Mayor Moore?

Here.

Council Member Bear.

President.

Council Member Pessimarelli.

President.

Mayor Pro Tem Bell.

Councilmember Mortalero.

Here.

And Councilmember O'Connor.

Here.

Mayor, you have a quorum.

All right.

Thanks.

We'll see if there's a motion to approve the agenda.

All in favor, say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

All opposed say no.

All right.

Motion carries.

We have an agenda.

We'll move on to public comment.

Do we have anybody to speak tonight?

There's nobody signed up.

I don't know if there's any of that in the room, but there's just looking to see if anybody would like to address the council tonight.

All right.

Seeing there is none, we're we will jump into general business.

And the first item on the agenda is item twenty-four twenty-five four seventy-four, the police facility expansion update.

You are I appreciate it.

We're excited to be here tonight.

I also have with me Deputy Chief Heather Carmesino.

Uh we're gonna present to you kind of where we're at with the design of uh expanded police facility.

Um we figured we we have some individuals here from our architect group and also from France and Pittman, the construction managers, um, who will present later on in the in the presentation, but I just want to give a quick overview of some things going on at the police department.

The need for the building, the need to increase staffing and and why we need that space.

So um before we go on, you're gonna do it just a quick introduction.

So Chad Alexander, town facilities manager and project leading for this project.

Uh mayor council, Eric Combs, D2C architects.

We know you, we know you.

Hi, good evening.

Uh Miguel Mora with D2C Architect.

Job Captain.

Um Thiago project manager with D2C architects.

Okay, wonderful.

Thank you for doing that.

And mayor, if I could real quick, I will also introduce uh members of France with Pitna that are here.

Uh Josh Davis Davis.

Uh and Mr.

John Pittman.

Okay, wonderful.

You bet.

So this first slide is just to kind of give you an idea of where we are headed as a police department.

Our calls for service over the last couple of years have gone up 20%.

Our population has gone up eight percent.

And our crime reports, lo and behold, have also gone up eighteen percent.

Um all of our services, all of the things that we do are on the rise.

We have our investigative cases are going up, animal services, victim crime call outs.

Thanks.

Thank heavens we have a VRA because those are increasing every day.

Um our co-responders are going out on more and more calls.

Uh, you can see the significant increase with them.

And then our budget has is also gone up.

Maybe not to the level of our our calls for service and those kinds of things, but we are getting by and we'll we'll have some more on that uh in in just a bit.

Uh you may ask why why is crime rate going up faster than population?

I know the mayor asked this question, it's a very insightful question earlier.

Well, part of the reason is the commercial we're bringing to town.

So anytime you have businesses or things that people come to in town, your crime rate's gonna go up.

It's not just you know, your population increases 8%, your crime rate increases 8%.

We have we've had lows open up, we've had King Supers open up on 287.

So that that drives things like theft and burglary and criminal mischiefs.

People are coming into town, they're getting things stolen out of their car.

Uh just any time you have a place where people go to, your crime rates may increase faster than your population.

And so one of the things on this slide is you know, what's it gonna look like when town center opens up?

What's the commercial that's coming there?

And and what will that attract to town?

What kind of folks?

It's all good stuff, but sometimes good stuff comes with the crime rate going up a little bit.

Uh I know we've heard a lot on this.

We've we the one of the biggest things on the town survey that we just did was was traffic and traffic safety.

Our collisions, you may not be surprised, are going up.

Our injury collisions were up 55% from 23 to 24.

They look like they're increasing this year as well.

Property damage collisions are up also.

But what traffic education is are traffic warnings.

So every time an officer stops you, right?

They don't have to give you a ticket.

They have some discretion to give you a warning.

Our warnings are up 11%, but our traffic citations are down 19%.

Does anybody have any idea why that might be?

I'm trying to keep stay on the good side of everybody.

We're trying to be nicer.

That's right.

We're trying to be nicer.

It's not that.

It's actually that our calls for service are going up.

So officers are have less time to do some of the self-initiated, self-directed activity out there of sitting on on busy intersections and maybe enforcing stoplight violations.

They're out taking the burglary reports and the theft reports and those kinds of things.

So they have less discretionary time.

So that's why you're seeing our citations, our traffic citations go down a little bit.

We do have a traffic unit, and we try to direct them to the problem areas, but even they are spending more times on traffic accidents because that's what they do is they investigate those those traffic crashes, and they're spending a lot of time on that.

So their self-initiated self-directed time is decreasing a little bit as we go.

And Chief, are the are the bubbles uh traffic citations or or uh uh those were just and just crime reports and those kinds of things in the uh if I can get back to it.

So those are actual calls for service in those areas.

So you can kind of see in the highlights there where we're taking our calls for service.

Right.

And they are just traffic accidents, traffic crashes.

That's Amber Patrol, my public information officer who keeps me on track.

So thank you.

Those are all the anything, anything that is traffic related where there is an actual stat on there is what that is.

So that big circles 226 either traffic stops, citations, collisions, education or something.

226 of those occurred in that area.

So you'll see like Erie Parkway and County Lynn.

We do a lot of traffic incidents, traffic-related things there.

And then you see the big intersections that we go to.

So you bet.

So this is a slide that I want to draw your attention to, and it's probably the one that concerns me the most.

In 2022, we had a one-minute response time to priority one calls.

Priority one calls are crimes in progress, crimes against person, some type of public safety issue that's going on right now when the officer needs to get there.

It was one minute in 2022, it's increased to three minutes in 2023 and continues to be three minutes in 2024.

We don't have numbers for 2025 yet, uh, but I anticipate as our calls for service go up and our community continues to grow, that that will increase if we don't increase staffing and increase the availability of an officer on the street.

And is that average time?

That is average time.

Doesn't mean every time it takes three minutes, it just means sometimes it takes more, sometimes it takes less.

Great question.

Uh, usually our minimum staffing in a 24-hour period, believe it or not, is I hate to put this out to the public, but I'm gonna two officers and one sergeant.

That's our minimum staffing.

We are at minimum sometimes because of the amount of leave that officers get, the injuries, the traffic, the the training they have to go to, court they have to attend.

So sometimes there are often one sergeant and two officers on the street to cover 48 square miles and answer the calls for service.

Priority two and three calls average about so things that aren't in progress, but maybe they're a crime, uh, there's different things that go on there.

The they're about a three to six minute response time.

So not too bad.

That's that's a good response time.

I'm not saying our response time is bad right now.

I just don't want it to get into that that realm.

What's your ideal minimum of the officer?

I I would like to make that currently in the next two to three years.

I would like to see that go to one sergeant and three officers.

That gives you basically a two-officer team that we could divide up into districts, keep them in their geographically responsible areas, like maybe a weld in a Boulder County, and and they would at least have an officer and a backup to respond to an in-progress call.

If if we have one traffic accident at Erie Parkway and county line, say it's an injury accident with two cars, that's immediately three officers.

That's two for traffic control, one to the interview witnesses, one to collect evidence, take pictures and investigate the accident.

So we can very quickly tie up our minimum of staffing, and that's why I would like to increase that as we get busier.

This slide right here shows how long it takes from the time we post for a police officer.

We're in a process right now where we say, hey, we're hiring police officers to the point where we get them to be a solo officer in number of days.

So if that that person who applies with us does not have their post certification, they have to go to an academy.

It takes us 307 days from the time of posting to get a solo officer.

If they do have their post certification, they happen to an academy, say we hire them from another office, another police department, it takes us 234 days because we still have to put them through field training.

We still have to teach them how welded in Boulder County prosecute cases.

We have to show them where everything's at.

It just takes a long time.

So that's that's part of what creates our staffing concerns is we want to stay ahead of that because as soon as an officer leaves, I'm almost a year out, depending on what we hire to to replacing that officer.

And and the town manager has been great about letting us kind of stay ahead of that a little bit with with over hires and those kinds of things, but truly full staffing is a challenge for every department in the state right now.

How come the lateral takes so long?

You're talking lateral that if you hired somebody, say from Denver or Right, right.

Yeah.

So when they come from Denver, we they still have to come here, learn the geography.

They have to learn our dispatch center, like our protocols on the radio.

They have to learn Weld County, Boulder County jail procedures.

They have to learn there's there's a lot to the job that I just can't take a Denver officer and put him in Erie and put him to work.

He has to learn how we do it, how our community wants to be policed, our culture, our our directives.

We have a 600-page directive manual that they need to learn on use of force and pursuits and all of the procedures that go around policing.

But that's that's a great question.

You would think it'd be faster.

And we try to accelerate them, and this is an average.

Sometimes we can get them out before then, uh, but sometimes they take a little longer, yeah, depending on where they come from.

Any other questions on that one?

So a lot of information on this slide.

It's a little busy, but I tried to cram a lot on there.

So these are the calls for service and the communities that they serve, as well as the number of officers they have and the calls for service per officer.

And you look at this, you think we're doing pretty good.

We're not we're not too bad.

We're 452 calls per officer, boulders at 381.

So our officers actually take more calls for service in a year than boulder police officers do.

Uh Parker's much of further ahead of us.

There, there's 653 calls per officer.

And so you can see all those different communities and where they range.

I I think the best place to be is between four to six hundred calls for service per officer.

Um we're we're doing okay in that regard, but uh, but we want to keep it in that range.

And to do that, we're gonna have to, as our calls for service increase, we're gonna have to keep increasing our staffing.

So Frederick's doing great.

Who has the least?

It's looks like it's Frederick.

But they're very staffed, and I have some other ones on the slide too.

Yes, sir.

So this is ranked by total calls, not yeah, total calls.

It's ranked by total calls, and then I then we have other information to the side there.

So does it population or any other factors, or it's purely based on calls?

Well, that's a great question, and that's that's kind of my next couple of slides.

Is yes, you want to staff for your calls for service.

If you've got a if you've got a large population and and not too many calls for service, you don't need a ton of police officers.

That's why we're getting away kind of with what we're doing right now.

We have a sergeant and two officers on, they can usually handle the call load, but there are times that they may not be able to.

Uh, one of the reasons I think that Boulder staffs hire is because of the potential of what could happen in your community, increases the more population you get.

So I'll move on to the next slide here.

And and this is this is the officers per thousand population.

Not the greatest measure for staffing police, like I said, you want to look at calls for service.

But what population brings is potential, potential for accidents, potential for domestic violence, potential for we have 5,000 kids in our high school, and heaven forbid we have something happen there that would require a large police response.

So you you have to staff a little bit for the potential of what could happen in your community.

And when you look at this slide, we're we're at the lowest officers per thousand of all of these agencies.

I don't know of another agency in Colorado that staffs less officers per thousand population than us, which is great.

We're a safe community.

We want to stay that way.

But as our commercial increases, as the crime rate continues to go up, we're gonna have to bring that number up a little bit just to deal with the potential of what could happen in the community.

It's interesting to me that La Piet, which is smaller than us, it's in burst.

So it tells that there's other things going on.

Exactly.

We have different things going on.

Right.

And if you look at their calls for service, um, they are uh just barely ahead of us.

And I would guess that we'll probably pass them up in the next couple years.

Right.

We're already quite a bit bigger population wise, right?

Exactly.

Exactly.

Less than eight, yeah.

They are, and that's why their officers per thousand are about 1.7.

25%, I'm guessing.

We're 25% bigger than they are, just doing rough math, but right.

And so now we're gonna start talking about facilities a little bit.

Um, I'm gonna finish with this slide and then pass it over to some folks who know more about that than I do.

But but this is uh square footage per officer, and not much on here except this is where we're at today.

We are at 374 square feet per officer.

Uh Baldur's the same.

Frederick is the same, they desperately need new building.

Uh Lewisville is about the same.

Um, but then you look at Lafayette, they have a larger building than us.

Windsor has a larger building than us considerably.

They just finished a building up in Windsor uh for their 52 officers, I think.

And and they've got a 50,000 square foot building up there.

Firestone, they've got a lot of room, and then Parker's up there too.

And this was basically all the information we could get from other agencies based on their staffing and then also their square footage of their facilities.

And currently we are designed in our building now to house 50 officers, and our authorized strength is 48.

So if we want to hire more officers, we're gonna have to expand the building.

And so, with that, I'm gonna turn this over to Eric, right?

Chad Chad.

Chad's gonna take this first slide, and then we'll uh talk about where we are in our design process.

Yeah, so um currently uh we've been working with uh DTC and France equipment on board on the pre-construction phase, um, and we're at 100% design development.

Um I think Eric introduced himself and DTC, but uh I think um you know, if we uh we talk about where we're at, we still have uh um about four or five months of construction documentation that to finish up, but right now at that 100% design development phase.

And so um still some assumptions, but we're starting to hone in on uh you know uh more uh solidified numbers and so yeah, I think we can go on to the next slide.

So it would be four or five more months before you'll say, okay, this is it, or do you feel like you'll be able to make reasonable estimates in a month from now or two months from now?

I only asked that because of our budget setting process and timing.

Yeah, I think uh so I'll talk about I've got a slide coming up in there that talks a little bit of what you can expect going forward in terms of you know what will be bringing before council and when.

So but uh moving slide.

Um so here is a uh just a comparison to build on what Chief was talking about with square footage uh per number of sworn.

That kind of gives you some other uh comparisons uh that weren't on that slide.

Um, and then we do have some uh facility costs for other public safety buildings, and these are escalated to current, so not all these were completed uh within the past year, and so we've we've used that six percent uh is what we've uh used for escalation for each of these, and so you can see their uh cost per square foot, and that's just a rough uh cost per square foot.

There's a lot of details and nuances with that, but it gives you an idea of kind of um where other facilities um what they're showing cost per square foot wise.

Um, and I'll let Derek with Franz and Pittman talk about any more details that I may not.

Yeah, no, I think when we kind of put together this chart, we were really kind of looking at similar uh facilities, whether it's geographically with like Firestone, Windure, which is closer to like the size uh we're looking at doing Tinmouth was kind of similar construction type.

Um Broomfield is in design, probably a little bit after where we're at, so it's a project kind of tracking along the same path we are, and then Lone Tree, which is one that is actually just under construction, so we're kind of trying to find cost of projects that have been bought out or in the design phase or have been completed over the course of the last couple years.

So that's kind of like Jack said, just try to keep it high level to make sure basically where we're at, we're matching our program with other budgets that are comparable to similar facilities.

So when I look at this, what does the 6% tax?

Do they have a property tax that is 6%, or is it a sales tax?

From our understanding, I think that was funded from a 6% sales tax increase.

But I'd have to verify that's a big sales tax.

How do their businesses survive?

Yeah.

Yeah, if you could double back on exactly how they're paying.

And then I think the COPs, you know, generally, if I understand this and I've learned a lot since I got elected, they're paid from the general fund.

So how do the two or the one that uh Tim says general fund, that they just have 23 million dollars sitting in their general fund?

They paid cash for it.

Mayor, I can tell you on the Windsor one, yes.

Almost positive on the Timmouth too.

And I'm still mad that they have 22,000 square feet for 13 officers, but anyway, I think they overbuilt.

I'm kidding, they probably built for growth.

But I but I do believe that at least Windsor for sure they had, I don't know if it was a public safety impact fund or if it just was straight a general fund, but they did just pay cash.

That's the way to do it.

Right.

Yeah, I also add that COPs don't have to be um from your general fund, they can be from any applicable funding source.

So they might have an impact fund or something like that that they're paying out of as well.

So but I think you're correct.

I don't think Windsor or Timbith went into debt to build their buildings.

I think they have the cash on hand.

I think that's what you're asking.

Exactly.

Do you know uh with Windsor being, you know, roughly depending on which one we're looking at, 100 to uh 150 uh less cost per square foot.

Was there anything in the design in that that was significantly different than what we were able to kind of keep those costs down because it looks like that was built fairly recently.

Yeah, it was built fairly recently.

I think probably the major difference between Windsor is it's much more of a pad ready site.

So I think your site costs are significantly less than some of these other projects.

So the one thing when you are comparing costs amongst projects, you always got to make sure you're comparing apple to apples.

Sure.

There's a lot of different terms of total cost, which is hard cost and soft cost combined.

So, like that's the whole package.

You'll see a lot of things where people are just talking about construction costs, so that would be hard cost.

Sometimes that includes site and building.

You also hear the term site and building when you're talking about numbers.

So there's a lot of things that you kind of have to verify on that one.

From my understanding, is that the site costs were significantly less than a lot of the other projects.

Um, I where that was built, I think there was some from planned development for it.

A lot of the infrastructure was already there that they didn't really have to um include in this project.

So there's there's probably a maybe I don't know it for sure, a little bit more behind the scenes, right?

From the cost, but um generally speaking, I'm I'm speculating that's why it's it's lower per per square foot.

I believe that fire strong numbers six tenths of one percent.

Six tenths.

That's probably yeah, that sounds about right.

We missed that point in there.

Okay, yeah, that's more makes a lot more sense.

Yeah, a lot more sense.

It's easy mix up.

As long as you're not adding zeros, you're good.

Right, cool.

Yeah, I think we should uh to Derrick's point, I think this uh uh echo that that uh we are going off of information available through public on that.

So there's a lot of uh details also in that uh as you mentioned.

Yeah, so mayor council again, thanks for your time.

Here combs, DTC architects principal uh oversee this project as a project executive.

Um when this RFP came out, the RFP that council approved to be released, uh illustrated a full remodel of the current facility of 18,000 square feet with the provision of adding roughly 32,000 square feet to the project.

Um we're proud to say that our team has worked hard.

We're we're within one and a half percent of that.

We're just under that 32,000 square foot addition.

Um so you'll see some of the areas later on in the slide deck that starts to illustrate how we've uh kind of manipulated to get the same operational excellence that we need and and flow and those sorts of things for the officers, but say within that those parameters that the RFP is uh defined.

So with that, we wanted to make sure um we're living within the boundaries established early on, not only from a square footage, but also from meeting the operational needs of of the officers, not compromising on space, but not giving more than's necessary.

Um, we are working closely with that town staff as well as the officers on how do we phase this project in terms of how do we build it, right?

Because we can't just take all of the officers out of a facility and have them just work out off the in the middle of their cars that you know in the parking lot.

I don't know, but we have to find a spot for them to continue their operations while we add to the building while renovate the current facility as it is.

Um the other component that was a highly important in this project was really looking at the aesthetics that are currently there and making sure that we're aligning with those aesthetics as we continue to move forward so that it doesn't look like something completely new or something totally different, right?

We wanted it to look like homogenous project at the end of the day.

So in terms of schedule, it's it's a little tough to read with the gray sheet there at the bottom.

But uh as Chad had mentioned, we're we're just starting the construction documents, the CD phase of this project.

Um sometime at the turn of the year around December, January, we'll we'll wrap up and we'll have CDs that are complete and done.

At which point we'll turn those over to the building department for their plan reviews and start looking at program or I'm sorry, permitting so we can obtain those permits and start doing construction.

So that's a quick highlight.

The then move that's a quick highlight on the design side, then we'll move into construction after, which has us somewhere kind of in a two-phase starting in 2026 and then continuing into 2027.

Does that make sense?

Okay.

So Brian.

All right, thanks, Eric.

Uh, so the next part of our presentation is really to peel back the curtains a little bit and show you kind of where we've been and and how we've gotten to the design as it stands today.

Uh, this this slide here is showing the existing site with basically the two main options we looked at for the building addition.

Um there's a large requirement for parking, both staff and uh public parking, and uh we're really maximizing the site.

So our our analysis really looked at an east expansion, uh, which would have been challenging because it would have had to eat in into or go over the detention pond, but it may have allowed us to keep the utilities that are already constructed in place.

And then we looked at an option where we put the addition on the west side, uh, which requires us to move the utilities but at a lesser cost than dealing with developing or redeveloping the pond.

Um and the other thing we really liked about it was it allowed us to tuck the addition a little bit up against the hill, kind of hides it from the neighbors a little more, which we knew would be uh liked by the public.

Um, and it also gives a more maybe secure and uh compact area for the part parking for the um officers as well.

Um questions on our site.

So the west expansion is what you want to do?

We did, yeah, we ended up developing the west expansion, uh, which allows the facility also to maintain the same image off a county line and the corner at Tolene really doesn't change.

So it allows the the new construction to be in internal to the site.

