601 p.m.

and I'm calling to order the town council meeting on January 20th, 2026.

This is a study session uh for three different items.

Uh the first item is item 2026 34, the Uri Community Center Building Addition and Renovation Pre-design concept presentation and summary report.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Luke and Bulletin.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh good evening, council.

Luke Bolinger, Director of Parks and Recreation.

And before I flip it to uh Rachel and Chad, who've done uh all the work on this project, I just wanted to put us uh back into mindset.

If you recall last September when we adopted our playbook, our parks and recreation strategic plan.

I kept making that reference of that upside down pyramid where you have your overarching goals and then you're getting down into the action items.

So tonight what we're doing is we've we've we've done this already, we've established our goals, and now we're getting down into that implementation stage.

So that's what you're gonna you're gonna see a representation of that specifically as it applies to this project, but I just wanted to put us back in that mindset.

Investment in parks and recreation facilities is really no longer a want or a need, it's an essential service, physical health, social connections, the simple opportunity to participate in a program, economic value or all benefits of investment in parks and recreation facilities.

Every meeting that we have, every design charret, every survey is intentional community building in parks and recreation.

So over the past two years, when we've been living up here, we've been planning to make sure that we can continue to provide recreational services that our community has come to expect.

So through our 2024 parks and community survey, through the data that we collected in our playbook, we know that it's projects like this that our community wants us to pursue.

And so as we continue discussions with you all with the community about this project and the second community campus, it's important to remember that building community doesn't happen, happens at a system-wide level, uh system-wide lens, not just within a specific project.

So that's the approach that we take when we when we present information to you all and to the public.

So with that, I will turn it over to Chad and Rachel.

Thanks, Luke.

So today we're here to talk about the Uri Community Center renovation expansion study.

And the study really started in Earth back in July of 2025.

Um that was uh due to budget that was requested in 2024 to study the ECC expansion.

And I was following up on the facility's master plan that was completed back in 2020.

21 uh kind of identified the need for digital space.

And uh I'll get into that in a little bit more as we go forward.

But just to start, uh Luke mentioned uh Rachel and I uh have been working on this with collab architects, and welcome Chris.

Um there with uh collab and then also Chris Kastelik.

Um Brian's here with us tonight, but that's the kind of architecture team that's been helping us um with the study.

Um a lot of staff involved, and Rachel will kind of go into that uh as we go forward.

But um, that's been uh team so far.

And uh just to kind of talk about um our agenda for today.

We're gonna talk about the current state of the ECC.

And when I say ECC, obviously URI community center, I'll say that um uh out of the gate, but uh we'll talk about the conception study that we've completed to look at the feasibility of expansion and renovation of the current ECC.

Um we'll also talk about the objectives of this presentation.

Um talk through the pre-design process.

Um again, I mentioned a lot of staff input uh from a design advisory team, and then also ad hoc members uh of the town staff and on actually members of the community.

Um we'll talk about some recommendations born out of that uh study um for expansion and renovation of the the current facilities.

And obviously, we'll have some costs.

And I want to preface again to Luke's point.

We start out here.

We're at the conceptual stage.

These are recommendations based on this current study.

And we'll have some costs to present that are very high level at this point.

We'll also talk about additional opportunity for expansion that was identified through the course of this study.

And then we'll talk about some next steps for this process.

Staff next steps.

Your community center has become an integral part of daily life for residents in Neary.

Providing a place for all the ages to connect, play and grow.

The facility was constructed when the town's population was a third of what it is today.

However, it has reached the point where programs and services have a higher demand than available space.

Enhancements to programs of facilities and support spaces are needed to ensure the community center remains a vital and vibrant resource to the public.

So I think the keys there that we'll talk about are just the population growth.

And as a function of that, to continue to provide these services at a high level.

And you know, uh some enhancements to the facilities are needed, excuse me.

Yeah, and I think the um two things I'd like to just add to that.

We track all of our participation, um, you know, usage of the community center.

And in 2025, we had almost 1,500 people wait listed for our programs.

So I think that just speaks a little bit to kind of the higher demand than the space available.

Also in the enhanced facility component, I just wanted to share that we did defer some ECC CIP improvement projects in the 2026 budget.

I think Luke shared that at the budget meetings.

And so once we started this study, we thought, you know what, let's take a timeout, let's take a step back, let's look at all of it and go from there.

So it's always still on on top of my okay.

This one's me.

Absolutely.

Okay, um, just in case not everyone is super oriented with the community center and what our use and spaces are.

I was just gonna come up here and point everything out to the group.

Um so first, this is the community center, and down is north.

Um, if you are looking at these green spaces right here, those are actually our three community rooms plus our stage, which we kind of makes a small median space, plus our kitchen.

If you go over to this blue space here, that is our column by lounge.

And for those that aren't familiar, that's our um it's a free space for our active adults to connect and and have coffee and um do different activities together.

Straight across from that are our two bathrooms.

If you go uh a little bit up, that purple space, the first one is our kids station, and so kids station is our drop-in um paid child watch program.

So when caregivers are working out in the rec center, or maybe even having a little bit of respite in the lobby, um, our staff can watch uh kiddos ages six months to six years.

That little kind of round thing behind it, that's the outdoor playground.

If you go the next little purple space, that's our mini miners area.

So that's a free indoor playground that's completely open to the public.

Because our kids' station program is so popular, often um, I want to say almost Monday through Friday in the mornings between about a nine to eleven.

We close down mini miners, so our kids station kiddos have access to it because that uh program is so popular, which is a wonderful option.

But what that does is it takes away a free amenity to the public.

So if you can imagine a mom with a three-year-old, it's a cold day, it's snowy, her three-year-old needs to burn off some energy.

She comes to the rec center at 10 o'clock on a Wednesday.

She can't access mini miners.

So the orange space, yep, right across from uh the purple, like right there.

Uh that is our cycle garage, and then right um above that is our staff offices.

There's our lobby, our big blue box off over here.

Yeah, perfect.

That is our pool, and then we um you can kind of see our front desk space, and that is also our break room and some um our lifeguard office.

And across the hallway, that is our gymnasium.

And then above our gymnasium, um, in kind of the same that little tan, oh well, in the orange color would be our fitness studio, and then the tan color are our two racquall courts, and then um further up is where our climbing wall is, and then this uh graphic is our second floor.

So that orange space is where our uh our weight room is, and then it's not quite shown, but then there, of course, there's a track that goes all around the upstairs.

So that's just a little bit of information about the community center in case on that everyone was familiar.

All right, so um reasons for this current BCC facilities that I mentioned in that paragraph uh we started just the need for space, and uh that is a follow-up on findings and recommendations from that 2021 facilities master plan, and they were um building deficiencies identified and facilities improvements related to that to serve the higher demand for programs and services and improved visitor experience.

Um it's really spaces to accommodate that growth and demand for services.

Yes, and then uh also want to share some key takeaways from our our recent parks recreation open space and trails um strategic plan update, which of course we're calling our playbook.

And so, as part of that process, we had a really really robust community engagement plan.

I know Luke presented on it back in August, but as a quick reminder, it included a community questionnaire, it included um interviews with focus groups and with um stakeholder groups, and one of our focus groups was specific to the ECC, users of the ECC, and then uh we had an open house, and then we were of course at multiple events collecting all this information.

And one of the key takeaways that we heard over and over and over again was expanded recreation spaces, and so um that's part of our summary report that our consultants put together for us, and then also within the community questionnaire, one of the questions that we asked was um what are what is your the some barriers to recreation?

What's preventing you from using our services?

And you know, common answers are things like it costs too much, or it's an inconvenient day or time, or I don't feel safe or welcome there.

And our number one response that we got the number one barrier was programs spill up too quickly.

Um, you know, which is that as a recreation professional, is a smidge heartbreaking.

I do have to share just one comment in the in the community engagement um uh or in the community questionnaire, we had an open-ended um comments that people could write in.

This person, I'm just gonna read it so I don't misquote it.

She wrote, current facilities are nowhere near adequate for the demand upon them.

Signing up for youth sports is like trying to buy Taylor Swift tickets, only worse.

Um PSA Youth Sports Registration does open tomorrow at 7 a.m.

If anybody has kiddos, right at 7 or 659.

Exactly, yeah.

No, it's exactly.

Um, so I just thought that was a pretty, you know, a pretty telling comment.

And then also in the community questionnaire, we did ask about most desired programs and services, and fitness and wellness was definitely at the top of that list.

So wanted to share that.

And then, as far as our playbook recommendations, um, we have a whole section on parks and recreation facilities.

And the top two, the first one is plan for future uh community recreation spaces, and the second one is revitalize and um uh expand the Erie Community Center.

So, again, straight from our playbook.

Oh, the next one's me too.

So um I thought this would be pretty interesting to share as well.

Um, in 2024, we were approved for three new FTEs or three new full-time staff, and um, with that, we had the amazing opportunity to kind of fill in some gaps in service that we had, so we were able to kind of expand our services, and that included therapeutic recreation, which is recreation for people with disabilities, along with any sort of um you know, inclusion support services that we need to provide.

Um, the second one was we're able to kick off our ERI Youth for Change team committee.

Thank you, Counselor Mayor.

Um, and then also that provided an opportunity to expand our teen programming.

We do like teen trips now and teen volunteer days, and then finally we were able to kick off our cultural arts program.

So now we have a cultural art supervisor, and she oversees and runs our cultural cultural art events like Shakespeare in the parking lot, and then she also oversees our public art program, which I believe we're coming back next month to share more information with you.

So it was so wonderful, but that's three new staff coming in 20 in 2024.

And I thought, I don't know where I'm gonna put everybody.

And so Luke and I made the decision that I would leave the community center to provide space for my new staff.

And so I actually work out at the Schofield farmhouse, and then we also put the new cultural art supervisor out there with me as well, so that we could um give up uh our provide some desk space for the new staff.

And then finally, um at the bottom, couple uh couple bullet points here.

Again, I know we everyone knows the town of Erie is growing, but we wanted to point out that in 2006 is when the ECC was designed.

You know, we're about just over 14,000 residents.

Um, today we're about at 40,000 residents, and of those residents, 45% of households in Erie have children.

So I thought that was a pretty interesting statistic to share or bring to light.

Oops, yeah.

That's me again.

Oh and so um I think that especially as staff, we have we've known for a while that we've needed more recreation spaces.

Um, and then going through our playbook process and all the community engagement.

Now we know that um expansion of the recreation services and and spaces is supported by the community.

And finally, through this study, now we know it's possible.

And honestly, I think of the group, I was the biggest skeptic.

I think I was the one.

Oh no, I was pretend to have been screwed.

Um, but you know, now we know it's possible, which is exciting.

So then I'll turn it over to you.

Yeah, we will get into the limitations and how we arrived at the options we did in a bit.

But um, this uh study summary report uh provides an update to council.

So that's what we're here for on our pre-design efforts.

We've um gone through uh what we feel is a very thorough process, um, and we're gonna present the building edition and renovation concepts for you tonight and those conceptual budgets.

So again, I'll I'll bold print, put conceptual in there, and that's where we're at.

That's the stage we're at right now.

Um then staff will seek direction from council to further develop those concepts into construction documents, and so um we're just kind of summarizing where we're going, uh, which is um uh a request for council to provide direction on that, and that'll really allow us to uh sharpen our cost estimates.

So as we said, this is very conceptual.

Uh we probably put a lot of we've got our expert partners and collab who's worked with an estimator to put together these budgets, but it is still based on a conceptual design, nothing uh in detail design.

So that's when you really get to sharpen the pencils and arrive at a budget.

Um share this graphic.

Um building on kind of Luke's um pyramid theme.

This is just kind of where we're at.

Um, if you see up at the top there at that uh white green level, that's where we started, which was the facility strategic plan, and then the process.

So that strategic plan was back in 2020, 2021.

The current stage we're at is that pre-design conceptual stage.

Uh, where we're going is the the uh take that pre-construction um and develop it into construction documents um to really again refine the scope of the project uh because we have made some assumptions and you really get into the details when you go through design and then again arrive at that more refined project budget.

Um so that would be the next step, and that would be the better part of a year worth of design when you think about uh an expansion of uh uh the recenter and uh Rachel really pointed out it's a revitalization too.

So we're not just looking at um an addition, we're looking at um the existing space primarily on the A side.

I say A side, and it's all those areas to the north of the lobby that uh Rachel described, but also some fitness areas and other areas again on that opportunity level that we've uh kind of mentioned that we discovered are possible.

Um I'm gonna kind of turn it over to collab now a little bit to talk through our process because they really led um town staff had a tremendous amount of input.

It was staff driven, but also led by a collab and helped to organize this process and let them kind of talk through that process.

Yeah, thank you, Chen.

Um great to meet everybody.

My name is Jordan Lochner, I'm the founding principal at Collab.

This is Chris Kostellic.

Um he's our recreation specialist.

And we approach this process in three major phases that you'll hear us talk about throughout the presentation.

Discovery, vision development, and then the developing of the design concepts and kind of that final vision and budget.

I think it's really important in the discovery phase.

One of our staples that we really try to stick to is there's no substitute for due diligence.

And I think that's what this graphic's kind of showing.

So I'm just gonna quickly walk up and kind of explain what's going on with this graphic a little bit.

Um it is a lot of colors, a lot of lines.

Um just the Orients, everybody.

Uh Rachel mentioned the three kind of meeting rooms on the north side, this is the north side of the current ECC.

Um, and I think when we started the project, everybody's assumption was the easiest way to grow would have been right to the north, um, right into that field that you guys see uh beautiful lawn space right there.

Um very quickly on in our discovery process, we we were doing our due diligence and realize there's there's a reason that it's the building shape the way it is.

Um everything you see in this kind of red right here is the um the mining, and this is the um dedicated setback in this orange that kind of uh facilitates this is the site we're talking about here for the ECC, and these are the property lines and the JSON site for the library, just to orient everybody.

So, really quickly on, you can see as we went through the discovery process and did our due diligence not only on what was um our opportunities and constraints were, but also working with the staff through a variety of exercises, understanding the needs and wants.

We were able to create this graphic that kind of identified site uh constraints, but really the site opportunities and how it related to the existing facilities.

