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Um, yes, I'll refrain for many higher number this morning.

We'll just jump into uh we're gonna announce Councilman Cash going on here.

Good morning, Sidana Gonzalez Petites, one of your council members at large.

Uh good morning, Darren Watson.

Fine, District 9.

Good morning.

Diana Romero Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4.

Uh Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver's District 2.

Good morning, Namani Sanimo, Northwest Denver District 1.

Uh great.

Thank you all so much for being here.

I'd love to open it up with any announcements people have that they want to share for fellow members or the listening public at home.

Uh the announcement lines are now open.

Yes, Madam President Pro Tem.

Uh, thank you.

I have two announcements.

Um, one of them is about our community open house that we are hosting on Wednesday at Thomas Jefferson High School.

Doors open at 5, and it goes until 7, I believe.

Um we have a whole bunch of city agencies that are there to answer specific questions around District 4.

Um Dottie will be there, Parks and Rec will be there.

Um Department of Uh Economic Development will be there, Dito.

Denver Water, Denver Public Library.

There's a lot of questions about the libraries in Southeast Denver right now.

Um, Welshire 100 and many more of our community partners will be there.

Um we'll have some snacks and pizza and hope that people can join us.

Um is the Welshire 100.

Uh, the Welshire Golf Course is celebrating um 100 years this year, and we're having a big community celebration and golf tournament on June 5th.

Uh registration will open on April 1st.

So go online to Denver Golf if you'd like to participate in the golf tournament.

Um, for some of my colleagues that also play golf, you will be getting an email from me if you'd like to play in the tournament as well.

Thank you, Dr.

President for Tim.

Other announcements.

Yes, Councilman Watson.

Uh thank you.

Um, Mr.

Mayor, I just wanted to share this morning um that uh Don Moskowitz and the community solutions team are convening today here in um on uh Sydney County building.

Community solutions is a program, a process, and initiative that helps to uh lead to solutions for reducing and ending um the instance of homelessness um in Denver and other municipalities across the country.

They chose Denver today to meet with the all-in-mile high team to identify with all of the uh community um leaders within um the uh that's leading towards solutions on unhoused um residents here in Denver to bring them together to look for additional solutions going forward to look at ways that we can reduce not just veterans um homelessness but homelessness for everyone else.

So I wanted to thank the team for community solutions for choosing Denver.

Um thank the administration for hosting uh the event this morning and looking forward to some of the outcomes from the meetings that are having throughout the day, and I think possibly throughout uh the rest of the week.

Thank you, sir.

Yes, a great chance for Denver to be proud of progress.

Thank they in part focused on Denver because of the success the city has had, and so thanks for all your leadership to make that happen.

Councilman Cashman.

Another reason for the city of Denver to be proud, the mighty mighty university men's hockey team defeated Western Michigan.

Two to one in overtime this past weekend in the semifinals of the National Collegiate Hockey Conference.

Uh semifinals they'll play Minnesota Duluth uh this coming Saturday in the finals.

Then on Sunday, um the uh NCAA will uh announce the entrance in this year's uh national championship.

So PyO's uh ranked sixth in the nation right now.

So uh go pioneers, keep it up.

Is it only four that make it to the frozen four, or is there a tournament of eight or sixteen?

Yeah, okay, gotcha.

We will look forward to our next national championship run.

Any other announcements?

Councilman Sawyer.

Thanks, Mr.

Mayor.

Just wanted to give a shout out to the state champion, George Washington.

Uh-huh.

Um, George Washington High School is in beautiful district five, and um, they have over 200 kids who um participate in their speech and debate program.

They are ranked fourth nationally and won the state tournament last weekend.

So we'll do a proclamation for these kiddos in a couple of weeks, but just wanted to give them a shout out.

Congratulations.

Great recruiting grounds for future interns and aides here.

Right.

We're really looking for all of you.

So uh Madam President.

Just wanted to say thank you to all the TSA workers who are working on paid.

I was at the airport um on Saturday late in my flight was delayed.

