Yeah, B, please, thank you.

Shall we she'll help collect them and consolidate them?

I also have a bunch of questions that hopefully many of you sent in, and so I'll try to get through all of those as well.

Um, and then time permitting, I'll take live questions uh both online.

We have the stream in virtually as well, um, and here.

So we'll do our best.

I think in a right around eight, we'll probably cut it off.

I don't want this to go on and on and on, um, but hopefully, we'll get through most of the questions and certainly the most important questions as we go.

So I'll get started here in just a couple minutes.

First, I just want to say thank you.

Uh, thank you for taking your time to come out and uh go on a journey with me.

Um, I'm gonna take a little bit of time, probably thirty to forty-five minutes to go through a set of slides that um will hit on many, many topics.

Um, I have a lot of questions that came in to me via email.

Um, and I'm gonna try to hit many of those as we go on the journey, but I know I won't hit all of your questions.

So if you do have a question, write it down.

I think Gabby's got the question box over in front of her.

You can just drop it in there.

Or um, time permitting, I will do my best to take live questions both here and on the virtual feed.

All right, with that, um, let's uh let's start the conversation.

Right.

First off, twenty twenty-five.

This is the first year that we are governing under home rule.

And that changed the way uh the your elected officials are elected.

All of the council members are representing three different districts, two different council members for each one.

They run in their district.

So, unlike Boulder Valley School District, for example, they have districts, but they run at large across the entire district.

In Erie, they're in districts, but they're elected in their district.

So I as the mayor, I'm elected across the entire town of Erie.

And so the good news for this is that you get two representatives.

So if you live in a certain area and you have a challenge, a problem, a question, you've got two elected officials that you can uh talk to, or of course myself, uh, which many people do.

Actually, I'm wondering if how many of our council members are here.

I've seen at least a few.

If you'll raise your hands, so councilmember Bears in the back, council member O'Connor is right here in the middle, council member is up front.

So I appreciate you being here and um being part of the conversation tonight.

All right, growth.

Um, one of the biggest topics, um, certainly when I was campaigning and people were talking with me, and then when I got in the seat and started to really learn what was happening this moment, growth, growth, growth.

Some of you may recall that we were in the national news because we were one of the fastest growing uh communities in the nation.

We were 15th.

Um, that growth has slowed as we went into uh 2024.

Um our growth rate was 4.3%, which means on the graph, we grew about 1,800 people, um, but we're right around 42,000 people in Erie.

To put that into perspective, we are right now, if you looked at our comp plan about halfway done.

And I always like to say that because there's always this constant tension between the small town feeling, and how do we preserve that small town feeling and still grow?

And that is something that all of us as elected officials are struggling with.

Um, but I'll come back to that small town feeling.

We can have a deeper discussion on that as we we go a little bit further here.

All right, 21 new businesses came in last year.

So I'm just gonna pause on the slide and let you absorb the logos and who's come in because sometimes it feels like where's the businesses?

There's lots of homes.

Uh but you could see that Erie is now hit what I'll call some level of critical mass where businesses want to be here.

And they're coming in.

I joke that Chick-fil-A makes more money than uh our grocery stores.

That may not entirely be true, but they're making a lot of money and we get the tax revenue, at least half the tax revenue.

Um nine mile, we share tax revenue with Lafayette.

Um they are supposed to share revenue with us once the corner across 287 is developed.

Um we're having discussions right now on whether our money going out is in the spirit of the IGA.

Not that anything's gonna change, but at least council is aware uh that they have not developed in the same timeline that uh I think Erie had anticipated uh them developing.

We'll cross the over a million dollars a year mark of going out to Lafayette at this point.

Um, hold on.

I have another these were last year, but this year already we have a few other uh new businesses that have moved in in 2026.

Edward Jones, mindful yoga and wellness, uh Move Lab Physical Therapy, which I believe is in the Aloe Building, and Mountain Kids Erie, which uh I think is gymnastics and climbing.

So a lot going on, and we're continuing to grow.

All right, parks and recreation, a ton going here.

I think one of the coolest things that uh a number of us uh got to do.

I think Councilmember O'Connor and Councilmember Bear were there.

Um John Reed there too, yeah.

Councilmember Mortalero was there too, uh, was for the basically the nationals, the championship qualifier.

And so we've got a wonderful pump track, and in all honesty, I didn't understand the whole sport until I was out there.

It's pretty cool to watch them go through the track and do their thing, um, and then to have it here in Erie.

It's gonna happen again uh this year in May, and I'm forgetting the date.

If go ahead, Luke.

May 3rd.

May 3rd.

So if you want to come out to our park on May 3rd and uh experience for it for yourself, uh it is a really cool thing uh to do.

I'm sorry, May 9th.

All right.

Okay, May 9th.

Scratch uh the first date there.

All right, town center.

This is um a topic that I think many of us have been looking for to come to fruition.

That has been in the orbit of the conversation for a long time.

We got to the point where we created a development authority to help with incentives to bring in the small format grocer.

At this moment in time, there is no inked contract, but there is definitely discussions going on.

I think that's the most I could say without getting into a legal quagmire there.

But the problem or the challenge for us as elected officials on this site is that it is undermined and it's pretty severely undermined.

Double decker mines in there, which means the cost to actually develop on that corner is quite a bit.

And so the conversation started to percolate.

How are we going to pay for that?

Roughly five million dollars on that corner, and then the undermining continues over by the recenter.

So when you go by the rec center, have you ever wondered why right behind the sign out in the parking lot, there's nothing out there, and then you have tennis courts?

It's because that is undermined as well.

And I'm gonna get to the police station, but when we were talking about the funding for the police station, what was bothering me was that we were doing a lot of municipal needs, beautiful town hall, which was needed, and it's a wonderful workspace.

But then the police station, which you if you haven't been following that, I'll give you more details in a minute here.

But they broken ground, we needed money for that.

More municipal needs, no question we need it.

But the conversation also migrated.

Well, hold it, we can't just be doing things that we need for government.

What are we gonna do for recreation and community?

What are we gonna do for commercial and to make sure we're doing everything we can to bring that in?

So, long story short, we bundled all these costs into one offering of what they call COP certificate of participation, basically like a mortgage, and we have a mortgage on all three, but it allows all three to move forward, and um all three are moving forward.

And so once the undermining is fixed at this site, then we have a buildable site, and it'll will allow the rest of the project to move forward.

And I'm I'm hopeful we'll have something to announce this year with the small format uh grocer there.

If you have questions as I'm talking, please write them down because I definitely want to have a chance to answer those in a little bit.

Okay, wells and cattell development.

So this uh particular lot is right in Old Town right across the street from the Erie Social Club.

Um you may remember last year there was a um an organization that basically had plants and um you know everything you needed to have a garden.

I believe they'll be back this year.

Is that right or not?

They will be back this year.

So Briggs, different site.

Okay, so those that have used them as a business, there'll be another place for them.

But this corner is a prime corner when you think about it.

It's right across the street from Col Creek Park, and it's right across the street from the Erie Social Club.

And so there's lots of people that are already down there, it's kind of behind the uh the post office.

And so we have an incentive packet uh that we put together, and the owner of the birdhouse is the um developer of this particular uh parcel, and it's gonna be mixed use, and um in there there's gonna be a restaurant, uh homemade ice cream shop, there'll be a couple of small business areas and a bakery, is what is planned at this time.

And so this is a great example on where we're using um what is called TIFF money or tax increment money to be able to jump start the development, and so there'll be a uh point in time where we do not get tax for tax revenue, but that revenue goes into the building to get it going, and then eventually, of course, we'll uh we'll collect uh the tax revenue as well.

More importantly, right now is to get old town as productive and as many businesses as we can uh down there.

I'm a believer that uh old town is one of our um maybe our only walkable communities to the degree where you can really live around it in old town, you can live uh around it like Northridge and come down, um, Erie Commons and come up, and so I would love to see uh old town expanded on the north side of Brigstea Street and to the south as well.

That's only already zoned mixed use, so you can either have homes and businesses together or convert them to businesses.

Um I think a Lewis.

How many think of Lewisville and they think of a great um old town?

Anybody?

Yeah, a few, okay.

Um Lewisville has an advantage that it's multiple blocks.

And so with multiple blocks, you have critical mass.

You may go down for one restaurant if it's full, there's another one or another one.

And so, how do we expand Old Town?

Is playing in the back of my mind constantly when we're making these decisions.

By coming down Cattel, we're actually or coming down wells, we're actually expanding Old Town with these new buildings.

All right, so that's kind of a look behind.

This is a look ahead.

So if I take a deep breath when I just uh did right there, this is a graph that you really don't want tapering off.

It's a financial graph on capital improvement funding.

So capital improvement is used for things like building this building or expanding our public works facility or building a new recenter.

Um you have to have capital to be able to do that.

Um we will we were able to get the money together for town hall, we were able to borrow the money for the police station, but now we have all these other needs.

And so, what do we do in order to get the money to be able to pay for them?

So, some of the things also that maybe people don't um think about is like street uh paving.

How many are in neighborhoods that they've come in and they've ground off the top um surface of the street and repaved in your neighborhood?

Anybody?

A few, yeah.

So when they do that, it makes it feel like you're in a new community again, right?

All the bumps are gone, and we're doing that community by community, but it costs a lot of money, and we're allocating about four and a half million dollars to that each year, and so you have to have capital to be able to do that.

Um I didn't talk about the airport, but uh the fixed space operation, the building out there.

If you've ever been to it, uh you'll recognize that it's uh well beyond its life, and we are going to have to do something out there uh for safety and to basically have an operational uh facility out there.

All right, um we keep going here.

Comprehensive plan updates.

So when I came into office, one of the debate points was should we have higher density throughout the town?

I mean, it was a debate point in the election.

Um, where should apartments go, where should um townhomes go?

And so we looked at the comp plan and we gave direction to make tweaks.

Most of the comp plan as it was adopted in 2024, um, is nothing's gonna be changed in there.

There are a few parcels in there where we're looking to create a second medium density.

Medium density went up, the number of units went up in the new comp plan.

We'll basically have a second medium density, a low medium, which will basically be the same as the old medium.

That probably got confusing, but it just means slightly less.

Town homes would be a perfect product for those places that are designated for uh low medium uh density.

The high densities could be apartment buildings, um condos if the developers would ever build them.

If you haven't been following that for the last couple decades, the litigation around condos is high, and so getting developers to build condos, they don't, and this is a problem for affordable housing because many of us started out in a condo or a townhome, and if they're not building the condos, then there's no gateway to get into the housing market, and so that is part of our affordable housing challenge that we have, not just in Erie, I'm talking about the nation as well.