So I'm happy to answer any questions.

I know there's a lot going on with this graphic.

Um it was really helpful for us as we were going through the process of due diligence, understanding what we could and couldn't do.

Um but I just think it's really important to kind of identify that.

Um, we'll just kind of go to the next slide here.

Um we we did a variety of exercises to help us gather a lot of that information of wants, needs.

Um we we did everything from architectural tours, we had a dedicated engineering tour of the facility to look at existing systems, the facility.

Um what you see here is um our SWOT analysis.

I'll just do a quick high level and then I'll turn it over to Rachel to go into more depth.

But we did everything from staff interviews, SWOT analysis, uh, design storytelling to really kind of gather a lot of that information to help us as we program and to really identify the need for this facility.

But Rachel, if you want to um you know, right as this project kicked off, we had kind of wrapped up our community engagement for the playbook, and so all of that was given to collab for review.

So we really wanted to make sure we involve the staff, got their perspectives, their input, and it wasn't um, it was definitely you know recreation staff, part-time and full-time, but then we also um met with our sustainability team, and of course, uh facilities.

Chad and his team, um planning, building, uh and and IT.

So again, we got lots of staff involved.

Um at one of the first kickoff meetings, collab facilitated a SWOT analysis, and so that's what you're seeing on this slide here.

I'm just gonna read one from um from each area, not the whole thing, um, but a couple that I thought I would pull out for um our strengths of the ECC, a strong community hub, family-oriented, welcoming, and serves all ages, all weakness.

Um, programming for the seven to ten age group.

And I don't necessarily mean missing programming as in like sports activities.

We mean like specific to the ECC.

Um, you age out of Kid Station at six, but then you can't be independent in the recenter until a little until you're older, about 12.

And so there's kind of this little you know um gap that we're missing that we we really want to try to um uh program towards.

Opportunities again, um, the second one down expanding youth, adult and senior programming, um sport, after school activities, mentoring, um, food.

Food's written down there because of our senior lunch program, and we're also we're about at capacity for our senior lunch, and it'll be a sad day the day that we have to turn somebody away.

So um try to avoid that.

And threats, uh site challenges.

So again, the undermining, the aging infrastructures, we just turned 18 years old not too long ago at the community center.

So it's almost a 20-year-old building, which is crazy.

Um, moving on to the next slide.

I thought we it'd be fun to pull out some of the staff interviews.

So these are direct quotes from staff facilitated by collabs.

How did that go?

Um, facilitated by collabs interviews.

Um the the couple the there at the bottom on the left-hand side, um, there's no room for additional equipment.

Overflow equipment is currently on the track, and they're talking about fitness equipment.

So if you've been to the ECC recently and you walk the track on the south side of the track, you're just gonna see all fitness equipment along that space to provide and in the corners.

We get these little pockets of uh equipment in the corners as well.

Um, one bubble up, personal trainers have difficulty finding space to train their clients.

So then we start to talk about okay, maybe we don't take any more personal training clients if we if we can't give them a good experience and have enough space to do the training.

And then one up from there again, need something for the immediate or intermediate age when they are too old for kids station, but too young to be independent in the rec center.

So again, this is all kind of staff perspective.

We we're there every day, we live it every day.

There's a couple things that we've identified.

And before we move to the next slide, um, I just wanted to touch on that design storytelling process.

So collab facilitated it, and it was with staff and with patrons.

Um, and we're all in a room together, and basically we were asked to think of the ECC as a person, and what's important to that person?

What are those persons' values?

What do they bring to the community?

And it was a really fun process, and um, we imagine the ECC is Greta.

She is a beloved community member.

Um, she's welcoming, she's caring.

She can't, you know.

Um, oh, she was the town mayor at one point.

Greta was the town mayor.

She survived.

She's survived.

Okay, team years and go on.

Yes.

Um, and so that was a it was a really just a different way to do community engagement, not the dots on a you know, on pictures, and for me, just sitting in the room, it was really fun to hear it and to hear that perspective and just understand how special of a place the EC the ECC is to the community.

So that was a really fun process on in your summer report.

The uh visual of it is on page 18 and 19.

So okay, so now then from all of that, so all the community engagement, the staff interviews, um, all the um the research, right?

That collab is putting together, some themes kind of started to emerge of what we really needed at the community center.

Um, and the first one is um flexible meeting space for rentals and programs.

I'm not sure if you've ever been to a meeting at the ECC in one of those community rooms, and you have um karate on one side of you, and you have dance on the other side of you, and you're trying to have a meeting, and you know, we just maximize those spaces as much as possible.

I ran a quick report, and in a three-month period, we had 435 bookings, and in 2025, we had to turn away 99 rentals.

Um, so again, um, those spaces get used a lot.

The next bullet point, enhance circulation, visibility, and access control.

So that's actually specific to the front desk.

Um, because people can come to the front desk from a couple different angles, it it's easy to be in a conversation with a patron and helping them, and people can can swing, can um get in pretty easily.

So, again, if we could maybe enhance that, so it's a little bit more of that control, um, that access control.

The third bullet point in large youth activity areas.

So, with many miners, as I mentioned, when we're using it for kids station, we've taken away that amenity to the public.

And so, in this process, I just kind of wondered: is there a way for us to um reimagine many minors where it can be open to the public and be and let our kids station um kiddos and staff use it.

So those were some things that we chatted through.

Expand and improve fitness and gym gymnasium areas.

So our fitness spaces are pretty much at capacity, our fitness programs are close to capacity, um, and our gymnasium.

I mean, we don't even have enough room for our own programs in our gymnasium.

We use the schools or we rely on the schools, but what's so ironic about that is that they are wildly unreliable.

And so we are getting to this really tough space of this um negative customer experience because we're suddenly moving, you know, last-minute practices, and as a as a parent who has lots of kiddos, that's not an ideal situation.

And this last uh bullet point really uh mentioned earlier, but it's all those spaces that um are needing to grow or be enhanced or modified as a result of the growth uh programs and uh the services and all this is improved the the visitors' experience of the facility.

I just want to touch on one thing in here is that um you see that administrative space in there, right?

So, yes, this does benefit the community because you need the people to come in and put on those excellent programs and services.

So we're not expanding the staff space because we just need more spots.

We need people to be able to come and feel comfortable and want to come to work to you know, put on the therapeutic recreation programs to program basketball schedules to run Camp Erie, which fills up in 37.

And yeah, a minute.

So just wanted to highlight that that one bullet there.

Thanks, Jen.

So I want to kind of give it to Collab to talk through this as they produce this graphic and uh kind of this breakdown.

But uh, this is what we're calling the targeted expansion and renovation of the ECC, and it primarily addresses the uh meeting spaces that we talked about, youth areas, yes, some fitness areas on a smaller scale and increased staff areas.

Um, just as a preface to this, and I'll admit this is probably the quietest this team's ever seen meeting all the work.

Now I'm gonna talk to you about the concept that we developed.

Um you ever watch the show house?

You ever watch that where you're diagnosing some complex?

That's sort of how this project felt to me that we're looking at this building in this sort of strategic, sort of almost surgical way.

It's not just replacing things like for like and saying, let's make this thing better.

It was almost a shell game.

So there's a little bit of complexity, but I'm gonna try to walk you through that a little bit here.

Um, talking about these meeting spaces, obviously, we have the the existing meeting space with the stage area here.

And if you remember that site diagram, we're very much limited in this building to essentially the boundaries.

So we were able to sort of nestle one additional meeting space into the west.

But we thought if we put additional meeting space out here, what is this?

What's the first thing we do?

We take away the windows from the columbine room, which is pretty critical to a beautiful sort of adult space.

So we decided that the Columbine room really wanted to move to the X tier, so they didn't got windows and a more a more you know uh view of the entry to the building and then recapture this space for meetings.

So we really were able to develop about 2100 um additional square feet for those um gathering spaces.

And again, those aren't just meetings and rentals, that's day camp, that's youth programs.

It's sort of the lifeblood of this in this building A at the community center.

So that kind of targeted that need for those spaces.

Then you got to those youth areas.

Um, one of the challenges is it's sort of landlocked.

We looked at saying, well, what if you've moved to different areas of the building?

But it still made sense to be here.

So what we really decided made sense was to push this space out, expand mini minors, but subdivided in a way that you could have this space open to patrons while Kid Station is using that um using that um playground.

So we were able to sort of solve that.

It didn't add a ton of square footage, but it kind of unlocked a lot of new programming.

Um, third, we looked at increased fitness, and this was probably the biggest challenge in the building.

It's everywhere, and I don't I mean everywhere.

It's down the lobby, it's in the cycle garage, it's as Rachel said, all along the track.

Um, one of the first things we said was circulation doesn't really work very well.

So we improved the circulation and control access control by moving the desk.

That allowed us to create a more direct circulation path and really think about fitness in a different way, flipping that in the lobby.

Um, we were able to capture space on both the lower level for a group exercise studio and on the upper level, bridging out over that two-story space on the way to the climbing to create about another 1,400 square feet of um usable group exercise and fitness space.

We did capture that cycle garage for staff space because it's in a really remote space relative to the rest of fitness.

So it didn't make a lot of sense to leave it where it was.

Um so the net increase of fitness is about 1400 square feet, but it's repurposeful space, it's really useful for the variety of fitness that's happening in the building.

And then finally the staff areas, and that was another one that we had to sort of unlock.

We're able to expand the area in here by pushing the desk out into the lobby again, as Rachel said, kind of improving that um access control scenario, but capturing that space in here.

In addition to the existing staff space, that's where we added this chunk of space here to capture a large training and meeting space.

A dedicated break room that isn't sitting amongst 10 staff members, additional workstations with some daylight, um, access to the senior area now that they didn't have before, so they kind of moved between those functions.

Access to the senior area now that they didn't have before, so they kind of moved between those functions.

So again, a total of about 3120 square feet of increased staff area.

So that total basically a little over 7,000 square feet of improved, additional, more functional, and more programmatic on our original space.

Did I miss anything?

No, but I will mention so Chris talks about that lower level fitness space.

That would be a conversion of one of the rack-a-ball courts.

So the very first racket ball court, that would be a conversion to a fitness space, and then adding that also that platform up top.

But there's still one there.

I don't play anymore.

It was a big deal when we built the recenter the first time.

And then I'll just walk you through briefly.

One of the other big challenges of renovating and adding on to the existing building is doing it in a way that's sort of seamless so that the building doesn't feel like some you know, Mr.

Potato Head of uses.

And so you can see the existing character of the uh community center kind of has this sort of modern farmhouse flavor.

And so this is representative of the addition, and we were able to kind of reorient the entry so it doesn't have this cross breeze that the staff complained about, but it's also more directional to the entry rather than kind of tucked around the corner.

And we were able to capture that additional space and sort of integrate it in a way that looks really seamless to the existing building and architectural character.

I think there's one more here too, Chad, if I remember.

Yeah, and so again, the front entry, a lot less space to work with.

But you can see just by extending this ridge, we were able to easily capture that additional meeting room, and then by extending the peak from the entry, we're able to capture that expanded um playground space with tall ceiling in a way that almost looks like it was meant to be part of the original design.

So real seamless.

And so, you know, these uh expansions and renovations obviously always have costs, and so the next uh I'm gonna sit down for that cost is um, and this is again um I'll let collab talk through the details, but it's an opinion of probable cost based on these concepts and the targeting targeting it targeted expansion and renovation.

When I talk about that, that's primarily those eight side spaces that I mentioned, the meeting space, uh some staff space, the the uh inner play spaces, um, and some fitness spaces as we mentioned.

Um Jordan, Chris, if you want to talk through some of this, then we worked with your estimator to put this together.

So sure.

Um, I'll just point out a couple things that I think are really important.

Number one, it was pretty serendipitous that the estimator that helped us complete this work happened to have been the original estimator for the original construction.

So he knew this building inside and out, he knew all those little picadillas that were in this project, and so his assessment, I think, of the existing construction and new construction was particularly targeted.

We weren't guessing at what was where and wondering if we could expand something.

So I think the numbers are pretty representative of both the renovation and addition.

So a little over 10.5 million dollars was the total assessment of both the renovated space and the new additions.

It was also really important to make sure that when we came into this building, there wasn't this distinct line where everything was brand spanking new and sort of tired and old.

So we did consider how we might do a refresh through the existing building with maybe a little paint flooring, some other things that would help kind of bridge that that visual gap.

Uh, we also included some escalation to mid-2028.

That's about two and a half years of escalation, so not just escalating it to when we intend to start construction, but as most bidders will look at the bid through 50% of construction.

So we wanted to make sure we didn't set you up for a situation where you underfunded a project right out of the gate.

And then non-construction costs, all those things like design and engineering, equipment, all the development fees, and all the other things that go into executing a project.

We wanted to make sure we considered those as well.

So a total price tag of right around 14.5 million turnkey for the project to accomplish all those things that we just presented to you.

Again, this is at that very if you remember the graphic of the pyramid that kind of uh 20,000 foot view, if you will, uh this process that we we mentioned that we'd like to get direction to move forward, really narrows that down in scope.

And so there's a lot of assumptions with this, and uh it is very high level at this point.

It is a uh, you know, you you saw the pretty uh graphics and renderings, and that that may lend thinking that it's farther along than it is, but it really is uh truly a conceptual level.

So I'll let Rachel kind of talk about the need for uh gym space, the fitness space, and the opportunity that uh we have uh that we didn't when we started this, realized that we would have.

So yeah, it was pretty exciting to to uncover that.

It felt like we were pulling back an onion almost, and um, and so once that we we discovered that it was pretty cool to think of all the possibilities, the programming, um, the revenue, not trying not depending on the school so much.

Um we even have after hour rentals when that we use our gym.

Um, and then just thinking about how busy our fitness spaces are.

Probably one of the number one complaints I get or I receive is from individuals that are frustrated uh with how busy the weight room is, especially come about 3 34 because that's when a lot of our high schoolers want to come over and work out.

And so um we offer right now fitness in our gym.

We offer it in the fitness studio, in the cycle garage, and in all three community rooms, that's where silver sneakers is, that's where yoga is.