Mayor was that east expansion.

They told me the expansion would have to be on stilts.

I didn't think overwater.

The architects got excited, but we need a police boat.

So my question is um about undermining.

We know that there's a mine in the area.

Is there any undermining under the site on the west side that would increase costs at some point?

Um not to our knowledge.

Um the new addition will be constructed like the existing building, which was basically rammed aggregate piers where we basically secure the whole site or improve the whole site beneath the level of the building.

And I believe our geotech has shown additional concerns.

Yeah, yeah, we've done geotech borings and survey to identify any of those potential subsurface geotech considerations and none of that spares.

So we're away from it.

Um when the original building was constructed, or believe it was uh pre-cast tilt up, is this a similar construction?

Yeah, we'll we'll get into this a little bit with the massing, but um to answer your question in short.

Uh tilt up is not really uh still an option here.

We are using pre-cast.

So we're working with the two main precast manufacturers in Colorado to develop um basically patterns and and molds and things that would mimic exactly what they did with the tilt up, but we don't have the space on the site to build the tilt-up slabs to tilt up.

Um, we did explore that real quick because as Eric noted, we're trying to do our best um to match or mimic what's uh what's existing.

So uh so kind of how we we've gotten to you know through the design is really through a high level of engagement with with the police, and uh we've we've also tacked onto that starting to work with the public, uh recently having a public meeting.

But um the way we do that is one we we started by vetting the initial program done by the previous architect, um, analyzing the existing building, the plans, walking the facility, interviewing um the officers and staff, um, and then sitting down in a series of uh charrettes um one on one with with the staff, bringing uh really Heather and her team bringing in the different sort of critical functional components of the PD and having interactive sessions.

But um the way we do that is one, we we started by vetting the initial program done by the previous architect, um, analyzing the existing building, the plans, walking the facility, interviewing um the officers and staff, um, and then sitting down in a series of uh charrettes um one on one with with the staff, bringing uh really Heather and her team bringing in the different sort of critical functional components of the PD and having interactive sessions, um, and that allowed us to you know really nail down the right adjacencies, the right layout and flow for the for the different spaces within the facility, all the while we're trying to fit this into the footprint that it needed to fit into, one for that overall um square footage, as Eric noted, but also uh limited site um to really expand.

So, as you saw on that site plan, we kind of had a pretty compact footprint we had to achieve.

Um, but by sitting down with the staff and working through all those interactive uh discussions, we're able to come to uh very solution-based um concept.

And um, maybe just jump to the next one and we can answer questions here.

Um so this is this is three of our massing.

We had others, but these are the three main massing studies we did for the facility.

You're looking at on the top set of images, the view.

If we were in an airplane at Tallin and County line, uh you can see really in the foreground the facility as it stands today, except we've filled in there's a little missing piece on the southeast corner.

We filled that in to give the facade um a complete sort of I guess elevation along county line, and then we studied the the we needed a two-story space really to fill all the program within this building, and so we really studied what is that mass behind the existing building look like to the west.

Um, all the while we're we're looking at uh just like you said about the tilt up or pre-cast, we're looking at the the look of the facility, um and the you know, we ended up with.

I'll just kind of sneak to the end here to the far right.

We really were trying to play off of the forms uh with the existing courthouse currently with the overhangs, uh the wood timbers, um, the look of the faux wood, uh, the Trex material that's making the curve cut through the front entry, um, and really working to come up with a composition that looks like it was the original design.

Um, so taking our D2C you know, egos out of it, we're looking at what is the existing architecture, how do we carry that vernacular into the new facility, both with the materials and the forms, um, and doing what we think is the best for how it fits into the neighborhood uh fabric as well.

Next one.

So kind of talked two parts on this one.

Uh working through uh basically the hope streams needs all the gamut of what what police would use this facility for, what the town could use it for, um, and designing out a proper floor plan.

Um, we worked back and forth with the building um to really balance those wants and needs with what is in the program.

And so uh as Eric said, we're proud to say that we were able to actually earmark a footprint probably bigger than what we're actually going to build, which saves you some space for the future, um, but also makes sure that we have constructibility and functionality uh of what they need in this in this initial building so that they never have to build again if if they don't outgrow it.

So we're not we're not planning a facility that when they move in doesn't function and they need another piece or another phase to add on to.

Um the the pieces in orange here would truly be uh for that a future expansion if officers you know it increased past what chief noted um and we needed to add additional sally ports and and office space.

So yeah, we've accounted for the future.

You say 15,000 square foot reduction to start in budget.

So was the original plan and what are we ending up with?

Um I'm not sure, maybe maybe you guys have the total numbers.

If you recall, we started with 18,000 square feet of renovation.

And RFP had mentioned 32,000 square feet, which gets you to right around that 60, or I'm sorry, 50,000 square feet.

Um when we looked at a full programmatic growth, like as Brian mentioned at the very start of the project, we look at current trends, current needs, programmatic space required to operate effectively as experts.

You know, we've done a lot of these facilities.

We we bring that knowledge in and say, Okay, Chief Chad, DC, you're missing these components.

Is are these necessary?

Are you know, for instance, canine unit um evidence, right?

Evidence is a big one right now.

You never get rid of it, right?

It kind of collects forever.

So we start talking through those things, and ultimately at the end of the day, we're somewhere around 65,000 square feet at one point if you were to build the full max build out of the project.

Um we've since worked to reduce to cut back to find ways to to multi-function spaces, and and Miguel's gonna talk about that in a little bit.

We've got a couple spaces where instead of being dedicated to a specific function, they're gonna be used for multiple functions because today they're used as this item, and then tomorrow that we use as a different function versus just dedicated for that one thing.

So we've reduced about 15,000 square feet by being economical by being frugal with the kind of layout multi-functioning spaces.

Right.

And just great summary of it.

Some of the things we like, we had talked about what would it be feasible to have a basement for expansion for long-term evidence storage for whatever.

We decided do we really need the basement?

When are we going to use the basement?

When's our evidence going to overflow?

When do we when are we going to do it?

We decided, you know, the basement, we don't need the basement.

We don't need it at this point.

We had two vehicle processing bays in here where you can pull a vehicle in and process it for evidence and have it in an enclosed space.

We went to one because quite frankly, it's gonna be a while before we have enough staff to be process two vehicles at the same time.

So one vehicle processing base enough.

So those kinds of things we worked with D2C on to keep it within the scope of the original project of 50,000 square feet.

Yeah, I should say to summarize it in our world, it's like we've self-value engineered the design with police and make sure we're not the ones saying, hey, let's just cut all 15,000 square feet, you'll build it later.

No problem, right?

So it's it's a thoughtful way of saying, can we live without the space and get it back down to the 50,000?

Sorry, did you have something to add?

I was gonna mention the uh basement.

Sorry, I want to make sure that we got brought up.

So all right.

Well, thanks, Brian.

Um, so here on the slide, again, Elvin Santiago.

So um, this is the latest floor plan that we have.

So basically, to kind of give you an orientation on the plan north is actually the existing facility.

On the plan south is the expansion that we're doing.

So, and you can see that's on the left side on the right side is the second floor, so they kind of stack.

So, the uh challenge that we had is an existing facility.

We want to make sure that we work with those uh constraints of the footprint.

At the same time, we want to make sure that the facility keeps running.

You can just shut down the whole facility.

So when we expanded the building on the rest side, that gives us an opportunity to build a two-story while the police tilts works, and then once that gets done, we can actually move everybody into the two-story and renovate the existing.

So uh a few things that we want to make sure that we provided was uh a kind of separation from the public to the uh to the staff.

So we do have some places where only the public can get to and have the uh police be on the backside, and then we also want to make sure that uh it flows, right?

There's departments that need to associate with each other, how they communicate, is their collaboration spaces that they can you know get together and just do the work uh efficiently.

So those were you know some of the main items that we want to make sure that we provided here, and again is a facing project.

So, how do we take departments, move them out, and then put them back in place after we're done with the uh whole renovation and maintain public access and parking throughout the case?

Correct, yeah.

So um, we created facing plans.

We've been talking to the uh build department on the uh how do we get people out doing construction?

So there's a lot of things happening behind the scene to make sure that we are providing a space and a facing plan that works with the whole department and the building department at the same time.

Um the site, um this is the new layout that we have.

We are maintaining the same entrance of Tallinn.

So progress, you know, there wouldn't be any work done on that space.

Currently, your facility does not have uh a secure area for the patrols.

So we think that's very uh critical nowadays.

So we are providing that separation between public and the uh parking for the patrols.

Um we added quite a few parkings, now we have 56, I think it is for the public, and we increased the uh patrol to 103, um, which takes account for the future growth that they are gonna have.

So then let me go here talk about the uh what the building looks like on the exterior.

All right, thank you, Owen.

Uh so for the next couple of slides, I'm gonna walk you guys through uh what the exterior of the addition and renovation look like, and also some shots of the interior.

Uh so here looking at the north entry, this is off of Tilene Road, and this is what we are envisioning the project will look like uh at it's at the final construction.

Uh, we want to keep as much of the existing uh as available to the public, the big round wooden wall.

Uh, we always thought it had a very inclusive or very inviting uh or was it inviting element for the PD.

And so we wanted to work off that and also continue the architecture so that we weren't detracting from any of the already pre-established uh vernacular that was in there.

Sorry, in the area.

And then looking at this perspective here, this is from County Line Road on the south end of the building.

And so from here you can see where the existing building is, along with the addition where we close off the southeast corner.

Uh, but then you also see the two-story addition uh to the west and how it perches over the exterior uh the existing building, uh further uh further extending that uh architectural uh vocabulary of the um kicker columns and the overhang roof.

One thing I'll point out is we will not have a nice green lawn like that.

It's gonna be a retention lawn because some parts be nice, so we can always do it.

And so looking at this perspective here, this is the western pedestrian path.

And so a couple weeks ago we actually met with the uh neighborhood um HOA, and uh we actually got some really good feedback from them, and from that feedback, we were able to incorporate some of the elements uh that they had brought up into our design.

Um, and so what we really wanted to show here is we will not be taking too much space or we won't be uh essentially lowering the value of that path.

We want to keep it as um open to the public as possible, and something that uh the public will want to continue to use and not just be turned away from now that the police facility is going to be uh constructed on the east side.

And slide, and then this here is a sample shot of what the police renovation will look like from the second uh floor of one of the residential homes uh on the west.

And so when we did a couple sidewalks, we realized that not many of the homes have views uh to the police facility, and so I think we only counted one of them having that.

Um yeah, we just with this, we want to show a different perspective of that pathway, show that it's still very much open, uh welcoming for the public to use, um, but while also uh increasing the size of the police facility on the other side of that fence in order to meet the needs of the community.

I do want to add that the importance of that fence that you're seeing is for safety for officers, it's a must-have.

You know, right now the officers are at risk when they get out of their patrol vehicle and walk into their job each day, they put their lives at risk with the the public who often isn't very thrilled, you know.

And so right now they're easily accessible by adding that fence.

We we start to put a visual barrier, a distraction between the public and an officer getting out of their vehicle.

So this is a must-needed component that that has to happen.

How high is that six feet six feet?

What's there today?

Nothing's absolutely nothing.

It's a burm.

So one of the things, Mayor, that concerns me about our current facility too is that we don't have that secured parking.

And so I'll see families on bicycle going through our police parking.

And of course, we have officers who are responding to mergers.

We're very careful, we're conscious that the parking lot's open, but anybody can drive in and out, and they do, and they ride bikes and all kinds of things through our parking lot.

It's just not safe for anyone to have that open.

You can pretty much sit up on that berm and they would you would not see someone from below.

Sorry, we go.

All right, all right.

So taking us into the interior.

Uh, these are one of the uh images that or this image that we're showing here is of one of the central spines uh that we're showing throughout the project.

And so what we want to show with this are two things.

One, we wanted to show how uh the building will now flow, it's got a lot wider corridors, um, and we're also introducing a lot of natural light, uh, mainly because we were very conscientious when it came to sustainability.

Uh, we want to make sure that we're incorporating uh sustainable design practices in the building, so that one not only the building uh is very attractive, it's very nice to be in, but also it keeps into mind uh budgetary constraints and all that.

And so this spine is literally uh point between the two uh existing building, the new addition, and so this is where uh staff would enter.

Uh, where officers will go in and out to get to their cars and those kinds of things.

And looking at this, this is uh the main patrol briefing room that we have on the first floor, and what we really want to get across with this room is the functionality and the versatility of these rooms that we're creating.

Uh right now we're showing it as a briefing room.

Uh and that is the main intention of that space.

However, depending on what future growth uh demands and the growth of the team, um we wanted to be able to have rooms that not only just serve one purpose but can be used for different types of activities.

This room here is the EOC, the emergency operation center.

And much like the briefing room, it was designed with that same uh design thinking of having versatility over time.

Um right now we're showing it with TV screens and monitors uh for that EOC.

However, it can easily be converted into a classroom setting uh in order to give instruction uh whether to the PD or to the public itself.

Can we um can we rent the EOC or have uh IGAs for the EOC?

You know, we will we I don't we could certainly hold training.

We we could certainly hold trainings there.

We there's a where the courtroom is currently, will be an area for uh community meetings, those kinds of things.

I'd I'd much rather have those things there.

But if you're talking about having other agencies in here, yeah, we could do trainings in here, we could do um we could have we would have other agencies in there, likely if there's an EOC incident that's large enough that we need to bring them in.

Um I mean, like Lafayette, do they have their own EOC?

They they did, and it turned into uh storage it's okay.

And so could we have an IGA with Lafayette where they pay for service?

I'm trying to make sure that we are you know, we're conscientious that if we have an asset that's unique, sure, right?

Not every police, every city has an EOC in this region.

Nine out of ten do.

It's it's a standard function, yeah.

And I think just to clarify, I know McGill said public space.

This is not a public space.

The the EOC is on a secure side.

So when you design a law enforcement facility, you you truly should be able to draw a line through the building, and this is where the public and and just random individuals can come, and this is where law enforcement operations occur.

Um the EOC is one of those functions that happens on the secure side that in a time of need, natural disaster, big event.

This this gets utilized by the various agencies that come to support that incident.

Um, not so much by the public, well, none at all by the public.

Yeah, and I'm not suggesting the public.

Correct.

Yeah, game role.

I'm part of the emergency response team, and we use Jeff CO ZOC.

Yeah.

Um, and so you know, there's some agreement between the government agency I would for and the county, correct.

Anyway, it would room is going to be empty most of the time, except when there is an emergency.

The question is, can other law enforcement agencies use it or use it for training, whatever to Mayor?

We'd probably do that through an IGA and certainly make it available to Lafayette and surrounding agencies that don't have an EOC.

Yeah, right, right.

Um, the the attraction of having an EOC in town is that you're on site.

So think about our fireworks show.

That's a large deployment for us.

We have fire department there, we have us there, we have public works, we there's all kinds of public safety concerns that we would actually operate out of this during our special events, and we could we could offer it to Lafayette, we could do those.

I don't know how attractive it would be to them because it's not in their community.

And that's what we could certainly do that.

But the question is if it has the technology in there, right?

And their EOC is used for storage, sure.

It may have some value to them, right?

Absolutely.

Or or any of the others.

Yeah, and we are seeing new technologies get used in that space, right?

Like drone flights and some other things happen in those facilities for for spot shotter and some of the other kind of functionalities that are starting to see your emerging trends.

Yeah.

And we're starting to see the space get used more and more.

Like on our fireworks show, we could have command staff in here along with supervisors, and we could actually live cast our drone footage of the event into this room.

Right.

And we would be able to manage that event from here.

Yeah, cool.

And is it fair to assume in the cost is all the technology that you need to make sure this is effective and works?

It is, yes.

And one of the biggest costs is generator.

You always have to have power, even in an emergency here.

So that's that's a big piece of it too.

Well, and I should note that the uh generator is backing up the entire facility.

So that's that's something that we would as a critical facility would incorporate regardless.

This is another space that's backed up by the generator.

Yeah.

Uh would be a diesel generator, but um, we are looking at electrify the building and do offsets with solar in the future.

So yeah, is there a reason for diesel over natural gas?

Um, I think I'll jump in availability.

Yeah, um, is a big one.

Natural gas um is plausible, but a lot of times, you know, like diesel is readily available, it's quicker, it's cheaper.

You can get it in spare needs, also you know, you also can't sever's line diesel.

It's there, it's more try and improve and fail safe and cheaper.

Yeah, during public emergency, sometimes you lose natural gas service, and we're gonna have to have some way to still run your generator.

All right, so continuing on with the second floor.

Here we're looking at the second floor corridor spine.

And so this part here is where the delineation between the existing and the new building shows on the second floor.

Uh and what we want to show here, one is that we're providing or we are being uh energy conscientious.

Uh we are providing a lot of daylight into the space.

Uh this in particular faces east.

Uh and so we would get a lot of that morning uh to afternoon light uh entering the building.

And uh along with that, uh again, it goes with that flow that we're trying to have inside the PD.

Uh, we want to create uh large corridor spaces so that there's moments of interaction.

Um, but also it's just a welcoming and inviting space uh for anybody in the building.

And this uh perspective here, this is of the break room that we are proposing right outside the EOC.

Uh that door actually next to the vending machines is the EOC, um, just to kind of place you in the building.

But again, going with that uh natural day lighting.

So this is on that opposite corner.

This would get a lot of that afternoon to evening light.

Um, but we also want to make sure, wanted to make sure that this space again not only is just a break room, but it can also be repurposed into a large gathering space, uh, whether if it's the PD having a large cookout um or any kind of town event that's going on, we wanted to make sure that this break room uh facilitates all purposes.

And so they got to talk about all the glossy pictures now.

The phone's so now we get to I get to bring it back to what it all costs.

And back in March, um uh at the uh session where we presented capital improvement projects and the plans.

We uh showed a rough order magnitude conceptual budget, a 39.4 number that you've seen.

Those are based on 2024, and then we showed at that time uh year after year 10% cost escalation.

We've adjusted that in this presentation and um to a six percent, which is uh we're between five and six.

That 10% was really coming out of the COVID years, even in 21-22, you saw 12%, and then it kind of leveled out.

Um, so we we projected kind of conservatively at that time a 10%.

So we've adjusted that.

Um, and again, when I say uh the current cost estimate at this phase of design is conservative, it means we should be at the high level.

Um we will have opportunities and through cost modeling sessions to select options that'll help us on costs.

Um that's what we our partners and friends of Pittman are excellent at is providing a good better best for lack of a better way to describe that, saying, okay, in this case we may need the best.

In this case, we can go with a good, and that's just uh a way to save 100,000 here or whatever it might be.

Um so I'll let Derek talk a little bit more about the phase of design.

But I mentioned that uh 100% design development.

We've got a lot of the uh new systems like mechanical electrical plumbing, pretty well defined.

Uh, some of the others will get more refined in that construction documentation phase.

So yeah, so I wanted to kind of quickly just explain the process behind like how the numbers are generated, how the estimating the budgeting is going.

Um, really up to this point.

Um, basically today you could say um how we price is we we take a couple different strategies.

So when a project is at a conceptual or schematic phase, really what you have to do is you we use peer projects so we find similar projects like that slide we had talked about earlier, whether that's construction type, similar facilities, or similar um mechanical type systems.

Um we also work with our trade partners um to get current market data really kind of generate what you think of like cost per square foot.

So think of budgeting for a project like a funnel, the beginning of the project or the conceptual phases, you start wide, right?

And then as design progresses, pricing can get refined, and you you start to tighten numbers, right?

So where we're at with at the design development phase, we're kind of 60% there, right through design.

So we've got that 40% left to get through.

So we're trying to forecast ahead to basically when construction would start, but then as we've already talked, there's two years of construction that we have to forecast as well.

Um so all of that is taken to account.

We do cost model um really at the conceptual phases to your question you asked about concrete and the existing.

We looked at what uh a structural steel building would be.

We looked at site concrete, uh casting it, which is what the existing was done.

We're on um pre-cast concrete, which is fabricated off site, trucked in.

Um, again, to make sure that we're being conscientious with the cost um up to this point, and then really where we're at now, we've we've been under ongoing um pretty heavy pricing exercise with the design development, but we actually have engineered drawings, so we're actually able to see how many linear foot of pipe like we have in the building, how many doors, how many walls.