Once we get the comprehensive plan updated, then our what's called the unified development code.

These are all the codes that then are put in place so that when a developer comes in and says, hey, I want to build in this high density area, our code tells them exactly what they can do.

If our code is out of sync with our comprehensive plan, then we basically have a plan, and then when it comes time to pull permits and to do the development, it may not actually reflect what was in the comprehensive plan.

So it's extremely important that we get this updated as we make uh make these types of changes.

All right, parks and rec.

This is uh this is definitely the the most fun topic to talk about.

Schofield Farms.

Let me back up before I go to Schofield Farms.

There are two parks in two communities, Compass and Morgan Hill that haven't been built yet.

Anybody here from Compass or Morgan Hill?

A few people.

And so those parks have been sitting ready to go.

Funding has uh been just a challenge.

Other priorities, I should say, has taken the funding.

Um I'm happy to say that Luke who runs parks and rec was able to get through that.

Um this year we we will get through the planning of the compass park, and um, we're hopeful we'll break ground on it in the fall, and then the construction will complete in 2027, and then Morgan Hill is basically a year behind that.

Luke, can you add to that?

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Luke Ballinger, Director of Parks and Recreation.

So we'll we're actually current concurrently planning and designing those parks at the same time.

Okay.

I think is also the meaning of concurrently.

So we'll uh we'll bid those out at the same time and we'll break ground on both those parks at the same time later this fall.

Excellent.

So a great update for myself as well.

Thank you.

So both communities will will get to finally be able to enjoy the parks like most of us get to enjoy the parks in our communities.

Schofield Farms Open Space.

So it's on 111th Street, so it's kind of on the south uh west corner of Erie.

If you're coming by Lowe's and safe way, you turn left on a 111th and you loop around towards Erie Parkway, it'll be on your left.

It's a beautiful piece of property that the town was able to acquire, and through many funding sources, um, primarily grants, um, the site is being uh redone, and it is being redone in the in the vein of a makerspace.

So you can go out there, you can do arts, you could do I think more industrial stuff, um, and that's coming soon.

The construction is well underway for the first phase.

Um, later on, there'll be other phases.

Well, there'll be a community gathering places, picnic tables that we can use as a community as well.

Um, beautiful mountain views, by the way, uh, from this property as well.

All right, the Erie B.

Um, I'm excited about this one.

Uh it's basically our first shuttle service on demand.

Um, and it is a kind of an experiment to see is there enough demand for this type of shuttle service.

So VA is going to run it for us.

They're purchasing the V purchasing the vehicles right now.

I don't know if they are purchased.

Pretty close.

Patrick, would you or David?

Would you like to?

Uh yeah, we have uh vehicles being delivered.

We have two that are uh have the wrap and ready to go, and we're waiting on three more.

So all right, and do we have a launch date?

I know April was being discussed.

It is in April.

I'll get that number or that day for you here in a second.

23rd, thank you.

April 23rd.

All right, 21st.

All right, so April 21st, there'll be vehicles at uh Arbor Day Earth Day as well.

The thing for me on this is I don't know what the demand is.

And having a grant to help us get this going, this will help us really understand.

Do we have a enough demand for this?

And if we do have enough demand, we can use that data with RTD, and to say, listen, people want to use this type of transportation.

Um, what can we do to get uh the jump more routes and and other things that RTD could do for us?

If we don't have good ridership, then that also tells us something about our community and what they need.

It'll run for two years, and that should give us uh enough data to be able to make assessments on on what's needed.

All right, um, north-south connectivity.

So um traffic, traffic, traffic keeps coming up, right?

We're growing, growing, growing, and there are bottlenecks in town.

And how do you solve those bottlenecks?

It is not easy.

And so this is all about is there a way to create another connector north-south?

And specifically, this is around County Line Road going south, and can it be connected to Airport Drive?

Why airport drive?

Well, it's already approved to have a signal out on highway seven.

And so if you have a signal out there and you can connect um County Line Road to the South, then you will take some of the traffic off of Vista Parkway.

That traffic increased when County Line Road was shut.

County line road was shut as part of the IGA, the intergovernmental agreement with Lafayette.

So when Lafayette and Erie were litigating, how many were here when that was going on?

That's probably like six or seven years ago.

Part of the problem was um, you know, each side wanted something, and so part of the agreement was County Line Road would be shut down.

That would be uh reprovisioned for just Lafayette so that they can get to their wastewater facility, and we would create Coal Creek Boulevard, and then County Line Road would swing to the west and get out to Highway 7.

All that's still happening and and will take place.

I think the problem is when you're going down County Line Road, if you want to go east on Highway 7, there's a natural tendency to not want to go west first and then east.

And so, what do many do?

They could use Vista Parkway.

And so the traffic has increased in Vista Parkway.

And so this is a thought, and I just want to be stressed.

This is a thought.

This is not a done deal.

We're waiting for the feasibility study to come back.

And David, I think that's coming to us soon.

Yeah, we have a study session scheduled with council in May, I believe.

Where we'll learn on what the cost is, because you got to get over coal um Coal Creek.

And so it's not like you can just put a road there and make it easy.

However, if you can get the road there, all of a sudden, land on both sides of that road becomes economically viable, where it isn't as via as viable today for economic reasons, businesses that could come in there.

So that plays into there may be a cost, and I think council will have to wrestle with is that cost reasonable to get the benefit of the traffic flows and to get the benefit of businesses that could come in along that road.

All right, the Erie Police Department expansion.

So over the next two years, this is gonna be built.

I think that many of you is probably driven by it and have seen there's a new parking lot out front as as they've dug a big hole for the new building.

The chief is here and he's living through this, trying to make sure his crew has what they need through the construction site.

It will take us, this expansion will take Erie to about 60-ish,000 people, and we'll be fine.

So there's likely another police station, substation, something probably out east that will service the town.

And one of the debates in the in the town right now with council is where does the money come from?

And should the new growth be paying into some fund to make sure we have enough money to build the next place station or the next expansion on the public works facility or the next recreational facility.

So that goes back to the slide where the capital improvement funds is a graph going down, but we don't have enough money going in to expand our facilities to keep up with the growth.

We haven't solved this problem.

It is a huge problem, and we've got to start tackling it.

Otherwise, somebody is gonna be in this role 10 years down the road, 20 years down the road, having the same conversation that we don't have the money to keep the niceties and the and the services and a place for our employees to work that is nice as we continue to grow.

So if there's any financial wizards out there that have a uh a wonderful idea, I certainly want to hear about it.

All right, considering ballot items.

We are testing right now, testing by surveys on what the appetite is for a tax increase.

Now, before anybody freaks out, we're not talking about property taxes.

We know that there are a lot of metro districts in uh in Erie, and those metro districts raise your property taxes to a point where there really isn't a lot of tolerance to to put any more costs on your home.

Now, a positive is I think it's this year.

I'm looking at Sarah, our CFO, this year or next year we pay off the bonds for the current rec center.

This year we will be paying Sarah Hancock, the finance director.

We will be paying off the um bonds on that this year, and then we transition to paying down on the police station.

Correct.

So we still have bonds on the original police station will continue to pay on, but the part of the the bonds that are on your property taxes today for the current rec center will be done, and you will see a little bit of relief on your property taxes as that happens.

So, what we're talking about here is likely a sales tax increase.

And Erie has slightly lower sales tax than Lafayette and certainly Boulder, and and so we'll look at that to say, are we willing to tax ourselves to basically expand uh the recenter and to remodel the rec center?

And of course, the expansion is to handle uh all the people that have moved in and the remodeling is the rec center was done when I was mayor the first time 20 years ago, and it's getting a little bit uh a little bit tired in some places.

Still well used though.

And then a lodging tax.

A lodging tax.

Why do we care about a lodging tax?

We don't have any hotels.

We care because um on the town center site, there is a place for a hotel, and um we are watching um what's happening in Boulder with the uh film festival coming in, and how many people might want to stay out in Erie?

And so um, you know, if we can make that happen where we get a hotel and it becomes another place, we also want to collect tax revenue.

Um, if you've ever looked at your bill when you go to a hotel in whatever city, it's like the bill is uh two-thirds the actual hotel, and then there's a bunch of other taxes and fees and things, and this is exactly what we're trying to do, get our share back when people uh stay here in Erie.

So we'll see where this uh where this goes.

If there's an appetite, I suspect the council will vote to approve to put it on the ballot.

If there is not support, we probably won't move forward with it.

Okay, town manager recruitment.

Uh, this is uh purposely a lengthy process.

So there is a what's called a request for proposal or RFP on the street right now to hire a consulting firm that will help do a national search to find the right person uh to lead Erie in the future.

Uh that'll come back to us, and we'll um once we have the recruitment firm, they will um basically meet with council, they'll meet with staff, they'll meet with um community, and we will develop the criteria to actually recruit for uh the next town manager.

And once we have the top um candidates, there'll be uh interviews and likely another public forum as we uh narrow narrow that down.

So this is one where um we know it's gonna take time, um, and that's okay.

Um Meredith Mouth is um right here in the middle, and she's our acting uh town manager right now and doing a great job as we continue on here.

All right, water.

I think this may have been either the top or the second most questions that I got.

How many got the emergency alert alert?

And how many felt a little scratchier like what is this all about?

Yeah.

So it actually was feeling like an emergency.

Why?

Because we get water allocations, and we're on our winter water allocation, and the winter water allocation isn't enough water to actually service our homes and service our landscaping.

And so when it got hot unseasonably, out of character, people started to turn on their sprinklers.

Wouldn't think any different.

I think most people, it's like, okay, this is what I do when it gets hot.

But when that happened, we drew down what our capacity could could handle.

And there was a fear that if that trend continued, we wouldn't be able to actually service your homes for day-to-day use.

So the alert was sent out, and um, even though it was scratchy and arguably it could have been maybe a little softer in tone, it did what it needed to do to just get people to stop and to say, okay, I'm gonna turn mine off, and oh, I was thinking about turning mine on, I'm not gonna turn it on.

It had nothing to do with the drought, but it felt like it had everything to do with the drought.

The other problem that we have is our water sources and how much water that we have in the future.

So we likely will go into stage one drought, a stage one drought situation, which means we will have days that we can water, likely two days a week, and that'll get communicated out, and that is simply because we don't want to go through all the water we actually have in our reservoirs up in the mountains.

Uh, Lake Gramby is our primary source of water right now.

If you draw it drew it all down in the first year of a drought, and this turned into a two-year, three-year, four-year drought, we would be sorry we did that.

So we're we're basically starting the um the conserving water now, so that if this drought is multi-year, we're set, we understand what needs to be done for that.

