Joining me is Dennis Morrington, Deputy Director of Parks Open Space and Gulf.

Lexi Sierra Martinez, our open space superintendent.

Grant Swift, the chair of the Open Space Advisory Board.

And Heather Balser, our chief financial officer, is also here and available for questions.

And I want to acknowledge and appreciate we've got some other members of the Open Space Advisory Board here this evening.

Tonight we're gonna be providing you with an overview of the open space program and its history.

We'll talk about the legacy open space fund and the post fund that support the program.

We'll also talk about the priority land criteria framework that's been used by the Open Space Board for many years in establishing priorities for potential future open space.

And then of course we'll be available for questions.

Okay, I'm gonna give a brief overview of open space.

So as you probably know, open space is defined by land that's owned by the city.

It's preserved for our natural resources, our landscapes, wildlife habitat, agricultural activities and corridors while also serving as a buffer from our neighbors.

And it differs from parks in that it primarily remains in its natural states used for passive recreation, like walking and biking and bird watching.

And 70% of our community respondents in our comprehensive plan update in 2021 cited open space as an aspect of Lafayette that they liked.

And featured here is some beaver dams just east of 120th on Hole Creek.

So a bit of overview of open space.

We have just over 1,600 acres of jointly and solely owned properties and 22 miles of trails that run through them.

And we support what's called urban ecology.

So we have hundreds of vertebrate wildlife species that depend on our open spaces as well as thousands of invertebrate species.

And we have five habitat types here in Lafayette.

We have several goals that help guide our work and our decision making.

We wanna conserve, enhance, and restore our habitat and the ecological systems within them.

We of course wanna protect wildlife and minimize disturbance, especially, but not limited to sensitive natural areas.

We want to maintain landscape connectivity and that ecological function within it.

We also wanna provide passive recreation opportunities, but that those must align with our conservation goals, manage and create trails, promote community stewardship through education, outreach, and volunteerism, and of course, we want to support ecosystem and community resilience through balanced land management.

And featured here are some Great Horned Outlets.

We have a Great Horned Owl family that breeds annually on Rock Creek.

So our projects are really uh directed by multiple strategic plans, and we also have several designations as well.

We of course have our Lafayette Comprehensive Plan.

We have our parks recreation open space or our PROS plan.

It was last updated in 2019, so due for a bit of an update.

We have our natural environment uh section of the climate action plan that really relates to the work we do in open space.

Featured here is also our 2005 open space and trails plan that really served as a framework for a lot of the newer plans as well as our priority land acquisition framework.

And most uh recently we have our wildlife plan for those of you who are here as something that I'm really proud of, and the the most current plan that is guiding a lot of our work.

And we also have designations that uh align with our projects.

We have pollinator district designation, which we are actively pursuing.

We are in our uh sixth year of Bird City, Colorado, our third year of the mayor's monarch pledge, and our 30th year of Tree City USA.

So a little bit about our open space team.

We are part of the community services department in the parks open space and golf division.

We are a small but mighty team.

It used to be way smaller until recently.

We have Dennis, our deputy director, myself, the superintendent, Holly is our coordinator.

We have two maintenance maintenance technicians now, which is really exciting, and each summer we hire one to two seasonal staff members.

So a little bit about our staff in action.

A lot of the work that we focus on again relates back to the wildlife plan.

We do a lot of restoration.

We were once short grass prairie.

A lot of our uh town was converted to agriculture, and so we spend a lot of time converting things back.

So just a little bit of highlights from the last year.

We had 11 acres of areas restored, um, lots of noxious weed removal, hand and manual removal, over 2,000 plants put in the ground, uh, many of those in wetland and riparian areas.

Within that 2000, we had almost 400 trees planted, many, many wildflower and native grass seeds put in the ground as well, and heavy nature program participants.

We also, I wanted to highlight our routine maintenance that really makes the open space look the way that it is and it feels.

We have over 20 trash cans that are serviced multiple times a week throughout the summer.

600 miles of trail edges are mowed.

All those 22 miles of trails, they're patched every time there's a wind or rain event.

We have staff out there making sure that you're not going to trip or slip.

We have four formalized trailheads, four underpasses.

I mentioned that because they take a lot of regular maintenance, especially after rain.

We have a robust wildlife camera program.

There's vandalism repairs and cleanup.

We uh hand water our plantings and our restoration areas take a lot of uh manual care, and we have routine wildfire mitigation as well.

And I wanted to highlight some of the faces of open space because there's not a lot of us.

So on the bottom left is Holly, our open space coordinator.

Her primary uh role is to work with external partners and community members featured there as our Lafayette Youth Corps.

I'll touch on them in a little bit.

Um, she helps bring a lot of our projects into action since our team is so small.

Next to Holly is Matt.

He's smiling in front of a beaver deceiver.

He uh installed under the uh Coal Creek 120th underpass to help mitigate flooding in that area.

Uh Matt is going to be reaching his 25 year anniversary next month, which is really exciting.

He started in parks and uh was the first open space maintenance technician.

Uh there's not a lot of pictures of me in open space, so that's me at uh our Earth Day Everyday Annual Event with Bernie the Bull Snake.

Yeah, Bernie's the best.

Uh and then there's Matt again.

That was just the other day he was um chopping up a fallen tree in our uh Rothman corridor.

Uh above him on the mower is Josh.

He is our newest maintenance technician, which is really exciting to help double our maintenance efforts.

And um, above him is a picture of him and Max, one of our uh returning seasonals.

So we couldn't do all of the work that we do without our volunteer and community support.

Um, these are four main groups of uh support that we have.

Of course, we have our open space advisory board, we have our Lafayette Youth Corps, which I mentioned, they do uh projects each week in open space uh September through April, which is uh really really helpful.

We also have open space volunteers.

Holly built out our open space volunteer program last year, so we now have stewards, we have naturalists, we have trail ambassadors, so uh there's uh a robust support system helping us out in the field, and then annually we have our Boulder County Youth Corps team support us during the summer.

So here are a few photos of our open space community in action.

On the left, top and bottom, those are Boulder County Youth Corps members.

Uh they're building a trail in the top.

We formalized a social trail that aligned with conservation goals in our Rothman kneebone open space.

They're building a no uh drill fence there in the bottom.

In the top, we have uh Holly with our Lafayette Youth Corps.

They're installing uh willow stakes in an area where there's erosion issues.

Next to them are two volunteers who are doing planting along Cole Creek to help diversify the vegetation in there.

We have nature program participants in a birding program we had last year.

Uh below them is our Lafayette Youth Corps helping establish our restoration area plantings, and next to that is some vegetation and duff removal in some areas of concern, and then um a group of all of our volunteers that came out for an earth day planting last year.

So I've I've touched on a few of the assets that we have, pretty standard things that you would imagine the trails, the acreage, kiosks, signs, and fencing, things like that.

We also have several structures that we maintain.

The shack is an education station between Wanaka Lake and Greenlee Wildlife Preserve.

We have uh historic Beaupre Barn.

We have Wanaka Centennial Farm.

Uh there's over 20 structures on that property and two wells, and that property is currently being reviewed by the National Parks Service for historic national historic designation, which is exciting.

Um, you're familiar with Thomas Farm.

We have the barn.

We also own a walk in fridge within it and the irrigation system.

And we also have some soft assets, if you will.

We have wildlife monitoring sites, we have four active closure areas, and in the very near future, we have two planned prescribed burn units.

So, of course, with all this comes um some challenges, and they're pretty standard in terms of things that most open space uh programs face.

We have high and ever increasing recreational pressure in our open spaces.

We see a lot of our popular uh properties really being hugged to death, and we see a lot of misuse in those areas, including e-bike misuse and trail etiquette concerns.

We also see illegal encampments and social trails, other vandalism, and all these things result in impacts of habitat fragmentation and plant and wildlife disturbances.

So you can see the photo here.

This is an area of a social trail.

You can see just behind the sign is one of the many plantings that go into restoration of these areas.

We have criteria for our closures, which is why we only right now have four active ones, and that's really to prioritize human safety, wildlife safety, erosion concerns, and focus on vegetation composition as well.

Um and there are areas where we have deemed that this uh location would be appropriate to formalize.

So recently, uh along or near the public road trailhead, we have our Coal Creek connections, which were uh these areas that were built to withstand more heavy use and off-trail use without affecting erosion or creek function or things like that.

Um, and with the current challenges that we have, we have a limited staff capacity to support the the rural enforcement along um or within our open spaces, and uh we lack a ranger program, but that is something that we're pursuing in the near future as a former park ranger, something I'm very excited about.

Um, and one challenge that's separate sort of from all of these, but interwoven is improving ecological function with the um current climate situation that we have.

Um, as you know, it's it's hard to maintain uh some of these restoration areas when we have a winter without a lot of snow, for instance.

Okay, moving into the program history.

So I'm gonna pass this to Grant in just a moment.

I wanted to touch on really the foundation of open space was uh grassroots and community-led, and for many years, um, from the genesis of our open space division, it was uh really driven by community input and residents uh creating uh the first plans and working and directing staff on projects and um focus areas.

For the first seven years of our open space program, it was almost entirely led by our uh community members just directing director level staff.

Um but now though LOSAB role has been honed a little bit now that we have our team.

Um so their focus is really to advise council and planning commission on open space priorities for acquisition, which we'll touch on in a little bit, funding options, uh trail and park opportunities, and um regular land management priorities.

Okay, so here is uh a timeline of the history of open space, and you'll see that it begins with passive open space acquisition from 65 to 91.

Well, our population at that time was about 14,000, 15,000.

And then in 91, um there was a housing development that was going in west of Wanaka Lake, and the citizens were upset about it because it was going to block their views.

Let me demonstrate.

And this was kind of the outcry of we need to find a way to tax ourselves so that we can buy open space like other communities are doing.

So we set up a tax, it was passed in referendum that was passed in a quarter percent of one, a quarter of one percent sales tax to tax Lafayette shoppers to generate uh income for the parks, open space, and trails tax.

Post fund that then um we also established in 92 the open space advisory board.

And then the first purchase from the post fund was the Wanaka Landing.

So if you stand in Wanaco parking lot and look towards Long's Peak, there's a strip of land.

That's the Wanaka Landing Open Space, and that was purchased from the post fund so that people could still see Long's Peak from Wanaka without all the houses blocking it.

Um our first open space day was at the outdoor classroom.

My wife and I got involved with that.

That's when I first started volunteering with the open with the city.

And we hauled trash out of the outdoor classroom site and set up, got a church to come in and help build the amphitheaters there.

Our little my children's handprints are in the cement or on the edge of us fun.

And then after that, I um in 95, I joined the open space advisory board.

Um and you'll see that the bulk of the open space acquisitions happened from 94 to 2007.

The wildlife task force was started in 98 to come up with best practices for managing the land.

Um at this time, if we needed uh a city liaison, we talked to the city manager.

The city manager came to our open space meetings.

The city clerk was our secretary, and the Bill Coleman or Rod Turler from the Parks Department was the person that we, if we needed shovels or things like that, they were our contacts.

Um 1999, the legacy tax came about, and again, that was another citizen-led activity initiative.

Um we had previously the Harney of Listoka site was where the Louisville ball fields are, and we had an option to build ball fields there.

But the thought was why would we spend Lafayette money to build ball fields so that people can go play ball and then drive into Louisville and eat and drink?

So we didn't do that.

Instead, the idea was that if you're familiar with the dog park, there's land west of the dog park called the Great Park.

That was going to be a Lafayette Future Ball field site.

But then the outcry came from that because it was already Boulder County open space.

So the city had to use post funds to buy open space land and convert it into parked land.

And when you have limited post funds, that seems like a waste of money with the land is already open space.

So as a result of that, the citizens passed another quarter percent of 1% sales tax for the acquisition and maintenance of open space solely, and that was in 99.

And then that started generating revenue, and so that by 2006 we were able to hire staff that you see sitting here.

And it has continues.

We uh have made the legacy tax that is in perpetuity so that we can bond against it because it was on a 10-year hiatus and kept coming up for renewal.

We said, let's just finish that.

Um then the most recent purchase was the Wanaka Centennial Farm that we purchased jointly with Boulder County.

And that's about all I got.

All right.

Um for funding and acquisitions, as uh Grant was just talking about, there are uh two funds in the parks and open space uh divisions.

The legacy fund is the.25 uh sales tax fund that is used for the acquisition and maintenance of open space.

Uh that the one that's the one that was put into perpetuity in 2017.

Um and it funds everything in open space from the salaries to uh equipment maintenance, uh everything there.

Um, also can be used for open space uh land acquisitions at the current moment.

There is a uh the the um legacy fund is paying the general fund back for the purchase of Wanaka's Centennial Farm, which you'll see on a few more slides.

Um the balance of that right now is the 1.165 million dollars, and then there's the post fund, uh, the parks open space and trails fund.

Uh its ballot language does allow for uh maintenance of open space and trails that is currently being uh used for funding just about all of the park operations that we have in the city.

Uh okay.

Uh so for some pre previous acquisitions, um these uh there's public land dedications, which is uh an option that we have other than outright you know buying land for open space, um, these provide a dedication of land for city parks, open space, and they can always also be used for uh community recreation areas if uh it's determined that uh a developer is coming in and wants to um uh you know develop a property somewhere and per arcode, you know, they're supposed to have some open space parks or wreck areas.

They have the payment for a cash in loo that they can do.

Uh and all of that does go to the improvement of our current parks, playgrounds, and wreck areas, and all of these things are reviewed by LOSAP and they make recommendations um moving forward.

Um so a lot of thought does go into acquisitions.

You know, we want to make sure that it's financially sustainable.

Uh can we can we purchase it and can we take care of the maintenance going forward.

We've also had joint purchases uh with Boulder County and the city of Louisville, and those have been successful in the past.

And this slide right here is the Wanaka Centennial Farm area.

Uh this is areas just east and west of 119th and south of Baseline Road.

The gray areas that you see are solely owned by the city of Lafayette.

The green area uh is jointly owned with the City of Lafayette and uh Boulder County.

The entire purchase in 2019 was seven and a half million dollars.

The city's portion was uh 4.1 million.

Okay, so moving into priority land framework.

So as we talk about acquisitions, our focus and part of Low SAB's focus, especially these next two years is to really make strategic decisions when it comes to acquisition due to uh rising land costs, increasing development, things like that.

So we'll go into the criteria and the map that comes from that.

So this is our our current uh map that outlines our desired potential open space uh properties.

The rankings are currently um in the process of being reevaluated by LOSAB.

That is something that is in flux and updated regularly by the board uh along with staff.

So you can see these are bubbles of areas that are uh non-specific intentionally.

You can see A, B, and D are part of those Wanaka uh purchases that have since been acquired, those were our number ones.

And um these are all ranked with an extensive uh criteria.

So we'll I think it's appropriate to just go through some of the criteria next.

Um, this is our ranking matrix.

This is easier to digest than the very long spreadsheet that comes with it.

Um you can see there's 19 different criterion that evaluate each parcel based on a lot of different things.

So the resource scores really evaluating a lot of the vegetation components, the wildlife uh uh conditions, things like that.

The land use score is a little bit more specific and straightforward when it comes to just size.

Um right now, what one thing that's under review is a comprehensive plan compatibility because when this matrix was created in the 2005 plan, it was based on our 2003 comp plan.

So LOSAB has been in the process of updating our matrix.

Um, they've been adjusting the multipliers, which is why our map is now being readjusted, and we're seeing some adjustments in our priorities.

One thing that they added was our equitable access uh criterion, and the goal is in the title, it's to promote equitable access to nature and proximity to open spaces for all of our residents.

So uh we and LOSAB recommend aligning our criteria with the state recognized definition of disproportionately impacted uh community members.

And this is a an ArcGIS active map, it has multiple layers that uh really breaks down all of the uh community members within the general umbrella of disproportionately impacted uh folks.

So the the new rubric descriptor would award a one if a site is located within a 10-minute walk of one of these communities and a zero if it's not.

Pretty straightforward.

All right, so looking ahead, um as Lexi mentioned, you know, the availability of land has changed and shifted.

There's less available land, the cost of of land per acre has increased, and our portfolio has increased.

