The Golden City Council met on March 10, 2026, beginning with a study session from approximately 5:05 PM to 6:40 PM to review annual work plans from 12 citizen boards and commissions, followed by a regular business meeting from 6:30 PM to 8:09 PM. During the regular meeting, council adopted two ordinances on second reading (historic preservation code and wildfire resiliency code), a new victim compensation fund ordinance, and three resolutions, including fee schedule updates and easement agreements. All votes were recorded.
If I could bring us to order, it is 505 on March 10, 2026. And I'd like us to kick off our study session where tonight's overall topic is boards and commission bullet points for the year. And there are some process things that we want to talk about. So I'm going to turn it over to the mayor weekly and uh. Yeah, thank you. Um just uh since we have some new counselors and we have some of our boards and commission members here, just uh kind of a reminder of why we do this. Um we've we've been doing this for a number of years, and it's really a great way to make sure that city council and all of our volunteer boards and commissions are aligned on the work being done for this year, um, so that we can make sure that all of the priorities that we've discussed and adopted in our strategic plan earlier this year, that those are reflected in the work plans and that there are no surprises. Um we don't want you all and on the boards and commissions working on something that's a surprise to city council because then when you come to ask us to do something, um we may not be in a position to do it. So don't want you to waste uh your your work on something that we're not aware of. So it really is a great chance to alignment. I know it's really short, we only have five minutes per board, so doesn't allow for in-depth conversation or questions. Um it's really just a chance to touch uh touch base and check in. Um but if there are questions or more in-depth conversation needed, we can always set that up for another time. So um it is really quick for the new counselors. Five minutes isn't a lot, um, but we can um meet up and have more conversation on the internet. All right, and let me follow that up with saying um these are not casting concrete. So if you get feedback tonight that says make adjustments, you can do so. And if you don't hear what you want to hear and you want to make adjustments, there is a um change process that the liaison familiar with. There's a form you can fill out, you can request a change to the work plan, and as long as it goes through the normal process, uh we can change it. So don't see sad if you don't get what you want tonight. Uh so with that, I'm gonna turn it over to our newly appointed director of finance. Joe. Thank you. Thank you so much. It's wonderful to be here tonight. I will be quick. Um the finance group is always in constant contact with our investment committee. Uh there is um we just had a meeting in February, just two things to highlight quickly. Uh we've done a lot of work in the past year to push the average duration of our securities up. We're at 1.9 years right now. Um that's up from about 1.7. This is in a situation where anything that can be called is usually being called due to interest rates. And our corporate exposure is down about 13% to better balance out our portfolio. Um as always, this is you know, we remain focused on capital preservation, liquidity, and steady returns for the city. Um switching over to the volunteer firefighters pension board. Yep. Any uh so that was fast. Um I have one quick question. Uh did we beat our benchmarks for 2025, or are we happy with uh the advice we're getting from our yeah, I think that um we well we got more return, but that's you know, because of the market dictated we were able to get more return. If we look forward, we are concerned that if interest rates soften just based on what we invest in, we'll be seeing less returns, as I mentioned. We do have some callable instruments in our portfolio, and we expect those to be called because companies can refinance that debt at a lower rate. So right now we're doing very well. Our benchmark seems to be above, but we do we we are looking to that's where we're looking to push out the years, that's why I mentioned the 1.9 years as opposed to 1.7 because the longer you lock in on those higher interest rates, the better the portfolio is going to perform. Okay, so thank you. Any other questions on IAC? Great, okay. Um the volunteer firefighters pension is um performing fine. We have no worries about it, and we look to restart the meetings again in uh this year. So and just for counsel, um, in case any counselors don't know, I am on both of those committees as required by our rules. So I do participate in the meetings, and if you have any questions, uh happy to uh thank you.