To order the town council special meeting on August nineteenth, twenty twenty-five.

You'll please rise and join me in the pledge of the weekend.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States under America.

Councilmember Pessaromelli.

Councilmember Hoback.

Councilmember Mortalaro?

Here.

Councilmember Bear.

Present.

Mayor Pro Tem Bell.

Here.

Mayor Moore.

Here.

Councilmember O'Connor.

Here.

You have a quorum there.

All right.

Thank you.

Um before we go to approve the agenda, I want to just pause for a moment.

On a Saturday night, we lost um one of the Uri's um youth, the sixteen-year-old um Erie High School uh student.

A tragic auto accident.

And um, I'd just like to take a moment of silence to reflect on that and your families and the importance of those those things around us that are really important.

All in favor say aye.

We have one person signed up for public comment.

Sam two minutes at the podium here.

Hi, Sam Fogelman.

I'm the URI resident.

I'm here tonight to speak out because I think it's important to do so in the matter of the outcome.

I I think there's an obvious crisis that's happening all around us, and I think it's really scary to watch.

There are bands of mass men and unmarked cars who are snatching people up off the street every day in communities nearby and across this country.

The victims are dragged away to an unknown location and they're separated from their families, sometimes even their young children.

And then some are sent to countries in which they've never lived.

The kidnappers are a secret police force empowered both by the current authoritarian regime and the willingness of good people to do nothing, as the saying goes.

If we choose to do nothing about this at this pivotal moment in history, then we fit the people that Dr.

King referred to in his letter from Birmingham jail.

People who are mod more devoted to order than to justice, who prefer a negative piece, which is the absence of tension to a positive piece, which is the presence of justice.

Because I think you have that power.

It has now been thoroughly documented by multiple news outlets around the country that flock camera systems, the same ones that monitor Erie and a number of surrounding towns are being accessed by federal authorities to track immigrants and dissenters for the purpose of kidnapping them.

Our town's records are inherently part of those searches.

If we're a community built on morals and ethics, and I hope that we are, then we cannot allow ourselves to take part in the work of this regime that entrenches itself further into our lives every day.

Taking those steps ensures that this regime loses a foothold of control over our lives here in Erie and that they can hurt fewer people.

I think you should do this simply because by keeping that surveillance system operational here, you comply with overlords who are actively harming and traumatizing human beings on a daily basis.

And if you comply with fascists on even a small scale, they know that they can continue to brutalize detractors and dissenters while you stand by and do nothing.

And when that happens, you'll be wondering why it's suddenly you or somebody you love being stuffed into an unmarked car, and then it's going to be too late.

So I'm asking you to be really brave right now.

I'm asking you to act with urgency, and I'm asking you to resist becoming a bystander to what's taking place when you have the power to act.

I hope you'll cancel those contracts.

I hope you'll remove those cameras, and I hope you'll urge your neighboring mayors and councils to do the same because it's the right thing to do at the right time.

Thank you.

Thanks for coming out tonight.

All right, and I'll just double check to see if anybody else would like to address this tonight.

All right, seeing none, uh, we will jump in uh to the first agenda item, which is item 25456 grants to communities, um, updated application and review criteria.

And I'll turn it over to uh Meredith Luz.

Good evening, American Council.

Uh I was here on July 15th.

You gave me some direction on the next steps for this project, so I am back with that.

Be quick this evening.

I think you everybody wants to go and talk to more exciting things than this tonight.

So this is our little agenda for tonight.

Like I said, it should be pretty short.

Um on July 15th.

Um, you uh we discussed this program, the history of it and where we were this year.

You asked for some changes to the process.

Um in your packet, you have uh mocked up application form what it would look like for 2026 applications.

It does include some changes to clarify some additional requirements, some that were in there before but weren't really clear in the um application.

So that's been in there.

You can look at that in your packet.

It also includes um direction you gave on the 15th to um maxim you institute some maximum grant amounts, so it would be 12,000 for service grants and five thousand dollars for event grants, although applicants can apply for up to two of those, and in that five thousand dollars, there can be more than one event, for example.

So there are kind of ways to work that through the system.

And then additionally, you asked for um changes to the uh review criteria specifically to relate that and align that with the preamble of the home world charter.

So the application um as proposed tonight would include these five bullet points.

This is language which directly from the home world charter.

Um we think uh Malcolm can discuss this further, but we think this language here says approved by the voters makes a lot of sense, and it would meet all of our current issues uh going on in the world.

Additionally, um, the application it clarifies in the application some of the issues that we were doing previously, but it wasn't clear in the application.

So we are looking at past performance, we're looking at impact of the community, the history event, and those types of things.

So that is the new application in a nutshell.

Um happy to take any questions you have.

So direction tonight would be great, so that we can get that application up when going by the first.

Okay, great.

And since we're in the study session format, um a little less formal, so I'm okay with anybody jumping in and I'll just make sure that everybody has a chance.

Um I have some concerns about reducing the events uh grants to five thousand dollars because we know that this year for pride and Erie Fest requested ten thousand dollars per main per event.

Council reduced it to 7500 per event, and then this would further reduce it to $5,000 per event.

Um just I think that we should keep it at $10,000 per event.

It just makes more sense to me.

Um, and then they if they don't need it, they don't request it.

Um I also kind of am thinking that if we put that max on there, it makes people or or CBOs feel like they have to ask for that amount.

Like, for example, with Biscuit Day, they historically asked for two thousand dollar um grants.

And I don't want them to feel like I have to ask for, I know we talked about this last time.

I have to ask for the max amount.

Um, so I guess it would be up to our wording and uh application to look at that.

Um I think what the two events they asked for 7500 each, and they got uh a little over 5,000.

I think 5,250 each.

Okay, so I think last year uh year before they were given 7500 each.

7500.

Yeah, the the previous two years they had gotten the full 7500.

Um, but last year uh since uh biscuit day um had asked for 4,000 and they were only funded 2000, they were some of the money came from the larger groups and were given to um biscuit day.

So yeah, so yeah, so okay.

I'm just thinking that keeping it at a higher level would allow us to be able to fund those cultural events that are really important to the community.

5,000 might be cutting them off the pennies.

Yeah, I agree with that sentiment.

I think capping the grants uh can have the unfortunate consequence of of hamstringing uh event coordinators.

Uh and given what they bring to old town, um, in terms of bringing uh creating community, uh even bringing business to old town.

Um I do know uh some things that are in old actually down in old town on the streets, uh like the farmers market or or have been a little slow this year.

I think the more we can do to encourage uh events, the uh at the parks in an old town, uh the better off will be in terms of generating community and props generating business.

Um and uh with capping it without regard to what they do bring to old town, I I think is is uh not good policy.

I agree with uh council member Baer and Councilmember Hoback, but I had one more thing.

Like are they required to submit any um documentation after the event uh like how they spend the money?

Yes, uh is it audited for it?

They're required to submit a report um by October 31st of the year that shows how they spent the money and um what the other information about how the event went.

Okay, for example, their event cost was only 3,500, but they got 5,000.

Would they return the 1500 back?

Or how does that accounting work?

I doubt we've ever had anybody not spend money we gave them.

But uh I'd have to go back and look at other applications.

It could happen, right?

So it could, yeah.

So how do we handle that?

Um if we don't handle it, it becomes like okay, I have 1500 left.

Let's buy candy and distribute our we put something in the application this year that says the money has to be spent on this event because I think we one thing we heard on the 15th was that sometimes they're like, well, now we want to spend it on something else.

So we want to clarify that it has to be spent on that.

And I think if they returned a financial report that said they didn't spend it all, that would probably go to the cut the um conversation the following year about how much to give them.

But they still get to keep the 1500 in this exam.

I'd have to check with how the um legal ability of us to claw back money.

I don't know.

Thank you.

All right, any other comments, questions?

Yeah, just looking at the you know what what we funded last year.

Um it was uh Erie Fest, which was 5250, um Erie Pride, which was 5250, um, and then other events.

The biscuit day was 4,000, um Color Wheel Project was 3,000, uh Erie Erie was 2,000.

Um so most of the uh single-day events were in the $5,000 range.

Um the Multis Theater put on a couple plays, they got $5,700, so they got the most for uh, but it was two plays, so it wasn't a single event.

Um so all the events were were in the five thousand dollar range that were funded um this year.

So right, and again that's because we reduced what we gave them.

Correct from 7500 to uh to 5250.

Council member O'Connor.

Uh so there the recipients of the grant are notified on January 30th, and they have until October 31st to spend the money because that's a reporting date.

What if their event is say like a turkey trot or something like that in November?

I had that same question.

This is this the dates that were set up prior to my getting here.

I'm not sure if there's been a reason for that.

So we can change that date.

We could, yeah.

Would you just kind of get we were trying to get reports so they would have that information for the next year's uh grant consideration?

That's what I was thinking.

Just the they just the cycle of the grants so I think it's more important that we give people an opportunity to spend, and it's not gonna be that much money.

You're talking about for budgeting purposes?

Well, we're instituting this reporting requirement, so they report at the end of the use of the funds, and because we're asked we're asking them to submit grant applications in September of this year, it'd be useful to have the information on what they did last year to evaluate their grant for the upcoming year.

So I get it.

Yeah, it creates this catch 22.

What do you do with someone who doesn't use their funding until the end of the year?

Could we could we just say 60 days after your event?

One to put a little bit of pressure to say, hey, if we're giving you money, we want this wrapped up and we know what's going on.

And then we really don't worry about ones that may be in November turkey trot.

We'll get it eventually, which could be used for the next cycle.

Yeah, that would make more sense because it gives a little bit of flexibility to them.

They don't have to have it in right away or by a particular day, but you know, there's definitely a timeline when we're expecting it back by that.

It's harder to track.

The nice thing about October 31st is I can send something out on October 1st and say this is two in 30 days, but we could come up with a process to track them.

I also I know um was it um biscuit days that I think a year ago, maybe I'm getting this wrong, but there was something that was we're trying to get reports and we didn't get them maybe.

So I that's why it sounds appealing, maybe coming from the business world.

If you've got a number of days after the event occurs, I'm just thinking at a minimum, there may be like churnable events that people are gonna do in Thanksgiving and Christmas time.

So you know, at least giving to the end of the calendar year gives a little bit of the flexibility.

It probably does make it easier for Sister Carmen and Neels on Wheels because they do spend it throughout the 12 months.

Yeah, and in their case, then it would be they're not done until the 12 months, so the 60 days wouldn't kick in.

Yeah.

Um, I'm not hearing any like gasps and a nut.

Okay, second that away for the moment here.

All right, any other comments on the direction we gave last time and what has come back to us.

Okay, then um I'll make a motion that we accept the changes as they've come back as directed at a last study session with the um one change to make reporting due 60 days after the conclusion of the event or events uh that the money is for.

Can we also change it back to 7500 or 10,000 so that we ensure that our cultural events are fully funded?

Well, let me let me see if we have a second for what I've done because we did give direction last time and then we can have further discussion.

I'll suck at that.

All right, so we have a motion and a second uh to accept it as is from our last study session and to change the reporting date now for their discussion.

Go ahead, councilman.

I think it's important to ensure that those cultural events are fully funded.

Um and and historically they have requested 7500 or been offered 10,000.

So I think that that's a reflection of the need in the community.

We we did lower it this year to 5250.

Thank you for that correction.

Um but I think that we should at least have the opportunity for the for them to request the full amount they need.

Um and I I think that's important because you know Martin Luther King Jr.

says that budgets or moral documents reflect our values in the community, and this is directly to the community.

So I think it's important that our council is supporting in the way that our community needs.

Yeah, particularly, I think, in addition to what council member bear said, um this is separate from what we are going to give you giving like chamber of commerce and others, right?

Correct.

I think a great parallel between some of the uh events that go on in the park, like by being better better neighbors and those that are presented by chamber of commerce with bands and with stage performances and with food trucks and with a lot of people.

Um but we give them you know five and tens of thousands of dollars for their events, so I would like to see these limits raised.

I I guess my concern is that um if we raise it, then there's less money.

We only have so much we have a budget, right?

Yeah, only have so much money to go around.

And if some events get more, some events will get less.

Right, and and also in prior years, sometimes we haven't used it all, and it hasn't really been an issue.

And I think we you know need to trust the application process and trust staff to make good decisions.

Yeah, I without hand stringing them.

Yeah, I I guess you know, we we had an example last year of biscuit day not being fully funded, and that was certainly a concern of mine.

Um, because it's one of our oldest and most cherished events, right?

Um, so that that was my concern about uh be my concern about going higher.

I guess I'm I don't understand because biscuit day is a cultural event that would be able to apply for the higher amount as well.

Correct, as long as there's enough funding to go down, yeah.

I don't believe they weren't funded because of a lack of funds, yeah.

Well it had to come out of somewhere they weren't funded uh because it was mentioned that they didn't have all the paperwork in when I asked the folks who uh that's a different issue, yeah.

But they did not not completing your application correctly, is not being not funded.

They did paperwork, yeah.

But that you know, it's it wouldn't happen.

Yeah, so so it's like we're getting in the weeds, yeah.

And I don't want to go back to each individual one if we can avoid that.

Um, I'll admit there's a little bit of art to what we're doing here, and um you know, we did have this conversation at the study session before, and so you know, we gave direction.

That's why I'm okay with what we have.

But I'm also okay once we get through one more cycle to relook at it and ask the question did the money go to um all the groups we wanted it to go to, and did we leave money on the table?

And then we can make adjustments for for next year if that's the case.

And knowing that um being better neighbors got just a little over 5,000 last year for two events, it's it's not a huge amount of money.

Um, from that perspective.

If it was they got 7500, you know, last year in the year, whatever, right?

Then I then I can see that any other comments before I call the vote.

Yeah, I do I just I think the purpose in in doing this was uh uh when we look back at the some of the prior funding from past years, there um there was a huge discrepancy between amounts that certain groups were getting and what others did, and we you know, we we want to get everything on on a level playing field.

So um certainly, yeah, I I get the point about the chamber, but that's coming out of different pot of money, and if we need to look at that for another um if if being better neighbors uh you know if there's other areas they get uh support from, we can certainly look at this.

Uh again, the intentions of this are are to help these groups and especially um the uh you know once the the with the focus of stuff that that directly relates to Erie, which being better neighbors does, but um uh I I think overall, yeah, we can we can look at that in the future if if you know we we want to add you know additional funding to this, we can uh certainly come back to it.

I don't understand why we're not looking at it right now, I guess.

It's because the as council member said there was 5200 that we're not changing it by that much from based on what was happening from the last year.

Okay, I'm gonna um I'd be called the vote because we did have this conversation, you know, a few weeks ago.

And if it fails, then we'll come back to a separate motion.

And I think just so clarity, I'll ask for a roll call vote so it's easier to um to hear.

Councilmember O'Connor.

Um I'm gonna pause for a second.

Councilmember O'Connor has been first on um all at the last two roll call votes.

And so procedurally, I think we should alternate that.

I don't know if he's just first because within a meeting.

From meaning the meeting, we've never alternated it.

Right, and that's why I'm asking um for that to happen.

I'd say best practice is the the um council vote is always random.

So that way, no one's waiting to hear what someone else does before they vote.

That's considered best practice.

Yeah, and what I'm pointing out is this would be the third um in a row to do it.

So if our town folk would randomly choose any one of the others um to insert some randomness, I would appreciate that.

Okay.

Councilmember Mortalaro.

Yes.

Councilmember Bear.

No, thanks.

Mayor Pro Tem Bell.

Yes.

Mayor Moore.

Yes.

Council Member O'Connor.

Yes.

Councilmember Pesceromelli.

No.

Councilmember Hoback.

No.

The motion passes.

Okay, thank you.

And um, I'm looking forward to who applies for grants.

We will move on to the main event tonight, um, which is our survey results.

So we'll have a little uh transition happen.

So much pressure.

Amazing.

I have gifts for you all if you needed them, but he was very prepared.

Just in case you needed note taking.

You all seem to have all of your notes.

But you know, just in case you needed more, I have more for you.

And in case you needed a new pen, all right.

Thank you.

Sorry about how we don't have the space.

And just for you, ergonomic.

Thank you.

Not for you either.

All right, Gabby, I'll turn it over to you to kind of set the stage.

Yes.

And then uh dip in.

Hello, everyone.

Um, Yami Ray, director of communications and community engagement, and we are here tonight to talk about survey results.

Um, I know it's what we've all been waiting for, so we're pretty excited about it.

We have uh Courtney Seavers here from Magellan Strategies, and she's gonna talk you through everything.

What we're hoping to do this evening is let her get through her entire presentation in one go um without questions and without interruption, if at all possible, which is why I handed y'all notebooks, and you're all very prepared.

So that was a kind of a visual representation of please write down what you're thinking, hold them, um, and we're gonna try to get through them all after the presentation.

We have plenty of time to do that.

Um Courtney has about 45 minutes for all 58 some of her slides.

She's good, she's practiced.

Um, and then we'll let you all have your questions and discussion.

If there's anything we cannot answer tonight, um staff that Patrick's sitting back there type in rapidly.

I'm gonna be typing things.

Um, we'll get you answers to anything we just don't have in the moment by your September 6th retreat.

So you'll have answers to anything that's too in-depth for us at the moment, or we might just not know.

Um, so keep track of what you're asking, and so will we.

Um, and just make sure I didn't have anything else to remind you about.

Because I made myself some notes, of course.

Um I think that's it.

So I'll pass it to Courtney and we'll get started.

All right, so let me set the timer for now, just kidding, for 45 minutes.

Um, thank you again for having me again, as Gabby mentioned.

I'm Courtney Stevers.

For those that don't know, I'm with a company called Magellan Strategies, we're a public opinion firm out of Broomfield, Colorado.

Um, as Gabby mentioned, I'm gonna go through this.

I feel like saying quickly because there's a lot to go through here.

Um, but I am gonna go through it relatively quickly, even though it's gonna be about 45 minutes.

Um so let's dive into it.

Again, the objectives of the survey for those um that are maybe listening online or public-wise.

Again, the objectives of the survey for those that are maybe listening online or public wise, the objectives of the survey were really to measure opinion on a bunch of topics funding sources for the Erie Police Department, housing and affordable housing programs that are within the town, transportation, traffic and roads, infrastructure, opinion on parks and recreational services, as well as opinion on the town sustainability program.

