Today's March 17th, 2026, and the City Council meeting will come to order.

We'll begin with a pledge of allegiance.

Clerk back.

Could we please get a roll call?

Mayor Tapia Vega.

Here.

Mayor Pro Tem Barnes.

Good evening.

Councillor Bolier.

Good evening.

Counselor Friedland.

Good evening.

Counselor Gallegos.

Good evening.

Councillor Gianola.

Here.

And Councillor Jensen.

Here, Mayor, we have a quorum.

Thank you so much.

We'll begin tonight's meeting with uh public input.

For anyone who wishes to speak, please fill out one of the speaker request forms you can find in the back through the glass stores.

Please hand that over to our uh city clerk.

When you come up to speak, please just state your name and address for the record, and you will have five minutes to speak.

In front of you on the podium, there's a little clock that tells you just how much time you have left.

Uh just remember to be respectful and stay under the five minutes so the speakers after you can get the same amount of time.

And for anyone who isn't here but still wishes to speak, you can call in.

That phone number is on our website.

With that, we'll begin tonight with Roy Johnson.

Hello again.

I'll do my best to keep it under ten minutes tonight.

Um it is my understanding at the council workshop next week.

You'll be discussing possible ballot questions.

And I know there's no public input at the workshop, so I'd like to make the suggestion here.

I suggest you consider a ballot question regarding section 5.7 of city charter filling vacancies in elective offices.

Um that you allow the voters to change this to state their vacancies, or I put this in the ballot.

And if that list is exhausted, then have canceled for the vacancies.

So I'm Martha Creati Kern, thanks.

Um co-creates programs with for and by Latino folks who live in mobile home parks.

I'm especially honored tonight to have been asked by Elena Claver, some of you may know her to speak.

She couldn't be here in support of having the plaque with names in the Lafayette cemetery that Frank Archuletta has researched, and that's so critical for the history of our city.

So now you just have to pretend that I'm Elena.

Elena is a federally certified simultaneous English-Spanish interpreter, a radio co-host for KGNU radio, a singer-songwriter, and a community activist.

And now I'm I'm Elena speaking.

I am speaking as a person who was present in 1992 when a historical injustice was corrected at the Lafayette Cemetery.

At that time, the His Historical Society, in collaboration with the United Mine Workers, led by Lafayette residents, Gary Cox, installed a headstone in the cemetery that named the six miners killed at the Columbine strike, who were originally buried with no names.

At that time, I, Elena, sang songs of World War I organizer Joe Hill, and some of Joe Hill's ashes were spread on the headstone.

So there's precedent for correcting historical injustices here in our town.

Today I urge you to install a marker with the names of the 200 Lafayette residents whose names were erased from the historical record due to prejudice against the Latino and Catholic residents of Lafayette in the early 20th century.

From 1901 until the 1950s, people who were not white Anglo Saxon Protestants were buried in a part of the Lafayette Cemetery and were not recognized.

But thanks to the work of Frank Archuletta, and in consultation with descendants of Lafayette families denied their due respect in those times.

We now know the names of all of those 200 people buried there.

The QR code is insufficient, as not everyone has a smartphone, and the Lafayette families deserve to have their loved ones named on a marker.

We can't change the injustices and racism of the past, but we can make things right by recognizing the past and taking positive steps so that respect and healing are part of our community.

We shouldn't be continuing the historical erasure of our community's Latino heritage.

Rather, we should be working to correct past injustices by actions such as installing a marker with their names.

Thank you very much, Elena Claver.

And I just want to say thank you so much for listening, and I absolutely second what Elena has written.

And I really hope that this because being able to see names of humans instead of a QR code, there is no comparison.

So I just really hope that you can do this.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.

Next we'll hear from Karen Norbeck.

Karen Norbeck, 800 Eastern CEO.

Good evening.

I was here almost a year ago to speak about the plaque at the cemetery, honoring those who were buried in Potter's Field.

Four of you were also here that evening.

There were two versions of the language for the plaque.

One was from Frank Archuletta and Doug Connero, and the one being proposed was from the Lafayette History Museum.

I minced no words and called that version an antiseptic piece of fluff.

I said when I read the language, one word came to mind immediately, whitewashing.

I said it conveniently sidestepped the city's role here, speaking about prejudice and neglect while not adding the words by the city.

I spoke about Frank's work to bring the Rose Luera story to light and how proud I was of my city as I watched former Mayor Lynch read a proclamation formally apologizing for the city's role in Rose's story.

And later, when I attended a moving ceremony to name the pool at the Rec Center in her honor, conducted by former Mayor Harkins, who could barely keep from crying.

