, and so we're in a little bit of a new landscape of how many projects we're receiving applications for, what we are awarding, um, and we could talk about that as well.

So let's talk about who's living in these properties.

Um typically in private activity bond finance properties, they are on the higher end of our affordable housing scale, which typically serves those that are making 60% AMI or below, um around 60% AMI, and um AMI stands for the area median income, which is the midpoint of our community.

So currently for a household of four in El Paso County, it's um this family is making about 116,000, and those living in these private activity bond funded um uh developments are making around 70,000.

And you can see that progression for a household of two as well as a household of one on the chart on the bottom right.

So, how do we get these private activity bonds?

So, and I don't have adult versions of this, and I apologize, I should have printed bigger ones of these.

Um but here the the general progression is that the IRS is distributing private activity bonds to states by population.

And in the state of Colorado, half of the bonds are allocated to the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority, and then the other half are um are directed to jurisdictions based on their populations.

So some of the large we'll look at some of the largest um jurisdictions, but we are one of the top four jurisdictions.

Um in 2026, we see we received 33.7 million dollars of private activity bonds based on our population.

Um we issue these bonds to developers as a pass-through entity, and then the developers borrow the funds from investors to create these low-income um properties, and then it's um what's called a revenue bond.

So again, we are the city is not liable for any of the repayments of these bonds.

Um this is the chart that I was alluding to earlier, and there's a lot happening on here, but the the big picture here is when we start to layer together tax credits, private activity bonds, so like soft funds, that purple part that's um coming from foundations such as Carrie Davis's organization, as well as like the Health Found, um, the Colorado Health Foundation and different in our office with our federal low interest loans from HUD.

Um, the more you layer this in, the the lower our rents can become.

And so for private activity bond finance projects, we are looking at the second bar from the left.

Um, typically, so you can see that there's more debt that does need to be repaid.

However, most of that's funded through private activity bonds.

And so there is a there's less as opposed to a typical market rate interest loan.

So let's talk about our 2026 allocation.

Um it's a generally a simple equation here, which is the IRS is um doing a perb capital multiplier of 135 per person.

And so in Colorado, uh the state received about 811 million.

Um so that puts us at about 1.8 million from uh increase from last year from our 31.8 million up to 33.7 million.

Um that is purely based on population.

So when we talk um our last issuance was for Bradley Ridge, which is a 72.5 million dollar issuance over by Peak Innovation Park Peak Innovation Park, and that project is moving along steadily.

They are under construction and have um quite a few of their buildings vertical, which is great to see.

So right now we have um a private activity on balance remaining of 38 million, and um, and that's from a carry forward from 2025 for that 4.3 million.

So uh let's talk just quickly talk about the process to issue these bonds.

When we we have applications open um one to two times a year, depending on how much bond cap is available.

So in May of this year, we opened up an application and have been reviewing those applications and still are going back and forth with developers for that 38 point uh 38 million that was remaining.

Um so we are reviewing market studies, we're reviewing readiness to proceed, where they're at in land use review, environmental reports, we're doing um like a general underwriting for these projects to make sure they're ready to move forward.

Um I have a committee that I then present these projects to, and um then we will come in front of council for an inducement resolution.

Once that inducement resolution is passed, these projects start moving forward on additional um due diligence, and then we come back to you for an ordinance to issue these bonds.

So, what I'm asking for you uh for from you today is to approve the resolution as presented to carry forward our 2026 allocation, which is 33.7 million um for the next three years so that we can use it on affordable housing developments.

And that are there any questions?

Councilman Henjam.

Uh yeah, thank you, Madam President.

Good morning, Katie.

Good morning.

Um, so uh it says on um carry forward till 2029.

Um, but you're not you're not carrying over to not use until I mean you will be using them.

You'll be coming to us with applications for 2026.

Correct.

Yeah, when we do a carry forward, it the language in our bond council is online if we want to have a more robust conversation on that, but essentially the carry forward is so that we can use them for up to three years.

Okay.

And do you have a general idea of how many applications, like in total dollars that you'll be receiving for this year?

Yeah, we uh I'm working with one developer in particular and going back and forth on uh their unit mix and what their ask is, and so we haven't landed on a file null number yet, but um, I will be going back to our committee to review their revised application, and if they recommend moving forward, you'll you'll hear from me again.

Okay, and approximately how many units do you expect we'll be able to right now.

This application is for about 220.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, thanks, madam president.