We also tested again those basic questions, benchmark questions that were at the beginning, just those overall, just kind of town of Erie approval, fiscal responsibility questions that we'll dive deeper into as well.

Um, again, methodology wise, we interviewed 3,854 residents within the town of Erie.

The interviews were conducted from July 14th to August 1st.

Um, just to kind of reiterate what we did, we sent out a postcard to 12,000 plus households inviting them to participate in the survey.

We also sent text messages to just over 19,000 cell phone numbers inviting them to participate in the survey, and you can see an example of that text message there on the left.

Um, the overall survey had a margin of error of 1.47% at the 95% confidence level.

Um, and then just so you know, these survey results are weighted to what um voter registration demographics are for the town of Erie right now.

Those are very, very similar, those demographics to just adult population for the town of Erie.

About 96, 97% of the town is actually registered to vote.

So it's very, very similar when you're looking at those demographics compared to the adult population.

Speaking of those demographics, um, so I know this is kind of little, I know you guys all also have it.

Um, this is a voter registration and past turnout demographics, and really why I wanted to include this is one to show you what those registration numbers were, um, but not only that to show you some previous um vote history so that if you decide to move forward with any sort of ballot measure, um, you kind of have an idea of what you expect turnout to be.

And so there's some big differences here, mainly among age group, and I just kind of want to touch on those so you can kind of understand what we are looking at, especially when you look at that 18 to 34 number.

Um, and I know we kind of touched on this at the first meeting that I was at, but just reiterate that 18 to 34 number, 26% of residents are registered to vote that are 18 to 34.

However, when it comes to voting, say in a 2026 election, a midterm election, we would compare that similar to 2022.

Um, so you can see that 26% number drops down to about 18% because they just don't turn out to vote as much in a midterm election.

Um, so I just want you to kind of have that in mind so that when you decide to move forward with any sort of ballot measure, if that be next year or just way down the road, you can have a better understanding of just that demographic of who's included in this survey as well as who would be included down the road when it comes to voting.

So just some over freezing all of a sudden.

Um, just some overall key findings to go through the whole entire survey, and I'll dive deeper into each one of these.

Um, but traffic growth and infrastructure are the top concerns really among residents in Erie.

Um, just because of traffic congestion, road condition, road conditions, over development, feeling that infrastructure is not keeping up with that development, um, was kind of some huge aspects that came throughout the survey in multiple different areas.

Um, followed by that is just some mixed sentiment on town direction.

Um, you can see throughout this survey that the town of Erie residents are pretty evenly split on a lot of these topics that we discussed throughout the survey.

Um, whether that be support opposed for sustainability, whether that be right direction, wrong track on just the town overall.

Um, residents in Erie are pretty evenly split.

And even when we dive into the why of like right direction, wrong track, you're gonna see some of those that are going both ways.

Um, and I'll point that out here in just a minute.

Um, but strong support for affordable housing.

Um, however, concerns remain with what that looks like and how that's funded.

Um, funding preferences vary by issue, whether it's the EPD expansion or parks and recommended these.

Um, there's some differences there that I'm gonna dive deeper into, and then broad support for sustainability and local investments within the town when it comes to recycling, water conservation, renewable energy.

So let's dive a little bit deeper into it.

Um, this was just kind of the icebreaker question that we asked our residents.

How familiar are you with the public services projects and programs provided for the town of Erie?

64% say that they're at least very or somewhat familiar, only 8% saying that they're not familiar at all.

Um, and then I do have this broken down on the right here by voter subgroup.

Um, and you can see gender age party.

Um, and then I did break it down since unaffiliated voters make up such a large portion of turn or of the demographic or of voter registration, I should say.

I did break down those unaffiliated voters by moderate conservative and liberal ideology off of their fiscal ideology.

Just so that you can kind of have an idea of that 50% and how they break down throughout the survey.

So each question will, or most of the questions will have that breakout as well.

And just to kind of give you a quick overview when looking at the three districts, there's not a lot of difference here among the three districts, except for when it comes to housing.

And I'll dive deeper into that as we get into the housing questions.

When it comes to issue preference, again, we just asked a verbatim.

Please describe the top two or three issues, priorities, problems that you think the town of Erie should address in the next two or three years.

These are listed in order of how they were mentioned.

One through 10, 136 is on this slide.

If you have time to read through these verbatims, I highly recommend that you do so.

Residents gave a lot of opinion, and actually went into very good description of what they're trying to say, which I felt like was I don't always get.

So I applaud the town of Erie for how in depth they went on some of these.

But really, some of these kind of go hand in hand and are touched, but and some of these are different.

But traffic congestion and road infrastructure, again, top issue that they prefer to be addressed, followed by rapid growth and overdevelopment.

Obviously, those kind of go hand in hand there together.

Water costs and availability of water was third.

Affordable and diverse housing was fourth, and some differences there, and we'll see that here shortly.

Need for more commercial and retail development.

A lot of people mentioned the need for local businesses, restaurant, especially a grocery store.

Public safety and emergency services being the sixth issue there listed.

And then seven, fracking in oil and gas development, just some environmental and health concerns tied with fracking of oil and gas.

Preservation of open space and environment, followed by recreation and community and community amenities, tongue twister, being eight and nine, followed by 10, which is bike and pedestrian safety.

So all of those kind of go hand in hand as well, ranting out the top 10 issues.

So let's dive even deeper.

Generally speaking, do you think town things in the town of Erie are headed in the right direction or wrong track?

39% believe things in the town of Erie are headed in the right direction, 27% wrong track, 34% are unsure.

That's common.

We typically see about a third of respondents that have that unsure percentage there.

We like to dive deeper into those who who those unsure voters are or residents are, and I'll go into that here just shortly.

But really, I just kind of want to point out not a ton of difference by subgroup.

You're gonna see on a couple of these questions a little bit of a gender gap here, where the men tend to lead up tend to lean a little bit more conservative compared to the women.

And so there is a little bit of a gender gap there, but really it comes down to the unsure.

Um, women have an eight-point difference there on unsure versus men.

Um, not a huge difference among 45 and 45 and older.

However, you can see a little bit of a difference there among that 18 to 34 age group.

Um, and then you'll see obviously a difference among ideology as we go through these questions.

Um, but 10 years really what kind of stood out on a lot of these questions and the differences and correlation of those that have been here less than five years versus those that have been those that have been here more than 20.

And you can kind of see that flip-flop between right direction and wrong track among those that have been in Erie less than five years versus those that have been in Erie more than 20.

So if you remember, oh, I lost.

There we go.

If you remember right, we asked a verbatim response of why do you think things are in headed in the right direction and off on the wrong track.

Among the 39% that believe it's headed in the right direction, and again, you're gonna see some contradictory between these two, these two sets of verbatim responses, but a lot of people in the right direction thought smart growth and development, um, community feel and that quality of life, parks, trails, and recreation, having those available, town leadership, and government and governance, um, and then economic and commercial development were all reasons really why Erie residents believe that Erie is headed in the right direction.

When it comes to the 27% that believe it's off on the wrong track, you're gonna see a little bit of the opposite here: uncontrolled growth and overdevelopment, traffic and road infrastructure problems, um, a lack of trust or dissatisfaction with town leadership, inadequate commercial development, and then again, fracking and environmental concerns pops up in this question as well.

Among that 34% of residents who said that they were unsure, we like to say that's the opportunity group.

Um, they're the ones that are not as invested or as educated in what the town is doing, um, and don't have opinion really if the town's going in that right direction or wrong track.

And so it's kind of important to dive into the who that is.

Um, typically you kind of assume that they haven't lived in Erie for very long or that they're a younger resident, um, but you can see really among those five age groups, there's not a lot of difference there.

They are younger, but only 27% of those residents that said they were unsure are 18 to 34, and really 17% of them are 65 and older.

Um, 41% of them have lived in Erie less than five years, um, and then 55% of them are unaffiliated.

But one thing that I thought was a little bit more interesting is one in five of them work from home here in Erie, and then another 18% were retired of that 34% that said they were unsure.

Um, some key takeaways of just who those unsure people are, they really value the small town character and preservation of Erie.

And so when it comes to kind of having an understanding of that 34%, um, a lot of it comes down to that small town character, smart and responsible growth.

Um, and they're not against growth or anti-develop, they're not anti-development.

They're just kind of fearful of losing that small town charm.

Um, and then a lot of that 34% believed that the majority of new development should bear more of the cost of infrastructure and services.

So let's go even deeper.

Um, do you approve or disapprove of the job the town of Erie is doing to provide public services, projects, and programs for town residents?

66% approve, 17% disapprove.

Um, and you can see that 66%, 52% somewhat approved.

So that intensity is not quite there where we'd like to see it.

Um, but 66% is a good number when you're looking at approval rating for just the town itself.

Um, and really by voter subgroup on this question specifically, um, there's not a lot of huge differences, just a little bit there among the different unaffiliated voters, um, but no huge differences when you look by voter or by resident subgroup down through these.

Do you think the town of Erie has the financial resources needed to provide an acceptable level of services?

55% believe yes, 18% believe no, and 27% are unsure when it comes to that and the resources available for the town.

Here you do see a little bit more of that gender gap, and again, looking at the men being a little bit more fiscally conservative versus the women, um, and seeing that 12-point spread there.

But again, nine points of that really is that unsure difference coming from that.

But really, other than that gender difference, um, there's no huge differences among subgroup there on the right.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

Town of Erie is fiscally responsible and spends taxpayer money wisely.

Again, we just want to ask this question just based on trust to get a feel and perception and opinion of what residents think when it comes to town of Erie.

And that way, knowing where you're at, whether you decide to do a ballot measure in the future or anything like that, you have good understanding of where residents are moving forward.

Um, and so 45% agree that the town of Erie is fiscally responsible.

29% say that they disagree with that statement, and just over a quarter unsure.

Um, but really what I want to point out is that intensity box there.

You can see only 8% strongly agree or strongly disagree.

Um, and there's a not as much intensity there when it comes to this question.

Um then this one, if you look at it on the right, not huge differences, um, really three to four points around, um, other than just Democrats being just over half saying that they agree with that statement.

Oh man, that's small for me to read.

Um then we did ask just kind of a priority question when it came to specific services, potential services, um, and essential services that could be happening in the future.

Um, with that in mind on a scale of one to five, where five means top priority, one means lowest priority.

How would you rate each of the following current or potential services or programs in terms of how much focus and effort the town should dedicate to them?

Um, and I do want to point this out.

I did rank these off of top priority because I do feel like that's a definite answer.

It says five top priority.

You can look at this question some different ways.

Um, you can look at it by five, just top priority.

You can also look it up by one lowest priority and ring it that way.

You can also sometimes kind of combine five and fours with one and two to get a feel of where that stands as well.

But for this purpose and for this question, I did rank it on top priority because I felt like that's really where the focus is driven, driven to for the town of Erie to look at.

So when you're just looking at five being top priority, it really comes down to the sustainability programs.

And I do want to mention that we had water conservation, solar and renewable energy, and waste diversion included in that actual response in question.

Expanding recreation services and expanding town of Erie parks located in neighborhoods were pretty much tied at that 25, 26%.

Affordable housing at 19%, town events at 16%.

However, you can see that bigger chunk of fours there for town events.

Potential new water park, 15%, arts and culture public places, 9%, and performing arts center, 8%.

Some differences there as you go down through there.

But there is a couple things I do want to point out.

When you are looking at lowest priority, you do have those three that are over 25% being affordable housing, the water park and the performing arts center.

So let's get into the Erie Police Department expansion question.

Again, we gave residents that kind of education piece to it of the police departments at full capacity.

The expansion is estimated to cost 38.6 million before interest and what the expansion would do and to meet the needs.

Knowing that information, how should the town basically pay, or how would you prefer the town of Erie pay or finance the Erie Police Department expansion between the property tax, which is at four mils, the sales tax, which I believe was yeah, 0.48%, or a COP with giving them the education behind that.

Knowing this information, would you prefer the town of Erie pay the how would you prefer the town of Erie to finance the Erie Police Department expansion?

40% said sales tax, 33% said certificate of participation, and 15% said property tax.

12% are unsure on this.

There's a couple things that I do want to point out on here.

So 40% obviously does not win a sales tax ballot measure.

One, um, those two are still fairly close at 40 and 33 percent, obviously, property tax is a definite third.

Um, I also want to point out that this isn't a ballot question.

Um, so I don't want anybody to think that it would or would not pass if a sales tax were to go to voters.

That's a different question for a different day.

Um, but this is really kind of um, I'll be honest, it shocked me.

I didn't expect these numbers, just kind of doing what I do, but um 40% sales tax, 33% um certificate of proper participation.

I can talk.

Um, but really the differences come in there on the right.

If you look at Republicans, um, 46% would prefer COP over a sales tax, um, where unaffiliate and Dems tend to lean more towards that sales tax.

Um, seniors and 45 to 64s are evenly tied, basically, statistically tied.

Not a huge difference among gender, which I was kind of surprised from considering some of the other gender gap kind of questions and responses that we've seen throughout the survey.

Um, and then I also want to point out the less than five years, 39% sales, 30% COP compared to the more than 20 years, 37% sales, 42% COP.

So there are some differences as you look through there.

Um, and then really the only ones that are over 20% on property tax are the Democrat side or that or those unaffiliates that believe that they're um or identify as liberal when it comes to fiscal issues.

Um, so a lot of stuff to kind of dig into here, um, as well as I'm not sure it really fully answers all your questions that you kind of were hoping to get out of this, but it does give you an idea of what the town would prefer moving forward and where that stands.

Um, when asked of many who live in Erie cherish that small town feel, being as descriptive as possible, how would you define a small town feel?

A lot of it came to that close-knit, friendly community, um, a slower pace and peace, peaceful atmosphere, um walkability was mentioned quite a bit when it came down to it and access to nature, um, historic charming downtown or town center, something that they can kind of character fill, move around, centralized downtown.

Um, and then limited growth and thoughtful development.

And I do want to point out that that doesn't mean no growth, that just means limited smart growth in their eyes of what that looks like to keep that small town charm.

So let's dive into some of the housing questions.

Um, opinion on housing density.

Again, we had this image that kind of gave a definition of what housing density looks like.

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement?

The town of Erie needs more housing diversity, meaning a better balance between condos, apartments, townhomes, smaller homes, single family homes, and custom built homes.

Again, do you agree or disagree with that housing density?

44% of residents agree with that statement that housing density is needed.

Just over half 51% disagree with the fact that, or with the belief that housing density is needed, and 5% are unsure.

Again, some differences there when you look at the intensity there.

21% saying strongly agree compared to 33% saying strongly disagree.

But you can see some differences as you go through here, especially by age and party when it comes through here, with seniors being a little bit more higher on the agree for housing density, as well as Democrats being a little bit higher or quite a bit higher at 60%.

One thing I do want to point out, and you're gonna see when we're looking at specifically these housing questions, like I mentioned there.

This was really the only place I saw some differences among the council districts with district one wanting a little bit more density compared to especially district three, and seeing that flip there.

So you can see that here in this question with 51% of district one agreeing with the need for more housing density, and it flip-flops there with district three, saying 57% disagree with that need for more housing.

How much of a problem is the availability of homeownership opportunities in the town of Erie?

Only 38% believe it's a problem, at least big or somewhat of a problem for homeownership opportunities.

Right at a quarter, believe it's not a problem at all.

Um, and then again, a lot of this falls in line with age, some correlation there among the age groups as well as party affiliation, as we would expect when it comes to homeownership there as well.

Um, and then you can see those differences there among tenure as well.

When looking at rental opportunities, not a big difference here either.

Um, 12 27% believe it's either a big or somewhat of a problem, 19% say no problem at all.

However, you do have that higher percent unsure at 36% on this question.

So they're just not as aware, maybe or what that looks like when it comes to rental opportunities.

And I do want to point out in all of your slides, I believe that were in the packet.

The bottom three, district one, district two, and district three were actually incorrect, and the one that got sent out, I fixed that today.

The one that's on the screen is correct, and we'll make sure that you have the updated version as we move forward, but just to point that out.

Um, again, we did define what the town of Erie looks at when looking at affordable housing for the survey.

It's important to understand again that the town of Erie defines affordable housing as housing that is financially manageable.

That is, they are not spending more than 30% of their income on housing.

And so, again, I just want to remind people that residents were informed of what affordable housing to the town of Erie looks like.

Um looking at these three different questions.

Again, these were three kinds of statements that we pulled directly from the housing needs assessment.

Knowing this, do you agree or disagree with each of these following statements?

I have these in order of agree.

Um, 73% agree with the statement talking about how it helps families stay stable.

Um, and these are all pretty high across the board and high across each subgroup with over 60% on the bottom two saying affordable housing promotes diversity and inclusive inclusive growth for residents, um, and then affordable housing helps make Erie's economy stronger by allowing more local workers to live in the community.

We did have this question on housing density and individual taxes.

Please read the following two statements.

Um statement A talking about the town of Erie needs to increase housing density by building more, by having more housing density available units, um, may create the tax revenue needed to cover the long-term costs of maintaining streets, water systems, and other infrastructure complaint compared to statement B, which the town of Erie should continue to focus on lower density housing, mainly single-family homes, even if it means higher individual taxes for that infrastructure need.

When it comes down to it, 49% believe of residents believe that you should continue with the lower housing density, and even if it gives the potential of higher individual taxes, 36% believe increasing housing density is their opinion to hopefully reduce those individual taxes, and then 15% are unsure when it comes to those two statements.

So again, you're seeing some of that split come in here among residents, and really there's no big differences there between gender and age group.

A lot of these differences again come from party as well as again, some of those differences between district one and district three.

No big difference there.

We're talking seven-ish points, but there is differences when you're looking at district one versus district three, and just how that how that looks across the board.

How familiar are you with the town of Erie's affordable housing program?

25% said that they were very or somewhat familiar with the program.

39% said that they were not familiar at all.

And you can see that broken out there on the right by the individual subgroups.

Not a lot of differences there on familiarity, especially just looking at very and somewhat familiar.

When looking more at the town of Erie affordable housing program and whether or not residents support or oppose that program, we we gave them some education of how it has a dedicated staff, that it's purchased land for affordable housing developments, received grant funding, and continues to try to diversify housing in Erie.

We also did tell them what they had a yearly budget of approximately 450,000.

Knowing that information, do you support or oppose town of Erie's affordable housing program?

54% support the program, 33% oppose.