My daughter's flight was delayed last night, and lots of flights were canceled.

Um, so just want to give a shout out to everyone who's working and not getting paid.

That's I know how challenging that is, and how when you go to get a paycheck for two weeks and you don't have any money in your account and you're still going to work.

So just want to give a shout out to everyone at Den who's making the sacrifice so that we can still travel.

Um it's a big sacrifice for all of us.

Thank you.

Uh thank you.

I want to thank in anticipation of hearing from all the work that our airport team is doing to try to support our TSA staff members out there to make sure they make it through.

Um lot of signs of service and support and commitment from both residents and other employees who are stepping up to give food and gift cards and the rest.

And so thank you, Phil, and your team for doing that.

Um the other announcements people have this morning.

Okay, great.

Well, we have um one general session item this morning and one executive session item this morning.

First up on general session, we have uh our friends from Den here on airport operations.

We're gonna talk a little bit about uh the overall airport operations.

I think we have David and uh um maybe it's just you, David.

Are you on your own?

Just me.

Great.

Um, thanks for being here.

Um we'll look forward to hearing your thoughts, and we'll all take a cue for questions as we go.

Yeah, so uh we'll actually do questions at the end, just to the extent that they don't they might get into attorney client privilege issues.

Um this presentation stems from the conversations from council president and Phil just talking about a primer on the federal obligations impacting the airport.

Um I'm gonna zip forward through to the second presentation, um, and really just talk about the federal requirements, a very high level that impact the airport.

And there's really four key airport law concepts that are front and center for the airport, right?

Uh and with the city preemption and federalism, uh, proprietary rights, the federal grant assurances, and revenue diversion considerations.

I'm gonna just go through this super quickly.

Um, federal preemption is generally the concept where uh federal law takes precedence over state or local law on issues requiring national uniformity, and there's uh two kinds there's express uh preemption and implied preemption.

Express preemption is when the federal government says we are the only entity that can regulate a certain area of law because we need a uniform national approach.

Implied preemption is where the law doesn't do that, but it impliedly takes up that space.

So, example, the federal government has lots of rules and regulations about airfield lighting, so if the local uh airport sponsor wanted to change the rules and have different kinds of lighting, that would be uh preempted by federal law.

There's also the concept of proprietary rights.

That's where the airport is acting essentially as a landlord and not as a regulator.

So the you know, for Denver, it's the city and county of Denver is the airport sponsor.

We are both a regulator, we have rules and regulations, but at the same time, we are also a landlord, and so it's the federal understanding of how the airport operates as our landlord.

Uh the body of law, there's uh going back since 1926, an evolving body of federal law governing airport operators and airport operations.

Uh it's codified at 49 USC Part 7.

There's also federal regulations that are promulgated at 14 CFR Part 139.

You always hear we talk about our pup being a Part 139 airport and our annual part 139 inspection that stems from the classification that we have under the federal regulations.

But there's a significant other body of law that we have to pay attention to as airport operators.

There are a number of FAA orders that dictate how FAA staff looks at the law and how they apply it to the airports.

So we need to be aware of how that works.

And so there's a very large body of law that we need to worry about.

So now we're gonna get into the grant assurances themselves quickly.

Commerce required uh FAA to obtain grant assurances as conditions of making federal grants.

FAA has formalized these requirements in the grant assurances, which are attached as exhibits to every grant document the FAA issues.

So whenever the city accepts a federal grant, attached to it are the actual grant assurances.

These are contractual obligations, although they are enforced like regulation, regulatory requirements.

So while they're contractual, they act like regulations from the federal government.

The assurances are valid for 20 years with a clock restarting for each new grant.

So every time we accept a new grant, we start a new 20-year clock on those grant assurances.

They are enforced through agency action.

So you no one can go to court directly for any violations of grant assurances.

There's a whole federal process.

Courts can review a final agency action in the normal administrative process.

So any time we get a federal grant from the FAA, these grant assurances apply.

There are 40 of them.

But there are really 10 that are important and that we, I mean, they're all important, but there are 10 that we work on as airport lawyers we work on regularly.