But there are, and we have plenty of water for those that are already here.

So, where I'm going now is the next challenges and the challenges of new growth coming in, and what are we doing with water?

So we have basically four water sources or potential water sources.

Colorado Big Thomson is what we use today.

That's Lake Gramby, comes down, gets piped over the Continental Divide, goes into eventually gets to Carter Lake, and then makes its way down to our water plant.

I get that right.

Okay, um, so we get our water, boom, done.

That is servicing the majority of us.

We also own water in what is called windy gap.

It's another water source up in the mountains, but the problem is we don't have a place to store it.

And so, even though we have water rights, when the water comes down out of the mountains, if we don't have a place to store it, it goes on and we've lost that water.

We can't use it at that point.

So there's a project called Chiminy Hollow.

It's a brand new dam up in the mountains, not too far from Carter Lake.

Uh, myself and um Councilmember Pastor Amelli made the trip out there as they were putting the last two or three feet on.

This was last summer.

It's an awesome site to see a dam before they put the water in the reservoir.

Everything was going great, and then they're getting ready to fill it, and it was gonna take a couple years to fill it.

But as they were starting to fill it, um, they recognized that they were getting high levels of uranium.

And we're not talking about uranium, like you're gonna get radioactivity and that.

We're talking about a mineral, like if there was too much salt in the in the um in the reservoir.

And so what do you do?

So many of the municipalities that were relying on the same reservoir, Broomfield, for example, they have the capability to already filter out uranium because there are other sources have uranium in it.

Our water sources don't.

And so after long debates, discussions, the decision was made to slow the filling of the reservoir.

They will do processing of the water at the reservoir to pull uranium out, and it will fill over six years.

The problem is we were counting on that water in a couple years.

And so new developments.

But there's a point where we don't have more water for that.

And so we're working through what do we do.

So that's the orange water supply there.

The blue water supply is called NISP, the Northern Integrated Supply Project.

It is a brand new reservoir up off of 287 north of Fort Collins called the Glade Reservoir.

Anyone heard about this?

Just a couple people.

Any of you taken 287 up there, and there's that rock that everybody spray paints and it's big.

So that'll be gone when Chiminy Hollow or when the Glade Reservoir gets built.

The problem is we're right at the end of all the engineering to know what it's going to cost, and the cost is a lot.

A lot to the point that it would likely not just impact the new people coming in, but it would impact all of us.

Now the pros to keep moving forward with this is that we would get a secondary water source, right?

Because we're highly dependent on Colorado Big Thompson.

If something were to happen to that, that would be a big problem for us.

Having two water sources is just good planning.

We are continuing to invest in in NISP, and we're hopeful in about another year we will know what the full costs are, and then the council will have to make a decision.

Do we continue to move forward or not?

Are there alternative water sources we can we can bring into the town?

Um and all of that is playing out at this point.

I'm looking at our attorney because I want to make sure I don't say anything I can't say.

She's still semi-smiling, so I'm okay.

I do want to pause here and just see if there are any um any questions on this because it's such a controversial topic, a complex topic.

And while I've just explained it, there's a question in the back.

And sir, I'm gonna have you come to the podium here if I can, because we've got a microphone up here.

Um then I'll do my best to um answer whatever you have.

Talked about the uh growth of the town.

I'm not sure why the town needs to grow, but in fact, double in size.

Talked about all this growth and all the uh all the money it's gonna take to involve to grow that much.

And then on the flip side, you know, you talk about the water concern.

Yeah, if there's a water concern, why are we still building out?

Yeah, so now you're starting to great question.

So um, I'll just repeat the question back.

You know, why are we growing, right?

If we don't have water, why why are we growing in the first place?

You know, this has been one of my big whys as I've come in, and I can I can say with all honesty, I don't have a full answer, but I have a good enough answer that in a community you're really either growing or you're dying.

And the question is, which side do you do you want to be in?

And I say dying because businesses are relying on our growth for them to make decisions to come in.

For example, if we just today said we're stopping growth, we're done.

I suspect we will never get a full uh small format grocer in the core of our town.

I suspect that um you know other um retail development won't mature, and so this is critical mass point that happens whereas a uh community, a municipality can be self-sustaining.

Where that point is, don't know.

Uh, but we also have commitments right now for growth that have already been done.

So add up to the 80,000 of the population.

Is that not not to that point?

Committed to at this point, not not that far.

And so um, I'm not I don't have all the the statistics and details on how far that would be, but this will be part of the conversation that we have during the remainder part of this year because we have to figure this out as we figure out whether NISP is gonna move forward or not.

Bottom line at the moment, there is no you know, concern we're gonna run out of water for those that are here.

We have the water, we have the rights, assuming the drought um you know resolves itself and we move forward, it'll be really a growth down the road.

And and we have not spoken about that.

I just want to add a concern for those of us who are on fixed income.

Yeah, I have a concern that it all be taxed out of this town.

I hear you David, I hear you.

All right.

Yeah, a water question.

Yes.

All right, perfect.

Come on up.

What are we doing with the wells out here?

I mean, if you guys are stuck in water dry, I mean, I have hundreds of trucks that go by my house every day, and I know that's just for construction purposes, just to water down the ground and compaction.

I've been in construction my whole life.

I've lived here for 60 years.

I've seen it when in 1972, we was hauling water here.

There was no water in the town, and it wasn't any better town than it is now, and it didn't now any better than it was.

I grew up here and I I've seen it happen, you know.

It's disgusting what's going on.

It's like a cancer coming in around us.

I've lived out in a country, you know.

And what are we gonna do about all this?

If you guys suck all the water out, where's where's what about the people that are in Canville out there that all on wells?

So Erie Municipal is not on wells, just to be clear.

Our water comes from Lake Umby at this point, and it will hopefully be diversified with these other sources.

It will be diversified with Windy Gap for sure, it's just gonna take more time.

Um so the well situation is not what we are are talking about here tonight.

I think although if it runs dry, what do I do?

$80,000 for new water cap?

Yeah, I'm I'm not prepared tonight to talk about wells in our town, but I understand you and I hear you.

Okay.

Um, what alternative water sources would we be looking at if we pull out of NISP?

That is a great question.

Um there are other potential sources that are here in the front range, but we don't know if any of them are viable.

Um, and we haven't done the due diligence yet to see what they may be.

It could come to a point where we say if you want to develop an eerie developer, you need to bring the water, and it has to meet these criteria.

That could be a path we go.

We haven't made that decision yet.

Um it could be we don't have the water, and at that point, then obviously we can't continue doing what what we're doing at this point.

Yeah, water question.

All right, come on up.

So what happens as our you know, homes and and the growth of the town and requiring more water, I get all that.

I'm curious about how much water we're pumping underground into the fracking system, and that water is never to be seen again.

I will um I will talk about Draco and um share what I can on that, and that is the right time because they're not using eerie water for that, they're getting their own sources for that.

Okay, but let me get there because I don't want to lose the the rest of the I understand it's it's more than just Draco, though, as somebody over here just said, and so they're bringing in their own water, so they're responsible for their own water.

That's right, it's not part of our municipal treated water um.

Okay.

So is it being pulled from the ground here?

I don't know where they get their their water.

It is not Erie's water, though.

That's the that's the key piece.

Like the gentleman who was here who was saying that his wells were running dry.

I'm curious if they're pulling the water from there.

I do not know.

Thanks.

Um, all right.

Let me move on to the page property.

Another uh topic that has created uh a little bit of uh concern uh as we go.

So the page property is just to the north of us.

You go up Brig Street as you're making the curve, you've got the uh the uh Reliance Park, the dog park, and then on the right, you have this beautiful open space space land.

And so this was um purchased um before I was elected.

I think it was 2024, 2023.

Does anybody remember 23?

I want to say it was 2023, but I can check.

Okay.

So purchased, and it was purchased using two sources of money.

One source was Erie open um space money.

You pay that tax uh on your property taxes today, and it allows to um be used for open space for trails, for trails maintenance.

It actually there was a change when it was approved, a couple or reapproved, um, that also allows it to be used to build buildings and facilities that are related to to parks and rack.

So it's uh it's a healthy fund, money comes in, we buy open space, we maintain our trails.

It's one of the things that that I think makes Erie eerie, which is great.

ARPA were federal funds coming out of the pandemic to help with the economy and get things going.

When I was elected, we had a study session, and I think it was in March of last year, and we were told that the ARPA funds had to be used for affordable housing.

So okay, so we got affordable housing on half of it, and we've got half to be used for open space.

September, we had another study session, and there was clarity there.

Nope, we don't have to use the ARPA funds for affordable housing.

We can use it for anything we want.

Could be affordable housing, but it could be open space, it could be for anything.

So at the at this point, we've got an option called the Village of Cole Creek, which is affordable housing, and half of the property being open space.

As we started to talk about it as a council, it's like, well, what do we want to do?

Simultaneously, I was asked by uh Dan Wog.

Any of you know Dan?

Dan is a House District 19 representative.

Um Dan was a board of trustee member.

And and he served, and he served um Erie.

So he he called and he said, hey, um St.

Scholastica, St.

Scholastica is a Catholic church in Old Town, been here for 125 years.

They have land up on Highway 52, right at the entrance of our basically industrial complex for wastewater treatment and potentially water treatment down the road somewhere, but right now it's wastewater treatment.

And so I took it to staff, I didn't know.

Asked them what's going on with the annexation, and it turns out that there are definitely hurdles for the annexation.

One, they're on left hand water, two, uh, they only have a write-in write out from CDOT.

They want to use our road, which we really don't want them on our road because it's an industrial road coming in.

Not that that couldn't happen, but um that was a challenge.

And so the idea came up.

Well, hold it.

If there's a benefit for Erie to get the land up there, could we do something on the page property?

And that is exactly how that conversation started.

Now, if you were to read um in the social media in the world, you would think I sat and they had a backroom deal and it's done, and there's a mega church coming in.

Has anybody ever seen a Catholic mega church?

I haven't.

This is not um like a flat irons church.

Um it would be between 500 and a thousand um seats.

Flat iron uh meadows is or flat iron flat irons church is 4500 seats.

So just putting that into perspective for you.

So they didn't know if it was feasible.

They filed a pre-app to see if it's feasible.

And I want to stress feasible.

A pre-app doesn't do anything, there's no approvals, there's nothing.

It just allows them to say, could this happen here?

And um we haven't heard back.

They got information from the town, they did work, and so that's where that sits.

So if anybody is telling you that we approved a church or I approved a church, it's absolutely false, and there is nothing that would ever show that.

It is just a potential option.

So now on May 12th, the council's gonna come together and have this discussion.