And you can see that carry over in that intensity just a little bit.

25% strongly support, 18% strongly oppose.

But really, again, some differences here.

You're seeing that seven-point swing among gender, that's kind of been consistent.

Um, if there is that difference, um, as well as the three age groups, but really it comes down to party, um 74% of Democrats saying they support the program compared to 29% of Republicans.

Um, and then again, you have a little bit of difference there among tenure with 57% supporting the program of those that have been in the Erie less than five years, um, versus those that have been here 20 years saying 47% support.

Um, but again, this is the one difference here among the three districts with nearly 60% of district one saying they support the program compared to 47% in district three.

District two just seems to be right in the middle of the two across the board.

Um, when asked specifically about the Cheeseman Street residents and what those are, do you giving them that information of what those look like?

Um, the cheesement developments, 35 home ownership deed restricted homes for two for a two-person household with a household income of 144,000 or less.

Knowing that, do you believe the town of Erie should be more involved, about stay about the same or less involved in supporting affordable housing?

Um, this one is pretty evenly split across the board as well.

29% saying that the town should be more involved, 32% saying it should be less involved, and 33 right there in the middle saying it should stay about the same.

Um, and so it's pretty evenly split when you consider that the margin of error is about one point 1.5%.

Um, but really you you're gonna see some of those same characteristics when you look at age group party affiliation, um, as well as the three districts there.

Um, you just see really when it comes to involvement the difference there among tenure in the red, not necessarily the blue, um, where you see that red increase on less involved the longer that somebody has lived in the town of Erie.

Um, of the following funding options, would you support the town of Erie using or which of the following, excuse me, which of the following funding options would you support the town of Erie using to help pay for affordable housing projects?

Again, residents were allowed to select all that apply to their opinion.

Um, so these do add up to more than 100%.

But 64% of residents believe federal or state funding and grants are the way to go.

36% said development related fees on new homes.

20% believe it should come from the general fund, um, just under that, 19% believe in tax increase to support the affordable housing projects, and then 28%, just about three out of 10 do not feel like the town of Erie should be funding affordable housing projects.

Let's look at traffic and transportation questions.

Um, in the past 12 months, has traffic added more than 10 minutes to your regular commute or daily travel within or through the town of Erie.

53% said yes, 37% said no.

Um, of those 53 that said yes, 25% said yes frequently compared to 28% that said yes occasionally.

Um, and really there's no huge differences there, other than again by 10-year.

Um, you can see that 43% of those that have been in the town of Erie less than five years.

Really, they're evenly split between yes and no compared to those that have been in the town for more than 20 years with 60 really more than 11 years, with 63 and 64% saying yes across those two.

Opinion on traffic in the town of Erie, being as specific as possible, which intersections and at what time have you been most impacted by traffic in the past 12 months?

These are listed pretty much in order Arapaho Road, Highway 7, County Line Road, Erie Parkway, and then Sheridan Parkway and the 287 corridor.

Those are pretty much listed in order of how they were mentioned within the verbatim responses.

This also is kind of a heat graph of how many mentions for each of these intersections were also included.

So you can kind of have a good idea of what intersections specifically rather than just saying Arapahoe Road or any of those.

So this is a deep diverse deeper dive into what specific intersections people mentioned in that question.

When it comes to the following individuals, do you believe safety on the roads within the town of Erie has increased, stayed about the same or decreased in the past few years?

Again, this is ranked by increase.

E-bikes increased 23%, and really all these are really close, the top three, with drivers being just below that at 15% increase for safety.

Really, drivers are higher in that about the same, and then really all of them are right at that 40% mark with decrease across the board.

Are there any other issues with roads, intersections, traffic or safety that you would like to point out to the town of Erie?

Again, I totally recommend that you dive deeper into these verbatim responses and really understand what residents are saying when it comes to, especially some of these questions like this one, where they're more in depth than just kind of giving you the top themes that I've got listed here.

But speeding in neighborhoods and near schools, need for traffic and those calming and need for traffic calming measures, talking about traffic control features around about speed bumps, stop signs, better signal timing, mention of dangerous intersections, lack of sidewalks, crosswalks, or bike lanes, and then construction impacts and maintenance issues, and some just better confusion or better detours and signage for those detours to cause minimize delays, confusion, et cetera.

So let's jump into the parks and rec questions and other amenities.

From the following list of community amenities on a scale of one to five, with five being extremely important, important, and one being not important at all.

Please indicate how important the following amenities in the town of Erie are to you and your family.

Again, this is ranked off of extremely important.

Um you can see that if you add extremely important and fours together, it's still gonna be ranked the same when you're looking at these questions.

Um but again, you can look at this kind of multiple ways, as I mentioned before in the previous question.

But 32% believe it's extremely important for the town of Erie to have good parks located in neighborhoods, followed by community campus, um, similar to ECC or ECP, a second rec center at 16%, an outdoor pool only with no rec center at 14%, a water park at 13%, performing arts center at 8%, and the town of history museum at 4.

And then you can see as we go down through those that either the neutral kind of gets higher or the not important at all, also gets higher to balance those out.

When asked specifically about funding those parks and service parks services and amenities, um, the blue is related to the general fund, the yellow is for a tax increase, and then the red is for Erie should not fund at all, followed by that unsure being in green.

Um, and so you can see the highest there at 53% is again the town of Erie parks located in neighborhoods.

53% believe the general fund should fund that.

20%, about one in five say that they are willing to do for a tax increase, and then only 13% saying that Erie should not fund.

Um the town of Erie History Museum is statistically tied between the general fund and Erie should not fund, um, between that 36% and 34%.

The community campus is more kind of split, um, 35% saying the general fund, and then 24 and 24% being for the tax increase and Erie should not fund.

Um, outdoor pool again is statistically tied between the general fund and Erie should not fund, um, as well as the second recreation center.

Um, but however, five one in five saying that they would go for a more of a tax increase for the second recenter.

Um, the performing arts center does have that higher number among those for Erie should not fund, as well as the water park compared to the general fund or a tax increase.

Looking deeper into the sustainability questions that we asked.

The town of Erie is dedicated to water conservation efforts and sustainability efforts like survey saving energy offering rebates to residents and planning for the future to make the town more efficient and resilient.

Again, we told residents how much that program's yearly budget is of approximately 1.2 million.

And the town of Erie offers many programs of for sustainability among the following programs.

Do you believe the town of Erie should be more involved, stay about the same, or be less involved, and promoting each of the following sustainability areas?

Really, the top two here 58 and 60% are statistically tied there when it looks at more involved between increasing rebate offerings, including water wise landscape conservation, energy efficiency upgrades, and then followed with that continue to maintain and expand the Erie Recycling Center.

It does drop under 50 for those bottom three with support solar and renewable energy related policy and advocacy advocacy and support at the state level, and then support and expand electric vehicle infrastructure.

Those are slightly under 50% for more involved.

However, they are about three out of 10, a quarter of the residents saying that you should stay about the same.

Really, the only one that's got the higher less involved is that support and expand electric vehicle infrastructure at 27%.

Would you support or oppose a dedicated modest tax increase to fund the town of Erie sustainability program?

51% said that they would support a tax increase.

41% said that they would oppose.

However, when you look at intensity, strongly support is at 17% compared to strongly oppose at 25%.

So it is a little bit different there when you're looking deeper into the intensity of where people stand rather than being kind of more in the middle or not as intense when it looks to a tax increase for the sustainability program.

This one does have a little bit of again of that gender gap, roughly about seven points that we've seen throughout the survey.

Democrats, 76% saying that they would support those unaffiliates, again, that make up about 50% of what registration are split right down the middle, almost statistically tied.

But really, again, you can see some differences there among tenure, among those that have been in Erie less than five years versus those that have been here more than 20 years.

Did I do 45 minutes?

Dang close.

There's different ways to look at work situation as well.

And then I will open it up now to any questions that you all may have.

I'm wondering if we should go questions section by section.

Otherwise, we may be jumping around.

Sure.

So why don't we uh start and we'll just one person at a time in one round uh just to keep it moving, and then if we have more time later, then we can come back for a second round.

Um so let's jump right back up to the front of it, and start on the key findings um slide, which is slide five.

I'll start as everybody is trying to get back there.

Um it doesn't surprise me about the traffic growth infrastructure, um, just because campaigning, right?

That kept coming up, coming up.

Um, and it is along the lines of some of the feasibility studies that we're getting going for traffic, trying to figure that out.

Um, I think if there's anything in here that surprises me as a key finding, we have the strong support for affordable housing.

I think that though is basically saying, do you believe affordability is an issue?

What we don't have there is a key finding is that people don't want to tax themselves for it.

They they're okay if it's the federal or the state funding, if I understood it correctly.

Would you say that that's a key finding, or would you say no, that isn't a key?

Yeah, they I mean, I wouldn't really say that's a key, well, let me rephrase this.

Um, when it comes to if you look at the bottom funding preferences vary by issue, um, that does kind of jump into some of the well, I think I had maybe designed.

Um, there are just so many different ways of funding that's really popping up.

I wouldn't say like the town of Erie is wanting a sales tax, or the town of Erie feels the general fund should fund everything, or the town.

This survey definitely shows that it really depends on the topic.

It really depends on the issue, it really depends on the amount and that need.

And so whether it be the EPD, whether it be certain amenities through parks and rec, whether it be sustainability, um, where that was split on that tax increase, and we didn't say sales or property, that was just a tax increase.

Um, the survey, I think really showed that it's gonna come down to the specifics of what it is, what you're asking for, um, and what that looks like in terms of how it's funded and what they prefer.

All right, so when we get to the affordability section, I'll come back to this.

I feel like this question was do you like puppies?

Oh man, I love puppies.

On which you want to pay the vet bills and raising a puppy and all of that, it appears that the results came back and said, Well, not really.

I want somebody else to pay for that on affordable housing specifically.

Oh, for okay.

Well, that's what we spend in.

I would say it they like the way we're doing it now, which is to use state and federal grant funding.

The question of the the same or more question?

It's two to one, do the same or more, as opposed to don't do it or less.

All right.

And so we'll we'll come in there.

I'm just on the key findings, it seems to me that the least different than say the police station.

Well, they're very two very different things, very different things.

But I think that's why I was trying to go with that of the whether it be EPD, whether it be parks and rec, whether it be sustainability, whether it be housing, it comes down to the details because they're when it comes to housing, yes.

General, if you can get grants, that's how they want it funded.

One in five also said that they would support a tax increase.

So I think it comes down to just the details of what that looks like and what that money would go towards.

Because obviously, especially for housing, that's gonna play a huge factor of what that looks like.

Right.

Okay, other questions on slide five, just kind of the overall key findings.

Any key findings anybody thought should have been here weren't or vice versa.

Um I I guess with uh traffic and growth.

I mean, I guess I wasn't too surprised by this, but on one of those slides, the I I think it showed the breakdown of districts, and it seemed like district one and district three were the ones that seemed to really kin on the on the traffic issues.

Um slide that was, but um I guess that's not too surprising with some of the concerns yeah, I think you're talking about how much or has traffic impacted you in the last um by more than 10 minutes.

Yeah, so I guess that's later in the presentation, but um, and then I I guess as far as like the mixed sentiment about town direction, um I mean I guess this was the thing it I mean it seems like as a generality.

Um it's it seemed like uh what was it overall, yeah.

When you have right track and unsure is kind of the the two highest ones there, and and that's I I guess I look at that and I'm not sure like one on the unsure.

Is it like do and some of the other studies have you found is it just just people um maybe newer people or people that just aren't sure uh not as familiar with things going on, or what I don't know what leads to I think right track 40% of our respondents are here been here five years or less.

So yeah, okay, like yeah, yeah.

So there's a couple things here.

When you when you're asking about other studies, typically you would assume, right?

And I never want to assume because that would put me out of business, but um, I never want to do that.

Um, but if you assume you would assume the people that are gonna be unsure, the people that maybe are that haven't lived here very long, younger, not involved, maybe don't have kids involved in the community um aspects like that.

And so we always dive deeper into this unsure because here it kind of fell in line with that, right?

41% have lived here five years or less.

You have basically 49, just under half 44 and younger.

Um, however, we have seen in other communities, Broomfield specifically, that it actually was a little bit older.

Um, and some of their older demographic, um, as well as some of those that have been there for a long time that just weren't as active or unsure of what's going on within the city and county of Broomfield.

So I've seen it all different ways, which is why I never want to assume when it comes down to who those unsure are when you're looking at that right direction, wrong track question.

Because yes, you would assume that it's those that haven't been here for very long, but as you dive deeper, um, the 21% that work from home that are here that work in and from home in the town of Erie, um, that kind of surprises me with that being a one in five of those that work from home saying that they're unsure, or that the unsure one in five of those work from home.

Um, and so that kind of surprised me just because they're here on a day-to-day basis.

Um, but they may not be as getting out and driving around, they may not be seeing it as much.

So there's there's different things that tie to each of these subgroups, um, but we always kind of like to look where they are roughly about a third percent of respondents when we do a community survey like this.

We like to dive deeper into who they are.

Um, because as I mentioned up in the top here, it kind of leads for that opportunity to really educate and form residents and have an understanding of who those are that may not be as active in the community or as engaged in the community.

Okay.

I felt pretty good about that question because of the people that had an opinion.

60% think we're good on a good job.

Well, I do there we go.

There you go.

So um, sorry, go ahead.

Oh, sorry, just uh um, and again, I want to be careful about like maybe reading too much into things, but I I I noticed right track, wrong track with the districting numbers, seems like district one, district three, um, on wrong track were were the higher numbers.

Is it too much to correlate that with possibly that those were the two that had more of the issues with traffic?

Could the, I mean, I don't know.

I mean, you can draw all sorts of conclusions if you want to dive deeper and deeper into that.

Um, really, when it comes to wrong track, all of them are really statistically tied 26, 27, 28 percent when you're looking at wrong track.

So I don't think that there's really huge differences here when you're looking at the three districts um for right direction, wrong track.

Obviously, district two is just slightly higher on that right direction number than the others.

Um, but I don't I would not say 5% is a huge difference, even in a survey of 3,800 residents.

Um, and really those wrong track numbers, like I said, are all all almost within the margin of air.

And so uh really the differences come with those unsure and really understanding who those unsure are within those districts, with district one being just a little bit higher than district two and district three, they're in the middle.

Okay, and then last question just uh just for clarification on the um on the unsure, you know, you talked about unsurely to opportunity.

So they're on the where do you work?

It says work uh work for company outside of area was 61%.

Was that just for the people that voted unsure, or was that overall in the that's just for the ones that were unsure?

Okay, do we have more of those breakdowns available for the other yes?

They're in the in the crosstowns as well as at the end of the okay, okay, yep.

Yep.

Um I'll come to Emily here just a second.

On seven and eight, are those in priority order, or are they just uh which ones are 10 different items in the top two or three things for each of them?

You mean slides seven and eight?

Seven and eight, sorry.

Those are in order of mentions of mentions, correct?

So affordable housing mentioned, traffic mentioned within those um, because we asked them what the top two or three issues are.

So obviously you could have had somebody mention three issues, we could have had somebody mentioned one.

So um traffic came through the most as a mention, um, followed by rapid growth water, affordable housing, and so on.

Got it, but you got to go deeper because just because something like affordable housing is number four on here, dimensions like number three concerned over high density housing in certain areas.

That's not necessarily a vote that we need more affordable housing.

It may be a vote that says um I don't want more high-density.

Well, and I would say for house for housing as you read through those, and again, this is why I highly highly can't recommend enough to read and dive deeper into these verbatim responses so you can read them straight from the residents' mouth.

Um, but really there you can see throughout the survey that residents are very split when it comes to specific topics and issues within the town of Erie.

Um, you saw that on the density question, you saw that on sustainability, you saw that in some of the funding.

Um, and so it affordable and diverse housing, yes, it mentions where the top four, obviously, there.

That does mean that you could have some mentions saying that they want more high density housing.

That does mean that you could have mentions of say less housing diversity.

And so it just really comes down to some of those key things within affordable and diverse housing, um, fall into those top three there.

Um, but they are they are coming from both sides of the spectrum, not only on housing, um, really on rapid growth and development as well.

Um, if you read through those responses, you're gonna see a lot of that um as well as just retail and commercial development, what that means towards residents, um, whether that be a ton of retail development, whether that means little shopping stores, whether that means just a grocery store, really plays a factor.

And so that's why I really I can't again recommend enough to read through those because it means so different um between each resident and what that actually looks like when you're diving deeper into these.

Okay, so I'm gonna go back to um just T Baer.

Um, I think you started to a question.

Yeah, I did.

I I saw you know, the traffic and transportation is number one or road infrastructure.

Um, and then when we look at slide 38, um the intersection of Sheridan Parkway and Arapaho Road gets 20 mentions, and that is not a real intersection.

So I was curious about it.

Too.

Yeah.

So some of this is done by AI calculating those.

Um, and some of those are when they have um, which was the one that you said Sheridan and Arapaho.

And arapaho.

Um, most likely they said in the sentence Arapaho and Sheridan or intersections that Arapaho and Sheridan.

So there is some misconception in this.

Um, but what I really wanted to do by adding this graphic is to really kind of show what whether it be the intersection, which I realize that's what it's labeled as, um, and I can fix that or correct that, but really mentioning two specific roads is what really pops up through here.

Okay, so we would have to break that out into share how many times Sheridan is mentioned, how many times arapaho?

Yeah, we we could do that.

Um this was kind of one way to have to do that because these are literally not intersections.

Yeah, um, my only thing what I say by that, and what I mean by that is Sheridan, there's lots of intersections, obviously, along Sheridan, and there's mentions of Sheridan and such and such, Sarah, and such and such rapo and such and such, rapo and such and such.

So understanding that this if I can go up, this slide really narrows down which roads are more specifically discussed.

Um, and if I understand right, um it sounds like you all are doing stuff already to kind of be proactive on some of these roads in the town of Erie.

Um, but really looking at this slide and understanding these five, which some you have control over, some you don't, in part.

I understand that.

Um, however, obviously they were mentioned within these verbatim responses.

Um, and there's only so much that the town can do, but really understanding this slide and really understanding those five roads are where that traffic is really kind of playing an impact.

Um, and knowing that you're doing stuff as far as Patrick correct me if I'm wrong, knowing that you're doing stuff to try and alleviate that, um, is almost just as important as dive deeper into the next slide.