So, really, we're at that tipping point to where cost, it's it's not this it's much more defined, right?

It's not just based off of something from peer projects.

Still some assumptions with some lots of assumptions still that we have to go through, right?

Like I said, we've got 40% of design or another four plus months that we've got to get through.

Um, but those assumptions, and we'll continue to cost model from a from a budgetary perspective.

We've identified the big systems, whether it's the mechanical system, the generator, um, those are all of your large cost items.

You're starting to get into okay, let's look at um a little bit of mechanical zoning or carpet types, doors, interior finishes a little bit, where can we have um you know casework, those types of costs that it's it's much smaller on the scale, right?

So um that's where we're ongoing within the next couple weeks, we'll have all that information back.

Um, and then that kind of leads to the to the next slide is just talking about Jad already hit at it, is just trying to project or anticipate inflation, right?

So um that's always the big question, right?

What is inflation?

How do you how do you identify it?

And really what we do is we we talk to our trade partners and then we monitor the market, and what we've seen is anywhere from like that half to three quarters of a percent per month, which equates to about six percent per year.

Um that's been relatively stable, I would say, over the last oh 12 months.

Um equipment costs, commodity costs, those have again stabilized, but we're still seeing labor costs increase.

So all of those there are variables with that.

Um, so how you identify that is is staying in tune with that.

But like Chad said, we've kind of arrived at that that six percent um for sake of of this slide and presentation.

So this slide is is familiar, it was from the March presentation, which we updated with that six percent.

The other costs um are kind of showing the costs of uh delay, one of which is you know, there is a need right now for space, and I think Chief mentioned it to add any officers at all.

Um there's a need for space, and so we've included that additional retrofitting costs um in there.

Um, you know, there's there's you can you know look at that chart and see kind of some of the other numbers that went into that overall cost of this under five million, uh, which is what we're projecting for the delay.

Um so I just wanted to kind of outline you know, going forward what to expect if uh you know council gives direction um to use certificates of participation for this project, and again, that is to keep on track to the January 2026 construction start.

And the key for that is to um get some of these things, especially early release bid packages, which I'll talk about, solidified uh so that we can lock in subcontractor pricing, lock in subcontractor schedules, for instance, Pittman's team schedule.

Um but uh uh we would be very quickly in the next month, October, bringing forward the first bid package, which would be amendment one to the CMAR.

So we have that pre-construction agreement.

We would then bring to council amendment one for this early release bid package.

And so I provided some examples there of what's in that package, and that's no by no means an exhaustive list.

Some of which is to lock in some contractor schedules, others maybe to uh actually uh procure um you know materials like structural steel, the mechanical and electrical gear, for example, can be very long lead items, subject escalation, and so we're trying to lock those in.

Um following that, uh November 5th.

Um this uh project does require a special review use, so it does require planning commission hearing.

Um, and then uh a re a review of that special review use and site development plan.

So uh we're bringing a package before that just because of again trying to lock in those those costs for 2025.

Um this process is slightly different uh than town hall, where a special review use was not required.

Um so we did not have that uh that hearing that was required.

Um then later in November we'd be bringing uh the second bid package.

Um and I show their earthwork utilities, uh, some examples there.

Um again, that is uh largely due to the phasing.

Uh so we need to get uh the site package under contract and moving so that we can start to um move uh major utilities to the the building, get that um in line and start to move some dirt, and then also uh set up the parking for uh the first phase.

So getting the public parking access, the access is figured out for um PE and the public.

Um so that's that second bid package.

Uh then December 9th, uh, we would uh bring the uh assuming you know, approval uh you know, or uh direction from the plan commission, um, you know, their guidance, uh we would come with the site development plan approval um at that December 9th meeting.

February 24th, then we would bring the uh final amendment um for the guaranteed maximum price.

So what's coming very quickly, really, Derek, uh hopefully you're tracking the schedule, but we're looking at September, the third week in September to really have that uh first bid package pricing.

Um, and they'll take some time to put that together and and refine it before we would see it.

Um, and so that's coming very quickly.

Um, you know, timing-wise, this meeting preempted that, so very quickly we'll have that first, and then you know, on the heels of that, we'll have an initial guaranteed maximum price.

And so we'll set that fixed limit of construction again through that cost modeling uh exercise where we're gonna look work to reduce cost from where we start.

Um, and then that initial guaranteed price kind of locks in what our fixed limit of construction would be.

And then finally, we'd have that guaranteed maximum price that uh you know solidifies that that amount.

And Derek, please let me know if I left anything out or no one we have to.

No, and I think the just to highlight the point of buying it out in various chunks, is really to reduce the risk of cost increases or changes, and also, like I mentioned, labor is going up.

Um, so locking in manpower capabilities for quality subcontractors, um, which will also help keep that cost stable.

So and then the other great thing is right now we are actually lining up to uh really bid out the project at great times for subcontractors.

I think there's two, there's really two periods you always want to try to hit for projects, and that's coming out of summer or early fall.

Everybody's trying to get their work from next year, right?

On the books, and then it's that first of the year.

And so we're actually with the schedule we're on, we're actually able to hit both windows for the meat of buying out the project.

Which yeah, I'll I'll add there's nine billion dollars of uh bond grant requests of last year's ballots in the state of Colorado for school projects.

6.9 billion, which have passed.

So architecturally construction-wise, we're starting to see some of those trades and subcontractors are filling their books and their dockets now.

Um they're getting that backlog, right?

And so if we don't execute quickly and we keep pushing out, those trades are going to get busier and busier, which then obviously leads to inflation at greater rates.

We're starting to see that happen already.

So this is an interesting economic um time that we're in.

Um because we're seeing like the city of Denver laying off people, and I suspect they're not going to be moving forward with any capital project that they can delay.

Um, so that'll be a decrease in demand.

I think your your point about school districts that have already passed bonds, right?

That's going to be rolling, certainly St.

Brain and uh BDSD have bonds that we're hopeful for brand new school um in Parkdale here before long in a bond that was passed long ago.

Um, so I get that.

I I am uh I'm paranoid for the economy right now, and that's partially because if you will follow the stock market and you look at the dot-com bust, I'm not talking about just this.

The tech stocks, the the big seven, right?

The Amazons and the the Facebooks and the uh Nvidia's and all that, uh their trading evaluations higher than the dot-com bus time.

And so are we headed for some kind of correction?

I don't know, but there's a lot more being talked about it, which could crater the whole you know, drive and all that.

On the flip side, nothing may happen.

Yeah, and you know, it could be 10% inflation.

Um I just looked up the um uh the mortison construction cost index, which I'm guessing is uh something used in industry, and it's dropped to 5.2% in the second quarter.

So something is going down there, and I appreciate you updating this from the the 10% that was in here before.

I guess that's a long way of saying it's really hard to predict what's gonna happen.

Um and we've got a lot of capital things to build in this city, not just the police station, but hopefully a future rec center, uh the Leon A World Umter as well.

Well, mayor, maybe that's a good segue for me for this last slide.

This is the last thing we have.

Um I want to thank D2C, Francine Pittman, Chad.

There's a ton of work that's gone into the design of this building.

Um hopefully we establish that there's a need.

I don't think Aries gonna stop growing anytime soon.

Uh may not grow as fast as we all expect, or it may grow faster, but but the police department works very hard to stay in touch with this community.

We we work hard to provide public safety in a way that this community expects.

We try and stay involved with the community, make sure that they understand that it's their police department, and in my opinion, as a your police chief, if we want to continue to provide that level of service, we need to increase the size of the department and increase the size of the building.

Glad I'm not on council because you guys got to make the difficult decisions, and I get that.

Um but the direction we need from the council tonight when you can.

I'm not gonna say tonight, I don't want to paint anybody in corner.

I know you have a retreat coming up, is either decide to fund this with certificates of participation, which is the timeline that Chad talked about, and we get moving on this thing and hopefully save uh the community some money.

You can define decide to fund with COPs and maybe explore a future public safety tax to help pay it off and maybe pay for uh future needs, because we will have future needs if we continue to grow, or you can decide to fund it through a ballot measure without using COPs, which would delay it into 2027, likely or beyond, and probably increase the cost.

Or you can say, gosh, I don't want a police department.

I wouldn't recommend that last one at all.

But but that's kind of the other.

Uh I do appreciate the council's time.

Thank you for letting us update you.

Uh like I said, we're not trying to put the pressure on.

We're just at a point in this process where we're ready to go.

We just got to decide or have you guys decide how to pay for it.

Yeah, and on um I'm John Pittman.

I um I would I would love to I'm the old guy in the room.

John worked on our first building.

But um, I've been in the construction market here in Colorado for uh 40 years.

And uh I've lived in Parker for 40 years.

When I moved into Parker, it was it was a two-lane road, and uh and there were 5,000 of us that live there.

And uh fact in the pioneery where I was where I uh raised my children, we start off with a party line, believe it or not.

And in 84.

So that's how much it's changed.

What we've seen is uh I've lived through three recessions in my career.

The first one when I was trying to get a job, which really stuck, you know.

Uh, and then and then the other two.

Uh I started my company uh 35 years ago.

Um I'll tell you that uh in 2019, we built uh the schools for Inglewood School District.

We built three of their four schools.

Those schools were built at $350 thereabouts a square foot.

We are gonna build two of the schools, uh, one for Douglas County and one for Cherry uh Cherry Creek School District.

$750 a square foot.

I used to build ORs for that operating rooms when I was uh when I was uh a young guy.

And and I I'm always just taken back.

During COVID, we saw pricing dip about four percent, and then when it was over with, it it was like something I'd never seen, the the amount of increases.

So uh my first degree is in economics.

And I'm a follower just like you are, mayor.

I I've I love hearing you talk like that because that's exactly what the way I approach business as well.

I I love hearing you talk like that because that's exactly what the way I approach business as well.

The um what what I've seen in my career is just an increase, increase, increase, increase.

And whether we have positive population growth or we have uh a small amount of negative population growth, I think I think it we it just doesn't stop and um so uh at the risk of sounding self-serving because we're the builders, and I and I know that if I were you, that's what I would be thinking.

I'd I do want to share that with you because it's something we faced uh for every year that we're in business.

And and for the last 10 years, I've keep expecting that recession.

I keep thinking, well, what it's gonna hit this year.

It's gonna hit this year, is it this year?

If we if we as a company had been tentative, we would have missed out in the in the in the the longest growth cycle of my career.

And uh so I feel I feel really thankful that uh that we didn't because we would have missed out.

So that's my that's what uh what I would share with you guys.

All right, and I'm gonna see if council has any other comments and then I'll wrap it up.

Uh council member Bear.

I just had a couple of questions about the um really just one question for the items that are remaining for this year, are those already included in the budget for 2020 back?

Which items are you we were uh, I mean, it's just listed out that there's I'm not even sure what would be associated as far as costs with these things, but like the um is there anything that we would have to pay for the bid?

Yes.

Um so I can tell you budgetarily, we have three and a half million dollars budgeted for all of the design and everything.

Um we rolled some of that into this year, likely some of that will roll into next year.

I think our spent to date is a getting close to 1.3 million um for this year so far.

Um, and then in addition to that, we do have the debt payment um budgeted 2.5 million in anticipation of issuing the COP.

So that is also in the budget.

Um so if we were to decide to go forward and issue depending on the overall cost of the COPs, most of that funding would be available.

We may have to do a slight budget amendment for the payment itself, but I would I would defer to chat on any of the items that if there would be any additional money we would need to appropriate, but I think majority of it we do have funding in place for.

Budgeted, and I just uh wonder about supplemental if that actually needs to be requested in 2025.

Um we have the money budgeted, but that's the question, I guess.

Yeah, no, I mean the the funding is um appropriated in 2025 for the design, so it's there in place.

I think my actual the actual bid packages, I think is what you're asking about that we agree for.

Each one of those would have a substantial cost and accent the first one being very substantial.

I don't know if you have any preliminary numbers, but we definitely don't want to go too far just because we have two other topics tonight.

Okay.

Um but yes, I'm just curious if they if we if something would be coming to council to prove more we would have to initiate the process of issuing the debt in order to go under contract because we would need the funding in place for those things to happen.

Yes.

Okay.

Right.

Any other questions?

Councilmember O'Connor.

Um so the uh conceptual budget was 39.4, and the current estimates 47.7.

Does that increase the um the um the length of the COP if we go down that path, or is the amount coming out of the general fund going to be more every year to keep to 20 years?

It's a great question.

So it does not uh lengthen the COPs and still stay at that 30-year threshold or 20 year if we wanted to pay more yearly.

Um, but it does increase the yearly uh COP payment amount to about three million dollars at that threshold, and that's give or take, you know, kind of depending on interest rates.

We're seeing interest rates fluctuate from 4.5 to 5.25 right now, and it's day to day.

Um, and so I have more models than in front of me right now that I even care to tell you about.

Um, but what I can tell you is that that would increase that.

Now the good news is is that we um you know some of that is funded from the general fund, but some of that could be funded from the police facilities impact fund, which we can offset some of those costs.

Um, but yes, it would increase that payment, um, and we would have to um you know look at that, adjust accordingly.

Yes, but we do have budgets very structured, um, you know, kind of with the new cost in mind.

And um so we would choose to go with option two to fund COP and then explore uh public safety tax to pay off the COP.

How is there um is there a set um amount of or can has can you pay a CP COP off early?

How early can you pay it off?

Yes, so you can always pay off debt early.

Um I it would really depend on how the um the dedicated funding was structured.

Um you know, if we did it as a general um you know facilities improvement tax, then that's something where we could you know appropriate however much we wanted to towards the debt payment.

Um and then if we you know got a significant amount, we could um discuss with our bond count bond council about uh you know what an early payoff would look like.

We could also um explore a refunding where we would actually lower the interest rate if interest rates started to come in.

So there's different options that we could explore, but essentially a tax like that would allow us the flexibility.

That's part of the the advantage of COPs, it allows us that flexibility to decide how we want to pay.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yeah, of course.

I get just a clarification on the interest rates.

So if the interest rates do go down, um we can refinance.

Essentially, yes, yeah.

And yeah, it they call it refunding, but yes, it's just refinancing.

We have fancy government work.

You have to hold them for what is a minimum number of years five years or yeah, there's a minimum number of years.

It's usually five to eight years, it really just depends on on how your debt's structured.

But yes, you do have to hold them for a certain amount of time, but you can you know talk to your bond council about the best way to do that payoff.

Okay.

Mayor Pratem.

Uh so just following up on what uh council member O'Connor was saying, just with the increased cost, um at a high level, um, I understand our ritual estimates, you know, it was very much kind of a proof of concept issue, but going because we've had a you know, it's roughly a 20% increase in cost from rural enlistments.

Can you kind of give me an idea of where those cost increase came about from our original estimates to the final one?

So yeah, I think that's uh it came through the design process, obviously.

That was to your point very high level, and it does those were late 2023, early 2024 numbers at 39.4.

And so with you know, we have adjusted in this presentation six percent.

We were showing the 10%, which would be around that.

I think some of the things that uh we've incorporated um, for example, the electrification of the of the facility.

And so that's uh a little bit uh more expensive mechanical package, um, you know, the site work, um, we knew um Derek, I'll let you speak uh a little bit more on the cost, but um it's really the the cost of uh what we've arrived at, and that is at the 50,000 roughly building.

So is electrification something that uh could be done like down the line, or does that have to be okay?

Uh it's gonna be an upfront.

Yeah, um and there would be uh opportunity down the road.

We have uh solar right now on a building that does offset roughly 70% of the utility cost, or would be opportunity with this type of roof and this type of facility to expand that and offset some of the ongoing uh operational costs for the building.

Um my other question, so and I'd harp on this lots.

Um but going back to the current general obligation bonds, and it my understanding it was approximately nine, 10 million dollars that once the rec centers paid off that we we would potentially have available okay.

So that's a total 10 million week a bond against or the yeah, I'd have to look at the exact number.

I think it was nine, nine and a half or something like that.

But yes.

Um and essentially we could um if that tax were to be extended by voters, um, that money would be available for us as long as the um the ballot language allowed for us to utilize it for purposes that were aligned with the PD buildings fancy way to say it would have to be allowable.

Um but if that were the case, then yes, we could um earmark that funding as it came in bond against and then use that funding towards it towards the payment.

Yeah, we said we could do that.

So I guess just as a generality uh finishing up on this and what might be presented to us in the future money is fungible, so whether it's COPs, uh the existing general obligation bond combination of those things, uh if we can look at what makes the most sense, because I know when we were talking before with COPs that we we've kind of got other things other than the police station, and if we can sort of kill multiple birds with one stone, um that might be a better sell to the public.

And if you go to something like uh a safety tax, uh knowing that we're trying to be responsible with the with the other monies that were allotted that that that hopefully that might give us a better chance of success.

I don't think we're supposed to be killing any birds, so just okay.

Sorry, I bad bad metaphor there.

So on the system would be like are we planning to use any heat pump to make 40?

We do.

We have a heat pump water heater, for example.

Um the all-electric is similar to this facility where we have a ER, it was called ERV, the ventilation recovery, and so we're bringing back uh exhausted air that's uh gonna help with building efficiency.

I think to answer your question, both of your questions actually is one of the things is the thermal envelope, and so that is a uh a cost that we we've uh you know that goes to the overall cost that is gonna help with that energy efficiency from Windows.

We uh we're looking at what's called a high performance um and we're working with our partners, um D2C and uh energetics, which is our energy efficiency consultant, and also Excel Energy actually, um uh in that uh energy design assistance where we look at um you know what makes the most sense from a financial standpoint to invest in the technologies, the equipment, uh, the envelope really to make this building uh tight so that when we do have these all electric units are highly efficient.

Uh again, we're recovering that ventilated air, and we've got a thermal envelope that's gonna hold it.

And so it's being a very uh needing to be a resilient and um um you know critical facility.

We've thought about those sort of things.

So one of the costs would be an emergency generator that backs up the entire facility.

Um so those are some of the costs that have gone into that.

Um we are also again not in this phase, but looking at uh at least putting infrastructure in to be able to expand our solar both on the rooftop and with uh parking canopies, and so the 2023 uh hailstorm created millions of dollars of damage for vehicles, at least uh vehicles not spared from that, and so we're considering those types of uh um things as well.

So yeah, so I feel like decision or not crime doesn't stop, and even like if it takes more time, it'll cost more.

We should figure out something and do it right now.

Okay.

All right, seeing no other questions, I'll wrap it up here.

Um I'll I'll start by saying that I don't think there's any question of whether we need a expansion of the police station.

So let's just get that off the table, right?

Um it's a big deal.

And then kind of where um councilmember Professor Romelli is going was going, I think we need to make the right decision for the long term, even if it causes us some pain in the short term.

And so when I think about the electrification, I think some people may say keep the cost down, do natural gas, but I think that will create an additional cost down the road, it may be a decade or two decades down the road when our society fully starts to convert to electricity.

So is it better now to have that in the building?

I'm probably on the side that says yes, get it done right the first time uh and be done with it.

Um we are going into a retreat on Saturday to basically set priorities, and part of that is discussing um funding mechanisms for all these needs.

We'll be informed um from one data point from the surveys that have come.

I think many of us were surprised that um a um a sales tax increase to support the police station was the number one choice with COPs um below that, but it was you know not that far apart, but something we need to discuss um to figure out where we go with that.

I am all for a public safe safety tax because we're not generating enough money from the growth, but I'm also um gonna be advocating for the impact fees when we do that study to ask the question what should our impact fees be for public safety?

So we do generate more money uh for the new homes because we're not done.

Um when I met with you a few months ago, I think you said this will take us to roughly 66,000 people.

We're at roughly 40,000 now.

That means there's gonna be another council in the future that's gonna be wrestling with where's the um uh substation um out there, and so I I feel like we need to get that revenue stream so we can do what Windsor or Tabernace or not Tabernace um Tibetan.

Thank you.

Uh we haven't paid any principle off on those, so that's something else we need to wrestle with, and it may be we don't do anything.

We just start paying them off, and that's playing in the background.

And then to your point earlier about the the recenter bonds, which are almost paid off, can we utilize that in some other way?