And so what the assets that we need to maintain are also requiring um substantial resources.

So staff are looking into exploring alternative options to acquiring property other than just outright purchase.

Um, so exploring potential things like conservation easements or trail easements, other partnerships with land trusts or other approaches for filling in some of those missing pieces in our in our portfolio.

We do recognize that in order to do this, we don't have the expertise on our bench.

Our staff has grown a lot, but that is not a skill set that we have.

So we're looking to explore contracting and open space real estate specialist who can assist us with that strategy with some of those transactional components and help us develop our approach so that when the next opportunity arises, we're better prepared.

So of course, there's the factors that we desire in a property, and there's the financial resources, and then of course, there has to be the opportunity.

That property also has to be available for sale.

I know later in your meeting, you are looking at board work plans in Low Sab's work plan.

They're looking at a proactive landowner outreach strategy, and so we are interested in the council's thoughts around that.

The the board has discussed the possibility of a proactive annual letter campaign to property owners to make them aware of the value of their property as open space and the value of land conservation.

The community services department is also looking at a shop local awareness campaign so that we can emphasize the importance of sales tax revenue on acquiring and maintaining open space.

Low SAB plans to continue joint meetings with neighboring agencies.

So Erie and Lewisville, we've had meetings, joint meetings with those open space boards, so we can better understand regional priorities and should opportunities arise for joint purchases or other collaborations.

We're connected.

And similarly, we've been expanding collaboration with Boulder County Open Space.

They have a lot of resources and expertise and have been good partners in the past.

So with all of that, we're happy to take questions.

Any questions from council?

I feel like Councillor Gianola has 50 questions, so I might go first.

I'll have fewer.

Thank you so much.

This was really interesting.

I really enjoyed this.

I guess I have a couple questions that but to dive right in.

In terms of the cash and loo, what kind of formula do you use to decide what kind of cash and loo you would ask for in a given property or development?

How do you make that judgment?

It's it's based upon do you want me to answer?

Sure.

I'm sorry.

Okay.

It's uh code says 12 to 15% of the total area that's being developed is going to be so we just valuate how much that land would be per acre, and then the cash comes from that.

But the thank you, Grant.

But in terms of the valuation, is it what market value is or what market value is, considering we we have some range?

It's market value for uh undeveloped acreage.

Okay.

Okay.

It's not commercial.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Um, and then for the open space real estate specialist, um, how do you find someone with that skill set?

That's really interesting.

In Boulder County and in the in the Western United States, we're actually lucky that there are a number of folks that have that that experience.

So there's some folks that we've been talking to.

Brilliant.

That's all for me.

Councilor Giannella.

Um, early in the presentation, thank you so much for the presentation.

Really informative.

Um, early in the presentation, we talked a little bit about fire mitigation and prescribed burn.

Can you just expand on that a little bit?

Kind of what is currently taking place or and when and kind of what's the criteria for that?

Yeah, um, so we are part of regional partners in a grasslands uh fire working group with um a lot of other municipalities and Boulder County, but specifically uh agencies in the East County.

Um, and so we do a lot of things in alignment with them.

So we mow trail edges, we expanded our trail edges mowing after the Marshall Fire.

We have one area in particular where we mow a pretty uh distinctive fire break that's uh adjacent to a few homes and that or a few uh neighborhoods rather.

And then we do a lot, we don't we don't want to mow everywhere or everything.

That's not um that's not good for any any of the goals that we're trying to accomplish here, including wildfire mitigation.

So we do a lot of uh duff removal, which you saw that that picture with our Lafayette Youth Corps in areas where um we couldn't do a prescribed burn or we couldn't do occasional rotating mowing.

So lots and lots and lots of truckloads of debris removal and then reseeding with native uh plants that are better suited to that that area.

Um and then for the prescribed burns, that is something that we used to do in open space.

We did it on Rock Creek and we did it in Nebone Open Space.

Our our goal is to re-implement the fire regime into these ecosystems that crave and need that.

And uh so we're working really closely with the fire department to implement um uh a prescribed burn policy, which is required by state statute and uh figuring out all of the administrative pieces, as well as writing a 90-page burn plan that goes into all the specifics.

So there's a ton of science, a ton of back work that happens before we can actually put fire on the ground.

The burns themselves will probably take very short amount of time.

But we're we're really excited about those.

What is like a historical kind of timeline of the burns occurring?

Like how frequent or yeah, it just depends.

Um I think that what we're looking to achieve is every three to five years in our open spaces to mimic some of the low intensity burns.

Yep.

Yep.

Um separate question.

Yeah, you talked about some of the closures and and restoration.

Can you tell me just a little bit more about kind of the how?

How are these decided?

Where are they?

How are they maintained?

How are they closed?

Things like that.

Yeah, so uh there this was a recommendation in the wildlife plan, closing areas of high habitat value.

Um, and we as staff uh when we kicked off implementation, uh determined factors, criteria to implement these closures.

So there's presence of plants that shouldn't be there, or um typically due to degradation of the area, like these social trails create um what you call edge habitat.

So there's uh noxious weeds, non-native plants that grow in this space because they're adapted to those degraded areas, um, a lack of plants that should be there goes hand in hand with the same concept, uh, presence or absence of wildlife that should be there, um erosion is a big one.

We had a social trail uh just west of public road trailhead.

We tried to close it um due to erosion concerns, and uh because the social trail area compacted the soil so much plants couldn't grow, which uh allowed for the cliff to just shear off.

It turned into a large mile high flood district project, which is why there's construction fencing in that area, the whole area needed to be graded out.

So there's safety concerns as part of it, um, but that there's a lot of factors, and then restoring those areas um that involves a lot of plantings and seedings, retilling over and over these areas, um, a lot of care and a lot of monitoring.

Thank you.

Really great.

Any other questions, Council Friedland?

I think I was after both of you.

No, I I don't need to go next.

Maybe maybe you'll ask my question.

Um, I was gonna start with e-bikes, so maybe I make sure the world can hear me.

Um best practices around I see the e-bikes point in your slides.

It's obviously a known issue.

I know it's been discussed at LowSAB.

Um best practices we could learn from there and with our constrained resources and managing that, or it does something else, you know, does it need to escalate and we need to think through it at a higher level, or talk to me about e-bikes?

I I think well, I wish I had the answer because that could really solve a lot of problems for a lot of people.

This is um not only just a regional issue, but nationwide.

Uh, this is something that all trail users and people on the roads as well are experiencing.

Um, I think, at least from my perspective, there's a lot of awareness of trail etiquette that um is lacking with a lot of our trail users, and um my understanding is that our police department is working really hard to increase that awareness going into schools and um talking with parents, talking with families about responsible use.

So I from my limited understanding of enforcement of e-bikes, I think that would like education is a good first step.

Do you guys want to add anything with that?

Thank you.

Um I know we were also planning on maybe doing like a um insect subplan after the wildlife plan.

Is that still in the are we still working on that?

Yeah, so part of our pollinator district designation, um, that's in partnership with Friends of Cole Creek, and that designation is issued by Butterfly Pavilion.

Uh super rigorous.

It takes about, they estimate each municipality taking about five years to achieve it.

So we're just starting our second year.

We just completed um the first year of surveying.

So they did two surveys um in the spring and the and late summer of last year, and actually found some really incredible things.

We found nine species of interest, um, and they provided uh really robust guidance that just we package right with the wildlife plan guidance on um implementing and uh strategies on how to better support the pollinators that are here, how to create habitat for pollinators that should be here.

And that's the designation.

Right.

Are we doing a plan with that too?

Or um not this is the designation has like a very lengthy rubric, so it's it's um it's achieving the same ends.

Yeah, great.

Um, the final question I had was around just thinking through the you know, we've got the post tax and the legacy tax.

Both of those are in perpetuity, right?

Yes, they are, yeah.

And so I don't know where we are at on the curve of those two, but eventually we do acquire everything we can, and we have a level of maintenance that's required that can be drawn from those funds, but eventually we don't have a need for that.

Eventually, hopefully, if we're successful, right?

We achieve all our goals, we don't need the money anymore.

We're probably not anywhere close to that.

I wonder how close we are to that, though.

And what do other communities do when things like that happen?

And we've got a tax that's sitting on our books that is kind of no longer needed because we've achieved everything we need to.

I guess it just goes back to the voters, and they choose not to have an impermitted anymore.

I don't know, just a question.

I I guess that would be an option.

Me, I would get everything to a hundred percent like it's just perfect, yeah.

And then I would say, Hey, Katie, what do you think we should do now?

Council, yeah, sure.

There's a lot to be there.

There's still a lot of maintenance to do in maintenance.

Open space and parks, yeah.

So it's parks and open space, so obviously a lot of you know, even building out a uh a ranger program, you know, that's not gonna be that's gonna cost some money for sure.

Good, good.

How does that compare with other communities like our half a percent compared to surrounding communities?

I know that Boulder has the same tax.

I'm not sure about who else.

Okay, thank you.

Counselor Johnson.

Could you put up the picture that the map?

Um so I'm I'm interested in understanding more about the bubbles, the dots that are connectors, and how that works.

Can uh like some of them are not even in the city of Lafayette, you know.

So could you just explain a little bit more about your vision for those little bubbles?

Yeah, so those are trick proposed trail connections that would really help with um improving pedestrian biking access.

The uh one I think it's P that's all the way in the top left corner that is outside of uh city limits and our urban growth boundary, but would serve as a connector, a trail connector to Boulder, which is uh would be highly utilized, especially from a commuter perspective, just a sustainability perspective as well.

And is that to tell our farm that's oh yes, yes, yes, and then within our ranking criteria, there is uh uh uh criterion for whether or not it's within our city limits and our urban growth boundary.

So then that one would be less a higher less priority because it's not in the city limits, correct?

Okay, and then this bubbles over here by K.

I don't really see that at least part of it isn't really on any, I guess maybe it's just I can't tell what color things are very well, but it it feels like it's kind of in the middle of nowhere.

So to the east of it and north of it is our silo open space.

That was a recent public land dedication, and then there's a trail corridor that continues east um just north of Walmart, so it connects to that system, and then there's planned multi-use paths uh along 287 that it could connect to, and then it could uh connect going west to our um golf course trail system, and then of course, in order for it to work um well and be the full uh the full trail connection, we would want to acquire some parcel of I uh whether or not that is the full parcel or an easement is um a different discussion, but yeah, yeah.

All right, and then um the look help me understand the the low sab oversees open space, and some aspects of what this department does are parks.

Is there an advisory board or does it just get pushed into low sub?

We have always helped with parks.

So with a recent uh development that came up, our discussion was about we want cash and loo because there was a wonderful park site that we thought would be really good, but they were not willing to give it to us.

But since LOSAB began, there was no parks advisory board.

So we assumed that role and have done that.

And then recreation, parks and recreation also, right?

Is who does where does recreation fit?

So like swimming pools or uh there is nobody who's sort of oversees.

There currently is no board that oversees that.

There's the older adults advisory board, which lives within recreation, but there's not a broader recreation advisory board.

Okay.

And then on your criteria that you're looking at, um sorry, the mic thing cut out at potential open space ranking matrix.

I mean, one of the things that seems to me is low-hanging fruit, what's easiest to purchase.

And I I sort of don't see that in here, and maybe it's implied in some of these other categories, but like if we want to get to something before Erie does, or you know, or if we don't do it now, we lose an opportunity.

I I'm I'm sort of not seeing that, but I'm assuming it's in here somewhere, but it's just not visible to me.

Yeah, opportunity was not included as a criterion, but it is still considered heavily.

So just because something might be ranked last, if it's available, that's a discussion we're gonna have absolutely.

It's not wouldn't be discounted just because we're like, well, it's ranked the end of our list.

And that happened.

If you look north of N, you'll see the Actonok property.

That was one that was low ranked on our matrix, but because the opportunity came, then the buyer seller was willing to sell.

We said, okay, we'll take it.

That's that green spot.

Yeah, it was a joint purchase with Boulder County.

Okay.

And that leads me to another question, which is the Centennial Farm.

So my understanding, I think I heard this on the tour, that we don't have the money to turn that into a working farm right now, that that there's some future plan to make that like a I used to live in Austin, Texas, and they had like a we called it Pioneer Farm, and it was a real working farm, and you could go out at like turn of the century, the previous century, you know, mechanics and stuff, and people could go out and work there, and there were a lot of festivals there and things that happened that were pretty cool.

And I love that idea, but I'm just wondering a little more about what is I mean, is it gonna be a hundred years before we get to that or ten or five?

Or tell me a little more about that.

So we need to do an assessment of that property.

It's currently undergoing the historic designation.

Um, but we would need to explore what's possible, better understand costs that hasn't been explored yet.

And what is the plan to do that?

We were looking in the next well.

I'm gonna have a structures assessment.

I hope to do one this year.

Um yeah, I would hope to do one this year.

I might have to make a budget assessment or budget submission for it, so it could be early next year, and then with an update to our open space or community services plan from there, that's what would come out.

Like, what do we actually want to use this property for?

And I can add on to that.

One thing that I forgot to mention in the our staff uh team is that we have an uh uh educator, a part-time educator that we are in the recruitment process for.

Um, so one way that we could utilize uh Wanica Centennial Farm is just for an education purposes, historic tours.

We can talk about agriculture within Lafayette and Lafayette's history.

So there's um something to be said about programming in that capacity.

Um also we plan to be uh utilize the farm as open space staff for um generating native seeds uh hopefully in the next two years.

So there's ways that it's being activated, but as far as utilizing the actual structures, I think there's a a lot of work that needs to be done to make them safe in order to do that.

Well, I'm excited about that possibility.

It's it's really thrilling, and um, I think so many people think their food comes from King Supers or and you know, expanding the opportunity to educate about that is yeah, really exciting.

And and also I would say we need an equity lens about that because you know their their you know, slavery and um other kinds of things impacted Colorado's historic agricultural and the way you know imported workers from other countries were treated.

It you know, it's part of the whole telling the truth about who we have been, and that we need to continue to you know move that bar.

Um so I hope that will be a consideration as well, so that we are honest about you know, farming was hard work, and some people worked harder than others.

I can speak a little bit about what our plans are with programming at Thomas Farm, not at Wanica Centennial, but we have uh plans to work with the Lafayette History Museum who is doing an upcoming um exhibit on exhibit history in Lafayette.

And the person that I spoke with, and and I don't want to speak for them, but they talked about really focusing that exit that exhibit on that lens that you're mentioning.

So we're gonna talk about it then and now and fo uh showcase Thomas farm because that is where food is grown for our community.

Well, thank you.

And and so with regard to let's just say you have a bike trail between two pieces of open space, right?

And the bike trail is concrete, um you know, not dirt.

But so that then becomes whose job to like snow pile that who uh who does that?

If it's on open space, it's open space.

If it's parks, it's parks.

Well, what if it's just like trail between two is what I'm talking about.

Like I mean, I would I don't know if there is an example like that, but if we were to build a bike trail between two pieces of open space, who who would take care of that?

Yeah, I'll get out there.

It would probably be open space, I would assume that it would come out of that budget.

Yeah, uh, or the um property owner uh is what who's typically responsible.

Um, but I would imagine that if it if open space built a trail between two, it would be open space property.

So well, and I want to say I have a neighborhood park in my neighborhood, and whoever takes care of it does a great job of getting because it's like the only place to walk in my neighborhood, and it's plowed, like you know, when the snow is done, somebody gets over there and uh they get it done quickly, and I'm very pleased with how well that happened.

So thank you.

Well, thank you very much.

I'll play that segment for the parks crew tomorrow.

Castle Gallegos, I believe you had a question.

I did, but it was addressed.

It was regarding safety enhancements and education of proper usage.

Any other questions from council?

Counselor Friendly.

I'm curious about the timeline for the reassessment of acquisitions.

You're working on it right now.

Yeah, we did uh the land use score in one two and a half hour meeting last month, and then we'll be.

I don't know if we're gonna finish it in our March meeting, but um March.

It's it's happening, it's actively possible.

Thank you.

I just had a couple more questions about the map.

This map is pretty old at this point.

There's a lot of I think there's some new acquisitions maybe on that or there's new developments, certainly, where maybe part of part of a wish item is now developed.