But yeah, yeah.

I just I would be curious to see if we broke it out and like actually counted just so we're where we this makes sense because the heat map doesn't maybe make sense.

So yeah, and these are in order.

These five are in order of mentions.

That does not mean though that Arapaho is more.

Arapahoe and highway seven could be literally one A and one B.

In that aspect could really be one A, one B, one Cother questions on seven and eight.

So um following council member Bear's uh comment about non-existent intersections, county line and highway seven does exist, but it's not used anymore.

Could that be could could part of the reason that was ranking pretty high is because residents think that that county line road may reopen to county to Colorado 7, and that there's a desire to make that connection somehow again.

I'll let Patrick take that one.

I'm not gonna do that.

First glance of like the raw data without and I think what I'll do is I made some notes about maybe some individual tracking.

And David Passick who's sitting in the room may be able to chime in.

When I first started to read the raw data, there was to me a red like frustration that it went away in the first place.

Um the comments that I was reading, and I didn't go like verbatim, but as we're looking at like follow-up items, a lot of it was like shouldn't have done it.

Why'd you do it?

Doesn't make sense.

This correlates to that frustration.

So I would say probably the first eight or nine where I saw county line in like a negative, it was this trigger point, triggered this frustration, and that's likely why through the AI it you'll see it.

Um so that's that's kind of the quick and dirty assessment that I had when I was kind of going through the raw data.

And we've heard that we know that that that decision triggered pain points elsewhere.

Okay, let's move on to the next section.

Uh the right direction, uh slide nine.

I think we did a little bit of that.

Any other questions, comments?

As we were looking at follow-up items, Mayor Pro Timbell, did you want us to do additional drill down as to why we were maybe seeing the mixed sentiment about it?

Because yeah, I don't know if yeah, like I I know scientific method, right?

Correlation doesn't equal causation, but it's sometimes good to maybe see those.

And I think I picked up that maybe looking into uh length of time in town, and then maybe a correlation or similar comments with traffic.

Yeah, okay.

All right, I mean this pipe graph to me is like third or third or third, basically.

So split.

Some like some don't, some are not shared.

All right, uh so maybe we go down the financial resource slide, which is 14.

When this interesting, I guess they're basically saying do we have enough money to do everything we need to do?

Right.

When we've got 13.

I'm sorry, did I okay?

Yeah, let's go back to 13.

Go ahead, uh Dan.

Um, I mean, I think it's a positive that two-thirds of the respondents that either well approve of the job we're doing with public services projects and programs.

It's pretty pretty clear-cut, I guess.

Yeah, pretty much a lot of time on that one, but it's nice to say it out loud.

Okay, then then 14 is the financial resources.

Interesting that slide 13 is saying, hey, you're doing a good job, and then slide 14 is saying at least a percentage, 10% ish or saying, but you don't have enough money, so that's good for resources.

I get I guess with both of those slides 13 and 14.

Um, I yeah, I agree.

I think I think it's good to see that there is um overwhelming confidence in what we're doing.

I I guess I it'd be good to know just the ones that said not, I don't know, the cross tabs or what data uh I just be curious to know like what are the things maybe that came up um uh for folks that didn't think we're doing a good job.

I don't want to like um I think it's always important to I will say when it comes to um wait, are you talking about 13?

Sorry, the 13 and 14, just in in areas where the I mean these seem to be the two slides where there's just overwhelming um support for what we're doing that's kind of cross-demographic, but um I at the same time I I never want to discount people that are you know, because it could be stuff that we're missing for sure, yeah.

Yeah, and uh as you dive deeper into those 17 percent that say disapprove.

I haven't done that, so I don't want to just throw out something that say I assume.

Um, but that is pretty common, about one in five percent that are gonna disapprove disapprove of a local government, a county, um, really any sort of government entity that really kind of is pretty common of 15 to like 23, 25 percent.

It's very common, unless you're in bigger trouble.

If it's bigger than that, we have other questions to ask.

These two slides together tell me town thinks residents think the town's doing the right thing.

Yeah, you also have the money to do it.

Don't come ask us for asking us for more.

Sorry, tell my kids.

Any questions on 15 is kind of balanced too when you look at um strongly agree or uh strongly disagree, right?

It's the same percent, it's not like there's you know, a big jump there.

On the next slide 16, um, it's interesting that you combined in the graphs above the top two strongly agree and somewhat agree or strongly disagree, somewhat disagree, but you did not combine uh top priority and the five and four to do the sorting.

So the the sorting looks odd here to me.

So that's a good question.

Um, and I'm glad that you asked.

If we have a strongly support, somewhat support or strongly oppose, somewhat opposed, they obviously still oppose it or support it.

Yeah, and so that's defined in the response between strongly and somewhat.

That's why I mentioned though that you can look at this multiple ways.

So if you look at the graphs, I have it here by top priority.

If you add in those fours, which doesn't mean it's a top priority, obviously it's not a top priority, or they would have said it's a five.

Um, but you can't have add in those fours and look at it that way of that's a higher priority compared to other things.

Um, but really the reason I did that is because it's more definitive.

Um, a five is a strong answer of just this is my top priority.

Yeah, when you're looking at a one through five type of ranking question versus a strongly somewhat comparison.

Um the other thing to mention as I go through as I talk about this, um, and I don't have included in the presentation because it kind of fell in line with this, is if you look in the top line document, which I'm 99% sure you have, um, the top line document.

Also, I included the average, the mean for each of these of a one through five means, so that you can have a better idea of just that average number of one through five and where that is as well, and those are pretty in line with what you're seeing through for the top priority here.

So there's multiple ways that you can look at it, but I never again I never want to assume where if somebody says strongly or somewhat support, that means they support it.

And so I never want to assume that a four means it's a higher priority compared to a top priority.

And so that's really where this comes in, but there's multiple different ways to look at it.

Um, and that's where I was trying to kind of point out that you can look at top priority fours and fives together, ones and twos together, or even just ones and looking at that lowest priority number.

Yeah, I think at some point you've got to start combining, otherwise you'd be making decisions off of sustainability got 34% only.

And it's like if you don't look beyond that, it's like, well, only uh 34% want sustainability, which means um 60 um six percent don't want sustainability, but that's not really true.

That's a different phrase you put it in.

It's a priority versus bond or not bond differently.

Yeah, right.

Well, then that's my point that yeah, if you've got I think you've got to combine probably the first two, um, because once you get to the third one, it's like, okay, well, I don't really have an opinion.

Is that right?

Am I looking at that right?

You can look at it that way.

Uh well, I I mean, I agree with council member that how you phrase that is different in what you're looking at.

So top priority being on the left in the dark blue.

Um, if you look at it, if you're combining dark blue and light blue, I would say it's a higher priority.

It's more of a high priority than those that if you combine, and I would say honestly, if you combine the dark blue and the light blue, you have to combine the light red and the dark red, um, so that you have that balance between fours and fives and ones and twos.

Um, but really I would say it does not mean that they don't want it, it's just not as high a priority as some other things.

One, um, and two, um, you can see that sustainability, even if you do combine those, the only thing that's higher is that expanding recreation services, and it's only by a point, I believe if I'm doing math correctly.

Um, but I totally agree with that.

So it's it's also important to look at the neutral because that doesn't mean that they don't want it, they just don't necessarily care about it when it comes to their priorities.

So if it's there, they may like it and enjoy it.

If it's not, they don't really care.

So it's it's it there's like I said, there's multiple ways that you can dive deep into these numbers, especially when you're ranking something one through five.

But that's also why we like to rank them one through five, is because it does give you different ways to look at it, ways to dive deeper into it, um, ways to really understand where people's where people's opinions are.

Um, because even looking at these, knowing that town events 31% are neutral, 33% are neutral on arts and culture, 30% performing arts center.

Um, those are the three that are over 30.

That does not mean that they don't want those, they're just not a higher priority when it comes to the other things.

So and I don't want to compare again.

I don't also want to compare these against each other because obviously when you dive deeper into it, when you dive into specific sustainability programs versus specific housing programs for specific parks and recreation, those priority levels are going to change, right?

When it's something specific to maybe meets them on a more personal basis versus not.

So again, these give you a good ranking of where the town feels and then priority to each resident.

Um, however, it's not a it's not a put budget money towards it.

It's not a I want this tomorrow.

It's uh this is my priority of where it stands.

By the retreat, I think I'd like to see this slide with the top two on one side and the top two on the bottom.

Uh you know, the basically the reds and the blues combined in some way.

Um, because we're trying to look at budget type things, that understanding of those that are generally for it in my top two choices, generally against it in my bottom two choices.

I think will give us um a better understanding.

So when I look at like that and see the blues together and the reds together, right?

And I I think it'll change the sorting somewhat, possibly.

I'd like to at least see that.

I think the key here for me is sustainability is rocking, right?

People really want to do that.

And and the 34% in just the number five says something, but what really says something to me is that only 16% in total have it as their lowest two, right?

So that is that is a powerful statement to be able to look at it through that lens.

Um town events, same thing.

When you look at it, it's um what is that 46, 52 percent.

You know, want the town events, or at least in their top two, and only um 17% are saying we don't we don't need that, we don't want it, whatever, right?

So um I think we're only looking at the the reds, the solid reds or the dark reds and the dark blues.

I think we're missing part of the story here.

I am surprised that the performing arts center is there's a much support there, and yet in the charrettes and and whatever led to where we're at with town center, that was a big deal, right?

Now, I obviously I wasn't part of that, so you know, unpacking that at some point when we're in the retreat may be helpful.

Why was it such a big deal in the town center charrettes?

But in the survey overall, it doesn't matter.

We reasoned it out with some how much money it takes and all that, right?

Yeah, maybe they're like called blue type for it.org what I'm willing to pay for and what I'm not.

Well, and I will sorry, just not to interrupt.

I will throw out the survey that we did for the town of Erie last fall, um, where we dive deeper into parks and rec amenities, included a bunch of questions on the performing arts center, including do you want it as well as do you want to pay for it?

I don't remember those numbers off the top of my head.

I'm not gonna try to pretend to remember those numbers off the top of my head, but I can resend that all to you if you don't have it.

But it is it was included in that previous survey.

Do you know if it was low in that?

Just without giving a direct I remember Don't worry, don't worry.

Um I remember I remember the want being like I'm throwing out I'm pretty sure it was in the 60s, but the willing to fund it was below 50 percent.

I would just say that we will be presenting some of that data next week at our on our both our performing arts feasibility study presentation and our pro stone update presentation.

Okay, well, anyway, I think this slide has a lot of good information in it and uh look forward to I think it was part of the education, right?

That where you're giving more information and they're ranking, you know, which is our top priority when you put it, you know, eight items together.

They're like, well, okay, now I'm kind of gotta choose uh, you know, in my mind, I gotta have a priority list, and this is how I would prioritize it.

Right.

So I think it can comes with the education of you know, if if you've got a lot of wants, what do you want most?

Yeah.

To remind me, um it was a scale of one to five, and you could answer five on everybody everyone or one on everyone.

Correct.

So somebody could have all of these as the top five choice.

And then the follow-up process by that retreat, what we'll do is sounds like we'll work to combine essentially the blues and the reds and leave the neutral make sure we have the survey results from Luke, which you'll also hear it sounds like in a week or two.

Debbie I had one question.

From the last survey, uh, how many uh responses did we get?

Well that up.

So nine hundred and something nine hundred and four out of uh 3900 uh sent out.

That is 2022.

That was 2020.

2023.

Okay.

So we we sent out 3900 questionnaires or surveys, and we got 904 back.

That was the yeah, 2020 in 2023.

So 23%.

Yeah, 23%.

And what was the percent on this one?

13.6.

Well, so I I did it off of 28.

That's probably right.

427 there was one number different, right?

It when they looked at districts, it it only came out 27 something, but all the other ones it was 2800.

So yeah, then is the 13% assuming one response from each household?

None and no, no, no, it's based on registered registered voters.

So it's not gonna be a precise yeah, yeah.

So we got three thousand eight hundred and fifty-four back out of 2800 426.

Did you not are you worried about any statistical um issues here?

No, I will explain kind of to dive deeper into that.

And you're comparing when you're talking about Polco in the 2023 survey, you really are comparing two different methods.

Um Polco only sends a select amount of surveys, they do a random sample, they select a certain amount of surveys, it's all paper.

Um, and so they send those out um and then hope to get 75 questions returned from the paper through the mail.

And just it's actually not all paper anymore.

They do have the online link, but that's if I remember right, that's not specific.

They can just take it online.

Um, and so the difference with that and this is the 12th out 12,000 something postcards that went out, each had a unique link to the household.

Um, so we were able to tell that somebody could somebody took it within that household.

Um, we weren't exactly able to tell exactly who, but we could tell between their gender most of the time age who it was.

Um, and so we were able to narrow down when we sent out the text messages a few days later, I believe it was almost a week later, maybe 10 days later, a week later, um, when we send that first round of text message, we were able to remove anybody that had already completed it, um, and then send out a unique link to their text message because that unique link tied to their cell phone was a unique link to the individual rather than the household.

And so we did have um some duplicates come in of people that tried to take it multiple times.

Um, but between the ID that we had on the household and being able to match that back with gender and age, not knowing exactly who it was, but being able to use the demographics of the survey as well as the ID of the household, we were able to narrow that down in between ID demographics and IP address, and knowing those IP addresses, we were able to get to remove those duplicates.

I was honestly pleasantly surprised that there weren't a ton of them.

There was about um I meant to look at that today.

212?

I thought it was just 112, but I could be off.

I'd have to look and get you that number.

I know it was like right at 200.

I'm thinking right at 200, right?

150 to 200, which considering out of 28,000 residents, that's really good.

So these are residents or voters.

So the postcard went to residents.

That was based off of the mailing list based on utility.

Your number is wrong, but if it is residents, not voters.

So you said 28 voters.

Right.

She's saying residents.

So we used roughly 30,000 residents, um, because we do have about three percent of our residents that are not registered to vote.

33% are not registered to work.

Okay.

So 30,000.

It's really 30,000.

So it's I don't know if that question is it it's about 12.8%.

Uh if you just use around 30,000 as our residence, adult resident population.

So the response would be even less than 13% if we assume 30%.

Just shy of 13%.

12 point, what'd you say?

2.8, yeah.

So along those lines to follow up on your what you said that if you saw a duplicate based on age and gender that you remove the survey, um, does that factor in for same-sex marriages that perhaps there's two women in a household or twins that are the same age?

So basically, if the I so in that sense, they could have taken it each from their cell phone, correct?

If they were if we had the cell phone number for each of them, they could have taken a cell phone and postcard.

Um, the only way it got removed as a dedupe is if they literally had the same ID for household, same cell phone number, or same ID for phone number across the board, it's cross the gender across age, all of those things.

That was a de-dupe that we removed.

And in my opinion, as a pollster, it's better to remove roughly those 200 that we can't confirm than it is to worry about, unfortunately.

One or two that may fall into that line that they may be exactly the same.

But most likely in this case, they had multiple opportunities to take it, whether it be through the text message, which had that individual link to their number, um, which we did have good coverage, 19,000 out of 30, I mean, is roughly two thirds.

So we did have that's actually very good coverage for a community with cell phone coverage.

And so um they had those opportunities to complete it.

Um, and we did have a few people reach out to communication staff that also we sent unique links to I don't maybe less than 10, I think, um, that we also sent those to.

But really, if they had a full line gender age IDs match, IDs match, then that we considered that a duplicate.

All right, I'm gonna keep us moving because we've got a lot uh to cover.

And I think the next section is the eerie police department, uh slide 17.

So I think this one surprised me a little bit.

Um I think it also opens a conversation about can we solve the funding of the public safety in the long term, right?

If we did go out to the voters and ask them for a specific sales tax for public safety that went into perpetuity, then when we hit 66,000 people in six years, is that right?

Eight years on whatever growth.

I mean, it's not too far in the future.

Will we have enough money to just take care of that without being in this dilemma that we're all sitting in here?

Obviously, we're not gonna solve that tonight, but um, I was surprised that this came out um uh this way.

Is this the only surprise, or we heard some more?

I say that again.

Is that the only surprise you had, or you had some other places?

Um with the uh with the police department, that was the my main takeaway.

What were your expectations?

Um, I in all honesty, I would have thought that um uh the COPs may have come up on top because there's no tax increase for that, but I think that it's a recognition that there is a trade-off for use in COPs, and that's the two and a half million dollars a year taken out of the general fund that can't be used for parks and all the other things that were on the survey.

This is also the question I got the most questions and complaints about.

It's confusing.

It was long, it was I didn't get any complaints on this one.

Yeah, I I think that means I think the biggest thing to point out here, and I just want to reiterate a couple things.

One, unfortunately, it had to be long with what you all were like.

Oh, you'd get from it, and so the education aspect piece unfortunately had to be that long, and that does limit people, it does create some of that confusion, and you're gonna have that.

Um, but it's obviously necessary as we discussed um previously.

Um, but two, one reason why again I included that demographic slide at the beginning is uh just a couple things here is one, this does not mean that somebody that does not mean that that 40% would vote for a sales tax when it came down to it.

This is not a ballot measure test question.

This is just a what do you prefer?

Um, and so it does not mean that you're starting out at 40%.

You might be close to that.

I again I don't want to assume when you're asking a specific ballot question and specific what that money would go towards.

Is there a sunset?

Is it strictly going to the police department or is it going to public safety?

There's so many factors that can play into that ballot measure when that time comes.

Um, but two, just because somebody says sales tax or even property tax doesn't mean that they'd vote for it.

That just means that you they prefer the town to move forward with a sales tax for that option.

But really the reason that I did include that demographic slide at the beginning is to give you an idea of if you do decide to move forward with any sort of ballot measure, remember that this is weighted to that younger demographic based off of registration numbers.

If you were to move forward in 2026, um you're gonna lean more towards those 22 numbers where that demo 18 to 34 demographic does come down.

Um if you move forward in 27, whatever that looks like down the road, those age groups are gonna change, and that plays a factor when you're looking into some of this on who supported the sales tax versus COPs versus property tax.

So understanding that younger demographic as well as understanding that senior demographic, because that senior percent, no matter if you go to midterm or an odd year, it's gonna come up compared to those registration numbers.

So I just want to point that out that and have an understanding of those demographics and why I included those in there.