So lots of moving pieces, hang tight, and I don't think it'll be much longer before um council will have a direction.

Yeah, we have to say that.

We do.

All right.

We will launch into our second topic tonight, which is item 25478, the sustainability action plan update.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Um, good evening, Mayor, Council members.

Thank you so much for having this discussion with us tonight.

So as a refresher, this was a request when we came to you all in late January with the contract with Lotus to update our sustainability plan from 2019.

So the plan tonight is to present to you all some information on engagement, greenhouse gas inventory updates, um, kind of what's been done so far, and really guard your feedback.

We want to hear from you all.

Um, what what could we be missing?

What more should we add?

What questions do you have to so that we can then take that information, incorporate it and continue moving forward.

Um we have a lot more engagement left to do with this plan, um, but we have done a lot so far as well.

So again, my name is Erica Thorley, sustainability manager with the town.

This is Emma Marino, sustainability and water conservation specialist with our team.

And then we also have Molly Marcasselli with us, who is a climate mitigation and resilience planning associate with Lotus Engineering and Sustainability.

So Molly, please take it away.

Thank you, Erica.

Uh good evening, Mayor, Council members.

Thanks for having me.

Um we can just jump right in.

Again, I'm Molly Marcuselli with Lotus.

Um excited to be here.

And I guess I'm driving.

Okay.

Um so quick overview of just some slides we'll share with you guys.

Uh we have a couple slides on project background, kind of just explaining why why we're here, why we're updating the sustainability plan and the project timeline.

We have a few slides on the um 2023 greenhouse gas emissions inventory that our data team conducted back in 2023.

And then we'll provide an update on all the stakeholder and community engagement that we've done today and some of the key findings from those efforts.

And then we have a few strategies with just a high-level summary of um the strategies we're thinking of including in the plan.

And then uh just a couple next up slides.

So with that, just some project background.

So in 2019, the town of Erie adopted their first um sustainability plan.

This was a five-year plan.

And uh very excited to share that about 80% of those strategies from that plan have been implemented.

Um that since that is a five-year plan, it is about time now to reevaluate that plan.

Within that declaration, there were a set of directives that were outlined that this plan can help address.

So one of those was to adopt a 2025 climate action plan.

That's essentially what this plan update is now that we have the emissions inventory data.

Um, we're able to use that to um better tailor our strategies to help Erie really reduce its emissions.

Um, some other directives that we think this plan can capture is expanding renewable energy across all town operations, expanding multimodal um zero and low emission transportation, and also expanding uh waste diversion across Erie.

And lastly, the beneficial electrification plan was adopted in May of this year, and we think that this plan can really complement the efforts that in the implementation of that plan.

And as I mentioned, the emissions inventory was conducted in both 2021 and 2023.

So we're very excited to have this data, and that's really going to help guide the direction of this plan.

Lastly, we wanted to just share the community survey results that came out a couple weeks ago.

Very excited to share that the majority of the survey respondents felt that the sustainability programs and town involvement in rolling out those programs was very important to them.

So we think that through this plan we can continue to expand upon and improve all of those existing programs that the town and residents really like.

And this is just a timeline for the project.

So we kicked this project off in April.

We conducted an existing conditions analysis.

So with that, we do kind of a landscape review of existing plans and policies in Erie.

We look at regional plans as well just to see where there may be gaps and how this plan can address those gaps.

We also want to make sure we're not reinventing the wheel and just building off of existing efforts versus redoing them.

We also conducted an equity analysis.

This is still in draft form, but we used a variety of state and federal equity mapping tools to better understand what vulnerabilities might exist in Erie and what climate risks may exist in and around Erie and how this plan can help address those risks.

Over the summer, we conducted a good amount of engagement.

So we held a staff focus group where we convened key staff to give them an overview of the plan and get some high-level feedback on the direction of the plan from them.

We tabled at the farmers market to get some feedback from the attendees there.

We convened a steering committee where we invited key town staff and community representatives to we're going to meet with them four times over the course of the project to help with building out strategies and again just providing really crucial input to the plan.

And then a few weeks ago, we hosted a charette where we invited town electeds and leadership to again help us identify priorities for the plan.

I forgot to mention we also tabled at the Arbor Earth Day celebration back in April and received feedback from a lot of the attendees there.

So now moving into the fall, we are beginning strategy development.

We just sent our first draft strategies to our steering committee a couple days ago.

Very excited to get their feedback on those.

And we'll continue with that strategy development.

We'll refine those throughout the fall.

And then once the strategies are in a final place, we'll move to what we call strategy prioritization exercise where we identify, we work with the town to identify key metrics to kind of rank each strategy against and identify the top five, not top five, they'll all be ranked, but just the top strategies that are most important to Erie for implementation.

And then we'll also select five strategies to model for greenhouse gas emissions reductions and cost.

We're not sure what those strategies will be yet, but we'll go through an exercise with town staff and other stakeholders to figure out what strategies we'd like to see modeled.

And then in the winter, moving into early 2026, we'll begin writing the plan and aim for plan adoption.

Thanks.

So as Molly already mentioned, the big difference between our 2019 plan, which is a beautiful plan, and much of the content is evergreen.

And RUS was run by our sustainability advisory board, which is just fantastic.

And actually a few of the people that we're engaging with now were part of that 2019 plan, which has been really neat as well.

But it didn't have the greenhouse gas emission inventories.

It didn't have the data of where are what are the biggest emission sources for the town and what do those look like, right?

Let's actually quantify them.

So a big difference is adding these inventories and this layer of data to the new plan.

So that will be really that climate action piece that Molly mentioned earlier.

Thanks, Erica.

So we just have a couple slides on Erie's greenhouse gas emissions.

So this slide is showing community-wide greenhouse gas emissions in Erie by sector in 2023.

So if you're looking at that pie, you can see that orange slice is waste.

So about one-third of Erie's emissions are coming mostly from the landfill.

It is important to note that a very, very small percentage of that is attributable to Erie residents.

But because the landfills are located within Erie's boundaries, it is global protocol to include those in the inventory.

Moving to the right, that green wedge is commercial and industrial buildings.

So we've got about 8% of Erie's emissions coming from those types of buildings.

About 30% is coming from residential buildings, 10% from oil and gas activity, and then about 19% from transportation.

So one of the key takeaways here is that if you add up the transportation and the buildings pieces of the pie, they make up almost 60% of Erie's emissions.

So those will be really important areas of focus as we're developing strategies for this plan.

How do these compare to other comparably sized towns?

I would say Erie's pretty comparable.

The landfill, of course, skews things for Erie.

I'd say the waste emissions in Erie are much larger than other communities.

But in terms of if if we took out the landfill, they'd be very comparable to neighboring communities.

I do think Erie skews a little bit more on the residential side as well.

So some communities may have more emissions coming from commercial and industrial, but just because Erie is mostly residential, they have a lot of emissions coming from there.

All right, so this slide, uh, there's a lot going on here, but the way to read this is that middle circle is what we just looked at.

So that's the emissions by sector.

And then that outer circle are all of the sources within each sector.

So you can see again, the vast majority of the 33% of the waste is coming from the landfill.

Um, about five percent of those 33% of emissions are here from Erie residents.

And then you can see in the blue, residential.

So um, sorry, I'm trying to can't read that far.

Just trying to zoom in on the screen.

Um which one?

The residential.

Residential fuel use.

And then electricity and natural gas.

Okay, thank you.

Light blue is natural gas.

Okay, thank you.

So, yeah, about 16% is coming from residential electricity use, 16% of that 30%.

Um, and then that light blue is residential natural gas use, um, and that's about 12.4%.

And then if you look at the green wedge, this one is is um grouped a little weirdly.

I think for the final plan, we may parse out the oil and gas.

But right now, um, where it says fugitive emissions, that includes um natural gas leakage, but most of that is coming from the oil and gas activity.

It's for some reason lumped under commercial.

Um, but you can see that uh for electricity use in commercial buildings, um, about 5.8% of that 18% is coming from electricity use in commercial buildings.

And then looking at transportation of the 19% of emissions coming from transportation, about uh 9.7% is coming from transboundary aviation.

So that's essentially Erie residents flying in and out of uh the Denver airport.

And then um about 8.8% for on-road gasoline.

So that's just cars moving about Erie.

Is it anything about how much pollution we've had from Monday port?

Yeah, so we also have a wedge in here for inboundary aviation.

It's 0.4%, and so that's the municipal airport.

A little hard to see there, but um go ahead.

Um, if we're able to track transboundary aviation uh by Erie residents, why can't we track uh the landfill that's attributable to people outside of Erie?

We we can, and we do.

Um, so about 5% of those landfill emissions are from Erie residents.

Um, so so much by far the majority is coming from outside.

There's also some just forever emissions that will be calculated from landfills.

So even the landfills that have been closed and retired, there's just going to be ongoing emissions from those landfills as part of the best practice for these these inventories.

Um, but yes, we do know that it is a very small slice of the pie that are from Erie residents.

So, and maybe I asked the question the wrong way.

In this uh pie chart, we're uh attributing transboundary aviation to Erie residents.

It seems like that's an attempt to capture activities that go outside our boundaries but are still attributable to Erie residents.

It seems like going back to the previous slide, we would not that the landfill isn't generating gas, but maybe we need two pies.

One is everything and one is um just Erie residence impact.

And I and I know there's a way of calculating this, there's different levels of the calculations.

Yeah.

That I don't see why we couldn't do that.

I think we could parse that out and identify that.

Um, because I think there would be a lot of impact for residents to see, okay, this is what we're responsible for, but we still have all these other emissions.

The amount that's coming from Erie residents.

Okay, I mean, is that accurate?

Yeah, yeah, we can certainly point that out, especially in the plan.

Yeah, we can certainly point that out, especially in the plan.

Um, again, just our data team wants to follow the global protocol.

Um, so a lot of communities, you know, infrastructure needs to occur.

So, for example, Denver, they have all the emissions from DIA, not just like Denver residents because that falls within their border.

Um, but we certainly can point that out in the plan and make it very clear that you know, this is the portion that we really have the most control over.

Okay.

So uh one other key takeaway just from this slide is um United Power and XL Energy have really ambitious goals to run the electric grid on 100% renewable energy by 2050.

Um, so over the next couple decades, we will see the electricity pieces of this pie, particularly in the building sector and the transportation sector, shrink down to zero.

So natural gas is going to be really important at pinpoint with our strategies.

These next couple slides are what we call a business as usual forecast.

So our data team essentially took the results from our greenhouse gas emissions inventory and did a little bit of research and used some state and federal data sets to forecast Erie's emissions over time through 2050.

So this shows what Erie's emissions would look like through 2050 if Erie were not to take any action to reduce its emissions.

So we have two scenarios here.

This first slide shows the low electrification scenario.

These scenarios come from Rocky Mountain Institute's energy policy simulator.

So what this means is it's just a kind of a slower, nor like lower adoption of electric infrastructure in buildings, EV adoption, things like that.

Um, and the next slide shows a high electrification scenario.

Um of the key takeaways uh from this slide.

And let me sorry get mine up because I cannot read that.

Um so if you look out to 2050, uh, between 2021 and 2050, Erie's emissions would increase by about 8%.

Again, if Erie were to do nothing to reduce emissions, and we use this low electrification scenario.

Um, and you can see again that waste is that gray wedge that's gonna be the biggest contributor of emissions through 2050, um, followed by the transportation sector, followed by residential buildings.

And then this next slide shows the high electrification scenario.

So the only difference with this, it still assumes that Erie is taking no action to reduce its emissions, but um it does have a higher rate of building electrification and community-wide EV adoption.

Um, and in this scenario, ERE's emissions will decrease by about three percent.

Um, so a good good sign that even if Erie does nothing, there is a small decrease in emissions.

Um, however, you can see that large uh portion of these emissions are still coming from waste transportation and the building sector.

How are you calculating uh population growth along with the reduction of waste?

I mean, this we're assuming there's a lot of different things.

Yeah, I think they're using um forecasts from the state demographer's office.

Okay, yeah.

So even though we're likely to hopefully build out our commercial buildings more.

There's some rather seems like there's some rather aggressive assumptions in here that causing our emissions to actually drop.

Yeah, so that would be United Power and XL Energies um greening of their grid of the electric grid.

So all the electricity emissions in buildings basically shrink all the way down.

So we have a quick question about the growth estimates from the demographic state demographic's office.

I know from Dr.

Cog that um their growth estimates have been a little off, and it's something we've been talking about for several months.

They also use the same um estimates.

I'm just wondering if there's a way so that we make sure that we're we have achievable goals in this plan.

Is there a way to double check the progress the projection?

I know that our transportation team has um that's who who's pointed it out to me is our transportation team has different ideas about what that might look like.

Yeah, I think that's certainly something we can look into.

I can check with our data team and see if there's other estimates they can grab from that.

All right, so that was the greenhouse gas emissions inventory and the business as usual forecasting for Erie.

Um these next few slides will just provide an update on the stakeholder and community engagement that we've done to date and some of the key findings.

So, as I mentioned back in April, we tabled at the Arbor Earth Day Festival.

Um there were about 1,000 attendees there.

We had a couple exercises going where we had the next slides will show the posters, but we had a couple questions we were asking attendees, and then we had some dot voting exercises where they were ranking their top three most important focus areas for the plan.

So in total, we received about 433 dot votes and 70 responses on those two questions that we had.

So that's hard to see, but that is the dot voting exercise.

That table on the right side of the slide shows all of the focus areas we included and all of the dot votes that we received for each of those focus areas.

And then we had a question that asked why is sustainability and climate action important in Erie.

We received about 27 responses.

Some of the themes we heard were public health and safety, natural resources, being a leader in the region, the importance of local action, longevity and future generations.

Another question we asked was what environmental considerations should be priority as the Erie community grows.

We got about 43 responses on this poster.

There are lots of key themes here.

I won't go over all of them, but just some to highlight local and clean energy, multimodal transportation access, waste diversion, curbside composting, high density and mixed use, sensible growth, things like that.

We also attended five farmers markets this summer, and I have to give a shout out to our resilience action plan team, which is actually right over here on the back row.

There are three masters in the environment students from CU Boulder who will be coming to you in about a month to talk about that plan.

But they also are fantastic at engaging the community with resilience.

So we also we talked about the resilience plan as well as the sustainability action plan at these events.

About 350 interactions across those five markets, and we found that we we actually had an informal questionnaire with a QR code for those residents that stopped by, and we got responses that it was important or very important for all Erie residents to protect its natural environment, which was very helpful.

And then some of the other top priorities we heard were public transportation and multimodal access, waste diversion, nature-based solutions, and renewable energy.

We do have staff in our steering committee meetings, but this is additional key staff that we wanted to make sure we were able to engage and get their feedback on this plan and its development.

So we have talked with them about the focus areas and strategy topics and received general support for those.

And then some of the ideas that have come from this group are benchmarking for smaller buildings, geothermal for municipal buildings, transit access improvements, e-bike and e-car share programs, and organic collection throughout town.

All right, so and as we mentioned, we convened a steering committee, and so we reached out to key community representatives in Erie, key town staff, anyone we thought had a really good pulse on the Erie community.

And we are planning to host four meetings with them.

We've had one so far.

So this slide shows the results from that meeting.

And we got some feedback on the vision statement for the plan.

We did some visioning exercises to help inform some of the guiding principles we'll have for the plan.

And we also shared with them the strategies from the 2019 plan, and they helped formulate some new creative strategies to include in this new plan.

So some of the things we heard from that steering committee, some of the core values identified that we plan to integrate into the vision statement, the guiding principles, and the strategies as we build them out, is that quality of life here is very important.

We want to make sure we have achievable goals, equity and access as we implement these strategies, community resilience and vitality, preserving the rural and natural character of Erie, clean, healthy, and safe environment for Erie residents, fiscal responsibility, and workforce development and opportunity as well.

So we also hosted a charette a couple weeks ago.

That's where we invited town electeds and leadership to do some visioning exercises for the plan and help again guide the direction of the plan.

And some of the priorities identified from that meeting were walkability and bikeability around Erie, education and outreach, Erie as a leader and leading by example and waste diversion.

So just some other engagement tactics.

So we were planning to conduct a community-wide survey, but because the community survey was just the timing of it, we didn't want to have two surveys out to the community at once.

So we sort of stopped to just our in-person engagement over the summer, but did just want to point out here that Erie Sustainability does have a web page on the town website that highlights all of the sustainability accomplishments going on around Erie.

There's a lot of educational resources on there around available rebates and incentives and other really helpful programs for residents and businesses.

And we are working on an engage Erie webpage for the sustainability plan where community members can add their input onto that webpage.

It is currently under development, but should be up and running shortly.

So just to bring all that together, some of the emerging themes we've seen from all this engagement.

Lots of focus areas are very important to everyone we've engaged with.

Waste diversion, very important, multimodal transportation, connectivity, walkability, expanding renewable energy, and of course, protecting natural resources.

We identified were improving quality of life, equity, resilience, protecting Erie's open space and public health.

And we also just wanted to note that to date, everyone we've engaged with has been very supportive of this effort, which is very exciting.

So with that, I'll spend just a couple minutes going over strategy development.

Again, we're still in the early stages of this.

But just wanted to kind of go over where we how we develop these strategies.

So it comes from a variety of different things, one being from that existing conditions analysis that we did in the beginning.

So we look at Town of Erie adopted plans, we look at countywide and regional plans, identify synergies, gaps, challenges, you know, where we can build on existing efforts.

A lot of the strategy development is also going to be led by all of the engagement we've done, whether it's through the tabling events that we did with the general community, the feedback we get from the steering committee, staff, elected leadership, and then a little bit of consultant expertise as well.

So these are the sectors we these are in draft form, but we think these will be the sectors for the plan.

So we have buildings and energy use that's going to be looking at building electrification, energy efficiency, things like that.

We have waste and materials diversion, so that will just be improving waste diversion efforts across the town, transportation and mobility, looking at vehicle electrification adoption, expanding transit and transportation infrastructure, nature-based solutions, which will be around protecting the natural environment.

We also have a few strategies around agriculture and community agriculture, and then education and outreach, which will be a really cross-cutting theme, just making sure that the community is aware of all of the programs occurring in Erie and empowered to take action and move sustainability forward.

And just wanted to note that we do we did identify equity and resilience as really concepts that will be woven into the plan.

Is that like a timer or something?

Okay.

Not for me anymore.

So the next couple slides are just the these aren't the strategies per se.

We have a lot of strategies for each sector right now in draft form.

This is just kind of summarizing the strategies that we've developed to date.

So you can see under buildings and energy, we have some strategies around advanced energy code adoption, making sure that Erie continues on that three-year energy code adoption cycle and going above code when possible.

Benchmarking and reporting, really targeting programs and outreach for low-income households around energy efficiency upgrades and electrification, and then renewable energy adoption, whether that be municipal buildings or community-wide.

For transportation mobility, we're looking at again improving and promoting trails, paths, and alternative transportation, as Erica mentioned, car and bike and e-bike share, continued community and town electric vehicle adoption, and we've also heard from the steering committee that subsidized transit passes would be interesting to explore.

Then waste and materials diversion, looking at expanding expanding the recycling center services, curbside composting, construction and demolition waste diversion, and of course, education, which is very important in successful waste diversion.

For nature-based solutions, we're looking at community agriculture efforts, funding for regenerative agriculture, water-wise native landscaping, pollinator-friendly landscaping, green infrastructure practices, and then education and outreach again touches all of the sectors.

So looking at Erie's Green Business Network, expanding outreach to promote energy efficiency and renewable energy resources that are available to residents, and then advocacy and education around multimodal transportation.

And just wanted to note here that uh with this plan, and now that we have the emissions inventory and we're going to be modeling some of these strategies, we plan to create some short-term and long-term greenhouse gas um reduction goals.

Um, and so we haven't done that yet, but we plan to have those in the plan to help keep Erie on track to um reduce its emissions through 2015.

So, last slide looking ahead, these are the next steps.

So we have three more meetings uh to hold with the steering committee.

We're holding one uh this Friday to go over in depth the draft strategies and collect their feedback on them.

Um we'll have one or two more staff focused groups um so they can vet the strategies as well.