The excellent award-winning exhibit about Rhodes is back at the collective.

She led the discrimination lawsuit against the city, but there were 25 other families who were part of that lawsuit.

Last night I looked at their names, and not surprisingly, I saw surnames that also appear on the list of people in Potter's Field.

At that council meeting last year, counselors Barnes Friedland and Tapia Vega advocated for stronger language on the plaque, and I thank you for that.

Unfortunately, after a long discussion, they fell one vote short of including the names of those buried in Potter's Field on the plaque.

Instead, four counselors voted for a QR code.

At your last council meeting, members of our community stood here and spoke eloquently about why those names should be memorialized on a plaque at the cemetery.

I agree.

It's long past time to step up and do what's right.

Last year I said to the council the legacy of those past city officials is clear.

What will yours be?

Now we know it was a code to scan with your phone.

How does one place flowers for their ancestors at the foot of a QR code?

Run their hands over their name or take a photograph.

You have the opportunity correct to correct that decision and write yet another wrong.

Last year we were one vote short.

I hope that we can get at least six votes in favor tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Next we'll hear from Meg Reeder.

Hello and thank you, and happy St.

Patrick's Day, loving the green.

It's my favorite color.

My name is Meg Reeder.

I live at 435 Blue Ridge Lane in Lafayette.

I moved to Colorado from Oklahoma in 2019.

I've spent my career here in Boulder County getting settled into my 30s, figuring out what it means to make a home be a part of a place and to put down roots.

I love living here in Lafayette, and I actually love working for a small business that operates out of Longmont.

These two towns and this state have come to mean a lot to me.

This is why I recently spoke up at the Longmont City Council study session on ranked choice voting, and it's why I'm here today to ask council to consider RCV for Lafayette.

Why?

Well, RCV is broadly understood to be the fairest, most inclusive, and most democratic form of voting.

They even use it for Oscar nominations and to select the best picture.

In Colorado, municipalities can use two forms of ranked choice voting.

One is for elections with one winner, and the other is for elections with multiple winners.

With Lafayette, that means we're looking at multi-winner RCV.

The reason RCV is considered to be the most democratic form of voting is because in an RCV election, instead of voting for a single candidate, voters rank the candidates based on their preference.

And this ranked order of preference gets reflected in the whole body, whole elected body.

RCV also acts as a solution for a lot of the main complaints or problems we have with our plurality system.

For example, it prevents what's called the spoiler effect.

This refers to situations where two or more similarly aligned candidates end up splitting the vote between them.

With our plurality system, voters may end up trying to vote strategically instead of voting on their true preference.

Maybe this looks like voting for a candidate who somewhat aligns with your interests, but you think they will win versus the candidate that best represents your interests.

Or worse yet, you just don't vote at all.

So many people I know in Oklahoma feel this way.

They don't feel their vote would count, or they just don't vote at all.

If 65% of their town is voting one way, and their vote would contribute to a 15% coalition, it feels like it doesn't matter.

So they just don't show up.

But with RCV, ranked ballots would result in an elected body that fully reflects the 65%, and their 15% coalition.

To break it down a little, let's say instead of voting for council, we're voting for which four sodas we're gonna bring to a party.

Three-quarters of the group only drink full sugar soda, and one quarter swears by Diet Coke.

I'd be in that coalition.

To speak to any possible worries, jumped ahead.

Under our current plurality system, the full sugar majority wins every slot.

And the Diet Coke Coalition goes home thirsty.

But with ranked choice voting, the drink choices would reflect the actual makeup and preferences of the group.

Three-quarters of the group would have their full sugar sodas, and the other quarter would get their Diet Coke.

To speak to any possible worries, data from across the country shows that RCV ballots are not difficult to understand.

In Charlottesville, Virginia, a survey of voters for the 2025 primary showed that 80% strongly supported further RCV use.

A citizen data exit poll showed that about 86% of Boulder voters felt that using RCV to vote for their mayor was either fairly or very easy.

And 45% want to expand it even further to their other elections.

An Edison research poll in Minnesota showed that 88% of voters found it easy to use.

And the statistic I find most interesting is it showed an increase in voter turnout by over 15%.

While I believe that Lafayette and Longmont have great elections, resulting in diverse representation and a representative government, we have an opportunity to create an even better system and to ensure continued representation that we've seen so far.

We can set a standard for what it look could look like at the state level and maybe even the federal level.

It's not hard to imagine that there might be a section of voters who feel their votes don't count in Lafayette and in Colorado.

So they choose not to vote at all.

But with ranked choice voting, they can put their preferences on display, confident that their vote will truly count and be reflected in the elected body.