Um are there new areas being evaluated that are not bubbled on this?

Not yet.

Um that is a desire of Losab to evaluate those, and we're hoping to tackle that next year.

Okay.

Um, but you're correct in that so part of our consideration when we're reevaluating this is um specifically the bubble N at the very top center, part of that has been uh developed into homes, so that's gonna affect the ranking.

Yeah, yeah, and I think there's other parcels that maybe could be evaluated as open space, but they've been developed.

Like if you look at this map, you say, Oh, there's nothing been here.

Is that under consideration?

And the answer is absolutely not because now it's houses or whatever, right?

Um yeah, I just see that there's potential for other parcels that have not been identified here that maybe they could get ranked.

I don't know, maybe they get ranked low because they're they were kind of never considered, but you know, expanding the list.

I don't know, it could be interesting.

And then I just want to clarify the ABC DEFG is just a naming.

This has nothing to do with the current ranking.

Correct.

Correct.

Okay.

This was the previous ranking, but it was in order.

It was in order.

Okay, so it's no longer kind of evaluate previously that E was a higher rank than N association.

Yes.

And that might change based on the new categorization, this equity piece, some of these different different factors.

Um, thank you.

Council.

Uh thank you so much.

Two quick questions.

One, you mentioned updating the PROS.

What broad brushstrokes would you like to see updated in it?

And then two, what would be most helpful for y'all from council?

Those are big questions.

I'll say that you know, the PROS plan was updated in 2019, so the planning work occurred prior to that.

Since then, we've had a global pandemic and a lot of change in the world and in our community.

So we do need to take a look at so that includes recreation parks as well as open space.

So that will be a larger undertaking with a lot of uh community engagement.

You'll likely see it in the budget proposal coming forward.

So what council would need to do is consider that as part of the broader picture.

Thank you.

So I have six questions.

I'm gonna start with the easy ones.

Uh but you can I I don't know, we'll see how this goes.

Uh number one, do actually let's do number two first.

Are are we going with the letters, the potential letters to landowners who might work with us on easements for open space?

That the area that we might be looking into.

That was something we talked about, right?

Okay.

So with the letters that go out, would they be specific enough to understand the intention behind it?

Uh because sometimes there's this concern that it's going to um, you know, having people going by their property is a little unnerving.

Um so we would be specific enough to say to tell how valuable this is and some of the things that protect their privacy.

That would be in the letter as well.

I you know, I think what would be included if there is a letter is to be discussed, and so Losa at their last meeting talked about some of the pros and cons of that.

That's one reason why having a real estate specialist to advise us on how we might approach that or if we do.

Um so you'll hear more about that as we talk about it.

This was an idea that we got from our joint meeting with Erie that Erie is currently using something like this, and so we said, hmm, well, what could we do?

And that's where this came from.

Yeah, that would be my experience is that sometimes landowners are really afraid of what the trail openings would do.

Uh okay.

So when we're looking at people moving across the trails uh on open space, do we ever is there any way to understand why people are going where they're going on the trails?

Is there any motivation that we can put our finger on why they are I think I know why they're always around Monica because it's just gorgeous.

But they not but and the other trails is there like do we ever understand the the intentions behind what people are doing?

Are you talking about like social trails like on not on the main trail?

No, no, no.

Oh, oh, trail counting.

No, we don't we don't have any like survey, we haven't conducted any surveying about like whether or not people are doing it because it's pretty or because it they're commuting.

Okay, um but that's something that could be evaluated.

Uh when we look at the significance of the vegetation, if we're looking at an is it an insect city?

Is that I don't know what the D pollinator.

Yeah, pollinator.

Okay, but the answer there might be a sub certification.

So do we uh and then this is hopefully this is a snowball question.

So uh softball for that snowball.

Water in my brain.

Um is is that the significance of insects integrated into the biospheric mixture, like the vegetation that's there and how the insects are interplaying with the that is why we're working so closely with Butterfly Pavilion and they're giving us uh this these in-depth recommendations so that we are considering the bugs.

Um so I noticed we have 22 miles of trails, but 595 miles get mowed.

And I watched, I'm guessing it was Matt mow the entire dog dog park because I had nothing else to do.

But um I mean, is that is that's how we get to 595 miles on 22 miles of trails, is that we're cutting way more than just the edges of the the 22 miles?

One side at a time, so they have to do one pass and then they go all the way back and they do it over and over and over again throughout the summer while the grass is growing.

Oh, that's total miles total, total.

Okay, that's how many miles they're putting on their mower.

And do we do uh can we get electric motors mowers for that, or is this not something that's there's not one that is uh available for commercial use at this size yet, but um Toro is developing one, but I don't know.

They've been trying to develop one.

Um actually just uh I think it was in December or January when um y'all approved the uh purchase order for the new equipment for the golf course and parks.

I checked with Toro that day, and their uh lead salesman was like so you know, we do have some small ones.

We have the handheld equipment, we've got push mowers.

Um the golf course has electric drains mowers because they're so much smaller, but for these larger applications where you're just you're mowing for miles in a day.

Um the salesman said that I would need to have a battery that was 8,000 pounds, so it's like it's just impractical, like they can't do it right now.

And I've looked at other manufacturers, they're not they're not there.

We are fully electrified otherwise, though.

Yeah, I I know that's saying um okay.

So this is where it's gonna get weird.

Uh do we do we have any climatological data that goes along with in our GIS system?

Do we track temperature fresh humidity?

Uh humidity, yeah, humidity.

Do we track any of that and lay it over the vegetation that we have here?

I'm I'm okay with a no.

I just didn't know if we would do it.

We have not done that.

I mean, we have our extensive surveying from the wildlife plan, but as far as like temperature and like soil atmospheric, those sorts of things.

We have soil conditions, but not the atmospheric conditions that you mentioned.

And I don't know if there might that might be available.

There is a station that I believe that's at the Erie Airport that both the parks and golf course irrigation systems use.

Um they get the the data that you're talking about.

So humidity in the air, um, temperatures, wind speed, all of that to calculated ET, like overall for the area.

Okay.

Um we are looking at a uh specific rainbird weather station right now.

I think it's like five thousand dollars that I could put over the grass in one area that would give me more specific data.

It's solar powered.

I think we're gonna go ahead and buy it, and we could put it in one park, just because it's got to be mounted on a pole kind of high in the air and everything uh to get that data a little bit closer.

One one last question.

This is definitely the weirdest one.

So when we mow, do we pick up the drop the clippings or do we just leave them?

They're recycled, they're recycled mowers.

Recycled deck mowers, like they're you know, they um distributed like mulch of yes, thank you, mulching decks.

Okay.

Um, and okay, so I didn't know if we were getting rid of all the so we're putting it back down where it was.

And this is in an effort to uh why why do we do that?

Well, for parks, it provides nitrogen to the grass as it decomposes.

Okay, so it's a natural fertilizer.

That's what I wanted to hear.

So that's great.

Uh from open space perspective, it's an additional layer of safety as well, um, being able to step off the main trail if you need to uh and not having having a little bit more uh awareness of any wildlife or critters that might be coming um from the side so that a bull snake doesn't spook you.

Um but I think also historically they were referred to as beauty bands, and um they've become mainstream because they've been um helpful when it comes to safety and user that's why I know that we do that.

I was just wondering if it was also a recognition that it re um re nourishes or whatever the land surfaces.

Last question.

So we're invade we're pulling out the noxious weeds.

Get it, and someone who may or may not have opened the little urbal apothecary said to me one time, hmm.

I wonder why they're there all the time.

Uh is it a and I understand this is beauty, this is safety, that's why we pull them, they're invasive.

They go down the list of all the things that they potentially do are gonna the problems are gonna cause.

Is there any way to look at ideologically?

Can we look at ways to not spend time removing that and reorient it into some other reality for us?

So I don't know where I'm going with this, but I mean, do we are we just gonna keep pulling them and pulling them?

Is that the end game or so uh ecologically speaking?

We have our noxious weeds are ranked within Colorado.

So there's list A, which is the worst B and C.

There's ones on watch lists, some of those jump from watch list to list A.

And um, those are all ranked because of their uh danger to affecting the ecology, and that's how monocultures can be formed, and then they crowd out our native.

So we want to be removing our noxious weeds to uh increase the biodiversity of our native plants.

We have a lot of um specifically insects, but also uh all wildlife that co-evolve with our native plants, and without them, it's basically like giving them potato chips every single day.

So we want to remove those noxious weeds so that we can allow the natives to grow, but there's a mindful approach and a strategic approach to that, which uh we try to take an open space so we're balancing really establishing our new native plantings before removing a food source for pollinators.

Um, but some of those medicinal herbs that they talk about at the apothecary, and we're doing a joint walk with them for edible weeds this summer.

Um, some of those are not so much species of concern, so they're less of our priority, but the higher priority ones we are removing um, especially along the Cold Creek corridor.

Uh, we don't want to be using herbicides in those areas, so we're hand pulling them.

Um, but we're first establishing native plants so that our local wildlife continues to have a food source.

Absolutely, I love it.

So we could potentially be pulling weeds to sell the farms market uh if they're edible, and there might be other ways to reduce the work that we put into the room to remove so maybe they remove themselves or they repurpose themselves for another animal.

Yep.

Okay, thank you.

That's all I have.

Counselor Johnson.

We've had a couple of uh complaints about e-bikes on Cole Creek in particular.

And I'm wondering if you have any thoughts about even if it's just money, that we need more money for enforcement.

You know, what is the solution to um dangerous behavior on trails of all kinds, really?

You know, at are we monitoring the trails at all?

Is there any sort of policing happening?

And just tell me a little bit more about that issue.

Yeah, I can give you a brief overview of what Commander Sellers has relayed to me and interject if I miss anything.

So uh Public Works in collaboration with Parks and Open Space and our police department did um some monitoring of speeds along Coal Creek and along uh the trail around Wanaco Lake and found that yes, people go very fast on Cole Creek.

Um, and our police department was is able uh to utilize that data to justify increasing patrols um on Cole Creek.

So they have um they've now mandated their animal protection officers to be patrolling daily on Cole Creek.

We see them every single day in their vehicles, just there, and they're not the ones doing the enforcement, but just their presence has they've noticed a decrease in the calls about e-bike safety concerns.

Um, and then they've also increased increased their outreach with uh the local schools, like I was mentioning before.

So there is a presence.

I think that there is um there's room to expand that and that sort of justification, I think more for establishing a ranger presence or a ranger program.

Um, but we know with neighboring communities that do have rangers that it doesn't solve the problem entirely.

And and related to that, I don't I just lost my train of thought.

Um, the the e-bikes that aren't really e-bikes but are really more like electric motorcycles, those are not allowed, right?

On the trail.

Correct.

So we only allow the class one and class two.

The issue is that you can purchase anything you want on Amazon, which is what a lot of people do, um, and there's not a great way to identify the differences in the classes, which is why I'm said before it's the national problem.

And and is there signage at the entrance to trails that says that if you have this kind of bike, you are not allowed on that trail.

Is there anything that tells people that?

Yes, we have um we have signage throughout all of our trail systems that indicates that we have a speed limit as well as our e-bike ordinance, and we just printed new rules and regulation signs that are also bilingual that are gonna be installed um more than just on kiosks, but in like touch points throughout our trail system.

Uh I just want to add that it is work.

Uh my perception is that it's working.

So the planning you put in place and heard this from uh people who I there was volunteered.

Uh there was a situation that I one that I heard of where uh somebody I know was riding and got passed by an e-bike, and that person was met at the bottom of the place where they were going too fast by one of our uh peace officers, and they had a little discussion, and it's become pretty clear at their schools that this is also something that you need to consider.

So what you're doing and what the officers are doing is starting to work, and it's I will say it's not just e-bikes.

Um it's all bikers need to you know follow the rules.

Uh so uh whatever you're doing, I I mean, not whatever.

What you are doing, which I just heard, um please keep doing that, and I think education is the way to do that, and uh our when our residents know what the rules are, they can also say like, hey, that's not you can't do that.

So thank you for for all those bits and pieces.

We're not done, but it's not gonna work.

Council Janella.

Just on the note, there is a sign that says no motorized vehicles.

I walk by it a lot.

I get annoyed with it every time I walk by it because it I think it means no motorcycles is really what it's trying to say.

But it's very clear, no motorized vehicles, and that is not what the current rules are on the trail, but I was opposed to having motorized bikes, e-bikes, whatever kind of motorized vehicles long before this was put in put into allowance.

Um so I just that's a little B in my bonnet, but just that the sign needs to be updated to reflect current rules.

Um I wanted to raise a totally separate issue, um, and that's social trails.

You know, we've had some discussions at the last council meeting, it was brought up, and we've had some public comment about social trails, and I was hoping you could help us understand you know what is the current policy around social trails.

I mean, I think about the basic rules of conservation, which says stay on the trail, and that social trails are not, they're not really trails.

It's where someone has gone off trail.

So do we have a policy?

What's the formal policy around that?

I don't know if I would c consider it a formal policy as much as the criteria we use for closures uh versus what we allow, um, which I talked about already.

I don't know if there's like a better way to and it's addressed in the you know the pros plans as well, you know, about um uh closing them, you know, like growing things back, you know, to prevent uh trail erosion, especially creek bank erosion, uh, because there are some areas of concern along Full Creek right now, especially behind Suntar Village.

Right.

Yeah, and I think uh we've talked about you know uh habitat uh fragmentation is another issue, things like that.

I mean, you I think you mentioned that there was one social trail that was like adopted at knee bone.

Uh yeah, we formalized a social trail in between Rothman and Nebone.

Um that it was it wasn't a concern with our conservation goals to establish it.

We do that, that happens occasionally uh throughout each year.

We want to evaluate areas where we notice people are going and they're always gonna go that way, and it might not cause erosion or habitat fragmentation, so we'll formalize it.

Okay, but then the places where we have closed the social trail, like put up a barrier, things like that.

That is because of some of these these reasons of erosion or habitat fragmentation, things like that.

Correct.

So the policy is those are closed trails, they should not be not be walked on.

Right.

Yes.

If I had it my way, I would be able to, you know, say just only use the main trail, but I also understand there's a desire to utilize some of these spaces that are off trail, and so we're really trying to balance um the approach.

I I think about you know some of the trails um in Boulder Mountain Parks where they're putting up, you know, some of these.

I think in one of the pictures, there's the big barrier, the the no uh fastener barriers that I've seen put up.

Um is there the possibility of putting up something more substantial than these, you know?

I think there's a small rope on on a couple of the trails I've seen.

It's something we're pursuing.

It uh depending on the location and most of the locations that we have.

Um it's a warrants uh floodplain permit, uh uh a hefty floodplain permit, not just an internal one.

Okay, okay, thank you.

Any other question from council for the open space team doesn't look like it.

We appreciate your time.

Thank you so much so much.

Thank you.

Creep down.

Electric vents.

I put that there, but I don't know if that's just a lot of people.

We would do it twice.

Okay.

Okay.

Sorry, you don't get your mouse.

All right.

I will hand it over for a much needed water supply update to our uh public works director, Jeff Arthur.

Thank you.

Um good evening, Mayor, members of council.

Um, Jeff Arthur on the public works director.

I have with me, Carrie Bischoff, who is our water resource manager.

Um so tonight we are going to talk about water supply.

Um, as council members, you will you can expect to be asked um regularly to make major decisions about water that involve public health, the environment, and um in some cases really billions of dollars.

And so our goal tonight is to give you kind of some foundational knowledge of that when we bring you individual items over the course of the year, we provide information analysis with that, but really to kind of hit on some foundational stuff within one aspect of that.

Um so we're gonna really just scratch the surface, but we're gonna start with uh a brief overview of the utility enterprises, and then we're gonna um zoom in on our source water system, kind of talking about where we get our source water from.

Um, and then we will talk about how things are looking with that so far this year.

And the third segment will be a preview of the integrated water efficiency and drought plan that we are working on.

You'll see that again in April at a workshop.

Um we'll have breaks for questions between kind of the three main sections.

So just to start things off, and we this came up a little bit at the retreat, but Lafayette's utilities operate as enterprise funds under TABER, and basically what that means is they each run as a separate business.