Um we'll continue refining the strategies, we'll do that strategy prioritization exercise and identify the most important strategies for Erie.

We'll do some cost impact and greenhouse gas impact modeling for five of the strategies that will help us inform the goal and target setting for the plan.

And then um, as I mentioned, looking at early 2026 for plan adoption.

And that's all we have.

All right.

Thank you, Willie.

Very comprehensive.

I was at the charette, so I got to kind of sneak peek of some of this and the discussion.

Questions from council.

I just um wanted to say about the subsidized transit passes.

I think that's interesting.

I hadn't heard that before.

And um at NATA this month, we got an update from RTD talking about kind of the different pass things, including um the different passes that are available, including EcoPass and um looking for ways to partner with different like I think that's the one that they partner with schools and things.

So that'll be interesting to see if we can get more service and then partner with RTD to implement those.

That'd be exciting.

Am I right?

Remembering that was that EcoPass is what they yeah, they were talking about the EcoPasses, and there's been an uptick in the demand for those because they're tied to the updated pricing that RTD has.

So maybe we they in the past, sometimes that if you didn't have a wide range of people using them, they really weren't cost effective for an organization.

But with the new pricing, maybe they are.

So yeah, you should definitely look into that.

Does Erie have Ecopass?

No, we don't currently.

We looked at it about five or six years ago, and at that point we had only a few employees that would be able to take advantage of it in part because we have virtually no transit lines.

Um it was gonna be on a per employee basis, it was way more than we could justify.

But that may have, I hope that has changed.

So I asked that because when I worked at Boulder Valley Schools, we did have to pay, although it wasn't that much, less than a hundred bucks a year.

And then in mind, so I do have an ecopass that somebody's paying for that isn't me.

Yes, we would appreciate it about need a student at mind.

Yeah, we we heard a couple of a few people expressed interest in that, so we're excited to explore that further.

So well, thanks for the presentation, and it's like stay very comprehensive, and I think your community engagement and information is has been great.

I think it shows up in the survey as well.

That people are informed and they're excited about the sustainability.

You know, I'd like to see solar on everything every building uh that that we have.

So um, and and there anywhere else we could put it.

And you know, back to to transit, you know, um, it's it's this high on almost all the surveys, but we're kind of handicapped with uh just the one line and you know the desubsidized passes.

I mean, uh what can we do to get the ridership up?

I know the the new bus stations will help and going off to uh Erie High School, um, that's gonna help, but uh you know, whatever we could think of or work on to try and get the ridership up, that would be huge.

The change in the Landsa Haloop, which is going through one level.

Right.

We've got one land in his lake, and that might have a plans.

Another thing is they do uh RTD service changes three times a year.

And so I think if we can get in front of them and say with these kinds of plans and say these are our plans, this is what we've heard from the community.

There's like they're it's important to them.

Um we can begin to advocate for more service.

One of the ideas that um our transportation team has is the LX from Longmont goes up highway 52 to the airport.

Well, if we move it over and it comes up Erie Parkway without adding a bus or a bus driver and just changing the route to the community center, that would be a really impactful way to add service to our community, and we would have a bus to the plane, which would be huge.

So I think these kinds of plans are the things that we can go to our directors and say, Okay, look at what the committee's telling us and what our plans are.

So I think that's key.

Thank you.

There's a lot of creative solutions out there too for like ride sharing.

Um, we just had a meeting with tread share, which is a new app.

Um they've been around for a couple years now that they've been expanding and really service the some county area um and are working with some of I think Arapahoe Basin for their employees.

Um, and it's a way to incentivize ride shares amongst employees.

Um but they're expanding, you know, and they're working in general populations.

Um so they're you know, we're always looking at it.

Um, and and it's also it's not just our team as the transportation team, it's many groups up in the town trying to explore.

We just did uh a recent RTD survey for employees as well.

We haven't talked about it widely, but in general, there's support for doing some type of pass for employees.

Um, but like you said, we need to expand our transit options.

What's the name of the app?

Uh tread share.

Yeah.

And there's actually some tax incentives for companies that participate in that, which is really interesting too.

Yeah, or state legislation.

All right.

Last questions, Mayor Pro Temp.

Yeah, thank you.

Um just wondering what with the landfill.

Um, since we have the Denver regional that's been closed for a number of years, is there a way to track the different landfills to I I think there's probably more opportunities on the Demo regional side to maybe if there's GHG recapture that we can do there, it might be more effective because they're not adding to it.

Um we're kind of fighting this cost of battle on the other side because we're still adding to it, and I know they have some measures that they're uh we're gonna be improving with with some other GHG recapture, but uh how much they can offset that versus what's going into it.

Yeah, there's a lot of things.

I'm happy to talk about the landfill too.

Um so there's there's two closed Denver regional landfills.

Uh the Denver Regional North, which is the one that is very much pyramid-shaped.

Um that was closed back before this concept of um landfill gas capture was really sort of an idea back then.

So with that sort of a facility that's been closed as long as it has it, it stopped receiving trash sometime late 20th century.

That was like back in the 90s.

The vast majority of any organ organic material that's going to break down has already broken down.

Um, and I think it'd be a real effort of diminishing returns and poking holes in it would probably be worse uh because you're gonna introduce oxygen.

Um right now it's a very anoxic environment.

It's there may be some decay happening, but it's so slow, so minor that I think that one's best to just let that sleeping dog lie.

Uh the Denver Regional South does have an active methane capture system where uh during the late stages of the landfill and after closure, they went around and poked holes, drilled wells down into the garbage, which is still pretty fresh.

Uh and that system is still operational, they still pull gas out of that landfill.

It is starting to decline.

Uh, and that one closed in 2020.

So you see that decline really starts kicking in about five years after the landfill close and then drops down pretty good.

So I don't know how long they'll run it.

They'll run it as long as they're pulling meaningful gas out of the landfill.

The front range landfill, the one they're currently building.

Initially they were they were doing it the same way where they'd build the cells and then they'd drill methane capture wells down into the into the garbage.

What they're doing now, the the newer cells, they started doing this two years ago, I think.

Uh, is they actually build the the wells.

They build the thing that's gonna capture the methane as they're building the trash cells.

So it's not build the trash and then drill down into it and try to make the best well you can down there.

They actually engineer the well with the trash to make sure there's sufficient annulus, uh increase the amount of flow, the get less preferential flow of that gas.

Uh, and so those should be much, much more efficient wells for a longer period of time.

So that's kind of the history of um landfill gas capture technology.

Um microcosm within the town of Erie.

Um we have seen in some other places uh the lot uh being pioneered in California where you actually do like directional style drilling, almost like they do small-scale modern oil and gas wells into the into the garbage.

We'll we'll see that's kind of a pilot program.

We'll see if those are super effective or if what waste connections is doing out there is really the best plan.

Um, these are kind of new and emerging technologies.

So that's kind of the long and the short of that.

Um we are in a in an area where we have not a whole lot of moisture.

Um, and it's quite arid, you know, and that decreases the rate that things rot, obviously, quite a bit.

Um, so you get to a point in Colorado and other semi-arid places like this where it's almost better to just kind of like encapsulate the garbage, let it go anoxic and stop rotting, um, as opposed to we got a landfill in Florida.

Uh yeah, it's the trash is gonna rot, so you might as well try to pull all the methane you can out of it.

So it's kind of a kind of a balancing act.

Okay.

Well, on the topic of gas, you're next to your working glass.

So I'm gonna wrap this up.

Any other questions?

Go ahead.

Um so front range is not scheduled to be closed probably for 30, 40, 50 years.

Probably quite a long time.

Umce it's closed.

Would that um in theory?

How much would the maybe that can't be answered because it's too far out in the future, but how much would the waste um greenhouse gases drop off on that uh you know, slide 10 illustrates.

Yeah, it's uh it's I don't know how the inventory is calculated per se.

It's it's often a reflection of the tonnage going into the landfill.

Yeah, kind of amateurized over, I'm gonna guess a five or ten year period.

Yeah, if the landfill were to close, how much would the emissions reduce?

Um I think so the emissions were they still has emissions once it's closed and they reduce over time.

So I think it would still be emitting a lot of greenhouse gas emissions, um, but much less than we're seeing now, and it would definitely shrink down to more like closer to that kind of five percent, or not the five percent, but um, I don't know the number, but it would decrease a lot.

I figured it'd be tough to answer.

I just yeah, it it since drilling through the charret, and I was just thinking about how much could it potentially drop off.

Yeah, not I know we we're not talking about closing the landfill, but it's someday it will close eventually.

The closed landfills right now in the data account for maybe one percent of the emissions in there.

So it's a pretty rapid drop-off and pretty significant.

I I will say um when this was published in 2024, obviously um the whole the whole pie chart is of super great interest, and I hope hopefully to all residents of Erie.

But the waste chunk and the oil and gas chunk were were super interesting to me, and I wanted to dig down into the how were these calculated, how can we make an assessment of how accurate they are?

So I asked waste connections, how do you estimate your emissions and what do they look like?

And we've got a more thorough report.

Um, there's a lot of finagling of numbers, but if you just look at the if you ignore the net numbers and you just look at the gross, this is how much methane um is probably avoiding capture.

The numbers were very, very similar.

I was like, okay, this methodology is pretty sound.

It may not be exact, but two different sources with two very different agendas came up with about the same number.

That's pretty good to me.

Similar in the the fugitive uh oil and gas wells.

Um I went through and just did a real rough accounting of what the industry reports itself as far as um emissions from from facilities in town.

They hadn't published the 2023 data yet, so I used 2022, but now it's like this will be pretty close.

And yeah, when we look at the facilities within the municipal boundary, it's it's quite close to this to what came up to this 10% number.

If you also start bringing in like the liquid handling hub, uh, if that happened to be inside Erie's border instead of outside, that oil and gas wedge would look a lot more like the waste wedge.

That's the one that Soccer County Road 6.

Yeah, adjacent to Erie, like touching Erie.

Adjacent to Erie, like touching Erie.

Yeah.

So okay.

So we experience those emissions.

Certainly.

And when it comes to greenhouse gases, I mean emissions in you know, pick a part of the globe, we experience those two.

Okay.

I think we'll wrap this topic up.

Seeing there's no more questions.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Appreciate this work.

Looking forward to the plan getting together.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Just use my same chair here.

Can't wait to bar it.

Thanks, everyone.

Touch the legs real quick.

All right, we're gonna move on to our last item tonight, 25171, a discussion of oil and gas and eerie.

And um just want to say this is a topic we've postponed a couple times, so I'm happy that we're here tonight and actually can go through this.

All right.

Uh thank you, Mayor, thank you, council.

Um I'm David Franks, the director of environmental services.

Uh so um the sustainability division uh as well as the energy and environment division.

Um I've got with me Ben Kellen, our environmental analyst.

He started with the town in December uh and has rapidly gotten up to speed and has been absolutely invaluable uh in doing all of this work, keeping an eye on all this stuff and putting this PowerPoint together.

Uh I try to give an update on oil and gas at least once every year or two.

Um this one, of course, got postponed a few times, but I'm really glad to have the opportunity to talk about these things.

Um my goal tonight is to have a conversation.

So we've put together a series of I don't know, 30 slides or so.

Um, but I don't want this to be uh we're giving you a presentation and then you ask questions at the end.

So please, if there's any part of this you want to get into a deeper discussion, you want to break something out, something doesn't make sense, um stop me and let's let's chat.

Uh if something's all good in kosher, I'm gonna move through it pretty rapidly so we can get to the end of the deck.

And with that, uh here's what we're gonna talk about just broadly, some oil and gas things, um, how we communicate with residents currently and some ideas we have uh upcoming.

Uh I think it's worthwhile to take a deep dive kind of into the Draco OGDP, as that's a pretty big thing.

Um was obviously much bigger in in March uh when we'd originally planned this presentation, um, but just because it's a couple of months ago that that that that plan is approved by the state, um, I think it's still super important to talk about what's what's planned out there and some kind of uh timelines.

Uh the cumulative impacts rulemaking again is now G's probably a year behind us, but an important subject, so we want to go back and and revisit that uh data falsification.

The the state, I don't know if you know, um, uncovered.

Well, I guess the operators self-reported that there were some uh bad actors as far as consulting companies.

Uh so we want to get into some details on that.

Um a general overlook at spills uh and releases in the town, and then what we have upcoming as far as uh enforcement within the town, we're gonna be launching our own internal inspection program.

So the next slide, this is a really broad overview.

There are uh 375 total wells within the municipal boundary, the vast majority of which are plugged and abandoned, but still 115 active.

If we look uh outside of Erie, uh say a 2,000 foot buffer, that's what the state kind of defines as near, uh, there are four a further 489 wells.

300 of eight which are active, and 181 are plugged and abandoned.

So sort of the opposite of this chart where the vast majority are active and the minority are plugged.

Um in Erie, we've had a heck of a lot of wells plugged and abandoned over the past I don't know, five or ten years.

Um so we're down to just just over a hundred that are currently producing.

And the breakdown, if we break down that segment into a smaller segment, there are currently 15 shut in and 100 producing.

That number fluctuates on a monthly basis as they turn low-producing wells off and on.

Um to the next slide.

If we look at it just by facility, so a lot of facilities will have multiple wells.

The breakdown sort of looks like this.

You've got uh 11 shut in uh and 21 producing.

So if you compare that to the last slide, uh you know, you can see that the production of those hundred producing wells only exist on 21 facilities.

So basically what's left in Erie still producing are these fairly, you know, the larger multi-pad facilities.

And that's a that's a trend you're gonna see across the eastern Colorado, what we call the DJ Basin.

All right, now coming to uh what often gets referred to as the scary map.

Um I I go back and forth on how to how to present this data a couple of years ago.

I showed it by operator.

Um last year I showed it by weather the well status producing shut in, etc.

Um, this year what we're presenting is uh by date of first production.

This is an interesting way to look at the the active oil and gas facilities in and near Erie because when they were drilled uh is an important piece of information because obviously regulations and engineering and technology changes over time.

So in looking at this, it's a gradational scale.

Um, red, very very old before the Clean Water Drinking Act was passed.

Uh basically you could drill a well, however, you could drill a well back then.

It's up to you and your ingenuity.

Um the orange are late 20th century, so we know there is surface casing.

We know there are some efforts to protect uh the upper aquifers that we drink water out of.

Uh, Erie doesn't drink water, but we as humans do.

Um, and then going into the yellow, these are sort of your early sort of directional, uh, what are called highly deviated wells, where they would drill kind of diagonally.

So they drill five wells on a single pad and drill them out kind of in a star shape to try to produce the basin.

About 2015 is when you start started to see these long horizontal laterals really take off and become the norm.

So those are the the green wells, uh, and then the purple, and there's only just a couple in the up in uh you know Fred Conestone and then Coslit East, uh just south of where Erie Parkway meets I-25.

Those are I highlighted those because that's those are the wells that are post-SB 19181, which was the sweeping legislation that overhauled all of Colorado's oil and gas uh rules and regulations.

So looking across this, you see up to the northeast of town, not within Erie, there are a lot of very old wells that should be concerning to folks that live in in Frederick and Decono.

Um no two butts about that, those really old wells are pretty concerning.

When we look at your late 20th century wells, um, obviously there's a lot to the north and east of town, and there's also quite a few down as you get close to Lafayette.

Those wells, we'll get to this a bit later, but most of those as part of the Draco plan, the ones in Erie should be plugged into Bandon, which will also capture a lot of the the 2000 to 2015 era.

Uh the ones 2015 and newer uh are probably gonna be operating for for quite a while, several decades yet, I would guess.

All right, on to the next slide.

Uh this is a breakdown by by operator since I didn't show it in the last slide.

Uh Civitas is buying far and away, uh, the largest operator uh within Erie.

Uh pretty good chunk of the pie also uh Occidental.

I'll note that of the that occidental slice of the pie, nearly all of those are plugged in abandoned.

Um if we looked at this pie chart of just active, it'd be 90% Civitas, and then there are a handful of KP Kaufman wells that I'll speak to in a moment.

On to the next slide.

Sort of a production history uh since 2021, and this is when the data are most available.

Um these data were summarized and provided to uh to me by uh my good friend and and uh cohort in Adams County, uh Greg Dean, and shout out to Greg.

What you can see is uh 2021 was probably the the year of peak production in Erie.

At that time, we were ranked eighth on this list of local governments by volume of production.

Um Erie's a pretty small town to be number eight on that list.

We've now dropped to about a third, a little less than that.

We now produce 27% the amount of oil we did, oil and gas that we did in 2021.

Um I know that the percent change is a it's a weird way to measure that.

Negative means down, and they're all absolute values, so that's 21, 27% the total production.

Um, whereas you see Fort Lepton now produces just over four times as much as they did uh three years ago.

Generally, the trend that you're seeing is a decline in production uh in municipalities and an increase in production in unincorporated county regions, whether that's Weld County, Adams County, Arapahoe County, uh, et cetera.

This trend will likely continue unless we have uh a large OGDP proposed within the municipal boundaries that is approved by this council and by the state of Colorado.

That becomes less likely with each new neighborhood that gets built.

Um we've got some pretty pretty strict uh and non-negotiable requirements for oil and gas facility siting within the town of Erie.

Uh and the amount of land that is more than 2,000 feet from a residential uh home is is becoming less.

Um we also have protections for uh waterways and registered water wells.

I'll get to other uh ideas we have about protections uh as we get into some later slides.

Um but now I want to jump into this handful of KP Kaufman wells uh that are in the town.

And this is of interest because the state of Colorado has been in a battle with uh with KP Kaufman uh for the last several years.

It all started back in 2021.

Um they had accumulated a total of uh 148 uh violations, uh and the state was was basically tired of getting ignored.

Um sites not getting cleaned up, uh notices of violations not being responded to, and fines not being paid.

Within Erie, there's so you can see here it says 21 active wells at eight active facilities.

All the ones in the north, all five of those in the very north part of town are just a single pump jack, just a single well.

Um so the other 16 wells are all in these three uh facilities down uh uh near the now closed Denver Southern Denver Regional South landfill.

A brief history on this.

Um essentially in April of 2021, uh the state of Colorado said, okay, the there's 87 wells here.

Um they've got to be shut in, uh, and you've got to clean up these 29 sites.

More violations accumulated uh over the course of the year, and then finally KPK and and then uh COGCC, now ECMC, came together and said, okay, this is dumb, we're just yelling past each other.

Let's come to an agreement.

So they they mutually came to an agreement of a five-year cleanup plan with with milestones that we measured along the way.

So you got five years to clean this all up and resolve all this all these problems sites.

And if not, uh, we're gonna lay the full possible fine upon you of uh my notes here say 1.9 million.

I want to say it's more like 1.9 billion dollar fine.

Uh fast forward a couple years, early 2023.

Um ECMC decided there's been insufficient progress and by insufficient, almost no progress.

And so they said, okay, August 1st, we're we're invoking the full fine, and we're going to revoke your sort of what are called certificates of clearance, which is the license under which you can sell oil and natural gas in the state of Colorado.

So it basically said you no longer get to do business in the state of Colorado, pay your fines and get out.

Pretty egregious.

Um pretty severe sentence for some pretty egregious uh you know shortcomings as an operator.

They filed a KPK filed an injunction.

Um that case was was was heard in May of 2024.

Uh summary judgment against uh KPK.

Um so they they re-sued the state.

They're now in court battles in the district court of Colorado against ECMC as well as two pending federal court cases against the state of Colorado and the EPA.

Um, but it is entirely conceivable that uh if the courts agree that the state of Colorado is justified in enforcing its rules that KPK could be uh you know within the state of Colorado, basically dismantled and then either sold off or all of these wells, which served very little economic value uh entered into the orphan well program.

Uh obviously at a statewide scale, that would probably overwhelm the orphan well program.

Uh, and who knows how long it would take the state to eventually untangle and resolve that.

So that's why I bring this up.

It is of interest specifically to the town of Urie because we do have uh a handful of these wells, uh 21 KPK wells within the state or within the municipality.

And they're producing even during litigation.

They did get a judge to say, hey, it's not really fair to make them pay fines and then cut off their only a way to make money to pay those fines.

So it's going back and forth whether or not they're allowed to produce or whether they're not, depending on which judge is last heard the this case.