This voting system is in reality very easy to use.

It increases potential voter turnout and ensures the elected body truly represents their voters.

My hope is that Lafayette will take the opportunity to set this standard for the state and for the country.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Next we'll hear from Frank Archuletta.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor, Council members, staff.

Hi Melissa.

Democracy.

In our government, the supreme power is held by the people.

Democracy at work and in action.

Human rights, liberty, and justice for all.

I will make myself clear to promote the truth of political correctness with my convictions for social change.

I ask counsel with my passionate plea for reparation and restorative of justice for the 200 deceased in the cemetery.

As we acknowledge the wrongs and take action to heal the pain of the past, fundamental change.

I will speak about honor, respect, and value, and the importance to our concerns.

It is time for true recognition and the understanding for the forgotten ones buried in the Lafayette Cemetery.

We must give them the respect, the dignity, the justice, the peace they deserve.

This is essential.

As we commemorate, to recall to mind to serve as a memorial of commemoration, and to acknowledge the 2008 to rest in these unmarked graves in the Lafayette Cemetery.

We must have a special plaque or a headstone with all the 200 names on it.

This is very important.

As we call the great law of peace that has inspired the essential elements of the United States Constitution.

The first principle is peace.

The second principle is equity and justice for the people.

The third is the power of good minds and the collective powers to be on one mind, a unity and health.

In the process of discussions, putting aside our differences as a method of reclaiming decisions and now using intellect to understand between right and wrong and to stand in unity and righteousness for justice for the 200 deceased.

As we acknowledge the history in the Lafayette Cemetery, let us not forget that there was inequities and they are the results of the racist policies.

Let us not ignore the political consequences of racism and discrimination.

We must all flourish in justice, peace, and liberation, freedom.

Council, your transformative work will inspire generations and may be shaped by equity, love, and sustainability.

You must have the courage to shape the foundation upon which progress is built and to contribute towards equity and justice by embracing the truth and using it will inspire change.

As you maintain your loyalty to your oath and dedication to the values of building an inclusive community, you must uphold justice and fairness and lasting commitment to the truth, as we've been speaking, the truth.

Let's get this right.

We must remain steadfast and faithful and true to the meaning and the commitment for the common good of justice and democracy and to lead Lafayette in a better, stronger city.

Council, the desire to represent the citizens is very important.

There was a time when we saw our community assaulted by poverty, oppression, and denigrating effects of racism that ate away at our pride in Stanama.

But because of our strength and perseverance and self-determinations, we have survived the struggle.

Now we will continue to endure and champion for justice for the forgotten 200 buried in the Lafayette Cemetery.

The Latinos live at a marginal of the society and a margin of history.

We have come full circle with our communal backgrounds, as well as to maintain ourselves as fully integrated individuals.

I hope you all realize what really transpired in Lafayette with the racism discrimination in the Clue Clooks clan and by the cities not putting in their maps, the record books or database, these 200 people.

I spoke with Wanaka family.

I was up at the cemetery earlier, and we had a burial for Rivera family out of Louisville.

And they were telling me from the old Wanaka families that there are people buried in your ball fields right now.

That's always been buried in that ball field, and perhaps in the road, too.

From the Wanaka family.

Now I want to speak about basically as far as this moratorium.

There's been two burials up there.

The moratorium is broken.

We must allow the 150 letters that went out, and there are over 200 people that still need to be buried.

At that time when Smith was buried up there, you did have the skate archaeologists there.

Then when they hit that coffin, I told them in 1918, there was burials here.

They went ahead and skipped it out and all that.

Well, when they hit that coffin, all they did was move towards the road move there.

This has been going on for over 70 years that I know.

Left side or right side, if they did hit a coffin or something like that.

So this moratorium is ridiculous, council.

Allow the people to get buried.

Thank you.

The moratorium is broken by the wave.

Thank you so much.

Next, we'll hear from Rob Glenn.

Good evening, Council.

Um Rob Glenn, 401 West Cannon Street, Lafayette, Colorado.

One of the start by first off given a um some gratitude for the exhibit at the collective, uh, the racism and discrimination with the Lafayette Swimming Pool in 1934, which is dealing with Rosalirs and the others that uh fought discrimination and the ability for fair use.

Um, I from what I learned, this was the second time this exhibit had been there, and so really gained a lot.

And and I think the biggest thing I saw was just a Latino population minorities that they were not gonna put up for crap.

They were gonna fight, even though the results didn't end up the way you would hope.

Uh, there were still that you could see how this town was built and the community and everyone together.

Well, not everyone together, but they were resilient is the best term for that.