In all honesty, I think we're kind of split on this.

There's some that want affordable housing.

Um, OSTAB, the Open Space Trail Advisory Board, they sent us a well-thought out letter on why this should be all open space.

I could tell you our email has been lit up, and I haven't counted them, but I would guess that open space is the leading um thing out there.

And so, you know, we'll take all that into consideration and we will give direction uh to staff once we have that public conversation.

I think the um the other thing that we need to really understand too is that on the Saint Scholastica, they were willing to partner with Catholic charities.

Catholic charities is a 5013C, right?

So some have said, oh, they're gonna discriminate, they can't discriminate.

Catholic Charities is an organization that by the laws of a 5013, they can't.

They do affordable housing in a sector we haven't done the 60 to 80 percent AMI, the lower um section, and um they just require land to do that.

So that was also included within the discussion.

Once again, nothing approved, nothing moving forward.

Council has not given direction on any of this, but we will tackle that issue on the 12th.

I think where the debate will come up is do we put affordable housing there in any form, you know, church or no church, or do we do all open space?

If we decide we're gonna do um uh some type of affordable housing there, it would go to an RFP process request for a proposal so that entities could compete for it.

Um and then you know that would be a decision that we would have to make as we um as we go forward.

All right, I'm gonna take a pause there because I know this one has been um talked about a lot in our community.

And does anybody have a question about the page property?

Yeah, come on up.

I don't profess to know everything or enough, but I I'm aware that ARPA monies, the American Rescue Plan Act monies cannot support religious and or religious based anything.

Um so I'm not quite sure how even talking about it later or taking to the council, unless they're going to do something completely not religious based.

So this would be where we would sell the land.

It wouldn't be that ARPA would pay for it at that time, they would reimburse the town for whatever that cost was or swap us land or whatever the deal.

So we would still be using ARPA funds.

Well, you could say that for whatever that piece is, no, because they would pay back those funds.

So if we said, and once again, this gets into the legal side, and I don't know all the little nuances here, but let's just say that ARPA funds have to be used for open or for um affordable housing, which we're told they're not.

But that's for sake of uh just understanding this.

Yeah, if um if Catholic charities or the church or any entity that was gonna do um affordable housing there, they would buy the land and then would would reimburse us.

If we give them the land, then it would fall under whatever the laws are to do that.

Catholic charities itself is uh 5013, it is not part of the archdiocese or or any of that.

Right.

Okay, but still religious based activities.

That so I'm just I don't know how exactly that would jiggle around where they buy it or don't buy it or we give it, but if there are pedallas being used, I I just non-lawyer nurse here, but uh I I think that's not permitted.

So just we we certainly vote on that or not.

That our our legal team tells us is illegal.

We will not do that.

No, no, no, of course not.

But it is certainly a question, and obviously we're concerned.

All right, yeah.

Page property.

Hold on hold on, Chivan.

I've got one over here first.

I've got a gentleman over here first, and then I'll come to you.

Oh, so we were just talking about how we want to build up downtown with more retail and all of this, and you know, housing in that area would have helped improve that for downtown.

But I guess I have two questions.

I mean, you talked about swapping the land, and I guess maybe we should put it to a public vote if that's what people want to do.

But my big question is why did the other counselors' members not know you were talking with St.

Scholastica for six months and Dan Luke about swapping the land?

So every idea starts somewhere.

I have people talking to me about all kinds of things, some of them crazy, some of them not so crazy.

Until they have enough to talk about, I don't go out sharing that with everybody.

Why?

Why because it creates uh this uncertainty.

So it was to the point when it was like, oh, this might be viable, might be viable.

Once again, nothing has been determined.

And so as soon as it uh became viable, we did have a discussion about that.

There's no hiding of everything.

I go to a ton of meetings out there, and all those meetings, there are many things discussed.

Dan Hobeck, one of our other council members, he and I are gonna go meet with the YMCA.

And my guess is I just told the council that we're gonna go do that.

All right.

So now Mayor Pro Tembell is mad at me because I didn't let him know that a conversation is starting with the YMCA.

My point is nothing has been decided.

There's lots of conversations to go.

The vast majority of them die before they ever get to the place where the council or staff would get involved.

Sir, let me go to this gentleman who's waiting, and I'll come back to you.

Can you just come up to the microphone so those that are on virtual can hear you?

Yeah, we we do have about a hundred people online, so they would love to hear you.

Thank you.

Yes, um, I was uh asked by Father Weido to read something that he had written uh relative to this property, and I didn't know if you wanted to take your time this evening or what what was your choice?

Um I was uh asked by Father Weito to read something that he had written uh relative to this property, and I didn't know if you wanted to take your time this evening or what what was your choice?

Probably not, but if you have questions, um, but if uh Father Weito is uh runs um St.

Scholastica, I would say send it to the council, and it becomes a public document at that point, and then it could be shared um shared freely.

Um, but tonight isn't the the time where um a document like that could be read.

Okay.

Yeah, this question.

I was just gonna say that uh relative to the uh the nurse, she went to, but um, you know, I understand what you were saying with regard to the uh funds that were used to purchase this property, and when you think about um trades, um you have different value, you know, there's a value to the land that we have out in right next to the water wastewater treatment plan out there.

So Erie may want that, right?

They may want that that land.

Okay, well, we may want to use something here, so you can trade properties and all right, and if you'll go to the why not trade.

Sorry, I just I just wanted to clarify that uh uh because Dan Moog's name got thrown into this.

So Dan Wog is a is a well, he's in Frederick now, but he was a resident here for a long time.

So there's Dan Wuog as state representative, and then there's Dan Wog as you know, who's a parishioner of St.

Scholaska.

This issue really goes back to 2020 when St.

Scholasco was uh they were uh deeded the land over there, and they really wanted to build where they're at.

And so um, you know, after Dan got down for the board of trustees, you know, we talked often, sometimes about stuff not totally unrelated to politics, but um he asked me uh because they were interested in annexing into the town as Mayor Moore mentioned.

Uh as a church that's been here over a hundred years, and um I know for Father Weito that um you know he feels the importance of being a part of Erie.

So that's how those conversations started.

So this was not representative Dan Wog, this was resident Dan Wog.

All right, thanks for the clarification.

Look, I think good ideas come from everywhere.

They can come from the left, they can come from the right, they can come from the nurse, they can come from the center, they can come from the the builder.

I want to know the ideas.

I don't care where they come from, and I want to be able to have time to say, is this viable?

That's why I asked earlier if we got a finance wizard and can help us through how are we gonna pay for all this stuff?

I want to know that.

Um I'm I'm gonna sit down with you and have a conversation and immediately go back to staff or counsel.

Probably not.

I'm gonna have a conversation until maybe there's something there, and then I I absolutely will.

All right, so more to come on the page property as we um get to May 12th, and we'll have this.

This will be a public forum, so please join us and we're gonna do our best to get through this and to give staff their direction because staff, it's not fair to them for us to be talking but not making a decision because they can't really do anything uh when that happens.

All right, I imagine some of you are here to talk about the Draco Well site.

So um this is one where I still am constrained legally, but I'm gonna share everything that I can share, and then um I'll take questions, and then if I can answer them, I will.

If I can't answer them, I'll just be honest with you.

Um but I will start by saying that if we get to the point where we think there is um something that that could be accepted by Erie, the public hearing right now is tentatively scheduled for April 21st.

So this isn't months down the road, this is now weeks down the road as we get there.

All right, so a little bit of history um on the Draco Well site.

January 24th.

Um we were notified um that uh Draco application was in March of 24.

Uh Weld County approved the Draco Pad application.

Um April 16th of two years ago, um stare staff shared uh primary concerns with the council at a council meeting.

That wasn't me, I wasn't here.

Um it was the prior council.

August 21st, uh the first hearing um happened.

David Franks, who represents us in all the minerals.

Is David here?

David's in the middle, he's awesome.

He um was down there uh to basically advocate trying to get it stopped on October 29th public hearing held at Erie Middle School.

He um was down there uh to basically advocate trying to get it stopped on October 29th public hearing held at Erie Middle School, um, and then on November 15th, after delaying deliberation, the ECMC, the organization at the state level, um, placed an indefinite stay on it.

So we thought, okay, this isn't gonna happen.

They basically directed Civitas, the oil company, to go see what other sites they can use.

March 26th of last year, roughly a year ago, Civitas has a new hearing with ECMC, and Erie testifies.

Um, I'll tell what we got out of that.

David again was down there testifying on our behalf.

Um, but it was um ultimately um approved um with that.

So um what we got out of that though was condensed occupation, um, which are basically uh um Civitas has a deal with Westerly, one of the developments, and westerly will not build houses in a certain area for a certain period of time, so the setbacks meet all the requirements.

That is a uh one piece of this story.

Um we are gonna get additional air quality monitoring out of this, so we'll be able to tell if there is an issue at the Civitas Wells or the uh Draco well site.

It is in Weld County, right outside of Erie's um border.

So this frustrates all of us, right?

We we don't get the revenue off the well head, we don't get as much inspection rights.

We it's the weld county is gonna do what they're gonna do, but we do have better air quality um monitoring.

Um we have um the capability to monitor plugged and abandoned wells um within the drilling uh and spacing unit.

So they're gonna be plugging wells as part of this, um, and so we can monitor those operations.

They're not plugging all the wells.

I think there's still a number of wells throughout Erie that we would love to have plugged, but right now that isn't part of uh what was agreed to.

Um there's gonna be landscaping and visual mitigation that they will do as part of this agreement.

There will be traffic studies by Civitas to assess the impact of the truck traffic that is going um through there.

They are gonna um pave County Road six, um, which is not paved, it's a dirt road, so they'll pave that to our standards, I believe.

Is that right, David?

Yes, they'll pivot to one of the typical sections that we have in our standards.

All right, cool.

Um let's see, and plugging abandonment.

Um, they're gonna abandon 22 wells and close 18 associated facilities.

So think of the tanks and the things.

So um none of that they had to do per se, but David was lobbying, and the ECMC said if you're gonna move forward with Draco, then you have to do these things.

So um thank you, thank you, thank you, David, for everything you've done on that.

Okay, so um Councilmember Mortalero just reminded me the paving of County Road Six is to keep them off of um County Road 5 and um by the high school, so we won't have all that heavy truck traffic um going um by the uh the high school.

I'll get to questions just a second.

Um so the number one question I get is um or the perception that got out there, however, it got out there is that Mayor Moore is uh signing agreements and that allows Draco to move forward.

Absolutely wrong, 100% Draco to our knowledge is moving forward no matter what Erie does.