Um, you know what the current stands.

So they are they allowed to produce at this moment.

They're all active.

They're all active.

They were shut in for a while, and I think it reversed.

I think like this a few months ago in the spring, they turned all their wells back on.

Correct.

I had thought, and the only one I'm really once I'm really familiar with are the ones on the reader property and uh you know, towards the northeast, but I thought those really weren't producing.

I mean, they might be producing, but they're not really getting it.

Yes, exactly.

All these wells are producing oil and gas wells.

I don't think any of them operate at any sort of significant profit margin.

Um, and obviously, if you have to do maintenance on your facilities, that further cuts into an already thin line.

Yeah.

Um thank you last week for uh giving uh signing the the resolution to purchase an OGI camera.

That's been a lot of effort in the workings.

Um I believe it's in transit currently.

Be here tomorrow.

Be here tomorrow.

Um Ben and I will be undergoing uh re-upping our OGI certification, optical gas imaging, and we're gonna hit the ground, and these sites are going to be you know on the short list of priority sites.

Um we know that this operator has a not a stellar reputation for doing routine maintenance.

Uh, and so we'll we won't single out this operator or any other, uh, but we're gonna look at age of facility, proximity to to residences.

Uh, we've got a whole kind of uh risk uh matrix uh as far as the inspection order, um, and and these will be on that list for sure.

The last thing I want to say, and I don't want to dwell on this for too long, um, is about the rule 211 hearing.

Rule 211 is a mechanism put in in SB 19181, whereby uh a local government or a landowner can request a hearing with the ECMC to force an operator to close a well.

And the the two criteria listed in the rule is that the the well must be either deemed not used or useful or presents a clear and eminent danger to public health, the environment, wildlife resources, etc.

Uh Frederick and Decono, a bunch of those red wells on the on that previous map, uh 43 wells, they requested the forced to be plugged in a in a 211 hearing.

Um the commission, upon hearing all sides of this, used a lot of very strong language to talk about KPK and how they run their wells.

Um I don't remember any of the words off the top of my head, but it was the worst things you've ever heard a commissioner call uh uh a business that they that they oversee and regulate.

Um negligent, uh recalcitrant, uh just some some really really strong language.

Following a strong language, they said, but we'll make you plug three of the 43 wells.

Basically saying a rule 211.

Uh we have the the purpose for the rule 211 is clear, uh, but we think it should be used exceedingly sparingly only in the worst cases where no other um no other way to fix the problem can possibly be reached.

And it would appear instead of looking at their rules and reading the very click clearly written or they decided to interpret or as and made the bar that it has to be demonstrably not used or useful, and creates a clear and present danger.

Um, this is not how their rules are written.

Um that's how they've chosen to interpret them.

I I say this because we we've been waiting, and by we I mean literally every local government that has oil and gas production in or near its jurisdiction to see how the commission would handle a rule to eleven hearing.

And everybody was like really hesitant to be the first one because we didn't know where the bar would be set, how they would what their arguments would be, how receptive they would be to this to this rule 211 hearing.

For a while, it looked like Larimer County was gonna be the first one to jump into the pool.

Um Boulder County had a couple of wells they were really going back and forth on if they wanted to try this, and it ended up being a combined effort of Frederick and Decono.

Some takeaways here.

The commissioners are very serious about using this rule very sparingly and not forcing the hands of operators, even when that operator is recalcitrant.

Um based on those percentages with eight wells, we might get one.

Maybe maybe.

Maybe and and the other thing is they were really they were really unhappy with bringing this this bulk.

You know, hey, here's 43 wells that we think are problems.

Um they basically said in their deliberations, hey, we're gonna hear this out and we're gonna settle which ones are gonna get plugged and which ones aren't.

But in the future, if you have a well you want plugged, come and talk to us about that well.

So they would have preferred to see 43 separate hearings on this matter rather than one.

Okay, how many keep this moving because that's CO 31 slides and we're so um so currently how how we keep in contact with our residents?

Um the best way uh to stay informed about oil and gas operations in Erie is our notify me system.

Um there's a whole bunch of them, traffic, police activities, uh, you know, road closures, events, all sorts of great stuff.

One of them is oil and gas.

Um, every time there's gonna be a rig going up in town, um, we try to communicate where it's gonna be, when, and what they're doing out there, uh, be that plug-in abandonments, maintenance, etc.

Um we're gonna keep doing that.

That's that's a good way, uh, but it is an opt-in system.

Um, and a lot of residents, if they don't know, um, they're not gonna be getting that information.

Uh, folks can, of course, always uh email Ben and I at ErieOilandgas at Urico.gov if you have uh if residents have specific oil and gas questions, um that's a great way to get a hold of us.

We love communicating with the residents, like favorite part of the job.

Um, if you have a general air quality question that doesn't pertain directly to oil and gas necessarily, we've got another email.

Uh, but the fact of the matter is um we're we're answering both those emails, so um just get a hold of us however you can.

And then of course, we've got uh you know our website.

Um we give presentations like this to council is a great place to be informed.

Uh and our air quality monitoring uh network, you can sign up for alerts through us and through CDPHE and get alerts on local air quality events.

That's what we're doing today.

Uh, we've got we've got a lot of designs on future communications.

Um to the next slide.

We're gonna start drafting a quarterly oil and gas report and sending that out to everybody via the notify me.

Um we could send a council a copy to council, but I hope you guys are already all subscribed to our notify me.

Uh, so I was gonna ask if that's gonna be redundant or if we can just use the one communication system.

Our plan is to include in this a lot of the information that we had been putting into our monthly uh division or department report.

Um, if you guys have feedback on things that you'd like to see, please let Ben and I know, either deny it or you can email us.

Uh, and we'll do our best if it's feasible and um and we can get that information and keep it regularly updated, we're happy to put that in there.

So we're we're open to ideas on what should go into that report.

Essentially, it'll be um a summary of anything going on, wells that were plugged, maintenance that was done, uh, things that we can read foreseeable uh coming down the pipeline.

Additionally, as we launch our inspection program, um, we'll provide uh an individual facility report for each and every inspection, and we'll throw that out on the on the notify me, uh, as well as a monthly inspection summary.

Hey, these are all the facilities that we visited this uh this month.

Uh this is this is where they were, and these were the findings, um, sort of a really high-level summary.

So if you don't want to dig into the nitty-gritty detail of the facility reports, be a nice summary for you.

And then uh we're completely overhauling our oil and gas website.

Uh, it was way, way behind, we're way overdue.

Um I'm only gonna talk kind of broadly because I don't want to overpromise and then under deliver because we're in the final stages of of working on that.

It's not quite live.

I was hoping we might have it live before tonight, but we're still a couple weeks out.

But basically, um we're gonna have a sort of a similar dashboard to what ECMC puts together, sort of a visual one-stop shop for information that's Erie specific.

Um we're gonna put up our own interactive map.

I don't know if you guys have ever been on the ECMC's uh website.

There's a ton of information there, it's almost impossible to navigate.

So we want to provide that same level of information or at least links to where you can actually find that information, uh, but in a much clearer, more user-friendly format.

Um, ECMC's website is designed for people like me and for operators.

Uh, we want our website to be uh designed for the the public to use because the public has every right to see this information as everyone else.

So we'll put up links to to regulation resources, you know, who's responsible for regulating what, because there's always a lot of confusion as to what whose roles are, you know, who does this, who do I need to be calling to complain about this, or I'm concerned about this.

Why is the town of Erie allowing this to happen?

And like it's that's not we're not allowed to not let that happen.

Um that's state of Colorado thing.

And then, of course, when we have um big projects uh like upcoming work at Draco, uh, we'll have a dedicated section on that page just for that project to keep every everyone informed.

Hey, here's the here's the best guess of the project timeline, these are the next steps.

You should see this happening around this date.

It'll stop around this date.

This is what we're this is where you can get to the air quality data.

This is you can where you can learn about this, um, that sort of stuff.

David, will there be information on all the spills and leaks and cleanup and mitigation?

Yeah, we sort of have a map that tied to the notify me.

Um, but it's by the end of the year it gets really cluttered, and then you go there in January, and there's absolutely nothing because it's just run on a calendar year.

Um, yeah, I would like to have uh on our map of facilities, noting which ones are in active remediation, and you'll be able to click on it and and it'll you can get to the EC to the ECMC's page about all of the the cleanup efforts, and then we'll provide a plain English summary of this is where this is in this stage.

This is the the next stage of this.

Um it gets a little tough because these projects are somewhat unpredictable because it's an iterative process, which we'll we're gonna talk about the uh Erie 124 and the Arapaho well uh remediation projects and and what's happening with those and why those are taking so long.

So it's hard to predict when you'll get to final closure.

So I hate to like throw a date out on the website, and then everyone's like, well, your website said that would be done four months ago, and it's still going on.

Uh, but we'll do our very best to keep current accurate information up there and try to explain what's going on and why.

Quick question about the website.

Um, I know for reporting purposes, it's super hard to for residents to know.

Do I contact E C M C O G H I R A P C D, A, Q, C C A P A D.

Um there some way that on the R we can have a link that says, are you experiencing an odor?

Click here.

Are you experiencing a spill?

Or okay.

You already figured out the video.

Oh, yeah, I'd tell them more.

Yeah, you did.

Ben, go ahead.

You're you've been kind of leading the website redesign.

Yeah, we've been working on kind of making it streamlined.

Because like you said, it's pretty difficult to know who to contact.

So we have some sections, especially in health and safety, where it's like, okay, if you have this concern, go here.

Um with that in mind, though, I think we can definitely flesh it out and make it a little more transparent.

Um, make it more of like a flow chart organization.

Okay, I feel like you guys could create the model that then the state could use because literally we've been asking the state to do this for years.

Yes.

Often when I when I get confused in the process, I just email everyone.

I'll draft an email, and then I say this is going to ECMC, uh APCD, uh, C D P H and E.

If you get a four-letter acronym, you're getting my email.

So that's as good a transition as any to talk specifically about the the Draco OGDP.

I'm sure everybody is pretty well aware.

Uh, but this is 26 wells that are planned to be drilled.

On the far right over there, you see the little uh pink blob that says Draco, uh sort of north of the of the active front range regional landfill.

They're gonna be drilling four and a half, maybe five miles uh to the west and producing oil from this um teal colored box uh under uh essentially western Erie uh parts of unincorporated Boulder County.

All the red X's on here, those are uh the 22 wells at 18 different facilities that are going to be plugged and abandoned and permanently closed uh as part of this oil and gas development plan.

Uh and if you recall half an hour ago when we were looking at the slide of of where old wells are, other than looking at the northeast corner, down in this southwest corner is where uh our most aged facilities that are actually within the town generally lie.

So a lot of these are a single well with a with a tank uh you know on site, they're they're producing oil and collecting it into a tank, potentials for leaks, etc.

Um these are not really super productive facilities.

Um they often exist out in our open space along our walking trails, um, you know, not far from the from the back fence of people's yards.

So if there's a silver lining, it's that the these facilities will be closed and plugged and abandoned.

And Civitas is doing the yeah, they'll be doing all the the pluggings and closings.

Um, and I'm sure there's gonna be a handful that require some extensive remediation.

A lot of those facilities have been out there for close to 50 years.

Uh when we look closer at where the surface facilities uh will be, so where the actual production facilities are, where the drill rigs are going to be located to drill down about 9,000 feet before drilling laterally about five miles.

I can see it is directly adjacent to uh the westerly neighborhood, which has been in the platting process since 2017.

So years and years of the of the town working back and forth with the Southern Land Company to make sure we design uh uh you know and plat a great neighborhood for future residents of Erie at literally the 11th hour.

Oil and gas operator says, actually, I'm gonna drill uh over here.

Soon as we heard about this plan, uh you know, obviously reached out to the operator, um Weld County, where this is facility uh will be located, um, as well as Southern Land to say, hey, this is this is a concern, and we need to do everything we can to mitigate this to the degree possible.

Um the orange line on here is the 2,000 foot boundary from the workpad surface.

The town of Erie in its in its setbacks, it's reciprocal setbacks, how close you can build a house to an oil and gas facility.

I think uniquely in the state, we have a provision that says, hey, you can't build uh a home, you can't site a residential lot within 2,000 feet of a facility that is in the permitting phase until it is uh in production.

And then after it's in production, we treat it like every other oil and gas facility, and it drops down to this this dotted line of a 500-foot setback.

The reason for that, the reason we wrote that into our provisions is the same reason that the state says you can't permit uh an oil and gas facility within 2,000 feet of a residence.

It's during this drilling, uh hydraulic fracturing, flowback, what's collectively called pre-production, um, that you see uh the largest impacts.

Um the most uh effects to air quality, so the most emissions, uh, as well as nuisance impacts.

Um drill rigs are loud, and a lot of that noise is sub-audible.

It'll it'll rattle the dishes in your cupboard, um, keep you up at night.

There's a lot of there's a lot a lot of heavy truck traffic coming and going from these facilities.

Um they have they have huge light towers.

Obviously, they build a light and a sound wall to try to limit the nuisance of the light in the sound.

Um, but you're still gonna have it, it's uh it's a lot if you've ever been near one of these facilities, one of these huge megapads as they're being drilled.

Yeah, but it's 24-7.

They'll work Christmas Day.

So some of the things uh that we that we negotiated.

Um first of all, we we said Westerly, hey, you we can't plat any of the lots that are within 2,000 feet, and the lat the lots that have already been platted, because obviously it's a sequential process that goes through this council.

Um we said, hey, we have to we have to get together and come to some agreement about what we're gonna do about this because it's not in your interest to have residents moving into their brand new homes while drill rigs or frack engines are still are still chugging along.

So basically they said, okay, we'll we won't request certificates of occupancy until after this facility is in production.

Um we won't plat the lots uh in filings that haven't gotten to that point.

That was all good and fine.

That was uh basically a year ago, right now, it's like last October.

And we said, okay, um, what have you negotiated on the other side uh with Civitas as far as when they'll be in production?

They said our agreement says three years.

I said, okay, so three years from the hearing date, you can request certificates of occupancy.

So that's what our agreement with Southern Land says is October of 2027.

You can ask for for certificates of occupancy.

That hearing was then uh the hearing with ECMC was delayed until November, where an issue came up of whether or not they had fully uh explored one of the alternative locations.

Go to the next slide.

One of the alternative locations is this kind of uh greenish area uh in uh in Red Tail Ranch next to the new houser landfill.

Did they really explore this area?

The commission said you need to make sure that that's not a uh suitable alternative location because there's not an eminent neighborhood next to this thing, so make sure you can't build it there.

Uh the hearing finally came back to to assembly in March, and uh Civitas said, Hey, we looked at this thing, we talked to CDPH and E.

And basically, in order to avoid causing potential runoff into the newhauser landfill, we'd actually have to build it over here where the pink area is.

Obviously, that puts it very close to uh to the residents of just a ridge, and we said, well, that that certainly won't work if that's the alternative location.

Um there's no way Erie can can permit that.

So with that information in hand, um the commission said, okay, we're gonna we're gonna grant this OGDP with some conditions of approval.

Uh many of these brought by the town of Erie and Southern Land Company.

So a condensed occupation, they said, okay, uh, your agreement with Southern Land says three years from this hearing, you have to be done by three years from now.

Obviously, that's that's better than uh no deadline, but it does put us in the awkward spot of Southern Land agreed to October of 2027, and Civitas agreed to May of 2028.

So there's a bit of a bit of a gap there.

Uh there's enhanced air quality monitoring uh that has to be done by the operator above and beyond what state regulations require.

Uh we'll also be putting uh town of Erie uh Boulder Air air quality monitors uh out there on Westerly along the ditch there, uh put at least one station out there, and we'll make all of our data uh publicly available.

Uh there's there are six wells uh previously formerly plugged in abandoned wells within the the spacing unit where they're gonna be producing oil that I highlighted and went to the operator and said, hey, these wells are pretty old and or they are very close to people's homes.

Um I would like you to pay for monitoring of these wells before, during and after your operations to make sure that the drilling and fracking of the formations doesn't somehow compromise these old plugged and abandoned wells.

Um they've concurred to that.

I think that is the first time that's ever been done anywhere in the in the country, maybe the world.

There's also some some landscaping uh and visual mitigation, uh berming, fencing, try to try to um make this when you look out uh across the open space of Westerly.

Um, hopefully this won't be the most prominent thing you see, um, though the liquid handling hub is also on the same parcel of land, and there's there's not any hiding that thing.

Uh they've agreed to pave that half mile of county road six between county roads five and seven that runs just north of the landfill.

Um that was at my request uh to facilitate hauling of waste materials, primarily drill cuttings from the site to the Denver regional or to the uh front range regional landfill.

You're gonna have more than 4,000 round trips of of semis filled with with drilling waste.

Uh so even so they were like, well, we could drive up to Erie Parkway, past the high school and down County Road 5.

And I said that adds like three miles to your drive times 4,000 round trips, that's 8,000 truck trips times three miles.

That's actually like quite a bit, guys.

Take the shortest route.

Um so they've agreed to pave that road.

Uh and of course, then the plugging and abandoning of the of the 22 existing wells.

Will they pave it to Erie's standards?

Yes.

The agreement says that either they will just pay for the project and we'll we'll hire the engineers, etc., or that we will approve uh pre-approve all the plans, etc.

This is our road.

And regardless of if it's uh the oil and gas company or often developers do road improvements as part of their development.

Uh same bargain exactly.

Uh pay pave your own way, right?

What sort of nastiness will be going into the landfill?

Primarily the drill cuttings.

So this is the chewed up rock as they as they drill down and across.

Uh I've talked to the landfill at length because they receive drill cuttings regionally, not just stuff in Erie, um, about how those are processed.

And uh basically they don't just sit out and off gas.

Um, once they once they arrive at the landfill, the landfill works to cover those up and and get those down into the landfill pretty much as quick as possible.

Um, so what we're gonna be seeing uh coming up.

This is this is uh let's see here.

Let me look at what put slider on.

This is what they have on their public safe facing website is that uh they start constructing the pad about now and then start drilling in a couple months.

That's that's a bit ambitious.

They're not gonna meet that timeline.

Um so you can push all of this out at least a couple of months.

Um but they're expecting to be completed uh and in production uh next summer, so maybe next fall or next winter.

That still gives uh plenty of of cushion before those homes in Westerly are built.

Um we'll work with Southern Land if that timeline looks like it's gonna slip uh to ensure that people don't move into their brand new homes while this activity is still going on.

But what's what is coming up is uh they've initiated the the traffic studies process.

This is not just County Road Six, this is also County Road Seven, uh Erie Parkway, the whole the whole haul route in and out of town in order to make sure that those roads are good enough for this and to to the degree possible, try to mitigate the the impacts of the huge amount of of heavy truck traffic that'll be coming off at I-25 to and from this site.

Um that'll take some time, uh several months.

Uh we haven't initiated the process of what the design on County Road Six is gonna be.

That's also gonna be uh a process.

All of that needs to be done and in place um before you can mobilize a drill rig out there.

So, like I said, this timeline is is gonna slip a bit.

Um after that, uh I'll I'll take it with their word uh that you're looking at about uh an eight-month process.

They're talking about bringing in two uh electric drill rigs.

Um, and they have worked with United Power to make sure that there's adequate power out there to power both those rigs.

Um then when it comes to fracking, um I believe that they're proposing a partially electrified flat frack fleet, um, which I've never seen before.

And you ever seen that done before?

Um, usually it's all diesel engines, um, but they actually want to try to run part of their frack fleet off of electric off the electric off the electric grid to minimize uh emissions, uh, air quality impacts, etc.

So basically they pull down all the stops on this application.

Um if there's an engineering control available to the oil and gas industry, uh, it's either in this application, was asked to be put in this application by the town of Erie, or I don't know about it.

So on uh CR6, I assume we'll be going to CR6 to CR5 into the entrance there.

Currently it uh CR6 and CR5.

That's just a stop sign there.

Yeah.

Um do we have any kind of mitigation for um like existing southbound traffic or something for the high school?

That's probably my biggest worry is uh yeah, that'll be that'll be a question for John Feruzzi as we go through the traffic impact analyses for this project.

Um short answer, that will be taken into account and and hopefully mitigated to the degree possible.