And it's strictly to be honest, mainly for this question, but any sort of ballot measure question um that you may have moving forward, not only next year, but the years to come, so that you have some basis to kind of go off of.

Got it.

So does that mean that we should maybe look into education around COPs?

It's like I heard a lot of feedback too that this was confusing.

I got a lot of questions about COPs.

What does this mean?

Um, what's the difference between sales tax and a property tax?

Those kinds of things.

So perhaps we could use this as an opportunity for outreach.

Yeah, and I would say even looking bigger umbrella, right?

Looking outside of just EPD, having residents understand what that looks like and what that funding would go toward can never hurt.

Um having them understand the COP versus sales tax versus property tax never hurts.

Um it comes down to a COP, a lot of people aren't as familiar because they don't vote on it.

A lot of towns just kind of take that and run with it.

Um, and so they aren't familiar with it because they're not the ones actually making that decision typically on a day-to-day basis.

They all voted for you, you make that decision.

So they're not as familiar with it.

So I'm not surprised that that's where the questions were coming from in regards to COPs.

Um, and we try to make that obviously as clear as possible in here without fully going into the weeds of it all.

Um, but again, there's so much there's so much going on in one question um on how this would be funded or potential ways to fund it.

Um, and when it comes down to it, and not just speaking as a pollster, but you have to have an understanding of what that sales tax would look like, um, and if voters would still support it at the end of the day, knowing what that in-depth would look like and that opinion there when it comes to a specific ballot measure versus whether you decide to move forward with a tax increase or COP.

So, one of the another thing I would say, even though the question was really long and didn't include all the information that you have to consider, including what would be the trade-offs for uh delaying this action, how much would that cost?

Uh, we've estimated that it would cost several million dollars uh to delay because it would increase the costs associated with the construction.

So weighing that into the question, okay, um, makes it even longer.

Um, we discussed that there would be trade-offs associated with that.

Some people would say, Oh, it's too complicated, others would get bored and drop the whole survey.

Others would want to dive into it.

So I mean this is one piece of information for you to consider.

Right.

And then your assumption that construction costs, I think yesterday you told me for your staff told me they're going up 10 to 15 percent.

But inflation's only gone up 2.2%.

That seems is that true?

Um, we know that the city of Denver isn't gonna be doing too many capital projects.

Does that reduce demand, which then frees up construction crews and actually drops the costs?

I think we can't look at it just backwards.

We have to look at it forwards as well.

Yeah, I agree.

If I could if I can help there too, and if you don't want to provide in September 2nd, we're gonna have a study session on the police facility where we are with design, and we're gonna have some of that information as far as construction costs.

We'll have the architecture as well as the contractor who's looking at the plans and estimating cost and also about police workload and our needs as we're moving forward.

So I hope I would I had also hoped that this would answer all our questions, and they'd be like COPs, just do it.

Didn't happen.

Uh I think that's okay.

I still think we have a lot of support in the town for the police department and for expanding that.

I think they understand the need.

I think that 40% saying they will tax themselves is pretty amazing.

It surprised me too.

Um it's 55%.

Right, right, exactly.

So I think the understanding is there.

I think if they didn't want it, they probably answered unsure.

Uh just my assumption, but we don't want to assume.

But I think that meeting on the second will help the council see a maybe a better clearer picture of where we're at in terms of need design and what it looks like if we delay moving forward, and we can answer those questions maybe on September 2nd.

So one thing um another question I think we need to address here because property tax came out the lowest.

But one of the things we're possibly talking about doing because we have this period and it's coming up because we if we do this, we have to do it in 2026, where the uh our our current general obligation bonds, we have the portion that's allocated to uh the rec center, uh, there's a chance that that difference between what we're paying there and what we're just paying on interest right now on the police station, that there may be a chance to at no tax increase to anybody, but we could have a uh uh ballot issue to ask residents to continue that.

So it's not a tax increase, but I I don't know the way that people looked at that if they were looking at property tax.

Do you want a property tax increase?

That's probably not a popular thing right now.

But uh I guess my question is as far as education on that, if we are to pursue that based on these results, what uh what generally is the recommendation of yeah, so that's a good question.

Um that's a very good question.

Um right now, anything that we're seeing, sales tax has about a 10-point higher support versus a property tax.

Um, mainly due to the fact of just property tax increases over the last few years.

Um people feel that they have a little bit more control over their spending, where obviously they have no control over their property tax rates and that control feel of it.

Um, and so sales taxes do have typically um have about a 10% higher support level versus a property tax.

Um when you're talking about potential um funding where you don't have to increase taxes, it would be like a reallocation or a bond where that those taxes are you don't have to increase taxes.

Any time you can start a ballot measure with without increasing taxes or without increasing any blah blah blah um to fund the Erie Police Department, you're gonna have a much higher level of support.

Um people understand that that's a can usually a continuation of a tax, um, but you're not you're not gouging them at that time.

And so they're more supportive.

I would have to say without increasing taxes, it's gonna be here.

Sales tax is probably gonna be here, and property tax is gonna be probably gonna be here.

Um, if you're looking at a level on that sense, COPs is obviously somewhere there in the middle, um, probably more towards the top.

But um, I was also surprised by this question um because I've done a lot of sales first property tax, but I've not done a lot of anything where we've included a COP option.

Um so I was kind of surprised.

I expected again, COPs to be a little bit higher compared to the overall numbers, just based on the fact that it's not a tax increase.

Um, but when it comes down to it, if you have the opportunity to do something like that versus an actual tax increase, your support is gonna be much higher.

Um, but when it when it comes down to it, and I can't state this enough again, this isn't a ballot test, and I don't want to make any assumptions off of any sort of ballot measure.

So whether you ask for a sales tax of what was it, 48, 48 or 0.48 percent and onto 0.48%.

Um if you ask for that versus if you ask for like what you're talking about where you don't have to increase taxes, I'm not gonna say where I think numbers would be based on that.

I would highly recommend asking voters um and really getting their opinion on that and doing maybe a police department survey, to be honest.

Um, because the details of what those questions would look like are gonna play a huge factor, but then you can also educate on some of the pros and cons, like you mentioned of if you don't go with COP, you're losing out on funding.

If you do go with the sales tax, then you have more funding potentially in some of those options.

So you can explain and go more into details strictly about the police department so um for something like that.

But I just know with that one, we've got a short runway because if we don't do that in 26, then that goes away.

Well, if you don't ask that ballot question in 26, is that what if if we don't if we don't have that on and doesn't pass in 26, the the money that's accumulated for the rec center could not be freed up to to you know help pay for the police station.

So that's why I was focusing attention on that.

So if we do go down that route, I think we need the that probably needs to get prioritized.

But the other thing I just say as far as a sales tax, and this is uh uh uh I guess I was saying Chief LeVay asked you, I I think about like with Broomfield with like the density that they're having um east of Sheridan.

I I'm sure that's like causing some additional burdens on our department and things, and so uh another thing to think about, and I I mean, I'm not so tied down, like could be a combination of things, could be a number of things, but uh the one thing I was saying when uh you and I were talking about about sales tax that something in in perpetuity um to help you know, so we have a dedicated fund to to help with our police force going forward, and I just think as especially with all that density happening in Broomfield, um, you know, uh hopefully we will see you know them shopping at King Supers, you know, having people outside of Erie contribute to that, you know, to where the burdens not just on us, because you know the I know the police it's a community.

Uh Boulder County helps us out, especially with dispatch and things like that.

We help other surrounding communities, so having those people pay into it rather than just having the burden just on Erie residents or all kind of helping each other on the state.

If you're asking me if I support a public safety tax, absolutely several communities have Frederick Longmont, they have them, and I think I think that would be um very helpful, obviously, to public safety in Erie.

But one thing I hate is the idea of delaying the facility because that's what I'd ask.

Like we're gonna we're gonna talk about the police facility where we're at on September 2nd.

And you guys have some difficult decisions to make.

I know that.

Um this will come down to do we try to do something that solves the long-term problem?

Sure.

Even if it causes us short-term pain, sure.

Or do we solve the short-term pain and maybe give up the ability to solve it for the long term?

And I would say to do both.

I you know, I don't know, and that's where I'm looking to Malcolm and staff to help us.

I didn't follow his question.

Like what was the question?

I didn't get to up with sorry, on on the with respect to the tax.

Yeah.

So uh yeah, basically what I was saying is is that um yeah, our the our police service, the the police departments around us, we're all part of a community that we all help each other out currently the way we're we're set up, and uh again, going with COPs or property taxes, that's Erie residents in Erie, you know, just paying to solve this problem.

A uh sales tax, or I'm sorry, what is it the the safety tax safety tax public safety tax um gathers people's anybody shopping in Erie is gonna is gonna pay that tax of people from Broomfield?

There's all this uh these departments going up east of Sheridan and things like that.

That that causes an additional burden on our police department.

We can we we can spread the the the rather than just having Erie residence burden with our police department having to you know uh you know expand out in these areas, the the residents of Broomfield can help us out in that by doing what they already do, shop in Erie, and and it sort of spreads the the uh the amount of money we can raise, we're gonna generate more money because typically those those people are going to shop in Erie.

Uh you know, we should see uh sales tax increases due to that increased density, and and that helps us.

That's basically the additional revenue.

And the only caveat and you have others help us pay it through sales tax.

And the only caveat I would say there's CLPs are paid out of the general fund, which are made up mostly of sales tax.

But that's true, yeah.

Yeah, and so as people in Broomfield, I mean yes, a public safety tax.

If you want to designate a specific sales tax to go straight to public safety, which some communities have done, yeah, we paid by by Broomfield, but the COPs will be paid also from sales tax.

And so as more people shop in the area and those places grow and our revenues go because of grow up because of our sales tax, they will also pay for the CPUs.

It's not just Erie residents paying COPs.

I don't know.

Yeah, yeah.

Sorry, it's also sales tax property tax will be in there.

Absolutely.

Um impact fee or building permitted fee, all that kind of stuff is done as well.

Right.

I'm gonna keep us moving.

Any other last closing thoughts on the police slide before we go to the small town feel?

One last thing.

One last thing I'd like.

Does the 60% mean they are opposing sales tax?

No, right?

60% tax support.

No.

I don't think you can draw that conclusion.

I think um the 33% that say uh COP that doesn't mean that they wouldn't would or would not vote for a sales tax, as well as to be honest, just because they would vote for a property tax also does not mean that they would vote for a sales tax.

There is some differences there that we've seen um as we've tested a lot this year of sales versus property.

And so um there is some differences there.

Most people that would vote for a sales tax would vote for a property tax.

Um it's not always the same if they vote for property tax and sales tax.

So um, but that 33% that say COP, that's just what they prefer.

That does not mean that they would not vote for so it doesn't mean that the 60% that didn't say sales tax are against a sales tax.

All right, let's move on to the small town feel.

Um we're a little after 8 p.m.

tonight, and um I would like to see if we can get close to 9 p.m.

If we can't, we'll keep going.

But um so if I'm picking up the pace solitation, it's not because I don't want to talk about this.

I just want to see if we can we'll hold quite a bit of space on the sixth.

We have yeah, we have budgets that that question is gonna hinge on.

So there'll be space um for sure for additional dialogue numbers.

All right, let's go to 21.

Or I guess 22.

So this is interesting to me.

I mean, what jumps out at all of you.

Well, it's kind of 50-50.

Um I'm not sure.

Yeah, I'm not sure how to how to interpret honestly.

It's 5050, and and uh you can read it any way you want, roughly, I think.

Um people live in the cynical family homes.

That's what we have around here.

Um without saying here's where it's gonna be or how much.

Uh I'm not sure.

Yeah, I don't so I don't look at it as 50-50 as much as I look at it as strongly agree is 21% and strongly disagree is 33%.

And so I forgot the term you use, but there's like this strength on um the disagreement side, which the disagreement side, if I understand this right, is that people aren't really looking for more housing diversity in condos and higher density, they're looking for preserving our small town feel and continuing on the path that we've been on for years.

Um, I know that's not um probably reasonable.

I think we're gonna have more housing diversity.

Um, but clearly, am I am I interpreting that correctly?

Um or if I'm not, man, clear it up for me.

I would say that the 51% don't necessarily think you should keep the lower density, they just don't think that there's a need for as the amount of high density.

Maybe stay the same and maybe not as much development in general at all.

Strongly believe that what you had a term for that, um strongly disagree.

Um yeah, I I always like to look at those as strongly agree and strongly disagree because that's just that higher intensity feel.

I'm not sure what I said, um, higher intensity feel of where the somewhat agree and somewhat disagree, that's kind of your middle um could really possibly change on any given day.

So I always like to look more at that intensity um to really get a better understanding of where people stand, even though those overall numbers are um what they are.

I think it just gives you a little bit more to the story to dive deeper into that intensity levels.

So you are conveniently ignoring somewhat agree and some more disagree, there was no need to put it.

Sorry, say that again.

For some of the ones, we are conveniently ignoring the somewhat agree and submort disagree and saying the intensities on the other ones, then they should not even be on the survey, right?

Well, I wouldn't say that we're ignoring them.

I wouldn't say that we're ignoring them.

Um, I would say that there's just a different intensity level of how much they agree.

That at this given point, at this given point of when they took the survey um compared to other respondents and compared to the town of Erie and what respondents said within the town of Erie, um, that intensity gives you just a different way of looking at it.

I wouldn't say they I would never say you're ignoring the somewhat agree or ignoring somewhat disagree.

Because when it comes down to it, those somewhat agrees and somewhat disagrees still have an opinion.

Um, and they still that's that opinion still plays a factor into where this lies overall um and looking at those numbers.

And so this question, um, the other diversity question where we have this two statements, um, as well as some of the other topics and some of those questions that we had in the survey really show how split eerie is when you're looking at some of these topics.

Um yes, it's not statistically a tie, but they are that's pretty darn close 44%, 51%.

And so understanding that it's a tie, but really understanding some of that intensity level allows you to dive deeper into is that tie remain among that intensity level, or where do people stand?

This is the one question that when it came back and I saw these results that it made me question whether we did the right thing in the comp plan last year, and we increased densities by 50%.

Right.

And so at a minimum, it's I don't see that the answer to this question supports that density increase.

Now, I wouldn't say go and change the comp plan based on this one question, but I think it at least asked the question, did we get it right?

And should that be reloaded at?

Once again, we're not making any decisions here tonight.

It's just the way I'm processing right now.

I think another thing that I heard you say was that density, higher density affects small town feel, and that people don't want higher density because they want smaller small town feel, and that's a biased narrative if if we're looking at it.

Um that what people want in a small town feel is the close net friendly community and smart growth.

Um I think it's incumbent upon a town to have smart growth when you're talking about higher density, and that's been Erie's commitment.

So but is smart growth higher density?

Is that what you are you equating smart growth to higher density?

It absolutely can be smart growth in and higher density, yes, from the walkable communities that we went to, that's higher density, and it's smart growth.

Like we put um you know, commercial near homes that can, you know, they can walk to commercial, they can walk to schools, they can walk to um centers where and so they don't have to jump in a car, they can hop on a bike.

Um, and then that brings down traffic.

And so what what I'm noticing though is that when we're framing this, we're talking about um the argument for for lower density is that it would what you just said was that it would maintain a small town feel, and that's not entirely true.

People want connection to their community, and to say that they couldn't have connection um to their community if they live in an apartment complex or there's an apartment complex in the community is not is not accurate.

So if I came off as a binary there, that's not what I'm flying.

But I would take it a step further to say if we built townhomes on linear park, which would give you exactly what you articulated, walkability, easy access to uh the restaurants and shops and everything, would we get support for that or would we not?

And so when I look at this question, it would be interesting in old town to break this out to see you know how they answered this particular question.

Well, I mean uh it's just kind of a strange example because you're talking about taking away open space for a park for it.

Um creating uh more uh density so that we have more options, and ultimately uh when you have more options, right?

The whole affordable affordable housing conversation, does that help us or hurt us?

And do people want that?

Yeah, and I think it's more um, you know, like north north uh westerly, right?

It has a mix of commercial uh higher density and and lower density, um, and to give that community feel versus a Thompson's thrift that was going to be put on 11 in Arapaho with you know close to 400 units at 20, 20 units per acre northwesterly, you have areas where you're in 15 units per acre, but when you spread it along the community, it's only six units per acre, right?

So it gives a completely different feel, right?

That that's a small town community feel that you're talking about.

And I think what people are are saying is we don't want the Thompson's thrift.

you know close to 400 units at 20 20 units per acre northwesterly you have areas where you're in 15 units per acre but when you spread it along the community it's only six units per acre right so it gives a completely different feel right that that's a small town community feel that you're talking about and I think what people are are saying is we don't want the Thompson's thrift um you know we we don't want high density in a small area we we want it mixed in to where um it it you know it's a community type thing and not a infrastructure um concern right I I think that's kind of what we're getting all through the survey um in that we're concerned about high density in certain locations where the infrastructure can't handle it and where it would not create us it would hurt our small town feel versus a bigger development where you can mix that in and I I think that's the difference it's kind of how I see also saying they don't want the big developments they don't want suburban sprawl they want it to be walkable they want to be able to get to town center they don't want traffic and building out like we have been is going to create a lot of traffic and also one more thing we got uh to hear from one of the experts who came in he said your infrastructure is better used if you have everything around and not like spread across or on the infrastructure so having like a little more density in the smaller idea achieve this walkability closeness community plus also better use of the infrastructure like drains water if you're pulling everything from here to the end of the town just to increase this or spread it out we are not efficiently using the yeah I think you say I I think you have to be careful um the the feel like the three communities that we walked in with with Sarah um and and Josh you didn't get a feel of overwhelming apartments even though there were a lot of apartments where if you put um an apartment complex on a smaller lot you're going to get that urban feel instead of a small town feel is what all I'm saying.