Um, and I think timing well, one as I showed gratitude for that part, but there's some great things coming up.

There's a panel on April 23rd at the collective.

It's more opportunity for people to hear about it.

But as you see those ancestors uh of the community of Lafayette and the people and what they fought for, I think it's perfect timing as y'all are reviewing in.

I saw in the packet tonight for the cemetery plaque that it kind of goes hand in hand that we need a yes, it will continue to be more names probably added, and I like that I saw every two to three years that y'all be reviewing that in the packet it mentioned, but really look forward and hope y'all proceed forward with making this happen uh and cherishing the names of the people that have not been properly honored.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Next, we'll hear from Megan Rest.

Dear council members, uh, my name is Megan Rast.

I live at 646 Homestead Street, and since I'm in Lafayette, I'll go ahead and say it's Anna's Farm, the colorful neighborhood north of Wanaka, north of baseline.

That's the neighborhood we're gonna talk about today.

Uh, I'm here to oppose the proposed self-storage facility at 685 Aspen Ridge Drive.

It's next to the High Line Lateral Drainage Corridor.

Um, and for the record, I came with five of my neighbors in late 2023.

Some of your faces are familiar, you probably don't remember, but it was the meeting where some of you got elected in.

I'm really glad the public input is at the top of the order today.

We waited like an hour and a half, two hours to address you all last time.

Candidly, we thought this project wasn't moving forward.

Um, and now we hear that it is.

Uh, so I want to begin with something really important.

We support development of that parcel.

Uh, we've talked a lot with my neighbors as in the past couple weeks.

Uh, we want this area of Aspen Ridge to flourish and to grow and succeed.

It's good for us.

We can walk and benefit from those services.

The question tonight that I want each of you to think about is what is the development that fits this location and the surrounding community.

So I'm gonna go through a few of the issues, and I really hope you take to hire it and imagine this is your home.

Um, I'm a first-time home buyer, it means a lot to me to live here in Lafayette.

So, what residents have consistently supported are buildings similar to what currently exists nearby.

Commercial spaces around 20 feet in height, like the proposal literally across the street at uh 640 Aspen Ridge.

It's gonna have small businesses, it's gonna have services, we're gonna really appreciate being able to walk and benefit from that.

The storage facility proposal is really different.

The storage facility proposal is at 35 feet high, it's the maximum height allowed, uh, and taller than any nearby building.

It also brings a building 40 to 50 feet closer to our homes than currently exists, uh, and which is the industrial building next door.

That combination of going to the maximum height and getting close proximity to residences, it's just not compatible.

It's not normal, it's not what's happening elsewhere in Aspen Ridge, and it's not consistent with the surrounding development pattern.

Second, this proposal uh introduces real safety risks.

According to the National Fire Protection Association, self-storage facilities are among the most this is a quote, the most challenging buildings for firefighters because of dense combustible contents and limited access.

Nearly 1,500 storage facilities catch fire each year nationwide.

This is all from that study.

It just happened in 2025.

In Colorado, we've been doing a research, has seen several major storage facility fires just in the past two years.

I'm gonna side quest to explain that, like in Arvada, there was a fire that burned for hours.

In Colorado Springs last year, there was a fire where there's a loss of life.

We've already had a fire, these are all storage facilities in Colorado.

We've already had a fire in 2026 at a storage facility in Grand Junction.

So this is a real risk.

Also, offer them a first-time home buyer who happened to close my house in December of 2021, which is when the Boulder County wildfires.

This is like real for us.

This is a really big scare.

Um, and we're talking about a facility that's less than 100 feet from our homes after it's built.

Third issue, there are concerns about the proposal itself.

I'm not gonna go into the developer who's not from here.

Clearly, they're not gonna ever show up to you in person unless this gets far enough where you it goes past the planning commission.

They've overstated distances, right?

So if you read their proposal, it's actually they're saying it's not a hundred feet, it's less than a hundred feet.

Um, this is a side quest, but they proposed flammable juniper landscaping, which the Boulder County has incentives to remove.

And so we've tried to talk to them about it, and they're, you know, oh, our landscaper did it.

They're just they're not from here.

It shows it's really difficult to get a hold of them.

They met with us as a neighborhood, it was their lawyer, right?

So they're just they're not from here, they don't get it.

We try to talk to them.

It's really difficult, and then of course, we're seeing numbers that are inaccurate when you actually go out and measure um this distance from our homes.

Before I move on from that one, they also have loaning areas placed next to the neighborhood.

We're not really excited about the design they chose to add noise to our to our lives.

Fourth, I mentioned earlier my home sits next to the High Line Lateral Drainage Corridor.