Um they're funded by rates and fees that are assessed to customers rather than by taxes, and those rates and fees can only be used for enterprise purposes.

Um kind of the advantage to this, and while it's why it's very common in Colorado is that gives council the opportunity to set rates and fees without going to the voters, um, which is helpful since water use doesn't really track with economic conditions, and so it's a way to not have purchasing power a road for the things we need to buy goods and services to provide water over time, and it also allows issuance of debt without going to the voters, which is really important because a lot of these things are regulatory mandates and to go through a process to have people decide whether or not to violate ECA regulations might be less than productive.

So where are those revenues come from?

Um I think most people are probably familiar with your monthly utility bill that includes a combination of fixed service charges and uses charges.

Um people may be less familiar with some of the fees that we assess to new customers, and those are one-time charges that are largely to defray the capital expenses associated with adding customers to the city, and those sort of break into two different pieces.

Um aspect of that is something called a tap fee, and some places call it a plant investment fee.

Um and Lafayette, we kind of have a hybrid of two different models.

So there's one model of tap fee, um, which is called a buy-in methodology, and you're essentially buying stock.

Everyone else has already built the company, and you want to come in and take advantage of that company's assets, and you buy a proportionate share of stock in the company.

So a portion of our tap fee is based on that.

And there's another model that's called capital expansion, which is if you're coming in and we have to build a new treatment plant, the cost of that treatment plant should largely fall on the folks who are directly benefiting that and driving those costs.

And then a separate piece from that at this point, because we are continuing to add to our water rights portfolio to support growth, new growth is required to dedicate water rights acceptable to the city.

We do have an option where the city can consider cash in lieu of water dedication for small amounts.

The public works director has authorization to do that just because it's not really practical for something really small scale to go through that process.

For anything over 10 acre feet, that's something where council has the opportunity to weigh whether it's in the city's best interest to do that.

So it's all the same water, but it's broken into three different utility enterprises.

To some degree, it's broken up that way just because of the regulatory frameworks are a little different for each of them.

So the water side is really we're taking mountain snowpack, we're diverting it from rivers and streams, we're putting in reservoirs.

That's really the piece of the puzzle we're gonna focus on tonight.

Um from there, it goes to our treatment plant on baseline road, we treat it to federal standards, goes through a network of pipes and tanks out to our customers across the city, and it serves domestic irrigation and fire protection purposes.

Umce folks have used it and it goes down the drain in their homes and businesses, it makes it its way through another pipe system.

Um we call the overall system water reclamation, but wastewater and sanitary sewer are it's all kind of different eras of kind of the same terminology.

Um it gets to the water reclamation facility, which is out on Arapahong County Line Road, and we have an incredibly sophisticated facility there by which we recover the clean water from the wastewater, and that water goes back into Coal Creek and en route to the Mississippi River.

Um thousands, if not millions of other people use that before it makes it to the ocean.

Um then the third utility is stormwater, also here called stormwater or drainage.

Uh, part of the same water cycle, but it's how we manage local precipitation events to minimize flooding impacts.

Um, and so we're also um under our state permits responsible for making sure that we minimize the water quality impacts of urbanization on downstream ecosystems and water users.

Um they'd consider related to storm water.

Um, in some parts of the country, there's what's called a um I'm losing my riparian doctrine.

So, in some parts of the country, when water falls on your property, you have rights to it in Colorado, including the stormwater, it falls under the prior appropriations doctrine, and Carrie's gonna talk about that later.

But the stormwater follows the same rules, and so one of the things that means is when a development comes in and it puts in a detention pond, that pond has to drain in 72 hours because it's not their water, it has to go back to the stream for downstream users.

Um I'm gonna talk about a few kind of big picture statewide things again because it is all the same water and interconnected.

Um Colorado's a headwater state.

This is a just an illustrative graphic of the Colorado River system with the rivers sort of scaled based on their annual flow.

Um, we're in the South Platte Basin, which is sort of in the upper right and flows to Nebraska.

The biggie on the left is the Colorado River.

Um, there are interstate compacts, which are basically trees between the states that govern how much water has to make it to the border in each direction and the terms of that.

Um, so even when you hear about things like issues with Lake Powell or Lake Mead or on the Colorado River, um, those directly and indirectly impact us because again it's it's all the same water, it's all interconnected, and so we are involved in that.

Um, a couple kind of interesting stats to provide context for some of the stuff we're gonna talk about later tonight.

Um, about 85% of Colorado's precipitation falls on the west slope.

Um, most of that comes in the form of snow.

Um, conversely, most of the people are on this side of the divide, and so over the years there's been massive amounts of infrastructure put into to move the water to where the people are.

Um, another interesting consideration is about 90% of the water use in Colorado is ag that becomes important.

Um kind of one piece is there's there's a lot of tension in the state around agriculture, and because a lot of what happens is growing municipalities will will buy a farm and dry it up to free up water, and that's a topic of discussion statewide.

Another thing to consider with that is um water goes into a lot of things.

So cheeseburger ballpark is about 675 acre feet or not acre feet, gallons of water.

Sorry, I realize units matter.

So but again, you know, it's maybe not something you think about, but as we talk about water efficiency, water gets used in a lot of ways.

And so as we walk through some of the water efficiency and drought measures tonight, there's it's in this broader context of water gets used in a lot of ways and is all kind of interconnected.

I'm gonna zoom in on how we use water in Lafayette.

Um so this graph is our monthly treated water production for the past 25 years.

Uh each of those little dotted lines is a year.

That blue line is our 20-year average, and that orange line is the average for the last five years.

So just a couple observations on this.

So the areas in blue are the the winter months where our use is almost entirely indoors.

You'll notice that there's very little variability year to year.

Um, there isn't an obvious increase over time, even as the communities grown during that time.

There's probably a couple things that contribute to that.

One of the biggies is that plumbing fixtures and appliances have become increasingly efficient over that time.

So as we've had new growth, and as people have replaced those things, we haven't seen that increase proportionally to population.

Um but if you look at the areas in red, um, we use about five times more water in a month in the summer than we do in the winter, and that is a lot of water that doesn't include the golf course, Wanaka Lake, or Thomas Farm.

This is just the treated water component of that, and it's expensive water because we have to have that infrastructure year-round to be able to handle those peak demands, even though it's not being fully utilized in the summer, um, in the winter.

So another consideration is um our infrastructure has to be able to meet that peak capacity.

Right now, our treatment plant has to run 24-7 with everything running smoothly to do that.

It shakes a little bit when we get in those umbrella ranges, but we're you know, we're we're able to do that, but that's not really a good place to be operationally because it provides you really very little ability to respond to equipment failures or other issues.

Um how this sort of segues into some of the rest of this is as we talk about conservation.

Outdoor is a huge focus, and we we do a lot of things related to awareness because it's still important for people to be conscious of efficiency, but in terms of things that are likely to move the ball for Lafayette, outdoor use is really where we have the most opportunity to move some things forward.

Um, this is the same graph, but I've highlighted 2024 in green and 2025 in purple, and kind of the message with this one is it's really about the weather.

Um 2024 was a fairly dry year, um, ended up being above the 20-year average.

2025 is a fairly wet year, and is below the 20-year average.

Um, so it's we're not really seeing an increased use over time, it really varies dramatically, and you can see um like the 2002 drought is conspicuously low on there, we've got some spikes, and so we are trying to consider a wide range of scenarios as we plan.

And that segues into climate.

So we have a lot of this data, but we also have a lot of indications that historic weather patterns are not a good indication of what we should plan on in the future, and really to some degree in the present.

Um, so regional projections speak to more variable precipitation, more extreme weather events, and that um isn't just floods that have an impact, but fires impact watersheds and impact water quality and how things run off.

Um it's anticipated that we'll see increased temperatures, and that there's certainly our indications that that's already happening.

That has a couple of impacts.

One of them is the timing of runoff from the mountain snow pack, um, which impacts the water rights system, it impacts how we use reservoirs, and we also can expect increased irrigation demand, and we're seeing some of that now.

If you look at um subset of those different years, you can see that the amount of time that we're in sort of peak irrigation season is getting wider on that.

People are turning things on earlier in the spring and leaving them on longer in the fall.

Um can I ask one question?

Sure.

In this graph that you have, was there ever a time when we did any water restrictions in any of those drought years that is reflected in here?

So the biggie is 2002, and that's that blue dotted line that's farthest down.

And you could see that it kind of started to creep up in the spring, and then there were severe water restrictions.

And those lasted through the end of the year, and there was a big drought buster snowstorm in early 2023.

And you know, and it rebounded back after that.

So again, that was we'll talk a little more about later of how things are looking now, but in an extreme situation, really we have to drastically curtail our outdoor water use to make sure we have supply for essential uses.

So one of the most important things that we can do to manage uncertainty is have the ability to store water from wet years to be able to use it in dry years.

So yes.

So right now, we've I've used this metaphor before, and hopefully everyone still knows what a checking account is.

But the city sort of has for water, we have a checking account.

What we don't have, and what we probably should have in most places have is a year of water and checking, but a couple in savings.

So we really kind of best practice more to have like three years of supply, and we have one, roughly.

Um, and so what that means is when we have a dry year, we have to respond really almost immediately because we don't know if it's gonna snow next winter.

Um so we have several water storage projects that are in the works to um help basically firm up the yield of our water rights.

If one of them has some additional water rights, but for the most part, they are projects to make sure that when our water rights have a good yield in a year that we are able to hold on to that and use it for a year where they don't perform as well.

So one of those is Goose Haven, that's a city project.

Um we were really fortunate to fill one of the cells there last year and have a couple more that we hope to see um be able to complete and fill this year.

And Carrie's gonna talk a little bit about that more later.

Um, we are part of the gross reservoir environmental pool.

It's kind of a cool partnership between City of Boulder Lafayette and Denver Water.

Um, and the outcome of that once that moves forward is that we will be able to deliver water to Lafayette in the winter, and that will essentially create an in-stream flow program to keep South Boulder Creek from drying up in the winter.

So it has a really positive environmental effect, but also gives us ability to deliver water in a portion of the year where we haven't been able to do that.

Um, that project has had some legal issues.

Um it is back under construction, but there's some issues Denver water needs to resolve before they'll be allowed to fill it.

Um chimney hollow is um additional storage to firm up the yield of the windy gap project.

Um that got completed last year, but unfortunately, um the quarrying of rock on site for the dam was determined to have used some rock that had naturally occurring uranium in it.

It's not totally unusual in Colorado, but there's some work underway to make sure that we understand the best way to manage that before that gets filled with water and delivered.

So there's some things in the works on that, and that's not delivering water yet.

And then finally, there's the Northern Integrated Supply Project, which actually is new water rights and new storage.

Um that is similarly has had some delays due to lawsuits, and then that results in cost escalation.

Um, there was a hundred million dollar settlement last year on that, and that has driven the price up enough that the partners in that are evaluating the best path forward, whether we make some modifications to the scope, um, with how much water different partners are in for, whether we need to bring new people to the table.

So council will hear from us, I think in the next couple of months with the 22nd agreement to basically to be part of the project, and we anticipate recommending continuing to do that.

We put significant investment in it, but uh before it actually moves forward with the big dollars in the construction.

Um, we'll be working with Northern Water and the other partners to make sure we have an understanding of what the project will deliver, what the scope is and what the ultimate cost will be.

Can I just have a quick quick question on that?

These are all storage projects, not necessarily new water rights associated with them.

So Goosehaven is basically to firm up city zone water rights.

Gross reservoir is yeah, again, new storage.

Denver water is letting us put our water rights and some city boulder water rights in their reservoir.

Chimney Hollow is firming up Windy Gap.

NISP is actually new water, it's water rights on the Pooder River, actually, and that will be water rights and storage.

Okay.

And we will get into probably more detail than you could ever want on those when we bring it back because they're all big ticket items, but that's just to kind of give you an overview of what's in the works.

So at this point, I'm gonna turn things over to Carrie, and she's gonna go in a little more detail on specifics of Lafayette's source water system, and then we'll have a break for questions at the end of that.

So I'm Carrie Bischoff on the water resources manager.

Happy to be here tonight to talk to you about our source water system.

Um y'all hear me okay?

I'm told I have a low voice.

Um, you know, Jeff gave a little bit of background into the water in Colorado and kind of reference this.

So the prior appropriation doctrine is a legal framework to regulate the use of water in Colorado.

Uh, this uh legal framework has been in place since before Colorado was a state.

Uh it's the concept essentially first in time, first in right.

And so what this means is an appropriation is something that is made when somebody takes water physically from the stream and places that to a legal beneficial use that gives you that appropriation that gives you that right to use that water, and it kind of puts your place in line.

And so the person that makes the appropriation first is first in line and kind of sew on, sort of down through the system.

Um, as you can imagine, our rivers and streams in Colorado have a lot more appropriations than we have water, physical water supply.

Um, so this priority system becomes very important.

The uh state engineer's office administers uh water rights in the state and water usage, and they do this down to the local level with water commissioners who actually daily will set a call on a local river or stream, and that's like a priority date that they put on a location.

And if you have a water right that is senior to that priority date, you're able to divert.

And if you're junior to that priority date, you have to um curtail your diversion.

Uh, the oldest water right in Colorado is the People's Ditch in the San Louis Valley.

That's an 1852 priority.

On Boulder Creek, the number one water right is the 1859 Lower Boulder Ditch, and on South Boulder Creek, it's the 1860 Howard Ditch.

Lafayette owns uh portions of both of those water rights.

Uh they started to acquire Howard Ditchwater back in the 1930s, or we did, and um the lower boulder ditch water right in the 1980s.

So those are really valuable water rights.

So, where does our water come from?

Uh, we have two basins of supply currently.

About 80% of our supply comes uh from our local basin, the Boulder Creek uh watershed, and that's outlined here on the aerial in pink.

Uh that's uh Lafayette there in the green in the eastern part of the watershed, and this uh extends basically from the divide on the west to the confluence with the St.

Brain.

And we have a rot variety of water rights uh that we can utilize from the Boulder Creek Basin from the very senior ones that I mentioned up through some that were appropriated in the early 2000s.

Our other basin of supplies, the upper Colorado River Basin.

Uh, we get water from the upper Color River Basin through Northern Water System, and that's through our ownership in the Colorado Big Water Thompson Big Thompson, Colorado Big Thompson, and Windy Gap units.

And so these graphics show uh Northern Water's um supply systems for both of those uh water supplies on the west slope.

Uh they collect and store water in Lake Granby.

From there, it gets uh moved into and piped across uh Rocky Mountain National Park through a tunnel, uh comes out on the east slope.

It does uh can head to the north to Horse Tooth Reservoir for our purposes, it comes south uh to Carter Lake.

From Carter Lake, it comes down to Boulder Reservoir, and from Boulder Reservoir uh gets delivered to Boulder Creek, and we pick that up at our diversion uh just downstream of that.

And so this is kind of a map, just an overview of our local system.

And so, like I mentioned, we have um look at a pointer on here.

There we go.

So we have a diversion off of Boulder Creek here at the north, uh, part of our system.

That's right at 75th Street.

Uh, from there it goes into about a five-mile pipeline uh to our Goose Haven Reservoir complex.

And we also divert off of South Boulder Creek uh into a ditch into baseline reservoir.

From baseline reservoir and from the Goose Haven Reservoir complex.

Oops, the water gets moved into the raw water pipeline and to the water treatment plant on Baseline Road.

So this is a picture of our diversion up at Boulder Creek at 75th Street.

You can see this if you're headed north on 75th Street, it's on the east side of the road.

We turn water into a headgate there and into our pipeline, the Boulder Creek Pipeline, which, as I mentioned, is about a five-mile-long pipeline.

It goes from 75th Street all the way to our Goose Haven Reservoir complex, which is about Isabel and Highway 287.

It goes into the first cell there at Goosehaven that we we now call cell A.

They're not great names.

And then it moves through.

It moves through several cells before it ultimately gets pumped into that raw water pipeline and moved to the water treatment plant.

Jeff mentioned this, but we uh actually had a new cell at Usehave and come online this past uh fall.

Uh we call it cell C.

It's right in the center of the complex.