I I agree yeah walkability um is key for that smart growth and that planning and yes maybe so I I want to go just at a higher level here so this is one that and I think the police station funding we started to see a little bit this but I think this is the biggest thing where the the demographic breakdown uh based on party affiliation um and uh a little bit with with age demographics um you you start to see um the the the differences there so we're you know in these ones where we saw the the we're we're and we'll get to a few later but where we see the the big disparities between Democrat and Republican I was kind of looking at unaffiliated to kind of be the moderation on this um uh and then when you look at the at the breakdown for unaffiliated again you're seeing this this kind of disparity um and I I think a little bit of that might have uh spilled over into what the the districts were because this is one that surprised me a little bit because of Thompson thrift I was surprised to see um uh district one uh as is the highest for for strongly agree um certainly in in um uh but you know I I imagine you know if you could break it down within areas within district one if we were to look at a rap o ridge I bet the numbers would maybe be more similar to district two or district three that's speculative that's not based on anything in here but um I I do think that that um it it it does matter where you put things and you talk about like northwesterly that's that's an area that says before I got on council that's been deemed high density um the one other area that that um mayor you're probably more familiar with because you know this is way before any of us but the um you know when I say golden run I'm sure that that uh sets up red flags with people in the community but it but again where you have uh high density next to an existing neighborhood I just anecdotally from when I talk to residents those are things that that um you know uh draw a lot of concerns now uh I I was on the board when we uh approved two sets of apartment complexes that were the first apartment complexes that we put in Erie I think it was over 15 years so um between the overlook apartments and the apartments across from the high school and um I I think that with both

I just anecdotally from when I talk to residents, those are things that that um you know uh draw a lot of concerns.

Now I I was on the board when we uh approved two sets of apartment complexes that were the first apartment complexes that we put in Erie.

I think it was over 15 years.

So um between the overlook apartments and the apartments across from the high school, and um I I think that with both of those um uh there was a lot of concern with stress in both of those areas.

I'm sure you guys saw that with um I I think the uh you know just driving in here today.

I I came down Rapho um uh you know, by nine mile there, and you're driving down there between four or five o'clock.

It's terrible.

So I mean it's it's awful.

There's there's a huge problem there, and everybody knows it, and that's also reflected in the survey.

So we do have to be cognizant of where we put things now.

Uh I I think uh, you know, uh uh council member Morrow, do you to your point that yeah, with northwesterly, there's a lot of thought and planning that you know went into that.

It's next to Erie Parkway, so it's it's next to areas where um you can you know there could be bus routes and things like that.

So uh I I think you know, I I don't want to get into what uh to me, small town feel means a different thing to to anybody you ask.

There's no I I don't think there is no textbook definition of what small town feel is.

There's there's some people um uh I mean we get people here all the time that they they'll they'll buy a house.

Uh uh this this happened in our neighborhood where we're uh uh there was a bunch of people that that uh bought in the the uh north uh sorry, the south eastern part of Erie Highlands, and they thought they were in open space, and nope, there's another planned community that's there that has entitlements on that.

And um so understanding that being uh uh transparent with the public on on where things are going.

And I I think we do like the the one thing, and I I'm I'm a fan of mixed use, but I think we need to be very clear with the public when we talk about what mixed use is because it can kind of be nebulous and um people aren't sure what's going in there, and if if we have you know four-story high rises, um I I mean I look uh just to give an example, and and this is where neighbors in Broomfield, but um the the like I say, everything that's happening south of seven and east of Sheridan in Broomfield, I don't think that's what people want to see in Erie.

We can talk about densities and things like that, but I I think that's what gets people worked out.

And the next uh the second highest or the one of the highest intersections that we saw was shared in in highway seven, and that's only gonna get worse with what's going on there.

So I'm gonna you say small downfield means different things to everybody.

I don't disagree.

Our residents have told us what they think.

I think we have we have to take this at face value or else we just throw the survey away.

Yeah, I agree that there's at least a slide in there for the um and as far as where they go uh yeah, I think you know, we also have to dispel misconceptions.

Um I've been at nine mile at rush hour.

I've been across from the high school at rush hour many times.

Most of that traffic's not coming in out of the parking lot.

It's coming through and by so the traffic problems are not originating with these medium or high density locations.

I think you have to dispel that no.

But it I agree, but there's more people living there and and people are in, I mean, I don't see anybody getting rid of their cars.

I mean, there's there's people that are, but but this idea that you know we're all gonna ride bikes and drive the butt and ride the bus.

I mean, RTD, I you you I know you're at the numbers on what is ridership now, 40 or 60 uh riders uh uh a day.

Yeah, and you look at New York City, which has the most utilized public transportation system, and they it's the highest subsidized, and and you know, there you know it it's you know how much money are you gonna throw at this, but we are on slide 22.

I'd like to get through slide 23 and 24, and then we'll take a short break.

Can I point out one thing?

So just kind of going with everybody's conversation.

We did ask neighborhood within the survey.

There's so many neighborhoods that it's hard to put them all in the cross tab.

So if there's specific neighborhoods that you'd like included, as long as we have enough responses to look at, I'm more than happy to add those specific neighborhoods into the crosstabs so you can take a deeper dive into those specific locations.

Um, and a good handful of them, I was just looking at a good handful of them, probably 15 ish-ish, um, have more than about 75 or plus um respondents within each neighborhood.

So there's with the nice thing with having that many interviews is you can dive down deeper into some of those neighborhoods.

So when we're talking about neighborhoods, I can add those in and get those to Patrick and Gabby, yeah.

Down the road, it's just trying to narrow down which ones are most important.

All right, let's move on to slide 23.

How much of a problem is home ownership?

I was I was um found it kind of surprising that um you highlighted the big and somewhat when actually the not much of a problem and uh not a problem at all is the bigger one.

So why did you choose to put the smaller one up there as the highlight?

I mean, with the headline read that there's really not a problem with homeownership opportunities in the down area.

You could say that it's all how you look at it.

Um it's just preference of we typically lend tend to lean to the um to what just a big problem, somewhat of a problem because you're asking how much of a problem it is.

Is it a problem or not?

These are the things that we might need to address.

So we typically look at that um rather than those that think it's not a problem at all because it's not a problem at all, and it's not as big of an issue to those respondents.

Right.

And so anyway, with us trying to make a decision.

I mean, what this tells me is that um if you add up the not much of a problem and not a problem at all, you're at um 47%, which is significantly different than those that think it is a big or somewhat uh big problem at 38%.

I think you could say that about the next few slides, right?

I don't have my um housing needs assessment notes.

Unbelievably, I don't have that notebook here.

I have three notebooks with me.

Um but I know I remember it's like 80% home ownership in the town of Erie, and so 80% of us own our home, we're not gonna say it's a problem, or that I there's a problem with rental.

This is why I thought these questions were kind of maybe hard to utilize because we own our homes and we're not trying to rent or buy in the town of Erie.

I I think it plays a factor in the fact of you're asking about home housing density, right?

Um, and so yes, knowing that eight 88% of people own a home in Erie, it again comes back to perception and understanding that opinion of what people think.

Do people think it's a hard thing to own a home in Erie?

Probably the 80%, 88% that have a home may not think that, but it's important to understand that because obviously 14% of them think it is still a very big problem, and they may own a home.

Um, however, out of 88%, only 24% of them don't think it's a problem at all.

So um, I think it's important still to understand that opinion and perception of what the town is, knowing that you have housing density questions coming ahead, um, and whatever that looks like, whatever you guys decide to do moving forward.

In my eyes, it's important to understand that even though, yeah, 88% of you own a home, 24% think it's not a problem at all.

So there's another big chunk of residents that do believe it's either not much of a problem or somewhat of a problem or a big problem.

So um just understanding that perception and understanding that opinion on both the home ownership side, but also when you're talking about density um and potential for those density properties to have more rental opportunities, um, understanding perception and opinion of those residents, even if they own a home, um, what's the perception when it comes to rental opportunities?

And only 27% think that it's a problem.

And housing needs assessments and stuff are maybe showing different things, maybe showing stuff that aligns with that, um, maybe showing things that align with the perception, but maybe different needs.

Um, but I think it's also very telling that 36% of that um don't have an opinion or are unsure if there is a problem when it comes to rental opportunities.

So when you're talking about people that need to work in retail stores, when you're talking about teachers, when you're talking about seniors, when you're talking about first-time home buyers, whatever that looks like, um, what's that perception of the ability for them to get a home among those 88% that have one?

Um, is it hard?

Is it a problem?

Is it an issue in understanding that opinion and perception?

I think really these two questions show that a lot of people don't think it's a problem.

Um, however, eighty-eight percent of them don't think it's a problem either.

So there is that balance.

I don't know.

But you can certainly live on what I believe should have been early, right?

And you can certainly work in Erie with a very short commute.

Um I guess this all goes back in the bigger picture on what's going to happen to Lafayette with the transit oriented community law, and if they really do grow to a hundred thousand, theory may be the last place where you can buy a single family home because there would be so many high density developments on our border.

And obviously, I can't solve that, or I don't think any of us can solve that at this moment, but it's uh a factor.

Um let's say eat thirty five, and then we'll pick up the affordable house.

And here if you have any overview of this question.

No, I will say that like I like I mentioned when we went through this these three questions are very similar among some groups.

Um they fall in line with really these overall numbers, which is why they're kind of combined in this one summary slide.

Do you support affordable housing?

Is it um just if you agree or disagree with those statements?

Yes, knowing that we define affordable housing.

Right.

And then we go on to uh uh slide 27 and the question in the results, opinion on housing density and individual taxes.

Which of these statements do you prefer?

This surprised me too.

I mean, I I suspected we might get a little bit of uh you know, want lower density, but the fact that people said that they would rather pay higher individual taxes to keep lower density um at that percentage rate actually surprised me.

Yeah, I'd agree.

I yeah, I typically you have higher individual taxes in the you know, description, it's uh more you know, you you don't get that much support, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, I'm especially surprised at that at the um affiliation breakout that Republicans are really willing to pay more taxes.

Yeah, higher taxes, yeah.

And what that tells me is that they they want their space, and maybe it goes back to the density question as well.

I was thinking that on slide 22, comparing those two slides.

Yeah, so you can see that's like 5050 also bank because that is 50 percent on the other side.

Yeah, right.

There's always totally I'm not discounting the 36 percent that they would rather have um higher density and lower to or reduced taxes.

It's just the narrative that's been playing in the town is um we have to have these high densities.

It goes back to the comp plan, that's what we put in there.

One of the logic behind that was to keep taxes down, and I forgot what the metric was, but it was number of people that are living within an acre or square mile or whatever.

There's more people to pay for that, and this uh particular question is totally counter to that.

I wonder we didn't do the trade-offs, so I wonder if we were actually um presenting them with the trade-offs, if they would like you know, you would not have money to pay for you know, the extra rec center, whatever the other options are, but we said instead you're paying to maintain streets and water infrastructure, if that would still still stay that way, it would still reflect um well, you are saying the trade-off in the sense that it's higher taxes or lower taxes, depending on right, not calling out what the taxes are.

So, you know, one one thing I I was uh I was in Grand Junction this last week, dropping my youngest off for college, and one thing I noticed when I was driving around there, one thing for all the people who love roundabouts, go to Grand Junction.

That's the I'm from there.

That is the truth.

Yeah, um but the other thing that I noticed there is that they are doing a lot of the things that we talk about here as far as um like narrowing of streets and things like that, but I thought it was brilliant the way that they're doing it, is um they're they're striping off the roads.

There's no they're not doing these elaborate concrete um uh barriers and and they leave room for parking on the side of the street, and there's dedicated bus lanes, and I just look that I don't like that's a lot cheaper doing it that way than it is with us.

So I I think one of the things in talking about the trade-offs is I I guess I just I I don't know agree that that you know, like doing this uh I I hate getting boxed into things it's like you have one decision or the other.

I think there's there's things where um we can accomplish the things that we want to do, um maybe without um you know that that might appeal to to both sides in in this uh equation, but uh yeah.

Other thoughts on this one all right, let's move on to 29.

How familiar are you with the town of Erie's affordable housing program?

This kind of also surprised me that with all the debate discussion we do on it, and it certainly was an uh an item in the um election.

Not very many people know what we're doing.

Yeah, I was very surprised.

uh equation but uh yeah other thoughts on this one all right let's move on to 29 how familiar are you with the town of eres affordable housing program this kind of also surprised me that with all the debate discussion we do on it and it certainly was an uh an item in the um election not very many people know what we're doing you know yeah I was very surprised I expected you know maybe maybe 45 50 percent but but you know 70 singles I mean that that surprised me like you say with all the talk and with all the you know energy that is around affordable housing um we we need to we need to do a better job of of educating folks I I think um and and maybe it it's because it's it's a confusing topic right even those of us who've been talking about it for quite a quite a while still have questions right it's nuanced well and also we're 88% owner occupied and so maybe that's just not a conversation people are paying attention to if they don't have to and so um they want their kids to move out of their basement but they're not sure how that's gonna happen and so yeah I think you're right we have to do better job of educating.

Yeah and that's it there aren't that many people watching us we're not that interested all right let's go on to 31 or at least critics for the question I have here it from the number the number of people responded to the question before apparently the people that aren't sure about the program they're sure approval doing so I don't know what to make of this well again remember they were educated in this this paragraph before they read do you support or oppose the work the town of Harry's affordable housing program is doing um and so just just kind of keep that in the back of your mind of they were educated on some of the things that the program is doing and operating okay yeah and it's pretty strong in the support going back down to the comments before the opposed or strong so I mean you know going into this I might have said okay well maybe 400,000 or 450 is too much but when I read this I'm like that's generally people are okay.

All right let's move on to cheeseman stream this one is different though oh no it's about the same yeah and you had about the same and more involved um together you're kind of in line with that yeah 62 percent um however when it comes to just involvement of projects like cheesemen or anything like that you can see that kind of a third a third a third almost but I will say 62 percent at least the same or more yeah and then when you go to how to pay for it though um I forgot yeah you can pick more than one of these right correct yeah yeah yeah correct but certainly uh someone else's money federal state which by the way is our money too but it's not in our budget and which is primarily primarily how we've been funding it at this point right I would not try to go out for a voters supported tax increase on these numbers was there uh for the funding options was there a breakdown for demographics and the there is it's a little bit more kind of weird to look at since there's um more than a hundred so it's hard to show but I can't there is a breakdown of that okay um it's you'd have to almost build like a graph like this for each subgroup okay because of the different they don't all add up to a hundred so you have you have to have an individual graph for each subgroup so if there's any specific subgroups that you're interested in we can look at that um but really these numbers stayed kind of actually fairly consistent across the board okay um a little different when it comes to party affiliation obviously when you're talking about funding anything um but across most of those stayed relatively similar so the way I look at this one too is that if we can get federal or state money then we should keep going in what we're already doing.

If we can't get federal or state money the highest support we had here was one in three people basically to say the developers should pay for it um and then it gets worse from there.

Um and we have time to do that before we would get kicked out of those programs.

So um I think that that's some motivation that we can take, and then also the development related fees is something we're also already doing through the um the metro district um policy policy, yeah, and then also you know that they have to kick back some to the affordable housing fund.

So that that's encouragement to me that we are we are doing those things, right?

But I would say that the majority of people don't want us to add costs onto the developers, right?

If only 36% are saying yes, we should do that.

If I understood what you said, 64% are saying don't be adding costs on to new development uh to pay for affordable housing, right?

Or am I misinterpreting?

No, because somebody could have said both because they could have uh they select all apply.

So somebody could have said funding grants and developmental related fees.

So um there is overlap there.

Um yeah, I'm not comparing the two.

I'm but yes, you're right.

Only 36% said development related fees um as a way to fund it.

Again, this is not a de support or oppose an X amount of dollars on developments going to affordable housing.

Um this is just strictly uh do you uh support um the town of Erie using that as a funding to pay for affordable housing projects?

So um it's obviously an option.

Um and yes, only 36% said that they that that's what they would one thing that they would support.

Um, but 64 did not choose that, right?

And so we have in our code right now, um I think what she said was they may have chosen that.

They could choose both.

Correct, but 64% of the people didn't choose that one, right?

No, they could have chosen both.

He's just subtracting the 100%.

So technically, yes.

Oh, I see it because of the same number of confusion people.

Yes, yeah.

Um I'm only talking about the red graph.

And 64% of the people did not think it was a good idea to charge development rated fees for affordable housing.

And I I suspect that's because they realize that increases the housing costs of new homes, which goes actually counter to affordable housing in a different way.

Or at least or or it means uh less infrastructure, right?

Because the developers not giving us the money for uh the goodness of their heart.

It's a fee that they're paying that an impact fee that they're paying that you could put towards something else if they weren't weren't doing affordable housing.

Exactly.

Like I I think it's a it's a good way to um you know satisfy or or approach that need, I think it's gotta be something in our toolbox at the same time.

We'd need to recognize that there's something that we're not getting, right?

So somewhere probably next year, I think we should do a study session on what are all the um affordable housing fees that are baked in the development um process, and you know, at least be able to understand that whether we do say anything about it or not.

I don't know, but maybe that could be also part of the impact fee.

I think we're gonna do an impact fee study.

I'm looking at Patrick on this one.

Um on all the development impact fees, so maybe it gets wrapped into the to that discussion.

All right, any other thoughts on this one, traffic.

So I think I mean most people are feeling like traffic is increasing, is what I take away from this.

Yes, yeah.

I mean, I so as far as like the going back to the numerical aspect of it, the graphs.

Um you know, without without quantifying where this is happening, when it's happening, it's it's very subjective data.

Um I mean right time of day, doesn't take more than 100 minutes to get across town, and then I would if you're saying 10 more minutes.

Well, where's that coming?

That's because of the stop lights, is it really because of traffic?

I you know, it's not a surprise because yeah, we get a lot of complaints about traffic, but um really have to drive down into when, where and how is it a problem?

Yeah, so traffic studies.

Well, I I think one thing, you know.

You know, um well, let me say that because one of the things is is that that was saying I took it, the the do not commute portion uh other than 65 plus, which a lot of those people are tired prior retire.

So that was the that was the only number that came out in single digits.

So um I I know that we've heard I I mean I've seen a lot of social media posts from from folks that are you know seem to want to accommodate to what in this list would be the the low well not the the lowest was unsure, so I'm not sure where that is, but of the people that actually had an opinion on this it was it was the you know low you know lowest sector what came out there so um you know the the no not really I mean that's not an insignificant percentage and and I agree yeah depending on what time of day it is, yeah, there's there's not necessarily problems, but um I think that um you know with like respect to Arapahoe, and I think one of the things that and I just said this publicly is that that um you know because of the unfortunately because of the litigation with Lafayette, that was not the ideal layout we wanted to have with nine mile.

We wanted to have a signalized intersection in the nine mile off 287.

We weren't able to get that because Lafayette got theirs in at Lucerne, and so that forces everyone going into nine mile to come onto Arapaho to get there.