I'm just gonna go through very quickly these 10.

Grant insurance one is essentially a catch-all.

It's a list of federal statutes, regulations, executive orders that the FA expects the airports to comply with.

So things like procurement requirements, environmental statutes, Americans with Disabilities Act, all those federal laws are incorporated into grant insurance one and become obligations of the airport to comply with all those federal requirements.

Grant insurance number five is preserving rights and powers.

So the airport sponsor needs to, and when it's an airport sponsor, in our case, that's the city and county of Denver.

There's lots of other governing structures for how airports can operate.

There's authorities, there's state operations.

But essentially, the airport sponsor needs to make sure it takes no action that would deprive it of the powers necessary to operate the airport.

A general obligation, grant assurance 19, uh, the operational maintenance of the airport.

The airport needs to be operated and maintained so that the aeronautical functions stay open.

Pretty straightforward, but lots of requirements there.

Grant assurance 22 is economic non-discrimination.

There's four parts I'm going to mention really quickly.

Grant assurance 22A is that the sponsor will make the airport available as an airport for public use on reasonable terms and without unjust discrimination to all types, kinds, and classes of aeronautical activities.

Grant assurance 22E is that each carrier using the airport, whether it's a tenant, non-tenant, subtenant, shall be subject to such non-discriminatory and substantially comparable rules, regulations, conditions, rates, fees, rentals, etc.

Grant assurance 22H is that the sponsor may establish reasonable and not unjustly discriminatory conditions to be met by all users of the airport as may be necessary for the safe and efficient operation of the airport.

And 22I, sponsor may prohibit and limit any type or class of aeronautical use of the airport if such actions necessary for the safe operation of the airport or necessary to serve the civil aviation needs of the public.

Grant assurance 21, for any action that a sponsor takes, FAA needs to uh weigh in on those decisions.

Grant assurance 23 is the airport's exclusive rights.

The airport cannot allow any aeronautical users to have exclusive rights to the airport, but we can't kick out all carriers except for one.

And for a fixed-based operator, like Denver has one fixed fixed space operator.

That's not an exclusive use because the airport is open to potential other fixed-based operators.

The fee and rent structure, uh FAA, the federal government requires that we have a reasonable fee and rental structure to support the airport, so that the airport can be as self-sustaining as possible, and so that the airport enterprise relies on its own revenue for its operations.

And then airport revenues.

This is essentially we talk about often revenue diversion, and this is the concept that the revenues received by the airport must stay at the enterprise and cannot be used for general city purposes.

There's a grant insurance 29 requirement the airport maintains an airport layout plan, which is a really high-level master plan showing uh current and future aeronautical uses and developments at an airport.

Finally, I'm just gonna go very quickly on this.

Grant insurance 27 is the use of government aircraft.

Um government aircraft can use an airport without having to pay any rental fees or landing fees.

Um there's a some recent development in terms of the FA's interpretation of what a government aircraft is.

Uh, some of the language here discusses that new change from a new airport compliance manual, which was just released in February.

Grant insurance 39 is competitive access requirement, and it's a requirement that medium and large hubs if we get a request for an aeronautical user to lease base or perform operations that we cannot meet.

The federal government requires us, the FAA requires us to uh put together a report that describes the request, an explanation of why the request could not be accommodated, and a projected timeline for accommodating a roquest.

This is a you could spend hours talking about the grant assurances.

There's you know this was 10.

I quickly talked about there are 40 of them.

Uh they each have a full body of law behind them.

We can always get into more details on any grant assurances you guys have questions on, but we really just want to give a very high-level overview of the grant assurance that the airport team works on in a daily basis.

And just quickly, grant insurance enforcement is through an informal enforcement process, which is 14 CFR Part 13, or a more formal process, which is part 16 administrative hearing process.

I'm going to talk quickly about an important type of property agreement at the airport, and that's the airline use and lease agreements.

I know you've all seen them before you many times.

Um not all air carriers at then have use and lease agreements.