And so, even kind of uh taking some of the pressure off those community rooms, coming up with this other fitness area, and then allowing those rooms to be available for programs and uh rentals, again, just just kind of kind of a game changer.

So we are excited about that.

Yeah, and these things are well known if you've been there to the ECC on a Saturday, or if you've tried to um, you know, I I'll share this.

Uh I helped coach my fifth grade um daughter's basketball team, and over the holidays, we didn't have a gym to go to.

So I thought, well, we'll go to the rec center and just try to grab a hoop.

Well, uh, everybody else had the same idea apparently on that night, and uh it was a little bit dangerous.

We had high schoolers that uh just about took out um some of our fifth grade girls.

So there's just that demand for gym space, and I think that's in general um with all the the need and the the demand for for courtspace and fitness space.

Um Chris, uh Jordan, do you have anything to add to this?

No, other than I think you you you you would identify this idea that this expansion in that direction initially wasn't something that we thought was feasible.

And so once you sort of open up this opportunity to say, is there something that makes sense here?

Again, it wasn't just a matter of what can we what can we what do we need to add?

It's what makes sense, right?

You don't put you wouldn't put offices in that area, you wouldn't put meeting rooms in that area, you'd put active uses that connect to the circulation network, which is why this idea made some sense.

Maybe you can walk us through the course space.

Yeah, and so and so that being said, um obviously it was sort of the natural to say, I think one of the very first comments was from staff was can we have a gym in the current set of well?

I don't know.

Um, but but the idea here is that within that sort of footprint of allowable expansion, it is pretty easy to share storage, connect up the gyms and really add that amenity fairly straightforward in from a planning and construction standpoint.

And then logically, if you have some fitness in this area, and then group exercise in this area, it's sort of logical that that expansion then leads to a small amount of fitness.

Um, and the nice thing is it has an exterior exposure with some glass and southern southern daylight.

So it just seemed logical that if you're gonna eventually look at that potential expansion, these are the amenities that make the most sense there.

Again, about 3200 square feet of fitness, 7,000 square feet of gymnasium for a total of about 10,000 square feet of active court and fitness uses and of course uh the the budget for that uh what we're showing for uh gym and fitness expansion, all the things that they broke down are consistent with this estimate.

You have your construction costs there, the escalation uh through mid-2028, the non construction costs, and the total cost of 12.5 million dollars.

And here is another rendering of that uh from um the east uh southeast looking west.

Oh sorry, thank you.

Um and so that shows that fitness area to the south, and then the gym expansion is that larger section of the c.

And this is a breakdown of that square footage.

Um again, this is the uh gym and fitness expansion plus the um, if you were to do both, it includes the A-side, um, which is that uh well, excuse me, the meeting space, the youth space, the staff space, um, the front entry areas that we mentioned.

And so uh just uh to bring this to the next steps, um, last part of our agenda.

Um, so we are town staff is requesting council direction for ECC expansion design.

Um so the first bullet point there is direct town staff rated council resolution ordering a fresh professional services agreement for full design for the targeted expansion and renovation.

That's that first option that we looked at.

Um the estimated costs for that effort, the the professional service dream is around 920,000.

Um the second uh bullet point there, um same uh professional services agreement, but with both the target expansion and renovation and the gym and fitness expansion.

And so the total estimated cost uh for that effort would be 1.7 million dollars.

Um the next boil point there is to determine the funding mechanism for the project.

There's been options thrown around for um you know other CIPs, and so this this obviously would require a voter approval and summed issuance, and so that's part of this conversation is some direction, uh at least to start the conversation and continue the conversation on the funding mechanism for this.

And with that, uh we'll take any questions.

Um continue our discussion.

All right.

Um great we're steady session format, so we can just all kind of chime in.

That's one of the advantages of this.

Um I'll start maybe just because the original rec center is near and dear to my heart because I spent a lot of political time when I was mayor of the 20 years ago, and the racket ball courts were a debatable item.

Um, I think we moved past that to pickleball, as uh we have players here, so it's certainly not a big deal to me now.

Um couple questions.

So in the original design on the side of the building, there was supposed to be art on there, and it never has been there.

So if you drive by on Erie Parkway and look to the rec center to your north, um, there's lights that are on the blank wall there.

So is that in the plan now or ever to actually use maybe some of the art energy uh to do something on the rec center?

Yeah, that is that is something that we identify in our public art and placemaking plan as an as an opportunity because we realize that I think without having a formal public art plan, a public art and placemaking plan, that just really just never came to fruition.

So that is something that Taylor has in her five-year art plan.

Yeah, we've hired like a subject matter expert on public art.

I'm really excited for our presentation in February.

Um she would be thrilled.

Further discussions on that until February.

Uh the second one is um, why did you not go into the future town building space?

Um, I've been aware that that's been there for a long time, and it's like no one has ever really had a plan or usage.

It seems like it's adjacent to this.

What's that considered?

And if not, why not?

Well, so I I can speak to that a little bit.

I think that uh that's one of those items that we identified on our deep dive, um, which uh established a no-billiasement.

That's one of the reasons why that uh there was an easement shown between that.

Couldn't you bring the slide up?

Yeah, there you go.

And so there's an easement by whom so I'll let you guys we did the we did a pretty deep study on that.

It's an interesting one.

Well, any time you build a building, um, I'll give you a very, very quick primer on building code.

In order to build a larger building, I don't want to go too much detail.

Because the PUD said there's a future town building here on your own property, the town essentially self-imposed an easement that said, well, if we ever build another building, we may forget we were supposed to have that easement buffer.

So the town's building department essentially imposed that buffer to say if you ever build a new building, you got to make sure you maintain this buffer.

So to answer the question, if you expand the building into that zone, that buffer isn't necessary anymore.

There's no reason to buffer against your own building.

So, yes, expansion to that area is feasible.

We in this plan took it as far as we thought was reasonable, but there's nothing saying you couldn't build a little further into that area.

Yeah, and it's council.

Could we not amend the PUD?

You absolutely can, and that's kind of what we're proposing is to say take this self-imposed easement off of yourselves, expand your own building into your own land, and you no longer have to normally you build up close to a property line, and the the halo is essentially self, you know, it's assumed when it's your own property within your own plan development.

You you kind of created the own your own situation.

So that's is that where the other gym is that you're talking about?

Okay, I did not make that kind of thing.

So we are yeah, I'm sorry if that wasn't clear, we are expanding into that area with that particular amenity.

And that's that larger green box you see over the blue line there.

So that gyms the tree.

Yeah, so that's directly adjacent to your existing gymnasium.

So this is the gymnasium and fitness edition.

That was part of that opportunity that we've seen.

Okay, so my question still stands then, all the space further to the east, you can use that.

Right.

And if we're gonna do this, do we do it once and we do it with whatever the programming needs in the blue is all the easement?

The blue was the existing self-imposed easement that we can obviously make.

So you could build in there as well.

Yes.

The I I think a key piece, and we didn't want there to be too many colors on this graphic, roughly 60 feet from a property line is what this building needs to stay off of.

So if we were to draw the follow again, I'll do it real quick.

If you were to do a 60 foot adjacent diagram, that is where your building would have to remain off of the property line.

So that dash border is essentially what you're allowed to build into.

Okay, so so there is more space to build, is what I'm hearing.

And then my next question is can you go up?

Can you go into a third story if you needed to?

Right, I get the undermining, you can't go out very easily because you go up.

The existing building would have to have been structured for that demand, and because you have a lot of long span spaces, those don't tend to tend to do very well going up, right?

Long long spans.

And then every other space in the building that's not a long span, i.e.

the gym in the pool, is a peaked roof.

So it would essentially mean tearing off those existing roofs and and expanding up where you would require more circulation, stairs, elevators, and so forth.

So it's probably the most expensive way to capture space on this site.

Um, but anything's possible.

But it is challenging, these big buildings because they're not like an office building where they're just a bunch of flat plates and you can just keep kind of stacking them up like a house of cards.

The way this building is constructed, it's probably the least um desirable or most challenging way to do it.

That's just a simple answer.

All right.

And then my last question is really about timing for this.

I think when the study was started, there wasn't discussion about a second rec center.

As we did the community survey last year, I think it became clear to all of us that there is support for a another multi-use facility.

Um, and I'm specifically using multi-use facility because there wasn't support for say a performing arts center, but that doesn't mean we couldn't incorporate some of those features into another building.

And so I'm hesitant, at least myself personally, doing any kind of direction or approval now until we can um do the second survey that is on its way to test the voters' will.

And then um, since we need funding for this, I'm guessing, but I don't know.

Um, I'd spoken to Patrick a little bit about this, but can we test what is your appetite to fund an expansion of the ECC?

What's your appetite to build a new second facility?

What's your appetite to do both?

If we get approval for more support for doing the new facility, can we not do what we're talking about here and just build it all into the second facility?

I think these are all open questions in my own mind that I hesitate to give direction to move forward on this.

There's also what I believe is a um political concern.

If we were to move forward on this, some people would likely see that as saying, well, this is all we need, and we'd lose the opportunity to move down the path of doing a second facility, which I believe we need as we go to from 40,000 to 85-ish thousand people.

All right, yeah, Mayor, that that's a great point.

And yes, we we can test a number of different options, and I think we're gonna talk about that here in a little bit.

But you know, I think from all the data that we did, all the conversations that we had, the 2024 parks and recreation community survey, the ECC expansion alone cannot meet Uri's recreational needs.

The second community campus, which includes some indoor facility, we're not just gonna rubber stamp the ECC now and put it at the 25-acre collier site.

That alone cannot serve Erie's recreational needs.

So I think we're thinking about again that system-wide vision of how do they complement each other in the long term so that you're forever meeting or closer to forever meeting Erie's recreational needs.

And then I think this the second site, and we'll get into more of this conversation later, presents some opportunities for some of those partnerships that Rachel and I have been talking about over the past probably 18 months.

And I think the the polling work that we need to do would help us figure out what is the owner's appetite for funding one or both, um we another and from a timing perspective, um, you know, by by moving forward with with you know design documents and and then construction documents that if you do see that the community is supporting one or both, then you're that closer to actually putting something putting shovels in the ground, and your costs are more accurate.

If you wait, I think Chad, you said it's gonna be a year process for construction documents.

Yeah, you guys I don't buy into that.

Hey, you gotta do it now, gotta do it now, rush for shush.

Because I fundamentally believe that if we ask our voters, are you do you want both?

Do you want to build just the new one?

It will guide us here.

And you know, if it takes a little bit of time to figure out what to do right for the long term, at least me as one vote, that's what I feel like we should do.

Um, because it could be they say the current rec center is great if you're gonna build a new one to help offload because I'm assuming the new one would have a gym and well, and and I think that's where we have to be careful.

We can't assume anything because we haven't done that, we haven't done that feasibility study today.

That contract for that consultant will come to you in the second meeting in February.

So I think we have to be careful about overpromising and under delivering.

Totally.

And when you're talking about a multi-purpose center, I think if you try to throw too much in one type of facility, your multi-purpose becomes not personal at all, not purposeful.

I think one of the things we discussed too in this study was um, you know, well, first of all, going back to the need is there now for additional gym space and things like that.

So that's that's been um there for a long time.

I think there was the conversation we had about okay, if if a new second site becomes a reality, then we don't want we didn't want the the new site and the old rec center, you know.

So some revitalization, I mentioned revitalization, that was part of that conversation was how do you how do you preserve this cherished resource really for the the build out and how does it uh evolve and still accommodate all the needs uh that that are there now, and then with the the accelerator, the additional growth, uh so that it doesn't become the old rec center totally go ahead.

This study session, so we can all jump in with that.

I don't have to recognize it.

I don't want to cut off your chain of thought.

So um so yeah, I'm one of those moms that recognizes that competitive sport sign up is a competitive sport.

I overslept a few years ago and we missed a soccer season.

Devastating.

Um so I I do I see what you're saying about the expansion is necessary to serve the community.

Um I'm curious.

Something else that keeps coming to my mind is I don't remember which presentation it was, Luke, but talking about um when we have these bright, shiny new facilities, then it's the operations in maintenance.

So we don't have that old recenter situation.

And um, so does this cost estimate and everything take into account the kind of the old part of the recenter?

I know we had a leak in the um lounge, and we had to replace a lot of the roofing after the hail storm.

So I'm just curious if we're able to make the updates and upgrades to the existing building along with investing in the new roof and expansions and all the fun new stuff.

Like I think the presentation here is what I said today's capital is tomorrow's maintenance.

Yeah, um, so I think I'll probably let maybe Chad or maybe Jordan Chris talk about you know, kind of the the upgrades, but but yes, I I think that's what the the conversations that we're going to have maybe here this evening on how do we make sure that we're funding continuous operations and maintenance for in for Erie's recreational facilities.

So that is something that we want to talk with council about on the next topic.

Um you guys want to speak to maybe some of the some of the concerns about the existing building.

I guess I would just say, you know, to that that point that we had leakage on the A side in the column line mileage area.

Um that the A site roof, when I keep saying the A side, but that northern portion has all been completely replaced.

And since then we've not had any leaks to my knowledge.

On the south side, you have the gym space, the uh pool space, that's a completely different roofing system.

Um, I think we're gonna continuously evaluate that and uh do ongoing maintenance.

And that's one thing that I would note that um that from whether it's the master plan that was done as plan back in 2020.

Um the the overwhelming comment is that the facility is in good shape, right?

We we maintained it well.

There are some the things we're looking at outside of this project to upgrade mechanical systems and you know, just aging equipment that we need to replace.

So that's all planned for, and then as part of this capital project, when that's one of the the importance of arriving at a budget that we can uh sharpen our pencils with, um, you would build in some of that operation and maintenance costs ongoing just to show the total cost of this project and an ongoing maintenance requirements.

So that was a lot, but there's uh there's several layers that hung in and and some things that we're doing now and some things that we got planned in the near future.

And then through this project, there's an opportunity to kind of uh look at some of those those issues that we can tackle through a renovation and expansion.

So um, and then in our COP discussion, I don't know who I'm asking this question to, but we you know, address the undermining, and I think we were talking about the courts.

Um is it's that are those improvements included in this, or is that similar?

No, those those are completely separate projects.