So that does create you know some additional stress there.

Now there is a write in right out for you know if you're coming north on 287 or or or um you know, and you want to go out to the north on 287, you can get out there, but there's a lot of access on on onto Arapo going going east.

So some of these I mean, none of the responses that we got back on the the problem intersections, I mean I mean, I think are surprising to probably to any of us.

I mean, we've all heard these, and um uh now as far as like you know, remedies and things, you know, that that's I mean, that's another discussion, and you know, I know uh uh you know, David, I know you guys have plans, you know, for for all uh um, you know, and I know we're working with Lafayette specifically with like Arapo and our 111th, so there's there's things in place, but I I guess uh I I'm I'm not surprised by by any of these results.

Um the one and you mentioned it earlier that I am curious about um that you know the um the county line that yeah that that makes sense that yeah, maybe it's like oh and we've talked about it before the fact people going east, it's like now you gotta go west to go back east and things like that.

So these are additional things we need to think about.

I was going through some of the data on like the specific responses.

There is some of what Patrick was saying about why did you close down county line road and highway seven?

Some of it's just for want of understanding.

Yeah, some of it's I don't like it.

Some of it is also just I think several areas on county line and several areas on highway seven.

So they're mentioned kind of in the same breadth, and it kind of grouped those together.

So that's some of the data that I'm seeing so far.

So if you if you guys go to slide 38, then there's many duplicates there, right?

You got highway seven, Sheridan Parkway.

Um that's not the duplicate.

You've got Erie Parkway and County Line, and then uh up two lines, you got county line, dairy parkway.

So it's the same intersection, right?

I mean, and there's a couple other like that.

So maybe we can combine the data and this is the one I was talking about.

Has a the intersection?

Yeah, yeah.

And then so we can clear this up, but I would also just look at this at the raw data.

I drive through Arapaho and 111th.

You got a plan for it.

That one's that one's uh gonna be I think um mostly resolved when you get turn lanes um put in there.

Um and it that's funded.

I think that was funded by the private council, it's just a matter of getting it going.

Yep.

Um Arapa Road and County Line.

I'm not I wasn't aware that one was tough, but maybe it gets backed up in the No, I think that's the issue of of where the they use the same roads and the same raho road is a problem and okay.

So you know driving problem there, right?

Relook at this one and see if you got some AI issues in that one.

Yeah.

And what I'm thinking from this section, kind of generally global view is that um weather traffic is a problem compared to you know, comparatively.

Like we I was just driving around in Denver for my daughter's wedding all weekend.

Um we it's a completely different animal.

But there is a perception in the community that there is congestion problem, and so investments in planning and ways to reduce congestion and traffic um will benefit in all those bus stops that we um approved design for so we can increase multimodal options and um in a couple of slides we'll talk about safety and um all of those things are beneficial to uh our residents and something they want to see us invest in.

It will be interesting once we get the bus stops in to see if ridership goes up.

I mean, I'm excited about the bus stops and the reroute um of the of the jump where to go buy more homes, basically.

Now, if we do all that and ridership doesn't increase, then that's gonna tell us the story too.

That you know, at least in Erie with um our demographics, people just won't use the bus.

Although I bet they'll use it for the high school, maybe where they're not today.

No, yeah, that's it.

But yeah, to your point, I I think you know, we we have to stay on top of it, be aware of it, because if we're talking about growing at the rate that we are and and and plan to we we need to know where the hop points are now, and and you know, we've got plans to work around that and make sure that we we do our best to stay ahead of of those growth patterns.

All right, so if we move forward to 39, this was interesting to me that most people don't feel that e-bikes or pedestrian walking bicyclists, drivers has really that big of a problem.

But yet for those that experience the problem, I mean it's uh it's a vocal problem.

Um wait the well decreased, yeah.

Decreased is the red.

So increases the red.

They feel less safe.

Yeah, so safety is decreased across the board.

Yeah, by around 40 percent.

Yeah, three you're good.

All right, so they're all kind of equal, right?

Except maybe the drivers, but that's pretty high too.

So anyway, we've got an ordinance coming to us on e-bikes sometime.

We're working on that on that, but it'll be this year sometimes.

We got legal things trying to get through.

Um, hopefully we got like speed limits or penalties or something to at least say, hey, come on, tone it down a bit when you're on those.

Well, I would love to have a conversation about that because I've been talking to different municipalities.

It it's a it's an issue, and so ideas out there.

Penalties are one thing, but how do we enforce that with a 12-year-old gonna crush his bike on the bike path?

I don't know, take it away.

Chief is gonna boot them.

We're just gonna tell them all.

Yeah, we won't impound them.

Right of a ticket, I don't know what is update, but also education opportunity for certifications, licenses, things like that.

So yeah, that's a good point.

I don't think it should all be punitive, right?

It's gotta be educational and um, you know, some communities actually I think I may have sent you a picture of Lafayette.

They had a they have like signs next to some of their trails.

Um Winter Park, I know.

Yeah, and so they're just reminders, is what they are really.

We are looking at what other jurisdictions are doing, and so far they both said they'll take a light touch on enforcement.

So it's more education side.

Yeah, because I don't know, I just been thinking 12-year-olds don't know how roads work.

They haven't been through driver's ed, but they're on e-bikes, and we're telling them they need to be in the road.

So I just feel like there's a disconnect there.

So part of that education may be the parental education.

Yeah, well, one of the things is uh I think a little hard to gauge from this.

Well, one of the things that's I think a little hard to gauge from this, this is another one of those that depending on like if you're riding a bike, depending on where you're doing it in town, there's some streets where we've got dedicated bike lanes and everything like that.

There's some things where you know, when I I see people every day, you know, riding their bikes on on uh County Road 5 past the the um landfill, I can't imagine that's uh anybody would feel safe riding to bike now there.

Um so you know it it I I think you know we've got plans for you know uh you know the improvements coming in there that hopefully will help.

One thing I was curious about in this, I guess hindsight is 2020, but I asked you, Chief, with the um the change in the motorcycle law, and I asked this because I ran this situation yesterday, um where uh you can now threaten thread, yeah, throw so um yeah, my wife had a situation where a motorcycle came in uh and the guy kind of was going too fast, lost control of his bike, and he put his foot out, and he she thought that he hit her car, but I guess hit the tire or something.

But anyway, like I to me it seems very unsafe for bikes to do that.

I hate the law personally.

Um I feel sorry for you guys having to deal with all that.

I do understand why motorcycles, I do understand the thing where a motorcycle, you know, out of stop sign if somebody comes barreling through, yeah, that can be very dangerous situation.

I I don't know what what the threading law is is much it's it's much more restricted than maybe what they practice out there.

Traffic is supposed to be stopped.

Okay, so so picture being stopped in a stoplight.

If you are a motorcyclist and you are stopped in traffic, you can thread between the cars between the lanes, but traffic must be stopped.

And you have to be it has to be safe for you to do so.

You can't just take off everybody's rear view mirror to get up to the front of the line.

Okay, but it it's supposed to uh alleviate traffic congestion, it's supposed to be safer for the motorcyclist.

I understand the concerns too.

It is very difficult for us to enforce.

Um motorcycles present a unique challenge when it comes to enforcement, both in speeding and lane usage and everything else.

And and I hate to put it all on motorcyclists, but that's what the law does.

The law says that they can thread when it is safe to do so when traffic is safe or traffic is stopped.

Yeah, and it's supposed to alleviate congestion.

So they shouldn't be threading on I-25, they shouldn't be threading while traffic is moving, it's supposed to be on traffic is stopped.

Okay.

I'm not a big fan either.

I'm also not a legislative.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, when I when I was living in England back around 2000, that was extreme extremely popular, and you know, a lot of motorcycles, a lot of them threading, scares the hell out of you.

Um, and you're like, what if I what if I would have been switching lanes, you know, even though traffic is sort of stopped, and I'm switching lanes, you know, I'm driving on the street.

Yeah, yeah, well, that too.

I was in Guanasuris.

The last thing I would just say about this slide was um just the idea of increasing safety for drivers.

If we increase safety for bicycle bicyclists, pedestrians, and e-bikes, um, that will also increase a sense of safety for for drivers because um when you hit a motorcycle or a pedestrian or whatever, um, that makes you feel unsafe as a driver.

Nobody wants to do that.

So just wanted to highlight that.

Rick regarding the e-bikes, um, is there a way to see or were there weren't comments related to e-bikes, were there?

No, not verbatim.

I would be an interesting to hear if it was on the trails or on the streets.

Okay, I backed up it's the parkway all the time.

I'm seeing kids fly down there on eBay.

Anecdotally, I can tell you that most of our complaints are on the trails, but we also get them on the streets where the 12-year-olds are doing wheelies on bikes that go 40 miles an hour without a license.

I mean, that's exactly why I have a moped license if a kid can just do it on an e-bike.

All right, let's keep um keep moving.

Um other issues, just comments here, lack of sidewalks jumped out at me.

Um slide 40, yeah.

Nothing else jumped out at me.

Um as things that we weren't aware of.

And then parks and rack, everybody loves parks and rack.

I think slide 42.

What really jumped out at me, and I think this is on another question too, is the community campus seemed to have way more support um than say the performing arts center.

Um so if we do go to the voters with the sales tax, right?

Is that an option that uh that we do?

And I'll have another question about how do we figure that out at the end.

Some good question about this one.

So when we're looking at this data, are we did we are we looking at what people want us to build or invest in like the community campus in addition to ECC and ECP?

Were we clear about that?

Or are they saying we had community campus similar to ECC ECB?

Which is interesting because that's that's that's close to the second rec center, too, in a lot of ways.

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say.

It's like because we kind of can go in.

Although, if you were choosing, they would say that they want it to be more full function than just a rec center, right?

Our current rec center is senior center.

Um you know, we've got uh do we still have a youth area inside the rec center?

No, that's gone.

Just wasn't being used.

No, we turned that into the cycle correction.

Yeah, long time ago, that's right.

Yes, we're maybe being used for the wrong reasons.

Got it.

Actually, to correct it's cut short on here because of just space, it did say a community campus similar to Erie Community Center, Erie Community Park with a rec center, aquatic center, and full amenity park nearby.

Oh, so it's the full blown is the second line.

So that's in that's even more interesting now that you said that because people are saying, listen, if we're gonna do this, we should do it all over doing a just another rec center without the park and all that, or just doing an outdoor pool.

Yeah, yeah.

Right.

But if you see the red sides, farming arts has a walking 30% null.

No, not important.

Right, which is which historically all the energy that was for the town center, and that was the big big thing.

Yeah, people like more expanded services with the rec center and other than like the water power performing arts.

They'll have like the red numbers that much like yeah.

It was interesting.

The town center Sharet of is actually in the lustre of design is shown as a massive aquatic center.

Yeah.

Um in the town center decide, and then retract, yeah.

What happened there?

How did it switch to I put some context around that?

And we'll talk about this more next week.

But in that 2023 community survey, we asked a specific question of what a preferred civic use space was.

And yes, it was an aquatics.

I think I can't remember.

I I've got it in the next week's presentation, but there were four or five different choices, and the performing arts rose to the top of that.

So that's why we went down the road of the performing arts centers because that was the preferred use for civics at a civic space.

And this broadens the question a bit.

Correct, and it puts it against other parks and recreation prioritize.

If if you when we look at next week's data on the 2024 uh parks and recreation specific questionnaire that we did, and compared to this one, you'll see some some trends.

Um, but also when compared to other priorities, such as these other ones that we're seeing here, you'll see that it does fall a little bit.

So, yes, there's general support, but not as much support.

Well, I tell you, this gets me excited on this one because the first one, the highest one, uh town of Erie Parks located neighborhoods.

I think we have that pretty much covered based upon comments you made at a prior study session.

And so um I can't wait to get into the conversation on how big a land do we have over there by the high school, and can it accommodate all this?

And what would it cost?

And and is that something we go after a sales tax to do?

And if it is, how fast could we get that going?

I mean, I think there's lots of positives for all of us in that one.

Meaning land over by the high school that uh call yourself park?

Yes, is that what you're thinking about?

Community campus similar to ECC and ECP.

That's what I've been told.

Yes, okay.

That was that that's the intended plot of land.

It's so centralized, and then could we do partnership with St.

Brain possibly that maybe they're paying for part of it because they can then use it?

Yes.

All right, any other questions on this one?

The one thing just in general on this, because it seemed like this one had the highest percentage of neutral votes compared to some other these other ranking questions.

And um I I'd be curious, you know, the next time we do a survey running this again with maybe you know trying to get some more education towards these things to see if if that number decreases.

Um I was um again, like neutral.

I I don't know if neutral means just yeah, sure, I don't care either way, or or if it's or if it's a not have enough information really lean one way or another, and that's that's always interesting challenge, but that's where I think the polsters will come in in a future.

Yeah, yeah.

All right, let's go on to um 43 in funding parks and rec services and amenities.

Interesting that the Erie History Museum went way high on this one where it was way low on the other one.

So I don't know if you can explain that.

Yeah, so just to kind of keep in mind when you're looking through this.

When you're looking at the previous question, it's just how how important it is.

Um this is more how to fund it.

Where am I at?

Yeah, it's so they're saying that.

Right, we don't really want the museum.

But if you're gonna do it, do it out of the general fund.

Correct.

Um, do it out of the general fund or don't fund it at all.

I mean, those really are statistically tied at 36 and 34.

So it did have a higher percentage of willing to fund out of the general fund.

That doesn't mean it's a top priority of what they want.

Yeah.

But what's interesting on here of all the ones with the modest tax increase, the highest one is for community campus.

Um, yes, it's 24%.

That's because you have to this is binary, right?

They have to choose one of these.

Yep.

So I'd prefer it to come out of the general fund, but um, the next highest was a modest tax increase.

So this is one I definitely want to probe on being the highest on here.

In other words, I wouldn't want to go to the voters and ask, would you be willing to fund with taxes a water park?

Because it's it's low enough, or uh performing art center because it's low enough.

All right, sustainability.

I think I was also excited about this.

We talked about it, I think it was in the uh early uh slides.

People want us to continue doing what we're doing in sustainability and increase the rebates.

Do we use all the rebate money we've set aside today?

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, we run out every year.

By like, is it like October we run out, or is it like March we run out?

I've got Erica totally here on sustainability division manager.

She she knows more of the units and outs.

Um we see quite, I mean, there's it's not uh it's not as predictable as you'd think how many people sign up for rebates on a given year.

Um I think this year is gonna be a huge year, uh, partially due to what's happening at the federal level, and people are worried about tax credits and things running out, and so a lot of folks are if they're gonna be doing solar installs or heat pump installs like by 2025 is the year to do it.

Specifically, we have a couple of campaigns that are going right now.

We have the switch together bulk purchase rooftop solar project.

It's the fifth round that we've participated in with Boulder County.

It's really meant to support folks as a community to go into a rooftop solar project and to have kind of the economy of scale, lots of additional resources to kind of help answer questions.

Um we do have some bad apples as far as solar installers, and so it helps with that as well.

Uh we also have a similar pilot campaign, which I we talked about earlier with heat pumps.

And so we had mailers land last week.

Um 7,000 mailers were sent out to single family residents, and we've already had a hundred people sign up, and we have seven people that have already paid a deposit and sign the agreement.

So just that alone, um, just for the heat pump rebates is a significant amount of funding.

Um, and right now we have about five thousand dollars left.

Um, we did apply for funding from Boulder County for their sustainability matching grant last year, and they allowed us to roll that into the first six months of this year, so that helped that that budget, but we're just seeing so much participation as as director Frank mentioned.

Um, that clean energy tax credits are going to be gone by the end of this year.

EV tax credits are gonna be gone by the end of September.

And so we we're seeing a lot of participation.

It's a great problem.

And so I don't remember what was in the early, maybe maybe it wasn't shared with us quite yet.

But the budget for next year was sustainability.

Do you know if it's flat, if it's increased, if it's decreased, if it's where it's at at this point?

We proposed a uh about a 20% budget cut for the department.

Um part of that is uh downsizing the uh air quality sampling program.

Uh but generally, even if you take that out of the budget, I think it's still about a 12% decrease.

Um, and that's just partially um, you know, if revenues flatlining or declining, uh just trying to be more uh more responsible with the funds we have.

And we're a really new department.

So this is kind of the first year that we've that we felt we really have a very thorough understanding of our needs and not just kind of running from the inherited budget of like yeah, that's what we asked for last year, let's ask for that next year.

Yeah.

So we're considering possibly increasing rebates and that kind of thing.

So I it was interesting seeing these results, you know, we were all really excited to see that.

Um there's not a lot of additional rebates we can add.

We have added waste diversion rebates with our bag fee tax collection.

We have added our energy efficiency rebates in the last few years, those are brand new as well.

We've added commercial water conservation rebates.

So we've we've been really leaning into the rebate space heavily, and it's exciting to see that residents are noticing that, I think.

Um I think right now, of course, energy efficiency funds, we could boost that.

Again, I don't think it's gonna be as popular next year with those clean energy tax credits going away.

Plus, you know, we from our sustainability division perspective, we're really scrappy.

Um, we have funding coming from Dr.

Cog, as uh council Councilmember Baer knows very well.

We're hoping that that will also boost our rebate amounts or directions we can point residents when they're trying to bring down this these big costs of some of these these uh projects.

Yeah.

So I I was kind of I was looking at that and saying, okay, so what would my recommendations be?

I think we could boost some funding.

Um I don't think we can necessarily add that many more rebates.

We're really doing a lot.

Right, okay.

It's like I want to give more money to this area of knowing the survey results, but I get it, right?

We've if you're tapped out, that's great.

And then maybe next year is just this kind of reset year as we figure out what the Fed cuts mean.

Yeah.

Um and then gone gone from there.

And it is challenging, you know.

The we put in our initial budget, you know, in June.

Um so you're looking at least six months, if not 18 months ahead of when people actually requesting rebates.

So it's it's a constantly moving target.

Um, I think this year we probably um guessed low, and and next year we may guess high.

It's uh tough to say.

And you can always come back with obviously Malcolm's direction for supplemental if like we ran out too early.

Okay.

What about uh recycling center expansion?

We are waiting to demolish the the building that's there.

Um we're we're using pretty much every square foot that we've got out there at the moment.

Once that building is demoed, um, we're hoping we can expand operations out there pretty substantially.

Obviously, the community um loves that as a resource.