It really is a distinction between a signatory air carrier and a non-signatory air carrier.

Uh den as four non-signatory carriers breathe allegiance on country contour.

The airport's rules and regulations have the criteria that an air carrier needs to meet to qualify as a signatory carrier.

Um at least one preferential gate or minimum of two scheduled flights per day, and at least a lease of 500 square feet.

And these are for domestic carriers.

And essentially, being a signatory carrier is a recognition of the commitment an air carrier has made to the airport to fly a certain number of flights and number of operations.

All of our use and lease agreements are essentially the same, and that's to avoid any unjust discrimination assertions under Grant Insurance 22.

Um, so that essentially each carrier has the same use and lease agreement.

Uh there is a distinction, we have four carriers that have long-term use and lease agreements based on developments and commitments they've made to the airport.

And all the other carriers, I believe it's 18, uh, are on use and lease agreements that expire at the end of the year.

So I'll just really quickly talk about some of the key elements in the use and lease agreement.

It allows carriers to use the airfield and sets out the terms and conditions of that use.

It identifies the demise premises, which are the property that each air carrier leases.

And there's several different kinds of property.

There is exclusive use, and the grant insurance says you can't have exclusive uses at the airport.

This is a little bit different.

This is a non-aeronautical exclusive use for like an airline club or airline support space where uh a united club or a delta club only Delta passengers or united passengers can use that club.

It's exclusive to their passengers.

There are also preferential use gates, and these are gates that are not exclusively leased by an air carrier, but are available.

Uh the airport can put other carriers on an airline's preferential use gate if there's an operational need.

And the rules and regulations set out a requirements and a process for how we could put, for instance, a united plane on a southwest gate if there was an operational need.

And then the use and lease agreement has a preferential use prevention preferential gate utilization requirement, which essentially means the airports need to operate a certain number of turns and aircraft on that gate.

You can't put one aircraft on one of our gates all day long.

There has to be a movement of those aircraft to make it efficient.

There are also common use facilities at the airport.

And there are airlines that don't lease gates or ticket counters, and they will use common use ticket counters and common use gates.

There's a prioritization of how carriers can access those common use gates, and that's in the dead rules and regulations.

Other components of the use and lease agreement, it provides air carriers access to our baggage system.

Uh the air the city retains the right to move carriers in the best interest for the efficient operation of the airport so we can move airlines around to meet our space needs as required.

And again, that's part of our proprietary rights as the airline as the airport operator, not as any kind of regulatory enforcement.

These are required federal contract provisions.

The FA lists a number of and has a number of required contract provisions that we have to have in all of our agreements.

So those are included here, as well as subordination clauses so that our terms and conditions are subordinate to any federal obligations.

And then finally, uh the rate making process.

So how we charge air carriers their rates and charges for using you know landing fees, rental rates, uh, whatever the charge is, is set through exhibit F, which is the same exhibit in all of our use and lease agreements, and it just sets out the methodology for how we set rates and charges.

The airlines can vote on exhibit F if we want to change that.

It's through what's called the MII uh majority and interest vote.

And I think that is a you guys have the deck.

That was an incredibly fast run through a very complex body of law, which is the airport airport law, which questions we have in the queue.

Cashman.

Councillor Catherine, go right ahead.

Yeah, I think I was slide 42.

You were talking about the four long-term leases.

Yes.

That they're all up in 2035.

Correct.

I believe it seems like they started at different times.

Why are they all up in 2035?

They I think so.

So with all four due to 24.

Yes.

Okay.

Other questions.

Okay.

I think that's all we got.

Thank you, David, so much for your help and presentation.

Um, I think that's all we have on our general session memo for this morning uh for our calendar.

So without any further ado, I will now entertain a motion to move us into an executive session pursuant to DRMC Two 4A, sections three, six, and seven for the purpose of receiving legal advice regarding negotiations of contracts.

Some all in favor?

Aye.

Any opposed?

Okay.

With that, we will move into executive session.

Thank you so much to the general public for joining us today.

Have a great Tuesday and have to stay a clear.