Um, last time when you were here, I brought up Royal Plines and asked that we not be presented with uh projects that are very uh unpopular with the uh the citizens that already live in that area.

Do you know which district this uh this well, I'm sure you do, which district is this in?

This application is near Peak Innovation Park again.

Um, and so we're reviewing the market in particular the market study based on the development.

Yep.

Okay.

I don't see any.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on to item 7B, will the clerk re item 7B into the record?

Item 7B, a resolution adopting the rules and procedures of the fire board of appeals of the city of Colorado Springs, effective August 11th, 2026.

Yeah.

Hear me.

There we go.

Um, good morning, counsel.

I'm Blanche Lindsay.

I'm the boards and commissions program administrator with legislative service.

I also have fire marshal Chris Cooper and public safety senior attorney Frederick Stein here to support me if there are any questions.

So to begin, um, we are reviewing the fire board appeals rules and procedure.

The purpose of um these reviews um is to align the rules and procedures with the city council rules and procedures, streamlining governance, establishing a unified procedure standard across all city council appointed boards, commissions, and committees.

A little bit of a background.

Um so the fire board of appeals has been operating under rules that were drafted in 2015.

Um the current version was adopted by the fire board of appeals in 2015.

However, it was never adopted by city council.

Um so in our updates to these rules and position um procedures.

Um to start out, no major changes were actually made to the rules.

However, these revisions updated um the rules um on an administrative side.

Um so the changes that were made, um, we revised the rules to reflect the procedures of city council, um, eliminating any redundancy and focusing on the fire boards of appeal specific functions.

Any provisions not unique to the fire board of appeals was removed um and is now referenced and inferred and governed by the rules and procedures of city council.

Um, and so the new uh rules um are categorized in these major sections.

Um organization covers the powers and election of the chair, vice chair, and secretary meeting schedules covers regular and special meetings as well as the agenda, public um or sorry, board procedures covers quorum attendance conduct conduct, voting and motions, and re uh actions by the board, public hearing procedures, um, covers the general rules um of a public hearing, and last section is the application of appeals, which covers the requirements needed for an appeal to the board.

A little bit about the work that we've done for these reviews.

It began in April of 2026 to rewrite the rules and was finalized in July of 2026.

The rules were um we conducted stakeholder engagement for the rules, which included uh reviews by the fire board of appeals, um, city council liaison, President Pro Tam, um Brian Risley, Fire Marshal Chris Cooper, as well as public safety senior attorney Frederick Stein.

Finally, on July 10th, um meeting of the board, um, well, of the fire board of appeals, they review an um motion to approve um the rules.

And the next steps would be um this would go to the regular meeting on August 11th.

We would ask that this be put on consent calendar.

Um, and are there any questions from council?

Councilman Henjam.

Thank you, Madam President.

Good morning, Blancha.

Um, it's not necessarily a question so much about the procedures, but um I the I did meet for the first time a number of the board members from the fire board of appeals at our um board and commission celebration and recognition.

Um they were very impressive folks, and uh and I recall um hearing from a couple of them uh the desire and um I think uh I don't know if it was a request.

Well, it was sort of a request.

Um, I think for that board to potentially learn a little bit more about our city budget, our our revenue, kind of the the financial aspects related to the work they do.

And I am not sure exactly what kinds of um training we are doing or planning on doing for all of our boards and commissions as it relates to board and governance and education and so forth, but um it just came to mind as I was listening to this, so I thought I would pass that along.

Yeah, thank you.

I will review that councilman Risley.

Thank you, Madam President.

Uh, as the liaison to the fire board of appeals, I was just going to comment that I certainly have reviewed these changes.

They're really nominal as you've described them, and uh I would recommend that we put it on consent.

Councilman Docson.

Yeah, thanks, Madam President.

Blanchick, is it in here, or can you just review it with us and then explain why it's not in there as far as the makeup of the uh fire board of appeals who's who who there's nine members, I saw that in there, but who how do we are there requirements for those nine?

Like two have to be citizens, one represents the building community, etc.

Um, there are requirements of the board.

Oh, go ahead.

Hi, good morning, Chris Cooper Fire Marshal.

Uh I'll step in address that in the uh the fire prevention code or the fire code that's adopted within the the city code and the city code itself.

There are specific requirements for the makeup of the board.

Uh I'll try and remember it off the top of my head.

There is a large business representative, small business representative.

There is a fire suppression contractor.

There is a uh building contractor, a representative of the insurance uh industry.

There is a uh commercial real estate broker and a member at large, I believe are the makeup of the seven members of the board.