Um, as a resident, I take my haul stuff over there all the time.

Uh we're now offering metal uh collections.

We want to keep continuing to support the community and say, hey, you have weird stuff, you don't know where to take it, bring it to us.

That's I think that's uh a fantastic use of of our resources to help serve the community.

But until we get the until we get the biohazard out of the way, there's not a lot we can do.

We're trapped between uh uh an old building and uh and a lagoon at the moment.

So, council member um Bell, just if I could add, I think we've I've had some really collaborative, exciting conversations with the parks staff, um and specifically adding a forestry sort yard and really thinking about expanding services and maybe collaborating the recycling center was with other forestry sortyard um opportunities as well.

I don't know if you all have visited any of the Boulder County forestry sortyards, they're fantastic.

Um so places where you could take certain woods, you could actually split them, you could you could create chips and then bring those back to residents, which we've done in the past.

We have a handful of folks reach out every year asking for that.

Um I think there's there's just some really cool biochar is something Boulder County is really leaning into.

I think we could use some of our yard waste collection that we use now to expand and kind of lean into some new cool novel spaces and really support our residents.

We're seeing that they really they really appreciate that facility, and I think we could just we could expand it.

Cool.

Wonder if we can ever do anything with resource central or maybe we become a hub to collect and then they do bulk transfers just to make it more convenient or something.

I don't know.

110%.

Um so Boulder County just put in a grant a few years ago for a reuse barn.

It's a 20 by 30 foot barn that they're putting at one of their transfer stations.

I'd love to do something similar.

Um I think we'd have to scale staff at that facility because we have to put dates, we'd have to make sure things aren't just sitting there and that they actually have value.

I think we could also think about an in vessel compost, which is something Boulder County just added and uh the Auraria campus has as well.

Um there's some really cool opportunities to increase waste diversion.

We also do a resource central pickup once a week now where residents can send a photo of an item, resource central say yay or nay, and then they'll come pick it up from them.

We're seeing that tenage just increase dramatically every month, which is really exciting.

I'm smiling because they're coming to my house between 10 and noon tomorrow.

And I think some people know I used to be the president of resource central, so I get their operations, I know their executive director well, and maybe they can fund somebody to run a satellite station for them as a possibility.

Yeah.

Um, okay.

So any other questions, comments on sustainability.

I mean, if I was surprised in some of the results, this is one I was surprised that there was such good uh support for.

So all right, and then we're down to the demographics.

So there's one more slide.

Yeah, one more slide.

The strongly support wasn't as um as strong as the strongly opposed, but the number of people that support is 10% more, so it's significant at least when I look at that.

So I don't worry about how strong or how opposed on that particular one.

All right, and the demographics I don't think we'll go through tonight.

Um, I think we'll just open it up for other uh questions.

Um I think the biggest question on my mind is um working with staff to figure out okay, if we are going to go to the voters for a tax, uh the sales tax.

I think that's the other thing I think it's property taxes kind of out.

I didn't see much of any support for property tax.

If we do sales tax, um, it seems like sustainability actually could be an option there, but if we don't need it, you know, there's no reason to necessarily go out per se.

Um, unless we got a dedicated sustainability tax, and then that frees up the general fund money that we're putting into sustainability now.

What is it?

1.1 million?

It's about a million.

About a million.

So there's at least a discussion for us to say would it be better to have a sustainable tax that funds it or not.

Um the public safety clearly is a debate discussion that we need to have, and you know, can we solve the police services long term, not just for the police station we're talking about now, but longer term, and how do we work in the extension possibly of the current bonds that are gonna expire?

And then the community campus, I think of all the things could be the other thing we look at at creating uh revenue stream, asking the voters to support that uh to go for it.

So, my question amongst all that is how how hard is it to put together uh and now a voter survey to test either kind of like Lafayette, right?

They did uh the council had to decide one thing, two things, three things, but I think they did that after they did a survey.

Yep, I don't know.

Yep.

Um I mean, it depends on what you're looking to do and what you're trying to accomplish.

Um, if you're looking at EPD specifically, I would keep it to EPD.

Um, because as Mayor Pro Tem um mentioned, there's obviously maybe some potential options there of what you can look at funding-wise.

Um, and I think that keeping that strictly to public safety more in depth EPD would be beneficial when you're looking at that and not having another survey where you're looking at multiple topics, multiple ballot measures.

Um if you're looking down the road for other potential ballot measures, whether it is sustainability, whether it is potential parks and rec.

Um, I think understanding what that funding would go towards and testing a more specific question would be more important at this point in time and diving uh deeper into the needs, the why, telling your story of what you're looking to do.

And how would can you turn that around in like a month if if the council said we want to know that?

So, yeah, we can.

So we got out of the field, I believe the last day was August 1st.

Um, on this.

Um, and so typically we like to wait a month at a minimum before we go back into the field in the same location just for fatigue, vote and anything like that.

We did have just under a thousand that were added to our DNC list from doing the community survey.

So that's just something to kind of point out there.

That doesn't mean that we can't do it or anything like that.

Um the DNC.

Or do not call us or do not contact, I guess if it's a text message, but um, there was a hand, a pretty significant handful that came through on that.

Um, and that actually wasn't just I should clarify, that was also the parks and rec survey from last November, as well as the survey um that we were just under a thousand.

So uh there is that aspect of it, which doesn't play a factor here.

Um for a ballot measure survey, we also wouldn't need to do a postcard, we would be able to get in and out of the field much quicker um due to the fact that it'd be based off a random sample, we would send out those text messages and complete those interviews in that sense.

So really now that we're looking at almost a month out, um gosh, next week is September.

Almost next week is September 1st.

So we can turn that around really, really quick.

Um, but when it comes down to potentially testing two or three items, um, we can do that.

Um but I I depending on what you're looking to do and what you're looking to accomplish.

If you're looking at more specific for an EPD of a sales tax and what that looks like, I would personally recommend saying go for an EPD survey, public safety survey, and see where you're at there.

Um, and then depending on timing, go on.

Um, but if you're really looking to compare a potential sustainability tax versus something else, um, we can do that as well.

Um, I just know the timing and stuff of that is all playing a factor here of what you guys are talking about with EPD.

So um we wouldn't be putting anything on this ballot.

So there's not like the urgency, I guess, right?

On only in the sense that if we are gonna use COPs to pay for the police station, I don't want to delay that.

And I you know, I think that's the thing, right?

Um but then we go back to what we were talking about in a prior study session, the undermining issue for town center, and you know, which pulls me back into the COP land, and then um one at all.

I want the police station built, I want the undermining done, and I want to get going on this community campus thing.

I don't know how to solve that at this moment, but uh I'll definitely be ruminating on that, and I'd love to talk to each of you and just to see where you're at.

Are there other taxing items other than the ones I've just brought up?

That anybody's thinking about I I would just mention in your packet, and I was trying to pull it up, but I don't have access to the OneDrive.

Maybe Adam can do it.

Um I have uh a timeline of what a typical ballot item life looks like.

Um, and so really from um the EPD standpoint, we have all the details.

We know what it costs, we know what a sales tax amount would be, we know all those details.

We don't know that necessarily for a sustainability tax.

We don't know that for our community campus, we don't know any of those things.

So this here talks about how long it typically would take and what the steps are to do this.

This is not for EPD of which we've done feasibility, we've done the modeling, we've done some of those things.

You could start halfway through that.

Um, but for the other items, we haven't done those first steps.

So I would say they would take longer.

Um typically, oh, and now where did that go?

Um, there's another slide to this.

Oh, there it is.

Okay.

Um, and so typically it does take at least a year if you're starting from scratch because a feasibility study takes a while.

Um, getting a public survey out and results and then doing education and outreach is usually how that works.

Um, and then of course, you have to approve any ballot language by mid-August, which is what we have just passed.

And so for next year, if we wanted to put anything on 2026, we really should be starting now to get those surveys out or feasibility studies versus anything out.

Um, anything that we don't have those done and any numbers we don't have created to test ballot language.

Can you send us that slide?

Yeah, so they're in your packet.

Okay, um, and we were planning to have a very specific one if you needed it for September 6th that lays out timing specifically for EPD.

Um, this one would be for pretty much anything else that we don't have details for.

So with respect to the um the general obligation bond extension, so we would have to do this now, because that has to be on November 26th, or it's we might as well not do it because yeah, that that's I think there's a potential.

I think they told us nine, 10 million dollars that we would have as a center right that we would potentially have to use towards a police station or whatever else, you know, the other recenter or whatever.

Um yeah, if it if it's not approved in November 2026 or draw on the ballot in 2026, we can't bring it up later, because that goes away and you'd have to do a whole new uh mill levy.

An option is that we can get the undermining on both sides of county line into the COP with the police station, we just take care of that.

And then we focus on the community campus, you expend the current rec center bond to pay for part of it, and you do a sales tax for the the rest of it, and then you separate these two things to your point for clarity.

Although we could get confusing there if we say, hey, you want to extend this property tax for no additional cost, and so typically if we test two different types of ballot measures for one thing, we're very specific on this is an option, this is an option of what the town could decide to do, and then we'll ask a question at the end of which do you prefer the town to do?

Um if you are looking at sales tax versus what you're doing or something like that.

Um combination, we'd probably and if it's a combination, what I would recommend doing is figuring out the numbers, obviously, that's first and foremost.

Um, but if it's a combination, depending on how it's worded, if you go for the sales tax as well as a so the thing to make clear that I please I would want the public to know is that the the general obligation bonds, you're paying that now.

So what we would uh we like when they built uh what is it now on power field, I think originally it was in Vesco field when they built that, it was the extension of the the state stadium tax.

So uh when they built Coors Field, so that would that was their big push was like and like you said, without raising taxes.

So that's a seven county stadium tax.

Yeah, yeah.

So that's what um be similar to type of push on that.

So we wouldn't want to I I guess what I want to avoid in that situation is is the sales tax increase is really kind of a different thing.

We would want to we're we're basically one to do both because we're we're trying to figure out different revenue streams for all these different things, but um at the same time, not like yeah, I I would just want to avoid people thinking, you know, oh they're raising our taxes, they're they're gonna raise our property tax and raise sales tax.

Yeah, let me let me take a step back and just kind of explain the ballot measure survey process because it is different than what we did here.

Um typically for a ballot measure survey process, we do have a couple of those benchmark questions that we want to see.

Um, but then we'll ask specifically if you have potential ballot language, especially, we'll ask the ballot test.

We call that an uninformed ballot test question.

Um, it's just a cold read.

If this was on the ballot right now, how would you vote?

Um no information, nothing like that, just specifically the ballot language to test that question.

Then we'll go into what we call information questions, which can be pros and cons of this is what the funding would go towards, this is a story, this is why we need it, as well as potential cons of this is X, this is why if we don't get this funding, this happened if it is a property tax, it is sales tax, whatever that is.

Um, telling that story why that's why you're going to the ballot essentially, and then we come back and do an informed ballot question, which after they know that information, pros and cons both, where do they stand?

Is there movement there?

Then we ask verbatim questions as a follow-up of why would you vote for it?

Why would you not?

So that's kind of an all-encome just overlooking look of a ballot measure survey.

Um, and your stance, I will say, and all the time I've done hundreds of ballot measure questions and surveys.

Anytime that we have two questions, and I believe what you're saying, if I'm understanding it right, there's an option where you would still have to go for a portion of a sales tax as well as continuing the bond.

So that would be two questions because of Tabor.

Anytime they have two questions, a lot of times they can cancel themselves out.

Um, for example, when a school district goes for a mill levy override and a property tax of or a bond or something like a bond or mill levy override, really are the two.

Um, they a lot of times cancel each other out.

Um, and so either you have to do a ton of education to really inform voters that hey, because we're continuing this, our sales tax is slightly lower, which I'm assuming is the case.

Um, because we're doing this, our sales tax is lower, but both of these you need to vote for in order for us to get a new police department.

Yeah, if they put the phone past, we're not going anywhere.

Correct.

Where sometimes you have a better chance of going for a sales tax to get the funding that you need and putting that bond money towards something else and having it a different issue because of if you're going for where you need two questions specifically to pass in order to get one thing.

A lot of times, again, they cancel each other out of the case.

Sorry, I love you can't wait.

Yeah, but I mean, I mean the bond money going, I'm not saying wait, I'm saying go towards sustainability, go towards housing, go towards a different undermining.

Okay, yeah.

But if you're looking to put both of them towards EPD, that's where the difficulty comes.

I'm passing both.

So I I think that's one thing we need to get back with uh finance staff because I know with the general obligation bonds were very limited in what because it is a continuation.

I think we're bound to, if I remember right, what the existing general obligation bond.

We it's not like we could say, you know, go use this to like I know nobody wanted the water park, but like we couldn't use that to say go build a water park because I think there's restrictions.

I that's what I thought Sarah said, but I can't remember right.

We need to get those folks in the room to have that conversation.

But we can to answer your question, we can test those things, but I I in all the years I've done this.

You have a better chance going a little bit higher on the one question than you do trying to balance off of two questions and getting voter approval.

Yeah, okay.

Um, but we can we can test a lot of those options, but I it does get confusing when you're doing two different sales tasks tax asks and one survey um for the same thing because people are gonna can get confused of well, why can't I go for the lesser amount?

Okay, yeah, well, these two things have to pass.

All right.

Um it is 9 40, and a pretty in-depth conversation.

We will come back to this at the retreat.

Um there's some action items, not a ton for staff to go back on.

If you've got other things you're thinking about, please in your one-on-ones with uh Malcolm, um, you know, share that with them.

And then let's do once around with everybody, and then I'll adjunct the just one last clarification on slide 38.

We're getting can we get the delineation or distinction between issues people have with a road versus an intersection?

So I have already reached out to uh my galley who I think left.

Um we have a traffic intern uh that we're gonna ask to try to go through those and really pull out the specifics on the roads and the numbers of each ones and which ones are intersections and all that kind of stuff.

Um, so that's we have a conversation tomorrow to talk to him about his best we can do his abilities.

Yeah, because for something like that, you really do have to go one by one and really try and answer those.

All right, entered work.

Yes, that's John.

Anything else?

Yeah, I just wanted to thank the uh staff, council, and Courtney and Magellan.

Uh a lot of work went into this.

I think we got a lot of really good information, a lot of detailed information.

I think it was great that everybody got a chance to participate and be heard.

Um so we appreciate that.

Also, the opportunity to educate folks is was really helpful in in the survey.

So I yeah, I see a lot of good things.

Um we have to be very intentional about our growth is is very clear and looking forward to you know the action plan that we can put together, you know, when we meet when we get together on the sixth.

Yeah, thank you.

Um, I'm also very grateful.

Um, and I think that what I'm taking away from this is the beginning of a conversation and encourage the community.

I know there was a lot of people who are gonna tune in tonight.

Um maybe our ratings went up a little bit.

Counselor.

Um but encourage you to um reach out and have conversations with us so we can continue the conversation because it's a great jumping off point.

No comments.

I too appreciate all the work that has gone into this.

It's it's pretty informative, but it's just gonna be one piece that I use when trying to make a decision for the residents.

So thank you.

Thank you both.

Um thank you for putting up with us.

I know like we were all over the place, and I I so appreciate you know hurting the cats, so to speak, and all this.

And there was a lot of work that went into this, and I'm so happy we're past this, and we can um go forward and and you know start making some decisions.

Uh, obviously, as a council, there's some um hard work to do, but um this is important and and I look we're a very different municipality than Denver, but I bring up Denver to point out what they went through in the last week and some of the optics that happened out of that.

I never want to see that here, you know, and and I you know, especially while I'm on here and certainly well after I'm I'm done here.

Um it's uh and so it's important to be good stewards of of uh the people's money, and we're when we're asking residents to you know um to help us out a little more, then we we need to make sure that we're in line with them, and um and you know, I try not to have sacred cows, and and so you know that's why you know getting these things, and there's some of the things on here that some of the things I definitely agree with, some of the things maybe I I didn't just or uh do disagree with what the results come back, but ultimately, you know, we're here to um you know to support all the residents, and so we want to make sure we make the best decisions possible, and and so yeah, I think uh now we can start start getting things moving, so it's exciting.

So yeah, but thank you both.

Yeah, it's great work.

I'm getting excited about it.

Richard uh our town manager, uh deputy and uh Gabby to see if you have any other insight or thoughts to close this down.

Follow up.

We've got a great follow-up session on EPD and uh that approach that comes next.

And uh we will use this information to help inform the discussion on the sixth.

In addition to the timeline, some of the other stuff that we yeah, he's got the survey timeline, Melissa and Sarah working diligent to also have a budget timeline, um, so we all understand where we're at with this budget plus future budgets, and then I anticipate the the sixth, you know, holding some space to get through the clunkier items that have budget impacts, COPs versus you know, kind of uh a ballot initiative so we can kind of rack and stack workloads for next year.

So we'll layer in budget timeline the next time we see it.

I I just think the last piece too is so um I think Luke talks to you about parks and open space things next week, EPD the week after, you have your retreat the week after that.

Um, and then we're gonna talk to you about legislative agenda after that.

Um so that we're gonna get all the local uh information, hopefully, really nail down with y'all, and then we'll talk about how that plays into regional um statewide sorts of things as well.

So you have a lot of prioritizing to do in the next couple of weeks and months.

Um, but I think this was a really great place to start, and we'll get you all that information to help.

Excellent.

I'm smiling at Gabby here because we started this uh journey um you know shortly after the election, right?

Lots of uh confusion and concern and should we do this?

Do we stick with the last survey?

We got through it.

I want to thank uh councillor hoback because he and I did that last uh um debate discussion with Gabby and Courtney to get us where we needed to go.

And I think the end result here is something that we can absolutely um work from as we go.

And so uh that's uh that's a big positive.

Last thing I'll say is that we have all put together things we would like to do um next year, and those have to be prioritized at the retreat.

Um, I've asked Malcolm if he can look at those.

And if there are things that are already in flight and they're like, we already got this, let's scratch them off the list or at least bring them to us and say, I think we're okay here so long as the majority agree that um there may be other things that he he will bring back to us to say um so long as we have majority, we can just do this.

It's not that big a deal.

I think we're we're gonna have the the debate and discussion of the bigger things, and we'll go through that process to um give direction to staff uh so they could do what they need to do.

All right, it is uh now 9 48 p.m.

and I adjourned this evening.

Thank you.