The Lafayette Planning Commission held a public hearing and unanimously approved Resolution 2025-05, recommending that City Council adopt an ordinance amending Chapter 26 of the Lafayette City Code to establish height and spatial requirements for emergency warning equipment. The amendment is prompted by Boulder County's replacement of six aging emergency warning sirens (approximately 40 years old) within the city. The commission also discussed upcoming community events, development projects, and departmental updates.
Do a brief presentation followed by public comment if anybody shows up and then any questions you may perhaps have for staff, uh then a discussion amongst planning commissioners, followed by a motion. So a little background. Uh Boulder County received grants to replace aging emergency warning equipment, including the six that are in the city. Uh they're approximately 40 years old at this time. Uh the new technology offers better message clarity, better sound uh propagation, reduced maintenance needs, and the option for more targeted messaging. Uh the current code does not actually provide a path forward for these. Uh that's why we're here tonight. Uh yes. That being said, I did some research. It's not always common in every code, and I think sometimes these are done just under like a life safety kind of emergency provision. Uh and we don't have a record of how the existing ones were processed. Uh so we could speculate all evening, but we'll never really know. And uh while we give you the background and while you know that these six new uh emergency warning uh systems are are coming into play. Really, the hearing tonight is strictly about the code language and not about these the the six uh future warning systems. So really the the amendment does four basic things, or there's four components to it. It defines what emergency warning equipment is, it exempts and uh exempts them from the height requirements and from typical setbacks, uh, and requires building permit, but then at the same time it also limits their height and uh the location, and then uh it prohibits co-location of wireless facilities. We'll go over each of these in a little bit more detail. This highlight kind of the the main language in each of those sections. Uh it defines them as emergency and warning sirens, audible warning devices, transmission equipment for public safety services, and associated towers and poles on which such equipment is mounted. All right. So it also exempts them from the spatial requirements, and that's our whole table that sets out setbacks, heights, all that all those requirements, uh, including the maximum height limits and setbacks. Uh and then it goes on to say tower polls and equipment must be structurally engineered, meet applicable building code requirements, and receive necessary building permits. And then where we limit the height is we simply say the height shall be the minimum necessary to accomplish its attended function, and then it shall be set back from any adjacent private property a distance equal to or greater than the total height of the emergency warning equipment. And then the exemption uh it just this lays out that it cannot apply to wireless communication facilities and co-location is not allowed on the polls. Really? That was the presentation, so it's pretty straightforward. And I guess we can open up the public hearing. Uh yeah, we can um hear from any interested members of the public, and it looks like we do not have any here. Um we will move on. Um seeing no members of the public wish to address commission. Public comment period is now closed. Um this item for discussion is the approval of an ordinance of the city council of the city of Lockheed, Colorado. Umending chapter 26. Um of the code of ordinances regarding height and other spatial requirements for emergency warning equipment. Um, do we have any questions of staff on this? I just have one question. I'm just curious. Is there any reason to specify in the code that this is only relevant to city-owned property? I don't is that is there any circumstance where someone else might want to put up a tower? We we definitely designed like the setback to kind of imply that because it's it applies to the setbacks apply to adjacent private property. Uh we did discuss that, and this is kind of where we landed, but I mean we couldn't we can discuss that further. Um but I can't the this language was was trapped in a way to to only apply to city property, but we could probably be more explicit. So I don't know if it's necessary. I mean, I I I sort of was trying to think about it. I don't know how many private interests would ever have an emergency desire, and if they needed one, would we want them to have an exemption too? Maybe I so I don't know. I I just thought it was worth asking. I was curious about the thoughts on that. Actually, I'm trying to refresh my memory because we had this expensive uh explicit conversation with Mary Lynn, and she felt comfortable. And I was trying to look point to the the language.