And Chris, where is that uh membership um dictated?

Where is that again?

It's codified in city code under public safety uh under the fire department.

There's a section in there for fire board of appeals.

Okay.

And is is does that occur on any other um boards or commissions where it's not in the uh this thing will be voting on or sending through uh consent?

Oh I would say absolutely, you know, city council at one point was responsible for more than 25 city council appointed boards that were created through various pieces of legislation, different sets of rules.

Um so yeah, so it's not completely atypical for the composition to live in code, and that that code section just references 8.3.101.

Um so and and I think one of the pieces about composition that often comes up as well.

It's very specific because of the work of this board that met those membership requirements.

Is that the smartest place for the composition to uh be dictated?

Uh are there pluses and minuses to to it being in what we're gonna vote on uh versus being in uh in code?

Yeah, I would say that the rules are not necessarily the appropriate place for board composition.

I mean, we're really looking to standardize boards and have the rules and procedures of city council be the overarching um rules for all of the boards and then boards by city council are allowed to have their own rules if there are specific procedures, and you'll hear there's specific appeal procedures here and procedures that we need to articulate in the rules for fire board, but um membership would not necessarily be appropriate within the rules for this particular board.

On our on the website, does it list out those uh requirements for memberships?

So with so with on the board portal um on the city of Colorado Springs website, there is a link to that city code section, and it is the very top section of that code that that lists the board composition.

Okay, I would just want it to be pretty easy for citizens to if they want to know who the hell is on this board that's gonna hear my appeal, they can they can see oh, it's it's made up of uh people who should uh be competent, or is it is it you know how many citizens are in there, et cetera.

So um council member Donaldson, um, it is actually uh viewable on the board's uh website.

Um so if you look at their the members, it'll actually, if it's a specific seat, it'll list what specific seat they're sitting in, such as if they're a license architecture on the seat or insurance provider in the seat.

Um so it will show that specifically in the membership.

Okay, thanks for uh answering my questions.

Appreciate it.

Can I have a thumbs up for consent or down, whichever?

All right, that will be on consent on August 11th.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um moving on to one more item before we will take a break.

I know some council members want one if you need to.

Um, I understand, but we're gonna go ahead and and have the clerk please read item 7C into the record, and then we will take a break before executive session.

Item 7C, a resolution of the city council of the city of Colorado Springs, approving a service plan for the Kettle Creek Metropolitan District cited north of Old Ranch Road, east of Voyager Parkway, and south of Federal Drive.

Good morning, Allison.

Good morning, Alison Socker, senior planner with the land use review division.

This morning we're gonna go over the Kettle Creek Metropolitan District, which is a request to create a new metropolitan district.

So the request today is to create a new district and approve a service plan that would allow for the creation of the Kettle Creek Metro District.

Um, and that would allow for a maximum debt authorization of 8 million to support the financing and construction of public improvements within that district's area.

That'll include 20.61 acres.

As mentioned, this is located just north of Old Ranch Road and in between Voyager Parkway and Federal Drive.

The location here is kind of as I described before.

So just north of Old Ranch Road.

This is in council district two.

This is in Council District 2.

The service plan would allow a total debt issuance of $8 million.

The anticipated cost of public improvements is about $5.1 million.

Of course, the difference between these two numbers is to allow for any contingencies and allow for any deviations that might come at time of purchase or contracting for services to make these improvements.

The anticipated land development will consist of 122 residential units, both single family detached and single family attached.

There will also be some improvements for active open spaces, some uh improvements for public roadways and other amenities within the district itself.

Um there are anticipated bond issuances that will come as early as next year in 2027 and in 2037, as of what is anticipated now.

The maximum debt mill levy is being requested to be 50 mils, which is consistent with the model service plan, and the maximum OM.

So operations and maintenance mill levy will be 20 mils, also consistent with the model service plan.

So on screen here, you'll see kind of a snip of the land use plan.

You'll actually be voting on this, I believe, tomorrow, along with the annexation and zone establishments.

So the zone being established, I believe, is R Flux medium.

So you'll see that here on screen that the yellow area is where the housing units and other public improvements are going to be made.

And then to the east side of the property, you'll see some open space that is the pre bowl uh jumping mouse habitat along Kettle Creek, and then there's some detention and landscaped areas along Old Ranch Road.

For uh all service plans being approved by council and established in the state of Colorado.

The service plans are required to uh identify at least two services that are being provided by the district.