We don't have any other um recourse that we know of, although I did ask a question to our attorney a couple days ago, and that's being tracked, chased down right now.

But at this moment, and everything we've been talking about for the last few months, it's under the assumption that Draco is moving forward and we can't stop it.

So my thought process has shifted from stopping it to how do we ensure it's as safe as possible?

Number one, and how do we ensure that um Erie gets compensated to the highest degree, whatever that means.

And so um this is this is big, and I'll just say that if this comes to be and we can share publicly the details, you will recognize it's an either go big or go home type uh type scenario.

There are 26 wells um on the Draco plaid that have been approved.

Um there are already 80 acres of Erie mineral rights that are already um um leased, and so you know we'll get about four million dollars no matter what we do out of that um part of it.

Um, let me address home values.

Um there's a something circulating on um social media that says if this happens, all of our home values are gonna go down.

Many of our homes today are already drilled and fracked underneath.

How many um live in uh Colliers Hill?

Anybody?

Yeah, there's a good chance that right now under your home or your neighbor's home that you've got a well bore and they're they're pulling out.

You really just have to look at the well heads that are all over Erie.

Those don't go straight down.

And so we we have evidence that says nothing has happened to housing prices because of a well that is uh that is um been drilled.

Um matter what we do, there will be a um a public um uh hearing.

And that is that is so important, and that goes back to the April 21st date tentatively.

We're not gonna just go approve something, we're gonna have a discussion, we're gonna talk about it out loud, we're gonna explain.

There will be other people that will explain what that means.

Um let me address the uh consultant that we've hired uh to help negotiate.

Um so some people are upset that we hired uh the former number of years ago, COO, chief operating officer of Civitas.

He left Civitas to create his own company called Alameda Minerals.

And on the December um at the December meeting, um we approved the contract um with him.

We have not paid him a dime, and we will not pay him a dime unless there is a deal to be struck, not a dime.

And so um he has incentive to get the best deal for us because he gets paid on that.

This is no different than if you hire um somebody to sell your house, right?

They get uh six percent basically on your house to make sure you get the most money you can for your house.

So it's a very similar, not identical, but similar setup.

Or if you hire a broker to buy you a car, you pay them a percentage to get you your car.

Why?

Because they're knowledgeable on what the dealers do.

And so this is somebody that knows Civitas inside and out, and he's playing on our side, and so um from my perspective, that's a that's a good thing.

And everybody could be the judge of that when we have the public hearing, and you could see what is uh is part of that.

Um hold on, let me get through um all right.

I think I've covered um most of the points, if not all the points on here.

All right, let me uh just pause there.

And if anybody has a question about Draco, um please come up to the uh podium.

Um I'm gonna call on Councilmember Pessaramelli because I'm I want our council members to ask questions too.

So I wanted to clarify one thing, which is uh when you said the contract was signed.

There was voting, and four people signed for it, and three did not so it's under like as if it's majority.

And the second thing is have you ever met Matt outside of the executive session?

I'm sorry, have I ever what?

Have you met Matt from SM energy outside of the executive session?

Um Matt, are you talking about Matt from Elamera, sorry?

I met him when we met with him as well.

Oh, this is a good thing.

Only in the executive session.

This is a yes, this is a good point.

He reached out to me and said, hey, I'm so and so I do Alameda Minerals.

I immediately said, Great, I sent his contact information to David.

Staff took it from there.

And I encourage you to do core requests and anything else.

I have no connection to Matt beyond just like a lot of other people, they come and talk to me.

What do I do with that information?

This case, there's an email, and I send it to David.

All right, yes.

There, I have one clarifying statement and two questions.

One is that Civitas in Colorado within as recently as 2023, but I believe there's also a lawsuit in 2024, has gotten in trouble for for falsifying their air quality monitoring and their other environmental monitoring records when we are asking the company doing the fracking to check if their own fracking is safe.

There is inherently a bias and there is inherently an incentive to make sure those studies look good for the company.

They have been sued multiple times almost into bank of bankruptcy.

Um, so my question is how are we gonna make sure that doesn't happen in Erie?

That is a great question.

I appreciate it.

We have our own air monitor.

We have our own air monitoring systems, uh, some that are fixed and some that we can move to the well site.

I'm gonna look to David if maybe you can just give an overview on a high-level overview on what we do with air quality monitoring.

Sure, yeah.

Um David Frank, Director of Environmental Services, uh, we have a contract with a company called Boulder Air.

Um, they've been active uh monitoring air in Erie as well as other neighboring municipalities since early 2024.

Uh we've got there's a central station at the at the community center uh near the ball fields uh that collects uh real-time data, and there are five satellite uh stations uh around town, often near oil and gas sites, uh the landfill, other uh known or suspected emission sources.

We will have an air quality monitor um out there in the westerly neighborhood, uh just on the other side of the ditch.

So basically as close to Draco as we can as we can get uh within the municipal boundary.

Um we'll get that deployed well before any construction starts so we can get baseline data, know what the air quality is prior to to Draco being built, uh, and then that'll stay um, you know, as long as the town is is funding air quality monitoring.

Um, we'll keep that up out there.

The state of Colorado also monitors air quality uh during drilling operations, um, as well as the first six months of production.

Um, those are the times uh in an oil and gas facility where you see the the most meaningful emissions is is during that drilling and fracking and then the early production.

Um we we would love the state and the operator to continue monitoring uh air quality after that six month period.

That's what they're required to do.

That's what they'll do.

That's why we're gonna deploy our own station out there to monitor, you know, in perpetuity as long as the facility is operating, hopefully.

Um there are also uh at this facility one uh piece here that that we advocated for um was real-time uh thermal imaging cameras to be on site at this Draco facility.

So optical gas imaging uh will occur around the clock.

So any sort of leaks or anything, hopefully will be detected almost immediately without uh waiting for inspections or for personnel to show up.

Um so that's that's kind of a summary of the air quality.

Yeah, no, I appreciate it.

Yeah, and so independent, right?

We're not relying on Civitas to um or SM now, SM Energy bought Civitas, and so I'm trying to get that into my um my comments at this point.

Um a couple of other things I'll say about this too.

I think there's also a narrative that I own stock in SM or I don't own a stock.

Um I was asked um if I have a home that's in the pathway of uh Draco.

I do um not my main home, but I have rentals in Erie, and uh they are impacted by it.

So it's not like I'm doing something that isn't gonna impact me as well.

Um, I will say the drill string will be 7500 feet under the ground.

Um, so that's uh what a mile and a third underneath, and it'll be about a foot um wide.

And so I know there's been some questions that I've gotten about well, hold it, this is gonna cause subsidence and my house is gonna, you know, tilt or whatever.

It is so deep that uh that is highly, highly unlikely.

Uh way different than like the coal mines that are around here, which are actually not very deep in the ground.

So I own no oil and gas stocks.

Um I told the yellow scene the other day, I actually own zero individual stocks at this moment in time.

So I so and then I had my clarifying statement.

I will make that super quick.

Um, I don't believe anyone believes that you are in a back room signing something to make Draco pad happen.

I think that we all know that the town owning its own mineral rights is a point of leverage to prevent further fracking, and that selling those mineral rights becomes basically letting leasing that ground for fracking no matter what.

If you sell them, there it's going to be fracked.

I don't think anyone thinks that you're doing something with Draco directly, but it's allowing more fracking in.

And I think that the issue that people are having with Alameda, which I did read the contract, it is a seven and a half percent commission, which can be up to four and a half million dollars for that company.

Thank you for that.

I think the I think the issue that people are having is that Matthew Owens was a part of Civitas less than five years ago, which is you could say several, but it does create a question about conflict of interest.

And the other thing is that signing on with Alameda presumes that there will be a sale, because the only reason they would sign on is because they are there to precipitate a sale and they're there to get you know your best deal, but they only get money if a sale happens.

So it's less of an evaluation of whether we should or not should sell or not, but it's an evaluation of how to get the best value.

And I think the concern that they have is that most people here don't want to sell at all.

I I understand that, and this is why it's important.

And I wish I swear, I wish.

At the end of the day, if we do nothing, we will walk away with nothing.

And so when this becomes public, if it becomes public, keep in mind that there may not be a deal.

If this was easy, there would have been a deal weeks or months ago.

And so I'm just asking you all to just be patient.

Let us get out into the public sphere, what we're talking about, and then we can all make a decision together.

Um listen, I live in Erie.

I live in there with my beautiful wife Janice here, and our kids, my son has a home in Erie, too.

We're not, I'm not gonna do something that is um you know gonna harm us.

All right, I'm gonna move on.

All right, let's let another individual ask a question.

Go ahead.

Okay.

Again, thank you for opening this up.

Um first question is is the same one I brought up at the town council meeting.

Will you commit?

And then this will be a specific question for you.

The dedicated meetings associated with this, not a sidebar, but a fully dedicated meetings, QA, letting those no plans, and then the feedback taken in on that prior to any vote on a binding contract.

Yes, and this is why a public hearing is so important.

Dedicated.

Yes.

The other uh aspects are um from everything I've read, this is everything you said is true.

Draco Draco's comment.

I mean, it really is, uh, and everything associated with all the mitigation landscaping, that this deal looks like an expansion of Draco.

Yes.

And it's an expansion of Civitas's activity in our year.

It could be five years, but they have the right once those those are gone.

That'll be some of the questions to be asked and answered.

The other one is they made an offer, is that correct?

Uh you said that.

So I'm just that's why I'm hold on.

No, I don't if if I said they made an offer, there's negotiations going on.

That's what started the whole thing was uh open discussion.

So they see value in the mineral rights, which indicates that those mineral rights can either impede the Draco project through time, they can remove some of the lines that they're putting out there.

It's a blocking mechanism.

So the people here that own homes that would be financially impacted in a positive way by that.

And that study is something that I'm assuming that this town council has put together and would share at that moment from an independent study standpoint.

I think the other aspect is there's plenty of publicly available information that should be publicly available, non-confidential that has been hidden within executive sessions.

We tied our hands, therefore we can't untie our hands.

Will you be willing to share the non-confidential information, such as the maps and the overlay associated with this?

So I've heard that we cannot, because we chose to not do it, and that is correct.

We have zero maps um from what are you selling?

S M.

All right, so I I get where you're going.

I just can't go.

I mean, I'm gonna get pulled off the stage by our.

This is not none of this is this is fiduciary responsibility.

Because it's gone through a full bidding process where we brought in all the competitors for civitas.

You you we will have a chance to kind of get the feeling that we brought in a civitas person who's okay.

Sir, I get it.

All right, let's move on to the next question.

I'm gonna ask, just like the roles we have at our council meetings, you know, clapping, sharing, booing, just let's let the speaker speak and let's let's share information.