So the the mine mitigation that we're looking at as part of the town center project uh really involves this area here um next to County Line Road and Erie Parkway.

The reason that we're looking at the undermining in the in that area, uh because you know, to mitigate, should you say up here, to mitigate all of this would be an astronomical cost, as you all well know to mitigate this area for hardcore services, which we know we have a need in the community right now, and pickleball and tennis love, well, I don't want to put those two in the same group, pickleball love the community aspect of that.

So expanding courts spaces in this area is something that we're targeting in a in a future capital group.

But a totally separate project.

Totally separate, correct.

Okay.

Not this is just the Erie Community Center, just the just the building.

Just the building, yes.

Does it make sense to keep those projects separate?

I'm curious, just why would we do it all together?

I'm not sure.

You could, yeah, you could absolutely, I think our next discussion is kind of not you know, do you how many how many do you fold in?

Right.

Right.

We see that we'll talk about that in the next, but we see a lot of different projects kind of folding into one ask if that's what the community wants.

So just so everybody knows who may be look listening to this tape afterwards or listening live tonight, but Luke's referring to as the next item, it is ballot issue planning, and that discussion is basically testing the waters for our community on what they're willing to potentially tax themselves for to do.

I'm kind of with Emily on this one that I would like to do it all, if possible.

Um, but obviously we need to see if our community is in that same mindset.

Yeah, and kind of on that note, um the plans for this, is it big enough?

I mean, how much time does it buy us before we need this second uh community center, right?

I know there's already you know, it grew so much over the last you know 15, 20 years.

Um does this get us where we that takes care of us today, or does this get us to take care of us for 10 years from now?

Um, you know, are are we are we like are we making the roads wide enough for for today's traffic, or are we you know planning for you know the next 10 years?

I wouldn't put uh I wouldn't I wouldn't put a yeah 10 years, yeah, 20 years.

Um I think expanding the building, uh the way it is, I I mean you're just really you're you're restricted on on how far you can expand.

Um I think if if we were to dig down a little bit deeper and say, hey, based on our user numbers and our population and our programs and services, you could do a phased out expansion if you had more room to do it.

But you know, I that's why we're looking at a second community campus because what does that need to look like and how does that campus complement what we have here?

So I can't give you uh uh you know a 10 or 15 year answer because it would just kind of just because we're so constrained by the site itself.

Kind of yeah, on this on the next topic, right?

What does the community have an appetite for?

Um, you know, maybe uh they have an appetite to expand this, but you know, not quite wanna be taxed to to do this like community.

So can we build into those blue areas and um and I'll if we you know on this project, if it comes back that you know that we might get one shot at this, and it might be a while before we can build the second one, right?

Um, you know, we don't know that yet, right?

But it's gonna be yes or no, right?

Um so Luke, do you mind if I jump in real quick?

I hate to steal any thunder, but I'm gonna put my recreation professional cap on for two seconds.

You know, one of the things, and I'm just putting this out there to kind of frame the conversation.

I don't know if it'll help or not, but one of the big topics of conversation in this study was not looking at these two potential centers as just duplicating the same things, right?

We know that.

Most communities that have a full service center, like community center, and we do grow into a second center, completely different complexion, right?

So I guess what I'm trying to get at is expanding this doesn't necessarily preclude some of those other amenities being duplicated or even new amenities coming online.

This facility has a drop-in complexion.

It's the kind of facility people just come to jump in and play.

A new facility might be more program driven, it might be more league-driven, it might be more generated by things that are scheduled, and and this one then stays that drop-in reliable.

I can always go here, like Chad said, and find a hoop.

The next one, uh, it's gonna be maybe maybe leagues and tournaments.

So to answer that question, it's not about how much or when it's sort of saying treat this building the way it sort of lives and treat its paternal twin the way it wants to live, and see those as sort of complementary to each other.

I don't know if that helps the conversation, yeah, but I keep feeling like there's this thinking that we're just growing more of the same things, and when reality it's treat this as something that's always there and reliable as drop-in, whereas a new facility might have a little more of a programmatic complexion.

And then you say, okay, now they're kind of synchronized as opposed to saying, well, we've kind of kicked this one to the curb and nobody uses this.

That's not how I see it.

And I hope that maybe kind of frames the conversation differently.

I mean, I I agree, yeah.

Uh one at all, right?

Yeah, but we also have a police station to pay for.

We have public, yeah, uh Leon World uh rural facility that we need to pay for, um, you know, parking right.

Um, so we we've got a lot of other things to pay for.

So uh, you know, if by expanding this project a little bit, right?

Does it save us some time for another big project?

Um, you know, another big campus somewhere else.

Does it buy us some time?

Yeah.

Um but it might not be wasted effort, is what I was suggesting.

It's like it's not saying put it here instead of it's a it's treated differently, right?

On the flip side, though, if you knew that we had support from the community to do a big second facility, I mean, isn't it possible that maybe you take a function?

I don't know, it's the senior group, right?

And you create a better space for the seniors at the second one, freeing up space in here.

So now you can do um, you know, your your workouts and your your private sessions on uh that you don't have room for today, right?

It's that's why they're linked in my literally like this if if they go for if you go forward, they very much are so that's why I want to get to the next topic to see whether we would have someone to ask the right questions.

Well, I did have a question about the um, in other words, like maybe I don't know, this is two in the weeds, but there's grant funding available for building decarbonization for some life for that kind of stuff.

I wonder if we could help offset the cost with through is there are we looking at that, like how we kind of leverage those CEO grants and Dr.

Crowd grants and things like that to maybe help with some of you know addressing the aging infrastructure on this building.

And we are actually looking at that.

Um so uh not with this project is because this looks at the whole facility, but um building electrification is something we're studying.

Um, you know, the uh to make it a more resilient center or a uh reliable center, I would say.

So some some backup power generation, um, and then replacing aging infrastructure, um, our rooftop units, uh the mechanical units are at the end of life, uh, really that we're still able to maintain them, but we we have that uh we've had that as a project um forecasted that we would uh replace those uh mechanical units, and there may be grant funding, and we're actually uh sorry in the conversation.

Uh that's good timing.

Uh we we reached out to the Colorado Energy Office, and uh you know, we've been successful for other grants in the past, and so that's uh we would target some of those who are that's great.

Okay, that's great.

And what my last comment is about the senior lunch program that that council member Hobek and I get to go to every week.

Um yeah, we are dreading the day that we're gonna have to say we're full.

Um, which I think 108 is our limit, and we've had 104 pretty consistently.

Um so and I'm looking at one of the slides with the numbers.

This is 13.

And um looking at where we have senior lunch in that kitchen window I look at when I do dishes.

Um just thinking about the I mean, if we have the space to expand would be amazing, but then we're gonna need a second dishwasher, and we'll probably need to double the size of that trash facility that's right outside the door and that kind of stuff.

So um, I'm just thinking through the logistics of it because we do want it all, but maybe it does make sense to have that eye to the future that says our seniors are gonna need their own, you know, half of a building someday or whatever.

So anyway, and just knowing that our senior our 65 minute population is set to triple by 2040.

So we can only expect those numbers to go up.

So uh I just had a couple questions on sort of uh projected cost.

So can you maybe explain if I'm calculating this correct uh for the uh target expansion reservation or renovations?

It's coming back a little bit over uh 2,000 a square foot versus the the gym expansion looks like it's only like um a little over 1200 square foot.

Can you part of those numbers without sort of parsing the whole because we did look at each of the areas of impact as a separate sort of small estimate?

What you're seeing in that that um first number is not just the added area that totals to 7,000 square feet, but all of those little surgical modifications that allow us to expand the desk or expand the offices.

So it's it's not that it's more expensive, it's that it's not necessarily in the area total summarizing the impact of the work.

So it's significantly more area you're touching.

So without sort of going through the whole estimate, yeah, it's hard to point out that all those costs tally addition, renovation, modification, you know, all these other pieces.

So the cost per foot doesn't quite equate area to cost in that first okay, yeah.

The second project is really new construction, X amount of square feet costs X amount of money.

And we have pretty good data on that, having worked on two or three gymnasium expansion projects in the region in the last couple of years.

So we sort of know what that yeah, so so what you're seeing is sort of a little complexity in the number that isn't clear based on the area.

So I guess I don't know what polls of this because I appreciate all the work that did on this, but I guess to the mayor's point of the extra area that we have, yeah, that we could expand into is that would their better cost benefit per dollar if we looked at something like that, right?

It probably is, and frankly, that question about going up, you know, that that fitness could be a two-story fitness space.

You could really leverage that, and to your observation, you get a little bit more bang for your buck if it's just clean, new simple construction on you know, virgin ground than going in and doing because you know, if you think about they have to shut down, they have to do work, then they have to vacate that work and do the new work.

I don't have to explain to you what a kitchen remodel looks like, but that's that's the challenge.

Makes sense, yep.

Yeah, hopefully that answers the part of our discussion on that note was about maintaining adjacencies too.

So, what makes sense to be you know, example, for example, are you gonna relocate everything in the A side and reconfigure that for fitness, or is it gonna be sure?

Well, I mean we'll talk a little bit more about those adjacencies, but yeah.

Yep, yeah, you know, kind of keeping the fitness spaces all together once we keep in our um our so if you go down to the A side where those community rooms are, those were designed to um they've already the person who's coming in doesn't need to pay to use those spaces.

Um they're there to be for rental, or they paid for a karate class and they go down, they paid for a dance class and go down, whereas the other side of the building is you pay to drop in and use the facility.

So that's kind of the design setup of um that we tried to maintain.

Yeah, so that's limited to that's limiting how you can locate things, right?

Like you can't put a lot of non-paid stuff on the easy that's the challenge.

That that leads in the something I was thinking of.

Um you know, get a loud bang for our expanded area, and it's area that undeniably will get used another gym, you know, more fitness area.

I'm not saying the other won't.

Um, when I look at the dollars per square foot, I have a hard time prioritizing more meeting space.

I know it'll get used, but sometimes I think a lot of meeting space there.

Um and maybe we can do more of a staged process, do an expansion.

And also with an eye at the future, we don't necessarily know exactly what our future is gonna look like.

We don't know exactly what our demographics are being gonna be.

We're aging, and maybe the families that are gonna stay here are aging, and maybe won't won't mean as as many children.

We don't know, but we can buy ourselves some time and maybe not put so much into the renovation as we do to the new facilities, and then in a few years, after a couple more surveys and whatnot, we'll know more what the residents want, and we bought ourselves some times, and and you know, maybe there'll be something besides picklewall that's as bad, you know.

So maybe Rackaball will come back.

Maybe but we'd better keep it project separate because that has to have first.

Is that a social funding though?

Is it really up to go to the mortal fund?

For yeah, we'll we'll have to we'll have to issue we'll we'll likely have to issue debt for a project of this size.

I think the the facility impact fund, the general fund mixture of those wouldn't fully support a uh a project of this size.

Not the construction size.

Yeah, were you asking design or construction?

Yeah, okay.

So yes to explain.

Yeah.

All right.

Any other questions?

I'm just cognizant of the time and we we have a pretty needy topic next.

So right now, on you know, a couple estimates for um the concept project and whatnot moving forward.

That's currently not in the 2026 budget, right?

So if we did it, we'd have to do a supplemental or no, and chat correct me if I'm wrong here, but for for design and engineering services, we do have that in the 2026 budget.

Okay.

What we're what we're after tonight is do you want staff to bring back a professional services amendment for one or the other, or both?

I think one or the other or both options.

You know, it's as a professional services agreement.

At least tonight, um, we probably don't have enough uh information.

Goes partially back to what I said earlier, what um councilor hoback said.

I think we need to get to the point and ask the voters where they're willing to spend their money, and then we'll be in a better position to to give direction there.

So regarding this, um I use it.

I use the facility quite a bit uh years ago when I was stay-at-home dad and know the kids' space fills up, and there's a lot of you know, times when the fitness area is pretty crowded.

Um, really, I I kind of feel if we're gonna expand, it would be to go for the additional court, the additional fitness area.

Um I hesitate to give direction right as others have expressed because of the funding.

Um but I was wondering about we're doing the undermining for pickleball courts.

What about parking?

How is that factoring into this?

If this facility is gonna be expanded, what are we doing with possibly expand expanding the parking where the pickleball courts were gonna possibly be?

It's a good question.

It's one of the things we've looked at.

You add area by code, you supposed to add parking.

Fortunately, there was an addition of parking, considerable addition to the south end of the parking lot.

And from our calculations, the facility by code is overparked.

Yeah, okay.

So not to say that if you go there on a busy Wednesday evening, it's not to get a spot, but by code it's overparked.

So that would be something we'd have to decide.

Do we feel we need more?

But from a code standpoint and sort of a due diligence standpoint, so we're adding X amount area, and you have X amount of capacity in your lot.

So it's use versus code.

Yeah, ask a user they can't find a parking spot, they may not care about code.

Well, then we can support it with multimodal investments.

Most most communities aren't going to towards over parking, you know, municipal buildings.

That's just that's not the trend, right?

So that's a good point.

Yeah.

Yeah, we'll know more about RTD in another year or two, and the B will inform us greatly on how many people are willing to ride it.

And so underpass, right?

And county line.

So council, what I'm hearing right now is that you we were in a holding pattern right now uh with with a professional services amendment, uh, until we have more information.

Can you help me understand a little bit what additional information that you might be after as it relates to this project?

Yeah, I think it's the macro view of the new facility as it relates to this facility and what the appetite from our community is to raise their taxes.

By the way, if anybody's listening, we're not talking property taxes here.

Um I think what we're going to discuss in the next item is sales tax, where we do have a little bit of headroom.

Um so I don't want to freak anybody out up there that uh we're heading down a property tax increase because we're not so I'm I'm of the opinion that we should be gathering this information alongside of those intentions so that we have the information to give our community.

I don't think that's wrong to be able to say here's what we're considering instead of um just keeping it so wide open.

Having having choices makes sense to me that they would be able to say, okay, do I want a new facility and only fund that, or do I only want to you know, fund an expansion at the ECC, or do I want to do both?

But not having the information of what that might cost could be preventative for them to making that decision.

So I think it kind of makes sense to have that information be able to present that to the community.