It's about a 750 acre foot bucket to hold our water.

We got permission to start filling that uh in September.

Uh the Colorado water year ends on October 31st.

And so we had until October 31st to get water into that reservoir.

Otherwise, we wouldn't really have the supply available after that date.

So we started filling about the second week in September, about a week or so later, at about mile 4.9 on that five-mile pipeline.

We started to see water bubbling to the surface in the open space to the just the west of the complex.

Umfortunately, that water bubbling uh sort of progressed to a total failure of the pipeline.

This is uh this is a 36-inch pipeline.

It's uh it's less than 25 years old, so there's probably some existing defect there that just sort of unfortunately progressed right when we were filling.

Um, so we had a lot of uh really great support from others in the public works department.

Our utility engineer Melanie did an excellent job of getting us a contractor up there, and we got a 20-foot section of that pipeline repaired in the middle of October, and with two weeks to spare, we were able to continue filling.

We turned the water back up and we got it full.

On October 31st, uh we turned off and cell C, our brand new cell was full.

Uh the other cells were a little bit lower, but we got the new one full.

And so this we started this water year on November 1st with what we could tell looking back at past records with the most water Lafayette has ever had in storage.

Um, so that's pretty exciting.

So even these small projects give us this boost to our reliability and our our water security.

So if we move over to our South Boulder Creek side of our system here on the right hand side, this is the new dry creek carrier headgate.

This is right where South Boulder Road crosses South Boulder Creek.

Uh this headgate uh in partnership with Trotter Limited, we had some automation added to this in the past.

Uh they added a two years ago.

We had it uh last year was the first uh water season we had it operational.

This big metal thing right here isn't part of it, so it's this uh this structure right here.

So we can actually operate this from our computer, from our cell phones, we can set a flow rate.

Um, it makes it so efficient for us uh to capture our water.

We can really capture all the water we want to capture and be um just really thoughtful with how we do that, and it's really gonna that type of technology is so useful, especially when it's drier and you want to make sure you could chase all the flows that you can get.

Um this type of technology we'd love to get on all of our diversion structures.

So if you go a little bit just down from that, after you turn the water into that new dry creek carrier, it goes to this head gate, which we call the Y.

Um, our naming is not great.

So that's where it splits.

It's uh Enterprise Headgate to Baseline Reservoir.

This is a 1930s vintage headgate uh with hand crank wheels in this old concrete.

It goes through open space and comes through these head gates by Cherry Vale Road.

That's Lafayette's Flume on that picture there on the right, kind of the left side, you can see water coming through that flume.

That's uh Lafayette's from Cherry Vale, it then goes into baseline reservoir.

Um baseline reservoir is owned by the baseline land and reservoir company.

with hand crank wheels um this old concrete it goes through open space and comes through these head gates uh by cherryvale road that's lafayette's flume on that picture there on the right kind of the left side you can see water coming through that flume that's uh lafayette's from cherryvale it then goes into baseline reservoir um baseline reservoir is owned by the baseline land and reservoir company this is a private irrigation company um of which Lafayette owns 70% of the shares so Lafayette staff um actually has a big role in running this company and we actually have to run it as a private irrigation company and so we kind of have to do this sort of dual role of making sure we're um you know doing our our duty to all the shareholders of baseline land and reservoir company while also uh ensuring that Lafayette uh gets their water supply the reservoir has about five thousand acre feet of storage capacity um we Lafayette utilizes this reservoir space is 70% of its ownership both um through its ownership of baseline shares and we also have agreements that allow us to utilize it and during the irrigation season uh we still do agricultural releases out of this reservoir so we're out there opening the outlet to let water to the ag users in the eastern part of the county in addition to um our water supply facilities we deliver to a couple parks facilities uh we deliver water to Wanaka Lake both through the raw water pipeline and also through a couple uh ditches off of South Boulder Creek uh parks uses water out of Bonica Lake to irrigate the park and we also provide water to Greenlee Wildlife Preserve we have a couple customers off that raw water line uh Indian Peaks golf course and Thomas Farms open space both both receive um water off of the raw water pipeline uh through metered deliveries nice we'll we'll pause there before we go into the next section I know there's two other sections so if you ask any questions that are coming up just let us know but are there any questions from council on this particular section Council Fridland?

Um I'm curious in terms of the rules of you know like our water rights what we're kind of allowed to pull versus like I don't know what you call it but the reclamation requirement like we we have to what are we required to release downstream once it's been treated um is there a is there a number it's specific to the each individual water right essentially so it's time we do we have to submit accounting to the state and to some degree it's forensic but you basically have to provide them this is which water rights we were using on which day and so it's this elaborate matrix of making sure that you're using rights so you don't accidentally end up abandoning them and then using what's in priority and then a piece of that is some of those rights we have a right to reuse the affluent and and some we don't it's single use and it has to go downstream.

So one of the things and I I didn't mention it when we hit the slide but with Goosehaven part of the concept of that reservoir is we in the future hope to install a pipeline from the water reclamation facility to Goosehaven and by doing that we can jump those reusable rights farther upstream and be able to reclaim more of that for an additional use because it'll kind of shuffle the the priority of things on the creek it's it's probably not in the immediate future is something we're gonna have to take on debt for but it is there's an opportunity there because we're not fully utilizing all of our reusable rights at the moment.

Roughly about 60% of our water rights are reusable.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'm also curious about the NISP project as you mentioned there's been a number of a few high profile uh funders that have signaled that they might weave or have fully left to tell us more there and then I think also you know with that project I guess I worry about like sunk cost and throw in good money after bad you know that sort of thing of like when is the right time to leave is there right time to leave like so that's the the basis of my question.

So there are a couple challenges one we've we've put a sizable investment into getting it this far and if we drop out we'll forfeit that and while the costs have gone up associated with the project the cost of water in general have gone up and so if we ultimately need this water there isn't an obvious path to drop out of this and go buy something cheaper.

And so we anticipate that the project will evolve and that there will be partners.

And so I mean, one of the things that may happen is it gets phased in a different way.

And where that sort of ties into the discussion of TAP fees.

So it has you know ideally minimal impact to existing customers that have already paid for other sources.

And so there were votes talking about leaving the agreement.

Have they officially left the agreement?

No.

No, the agreement hasn't renewed yet.

So yeah, it's not an official action.

Thank you.

And at this point, the agreement that we're bringing forward, I think in April is just to continue.

It's it's not the it's not committing to the financing of the construction.

It's just continuing to have a seat at the table.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh, this is fascinating.

Thank you both so much.

My question might be related to the next section, so please stop me if it is.

But you mentioned earlier that it's ideal to have about three years of water supply, and we only have one.

If we could briefly blue stack, what would we need to do to get three years of water supply?

What would that look like for us?

Do you want to take do you want to take that?

Or do you want me to I so we are continuing to assess and work to update our modeling?

So one of the challenges is is everything's based on historic records, which are proving to be not terribly useful.

Um so you know, we have been working with our um, we have water resources so specialized that we actually have a separate attorney and a separate um water rights engineer, and we are working on updating our model on that to better understand what we can expect for yield.

Um the hope is with the storage we have planned that we'll be long-term, I think, in that ballpark.

Um, but it again just with kind of what's going on with the the planet, it's um you know we don't want to be overly conservative, but we also it's essential to human life, and there's huge consequences if we um you know aren't able to we have an extended drought, so like we're hopefully we're in the ballpark, but we're continuing to explore that, you know.

And one of the the big concerns, and and Carrie will talk about a little more is as we get into the the drought planning, it's figuring out what our priorities are.

Um and kind of the first thing that gets hit in a drought is landscaping and trees, and so you know there's consequences to how often it is is it okay to have a shortage that's at the level where we we have you know some of those things that aren't replaceable um severely impacted.

So it's a long way of saying that we hope we're in the the right ballpark, but we are continuing to you know be vigilant and and make sure that we are continues the best data we can get our hands on your presentation.

Uh thank you.

I just had two quick quick questions.

Hopefully, the head gates that we that aren't tech.

Um do we own them and how much does it what's the ballpark to buy a new head gate that's higher tech that you can adjust easily?

Yeah, so we um own several of them, the non-techie ones.

Um, and it really depends on what you need to replace it with.

Uh you know, we have uh project identified to try to look at that, sort of come up with uh sort of a scope of work for what that might entail.

Um sometimes you have to entirely replace the headgate with a completely different style of headgate, and sometimes you can add automation to an existing head gate, which is what we did at the one I showed you the picture of.

Um it's sort of a sort of a niche field, so there's not a lot of um uh people that do that.

It's kind of specialty work.

We have one that we work with in the in the boulder um area, and they are so busy that they're even hard to so is uh thousands or millions to um I would say it probably tens of thousands.

Tens of possible.

Um and one other question are there any First Nation um people who have water rights in Colorado?

In Colorado, yes.

And are they do you ever run into them when there's a call?

Um not on not in our basin.

I have not.

Not in our basement.

Yeah.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilor Junilla.

Really fascinating discussion.

Uh appreciate you being here.

Um are there other local storage opportunities that are you know high in the sky, wish list thinking future big picture, like someone had the vision to build goose haven?

Are there other things that are on our future locally as opposed to like NISP or some of these other gross reservoirs?

Yeah, I mean, I think I think the city wisely kind of has gone with a strategy of having some investment in a lot of different things.

So the fact that we're in gross, we are expanding our own supply, we're in a you know, a um two projects with northern water is good strategically.

Um I don't know that there's anything really local in the works.

Okay, just curious if if it was you know long-term thinking, oh, this parcel could work as another cell F, I don't know, making this up, right?

I think there's like uh statewide, there's like big dream projects that you know probably may not occur, but that's lots of municipalities joining like this NISP project, yeah, for example.

Um of these uh these headgates and these flumes.

Correct me if I'm wrong, or or explain to me how they work.

Is it you know if the water flow in the in the ditch or in the creek is is high enough, it automatically diverts into something that goes into our system?

You have to open it.

You have to open it.

So uh Brian who works with me actually goes out and physically opens uh the head gates and adjusts them uh depending on the style it is.

It could be a flume with a stock gauge and a certain level, and that flume equates to a certain flow rate.

Um like the uh you know the automated headgates read um different uh different stations that the state uh maintains, uh different uh flow stations where you can get those gauge readings.

And the one that we have at 75th Street is uh sort of a formula through for the pipe it goes through, and then that's actually right at a meter five miles down the line.

Um so they're all kind of different.

Yeah, and that one seems easy because it goes directly into our pipeline.

We're the only user for for these things like baseline or gross.

Are there ways how I mean how do we track what water that we capture when it's our turn to capture water?

Do we have flow meters and these kind of things?

We knew that we put in two acre feet into baseline on this day, or yeah, I mean we would measure it in, and if there's multiple uh entities, you know, delivering at the same time, you'd have to coordinate whose water is whose, and then you'd have to account it, account for it and keep track of it all.

So one more question, and that's evaporation.

I assume there's evaporation losses on all of these um these sites.

I think Goose Haven maybe has the potential to do something different than we would do with baseline or gross reservoir as far as limiting evaporation, right?

Um are there things that we've thought about to do that to limit evaporation?

I assume it costs money.

Can we just talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, I mean, from a large scale, I think it's just it's difficult.

Um, there are there are places that you can get these little plastic balls that go over the top.

Um there are places that have done solar fields.

Um, you know, certainly one of the challenges we have is wind.

Um you know, we have actually a few solar-powered aerators on the reservoirs, and just kind of keeping those from having issues or challenges, and you know, and if we ended up with a million plastic balls blown across 287, C that would probably not be so it's it's definitely like it's stuff we keep an eye on and see what's working.

It hasn't really taken off in this part of the country at this point, but it's certainly it's it's common in other parts of the world.

Yeah, it's something that I've just I don't know if we talk about or think about.

So I just wanted to raise that that it makes me think about you know, wildlife uses of some of these reservoirs or what as well.

If you're interrupting that, maybe you want to avoid that, right?

I think follow up the evaporation question, which is in some of those charts that you have.

Um does a hot summer or you know, certain kinds of weather really affect evaporation in a way that uh those uh I I'm not really sure if I saw that reflected in any of those charts.

The evaporation um kind of happens before it gets to the graph, if that makes sense.

So that's happening um before the water gets delivered out of the reservoir primarily.

Um we lose in the heat of the summer, we lose quite a bit of water, um, a couple hundred acre feet a month to evaporation.

So another kind of related challenge to both of those things is um when we get warm temperatures, we have a lot of challenges with algae blooms.

Um of the things we've tried to do first and foremost, we've we're trying to move intoward managing things as ecosystems versus as reservoirs because if you can get the system in balance, things sort of take care of themselves.

Um, and historically, you know, it's been a lot of use of herbicides and other methods along those lines.

Um, what we did add a couple of years ago on that front, um, are these you'll see them in baseline reservoir, and you probably see them from the Rod in Goose Haven, but they're um there's solar panels and they have an ultrasonic, um, and it basically disrupts algae's ability to float.

So before it can kind of explosively take over the reservoir, it causes it to sink and basically die off before there's so much of it that we have a water quality and kind of an unstable ecosystem in the reservoir.

So but that that would be a challenge with if we if we put solar panels or or balls over the top, we might help the evaporation, but we'd also have to be conscious of how we keep the the ecosystem in balance.

Yeah, I think we're ready to move on.

All right, so I'm going to a little bit now of sort of this early season water supply outlook.

Um, look at this scene.

We have not seen much of this this year, this pretty beautiful snowy scene.

Umifest it.

Let's make this happen.

And so we're uh in water resources, we're kind of constantly watching all kinds of water supply indicators.

Um different times of year, different uh indicators have sort of uh different levels of meaning to us.

Uh the most important ones to us have to do with sort of our storage that we have here in Lafayette in our own reservoirs.

Uh, you know, in the winter time we monitor the snow pack uh throughout the year, we monitor the precipitation in the Boulder Creek Basin.

Um as we get into spring, uh the stream forecast starts to be uh an important tool.

We developed uh this year um a water shortage index tool, uh which I think is gonna be useful uh for our for future planning and forecasting.

Uh we monitor customer demand, and then we also, you know, things that play into um our our sort of water supply outlook is you know uh what northern issues for the quota for CBT, what the drought monitor looks like for the state, and then some more kind of regional forecasts and even national forecasts from the NRCS.

So here's uh the Boulder Creek Snowpack.

Uh this is from a couple days ago, but it hasn't uh changed significantly uh currently at about 55% of median, which is not good.

Uh we right now are in the second percentile.

Um this oops, sorry, this is a very sensitive mouse pad.

It's a 40 year period of record that they use for this graph.

The black line is the current water year.

And then you know, kind of the min and the max.

So right now we're in this uh this lower percentile.

The peak uh snow pack is typically towards the end of April that you would see peak snowpack, and that's kind of indicated by this mark here.

So we still have about two months to go before we would typically see peak snowpack for this season.

Uh but right now we have a lot of ground to make up.

Uh this is the most recent uh drought monitor.

This is actually from last week, so this is before the the snow that came last week.

But I have Boulder County uh highlighted here in the blue box.

Uh you can see some pretty significant drought in the high country, uh, extreme to exceptional uh in the high country there that's sort of bat shaped.

Um in Boulder County, uh we're looking at sort of the western part of the county, um, the higher parts of our watershed currently are showing D2, uh, severe drought, and then the eastern part of our county here where we are is in D1 or moderate drought.

There's some level of drought or of abnormal dryness over about 75% of the state.

Uh these are a couple seasonal outlooks from the NRCS.

Obviously, these are at a national scale, so they're not very fine-tuned down to a local level.

Uh, this is the March to May outlook.

Um previously I had had the February to April outlook in Colorado is falling more in that equal chances area.

Uh, this March to May has Colorado uh tending to look like it's gonna be a warmer and drier, tending to warmer and drier for that three-month outlook.

I call this don't give up hope.

So this is the kind of the precipitation timing.

This graphic on the left is from the Colorado Climate Center, and those colors uh correspond to the month of maximum average precipitation.

And so again, I have Boulder County, they're highlighted there in the box.

And so if you look at our watersheds where we get our water supply, uh the typical month of maximum precipitation is April.