I don't know if it'll be involved changing that intersection to a four-way stop.

That seems like a pretty messy solution to me as a commuter, but yeah, yeah.

Um I don't know.

Uh on the upside, making a left off of County Road Six on the on to five.

If that backs up traffic, they have basically a mile of unused road before they're gonna impact another.

They're the only guys on that road.

So um that helps a bit.

All right, it's 9 p.m.

Um, so I want to keep this going.

I don't want to cut you off.

It's no not at all.

I don't want to go too late here.

I have a question before we cut off.

Um the plugging and abandoning of all the wells that they have to that be done concurrent with this.

Uh some of it's actually already started.

A few of those sites have already been plugged.

Um, some of it'll happen concurrently, and some of it'll probably happen after.

And are we notifying our residents that we've got a um quarterly meeting uh scheduled with Civitas to talk about hey, what are the sites you're gonna be visiting in the next few months?

Um, to try to keep a uh like a running log.

Um one thing we'd asked for was hey, can we get a a list and approximate dates for all 22 wells?

And they said, there's no way we don't know rig availability.

Um we can't do that.

And I said, Well, what can we do?

And they said, well, that can we just get together every couple of months and because we can predict about two months out what we're gonna be doing.

I said, okay, let's get together every two, three months and talk about what the next couple of months are gonna be so that we can keep out ahead of these plug-in abandonments.

Um there's a lot of lessons learned uh in the plugging of the URI-124 well that we we asked the operator to implement when they did the Arapahoe well.

Um namely they built big sound barriers out of hay bales, tried to minimize the nuisance impacts to the residents as best they could.

Um, I think those efforts were were partially successful.

We're gonna keep working with them as they move into these neighborhoods.

Um you know, the fact of the matter is this isn't rural Weld County.

This is a this is a vibrant city, and you're doing heavy industrial operations, and so we're gonna review each site before they go out there, what their plan is, what are their mitigation efforts, where are the shortfalls, what can what more can be done?

Um I think uh I think a great idea looking at these um you know current ongoing excavations that have been an open hole for a long time is hey, maybe we'll make a requirement that says you have to you have to fence these excavations off and limit access to the public um for as long as they're open.

Um some pretty simple steps like that.

Plug an abandonment over by Red Tail at 24 was the mess.

So how long did that take?

It was just a mess.

It was just contentious, it was very very close to people's homes.

Um and where they mean yeah, and where they walk their dogs, and uncertainty as to um whether the route they were using to access that site was was acceptable and whether or not they were gonna put the landscaping back afterwards because they tore up a lot of grass and ruined a bunch of sidewalks.

Of course, it it all melts sidewalks and things and the grass all look uh much better.

Of course, they're that's part of their cleanup requirements, so they do have to restore it back to where it was.

So every one of these on Draco then could run into the same problem.

Yeah, have we considered reaching out to HOAs at all?

Yes, we will um where the HOAs have contacts with us and are and are still relatively active.

Um getting hold of HOAs is harder than you think.

Those of you that live in there probably already know that, but uh me living in old town, I I had no idea.

Uh I'm gonna hand it over for to Ben for the uh for the last two few slides because real quick David, yeah.

If the air quality monitors flights and we get to unsafe levels, what requirement uh for a Civitas?

Do they have to shut down operations?

Yeah, I mean, what that's what happens if we hit, yeah.

Yeah, that's it's a good question.

It's how you define unsafe levels.

Um they of course have air quality permits, uh, APINS.

Um, if we see data that they are in violation of the air quality permit, then it would be up to the state of Colorado through the through the air air pollution control division, APCD.

Um, we would of course notify them immediately of even any anomalous data, whether or not it was in violation of state regulations.

Um I don't know, Ben, have you ever seen that happen?

I don't think so.

I don't I don't think so.

I I would be really surprised if they if they were to cause so egregious emissions that they were in violation of Colorado state law.

Um the air quality monitoring obviously could serve that purpose, but I think its primary function is to provide transparency to residents to say, hey, someone is looking at what's in the air.

You you can find that data here.

If this isn't information collected by the operator, this is collected independently by the town.

You know, we can compare it to what the operators collecting.

This is this is real, this is real air quality data.

That being said, it is a very inexact science.

Um, if the wind's blowing the other way, we're not gonna see it.

Um that's that's the nature of it.

Uh we test for several dozen VOCs.

Um there could be stuff in the air that isn't on that list.

That's entirely possible.

We test for everything that we know comes out of an oil oil well.

That's what we know.

We do that, we're doing the best we can, but it is a it is an inexact science.

Okay, thanks.

Alrighty, moving on here.

As David said, we want to talk a little bit about the cumulative impacts rulemaking.

Um, we are about a year out now from its inception, um, and we could talk all night about this, but we'll just go over some quick um things we like and don't like about the rulemaking now that we're a little bit farther down the line.

Um, some of the good things that came out of this are the application of the Knox and greenhouse gas intensity targets through the Form 2D.

So these were basically measures of emissions per unit of production that have existed through CDPHE for maybe about two or three years now, but there wasn't really any enforcement arm to that or any really any application outside of the reports that were submitted.

Um, so those are actually now check marks.

If you're going to have an oil and gas development plan approved, you have to prove that you are meeting those targets.

Um, so good for some forward thinking, but there are some caveats to that, which we'll discuss a little later on.

Um, the big ones, as far as ERI is concerned, is there are some new requirements for pre-application hearings, um, which local governments now have access to, kind of continuing on with that 181 theme.

Um so we have additional notices and the ability to call in some more outside assistance in that application process.

Um, we have yet to see obviously an application within Erie, um, but we've kind of seen that in some of our neighboring communities.

Um moving on to some things that aren't so good.

Obviously, this rulemaking had to define what accumulatively impacted community is.

Um, and ECMC chose to use their enviro screen tool, just basically this online tool that pulls a bunch of different characteristics of a community to kind of come up with this score of how impacted it is.

Um, and that cumulatively impacted community cutoff is the 80th percentile.

Um, however, this is a pretty black and white way to determine it, and there will obviously be some outliers.

Um, unfortunately, Erie is a good example of one of those outliers where there are certain parts of town where we're in the 95th percentile for air toxins, um, but we will never qualify as a cumulatively impacted community because of our social socioeconomic factors.

Um, so we're not afforded those same protections where in some cases we may need that, especially um in terms of the emissions that come from oil and gas.

Um, we were talking about that area north of the landfill where the liquid handling hub is.

That's a great example.

Um, and then kind of moving on to the ugly part of it.

Um, there were several iterations of the rules um throughout 2024.

Um, and in particular, there was one in June and one in August.

And between those two rulemakings, they had a pretty large shift in the scope and some of the rules that took away a lot of the protections afforded to these communities.

Um, the biggest being there was a provision in there for developments that were to be within 2,000 feet of homes within um disproportionally impacted communities, they would have the ability to vote on if they wanted that development to take place.

Um, and that that provision was actually removed.

So that would have been a great opportunity for residents within those communities to kind of have a say in what oil and gas is built by their homes.

Um, like I said, unfortunately, that was removed.

Um, and then the other big one that I kind of mentioned earlier, it was good to see the NOx and greenhouse gas intensity targets implemented.

Um, however, the way they were implemented was changed during the rulemaking.

Initially, you had to show that you were meeting the next target, which would have been in two years.

Um, however, they then rewrote that to just say that you had to meet the show that you met the previous one and then um provide an interim report during that time.

So that took away a lot of the pre-planning.

Especially in the early stages of the greenhouse gas intensity targets.

They ratchet down pretty quickly over up until 2025 and then into 2030.

And so kind of removing that forward planning really changes the scope of what it means to meet those targets, especially since operators should be implementing some pretty widespread changes to meet those.

Moving on to what's probably been the biggest topic this year.

This is the data falsification investigation.

So ECMC in November of 2024 announced to the oil and gas regulatory community that operators had come forward and basically admitted that they're they had falsified data submitted on their behalf by a select group of consulting firms.

Now that we're a little down the line, ECMC has identified 404 sites up from their initial 344 that they received falsified data for.

So things like ERI 124 where they were cleaning up those similar types of projects, numbers were being altered on lab reports both to indicate compliance with standards and to not indicate compliance.

So it wasn't really a clear trend there on both directions.

Yeah, both directions.

And this is, I mean, I've I've done consulting.

This is this is like the sacred thing, right?

Is part of you you provide all your data and then you provide the lab reports, and that's the quality control check.

To falsify lab reports, um, like just so fundamentally breaks the the trust of this system that it can be underscored how egregious this is.

So was Tasman and Eagle were they fined or did they suffer any consequences?

There are criminal investigations ongoing in addition to two other investigations.

Um I would be surprised.

Uh I would be surprised if these companies continue to exist when all this is said and done.

Um I mean that like there's no coming back from this.

You broke the sacred trust.

So is it and the individuals?

I I would expect to face criminal prosecution.

Was there any indication that Civitas or Chevron or Oxy had knowledge of this?

It was, I believe it was Chevron and was it Chevron and Oxy or just Chevron?

It was Chevron initially, and then Occidental and CIPTOS came forward.

When they're Chevron said, hey, something's going on.

Yeah, they're like, they actually noticed and said, Whoa, something ain't right, and we don't know how big a problem this is.

Um, and this is this is what we know about it, and then that caused the other operators to start digging into their own reviews and reports and what their consultants had done.

Um, and then they also came forward and they're like, hey, yeah, we found some some weird stuff as well.

So it doesn't appear that the consulting group were doing it on behalf of their clients.

That's that's hard to say.

I'm not gonna speak to motive, and this is a uh progressing um ongoing investigation.

The fact is that there were falsifications both ways where sites that required additional cleanup were lied about to say that they're clean, which is obviously extremely concerning.

But there were also cases where sites that were clean and done, they were falsifying reports to say, hey, you actually need to go out there and do more digging and do more work.

And that that to me seems much more like these consulting companies who are doing the cleanup work are just inventing work and actually and actually defrauding the the oil and gas operators.

Um so both instances happen.

One where you say this benefits the operator, and one we say this is actually detrimental to the oil and gas operator.

Um both are bad.

Uh one is one is way worse from a public safety viewpoint.

Um most likes you hope you get a whistleblower to maybe give some inside information.

Exactly.

As this continues to develop, keep you guys up to date.

Um but I want to we want to move into there.

Are a couple sites actually in Erie.

Yep, that's good to consulting firms.

Are there?

Two consultants.

Oh, how many are there total?

How many other companies do this sort of thing?

Several dozen in the state of Colorado, probably hundreds across the country.

Again, this is this is unfathomable to me, someone who and you came from consulting as well.

I can't.

This is when we heard about this.

We're like, are you like you're joking, right?

That's not a that's not a thing.

All right, let's talk about the site scenario here.

Yep.

So we have three locations relevant to Erie, two are proximal, and one is actually located within Erie.

So you can see those on the map marked in those pink triangles.

Um, these are all at the northern section of town.

Um near the wastewater treatment plan.

Yeah.

So it's north of 52.

Yeah.

Uh one is just south of 52.

In the umgoing spring hill development.

Perfect transition there.

So we don't want to get too much into the details, um, but we just wanted to bring it up that the one within the Spring Hill development, we have been in contact with the developer.

Um they are aware of this, and we've set up some communication channels.

So as they receive information from ECMC on the nature of the falsification at this site, um, we will also then receive that information, and we can kind of coordinate as needed with the development.

And you can see here there aren't lots uh proposed near the site.

So this shouldn't impact uh the ongoing development or planning process in any substantial way, uh, but it's something we're keeping on that.

So on this one, was it um in favor of they won't tell us that uh interesting.

I'm sure we'll get there, but you we we've asked for that information from ECMC, and they're like, yeah, it's an ongoing investigation.

Um so there are four investigations ongoing currently um in regards to this.

The first is ECMC's environmental unit.

These are the ones actually going site by site and looking at the data that was falsified.

Um next, ECMC's quality assurance control unit.

Um, they are looking at all forms of data that are submitted to the commission and are actually building a tool right now to cross-check submitted reports with verified lab data directly from the labs.

Um, the Department of Natural Resources Executive Director's Office is looking at ECMC staff with ties to these previous consulting firms to kind of investigate to see maybe why this went unnoticed for so long.

And then the final one that David mentioned prosecutors and law enforcement, they are pursuing um civil and criminal action against those involved.

Um here's a brief timeline of kind of everything that's happened in the investigation starting in November of 2024 with the announcement up until the present day.

The most recent um update was in July on the 23rd, um, and that was the last of the regularly scheduled quarterly updates.

Now that the notice of alleged violations have been issued, um, it becomes an internal process, and so the information um is a little less available for the time being, and so those updates will come on an as-needed basis.

Um, but we did want to take a moment to talk about this statement that ECMC has been kind of circulating recently.

Um, I'll pass this off to you, David.

Oh, you don't want to say this on the public record.

Uh basically what ECMC is saying is that this is not a big deal.

There was no new risk to the public.

But the key here is no new risk.

The the way they're defining this here is they're saying, well, by falsifying data, they didn't cause new things to be spilled or for new areas to be contaminated, right?

They they say right here, the disturbances from oil and gas operations of these sites is unchanged.

The falsified data affects the degree of remediation needed to remediate those disturbances.

So, what they're saying is the the risk to the public was the same with or without this data falsification, which is maybe technically true, but very dishonest.

Uh the fact is there are sites out here that would have been cleaned up on a timeline on a more expedient timeline that weren't.

And how they can say that that creates no new risk to the public, I will never know.

Okay.

Um, so unrelated to the data falsification issue.

Um, we were asked to prepare a spill report for the last seven years.

So we have summed all of this, all 68 spills that have occurred from 2018 and provided a breakdown by operator.

So you'll recognize that uh pie chart on the right is the facilities versus operator.

So you can compare the percentage of spills to the percentage of facilities that the operator actually operates.

Um, and you'll see these line up pretty evenly.

The only outlier might be um occidental.

Um, and the reason for this is they've closed um a pretty good amount of their sites within town, and as you guys know, a lot of these spills are discovered during site closure.

Um, so that roughly accounts for that increase.

Um, and here we have a map.

Again, you'll see some clusters where developments are to take place, and like I said, that's because those sites are being closed to make way for those developments, and that's typically when those are found.

Um, so there are two spills and associated remediation efforts that we kind of wanted to touch on as they've been getting a good amount of attention, and we've been answering a lot of questions from residents.

Um, the first being Erie 124.

Um, as we all know, this was discovered in November of 2023 with the site closure, and since then they've removed an estimated 1300 cubic yards of contaminated soil and installed 13 groundwater monitoring wells.

And testing has been occurring on a quarterly basis since then.

And this is still ongoing.

There was some work that happened in July of this year, included in which is what this map here captures.

There's a resample at one of the wells and some additional background sampling.

So this, as far as we know, will continue until ECMC is satisfied and issues a no further action.

SIPTOS per their own reports has estimated this to be December 2026.

So our goal is just to continue updating residents when work will be conducted and when though that actual testing will be conducted.

Is there any way to expedite?

So the the way these cleanups go is they'll they take away the equipment, they dig up the lines, and they look for contamination.

So that means visually olfactory, you know, you smell if the if the if the smells like crude oil, uh, and you'll want around with a um handheld uh hydrocarbon detector.

Um anything that looks contaminated, smells contaminated, or gets a reading on the PID, mark that and start excavating.

And you dig it up until it looks clean, looks clean, smells clean.

Um, and then you take samples on what you hope to be the clean side wall of your excavation and the bottom.

That all goes to lab.

The lab has to analyze that material.

That takes several weeks, maybe a couple months.

Then that that information all goes to ECMC, they have to review it and quality control it and make sure it's not falsified.

Uh, and then they will draft a response to the um to the ongoing remediation report saying, yep, this all looks good, uh, fill in the hole, or uh nope, keep digging.

And then they'll do another round where they'll do another round of excavation.

Um the process is set up this way because you don't want as an operator, you you wouldn't want to have to dig an infinitely big hole.

You don't want to dispose of any more dirt than you have to.

So your goal is to dig the smallest possible hole.

So they don't want to over excavate.

Uh the state's goal is to make sure that everything that's contaminated gets properly disposed of and hauled out of this neighborhood.

Um, those two interests uh competing create a very lengthy process.

Um, a process in which the local governments are not really involved.

It's not our local regulations that dictate this process, it is the state's list of contaminants and acceptable levels, um, the lab's turnaround process and the quality control necessary.

So it is extremely frustrating uh how long these can go on, especially if it's multiple rounds.

In this case, uh you've got sort of a riparian system running through here, obviously very shallow groundwater and a series of monitor wells.

Once you start dealing with groundwater remediation rather than just digging up soil and hauling it off, that becomes an even lengthier process.

Groundwater is not an easy thing to clean up.

Um would that get the state to expedite DS if there's groundwater?

Well, once you dig down to the water table, that's about as far as you're gonna dig.

Excavating is no longer gonna fix your problem.

Um at that point, you start looking into other remediation, and I'm not sure exactly what's going on on this site if they're doing pump and treat, if they're just have these monitor wells uh to monitor and ensure that there's no groundwater contamination.

I hope that's the stage they're at.

Uh, or you start getting into bioremediation where you inject bacterium that like to eat oil uh into the you start getting it in the sort of cleanups that we saw at the Newhouser Landfill, which are very lengthy process, years and years and years.

Um they're hoping this site will be will be done next Christmas, correct?

So not this year, we're looking at a year and a quarter, and I'd say that is probably an optimistic guess.

No, did I read that they've gone down to 17 feet so far or that's for the next remote.

Yes, that's the next site.

The next site is a gigantic hole.

Um, the excavation on this, how many cubic yards did you say?

1300.

I think it was about 12 feet.

So it's a that's a pretty big hole, 1300 cubic yards is a is a large hole.

On the first one or the second one?

That's on this one.

And and they're they're obviously they're collecting a lot of uh background samples.

That's to establish what uh the naturally occurring metal contents in the soil are.

Um we see a lot of elevated chromium, arsenic, um, handful of others, uh, beryllium just in this part of the country, just in Erie, that's what our dirt's made of.

Um, and so they probably have some of those readings that are elevated.

Uh and so they're the idea is to figure out what area this area this should what levels this area should be restored to.

Because you have the standard table of levels need to be below this these values, and if it's naturally occurring above that value, then you need to set a new value.

So that's the purpose of the green dots uh out of the site.

And residents can see the progress on the updated website.

Um yeah, we're gonna start giving much more uh much more thorough communication.

Um these sorts of things are hard to communicate.

Um we can read the remediation reports.

Uh there's there's often not a ton of great information.

Um we communicate with the operators.

We we ask Civitas to say, hey, what's going on out there?

Umsu, it's not a lot more information than those remediation reports.

But any mediation, you they dig a bunch, they haul it away, they take samples, they wait, repeat the process.

Then they might have to that's generally gonna be the process at repeat.

Yeah, of all of these sites.

Um but we'll we'll do we'll work to when they put out new remediation reports, they're usually quarterly.

Um we'll read them, give a layman's summary and post that up on the website.

You have said who the operator was?

Who was I missed it?

Oh, this is a Civitas.

Are they both Civitas?

Yeah.

Um so moving on to the other one that we've talked a lot about recently um is the Arapahoe tank battery located in the Arapahoe Ridge um neighborhood.

Um, this is as David was talking about earlier, is they're still in the dig phase.

Um so they have dug down to 17 feet now at this facility.

So there are two slides depicting kind of how they've been excavating over time with this image on the far right being what it currently looks like.

Um so a pretty large hole going on here.

Um, and as they've continued to dig, they've continued to find um dirt that's still contaminated above ECMC's um acceptable limits.

Um so at this facility they've excavated over 6,500 cubic yards.

Um, so quite a big excavation.

Um, and this most recent excavation was done in February of this year.

Um so this is still very much ongoing, um, and something we're hoping to keep tabs on.

Um, we've been talking about it with the inspection program.

This is something that we'd really like to implement into that, so we can have on the ground like investigations of this, we can check up on it, and we're not reliant on quarterly reports or operator supplied information.

We can just go ground truth it in the field.

That's a big hole.

That's a really big hole.

You you don't get to something like that by you know whoops, something ended up on the ground and nobody reported it.