Yeah, and the problem with that logic in my mind is that if the voters approve a second facility, it may change what we want in the first facility.

For example, if we abandon the seniors at the original facility and we build them a nicer, larger facility at the second one, that will change the design of this one.

And that's why I don't want to do it in the middle of the day.

Maybe we should go for it, give the residents what they need and want now, and then that will change the new facility.

Okay, I'm just uh I'm at a different opinion.

I think the big thing for my perspective is just that uh um I just have concerns about the amount of money that we're uh for for the renovated portion of the point we're making before that that um we're spending an awful lot of money to to renovate that area, and I I think if we can reconfigure it in a way to sort of maximize our our dollar for what we get back, I think that is probably gonna be important for for the residents uh uh to consider in any tax measure.

So can you explain what is awful look?

Like how do we well I from what I was saying before, like you're uh you know, for for the the uh the meeting center expansion, you're you you're you're paying about two thousand dollars square foot uh versus on the gym expansion, you're paying 1200.

Like it's all already there, and you're looking at vitalizing it.

It's not like a piece of dirt, and you're starting, so those costs will always be different.

But actually, actually, this is the other way around.

The new dirt's cheaper, the new building is cheaper, which is current, but don't have the plan for the new dirt, right?

It could be 35 or 45.

Yeah, the it's whatever we've got here, yeah.

The expanded gym facilities, which is just these additional bases, yeah.

Basically go to all the limitation of where we're at right now with this high conceptual is that we don't get that level of detail of cost.

And so that would be an effort of going through it full design.

Yeah, I get that.

And when we go to the voters' task for the tax increase, we actually won't have it down to that level either, right?

So um, I think there's a big question in front of us, right?

We did the survey last year, it said that people were highly interested.

I think it came out number one in the survey.

It wasn't one, it was number two, and it said we're interested in a multi-use facility.

Well, what is that multi-use facility?

The next item is gonna get clarity on what um we as a council would like to see tested for, right?

As far as um on the next survey that goes out, and time's ticking, right?

Because we are, I think at least I'm on under the impression we're gonna try for this coming election.

I hope I'm not in the only one in that um vote, which means we have to move pretty quick.

So if there's any delay here or putting it on hold, it's not gonna be a long delay, it'll be long enough to get the survey results back to help guide us on where the energies um should be.

I just I think just to re reiterate and then yes, that's true.

Is that um when you when you do ask the vote right, you have to you have to have an amount in mind in order to build the facility, right?

And we know right now conceptually what that is, and it theoretically we'll know conceptually what a second community campus is.

I think as best as we can fine-tune numbers, that's why we're presenting this information.

Sure, that's true.

So we if we don't do it this year, then yes, we can we could absolutely continue to find cost, and that doesn't happen until you have construction documents and you have a contractor on board that's actually gonna be building the facility.

So just want to reiterate that point that we're just fine-tuning costs.

We're getting to that low point in the pyramid.

Yep.

I hear you.

So I'm hearing direction is let's go to the next item, and maybe we'll need to get more information from that one to fully resolve this one, but the next item is critical, and what we'll pull on.

Yeah, I doubt we'll get enough information because it's the information from the poll that I'm talking about, not the information just from the conversation the next item.

Conversation the next item will help us understand what we'll be polling for and what information we can expect back from the poll.

Which we haven't had that conversation, so I don't know what that is at this point.

But also give us an idea of the timing when we'll have that feedback.

Yeah.

Right.

So at this point, it's we're on hold for this one until we decide what until we get polling information.

At least through my lens, and I mean I would like to move forward with some design so that we can go to the voters with something a little bit more concrete.

I think waiting for another poll.

Um is just spending more time and getting us closer to the deadline where we've got uh grab something through.

I'd like to move forward with design.

Understood.

So one last question is that how much is the end and uh how bad are we you you gave some numbers, but does it make sense to get something started and it might carry along for one or two or three years?

I know you said we don't put in the number.

I'm sorry, customer smurly there was a cough back here that I missed what was your question?

What's the cost of the it's not about just the cost, uh, how well can we serve with this arrangement versus waiting for I thought we and then a bond and like that doesn't even even the survey doesn't have any fixed amount.

We can we tell them that 30 million or 10 million because without that the survey is also not worth it, right?

Right.

I yeah, I think you know, as as our population albeit a little bit slower than than usual continues to grow, I think those wait lists grows, right?

So until we see that growth flatline, and that's how many people we have on basketball wait lists and you know sharing swimming lanes and you know, all the all these different things.

Um I think that that number will only continue to climb.

And as we uh we we introduce new programs and we introduce new services based on our goals that we establish in the playbook because our community wants them, you're just gonna see that that continuous kind of strain on the existing facilities, which is why we're presenting all this information now before it gets to the point where we're not able to provide the level of service that our community has come to expect.

Uh did that answer your question?

It does look uh I'm just thinking between two things.

One is I don't know when the new one will be there.

Right.

And it's not definitive, and there is so many things.

One is they what if they don't accept it or approve it?

Right.

So I'm I'm thinking let's provide the services now, like with this uh expansion and uh like fulfill the demand.

And I like to say that uh I feel like this expansion solves yesterday's problem.

And so um, yeah, I mean also featured absolutely um yeah, so getting some of those numbers dialed in.

Without a design of some sort, we don't know what we're gonna ask the voters for.

How much and I would also if the desire then is 2026 to to make that ask again, that timeline of design, we would be looking at a full year really realistically in design.

So another thing I have is the more we're delayed, the 12 million will be like 15 or 16 million.

Yep, yep.

And we are we will be delaying services, the cost of it will increase.

We'll still be like solving yesterday's problem.

All right, I get it.

And um, I also understand that we're talking months here to figure out what our voters are willing to do.

If the voters come back and say, listen, we get this other rec center expansion, but we don't want to do that, we want to do the big one.

That's sending us in a different direction.

If they say, forget the big one, just fix the old one to bring us up to that's a different thing.

We don't have any of that information today.

Um the point that council member hoback made earlier.

I'm surprised you've kind of flipped the other way when you were saying, well, hold on, if we do the big one, we may not need to do something on this one until our population.

Okay.

Defer the renovation until maybe we know a little bit better about how this plays out, and then decide what we need in any renovation versus a new one, which is the new one.

Okay.

So this is the renovation.

I mean, it's an expansion and renovation.

They're separate.

There's a presentation for renovation and we had a presentation for expansion.

Yeah, the two.

And I'm saying let's let's look at staging it and do going ahead with the expansion and the proof renovation.

So also one more thing is uh the new one will just be complementary and it's not like replication of the same services here and there, right?

So unless it's not that when you build that one, it's complementing orders over here, and it'll be some entirely new thing that you said could be different kind of services, and this will be just like drop in and do so.

You can always provision that differently, right?

Right, but but the point that we discussed earlier, if you take functions out of the current one and you move them to the new one, then it is different.

And so I take that to heart, right?

I want you guys to be able to look at everything once the voters have been able to give us now.

If the majority of people here want to just spend on this, I believe it will put at risk the ability to get the second rec center, because I think some people will look at that and go, they've taken care of the problem.

Every dime we pump into it, you know, as you guys all know.

I look at all these problems through three lenses technical, political, and cultural.

And we're talking about technical, is what you're talking about tonight.

Technically, we can tell what it's gonna cost.

Culturally, I think it's more about uh the programs and oops, I didn't wake up in time.

So, what's the culture of this and how does that impact it?

Positive for doing this for that, but then you have the political side, and I have to try to navigate with council.

How do you get uh the voters to approve a tax increase?

And anything that we're doing to say it's okay, because we haven't looked at the whole thing, it it puts that at risk.

It just does.

And I get that I get the pressure to do something now.

But I also believe is this gonna change?

Maybe we should just wait till we're 80,000 people, then they'll build one.

I mean, that's that's crazy talk.

So well, it is, but okay, take it a step back.

Because I I think I was thinking somewhat along the lines of what what you were, and that was with the the expansion portion, just the gymnasium portion.

Um, if we went ahead with that and then uh deferred the the is that am I summarizing this correctly then deferring uh the renovation portion because that you're you're paying a very high price to get not a lot of square footage return and that, but that alleviates some problems, some of the not all the problems, but alleviate some of the problems with maybe you know, pick up basketball leagues, those types of things that we see a lot of demand.

Um, but could still talk to um uh in the big picture, you know, the I agree with you, the second facility, I think.

Um, especially in terms of of what you're doing uh programmatically at the current facility, that could very much change.

So I get it, but I also to the point made earlier.

I don't want a beautiful part of the the current rec center expansion, and then a yeah, what did you guys call it?

It wasn't run down, but it was some other term you used.

We're talking in months here, right?

We're not talking years and years and years.

If if we want to do this, I fundamentally believe we're gonna put at risk the vote for raising taxes.

I fundamentally believe that it is a fine line that any of us walk when you're asking the voters to raise our taxes.

Yeah, but but uh but how do you think or why do you think the voters want to raise their taxes who are on fixed income?

Do you think this facility will that's a philosophical question I cannot answer?

But what I so you're assuming that they're willing and be ready to raise.

I'm asking for the survey results to help guide us.

I'm not I'm not assuming anything.

Anyway, you know where I feel.

Anyway, you know where I feel if you guys want to move forward in this.

I think you will put at risk the bigger question and bigger picture.

And for me, the next conversation will tell me when we'll get the results from the survey.

Um what I want to understand is kind of the appetite because if there isn't an appetite, is there an appetite for expansion here?

But not as but we won't have enough money to do a second place.

Maybe we knew do more here.

Um to buy us time till we can get the money for the second second uh center, right?

Or if they'd rather have the second center and not you know, not you know, increase or expand this one.

But I kind of like our ECC and and I you know, but but that's again that's up to the voters.

So that's kind of where I am.

I want to understand when we'll have the results of the survey, and to if there's not gonna be enough money for a second place, maybe we can make this one bigger than what will the current proposal all these decisions will still be made this year.

Yeah, I have one question on that one.

So in the survey for the second uh ECC, do you know what amount you'll put in there, or you'll just ask, do you want a second ECC?

That's this will be the next agenda topic.

And that you'll we'll discuss like how much it's going to cost.

Don't they have to do the analysis of how much it'll cost to put it on that one?

Yeah.

And that'll be in months.

You assume it'll be done in months.

So this is the next agenda item.

Right.

And then we'll bring we'll we'll be bringing a consultant contract for that study in February.

Okay.

And then that that will be completed sometime this year.

This year.

Um regarding the just doing the basketball and the fitness room option.

Would that 12 and a half million dollars potentially increase if the option one isn't done because some of those costs are being shared between two uh to answer our analysis looked at those two projects as independent.

Okay.

It looked at the renovation project as being built over one sequential mobilization, not additional, not eight separate.

So if that helps answer the question.

Yes, if the two are we didn't we didn't lump those in and say you get some benefit that commingles in project A, project B.

Yeah.

In theory, if we did them both, would we get the potential?

In theory, yes.

Okay.

If you ask me to quantify it, I would probably have to have to defer that from the issue that there probably is some benefit.

Yeah.

Okay.

With the disruption of our community, it's probably better to do them all together, I'm guessing.

Yes, and and not to complicate this issue, but it sounds to me like there is a very thoughtful survey that could be applied because a lot of times these surveys tend to be somewhat open-ended.

It's going to be very targeted, targeted toward ballot questions.

Um, having worked with a lot of communities, dozens and dozens and dozens with these same questions.

You can make one argument that one jeopardizes the other, which is a perfectly valid argument.

I've been in plenty of communities that say, hey, you want a new center, take care of your old center.

So you could almost make an argument on any side of this.

So asking the voters the question, probably not a probably not a bad idea, but we heard both in uh eight and a half months.

We engage the community.

So all right, we'll be going an hour and 40 minutes.

We still have three more topics tonight.

We also have an uh executive session.

So um, unless we we have four people that don't want to move to the next topic and continue this topic.

Um, I'll keep us on this topic.

Right, I'm not seeing people saying yes, let's keep going on this.

So we'll move to the next topic.

We'll get through that.

That may prompt us to bring this topic back up either tonight or a future meeting.

Uh but let's um first thank you.

A lot of good work, and um, I think this is hard decisions we're gonna have to make because of the monetary side behind it.

Uh but we'll get there.

All right, so we're gonna move forward to the next agenda item, which is item 2026 62, which is the ballot issue planning.

And I think we're gonna stay up here.

Um, or the town manager um Melissa is gonna join us.

I think Gabby, our communications uh director is gonna join us as well.

I'm gonna grab water real quick.

Oh, yep, sure.

Okay.

You take over from the start, the mayor city sucks.

So maybe it's just give more.

Okay, perfect.

Um, we can do that.

Uh Melissa and I are both on this topic tonight, so we can chat with you and get some clear direction about our 2026 and/or 2027 ballot item issues, and we'll talk about that here in a second.

I do want to acknowledge that we we are 45 minutes or so past the time we're supposed to start this topic.

So I'm gonna try to get you to your discussion pretty quickly.

Um, I will start then with just the review of what I'm gonna talk to you about today.

First, we'll talk about the typical steps it takes to get an item to the ballot successfully, what that timeline usually looks like.

Um, we'll review the potential items that have come up over the last year that you all have talked about and and possibly said would be good on a ballot.

Um, we'll talk about a vendor who could do the surveying and polling of our community for a ballot item.

You'll have a discussion, hopefully give us direction, uh, and we'll move forward.

So, first I wanted to show a little bit of what it usually looks like to take an item to the ballot.

There's a lot of steps to it to do this successfully.

And I will say this is a typical um timeline and the steps for something that is um asking for money.

There are a lot of other things that you can ask for on a ballot that are not necessarily money from the community.

Um, but when you're asking for money, in particular, either a um a tax increase to property taxes or sales taxes, usually we go through all of these steps.

Uh, one example of a ballot item that we didn't necessarily need to go through all of these steps for was actually just last year when we asked about medical marijuana or uh sorry, uh marijuana sales tax.

It was kind of a hypothetical, and we didn't have any marijuana businesses.

We were kind of prepping for that, so it wasn't necessarily gonna hit anyone's pocket.

So there wasn't as much time needed or as many steps that we took to get that through.