That's what we're here for.

I get it.

There's a large number of people here that you know have an opinion.

I get that.

Yes, Mayor Brooks.

So I I live in Westerly, probably closer than most to where the Draco pad is going to be.

And while presiding as mayor, we had multiple mineral spills, industrial accidents in town, and they're very frustrating because when there is a spill, uh there is very little that the town can do about shutting down the operations and preventing that spill, that those things are managed by the ECMC and the EPA.

And so the theory that by enabling the Draco pad to go forward somehow we will get better leverage in ensuring that their operations is safe, um, is is a dangerous line of thinking, I believe, uh, because if we discover there is a spill, if we deserve if we discover they're outgassing, as was happening at uh the Papa J facility over in Colliers Hill, you know, it could be weeks before they fix it.

It doesn't necessarily mean that we're gonna be any safer.

And since the state law prevents forced pooling of minerals owned by municipalities, why are we entertaining selling or leasing our mineral rights?

Uh, when you started talking, you mentioned that when the Draco PAT was in was approved, we're not gonna get anything from it.

We don't care.

We don't need to get the money from the oil and gas industry.

It's a very small portion of our revenue stream.

So I'm very yeah, I'm very unsure as to what your motivation is for even considering this.

Forget who you're using as a consultant, forget who you're doing the contract with.

We have 206 plus, I don't know, wells that are currently in Erie.

Uh we purposely have no heavy industrial zoning in town so that no new wells can be drilled.

Why are you why are you entertaining the thought of the process?

Mayor, I've got I've got the question.

Um the reality is it's about safety and it's about compensation.

I cannot say anything more than that at this point.

When we have the public hearing, you will have a chance to say, oh, is that enough for safety?

Maybe the heavy time you can let me know.

Or maybe that's not gonna do anything.

Thank you.

Okay, sir, please.

There's a number of other topics I want to get to, including affordable housing housing, airplane noise.

Um, I think we hit the other two.

There's a few more here, too.

So, sir, well, this will be the last question on oil and gas for now.

So it's it's clear, at least perception, right?

The town doesn't want this.

They didn't want it before the ECMC voted on it.

So to me, it's clear the government is just not listening to the oil people.

So my question is.

So my question is before things get maybe a little French, people start protesting the pad.

What mechanisms do we have to say, you know what?

We don't want it.

We want to bring us to a vote of the actual people and say no.

Because you know what?

I don't care their business, I don't give a shit.

What contract uses appropriate language?

Um there may be that are we all adults.

There are people online, this is recorded.

I'm just asking us all to be respectful.

And if we can't, I you know, unfortunately, we'll have to shut the stop.

And I don't want to do that.

One of them is your contract might just get kicked to the curb, and it is time to do that.

And if y'all don't want to do it, tell us how we can organize and do it ourselves.

Okay, thank you.

All right, please.

I'm gonna I'm gonna move on because I'm gonna move on.

There's a bunch.

All right, I'm going on just core up my email to to David, and you'll you'll have that.

All right, um, affordable housing.

So a couple questions came in via email.

What plans does the town have to address the the noted lack of affordable housing units, specifically for seniors and disabled citizens, potentially by exploring models like blue line development that is being developed in Frederick.

I think this is uh an excellent um uh topic.

Um, one of the problems with Erie is that land is really expensive.

I often say that Erie is affordable housing for Boulder and Frederick is affordable housing for Erie.

And so, how do you get this type of development going here?

I would love to see this.

I would also love to see um senior housing, um, both um independent assisted in memory care um come to Erie.

I've spoken to a couple developers.

Once again, the council members probably don't know I've spoken to them, hasn't gone anywhere.

Um, but I would love to get something going within uh that uh that sense.

Another question was given the low occupancy rates of um of our existing uh affordable housing development, um, is more affordable housing development justified or should it be put on hold?

And I think um what that question is really about um our first affordable housing attempt um on the corner of County Line and Cheeseman.

Um there's 35 units there, and last I heard I think there were 11 sold.

I'm looking at Sarah now.

We have four there are 14 sold, six in reservation, and um whatever the remaining is 15.

Okay, so somewhere 1415 of them, and roughly 20 are not sold yet.

Um we don't know if this is because the affordable housing model there isn't working financially, or if it's just the dip in the market that we're seeing, not just there, but we're seeing across Erie.

So we're watching it closely.

Each of those units were subsidized by $93,000, I think.

And so all of us as council members and elected officials should understand why people can't afford them if they were subsidized to the tune of you know over $90,000.

Um, yeah, and if they're too expensive, then did we miss our target audience, right?

And that's um all right, airplane noise.

Anybody heard the airplane noise increase?

Yes, okay.

So there's a reason for this, and I don't have an answer for it.

Um the reason is because Rocky Mountain um airport, which is where a lot of the flight schools are out of, it's a controlled airport.

That means they have um agent, they have flight control there, government, federal government people who are controlling the flights.

Well, you may know that um a lot of changes happen in the space, they're understaffed.

When they get too many planes flying around the Jeff CO area, they tell them to go elsewhere.

And so they go to Erie, they go to Boulder, they go to Longmont, and um there are flight tracking, you could see them circling.

It irritates me.

It really irritates my wife, and if my wife is irritated, you know, I'm irritated, and it's a problem.

There is no easy solution because we do not control any of the skies.

We don't control who can come here and not come here.

I often think about it.

Well, the good news of this is these are the future pilots for our flights to Hawaii or the military or whatever, right?

And so this is where they're training.

We're working on it.

We did have a brief discussion about um landing fees, and that is kind of it's gets scratchy for uh David and his team because if we put them on, then does Longmont put them on, and then you get into this kind of war of fees.

The FAA doesn't like us to do that either.

And so at this moment in time, there is no easy um answer.

I know there's a group that has started to ask the question can we just shut down the airport?

We can't shut down the airport, it is funded over 90% by the FAA.

It I'll come back to that.

Good question.

And actually, if I'm gonna I want you to ask that at the podium, so everybody here's a question.

Um so we have this airport, it's not going away, and it um it provides a great service.

A lot of people learn to fly out of there, and one day I hope it's got an economic engine to it as well, especially if we can connect county loan line to airport drive because it'll go right there, and you know, wouldn't it be great to have an airport themed restaurant that you can watch the flights come in and out?

I mean, all this could be, um, but it's not there um yet at the this point.

Can I get you to come to the podium and ask your question?

I'm from Pennsylvania and I lived in town called Lockhaven, Pennsylvania that was the home of the Piper aircraft.

New yeah, I would lived in Lockhaven, Pennsylvania, which was the home of Piper Aircraft.

Oh airplanes flew over us constantly, but never as loud as some of these airplanes.

The one airplane that flies over our house is tremendously loud.

It probably has a like coming motor.

Uh, and it's probably a Cessna, an old Cessna, and it's extremely loud.

I know they make loaders now that are a little bit softer.

Our concern now is not so much as the value of the property.

Our concern is that airport financially sustainable on its own.

Great question.

So the airport currently is subsidized.

Um, and that subsidy is um something that I think is a concern to me and others.

We are working to create more businesses out there, more hangers out there that will generate revenue that will write that that um that imbalance that we have.

David, I don't know if you can talk about the amount of the subsidy that we provide at this this point, or a rough figure.

Yeah, I was like, I might defer to Sarah Hancock, our finance director, on the exact number.

Um, I will say uh we did have uh present to council um an analysis on how we propose to address fees.

We're currently working through the due diligence of that to help close the gap financially with the airport um on the amount of subsidy that we provide.

Additionally, we're also looking at uh potential um opportunity to develop additional hangar space out at the airport, um, which helps uh generate more revenue for the airport as well.

Yeah, and to be clear, the hangers out there, these aren't the planes that are coming and flying around.

They're the flight schools that are doing that because they have to get their touch and goes.

I think that we have more hangers, then you have people that um are putting them there so they can go fly to wherever they're gonna go fly, not hang out in our um airspace.

Um Sarah Hancock, finance director.

Um, I would just share that as of last year, um, we subsidized from the general fund 168,000 um to the airport.

And I will also say that we do secure quite a few grants through the FAA, which is what you alluded to with the 90% funded through the FAA.

So they do provide um a lot of the maintenance and operation um funding for that, in particular when it comes to runaway maintenance and things like that.

So um at this time it is less than 200,000, but it is um, you know, a good portion of the general fund.

All right, let me go on to um uh airport question.

Couldn't you can you just come up to the podium?

Yes.

Oh, okay.

I'll get to you, I'll get you next.

Well, as he's coming up, go ahead, ask your question.

Is it feasible for the town to ask the airport if they can ask the pilots to avoid flying over residential areas when possible?

And we do do that.

Um, David, you may want to talk a little bit about that.

Great question because that is part of our plan.

Yeah, I appreciate the question.

Um, I do know that uh our airport may uh airport manager, uh Jason with Vector Air, um, is contract employee for the town.

Um he meets regularly with other airport managers as well as um flight schools in Erie and around Erie, and we do try to uh address the voluntary noise abatement procedures that we have put in place.

Obviously, they're not fully enforceable, they are voluntary, but we do meet regularly with them to help reinforce our expectations of that.

So um something that we actively work on.

Right, and one more for the airport.

Um you said 116,000 funding gap.

Does that include any amount that goes towards the full million dollars that we need for the the capital project at the airport?

That's a great question.

Uh million on top of that.

Yes, so the 168,000 is primarily for the operating of the airport.

Um, any of the funding for like those large-scale projects, we are looking into grant funding for those type of um projects.

So the capital is kind of a separate component of what the general fund supports.

The general funds really supporting that operating cost.

Four million.

I don't know the answer to that yet.

I think that's an ongoing discussion.

Um, my under I I can look into this more, but my understanding is that the operation of the airport is on the on the town to perform.

So I'll just give some reminder.

I'll give reminder for folks, please do speak directly into that microphone.

We have some people online who have a hard time hearing some of you.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Um, also on the airport.

Um, I live in an area where it can be on certain days constant, like just it doesn't stop all day long.

I know that you said it's voluntary.

Is there a way to make it not voluntary?

And then the second question, okay, is um about um air quality.

Is that being monitored?

That's one thing from an unleaded fuel and the fuel standard.

I just worry about air quality with that much air traffic.

Great questions.

Uh the first one we can't tell them not to do whatever they do in the air.

That's the the federal government.

Um the second one is leaded fuel.

And we are putting in a uh non-leaded fuel, but engines have to be converted, but we're doing the first step so you can actually get non-leaded fuel and and use that.

David.

Yeah, we uh implemented a unleaded fuel transition plan for the airport in accordance with uh requirements of CDOA with the state.