That's that's definitely you know that's like the casing or something, bro.

Probably the flow line, the line, the underground line between the separator and the tank, what fills the tank.

There was probably a pinhole leak in that line for several decades.

Yeah, um, and it never daylighted to the surface, so there was no you go out on the site, you'd have no idea nobody would ever know that's going on.

You dig up the flow line, you find a little bit of contamination.

You start chasing the chasing the rabbit hole.

Um so we had a public commenter at our last meeting that came and talked about this site, and he was noting that there's there was no fencing, you'd send kids playing in the site.

Um, what can we do kind of immediately to yeah?

I think we will reach out to Civitas to say, hey, um, we've had reports of of kids and other members of the public potentially hanging out and playing in your excavation.

Can you get some fencing up?

Um, do something to restrict uh public access for the duration of this.

Uh I think long term it's very worthwhile to explore perhaps drafting a brief ordinance about what these sites what should the condition of the sites be.

Normally they're not open for more than a month or two.

Uh they're not of this scale, uh, and they're not typically right in somebody's neighborhood.

It's often out in you know, an alfalfa field.

But in the nature of Erie, I think it's absolutely worthwhile.

Um, putting a pen to gave together, put a pen together with some paper, and put an ordinance together.

Um we'll start exploring that.

I don't know of any other towns that have that sort of thing.

We'll probably have to write afresh.

I like to cannibalize good ideas when I see them.

I will say it is in ECMC's regulations that these open remediation excavations do need to be fenced or covered.

So they're already probably in violation of the statements.

Yeah, so let's we'll work on on getting that addressed immediately, and then we'll look long term about what the town can do.

Have we attempted to contact Civitas and they they're not responsive, or we just haven't gotten that far yet?

We've contacted them amongst or about a couple things in the response from them is wishy-washy.

Sometimes we get a good response and they'll they'll follow up quickly, and sometimes we don't.

I would say if you don't get the response, right?

Get it up to Malcolm and I mean I'll call them if I need to, but I won't do that without Malcolm saying, Hey, can you do whatever you need to do politically?

Yeah.

There's also always an option of of uh calling ECMC inspectors and saying, hey, we have an issue at the site, come out, and then they can draft notices of violation.

Um it'll be much when we start doing our own inspections and have actual evidence, and here's a form filled out, uh, I think that'll strengthen that communication channel and hopefully uh get get answers more promptly and more transparently.

Yeah, and they don't want to just go to you know the state in until at least contacted them and you know figured it out.

I knock on my neighbor's door and ask them to turn down the music before I call the police.

That's a great analogy.

Well, one of the frustrating things was Civitas, and I I talked to one of the representatives about this when they had that flare off that I think we got a follow-up.

This was about a year ago now.

We had gotten a follow-up message from them, and the reasoning for what they did was logical laid out or whatever, but it's like, why didn't you why didn't you tell us about it before they were doing it?

It made perfect sense.

We could have got notification out, but we got all the complaints about it, and then we get the explanation.

So I remember that was that was like a week after you started.

We got we got like we got like three dozen phone calls in an afternoon.

I was like, something is happening.

Yeah, yeah.

So the new um monitoring device that uh shows up tomorrow.

I know you said you've got some early places you want to take it.

I mean, is this one of the places you should be maybe looking at or not?

Since this isn't an active leak, I I doubt you would see anything.

Okay, um, if there's anything coming out of this hole, it's gonna be so minute and minuscule.

Yeah, okay.

Um I will say we do have plans for the calendar 2026 to do some soil vapor testing, and that would be that would align with sites like this.

Okay, yeah.

So is there a target date ECMC has put for the cleanup on this?

I haven't seen one on this one.

Okay, so especially since December 2026, and yeah.

There's yeah, with the Eerie 124, since their excavations are complete and they're just doing the ground monitor groundwater monitoring, there's a little more set time scale.

This I mean, this excavation is as of February.

Yeah, there's there's sort of there's like four phases.

Um is is it an active or a closed uh site?

And that literally means like is it an active leak that hasn't been addressed, or is is the is it no longer leaking?

And in these cases, since they're decommissioning the facility, these basically start off closed, which I think is a poor choice of choice of words from the state because to me, I see like active remediation closed.

Oh, this site is closed, it's done.

It's done leaking, it's not done, it's not closed final remediation.

Then you get into so then they'll transfer from uh over to a form 27, so then you have to look in a completely different place to find the information on an on a remediation rather than a spill release.

Uh and then in that process, then you'll get to um where they start their questing closure, which is when they're like, okay, yes, we actually think we're gonna be done by this date.

Here's our plan, um, as opposed to this, which is sort of like still in investigation.

They're like, we're trying to figure out how big this thing is, and we don't know how how long it's gonna take yet.

And then after that, when the remediation's done, then you get into reclamation where they fill the hole back in, seeds, and that's another two to three year process.

So I I guess in these small leaks, uh is there not uh anything maybe on a pressure gauge or anything that would indicate that they're small enough that it's not setting off a detection or something.

Right.

So on a modern facility, I think you would see they do have sophisticated enough instruments, but this is gonna be like a literally a manual pressure gauge um you can find in your granddad's garage.

And this is one of the reasons why we're we're glad to see these 22 wells that are gonna be plugged in abandoned.

Anytime we have retiring of these old facilities, it means finding these types of problems and fixing them and cleaning them up.

Um this probably went on for who knows many years.

Nobody knew and it went unaddressed and uncleaned up.

So I assume the expansive soil here probably soaks it up like a sponge.

It's probably you do run into cases where there'll be a uh a clay layer that basically stops it from going down to the water table.

Yeah, it'll spread it out laterally.

Right.

Um, but yeah, it's like yeah, the spill hits this shelf and doesn't go any deeper.

All right, I think we saw a few more slides.

Yeah, we're almost almost at the end.

Along with the asking for immediate fencing, I think it would be prudent for us to also ask civitas for regular updates on one twenty Erie 124 and also Rafaho tank batteries since they're so they're in the middle of our neighborhoods.

Yes.

And they have a history.

So um I will guess that their response will be we update the state quarterly.

Uh but we will certainly work with them to perhaps get more uh information at uh quicker intervals.

We could ask the state to um enforce that for us, but we're coming to them in good faith.

So we're gonna come to them in good faith.

That's exactly right.

All right, so the wrap up here, we've talked about most of the stuff on this slide um pertaining to the field inspection program and how we're looking to start that um pretty much right away now that we have the OGI camera.

Um but in addition to that, we are looking at um adding some language to the UDC to give us the ability to levy fines, um, which is now a possibility for us.

Um previously we have our regulations, but not really in any enforcement teeth to that.

Um so that's something we are working to roll out shortly.

Um to go along with that right to access and inspect facilities specifically for the uh inspection program, um, as well as annual inspection or registration fees to accompany that.

We've been looking at other local governments in the surrounding area and kind of how their fee schedule works and looking to implement something along the same lines.

Um we discussed the fines and penalties, which we potentially will be assessing daily for long-standing infractions.

Um we are currently in the process of working on some rules and regulations to protect our municipal water supply.

Um, and then looking more down the line at potentially addressing some of the holes and the cumulative impacts rulemaking, and then some rules around deep geothermal and carbon sequestration so we can kind of stay ahead of the curve of where we see the industry going in the next couple years.

So, our municipal water supply, are you talking about ONG around like Thomas Reservoir or Erie Lake?

Um because our water supply, I want people to know we're not actually drilling into the ground for a while.

Correct.

Yeah, we don't drink any groundwater.

Um this is uh so we we have a vested interest in protecting the sources of our drinking water, even if they're outside of the town of Erie.

And and when it comes to municipal water supplies, we can actually extend our authority outside of our municipal batteries.

It's one of the only cases in which we can.

And so we're looking at um along Boulder Creek, uh, along Cole Creek, uh, and up yeah, near Thomas Reservoir near uh Erie Lake, uh, and even up to Carter Reservoir where we source our water.

We can extend protections, we can uh exercise our land use authority in those areas uh within five miles of where we have uh drinking water source.

So we can go all the way to Grand Lake and I don't know about Grand Lake, and there's not a lot of oil and gas production up there.

But hypothetically, there is uranium uh in the I'd have to talk to you to our oil and gas lawyers, uh our regular town attorney and our water lawyers.

Um writing these sorts of things can get expensive.

So we're we keep it semi-local.

Uh and it's not just oil and gas centric.

This would be um you know, from any undue influence which could potentially contaminate our uh source of our water.

So but this is kind of a short list of the um ordinances and municipal code updates that were that we're eyeballing over the next few years.

Um we'll we'll roll these out a few at a time.

Uh or if we if we find a lull in the day-to-day work, maybe we'll just bring you one big package.

So, how about I just go around the circle to see if there's any last uh questions or comments?

Good council member bearer.

I was gonna say about the cumulative impacts rulemaking.

Um there were some things we were really frustrated about.

I don't think we can fix the um virus screen score and except to keep festering the environmental justice arm to fix that.

Um I think that's beneficial for us to stay in that conversation with them to look at environescreen.

I know they just updated it, but um, we're only on version two.

I know two dotto.

So I think there's opportunity there, but I wonder about um some of the other things where they compromise setbacks and the Knox and GHG targets.

Can we incorporate those in our own policy?

Yeah, in a lot of cases, the the Knox and the GHG, um I without a health department, I don't know how we would regulate those, and we are sort of dependent on CDPHE and NAQ CD to regulate those on our behalf and to be consistent with the state of Colorado.

As far as the setbacks go, uh our current municipal code is largely more restrictive than what was proposed in cumulative impacts, even at the best of of times.

We have a very strict under no circumstances, can you drill closer than 2,000 feet?

Um we've got 500 feet to all of all sources of water within the town, whether it's drinking water or otherwise, if there's a registered well with the state engineer's office, we say you can't drill next to that.

Um I'll take another look through and see if there are other protections, but we're already we are already largely more protective.

Um that of course only pertains to proposals within the town.

Uh and again, I don't know what ordinances we can pass locally that extends our reach and our land use authority out beyond our municipal boundaries, uh, except for this rare uh exception to uh utilize municipal drinking water sources.

So that brings up, I'm sorry, one more question.

So Senator Wallace invited you and I to a meeting with ECMC commissioners and staff, and um has anything come about?

We talked about being more involved in the planning process so that we were communicating and all operating with the same information so a situation like Westerly doesn't happen again.

And I think there was some commitment to meet together and perhaps develop a rulemaking, but yeah.

So um I was in communication with Chair Robinson, Director Murphy, uh, and basically kind of like the busyness of the summer happened.

Um so we have not had a chance to meet, but it is still on our schedule.

I think it was for the fall anyway.

Yeah, it keeps getting it keep getting knocked back.

Um we were supposed to meet, I think initially it was gonna be late August, and now we're looking at October.

We'll find the gaps in our calendars.

Uh, but Ben and I just met with Commissioner Messner last week um to talk about how the local permitting process and the state permitting process can um better serve each other.

Um you have cases where um like the town of Uri would prefer that our local permitting process run through to completion where we have a determination by council um before the state takes up that same application.

Our justification for that um sequential process being if if there needs to be substantial and major modification to the oil and gas facility or oil and gas plan in order to satisfy our municipal code, um that should all be set and done before the state hears it because what a waste of time for the state to approve a facility and then for the local government to say actually that you can't build that, it has to look like this, and then it'd have to go back to the state for revised permit.

Um other jurisdictions um like Weld County comes to mind, they much prefer a concurrent process where the local government and the state are both reviewing the application simultaneously.

That's obviously gonna be a much faster process.

Uh and then the vast majority of local governments do no oil and gas uh permitting whatsoever.

And so they say, hey, whatever the state decides, that's great.

So those are sort of the three tracks, and we talked to Commissioner Messner about why we like our approach, um what we see working very well in the process, uh, shortfalls we see in the process.

Um with the caveat that since the local governments were granted this limited land use authority regarding oil and gas, um we've we've only been a proximal local government.

We we have not actually processed an application to do a uh to drill a new facility within Erie since uh SB 1918 one.

So we don't know exactly how that process looks.

How do you envision the fines, penalties, and enforcement working at the town level?

So yeah, so the first the very first thing is is uh um requiring registration of every facility.

And then we have we don't have to go to the state.

We we know what's at each facility, we know what's permitted to be at that facility, um, and part of that registration, we'd like to see a registration fee.

Um I worked in in the nuclear uh sector for a good chunk of my career, and in that in that world, industry pays for its own regulation.

The our taxpayer dollars fund zero zero pennies to the to the nuclear regulatory commission.

Um and and I would like to see this program not be a burden on the general fund, but to be funded by the the industry that it is um that it's overseeing.

Um so that's the first thing is just a simple registration fee.

Nothing nothing you know extraordinary, um, enough for Ben and I to keep the lights on.

Um and then beyond that, uh, we could look at potential inspection fees.

Um I I don't I wouldn't like to, you know, every violation we start handing out fines immediately.

I think it would have to be a boy, we've talked about this problem for several cycles now, we're not getting any action, or in the case of hey, this is really really egregious.

Um but in my opinion, the point of an inspection program is to identify and and fix problems, and that that should be the number one goal.

And as long as the process of inspecting and informing the operator gets things fixed promptly, um, I'd like to see there be no fines issued.

Um it's only gonna be in those cases where that process is broken down and we've got issues ongoing that are unresolved, or issues that are creating uh an immediate danger to the public or the environment where we need it prompt and immediate action.

Um in those circumstances, uh, as we said in the previous slide, um, yeah, levy fines, start levying fines daily and force some action.

If it's that serious, absolutely.

So, how would you enforce it or how would you propose enforcing that?

Um, you know, in the case of you know, like Civitas is you know has 90% of the wells in town.

Um in every other jurisdiction, every other local government, they they're they are uh willing participant in the local rules and regulations.

Um when uh when we draft municipal code, uh they they do their very best to comply with it, and I think that would include um fines and fees.

In the case of of KP Kaufman, uh much less so.

Uh we only have the 21 wells here.

Uh I know talking to um you know the folks in in Frederick, they have a big big problem up there because the vast majority of their wells are KPK wells, and and they say, hey, we're gonna, you know, we want a registration system, and they're like, nah, we're not doing that.

They say, hey, you have this problem issuing fines, and they're like, yeah, we're not paying that.

So Civitas, though, is our bigger.

Civitas is an above board um operator, fully, fully interested in being compliant with loss and regulations.

And maybe we sit down and you know, at some point have that conversation with them just around the table to say we're hearing things that are you know, you you could do better for us, which would help us be able to send a better message because it's frustrating now.

But yeah, how do you how do you police uh an industry that doesn't want to be policed?

That's a tough question.

Um that's and part of that is just maintaining good working relationships uh, you know, across the board, working with each other instead of against each other, and in every circumstance where that's possible.

I would say on that note, you know, we've got these two spills, we've got 22 wells that are about to be plugged and abandoned.

We're gonna find more places where remediation is gonna occur.

How do how do we work with Civitas and ECMC to not take, I mean, it's long, frustrating process.

How do we improve on it?

Um, you know, working together, you know, making sure that we can do that.

Well, we we'd committed to meeting with Civitas every two, three months.

Uh, once we got very close to Draco.

Um I'm thinking it's time to reach out to him and say, hey, I think it's I think it's time we start meeting.

I think that time has come.

Yeah, I yeah, like I said, I'd like to get these two um cleaned up quickly, and and then in anticipation, there's gonna be a lot more coming, right?

So, how do we do this faster?

The other question I I have is the 22 wells at Civitas is going to be plugging with the commitment from from Draco.

Are those all their wells?

Or are they other folks' wells is I think they're they're all Civitas wells.

There's one well in that spacing unit that they don't own, and that that one's not going to be plugged, I believe.

Okay.

So if they come upon a well and it needs remediation, it's their well when they plug it.

So it's so that it's not going across multiple operators.

And yes, that is the case with the wells to be plugged.

Um the six already plugged wells that they've committed to uh to monitor, none of those wells belong to them.

And that's why that's why this is so interesting.

Uh is an operator is saying, yes, we agree, these need careful study, even though there's someone else's liability, and in a lot of cases that someone else no longer exists in the state of Colorado.

Yeah, they're risk is something happens to those six and shuts down the Draco operation.

Yeah.

And that's why I said you need to monitor them before during and after.

Yeah.

Um, it's in your interest to establish the condition of those wells before you do anything.

You need that baseline data.

And and if and if folks are curious why uh why does Draco cause the plugging of all of these other wells?

Those wells hold open active lease agreements uh for privately held mineral rights, and those leases are they have what's called the primary period and the secondary period.

The primary period is you sign a lease and then the oil and gas company has eight months to look for oil in your minerals.

If they find oil, which they did back in 1974, um the secondary period of the lease is indefinite as long as production continues.

So those those wells, they may produce next to nothing, but it's not nothing.

And so they they hold the lease that your grandfather or the previous landowner's grandfather signed.

And now that now that they have permits on Draco, now they can now they can remove that well because they have a new well that continues that lease.

All right.

That's it.

Okay.

Anything else?

Oh, real quick.

Um the green wells.

Um obviously most of these are an unincorporated uh weld county.

Um yeah, so you've got the uh ones between uh Summerfield, the Reeder property, and what would be North Station.

Um, and then of course the ones uh uh north of County Road 10, just uh north of Colliers Hill.

Um I guess first question.

Um, how often are we meeting with Weld County?

Well, I think it's Brett Kavanaugh, right?

Not the Supreme Court Justice, but the other Bavanaugh with a city.

Um let's see, we've got a lunch with Brett coming up in two weeks.

Uh last time we met with them was maybe a month and a half ago, two months ago.

Um Weld County also invites uh it used to be just the operators, but they also now uh invite uh local governments for a quarterly meeting in Greeley uh that we attend.

Uh so I would say our uh our communication with Weld County is is pretty tip top.

Okay, and both Weld County and and Erie have expressed a desire to increase that coordination even more.

Um to have regular communication with their inspectors now that they have an action active inspective program uh and to share our inspection results and to just generally um keep each other in the loop on what's happening.

Um because obviously what what happens in this part of Weld County affects Erie, but what happens in Erie affects that part of Weld County.

So and I'll say that's that's uh that's come a long way.

Um since I started here four years ago, uh we you know, I reached out to Weld County, that was one of my very first priorities is to establish that relationship, and that's and it's done nothing but built over the last four years.

That was one of my very first priorities is to establish that relationship, and that's and it's done nothing but built over the last four years.

Excellent.

Uh so yeah, and and like I said, we've got a um Frederick to the north uh finally hired an oil and gas guy.

Um and we've we've met with Robert four or five times since he's been on, so that's been probably about as many months.

Um so yeah, and we have we have good coordination with all the other local governments.

Uh if they have an oil and gas program.

Uh there's there's plenty of plenty of communities still that don't um don't do any internal oversight, they just kind of leave it up to the state.

Just Dako.

Uh Decono does not have uh an oil and gas person.

Uh Firestone does not either.

I think is getting really serious about it.

Firestone less so.

Um maybe they'll change their mind.

Last question that single well, the orange well, and uh I don't know if that's North Station or Erie Gateway.

Um there, but what's the status on that?

Is it on the plugging list out there?

I'd be surprised if it's not.

Our data is oftentimes uh okay, you know, a few weeks behind.

Um I yeah I'm remembering the same thing.

Yeah, I'm 90% sure that's all right.

This this data is just a little bit out of date.

Yep, no problem.

Just wondering.

Um yep, that is plugged and abandoned.

It was probably it was plugged back in 2023, but I'm gonna guess because it was a KPK well, that they were holding the status as shut in or temporarily abandoned until they were sure the site was cleaned up because that is one of the very few things the state still has leverage over is the well status because they get to pick what the well status is, and you don't get your your bond money back until they change the well status to PNA.

Okay.

All right.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, I started there.

That's right.

I think we're we've gone around the horn here.

Thank you.

I know we put you off uh a few times, and uh I just just happy to accommodate the schedule.

There's a lot of business that needs to be done, and this is a uh more casual conversation.

So the slide deck is good reference now, at least for me.

So when things come up, I can reference slide whatever questions that way.

All right.

The time is now 9 56, and I adjourn this meeting.