We had a pretty good sense it was gonna pass from past community surveys.

Um, so just going high level here, we do usually do a feasibility study.

Um, so a lot of the facility-related bonds and taxes that we'll be talking about, probably should have feasibility study in order to have the full uh information in particular on financing ready for the public so they can understand what it looks like.

Um we do the kind of modeling of what their taxes would pay for, so we can be as clear and upfront with them as possible when they get their ballot item.

They know what they're getting if they vote yes, so they know what they would give up if they vote no.

Um then we do the public opinion polls.

So typically, if we can, we like to ask them twice the same sort of questions.

We ask them once with basically no education out there in the public and see if they would support it, knowing whatever they happen to know in the moment.

We would like to do a lot more education and outreach, which is the next step, and then you poll them again and say, okay, now that you know all of these things, now that we've talked to you for X amount of months, would you still vote the same way you did?

Would you vote a different way?

Um, and then finally, you have to have your ballot language finalized, and in particular, if you're asking for taxes, you have to have very, very specific language uh that matches table requirements for our ballots.

Um, and those are usually due about mid-August, uh, mid to late August.

So we can get a specific date on that.

I think it actually might be August 9th, but I'll get a date.

Um, and then uh finally, like campaigning, which is something we cannot do as staff, um, elected officials can, and then um some uh specialized committees if they're formed, can also do the campaigning, but staff cannot do that after the ballot language is approved.

So there's a lot of legal steps and a lot of best practice steps to a ballot item.

I thought we could not my understanding that the elected officials could campaign for an item.

We reflect the town, and a town cannot campaign.

Elected officials are treated differently.

You cannot use 10 resources, you can't, so for instance, you can't print flyers here at town hall.

You'd have to do that at home or different arrangement.

You can't use any 10 resources, but you are treated separately as an elected official at staff for campaign.

My highlight they position is I know you're making exactly what you should under our charter, but um you can campaign in all your free time.

Okay, thank you.

Um, and of course, we can get into a lot more detail about that as we get closer to an actual ballot and election.

This next slide here is the ideal timeline for a ballot item, especially one that has tax implications on it.

Really, an 18-month plus timeline is the ideal to really make sure that you've done enough education and outreach for the community and done the multiple polling to know if your measure will pass or fail.

And the reason that's important is kind of in that green box there.

The best practice is to wait at least a year for a small failure of an item.

So if if it's barely losing, they say, okay, try again next year.

Two to three years for a larger failure, anywhere from 10 to 15% or higher.

They say you really need to wait a longer period of time, or the public says, Well, you didn't listen to me.

I said, No.

So it is really important to not put an item on the ballot if you know that it does not have the support of your community.

So that's why that education and outreach piece is so important.

We did take nearly two full years for the home rule charter question.

Um, when we did exactly what I had mentioned there, that we did polling first with no education, and we saw they were close to support.

Then we did a whole almost year of education, polled again, and then we had support.

Um, so you'll see here if we could have would have started feasibility studies for anything that you're going to consider in November, um, and then done some polling starting in about February, March time, get results by May, do more education and outreach, and then right before August, you would pull again and make sure that they there was the support you needed before making your decisions.

Um, so again, that's that's fast.

I just want to get you to the actual discussion.

But these these slides are in your packet, and we can certainly come back to them if you would like to.

And now we're into your topics.

So, again, if you had looked through your packet ahead of time, you'll see that all of these items, I think there are eight of them, are just things that have come up over the last year in your conversations and are potential um items for a ballot, I think would be appropriate for a ballot question.

So we want you to be able to talk about them.

We did try to bundle them in like topic areas and categories.

So these first ones are kind of bond measures, facility funding.

So this is where you'll see the conversation you have already started this evening about a second community campus and an expansion to the Yuri Community Center, um, as well as an expansion to our Leon A World Service Center, which has houses most of our public works and parks facility needs.

Um I'll come back to all these.

Uh, long-term revenue sources here.

So we're talking about a tax that might last in perpetuity and not sunset.

So this would be a permanent funding source for different items.

So the first one here is an indoor recreation operations and maintenance tax.

Um, as you were talking about before, when you build something today, it becomes maintenance for tomorrow.

Um, this tax could help pay for all of that.

Followed by um a public facilities tax, which wouldn't necessarily be specifically targeted towards parks and recreation facilities, but could be any of our facilities, so that is a bit more flexible and doesn't have to be project specific.

So that's an option to consider.

Um transportation and infrastructure tax.

Um, you've had conversations about this as a possibility and or a fee.

Um, and so there's some links in here to some of the fees that were just recently approved in communities near us.

So this one, again, we do have the opportunity to ask about a tax, or there is a fee option here.

And then finally, accommodation-related taxes.

Some of this is coming up specifically because Sundance is coming to our area, and so we do want to be prepared for that.

Also in mind that Sundance will ideally be in the area for a very long time.

So, yes, we could be ready for the first one, but we certainly could be ready for the future.

So there's a short-term rental tax option here, which could be on all of our short-term short-term rentals that we have in Erie, of which we don't have a good grasp on how many that is.

Um, and then there could be a special licensing type just for Sundance or special events, and then a lodging tax that would be applied to hotels, of which obviously we don't have one now, but are planning for one at town center.

Um so I wanna I wanted to lay those out for you first.

Um, I hope, like I said, hopefully you have looked at these and are familiar with all of them.

We will go through discussions.

Um, and I think I have this a little out of order because I was gonna talk to you about our survey option, our vendor options, but let's just wait for that and have you start your conversations about possible items.

Um, I do have staff members here, obviously.

Luke's stayed, Julian's here, you can talk some about the lodging taxes and short-term rentals.

Um, Sarah's here.

We have some specific questions about taxing and what that does for our finances.

Um, and so, and of course, any other staff members can please talk about things as well.

Melissa, anything else to add?

No, I think um just really pay attention to the timeline and how quickly we need to move to um get someone on board to start asking residents.

And so um, you know, we're we really need to make these decisions quickly.

No pressure on them, but yes, pressure just because the timeline is short.

It seems like the election is a long ways off.

But as Gabby emphasized, really we ideally we would have already started this a few months ago, so we do really need to move on your decisions of what you want to get more information and poll on.

And I think just one last thing to consider 2026 is going to be a midterm election.

Um, our ballot is probably going to be quite large.

Um, we know that we're going to have federal, state, and local items on it, in including at least three council seats uh for the town are going to be on that ballot.

We do know that this year, the 2025 year that we just had the election for many of our neighbors waited and didn't put items on there just because of the economic uncertainty.

So we do expect quite a few items to be on 26.

Um, so just something to consider as the ballot gets longer, there is more fatigue and there may be less likelihood that all of our things are approved.

So just another thing to consider when thinking 26 versus 27.

Do we have any sense on any of the special districts, whether it's Mountain View or or St.

Brain that that may be targeting 26?

Do we have to do that?

I don't know.

Um, I know everybody's starting these conversations right about now and at the same time, and everybody kind of plays a little bit of chicken.

Who's gonna go first?

Um, but we do have to your point we have Mountain View Fire District.

We've got both St.

Frain and Boulder Valley School Districts that could have um items.

I don't think Boulder will, and I think St.

Brain did what last year they did last year.

So I wouldn't expect that we come back with that.

And we could have some from either county um state and some of the other uh state messenger is also deciding whether to go to the ballot 2026.

Yeah, that's a big one.

But means passenger room.

And that one will be controversial because fast tracks, right?

We were all taxed when we got nothing up here, but they they've got to go to the voters at some point.

So I'll open discussion from you.

I I am kind of hoping that you all will just ask questions and start to work this out.

Yes.

Before we dive into the weeds of specific issues, yes.

Uh it sounds like we are thinking possibly this year's election, which is gonna be a scramble and a half.

Can you give us some guidance on the timeline items?

Where we can crunch some of that time where we cannot.

Sure.

Must not.

Yeah, so you're so then maybe I am in the right order.

Your first decision here would be which vendor we could use for our polling and surveys.

We are under contract with Polco, who usually does our community surveys, and so that is a contract that we have ongoing with them, and we have discussed with them the possibility that they switch their services to polling, like ballot item polling instead of community survey, and they're willing to do that.

They could get to work as early as next month in February asking questions as long as we have the questions, at least uh a start for them to get going.

If we don't want to use them for some reason, we would have to start a full RFP process, would add at least a month to that timeline in order to get applications out, get get their applications back in, and then do interviews for possible vendors, which is something we can do if that's the direction you decide.

So that's kind of the first decision point that we have from a timing perspective.

Um, if we go with polco, let's just say that.

Um, we could get a first initial survey out to the community as early as February and start asking those generic higher level questions.

I would still highly suggest that you shrink this list from eight to maybe two at the most three items to ask them.

The more you ask them, the less information you're gonna get.

Because as we know, everybody wants everything.

Um, and so we really need them to start really separating what's important to them.

The less items we give them now, the clearer our direction will be from the community.

Do we use Polco for the marijuana tax and the no?

We used uh we we didn't use a company for the marijuana tax.

We didn't feel like that was necessary for our other recent taxes for home rule for TNAC.

Um, I think those are the last two.

We used Magellan, which we used for your community survey last year.

Um so Polco has not done these smaller surveys for us.

They've stayed at kind of that higher level large community scale surveys, but they do this for other communities.

We just haven't asked them for it.

Yeah, Patrick reached out to me and he said we have money, I think, on committed to them.

So I don't have a problem using Polk.

So can we not use Majilin?

No.

They they have indicated that they would not like to work with us on this project.

But Polco says that they would.

Yeah, and I have a problem with Magellan too, and I'll keep it short here.

But there was no language, I guess, in our contract on how they use AI.

And when I questioned the usage of the AI, they would not meet.

I didn't have that I took the question if I work with the nobody even like good language market.

I get it, man.

I get it.

So does Polco use A?

I don't know, but we should have something in the um in the language with Polco on if they use AI, how do they ensure that it's not hallucinating?

And they should have some policy or something.

Yeah, so we we've asked them that question, and they did send us some some really high-level information to start with, of which we can do a deeper dive into specifically their AI policies.

But I have already asked that question, anticipating that it would come up.

Um so I'll I'll send you all of that information.

I I didn't want to overwhelm you with details if we weren't gonna go that direction.

Yeah, so does anybody not okay with using Polco?

Okay, I think we're okay on that first question.

Perfect.

Okay, so if we're gonna assume we can start in February, then um the timeline, then from that perspective, we'll go back to kind of a sample timeline.

So let's say we will do some sort of surveying.

I will say if you decide to move forward with, for example, the second community center, we don't have the feasibility study results for that.

So we will not be able to tell people specific numbers, which our polling company will tell us will not give us very clear direction.

Can we utilize other communities that have recently built a square footage rec center in the ballpark?

Or are we like off hundreds of millions of dollars?

I mean, what are we talking about tens of millions?

So we're not quite sure we're talking 50 million that we're not sure.

Well let look talk about.

We're not sure.

Yeah, I think we we you could get in the realm of tens of millions of dollars off because we haven't done any sort of studying of the site.

We haven't talked to our partners, are they willing to contribute capital dollars towards it?

Um, you know, are we talking aquatics?

Are we talking a field house?

Again, this is a campus.

This is not just a recreation center.

It's 25 acres.

So we're talking outdoor amenities, we're talking ball fields, so yeah, you you run the risk of of saying, oh, it's only gonna cost 25 million.

Oh, guess what?

It's 85.

And and I will say from a PR perspective and purely a communications perspective, if we go out with minimal information, that's what I'll get back.

Is but what about this?

What do I get?

What does it look like?

How much space is there?

How much is it costing?

So it's it's going to be a lot of if we share just kind of high level, a lot more questions come back in than we get answers.

Can we do it the opposite way?

And to say that um what would go in the second rec center is still TBD and there'd be a lot more survey and community input on that.

However, if um we want to give you ranges, if we are able to raise our sales tax by whatever 0.2%, I have no idea if that's the right number, but by whatever percent, that would generate X amount that we can put into the second rec center.

Maybe we design the second rec center by what the voters are willing to support.

I I I'll say two things to that.

One, I do want to just remind you that the option for a property tax is on the table.

I think y'all need to please give me some direction if that isn't on the table, because those are two options that are possible.

We could do a property tax increase or we could do a sales tax increase.

And those are things we could also test with a survey and a poll.

Um so I don't want to go into it assuming that there is only one option unless you have already decided that as a team here.

Yeah, the only reason why I say I'm not for it is because we have all these metro districts, and the number one thing we get back from taxing, or at least what I hear, is that our property taxes are already too high.

I recognize the town doesn't get that, but people don't differentiate that.

They look at their property taxes and they go that that it's big.

We can test for that, but I think it also um adds another level of complexity.

When I'd be really surprised if people came back and said, Yeah, let's let's raise our property taxes.

And then just to pause, I brought Sarah up just to make sure we followed up on your first question.

So Sarah, did you like it?

Yes, I just wanted to um in terms of calculating the tax rate that we would need to generate, the better number we have, the better timeline we can provide.

Um, so I think like it and I don't know how this works in ballot language in terms of when we would want to deliver something like this, but based on what we need to generate per year to get to whatever the end game is, and then whatever is actually in the ballot language in terms of are we specifying a community center, we spent or are we doing something as a general tax will also determine whether or not um how specific you need to get.

If you're going with a generalized tax and you're just trying to generate a certain amount for public facilities or something like that, you can be a lot more broad about what the cost could be.

But if you're talking about a facility that you need a timeline on, especially if you can't generate enough in the first or second year for the full cost, you're talking about 10% escalations year over year on those on that facility.

So I would just caution to staying broad on the costs for individual projects.

You want to be more specific with those in order to generate the right amount of tax.

But if you're on a broader public facilities, police facilities, things like that, then you're you have more autonomy, I think, to kind of select what sales tax rate would make sense to generate.

So I just want to differentiate between the two because I think it's a little easier sometimes to hone in on how much you need to generate to in order to get to whatever timeline you're trying to go forth with on a on a project.

And we've seen neighbors take that approach.

You know, we I have a number of uh ballot items that are very specific in saying gym, multi-purpose rooms, aquatics, fitness center to Sarah's point.