Um that is in place, and we do have that programmed into our capital budget at the airport um to pursue grant funding for that in 2027.

So it's it's we have to have that done by 2030 per the state.

So we're working on that currently, and we're trying to get it done as quickly as possible.

So all right.

I am um is Julian still online.

Do you know Gabby?

Um, Julian, I I thought I had in my notes and I don't see it, but there was also uh the businesses that have gone in at the airport recently.

Um can you address that one?

Yeah, I'm here.

Can you guys hear me?

Okay.

Yeah, can hear you great.

Uh by the way, Julian does our economic development.

Yeah, so uh regarding the airport, there's uh a current business park called the flight business park right off airport drive.

There's about five buildings of light industrial flex space that's available for lease and purchase.

Uh there's always a number of businesses that um acquire space in there or lease space in there to move in.

Uh, we have a few recent logistical companies and warehouse companies that have rented space there most recently.

Um I will say something that is currently underway though, flight business park is currently under construction to build their second phase.

If you drive in off of airport drive, there's a construction site representing about 10 acres immediately west of the existing business park.

Um they're adding an additional five buildings of about 175,000 square feet of new flex industrial uh space that does allow for additional airport storage and hangars, um, but is more intended for that business use as well.

Um so they're working through their utility connections right now, extending sewer connections, upgrading water lines and et cetera.

But that'll be providing a lot of new industrial uh flex and commercial space at the airport.

Wonderful.

Thanks, Julian.

That piece.

All right, we have about 30 minutes left, and I'm gonna look to Gabby because we've been taking questions in the room, and I'm gonna see if there's anybody um online that has a question.

Um yes, we've had about 20 questions or so submitted.

Um I I was gonna try to bundle more categories if you wanted to.

So I didn't know if there was a topic you wanted me to jump to, or just pick one.

Um yeah, I would say pick one and if we haven't already answered it, um, one one topic that we have not covered at all yet, but came up quite often online, and we did get one from the room was actually about how we're supporting the school districts.

Um we have questions about with the growth and the lack of funding for education and schools.

How are we going to support any more schools in Erie in particular?

Um, expanding Erie High School, making a new one in that sort of vein, is what all these questions are about.

All right.

So great.

Um in Erie, we have two different school districts.

And I wish I could say the line went down County Line Road, it does not.

Um, but St.

Farrain is primarily on the east side of town and Boulder Valley is on the west side of town.

Boulder Valley only has one school in Erie proper, that's um Metal Lark.

It's a K-8.

Um, they have plans for a second school in uh Parkdale.

We just got a letter.

Um I met with the superintendent, um, so did uh Councilmember Pastor Romelli.

We went out and met with the superintendent about what are your plans?

I'm very interested in this because Erie supported the last Boulder Valley School District bond, and in that bond is money to build the school.

They have the money to build the school, but Boulder Valley Schools is also suffering right now from declining enrollment.

And so the superintendent and his team are working through are they going to close schools in Boulder and Lafayette, Lewisville, wherever?

Um, and then what does that mean?

And so uh they're watching our numbers in Parkdale and the community, um, but right now they will not commit to to build the the school.

And so they're bringing in portables over to Metalark, and that school is kind of busting at the seams right now.

Um, if you are concerned about this, I encourage you to go to the Board of Education meetings and go talk to your elected officials for the school district because it is a separate government entity.

Erie doesn't have direct say over what they do, your voice just like it matters here, it will matter uh there as well.

The St.

Foreign side is a little bit different.

They've been um uh uh bonding and getting money start staying ahead of the growth.

So they've already approved a second high school that'll be north um on the west side of I-25, north.

I can never remember the exact location.

It won't be in Erie, but Erie residents will go to that high school.

Just like on the Boulder side, um the students in Boulder Valley go to Centaurus High School as their home school.

So it'll be a similar setup with that.

Um so go and talk to your uh school districts if you have concerns with them.

And if I can help, I will absolutely get into the conversation as well.

Uh go ahead, Gabby.

Um, another batch of questions that came in when you were uh discussing downtown developments, um, some of the things near Colk Creek Park and whatnot.

There were some questions that came in about parking um and what we're going to do about the limited parking in Old Town.

Are there plans to create more parking around the new development?

And then specifically any um any plans to create more ADA accessible parking downtown.

Um okay, great, great question.

Also, and it goes back to the page property.

When um the conversation started with St.

Scholastica, one of the positives in my mind was they'd have a parking lot on the south end of that property property that's walkable to Old Town.

I thought, oh, well, maybe that could be used for the big events.

But that same conversation also started to play out in the open space.

And if you think about it, if that property becomes 100% open space, then you're gonna have connectivity to the trails.

And you put a trailhead parking lot in there, and then that could double as overflow parking for um old town as well.

So you know, depending on which way council goes, there's a potential, nothing's been decided, but a potential to have a parking lot for overflow parking for old town.

Oh, and the ADA more handicap.

I do not know on that.

I'm gonna look to David.

I know that we have certain amounts we have to do, but parking with handicapped and ADA requirements.

Um I'm not sure.

I might ask Sarah Normella what the code requirements are for uh new parking for development.

Um I'm not aware of any like specific parking projects that the town is doing at this time.

So our um our building code actually regulates ADA parking, and it's usually associated in a parking lot.

We can choose to identify um-street parallel parking spots for ADA as well.

I think that would be something that we would look at with our transportation team and as we do improvements in downtown, but lots we we we do have.

All right, cool.

So if you are in that situation, um you could send uh an email to me and I'll get it to Meredith and the team to look at uh that specific situation.

All right, Gabby, we'll do one more from online.

Um we got uh a few questions in here that are asking about Erie's financial situation.

Um, specifically, how is ERI being financially responsible and fiscally responsible with our money?

Yeah, that's a broad question.

I think that um, you know, everything that we do with the budget, um, we rely heavily on staff and Sarah.

Um Sarah will tell you that um I was probably the biggest um um skeptic, maybe skeptic, neophyte is I was learning, and she spent a lot of time just helping me understand how the budget worked, the capital side, the expense side, and we will go start to go through this uh similar budget process here in just a few months uh for 2027.

Um I don't think we're at the point where we're gonna be looking at oh my gosh, do we have to you know cut staff or do we have to delay this project longer?

I don't think we're at that point, but we're definitely just focused on how do we get the capital projects moving, the big things, because that is our community.

Um, Sarah, I'd love to hear what you think.

Yes, I'm happy to elaborate.

I think what is really important to understand about the town's budget process is that it goes on through the entire year.

It's not something we look at once.

Um, it's very iterative, and um, we spend a lot of time um putting together economic factors, looking at our trends, understanding how money is being spent, um, and we make sure we're relaying all of that to the council um as often as we possibly can.

Um, I will add that we will be doing study sessions um earlier in the process this year um to bring uh any issues we see, any trends we see in particular related to the economy as early as possible and engage the council um as much as we can during the process.

So um we'll begin the budget process here in about the next month or so um and it will go all the way through uh November for adoption.

So there will be lots of opportunities for um residents to come forth.

We honestly, I'll be very honest, we do not get a whole lot of public comment with the budget.

I would be really excited if folks did want to come speak.

I really genuinely would.

Um and I think the council would love to hear from from the public too.

So um we always have public hearings for all of our budget um adoptions, whether they're supplemental or whether they are our formal budget adoption for the next year.

Um, so they are very interactive, iterative processes.

So that's all I'd add.

That's awesome.

And Sarah I just also wanted to add that we also think about being fiscally responsible in the way that we develop in our in our economic development.

So when we focus in on our downtown or projects like town center, those are geared towards bringing in tax revenues that um increase our revenues over time.

So economic development is very important.

And just another great example is actually how David Umsick looks at our streets and um and and the improvements for our streets.

And I don't know if you wanted to just talk really briefly, David, on um your approach to street improvements because it is focused on um long-term resilience and saving money over time.

Uh yeah, thank you, Sarah.

I appreciate it.

With our transportation team, we tend to look at our TMP, our transportation and mobility plan, and we look at how we can, what are the prioritized projects.

We also look at other programs that we have in the queue with our neighborhood speed management program and our street resurfacing program.

We take all of that into account.

We talk with other departments like parks and recreation and utilities, and we look for opportunities to bundle all of these projects together.

So a good example of that last year was in Kenosha Farms.

We had an area of that neighborhood that wanted some speed management, and we found that yes, that was needed.

So we were doing some street resurfacing as part of our annual program, and we decided there was an opportunity to also add uh speed homes as a component of that.

So it's a great example of how we look for opportunity to kind of be innovative with how we approach doing projects and making sure that we're trying to spend money once and not multiple times to rip up roads.

So all right, cool.

Um there was one more topic here, and then I'm just I think I'll just open it up after that.

Um we've had a number of residents coming.

I'm looking for the question on here.

There are a number of uh residents that have been coming down concerned about ice, concerned about um our messaging from the council.

Um if anybody knows um uh hold on, let me actually find my notes on this one.

I'm sorry, a question on I have a question about housing and economic development.

Okay, I will come back to to that one.

Um, so ICE and public safety is the thread, and an individual named Shannon Milliken has come down.

You can watch her testimony or her public comment to us.

Um and the question is have I met with her and I have met with her, and the conversation has started uh for a proclamation uh for inclusivity and that um public safety.

I talked to the chief about this too, and um what he shared with me is that Erie police do not participate or assist in civil immigration enforcement, and they do not share information with ICE regarding our criminal investigations.

There have been no ICE operations in Erie that we are aware of.

Um, at the same time, we cannot interfere with ICE operations in town should they ever take place.

So, you know, we we will do what we um can do.

We're not assisting, but we're not also not getting in the way.

I certainly don't want to put our police force in the way of a federal um agency, but there's been no activity here.

I think more importantly, it's the message about you know, areas for everyone.

And um, you know, I'm gonna um work on this, and I'm hopeful we'll have a proclamation that uh staff can go through and um get it to council sometime in the next month, um, you know, six weeks, something like that.

All right, let me do um two questions here, and then um I'll come back to Gabby.

Yeah.

Good mayor, do you want to okay?

Go come on up.

Um, what about our contract with Flock?

Um what about our contract with Flock?

Well, Flock is surveilling all of us, and I did not opt into getting surveilled by Flock.

And so I'd love to know how that goes into, especially with ICE, with ICE partnering with Block and how how all of this works together in our community, because I did not opt into being surveilled by Flock, and I don't think others did either.

Yeah, so um, I'm gonna turn it over to the chief here in just a second.

Um, in the big picture, we use the cameras because we're we are looking at license plates for stolen cars, right?