So it is typical for our service plans to list maybe a greater number of the services they may provide, just so that they have the option of implementing more services if they so choose, but at a minimum they're required to put at least two on here.

So that is why you'll see kind of a greater list here on the screen for descriptions of services.

The reason that an IGA is not required for these is because the city nor the county are providing these services.

It will just be up to the district to provide those services, and if the district wants to work through an HOA, they can also do that separately.

So that is why you'll see that no IGA is required to conduct these services.

So if the district ever does decide they wanted to provide a service that is not listed on here, that would be grounds for a service plan amendment, which would come back to council.

So in your packet, you would have seen the clean proposed service plan as well as well as a red line comparison to the model service plan, all of the standard exhibits that come with our service plans, a cover memo from the applicant, as well as a draft resolution.

This item is being scheduled right now for August 11th for its final hearing.

However, of course, this is going to be subject to both the approval of the annexation plot and the recordation of the annexation plot.

So as long as the applicants are able to get that turned around and recorded with the county in that time frame.

We'll have this heard again on August 11th.

If not, we will continue this item to the following hearing.

And I'm available for any questions.

We also have the service, I'm sorry, the district's representation here if you do have any questions for them.

Councilman Casey.

Thank you, Madam President.

Um Elison, I did have questions, but you answer them all in your presentation, so thank you.

Yay.

Councilman Donaldson.

Yeah, I do have just a couple questions about the bonds.

Are they going to be publicly I don't oftentimes I don't remember the exact terms, but are they publicly offered or privately um owned?

Uh that would be a question I think would be better answered by um the district's representation.

Okay.

Good morning, Madam President and fellow council members.

Nicole Pakov on behalf of the applicant for Kettle Creek Metropolitan District.

And to answer your question on Councilmember Donaldson, at this time the bonds are anticipated to be publicly issued bonds.

However, the service plan does allow for the discretion if it if it were appropriate to do privately issued bonds.

But at this time it's isn't it's anticipated to be publicly issued bonds.

Okay, that often raises concerns that it's owned by uh individuals who don't have an interest in paying the bonds off as quickly as the property owners inside the district might wish because they're paying a higher rate of interest than uh uh you could at least get it refinanced.

So I'll I'll I'll find out between now and a couple of weeks what council can do if anything about that.

Um then well I guess there really isn't since we don't have that, there's no amortization schedule or anything like that in here, or is there in the financial plan attached to the service plan?

Is there anything unusual about that amortization schedule?

So that if I showed it to someone else, they would go well that's not normal.

Look, they they uh they keep the principal as a giant amount till the very the very end.

Uh council member, I do not believe there's anything unusual about the financial plan.

It aligns with the city's model service plan.

The the bonds are 30-year term bonds.

Okay, and this has been reviewed by our planning department.

Is there anything uh unusual in the amortization schedule?

Okay, those are my questions.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Allison.

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

We're gonna move on to item T B 10 B, which is a closed session after we um the clerk reads in item 10A and 10 B.

We will um I'll have the attorney read in and vote to go into closed session and then we will take a 10 minute break.

So will this um will the city attorney please read items 10b and 10 a 10 B A and 10 B B into the record, and then we'll um pull the council members.

Good morning, Stephanie Boster, City Attorney.

In accordance with City Charter Article 3, Section 3-60 D and its incorporated Colorado Open Meetings Act, CRS Section 2464024 F.

The City Council in open session is to determine whether it will hold a closed executive session.

The issue to be to be discussed involves the annual performance evaluation of the city council administrator and the city auditor.

The president of council shall pull the city council members and upon consent of two-thirds of the members present, may conduct a closed executive session in the event any city council member is participating electronically or telephonically in the closed executive session.

Each city council member participating in the closed executive session shall affirmatively state for the record that no other member of the public not authorized to participate in the closed executive session is present or able to hear the matters discussed as part of the closed executive session.

If consent to the closed executive session is not given, the item may be disclosed in open session or withdrawn from consideration Will the clerk please um poll the council members council member Casey, all right.

Councilmember Crow Iverson.

Aye Councilmember Donaldson, aye.

Councilmember Pendre.

Aye.

Councilmember Lineweber.

Aye.

Councilmember Rainey.

Aye.

Councilmember Risley.

Aye.

Councilmember Williams.

Aye.

And Councilmember Gold.

I believe is absent.

No, she's dropped off.

Yeah.

Okay.

We will um now prepare for closed session.

We will take a 10 minute break.

Yeah.

We are back into work session.

Um and this meeting is now adjourned.