The more specific you are, you hone in on the cost, and that way you the voters know what they're getting.

Yeah.

So around a sales tax.

Um increase, you know, we have two different sales taxes, but well county and boulder county.

Um there is some room right now on the Boulder County side uh for our sales tax to bump it up Lafayette is is higher than us.

Um, and there's a few other areas around us that are higher.

Um, but I guess it would be helpful to understand what we think we can increase it to and what that would generate, right?

Yes.

So I can get that specific information if um there is a dollar amount we're trying to target.

So um right now I can't off the top of my head tell you how much it generates.

Um, and actually we're waiting on our year-end numbers right now, so I'll have more information very shortly, hopefully.

Um, but with that said, yes, if we know we want to generate 15 million a year, we can you know look at how much we collect and say, what would that, you know, what would the gap be?

What how much would we need to add to the tax?

And that would go on both Boulder and Well County County side.

So Boulder, if you're on that side, we'll just pay slightly more because of their increased sales taxes.

But yes, you know, I think it has more to do with like what are we trying to generate, and then we can kind of back into that number.

Currently, we're generating what around 25 million.

Sounds 20.

I think sales alone is want to say 22 to 25 kind of over the last few years.

We've been increasing about 10% year over year, kind of depending on um what's coming online, like King Supers coming online and different ones, you know, generating more sales tax.

Right.

So I'm just thinking, you know, an increase would probably only get us around two and a half to three million a year, right?

Yeah, depending on what you know, percent.

And again, that's something I could get into.

I have to actually look at what that would mean in terms of generation.

But yes.

I think I mean this this can go in so many different ways.

Uh what may be helpful, this may be totally thrown out, but what may be helpful is if we look to some communities around us that have built rec centers, say in the last two or three years, do your best judgment on roughly that's what we think we need here, and then back into the sales tax number, right?

Because you'd have to um bond for that.

That would be the payments would be based upon the sales tax.

The revenue bonds, yes.

And then that would help us understand.

Well, maybe the second rec center is totally out of reach because we can't raise sales tax enough to get there.

I mean, you're only talking a building when it's a campus.

Yeah, right.

And so and that's why I think we need at least something to start with, right?

That what is what have others done?

This number, actually.

So then go ahead.

Finish it down.

Yeah, I was saying looking at somebody else's free to send and say that is a number and taking it to the voters above the number.

You're missing some steps there.

I'm just trying to get an understanding.

Okay, let me throw a number out there.

The rec center is gonna cost 75 million dollars.

I don't know if that's right or not.

You have a number.

Oh, I do.

Well, not on that, but on the expansion of the Erie 27.

27.

27 million to do the court and everything.

Yeah, that's all in all.

And actually, I just just wanted to ask.

Um, it in this slide it said would benefit from long engagement.

Isn't that already done?

Or well, I I yeah, I I did see that.

I think if we were talking about um pushing this to to 2027, um, I think that public engagement to better, you know, look at that again um from a public standpoint to to marry your point a little bit on both of these projects if we were to to delay for 2027.

And then you would get more public input to say, okay, this is what the second site would need.

And then do you basically have a better sense to the second site's gonna be it's gonna be a big project.

Yeah, that's what I mean.

That's why it's 75 million.

I have no idea that it's uh town of Tim Nith just uh passed a sales tax bond last November for 109,000 square foot center and at 93 million dollars.

Yeah, and then they have some impact funds going in and into that as well.

So to give you a rough number, 109,000 square foot at 93 million.

So okay, we need to whittle this list down.

Yeah, although yes, I would say accommodations.

I could right now easily take those two off.

I'm I'm yes, we need to get there.

I'm almost thinking that if we delay this to 27, then let's go back to the last topic.

Then uh now I think I'm more council member hoback with maybe let's go all in on what we know.

You build that, it gives us enough separation from the current center work, and then you work on that in 2027, 2028, 2029, whatever that may be.

That's a long-term project.

Yeah, yeah.

And then we well, I mean, we have to leon a World Service Center agreed.

Um, I just got to mold this over.

And we also talked about the tax to pay down the COP for the police station as well, right?

So that's right.

With which isn't on here.

We thought should there be a public safety tax on here as well, so that when the chief needs to expand again, we've got money saved up.

You know, in theory on that, since we can't pay it for 10 years, we can't pay it off for 10 years.

We could delay that one to like 28.

Yeah.

Yeah, and we and we and I mean I'm in favor of paying it off as soon as we can, but we can't do it for 10 years.

So, really, you focus on the current rec center, doing as much as you can, put this off until you guys can do more work on whatever the bigger project.

The second community campus.

Okay.

So uh backing up one second.

Um follow-up on what you said.

So for a sales tax, is there a way to calculate um we've got like Broomfield right now is growing like crazy around Sheridan.

Like, do we have estimates on you know if there's extra dollars or being spent in King Super or some of our areas?

I mean, we we have yeah, that's that's a hard one.

It's definitely tough.

Um, because naturally you would assume that the more homes and more traffic over there would influence you know some of our tax generators over there.

Um, but I I don't know enough about how many people are coming into that area to kind of understand that.

I think that might be something we could maybe discuss with Broomfield, but again, we it's hard we can't really share a lot of sales tax information.

Yeah, so there's there's some limitations to what we can actually discuss.

Um, but yeah, I mean I could definitely explore it, but uh, I think it would probably be uh a lot of assumptions on on my part.

And there's rumors of whole foods going out there, which then maybe I'm sure there's enough demand that eventually there'll be another grocery, but um I I mean getting back a second to the property tax versus um sales tax.

My thought with the sales tax is that um it it does allow outside of Erie to pay in to what we're doing rather than just putting it on the backs of the residents and I feel like Erie for a long time, probably when you when the first Roxar was built and you were mayored and um we didn't have any taxes.

Yeah, we didn't know yeah, we were really relying on property tax, and I think um we residents have spent enough in other municipalities, like it's time for them to help us out.

So plus we didn't have a bunch of metro districts.

Yeah.

The western side of Erie is for the most part metro district free, and that's changed now.

Whittle?

Yeah, go for it.

Um for me it's the the lodging tax and the short-term rental tax.

Um just those theme that they could be pushed off a couple years.

Yeah.

Um so that we're not putting those on the ballot.

So we're really uh putting the focus needs to just be on money to expand the current rec center and to pay for the renovations.

That seems to be the closest project, if we want to put that things.

And then be the closest project.

Yes, if you if you dag Dummer were gonna put something on the 26th ballot, that's the closest parks or project that we have that you could we could confidently communicate what we're doing, how we're doing it, how much is it gonna cost to to the voters then?

Luke, should we go back though, and on that slide that had the blue and the future town building?

Should that be considered if we're gonna expand it and just put our focus in that?

We could if if if we wanted uh collab to uh start looking at that again, we we could absolutely do that.

I mean, we we have a lot of the base knowledge, it's more of just putting up a new building, right?

The renovation that that project took so long because you're you're trying to move around pieces that are already set, right?

Right with the expansion with the fitness facility and the gym, as as Chris alluded to, those are new buildings.

Right.

So collab could easily come back and say, okay, council give us some directions to add some on to the future town facility.

All right, what does that look like programmatically?

And you know, pop up four walls and a roof.

I'm simplifying it, but yes, collab could do that in a somewhat relatively quick manner.

Well, and I asked that because um what was the number?

Um 104 seniors are now at the lunch and capacity is 108.

Yeah, I mean, do you do you build a senior way?

I think you know, I don't want to tell you that we all I mean you you you get the number throughout a third of our uh by 2040.

2040 or 65 in a population will just triple.

So yeah, I mean that should probably be part of of the expansion, right?

They're considered so instead of doing an a targeted expansion, could you roll that under the a public facilities tax?

You could you could you it would just have to, and then council would have to prioritize what are you gonna use those tax dollars for?

Yeah.

I think that's a harder ask of our voters though, if it's generic.

Right.

But it is and it isn't.

We we know of a project that there is support for.

Then why not just call that project out?

So you take the ambiguity out of the ask.

Because then that sunsets, doesn't it?

I think you can do that in the language I've seen it before where you prioritize the project.

So like first it shall be used for this, then used for this, and then used for maintenance and operations for the department or the general fund or have or general operations.

I've seen it done that way.

Um so uh Boulder had one like that that they um they actually was going it was going to sunset and then they transitioned it into a general fund tax, which I was very surprised that it did that.

But yes, so but I that I'm not an expert on the ballot language that we would need in order to do that, but I have seen it.

Windsor and Tim that this this recent one have both done that where they asked for a certain amount of sales tax to pay the bond, the still the sales tax revenue bond, and then they leave 0.25% as a non-sunsetting sales tax to fund operations maintenance, deferred maintenance.

But but does that cause us to push off the second one for 15 years?

Well the second I guess it it wouldn't be enough to probably fund the second one for a really long time.

For a long time, right?

Yeah, okay.

I mean or do we count on increased sales tax to pay for the operations and we focus on the bill.

I mean, our sales tax are going up predictably at this point, right?

Yes.

And so is there enough headroom in the increased sales tax to cover operations?

I would have to look at that.

We assumed 5% uh increase this year on sales tax, um, which is reduced from our previous year um increases simply because we're expecting a little bit of an economic flattening.

Um but yes, if you're increasing, you know, five percent year over year if we continue on that trend.

Um that roughly keeps up with our cost of operations overall.

So uh with the exception of some personnel.

Um so broadly, yes, you could you could kind of do a little bit of a shell game there where you know you said we're going to do a tax that would support the operations, maintenance and operations for different properties facilities, um, and then you would uh then look at what is freed up in your general fund in order to push that towards your CIP projects.

Um you're still kind of utilizing the same funds, you're just doing it from different places with different purposes.

Yes, exactly.

So but you're dedicating those operating funds, which has downside as well, right?

If you don't need all of them, they're now dedicated completely to your parks and rec, um, which I know Luke won't be upset about.

But if we if we need some autonomy and spending, it might be a little difficult.

That's why uh for simplicity.

If we feel like we can handle the operations within our increased sales tax, I'd rather go to the voters very specifically.

This is a sales tax to build the facility.

And then we can always come back in future years um for these other topics.

Think people are less hesitant, they're more hesitant when operational things are tied into these taxes.

Who will say it takes more education?

That that outreach piece definitely increases when it's it's not so straightforward as you will see this building that does this thing.

Exactly.

It definitely takes some more handholding to get the residents there.

Well, that was harder for us.

This question, oh, sorry.

No, go ahead.

When I was in Windsor and we we asked those questions of the voters, we were very clear in the ballot language isn't very clear, and I'm looking at Tim this right now.

It it it very clearly states that once the bond is paid off, I mean layman's term here, once the bond is paid off, this amount remains for operations and maintenance.

So it it has been done and as recently as last year.

But I just want to mention um I know laws expansion is maybe not as appealing to voters, but I would couch public works as very bread and butter type of government.

If you lose public work, that's a huge loss to the community, even though they don't see it and they don't feel it as much as a rec center, street maintenance operations, all those things and the working conditions we have those employees in right now, it would not be a good leader if I told you they were good.

They really need to be improved, people are on top of each other, and so that problem needs to be solved.

It doesn't pull as well with the voters, it's a hard one, but I don't want you to forget that it needs to be taken care of and um and we need to figure out that expansion sooner rather than later.

Right now we're looking at modular units just so they can sort of go to the bathroom and have some space.

Um, but it is a problem that's sort of right there.

So as you think through making this decision, also think through, then what would sort of be your guidance to staff on the Leon World Service Center long term, so that we can start kind of thinking about that as well.

Yeah, that's a great point, Melissa, and and I'll use the the example of Lafayette, I think.

In uh also last year, they funded uh that was a property tax.

So it was a 74 million dollar bond that was renovate and expand the rec center, construct a new civic center and renovate existing service center.

So they had that situation where they they bundled, right?

They bundled all the projects together and then asked the voters, hey, with this one tax, do you want to fund all these projects?

So that is another option.

I think that starts getting into more of the the public facilities tax, but they were very specific in their ask of this is what you're going to get.

And I think that goes back to Gabby's point of education in the community, which again, you know, does that maybe say, ah, well, actually, maybe we should be looking this to 2027 so we can do that education, get the information back.

Yeah, this like I either want to do it all, which is where I was at coming into this meeting, right?

And if that means wait to 2027, then I'd want to wait on the expansion of our current center and try to get it all.

I think the advantage Lafayette had was they don't have metro districts all over the place.

And so a property tax was more palatable.

Although they had a split council too, the mayor ended up casting the vote to go for all three.

Um and it passed.

And so I don't know.

They also have the highest sales tax in Boulder County.

Oh, so sales tax by wasn't an option like it is for us.

Right.

We also have um some of our property tax mill levy dedication rolling off at the end of next year, too.

Um so the voters will see the residents will see a slight decrease in the mill levy that's required to pay our debt payments.

So that will be nice alongside, you know, if we're asking them to raise their sales taxes, but they're also seeing a decline.

There could be some, you know, uh just ease for the voters in that thinking about paying more taxes in terms of sales tax.

I don't know.

We gotta we gotta cut this list down.

I mean, I'll like I said, I'll start with the I'll start with the uh accommodation taxes.

I feel like not pursuing those in 26 or my only concern is um sending it and being prepared for that, and and just I'm I'm on board with you because we don't have a hotel lodging tax isn't necessary right this moment, except that that short-term rental um will have a an ordinance, I think, coming soon-ish um to discuss short-term rentals, or it's on our work plan, I guess.

On our work plan, yeah.

Soonish means, you know, it's relevant.

I mean, relative.

But um so I know there's you know, superior had a hotel without having that tax, a lodging tax.

I wonder if there's something else we could be creative, fees, I don't know, some sort of registry.

We're gonna have to look at it somehow because we already hear from residents that they want us to be regulating short-term rentals in the neighborhoods, and I think we have something that's going to incentivize short-term rentals in neighborhoods, and so we should be prepared for that.

I don't I don't disagree, and I see it firsthand.

So I just for uh I don't know how long it or how soon something like that could get into the works where there has to be a process to figure out you know, where who does have these short-term rentals and who or what staff members are going to be dedicated to overseeing this and making sure that there's compliance and licensing and I think there's a lot to it, maybe correct?