So we still have April to come.

And if you look in where Lafayette is, uh, May is typically the month of maximum precipitation.

Uh this graph on the right, it's a little bit hard to see, but it's that same snowpack graphic that with the black line being the current water year.

And I threw some years on there where it was kind of like a mid to not great start and ended up looking pretty good.

Um if you kind of look on here, you know, we had some years that were low, and if you follow this blue line, 1995 was right along with us right now, and it ended up forming the maximum line at the end.

But you have to be realistic, and so 2002 did the same thing, and we're kind of following along 2002, and everyone, if they didn't experience 2002, it's probably heard about 2002.

2002 never never went up, it just kind of dove down, and it's sort of the bottom line there.

And so, you know, spring can bring a lot of different scenarios.

We're hoping it brings, you know, the one that brings us that high mark.

Um, but uh we'll continue to watch that.

So our current conditions within Lafayette overall our storage uh right now is about an 82% full.

Uh we have about 4700 acre feet of water in Goose Haven and baseline for Lafayette.

Um Goose Haven Reservoir itself is uh over 90% full.

Uh Lafayette's portion of baseline is about 76% full, and baseline reservoir as a whole is about 65% full.

We intentionally draw baseline down in the winter uh to limit the effects of ice on the dam, which ended up not being a big issue this year, but we do that every year.

That's sort of a best practice.

Umaka Lake isn't one of our water supply reservoirs, but we do supply water to it, and that's currently about 75% full.

Right now, the quota for CBT is set at 50%.

We own about 1,100 units of CBT, so that equates to about 550 acre feet of water.

They typically uh reset that quota in spring and increase it to most often about uh 70%.

Sometimes in dry years, they do higher.

And we have not used any of our CBT water, so we have that water supply available.

Current operations, there are senior calls on both South Boulder Creek and Boulder Creek.

So we and there is limited physical supply.

We don't have many water rights that allow us to divert in winter.

And there's no supply to divert if we did.

Right now we're taking about five to six acre feet a day into the uh two reservoir areas.

Um our current customer demand is about eight acre feet a day.

This is all normal, these are kind of typical operations, um typical diversion amounts, demand amounts, um, and the storage actually does have in is probably a little bit higher than normal, but they're they're typical uh numbers as well.

And so uh we just recently developed this water shortage index tool, kind of in conjunction with the drought response portion of the the plan I'm gonna talk about here shortly.

It's essentially a supply over demand formula, where if we have a greater than one, we're not forecasting a shortage.

And this uh formula gives us a look ahead to the end of the water year.

So with the conditions, how they are, how will our um supply look at the end of the water year?

If it's less than one, then we might want to do something now to make sure the end of the water year we're not less than one.

Uh for the store or for the supply part of the formula, we consider current storage, the yield of all of our water, and then we hold back a storage reserve.

So we want to make sure we never draw down our reservoirs below a certain level.

We currently set that at 85% of sort of a typical year demand.

Um the nominator of this formula is all of our demand pieces, in which we put in potable demand, the non-potable demand, and operational losses, and this is where we add in evaporation.

Um, we add in system losses, and there are some treatment losses as well.

And we kind of use this uh index to sort of give us an idea of where we are for the sort of the confidence in these numbers to be more meaningful.

It really needs to be a little bit later in the season about April time frame.

Um we get a little bit uh more confidence uh in the results of this formula, but we have played with it a little bit, kind of plugging in like what if numbers, and we did kind of play with some 2002 type scenarios, and doing that, we're kind of getting results sort of in that um just above one to just below one range as far as the the index output.

So Lafayette does have within its city code a conservation ordinance, um, just a reminder about that that limits outdoor irrigation to no more than three days a week, no outdoor irrigation between 10 a.m.

and 6 p.m.

and no water waste.

And then as part of the plan we've been working on, we did uh develop sort of this uh drought stage format here.

Basically, it goes from like a wet, meaning there's no um no drought stage uh declared, and then kind of one through four each with sort of a targeted reduction amount, kind of the inverse almost of that index I was showing you in the previous slide.

And again, kind of you know, just our sort of preliminary thoughts are we're probably I keep doing that, sorry, in that borderline there of a kind of a dry one, dry stage one condition.

We do have some really great water efficiency programs that we like to promote, and even more so when we're seeing these dry conditions.

Um we have continuing uh the popular garden of box.

Uh, there's some discounts available toward lawn replacement, uh the slow the flow sprinkler assessments where resource central will actually come and evaluate your irrigation system.

If you do that, you can be eligible for no cost smart controller or rain sensor.

Um those are limited, so sign up for those assessments early.

There's some additional rebates available for other irrigation components and rain barrels.

Uh new this year, it's a large property water assessments and an HOA turf conversion consultation program.

There's several workshops and events that the community can attend.

And there's gonna be uh some additional outreach and education this year.

The sustainability team has been working on a new water branding campaign, which is really neat, and I think you'll be hearing more about that here very soon.

And you'll get to meet Eddie the Trout.

Sustainability is also going to promote water Wednesdays, in which they're going to provide a water efficiency tip, a new tip every Wednesday.

And I will have a link to our website at the end of the presentation that you can you can take a picture of.

In summary, you know, we'll continue to monitor all the water supply indicators.

We do um so we have this draft plan that I'm gonna talk about here in the next section uh with that contains our drought response, and so we do have a drought response framework, detailed drought response framework laid out in that draft plan, which is really great.

Um our staff drought team is meeting in March, and we'll start kind of reviewing conditions together, planning things, kind of looking to what this season might look like for us in all of our different operations.

Um then we'll meet as frequently as needed thereafter.

And then, as I mentioned, um, it's really kind of that April time frame that we're probably looking to kind of make that decision or that determination of are we in that stage one or we are we not from Council?

It's there Councillor Jensen.

Do we do any variable pricing on water based on external conditions, or is it always the same price?

So yes and no.

So um we during normal times have a tiered rate structure, um, which means that um as you increase your usage, the rate per thousand gallons increases, and that's sort of set to protect and keep essential indoor use affordable, and folks who are well out of the norm pay more for that.

Um so you pay a higher rate plus more gallons.

Um, in the event we move into some of these higher drought stages, um, you know, one of the the things in the toolbox is potentially to um shift those further to impose penalties to make changes to the rate structure.

So those those are things, and we've included some of those in the the draft drought plan, um, but it's not it's not technically baked in, but we have a pretty um pretty distinct tier system to to try to discourage use that's well outside the norm.

And how do our prices compare to cities around us for water?

Um it's interesting, everyone sort of circles each other.

Um, because every council, when you bring a rate study, the slide that everyone wants to look at is the one that compares to everyone else.

And um generally what happens is somebody gets in bad enough situation that they have to do a drastic increase, and then everyone else updates their slide and goes back and gets the increase they need.

Um we have tried over the past few years to shift away from that.

I mean, you've probably seen in the the paper other communities having to do like 50% increases.

Um we have tried to um stagger things over several years.

Um that at least in my opinion is easier on customers and gives people time to respond.

I think we're probably right now we're somewhere probably in the middle of the pack.

Um but it does sort of cycle because there just is that natural tendency to put it off, and then when you have to play catch up, it's pretty drastic.

I'm I think one of the things that we're in a really positive position on is as we've made adjustments over the past several years, we've done that anticipating the costs associated with NISP.

Um so we when that moves forward, we won't be in a position as some of the other communities are where they will where they will have to make drastic changes to rates to recover that.

Um it's like in rough numbers, four years ago, five years ago, we were bringing about 10 million dollars a year and with anticipated NISP debt service of six million dollars a year, which would be a tough thing to try to close the gap on in a in a single year.

So we looked at it, and I can email you the deck from last fall, but we did look at it as part of the rate study, but it's probably most communities have changed since then.

So, do we have any pricing package for very low income folks?

What do we do to help people who are really struggling?

Yeah.

So it we have a couple things.

So one of those is and council was I think really thoughtful about this is we have kept that tier one rate as a lifeline rate and make sure that we keep water as affordable as we can for that lowest tier to make sure people at least have water for essential indoor use.

Um we partner with Sister Carmen.

Um we have a utility bill assistance program.

Um we do it through them in part because it for a lot of folks it's more comfortable to go to an outside agency than to come interact with the city.

Um as we've made changes, we've expanded our contribution there, and we also added a um a program two years ago, three years ago, um, where um folks can can apply and actually get uh just an ongoing credit on their monthly bill.

Um, and that was to help close the gap for some of that rate increase, you know, particularly if people want a fixed income.

Um that I think we have good information on that on the website, but also directly through Sister Carmen.

And then I wanted to look at the strategies that you mentioned.

You said we have a lot of good strategies, and um what I'm wondering is do we have any measurement of their effectiveness?

Like is the 750 incentive to replace your lawn working?

Is that enough?

Is it do we have a lot of people taking advantage of that?

You know, how how's that going?

Um you know, there's some things like garden in a box that just like sell out year after year.

I think last year there were some programs that didn't get fully utilized, and we've made adjustments year to year.

Um, but we do we do look at the uptake piece of like are there things that people aren't using?

Is it moving the ball?

Um thing that's been harder to try to get good data on is how effective the programs are in reducing water use.

And I think part of that is just there's so much variability year to year.

Um, you know, we have even with all the the turf replacement and programs we've added, it's really hard to look at individual water bills and go, wow, that's their usage has gone down following utilization of a program.

So that's something we're continuing to dig deeper into.

Um do we have any idea of like the numbers of people who have removed their lawn through this incentive?

Yeah, they track it.

It's through resource central.

The sustainability group works with resource central on a lot of these programs, and they do track a lot of that, and we get kind of reports at the end of the year of the I'd be really interested in knowing how effective that is.

I replaced my lawn, and I do have a did have a big lawn.

It was very expensive.

And uh like almost five times that.

Um so I don't know if seven I didn't take any because I didn't know about it.

I didn't take any of this money.

Um I don't know if money was a real factor for for somebody that $750 would be enough to I think I spent more than three thousand dollars to replace my lawn.

So I I don't know if $750 is enough.

I that's what I'm trying to figure out if that's the right amount or if there's something else.

The other thing I learned from doing that is I didn't know what I was doing.

And I could have I again if I had known more of that resource central was such a good resource to help me with this, but I didn't use them until I was almost done, and then I it was too late.

So um, like for example, I took out my turf, dug it up, and it was two and a half tons of grass.

There may be better ways like putting plastic down, you know, and just killing your grass that make much more sense, but I don't know the answer to that.

And and are we are we educating people about you know how to do things easiest and and how do we measure uh you know the effectiveness of that?

Is because it from what you said, Jeff, our excuse me, Director Arthur.

Um that lawn piece is one of the main pieces we have control over it, right?

And so if we the other thing is knowing what is the average water usage of a lawn, you know, like if we got rid of one lawn, what would that save us?

And so if we the other thing is knowing what is the average water usage of a lawn, you know, like if we got rid of one lawn, what would that save us or a hundred lawns, or you know, having a goal or a target of in any given year, you know, if by 2035 we had no lawns, that I think that would be great, or at least no bluegrass water intensive kinds of lawns.

Maybe, you know, I what I did was drought tolerant native grasses, and last summer I watered once at the beginning of summer, once at the end of the summer, and once in the middle of the summer, and that's it.

And it was very effective for me.

Um, but I don't know, you know, maybe someone else would look at that and say, well, it needs more water, you know, and they wouldn't, like you said, they wouldn't actually save water because they they kept watering the way they used to.

I'm not sure, but I it feels like there's some measurement that could be helpful to ascertain what are you know, you're developing this plan, but what are the best approaches that actually make the most difference?

And then yesterday I was looking up the HOA law, and it says, I believe still that HOAs can compel you to have a lawn.

The way I read it, it was like you can do all these things, but the exception is fronts, the front of your house.

The HOA can tell you in the front of your house that you have to have a lawn.

That's how I read that.

I you know, it's law, and it's somebody wrote it, and I could be interpreting it incorrectly, but that the HOA can still govern the front of your house and tell you that you have to have a certain amount of grass, um, which is a matter for the legislature, but um maybe not, maybe we could.

I don't know what we could do about that.

Um and most people's major lawn is in the back, right?

You know, I don't think people tend to have unless you have a great big mansion, you know, where you have a big yard in the front.

I think most people have backyards where that's most of their grass.

But I I guess my question there is is there something to be done regarding HOAs that would make this work better?

You know, or are HOAs on board and helpful?

You know, I I don't know the answer.

I think yes and yes.

So there are definitely always more things we can do.

And I mean, one of the nice things is is because most folks in most communities in the area partner with resource.

We have not only our own local knowledge, but we have kind of what's working regionally, so we can apply that expertise.

Um I feel like particularly the the rate changes have got the attention of a lot of the bigger HOAs in town.

Frankly, some of our biggest water users in town are HOAs that are watering decorative turf.

Um and or the adjacent sidewalk, or in the middle of the day, and so um we are hearing a lot from those folks.

We've had several HOAs get interested in um some of the the grants on that, and I would hope that as those HOAs um reckon with how to manage those areas that it will spark some discussions about how to administer that on individual lots.

Um because it is there's a cost to it, and I would hope that the that the boards of those HOAs and the residents of those HOAs would be having those conversations to volunteer information here.

My HOA did a pretty big turf conversion uh last summer.

Our water went down because we have we're in the middle of a conversion project.

We have not seen the returns on that yet.

I'm on the board as well, so I have direct insight to this.

But our our goal was ultimately to save money because the rate structure is such that we're paying I I'm embarrassed to say like a $2,000 a month water bill.

Um that that's a lot of money.

For a small HOA, and it it can move the needle.

And so what did you convert to?

Pardon?

What did you convert to?

Something like you've got where we will water it once at the beginning, once in the middle, once at the end.

Well, anyway, to the extent we can measure the effectiveness of those tools.

I think it would be helpful to know if we have the right bunch of tools, or if there are other things that uh might be more helpful if we need to work with HOAs.

My HOA has been talking about converting their turf to something for as long as I've lived there and it hasn't happened, and maybe there's something that would you know give them a little kick in the butt.

I don't know what that might be.

Last question, sorry, uh golf course.

I know there's a lot of people who think golf courses are just really water sucks, and I wondered if we've done any study or analysis of how our golf course is doing, and uh whether we you know put certain drought tolerant grasses on the golf course, or what are we doing with regard to the golf course?

The golf course is a pretty efficient irrigator, actually.

Well angle.

Um I uh I mean there's a uh number of areas that you know are native there.

Uh the golf course actually has a hundred and thirty-five acres of recreational grass.

Um the crew out there is really on top of and getting better all the time of cultural practices with aeration, um, you know, it in taking care of the grass and trying to use the least amount of water as possible.

Um I haven't done a study of surrounding golf courses.

I have talked to other golf courses that are of the same size.

We're actually trending a little bit better than that, but it's it's still a lot of water, I'm not gonna lie to you.

That's what I find too.

Yeah, is it's they're actually a pretty good, pretty efficient water use.

And and we brought Dennis up not to put him on the spot, but he has like really dug in since he started in his role, and um, I think made huge progress.

So I think it is it is inherently a large amount of irrigated area, but I think we have a lot of things moving in a positive direction.

They do also irrigate using uh when it's available, they use water from a ditch, um, and then they use uh raw water, so they're not using treated supply.

Correct.

Any final questions before we move into this last section?

Did you have no?

I'm good.

Okay, Mayor, I'll hold mine until we get to the next session.

I do have a question.

The first thing I want to say is uh kudos to us.

Our five year average, right?

Better than our 20 year average means we're improving.

Fabulous.

Maybe the second piece is something that we've talked about before.

I brought up uh, you know, when we talk about water before, but I now have the the right words to sort of state the idea.

So thanks to my friend uh Claude.

Um it's it's basically an energy performance contract, right?

But just water saving performance contracts, and then we can fund it in a variety of ways.

And specifically, the way that I think we could consider funding it is through on bill financing, where we invest now capital investment in improvements that are like distributed improvements in irrigation systems, for example, um, where we either share the cost with the homeowner or take the whole cost, whatever, and then over time, because of that savings, they see the same cost that they would have seen, and we then get the um we capture the the saving in the future to pay back our capital investment.