And they're used for that person purpose.

The chief will tell you our policies around the data.

Yeah, so Flock is a system that we use at the police department to notify police officers when a stolen vehicle enters the town.

And officers receive real-time notification when that happens.

So when you report your vehicle stolen, we get the license plate, we put it in a database.

And Flock has access to that database.

All Flock does is read license plates.

It it notifies the officers when that comes into town, similar to what they do like on a toll road.

When you go past the toll road, it reads your license plate and then it bills you based on who has that license plate registered to them.

So it's kind of the same concept with Flock.

Uh, we do hold them for that.

We that data is held for 30 days, but that data is ours, and we do not share that with ICE or any federal agency.

Flock and college.

Okay, it's yeah, and I I can just tell you that we own that data.

We decide who access it, accesses it, and we do not share with ICE.

Okay, I'll come back to to the mayor and then one more question here, and then I'm gonna go back to Gabby.

So I want to appreciate uh Director Hancock for sharing the amount of operational um cost that we spend on the airport every year, 168,000.

Um one of the topics that you received questions on earlier.

I I guess I got up here a little too late, uh, was the Cheeseman Street project.

And I wanted to share and point out that one of the nationally accepted best practices for developing affordable housing is for municipalities to dedicate land to a project, and then the partner, usually a nonprofit of some sort, uh will raise money for the rest.

That's what happened with vertical development, who built the Cheeseman Street project.

That was a 17.5 million dollar development.

Uh it took $3 million of total uh subsidy to get that built.

$2.7 million of that came from uh ARPA funds and DOLA.

We received a $1 million grant from the state.

So the net uh contribution subsidy from the town of Erie was $300,000.

Half of that was sales tax revenue that we forgave on the building material for the project, which obviously you wouldn't need to forgive it if you didn't build the project.

So of the $93,000 that was subsidized on each of those units, uh, about 4,000 was actually from uh the town taxpayers.

That's the amount of investment that we have.

My question is how much is the current operating cost to the town of Erie for the Cheeseman Street project, and how much ongoing expense do we have related to that property?

And that's a question that I'll look to Sarah or Sarah.

So there's two records.

To the other Sarah.

Just pick one.

Um, yeah, it we do not have a a lot of um operating costs.

Um we do approve um we have multiple approvals and reviews that we need to do as uh as applicants come in, and that's pretty much the limit.

We haven't quantified own the property, do we have to pay tax on the property?

Do we have a mortgage on the property?

No, we transferred that property over, and the developer is responsible for selling thank you.

I think the main question about the cheeseman property is did we hit the right target market and are they able to buy these units?

That's not our concern.

And that's that's I may aren't that this is my concern.

Um, because it it informs, and maybe uh Lafayette is doing affordable housing at the lower AMI level, and that seems to be really successful.

Um, and so I don't know.

And this will be more of a conversation as time goes on with this.

Yes, sir.

So you actually answered or addressed my earlier questions on growth, but a couple more came up as you were speaking.

Um, one uh on the airport.

Um of the things that I think is kind of locking the airport into existence is whenever we take FAA money for a grant or something, the clock is reset to 20 years before you can do anything about closing the airport if that's what we wanted to do.

So have we looked at any other sources of funding other than FAA grant money?

Second question I'm gonna go back to Draco.

This is hopefully an easy one to answer.

Isn't there a deadline of uh October or something when they have to complete construction on the well head?

And then what happens if they don't meet that?

I will come back uh to to that one.

So on the airport, my understanding is we purchased the airport with FAA money, and that sets the clock forever.

So there's it's into perpetuity.

There it doesn't matter what we're doing in grants now.

It is the original decision when the airport went into bankruptcy.

It was private at one time, long before I moved here 30 years ago.

Um as soon as the decision was made for the town to purchase it, that put in into play.

As far as the Draco and the time limits, I'm gonna look to um Mr.

Franks, David, if you can answer that one.

Uh yeah.

Uh per the agreement uh from Southern Land, the developer of Westerly, uh their agreement with Civitas now SM Energy uh says they have to be done uh with pre-production activities uh by October, or sorry, May 2028.

Uh so that's a few years out.

It is a pretty tight timeline to drill uh and complete 26 wells.

So that did that timeline push out.

No, that timeline is is because of the development at Westerly.

Um and it's my understanding that that is a firm timeline.

It was in their testimony to the ECMC, and therefore it's part of their state permit.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

I'm gonna go back to Gabby and questions uh from online.

Yeah, to take us back to the page property.

Um, we did have a question in here about why we aren't considering retail um opportunities at that space.

Why we're not considering it pay.

That's another good question.

I think that if I sense the council um was open to retail, I might be open on on the southern section because it goes back to the small town feel.

And if you can expand old town to the north and to uh to the south, then we get more businesses getting that critical mass.

But then, all right, I'm gonna blame this on councilmember O'Connor.

He took me out there on my mountain bike and he said you gotta come out and write this.

And oh my gosh, it is in a really cool place.

And so when you start to think about making a hundred year decision, and knowing that that would turn into whatever, uh a retail space or a um whatever, right?

A church, whatever.

It does make you think about what is the right decision for a hundred years.

And you know that plays into my my thinking as well.

All right, um, one more question, and then I'll do one more for the room and then I'm gonna wrap it up.

Um, so I do have a group of questions that ask can you tell us why you're making decisions that seem out of touch with what the citizens want you to decide.

Yeah, it's you know, I think this is a struggle for all of us as um elected officials.

Are we doing the right thing?

This is one reason I championed the um comprehensive survey, which we got a lot of good information.

One piece of information was affordable housing is important to us.

So long as you don't use Erie taxpayer money to subsidize it.

You can use staff uh state taxpayer money, you can use federal taxpayer money, but just as long as you don't use Erie taxpayer money, then we're open to that.

So um I'm always trying uh to get feedback.

I'm one of seven.

I get emails and uh texts.

I put my cell phone on every single um email I send out.

I encourage people to reach out to me.

Um there have been a couple people that have been very concerned about a number of things that have come down to public comment, and I've reached out to them, and I'm thankful that they've spent some of their time with me just to talk about their concerns, and so I try to be as accessible as I can.

Um, I also have a full-time job.

So some of you may or may not know how the mayor's system, the elected official works in the state of Colorado, but there's something called the strong mayor in the weak mayor system.

Does anybody know this?

So there's Denver and Colorado Springs, I think are the only two that are strong mayors.

They are the CEO, this is their full-time job.

They make enough money where they can support themselves.

Every other municipality in the state, including Erie and Boulder and Fort Collins and Longmont, is the weak mayor system.

I wish they had a different word from that, but that is the that is the uh official title of it.

And so what it means is that I'm more like the chairman of the board and the council members are board members, and you hire a CEO or a town manager, and they run the town uh day to day.

And so I do my best to give as much time as I can, and I certainly have people reach out.

I always follow up uh with them.

Um there's also people that say that but don't reach out.

So my phone number is on my emails, and I know there are people in this room that have reached out to me and I've connected with, and um, I absolutely it's a priority for me.

All right.

Um let's see, I think I said one more in here.

Yeah.

I was one of the residents who emailed a question about the um public safely safety proclamation or a residents who have uh concerns and fears about being profiled by ice.

Um my question is did you understand that it was a safety proclamation and not an inclusivity process?

Um so my conversation with Shannon was broad, and so um the conversation has started to say what would be the words that are in the proclamation, and we're not further enough where I could share that.

But yes.

But do you understand it is a safety thing?

And it's I'm here speaking for people who are afraid to come out in public, our own residents.

They're being profiled.

I just I can't make that any more clear.

Yep, and I and I uh yes is the answer to your question.

And thank you, Chief, for providing some uh answers and clarification, but we are all still concerned, and I'm afraid I'm one of the people that don't trust the police, and I want to mayor kettle.

Go ahead, Chief.

So I would just encourage anyone who is concerned about the police department's involvement with ice or a cooperation with ice or operations of ice in Erie to please come visit with with myself or or my deputy chief.

We will answer all the questions we can.

We are very transparent about what goes on in town and what we do and don't do.

So if you have a question about flock or anything, please come down to the police department and we will visit.

I'll sit down with you and we can have a conversation.

All right.

Well, I just want to thank everybody again uh for coming out.

I really want to thank for I have one more.

It's okay.

The last one.

Uh I have some comments about parking.

Um since this ever since this discussion studied uh started uh about the pitch property.

There was this um discussion about putting a parking lot in there.

Now the interesting thing is that parking lot would be you know how far from downtown just even farther than the parking lot of the church on the corner of Evans and County Line Road, which is never full.

So why would you even think about putting a parking lot up there with or without a church?

Now, number two about parking.

Um I watch it occasionally because I like walking into downtown living in Northwidge.

Uh parking is never full.

Okay.

How about marking parking booth or what do you call it?

Parking spots with the white lines.

So that parking is optimal or spaces optimally used.

How about how about putting signage up?

So people make the little walk to the end of Coal Creek Park and park there because when I look there in the evening, it's empty.

And so all of this putting more concrete in for parking lots, uh, which in uh of course raises for me also the principal question.

I know we don't have a lot of staff staff, full-time staff.

You're a wake weak mayor, uh the council members are I guess weak council members.

That's the uh the term it is.

Uh when it comes to something like that, when it comes to civil engineering, I mean, I don't want to get into uh uh examples, but this parking thing just drives me nuts.

I mean, when I hear the discussion, you want to put parking up there when there is a big parking lot for in another church that's even a little bit closer.

Nobody will take that when they come to downtown because people will not walk that far.

How about using street parking that's much closer by uh designating it as parking, maybe even putting up a smart system.

Do you have a question, sir?

No, it's not a question.

Okay, then I'm gonna move on just because I'm on respects.

Actually, it was all questions.

How about how about I think those are questions, aren't that?

All right, and I get it.

Um so on the parking, we always work uh through the public works department, they do their studies.

Um when I think about parking on the page property, it would be primarily for the trailhead access in the center of our town, especially when the bird trail gets built.

The bird trail um is the boulder to Erie, the regional trail.

Um they're starting on it in the boulder side, then it will be next, and then the centerpiece will be done, but it'll loop, right?

When you think of Cole Creek Trail, you can go through Erie to Lafayette down down that way.

This one will loop the other way, um, get across 287 and go in.

You were gonna need parking for that.

And so any all that'll be studied long before we make any decisions um on it.

All right, with that, it is uh eight o'clock.

Thank you.

Thank you to staff for coming out on a Thursday night and answering all the questions.

I really, really appreciate it.

And thank you to the council members that uh were out here as well.

I appreciate that.

I hope everybody has a nice evening.