Yeah, there are firms that help with that.

It would cost some of the money that would be raised by it as well.

I I think where I'm at, subject to more debate, of course, is that we go all in on uh the current rec center expansion and we try to use the land that um wasn't even in the presentation and to get that bigger.

I think I'm going back to where I think where you were originally.

Let's take care of the current one, buy us a little bit of time, and then we can look at the future one.

And um only do it for the cost of the physical cost, the capital cost to do it all.

Um that buys us time to either come back in 27 or 28 with um the broader tax for a second facility once you have more time to study that.

And laws and pay them off.

No, no, no, no, no.

So in laws, right?

Um yes, I think laws would be out, just focus on this so we can get it.

And you know, I think for our community standpoint, they see us investing in town hall, cost a lot of money, right?

COPs and other ways, um, or not COPs.

I forgot how you paid for this, but you found the money, right?

It got built.

Um but they see this is a this is a government facility, the police station, they see it as a government facility.

Um, I think the recreation center, they'll see as a government facility, but they'll see it as a community facility.

Um, you know, you don't really come down here to hang out for community, you don't really go to the police to hang out for community, no cuts there, but that's just kind of the what it is.

But you do go to the rec center for community, and I think we need to get a win in the community column uh to say that this is equally important.

And I think that was some of your words right when we started, Luke.

Um, that this is not a do we need to, but we have to do this because of the community.

And so if we focus on that in this election, and then we study these other items for the future, with the exception of the lodging tax, um, because I think the lodging tax doesn't really cost us anything.

We just need approval to do it, and then if we get the hotel built, it's already in place.

Um, and I don't think that would put at risk the um the rec center.

And so just to be very clear, you're talking about a question about expansion of the ECC and potentially a lodging tax on 2026.

That's right.

And everything else would just wait until you guys can come back to us with I think better information where we'd have a higher degree of success in educating our community and then having them say, all right, we get it, we need to go there.

And then with the sales tax sunset on the expansion.

I think so on the capital of the bond is paid off.

Once the bond is paid off.

You can always go back, and I love what St.

Frain did on their last bond.

They said without raising your taxes, will you support blah blah blah blah bump?

And they got it passed easily.

Yeah.

And I think once they're in place, then we can come back at that time and do the same thing.

And yeah, as we get to the second community campus or that the the Leon A World Service Center, then we can say, hey, we already have this tax in place, whether we have to increase or maybe it's a small increase, and you get another second community campus and the Leon A World Subs in 2829, whenever that happens.

Um, just a point of clarification.

So when you say all in on the recreation expansion for the 26th ballot, are you looking at the full renovation and expansion or just the expansion?

So the fitness facility and the gym and the future town building.

I'm saying the renovation too, so that it doesn't look like old or new.

Yes, the full 27 million scope.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Because then it's done.

And then we're not trying to hodgepodge it where you where you start to people know that you got the old sign, the new sign.

And I think if we can get through that.

And I would you would say if there's 10% more and you can add 10% onto those 27 million, and you can add some key features that would buy us some longevity.

I mean, I would just look at that too.

Have you finished?

Okay.

I had one question on the settlement center.

Do we have enough information or do we need to educate people for if we've ordered to do 20?

We would need more financial information, more specifics on that one.

So we have some pretty high-level numbers and not enough, I would think.

So that one, if we're gonna do it, could go for 27.

Um, it's sort of like the the new community campus.

Like we could do a feasibility study and get the information in order for 2027, but I would not say we have enough information for 2026.

Gabby, one thing, uh, or actually maybe this is a question for you, Sarah, but maybe it's Gabby.

Um the tax that is rolling off for the current rec center.

Do we have like an average?

Can we say if you have a $700,000 home, this is what you are paying, and you will no longer be paying that.

And so we're asking you to approve this other sales tax.

I could get that number for you.

Um, I can back into it.

We represent about 11% of the property tax bill on both sides of the counties.

Um, so you know, roughly 10% off the top of that is probably gonna be what's dedicated towards debt for each individual taxpayer.

So again, I'd have to calculate that, but I could get that number.

I think that'd be part of the messaging.

Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah, I'll just to clarify.

It can be part of the education, the outreach, it would not be able to be part of the ballot language because it would be a direct swap.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That makes sense.

Um, so I'll I'll just say that sounds like very clear direction for 26, unless I have other council members who don't like that.

Let me reiterate, and then if anybody doesn't agree with that general direction, once again, we can't make the decision tonight, it would come back to us um in uh the contract with Polco, it would come back to us in the uh contract to do the design.

Um so let me summarize, and then if anybody disagrees, let's get it on the table.

Um, so we focus uh the ballot language on two things the um hotel tax and the expansion and renovation of the rec center.

The tax would be for the capital costs only, not the operational costs.

This would be for the 2026 ballot.

The other items would be pushed off to 2027 or further, depending on how information was coming together and what staff brought back to us as the most critical needs.

I think that's it.

And Mayor, can I just ask a clarification?

You also said um, I heard you earlier say you wanted us to look at that additional land as part of the ECC expansion.

I think yes.

So when you come back to us with the contract, I think you you have to make a judgment call.

And I think it goes back to what Councilmember O'Connor was asking earlier.

Does it drive down the cost per square foot if we do that expanded space and then gives it helps reduce some of the problems we have in the rec center that we can't reduce with the way it is drawn today?

So we are talking about bringing back a contract for that additional work that we discussed.

Yes, and previously that's going to be the 1.7 million dollar contract.

Yes.

We'll have to make sure that a little bit more with the additional land.

But I don't want to say I don't anticipate it being too much of an additional cost.

But that's the ballpark.

That's yes, that's the ballpark.

All right.

I'm just looking around to see if anybody can't live with that direction, knowing that we'll make the final decisions that are.

It feels like a fairly painless possible win.

But okay, let's talk about that.

So I know you wanted it off.

Um I think um Councilmember Vero was talking about maybe we should do it.

I don't really have a strong opinion one way or the other because I don't know enough.

Do you repeat your concerns about it?

Um basically.

So if this tax comes into play, we have to um figure out a licensing program for it, um, who oversees it, collection.

Um to me, it was if we have to get the list down, that just seemed one that we could delay.

Because I don't, I think the tax collected, I could be wrong, but I think the tax collected will not be that much, and we will be paying for administrative fees or somehow through that it's correct.

We do not currently collect our own sales tax, we do that through the state.

So if we were to collect any of our own taxes, we would have to figure out how to administer that.

Um I will say, as part of the the UDC update that the planning and development team is going to be bringing forward later this summer, they are talking about the process and the code for licensing and whatnot.

And Sarah Normella, the director of planning and development, did talk about wanting to start tracking um the short-term rentals sooner rather than later to try to get some information to get that data.

Um, so in my estimation, it might be a good one for 27.

So we have more of our process in place, but I I know Julian had thoughts on it as well.

Um from the Sundance and kind of economic perspective of that.

But I I do know that there's just yes, to your point, there's not the process in place.

We don't necessarily have the staff in place.

We don't have the data for what this lift really would be.

Um, but we certainly could and will by the end of 26.

So for 27, that might be a really good option.

And then Mark Mini Shot Dumbledore's like in learn about some other basis.

Very few.

I know this because I was one of my friends was looking for the shot doubler.

Oh, good trouble plotting.

All right, I'm gonna, I think you have direction now.

We'll leave that one um the short-term rental tax out of it, and we'll revisit it.

Other clarifying questions?

So I I just want to make sure because of the timelines that we have for education and outreach.

Um, I would like some sort of direction on 2027, um, more specifically than all the rest of them.

Um because we would like to know which feasibility studies do we need to get started on now in order to be prepared for education and outreach for the next cycle, um, and which ones do we not think so?

So, for example, I don't think there will need to be an extensive education and outreach for the law or for the short-term rentals tax in particular, because to your point, it's probably not going to hit many of our residents, right?

Um, but for the second community campus, that's going to need some massive education and outreach in order to get that passed.

So that one, if we're saying yes for 27, like we need to get moving on a feasibility study, we need to get moving on things.

Um, so so there were quite a few things we did not even touch in here, in particular under the long-term revenue sources, of which, if we are going to think about them for 2027, we would need to know that to get information prepared over the next you know, six, nine months, and then come back to you.

So I can and I I'll speak to both of these items, the second community campus.

As I've mentioned, I think now probably ad nauseum for my own personal purposes.

Um, we are bringing a contract for the feasibility study for the second community campus in February.

That was supposed to be done by August in preparation for a potential 2026 ballot.

So I'm actually relieved that now I have a we have a little bit of time.

We don't have to rush that.

So that will be done by the end of 2026, and we'll have a lot of good information.

We'll have done a lot of the outreach with community with stakeholder groups on that campus.

Um because we are also doing a uh cost of operations, our cost recovery, our financial stewardship model, and along with the second community campus doing the operations and maintenance of that campus.

We could have a number of where we needed to be for an operations and maintenance tax for eerie indoor operations and maintenance that we could back in.

Yeah, and I think I go back to what is our increase in sales tax and can we absorb it, right?

It's those operational tax questions are harder to get across.

I'm gonna jump in on that and say our five-year forecast should we barely had enough to maintain our existing operations.

So I don't think we're flush with cash to be able to do that based on what we currently know.

That five percent year over year keeps up right how long our operating increases year over year with inflation.

And that's assuming existing space with existing staff.

Exactly.

Yes.

And so I mean, we I won't go down the other paths right now, but there may come a time where we just need to look holistically at the system and ask are there things we're doing that we can dial back a little bit and that's a whole nother deep dive conversation.

So Gabby, I don't know what to tell you.

2027, I think for me, laws and um and the second campus um are the two biggies, and then all these other ones.

I'm I'm just not sure.

We'll have uh a slightly different council up here at that time.

So I also you know, we got to go through, and the the folks making the decision at the time will ultimately have to make that decision.

And I also in you know, transportation infrastructure tax.

Um, I know everyone's super excited about that with it.

Um I think it would be great to know what the community thinks about, you know, maybe at the outreach time they've been using the B or they've had access to the B that hopefully is connecting them with other communities, and that begins to sort of open their mind their eyes to um multimodal travel and what's possible.

Um Erie is part of an e-bike um exchange, and so we're hoping to kind of expand that.

So I don't know if 2027 is the time where we kind of wait for these things to really get established and then maybe look at it in 28 or something, but um I do know there's there's a lot of exciting things on the transportation front that we could we should look at um how we're gonna fund those and ensure access for a community.

So and I think even just having the direction for us to start closely tracking those sorts of metrics is helpful, like for us to know like, oh, coming up either 27-28.

We want to really talk about a transportation-related tax.

Um, we need to know these things and how they've changed over time.

I think that's helpful for staff to know.

Um, and and because that's not a facility that would need to be as specific.

Um, I think we're not gonna need a feasibility study necessarily for that in the same way that we do for our community campus.

Um, so I think that that's good enough direction if you all agree that we should be tracking transportation and and what the community thinks about it.

I think that was the number one issue on the survey, um, transportation issue or um traffic and congestion and all that, which then begs the question: could we ask the second question under the transportation infrastructure tax on this on 26, which if I understand this right to understand the supporter opposition to having a fee, right?

Where you don't have to go through the TABER process, but um people get upset at fees too.

Yeah, every time I register my car and I see the whatever it is, the 10 fees, I'm like just put it into the whole thing, right?

I'll pay for the bridges, but you don't have to tell me every time.

Yeah, and I and I I will say there was quite a bit of pushback in the city of Boulder um for adding the fee without extensive education and outreach, in particular for the commercial um vendors and and businesses in the city because they're they're hit with a much higher fee than the residents are.

Um, so I would say that education is definitely necessary simply from a PR perspective.

We need to have that conversation about what a fee could look like and how much.

Um, do you want so we should leave it off for 2026?

Well, I so I I would have a question for you.

So, yes, of course, there is always value in having statistically valid polling and surveys.

For a question like this, there is also the opportunity to have a less strict, less statistically valid survey and ask the question and get a general sense back, and then later go and ask the more statistically valid version and pay the vendor to do that.

So we we do have the option of doing a survey monkey poll and just asking those questions and getting a general sense now and then seeing which direction it starts to do.

That's okay.

And leave the poll code very specific to the items we just discussed.

Right.

And and that's perfectly acceptable.

And I'll I'll make sure I kind of space them out so that it's not confusing that we're not asking ballot questions in two different places.

Um I think it could help us decide.

Okay, do we actually want to go down the route of a tax instead of a fee, or is the fee a a more palatable um space for the residents and businesses?

Okay, I think you have general direction.

Um certainly for 2026, you've got a little bit for 2027, but that'll have to come back in the future.

No, I think that's helpful.

All right.

Well, thanks for hanging in there with us.

And I think these conversations are important because it certainly um shifted a little bit from where I came in.

I'm a little disappointed that I can't go after the big kahuna for everything, but I understand the distance behind that.

There'll be plenty of kahunas to go after.

Thank you.

Thank you.

All right, we'll move on to um the next item, which is 2026 uh 55 discussion of council rules and procedures, council codes of ethics, conduct, and virtual meeting policy.

Welcome to uh to the tables here, Meredith.

We've been waiting patiently.

Everybody left, everybody else had other people.

It does kind of feel like us in the question is where's your people?

Um I am gonna mention some for roughly at the time we were hoping this item would be done and we're just starting it.

Um this item is not time sensitive, and I know you have outside counsel here for your next item.

And if you'd like to consider postponing it, we can do that.

Yeah, so I'm looking to um our town manager, and if you're okay doing that, I think that's probably a wise question.

Sorry.

To postpone this top nerdist was saying this is not time sensitive, so we can postpone to a time in the future to allow us to um get on with the next discussion because we are paying consultants to be here.

I'm a lot cheaper than they are, so I can come back.

Does anybody disagree with that?

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

All right, with that, we're gonna adjourn this meeting and we're gonna start another meeting, uh, which will require us to do a roll call vote and um rule nine yards.

So let me get the agenda up here.

I just got it up here.

All right, um, I'm gonna call to order the uh okay.

Yeah, Dean, you can get there.