It's a long return, I think, for water, and especially for things that are not uh significant uh savings for the investment, but I think the challenge is that for a homeowner, they really don't they see very little savings.

Um and so they don't change their irrigation or they don't change their lawn, but we as a whole system see significant savings because we don't have to plan for higher peaks, and so thus maybe we do see a reasonable return that makes the investment worth it.

So anyway, I just want to say that.

I know we talked about it so that's and let's talk offline because we could probably fill a couple whiteboards, yeah.

Sort of sort through the math, but um definitely open to conversation of kind of what that might look like.

Thank you.

One one question for me.

Uh in your um kind of index, you had a uh reserve storage reserve, and I think you said we want to keep 85% as the storage reserve.

Can you just explain that a little bit more for me?

Yeah, so our if we considered a normal year, the full demand um that we would have on our system.

We want to keep 85% of that held back.

Just so that we have it available to you, so that that's we wouldn't draw storage down below that level.

Okay, okay.

Which it's just kind of our safety factor.

We've not we don't want to drain our storage.

Okay.

So that means we have to bring in a lot of water through.

Is that that's because we don't want to drain the storage, or we want to have that remaining for like emergency use.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

I think we're ready for the next section.

All right, final section.

Um, so this last year we've been working on our integrated water efficiency and drought plan.

It has a name now, it's kind of a mouthful.

But it's the Lafayette Water Readiness Plan, water efficiency and drought.

As I mentioned, it's an integrated plan.

It includes both water efficiency and drought response planning.

And it was developed in accordance with the state's guidance documents.

The state requires uh water providers of a certain size to have a water efficiency plan approved by the state, and they highly highly recommend a drought response plan.

Our two main goals with this plan are to achieve a long-term reduction in water demands and water efficiency benefits in non-drought years.

And then also the other goal is to ensure sufficient water supplies are available in times of drought and water shortage.

The plan outlines uh how we'll get there, the benefits and the goals, and our operating principles.

And I also I want to point out that this was really a great effort from an interdepartmental team.

Uh, we had about a dozen different staff from different departments participate in five workshops throughout this last year to provide feedback.

We want to make sure we get kind of the maximum buy-in on this plan.

Dennis was one of our and Jeff, our participants.

Um it's a really um comprehensive plan.

Uh this plan has kind of like two different themes, and we came up with these acronyms to sort of distinguish between the two themes of the plan, wet and dry.

Um, hopefully that makes it easy to remember.

So, wet are water efficiency times.

This is times when water supply is efficient for demand.

Um, when we say for demand, we're talking kind of typical demand, unconstrained demand.

And really the focus is on achieving these long-term demand reductions and supporting the resilience of the city, and that's done through the water efficiency program.

The other um piece to the plan is dry, and that's a drought response year.

This is when water supply is insufficient for that demand, and our focus is on short-term water savings, and it's temporary.

So there's four drought stages with temporary uh response actions.

And so in this plan, we describe uh what would happen in water efficiency times, and we have uh sort of long-term demand uh reduction targets identified to be achieved by 2032.

This plan has a seven-year planning horizon.

Um, and that's a requirement of the state.

We've identified in this uh plan our water efficiency program with about 40 activities uh that will support water efficiency and drought mitigation.

Uh, it's important to also identify drought mitigation activities because anything you can do during these sort of normal times to help so kind of reduce the severity of what has to happen in the dry time is highly beneficial.

We sort of rank these activities as uh activities we're going to continue that we're currently doing that we're going to expand.

Uh new activities, and then we also have this sort of fourth sort of wish list activity that we would do if funding and uh staffing are able to support.

And you know, kind of you saw in those early graphs, it's really that outdoor irrigation use time of year where we could feel like we could make the most difference.

The indoor uses it's really constant.

Um, it's hard to squeeze much uh more savings out of those, and so we've really prioritized uh programs that target outdoor uses.

Uh this plan, as I mentioned, it's very comprehensive, it lays out all our education and communication strategies, our resource needs.

There's a ton of data in it.

Um, a ton.

It's really technical in parts.

So if you really want to dive into the data that's in there for you, um, lots of demand data that you can look at for kind of multiple years.

And as uh it's being mentioned, we have a methodology in this plan so we can monitor if it's effective because if we can't measure it and prove that it's effective, um, it might not be working.

So we have a methodology uh to be able to do that and kind of monitor uh the effectiveness of the program.

Uh the other piece to the plan, uh the main piece of the plan is our dry or a drought response year, and in this uh we identify sort of our short-term temporary demand reduction measures.

We have them identified both for community actions and uh directed at the city.

So things the city would do throughout the four different stages of drought.

Um again, we outline implementation, something that's a little bit additional that we would do in a dry um response is enforcement.

So we we describe how we would handle enforcement, and again, we have a methodology for being able to monitor the effectiveness of our drought response.

We've come up uh we've identified four drought stages.

These are uh pretty standard among water providers.

Uh sometimes the uh terminology is slightly different, but we have uh kind of moderate through emergency and in a moderate uh stage one.

Uh that's we're looking for about an overall 10% savings in water use, and that would be through voluntary uh watering restrictions above the conservation ordinance, and really an increase in education and promotion of our programs for water efficiency.

As we get into a more advanced uh drought stage, that's when we're looking for that 10 to 25 percent water savings, and at that point, we would implement mandatory water restrictions above that conservation ordinance, severe again, additional water savings, additional mandatory restrictions above a stage two.

In stage four, um, we're looking for greater than 40 per 40 percent savings in water use.

There would be no outdoor irrigation, and again, additional restrictions above stage three.

So, what are the next steps?

Um, currently we have a first draft of this uh document uh undergoing kind of an intense internal staff review.

I've had three meetings in the last three days about it.

Um in March, uh, we'll have a draft ready for the workshop participants uh to review and provide their feedback on April.

Uh we'll turn around a third draft, um, introduce it to the advisory boards, and then we'll be back here uh April 28th uh for the council workshop.

Um, our consultant who's been working on this with us will join us and we'll give you a really in-depth review of the plan, and we'll provide a format for you to be able to provide feedback if you wish.

Uh following that, um, the plan will become available for a 60-day required public review period.

And we'll also uh do some additional outreach to like neighboring water providers and northern water.

Uh, once it goes through the uh public review and we have a final plan ready, it will come back again to council uh to be adopted uh via resolution, and we're probably looking kind of July August for that to happen, and then that final plan will be submitted uh to the CWCB, the Colorado Water Conservation Board for state approval.

And here's that QR code for our water efficiency programs.

Uh if you want to bookmark that and share that with your friends, we'd appreciate the the help in and kind of promoting those programs.

So while we're happy to answer any questions, I know you've got a couple more items, so just we will be back in April.

So if you have pressing questions, happy to take them now.

If it's um something that you want to shoot Katie or an eye an email, we can also look to address it in the April presentation.

But just a quick one.

Well, you said no irrigation in stage four.

Um concerned about people who have vegetable gardens who actually use that for their food supply.

Would they be included in that?

Especially if they had drip irrigation, you know, where it's not spraying up in the air.

As we have it laid out right now, it would be limited to like hand watering of like trees and kind of like more sensitive um vegetation like that, not outdoor gardens.

And again, it's a draft, and that's what we'll be back discussing.

But when we get to that level of drought, it's also making sure that we've got enough water for the hospital.

Sure, that makes sense.

So the other thing is the timeline you have laid out is not really very good for if we have a bad summer.

You're you know, we're talking about approving it after and so would there be any mechanisms like let's say we have the draft plan in April and everybody loves it, and you know, it's tell us to go through the process, but could you tentatively use it as your guideline pending final approval?

That's our plan is we're gonna follow the framework in this plan because we don't have another framework to follow, honestly.

So that is our plan, and you know, it's both fortunate and unfortunate, maybe that we get to test drive it a little bit to make sure that um it's gonna be effective.

Hopefully, we don't, but you know, yeah.

I think you mentioned early in the presentation, and we're heard the word conservation ordinance.

That's our three days a week, certain hours a day.

Does that ordinance give us flexibility to have additional restrictions?

I believe it probably so what we would do is uh in the event of a greater drought stage.

Um, if we were changing the law, we would come back to council and have you pass an ordinance to have it be enforceable.

Um so that's that's the the baseline, but to go above and beyond that, we would do a temporary thing or we could do to that current ordinance that would be kind of helpful on a broader scale.

Maybe that's sort of you know, once this plans in place, we look at the stage one or stage zero, and we say, you know what, we need to adjust this conservation ordinance.

You know, we say three days a week, but maybe we need to say like even numbered residences only water on Monday, Wednesday.

These people order on you know Tuesday, Friday, whatever it is.

Yeah, so we updated it a couple of years ago.

Probably the biggest thing we did as part of that um was to switch it from being it was structured as criminal violations, um, which among other things you have to prove in court beyond reasonable doubt, which is sort of tricky when you have to get up in the middle of the night to see if somebody's watering their lawn.

Um, so we switched that to civil penalties, which difference is it's preponderance of the evidence, and someone can get a fine, but they have a due process through a hearing officer.

Um likely if we move into one of these other phases, we would come to council with the proposal to reduce days a week or further constraints.

That the other thing that we have not fully utilized is we now have smart meters.

And um, you know, we are working on some things to make that um more readily available to the public.

It's unfortunately it seems that it's gonna involve replacing our utility building system.

Um, but you know, with that, the ability to in the odd and even thing historically was because like how else do you enforce it and know when people are are using water?

So, with that level of data, do we have with that an ability to make sure people are only doing two days a week but have them do it the two days that it needs it versus someone going, well, I can only water on Tuesday, so I'm gonna water on Tuesday whether it's raining or not.

Um so that traditionally that's been how agencies have done it, but I think that the technology that we have probably opens up some opportunities there.

I was gonna ask about enforcement um as well, and that sounds like that.

There's there's some avenues for that.

Yeah, I mean, the other thing that's sort of changed since we went through the last big drought is more people have smart controllers, and so you know, having somebody have to turn off their smart controller because they can only water on Tuesdays may not be the most efficient.

So you know, that's that's how it's been done in the past, but I think there are opportunities to refine that.

Thank you.

Mayor Proton.

Thank you, Maya.

Thank you, Mayor.

I was just gonna say that I don't know.

Do so when evaporation was brought up earlier.

There's a a reality, I think, for rest of the council that we are in a different climate system at this point, and uh trying to figure out how to bring this analogy through our treasurer uh to a greater level to put forth the the reality that as we warm, we warm and we don't cool off.

Uh we're starting in a level now where changes can happen faster.

So this isn't it's not a linear change that's occurring right now, it's non-linear.

And the possibility of a drought going into a drought is happening fast is can happen faster.

Um I think it might be it's gonna be hard to tell effectiveness because there's more factors, and I just want to share with Kelvin's like let's apply some grace in knowing how effective this is because we're not dealing with 10 years ago or 30 years ago's system, and things are moving uh and will continue to move.

So I just want to give you a little wee way to do the best you can to figure out how what effective this is, but knowing that the the target keeps moving of what do we have to deal with.

And if you step outside and look up, that's where our snow is.

All that stuff that's sitting on top of us, those clouds, that's where it is.

We've got we've got a situation here, and everybody knows how warm it is outside right now.

So this is a little bit different a game than we've been dealing with before.

So thank you for everything you're doing, and um we'll do the best we can.

And I really appreciate this is an amazing plan.

So I was on a call this morning.

Uh there's a monthly call at this state where they talk about water conditions and the first four months of this water year statewide are the warmest on record in the 131 years.

Yes, and it's a warming, it's a trend.

Like it's yeah, as you're saying, it's and we might see a little this going back, but it's yeah, but it's continually stepping up.

We're not gonna get to 1972's climate again.

We're we're past that.

It's really complicated, and you guys are doing great job.

Uh just really briefly would echo the kudos and appreciation for this excellent presentation.

I just pulled up the Lafayette connection that we send out both physically and then electronically with the water bill.

And just want to note that both in English and Spanish, there's a bit about turning your lawn into a waterwise garden this spring, which is really cool.

But I guess one thing that I would love to hear a little bit more of in April's how to use the water bill and Lafayette connection to continue to push this information out since everybody's getting that anyway.

Uh, and then I've got the graph here on my water bill, and you know, we try to be very water-wise ourselves, but I wonder if it's possible to explore maybe a matching, like, hey, here's where you are, here's where you could be, and sort of a maybe to kind of incentivize through data, like something uh target for people to aim at uh just because uh you laughing, Consider.

I get these, I get these on my power bill that says here's you and here's your efficient neighbors.

Yeah, and I don't know how it's possible to be those efficient.

So I just worry that we're gonna just so embarrassed without so we will likely be back at some point um, hopefully in the first part of the year.

Our utility billing system is um I can't think of a appropriate word.

Um to the point that we are struggling just to have it not double bill people, and so we are um moving toward doing uh an RFP to get a new vendor.

One of the things that we will be looking at, and that is ability to integrate with our meter system.

Cool.

Um, because the you know, the certainly the mailings and the outreach have an impact, but if we can get people when we have their attention when they get that bill, and that when they go to pay that bill or have a question about that bill that they can go, oh, here are some programs and services to reduce my use.

Here's why my bill is high, here's how I compare to my neighbors, here's how I compare to last year.

Um because we have the ability to get that data, we just don't currently have a good platform to get it out.

Um, folks with questions can call and we can actually pull that up and we can email you screenshots out of the metering system.

We just have um not got to the point that we've got a good integrated platform so people can easily get their bill information or use information in the same understood.

Great.

Well, we'll see you in a workshop soon.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I've used that service to call and get uh meter information.

Um we can get very detailed information.

So if it's ever of interest, you know, we were trying to track down a leak on the HOA system.

And it was great to be able to say, okay, we showed it off.

They said, Yeah, we can see that.

Oh, we opened it back up.

Yeah, we can see that too.

Pretty real time.

All right, well, we will move on to the board of commission work uh plans.

I think this was left over from our retreat, correct?

That is correct.

So um hopefully you've had now plenty of time with the um kind of report outs from your boards and commissions, both on their accomplishments and their desired work plans for the 2025-2026 plan.

So I am just here as a facilitator of moving this uh conversation along.

And if there's any questions we can't answer tonight, we can always come back.

Um as a reminder, this is um the first time now in this newly revised process that we are integrating in boards and commissions work plans into kind of the time frame where you all have your discussion about work plans so we can start to better align and then give that real-time feedback to the boards and commissions that we are you know generally supportive of the things that they want to explore over the next couple years.

So I will say, you know, by and large for all the boards and commissions, um, we don't have any you know significant concerns again, they're advisory only, so some of the things they want to explore.

It would always have to come back to council, but we wanted to just have an opportunity, um, not necessarily to go board by board, but just big picture.

Um, are there any um items that you would like that aren't on there for the boards to explore?

Um, again, like a work plan, it's only a couple items, you know, they can they meet once a month uh 11 times a year.

Um any concerns that you have with the proposed items, any um things that you would like to clarify or have the board clarify, and then most importantly, as you guys are the liaison, do you all commit to go back to your board and say please move forward or tweak this or tweak that?

So um happy to answer any questions, but I feel this is much more uh Mayor Tapia Vega, kind of your realm to facilitate.

Yeah, definitely.

And we I'm assuming we've all read all of these work plans that were given to us as our city manager said we've had enough time now to read them.

So we'll just go question by question and just um kind of overview.

So are there any items you'd like the boards and commissions to discuss?

And I guess we can break this down by board if there's anything you want in particular, but also just broad council Friendland.

I apologize for uh not following the questions uh that you just proposed to us, but there was kind of one high level thing that I wanted to maybe just say, and um it doesn't necessarily need to be reflected, I think this year, but to me I the HRB work plan in having the high level one, two, three, I think it was HRB, yeah.

Um education, outreach and engagement, advisory, like really high level, and then obviously just like the other others had really specific things.

To me, I think that's um really helpful, right?

Because like, yes, they have all these specific things, that's great, but those things are gonna come and go over two years, and so having alignment on here's the really like high-level buckets we're gonna be working on, and then items under that.

So I just want to say that before we dive into these very specific uh feedback pieces that I think structurally to me that makes a lot of sense and gets them thinking about sort of those high-level things rather than you know, really specific actions or projects.

So okay, so just for future reference, it's easier kind of to bucket them into those things so we can see kind of what it is.

Yeah, exactly.

And I I mean I think each board and commission could do that with the items they already have.

Um you know, but I think it I think HRV is the only one who did the yeah, I think so.

It would be more work probably to go back to them and make them go through that whole exercise.

So I'm not necessarily recommending that, but I do think to me that would be uh a good uh adjustment in the future.

Well, then the priorities get more concrete and specific.

Yeah.

Under each so that the general at the beginning and then the specifics are in the priorities.

And the specifics are gonna change or they're gonna not happen for whatever reason, and that's okay, but have they moved the ball on their high-level priorities?

Oh, we don't know that because they're not written down.

Councillor Johnson.

We we mentioned that we wanted uh some feedback from the preservation commission, and they they had already done this and it was too late.

Do we need to add that?

Or I mean, almost all of them say, you know, respond to requests from council or something generic like that.

So I don't know if it but it's not on their priority list right now.

Do we need to change that to add respond to council's request for input about the sign?

Um anyway, just I wouldn't necessarily recommend that.

That's kind of a very singular one action.

I see these as you know, taking multiple meetings for the board to kind of work through.

Um, and so yeah, at any given time, you guys can direct staff to go back to boards to get their inputs, and um, I think that's just an inherent nature of what's outlined in their functions.

But thank you for that question.

I guess I'll move on to question two because question one is a little broad, and I understand why it made it a little difficult to answer.

But from anything we read in any of these work plans, are there any concerns?

So I think that's the biggest one.

I want to make sure there are no concerns.

Counselor.

I mean it's not necessarily a concern, and the concern would be more with missing items than proposed items.

You know, I saw some of the boards mention the the capital projects that are coming on the horizon.

And I guess the question would be did each board consider that is there something that they could weigh in on on the different capital projects that might be in their lane uh in some way or you know, what some way or another?

And so that that's something that we might want to go back to them and say, hey, this is a big project that's coming.

Is there anything that you could weigh in on as part of your you know work plan this year?

So two questions there.

One, is this something you'd just like to propose to council to hope to get boards and commissions to discuss?

And then second question before you answer that, when we're looking at the project timeline for those or boards and commissions anywhere within that, okay.

So they're they're gonna be looking at this at least some boards will be looking at this as we go forward.

Yeah, and I think like that the senior or the older adults advisory board, you know, had a specific item for that, just given the relationship with you know the the plan for the the recenter incorporating the senior the older adults component.

Um and so I are there you know, did we hear that from the youth advisory board?

I don't know.

Should we?

That's maybe more of the question.

Um that's my proposal is that we would want to get each of the boards and commission to weigh in if it if there's something that's appropriate on those big projects.

What I'm assuming is that the project, I mean, well, it's very early.

Any board that would have any relevance to any of the projects would be looped in my assuming.

As part of the engagement plan, yeah.

Okay, yeah.

Okay.

That makes sense.

Yeah.

Any other concerns, anything that we want to see from our boards?

Similar to counselor Juno, not really a concern, but uh at least for my three boards, the work plans are very ambitious, and I have a lot of confidence that these very hardworking folks are gonna be able to execute a lot, but it is it is a lot for folks on a volunteer basis, particularly on a monthly meeting.

So maybe it doesn't rise to a level of concern, but just want to make sure that uh nobody bites off more than they can chew.

I think that's a great point because I think again, this is the first time that we're having them go through it and kind of the reality sets it.

I mean, you get the newbies here, especially probably realizing that as even counselors, right?

Is it just limited time, so I will be also curious to see.

And um, you know, they'll be doing report outs at the end of the year of kind of what they accomplished and see whether things take longer than what they might anticipate.

So it's a great thing to measure counselor for them.

Okay, thank you.

Um similar to kind of the you know, thread, maybe that should be in most of them or on projects.

I know one of the things I've heard from um them in the past is a desire to engage with each other.

And I wonder if you know there's certain um boards that make more sense to engage, you know, they're they have more of an intersection or uh you know they could they could enhance each other more.

And so I you know, maybe that's a place where us is where we kind of see the connectivity from our perspective, we could offer to them that like make sure let's put on you know um these two, they should talk to each other in the next two years.

Um, and maybe that's something that we could offer because I know they want that.

I don't think they know how to get it, so maybe we could help them make that happen.

Another another thought to address I agree.

I think that they're you know, having been on a board for a long time, there was discussion about how do we work with other boards where there's overlap or um I mean I think the thing that was proposed is you know the kind of board liaison in a way that like one board members attending another board's meetings or vice versa.

Um I don't know that was ever adopted, or you know, we could suggest it.

I think that's a reasonable strategy to do that, or kind of say, hey, you know, older adults advisory board, we think you need to collaborate with the arts board.

Yeah, you know, they have some items that are coming up that might be relevant to you, you know, and and have the council liaisons take that back and see if they can get a volunteer to uh maybe that's one way to do it.

Yeah, we saw great success when we got the board chairs together too, so it's something we can continue to explore.

Yeah, yes.

We don't know which boards and commissions are missing members, but maybe something specific to the mid-year recruitment process.

Which opens up on Monday.

We knew it was coming soon.

Yeah, wow.

Mayor Brunson.

Uh thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh it's dawned on me and we dawned on me when we uh counselor Bolera Bullier.

Sorry, that's perfect.

Mention not biting off more than you can chew.

Um, and I I do recognize that it is possible for uh board and commission members to feel the urgency of completing projects.

And I I think it might be through the um board chairs to make it clear that we there is a there is a level of grace that you know if you can't because things are gonna happen, and if you don't get to some of these items, um that's absolutely okay.

Uh this is it's always volunteer.

And um with that said, the addition of having them meet with one another, are I remember a lot of maybe stress coming out when there's some trend uh you know trying to work out how do we actually make that happen as well.

We've got our schedules, this is in our program, this is when we're meeting.

Uh that might be something for the boards and commission chair board chairs, boards and committee chairs.

Um to find out from them who they think they should meet with.

And that way we don't we we're not telling them who they should meet with, but find out from them who which which one, maybe one other board or uh or committee that they could put in their work plan so as not to overload you know the the the docket of what they're going to do to because this is really new, and they don't want to stress anybody out.

And if there's if they can agree on another group they should be meeting with, then that informs us of what they might be missing with what their resources are that they need to make their decisions on.

That's that's all I want to say.

Just a quick point point point of order question, maybe for the city attorney about you know if we had a subcommittee of one board meet with subcommittee of another board.

Is that problematic?

Two people from one board meeting with two people from another board.

If it's two if sorry, you're asking about under the open meetings law.

Yeah, yeah.

I think two people from one board can meet with two people from another board.

I would still caution them to be careful.

I mean it it's but I don't think it would be need to be noticed under the open meetings law.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Just one brief thing I I might add is something that really struck me in my early meetings with with my boards is the depth and breadth of connectivity they have across the region.

Um the area agency on aging.

I might am I getting that right?

Yeah, yeah, from Boulder County, uh new to me, so so the older adults advisor board liaises with them, then they're part of a regional constellation.

So, you know, I think this comes back to not biting off more than they can chew, but also offering grace.

There's so many touch points with so many different entities just beyond kind of like what we see as council liaisons.

And so I think maybe at some point it might be really interesting just to map that out.

I know that would be a mountain of work for maybe not uh juice worth of squeeze, but it would be really quite striking like how many different folks and entities are Lafayette's boards and commissions touching across the region.

I I bet it's pretty big.

Council General.

Okay, thank you, Mayor.

Kind of on the lines of the discussion, you know.

Are there other municipalities boards that they might also want to meet with?

Like we heard about open space tonight meeting with.

I don't know that I I take it back.

I think some of the other boards do meet with some of the other neighboring municipalities boards.

I don't remember seeing that in here, but maybe I just can't remember everything on their work plans.

Oh, they meet with other I think some of them are more specific than others, you know.

Like I don't think they're necessarily listing out like I imagine open space is meeting with Lewisville or Erie again, probably this year, and I imagine SREV is doing the same with Louisville.

Um but I don't think they have it on there because it's more happens.

Yeah, it's gonna happen.

It's not a priority that they're they want our input on, really.

I'll open up the conversation broadly.

We don't have to stick to these questions.

There I know this was uh topic of conversation that we all wanted to hit at the retreat.

Is there anything in particular about boards that we want to talk about?

This is our chance.

Counselor.

I'm just curious about the celebration and accomplishments.

Do we have a date set that we want to see celebrations and accomplishments from each of the various boards and commissions?

And are we gonna invite them to a meeting to celebrate them?

So we've done this now twice where right as the former members are transitioning off in late fall, we have a celebration there, and counselors are all welcome to go and attend and see you spoke last time.

And so yes, that'll be continuing on.

Great.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Council Bertle.

I would I would offer one thing and then maybe ask a clarifying question to what you just asked us to think through.

Um the thing to offer, maybe as a sort of a next step or maybe empowering us who are liaisons, of course.

Um I think each of us probably knows our groups and the work plans the best.

So I would certainly feel confident in all of us to provide some level of feedback if you felt it was relevant to their specific work plan.

And if you have any additional questions, I would encourage you to ask us, you know, over email if it comes up or something.

Um so that's one thing is that I think you know, we're closest to them, and so maybe there's you know, like I'm looking at the older adults one, and I'm you know, trying to think if it is there anything they missed, or you know, it's just hard because I don't know them that well.

Um then to answer your question.

I'm wondering, I don't think now's the time to talk about like the communication flow generally with them, but I want to make sure I'm not missing my chance because it sounded like from your question, maybe this could be the time, or it was a follow-up item from our retreat that we may address when we address follow-up items from our retreat, correct?

Correct.

So your March workshop will be a presentation uh following up on the retreat and items that are outstanding and what the plan is to address that.

So I would love to keep it for SACO tonight just to their work plans.

And question four is a little communication, but just your commitment to go back to them with this specific topic.

Sounds great.

That's awesome.

Anything else, Councillor Ginola?

I mean, I actually came up with something here that I would maybe want to ask the human rights board about, you know.

We've we're hearing a lot in the world about you know uh vulnerable communities, and could they are they the group that we would want to give advice to council saying, hey, we think that we need to protect our vulnerable communities in our in our uh area better.

And here's some ways we could do that.

I I don't know that that's on their work plan.

Um should it be?

I mean, this is a question for council, as something that I think is in their lane, right?

Um, thinking about you know, some of these ideas that we've been just hearing from members of the public flock as an example.

Um so they discussed that last night at their meeting, and I believe their next meeting it will be on the agenda to look into what I'm not quite sure how what we're gonna look into because we don't have like a lot of staff to do research for them, that kind of thing, but they know it's coming, they are gonna have a conversation about it and um make a decision as to whether or not they have anything to advise us about.

You know, they they may feel they're not prepared or equipped, you know, don't understand the technology well enough.

I don't know, but they uh embrace wanting to talk about it, and they are gonna talk about it at their next meeting.

Yeah, and uh I I see other things, you know.

Could they host a know your rights kind of event or things like that?

That you know, is that in their is that in their lane or not?

I don't know.

I don't know.

I have I I get invited to a know your rights training almost every day of the week.

So I I don't think there's a gap in uh those trainings happening that they need to fill.

There's lots going on in that regard.

However, um I think you know that they have that generic advice to council kind of uh agenda item, and and they are sharp people with a lot of good uh background, and I think to the extent they see something that they think like you mentioned um the uh the you know, the capital improvement project.

They're gonna stick their nose in that, I guarantee you, especially with regard to people with disabilities and the elderly, you know, um they're they're gonna jump in on that.

I know they will, and they will have you know input for us, like you know, disabilities that are hidden, you know, and uh things like that that they they know better than we do, or I do anyway, and so I think they'll jump in as appropriate.

They want to.

Yeah, and I guess maybe I was looking at some of these as more I feel unprepared, and this is the board I would turn to for advice.

Well, to the extent you know things are coming up that you want that, then I did relay that I thought we would benefit from listening to them about licensed plate readers and to the extent other things like that are coming up that you would like me to convey to them that we would like them to work on.

I think that would be great.

Okay.

Yeah, I I think this is well within the advisory role that they've identified, so maybe that's that's a good framework.

And I'll close this out with a final question.

Everyone feel good about this and good to go back to your boards and report out.

Fantastic.

I don't really understand this one.

What is it?

We're reporting out this.

What that we're sharing with them the the thing that they helped develop and giving it back to them.

Yep, that council's good with it, and that they can continue on.

I did hear one ask though, and I just want to get clarification.

So you all are on the same page.

Is there also an ask to add them identifying one other group that they would like to meet with throughout the year?

Was that a consensus or was that just a desire?

I just threw that out there so you all can decide.

Or just let it happen organically, because a lot sort of if I could just tell me, I I love the impetus, at least for the ones I'm working with, they're already doing so much of that.

I I would just sort of let them keep cooking, but I think for others that maybe are a little bit more myopic.

Um, but I do love the idea of fostering more cross-pollination among them.

Maybe we can ask, because I think we will do some sort of chairs meeting again sometime in the first half of this year, I would guess.

Um maybe we sort of focus it on that, and it's not necessarily a requirement to your point.

If they're if they don't feel like they need it and they're already good, that's great, but maybe it will give them a chance to think about it.

And then the chairs, they can talk about it.

Chairs can bring it to the chair's meeting and they can discuss amongst themselves.

Seem easy.

Perfect.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

With that, we move on to the new ideas section.

And I've only heard of one idea tonight.

Um Council Bullier.

Mayor, given where we are in time, I'm happy to punt this one to the next month.

Okay, yeah, absolutely.

Folks want a teaser, I'm happy to do that, but I think we can definitely punt it till next month.

Okay, so there's a global peacebuilding prevention network uh called the Strong Cities Network, and it provides toolkits to municipalities to help them deal with uh polarization, hate, violent extremism, both in person and online.

Among many toolkits they provide is what to do aft in the aftermath of an attack or something.

Denver and Aurora are members.

Um I'll be happy to talk about it next month.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, thanks.

Well, and I the regional housing group that I am on for you all had strong cities at their last two meetings.

So uh, and I I've been sort of you know buzzing around them for many years, but not in this targeted sort of area that you're talking about.

I've been there more of housing and urban development and planning kind of piece, but sounds like they do a lot more.

It might be a different network, Anne Marie.

This one is specifically focused on terrorism and violent extremism and how uh particularly young people can be radicalized online.

Again, giving toolkits, this is all like free, there's no membership cost toolkits to public safety, education, municipal folks just yeah, they have the same name, but I guess they're not the same thing.

There's also strong towns, maybe okay.

Yeah, if you wouldn't mind, send an email not asking us to join, just sending us broad information about it.

So when we come back next month and look at it, everyone has some sort of background on it.

Perfect.

Glad to fantastic.

Okay.

With that, uh, I will adjourn our workshop.

However, everyone stay seated.

Um I will call to order the special meeting for February 26th, uh 24, 2026.

And we will begin with a pledge of leading.

Oh, I would just to the uh United States of America into the Republic for legislation under the liberty and justice for all.

Can we take bio break real quick?

Or do you want to get a special?

We will okay.

Counselor Bolier.

Sorry, he's here.

Councilor Friedland.

Here.

Councilor Gallegos.

Here.

Councillor Gianola.

Here and Councillor Jensen.

Here.

Mayor, we have a quorum.

Fantastic.

I move to adjourn to executive session pursuant to Colorado Revived Statutes Section 24-6-402-4B and 24-6-402-4EI to confer with the city attorney for the purposes of receiving legal advice and specific legal questions regarding annexation and to determine positions relative to matters that may be subject negotiations, developing strategy for negotiations, and instructing negotiators regarding potential annexation related agreements, all pertaining to the range at Lafayette annexation for the real property located at the southwest corner of Highway 287 and Arapahoe Road.

Second.

Second.

Any further discussion?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Any opposed say no?

No one opposed.

That passes unanimously.

The city council will adjourn to executive session and will not return to an open meeting.

The time is 8 47 p.m.

Is anybody going to the community foundation thing?