Literally, this is in between my home and this proposed facility.

It helped protect my property in the 2013 flood.

So I didn't live there, but my home did not flood, uh, and some of my neighbors did.

So before approving this project, and for the record, I've asked the planning department for documents that should be publicly available.

I've yet to hear back.

Um, but I I'm hoping the city can ensure that there's a full engineering review.

Um, obviously, we're really focused on not having increased runoff or flood.

Again, I'm like, cannot express enough my home didn't flood, and if this thing goes in and it floods, it's gonna be a direct connection to the to this facility given how big it is.

So finally, um certain planning commissioners uh had to recuse themselves uh over the past week from hearing about this project to review the development, it got postponed.

A stated reason this would happen to a neighbor, so I didn't hear it personally, but a stated reason would that was that they're part of a border foundation that receives funding from the developer.

So we're grateful that they recuse themselves, but honestly, I want to ask you all to ensure that it's monitored by city council.

That's a really big concern for us that there might be conflicts of interest at play.

I'll be honest, I don't know the rules about whether they were required to recuse themselves or whether they did it just to be good and have a norm.

But the last thing any of us want is to have that kind of activity happening at the planning commission and approving this project.

So, last um, I support the development that fits the community.

Thank you for the time.

Um, we'll probably be back here.

I hope we're not, I hope it finishes, but we'll probably be back here to continue to talk about this because we're very concerned.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I don't see any more speaker request forms, so I will turn to our city clerk to see if we have any callers on the line.

There are no callers online.

No callers online.

Okay.

And I just want to make sure is there anyone else in the room that would like to speak?

Not seeing anyone.

We will close public input.

Um we'll move on to our consent agenda, but before I do that, uh I want for those following along with the agenda, both for counselors and members of the public.

There are two executive sessions on our agenda, but I because of unforeseen illness for one of our outside council, uh, we will only be having one of the two.

Um so just a note there.

Okay.

Moving on to the consent agenda.

We have a couple of items tonight, including item A, March 3rd, 2026, City Council meeting minutes.

Uh uh agenda item B, first reading, ordinance number seven, series 2026, amending section 115-35, license plates and registration of the code of ordinances to correct an error.

Item C, second reading ordinance number five, series 2026, approving a memorandum of agreement between the city of Lafayette and the Colorado Department of Transportation and granting a temporary easement to the Colorado Department of Transportation.

Item D, second reading ordinance number six, series 2026, authorizing the city manager to execute an access and maintenance easement for the benefit of Boulder County.

And item E, contracts pertaining to the municipal court case management system, including the first contract mine share HDV LLC for court case management system licensing and implementation and the second contract for SIPA, the statewide internet portal authority granting funding for court case management system implementation authorizing the city manager to execute the agreements on behalf of the city.

Is there any items council would like to pull?

Councilor Johnson.

Yeah, I just have a question on item E.

So uh item E.

Item E, yeah.

Any other items council would like to poll?

I move to approve the balance of the consent agenda.

Second.

We have a motion, we have a second, any further discussion?

All those in favor, say aye.

Anyone opposed to say no?

No one opposed.

Council Johnson.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Um given some other things we've been looking into that involve privacy and uh how data gets abused uh or misused.

I I am wanting to know with this court case management system.

Will we do any audits?

Will there be any external will we be looking at it periodically to make sure we feel like you know data is protected?

Um I just wanted to find out what the mechanism is about that.

I'll have our chief information officer Ernesto Shades answer those questions.

Uh good evening, Mayor, uh Councillor Jensen.

Um so part of the evaluation of all the products is uh cybersecurity assessment, and we're very thorough about where data is protected, how it's being housed, how it's being accessed.

Um, this particular product that we're recommending is going to be in uh a cloud's environment primarily, and then the applications on top of that will be audited, and we'll also be working with the vendor to make sure that any type of findings are identified.

Um, because this is a core management system, it does have to meet the criminal justice information system standards, um, which are established by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

And at this time, all indications are that they can and do for all of their products, and we'll continue to work with them and make sure that that is uh uh stays in place.

And how often are would an audit happen?

Sure.

So uh an audit can happen anytime there's an incident, or if uh at least periodically once a year.

So uh to stay uh C just certified, there's uh kind of a cursory audit uh from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation at least once a year where we answer questions and then periodically they'll come and do an assessment.

Uh for our standards, we do require that the environment is scanned monthly at least, and then we will probably do our own uh testing periodically while we do the rest of our environmental scans.

So if you're doing a monthly review or that the vendor is doing a monthly review, is it you would be doing it or the vendor really?

Um it may be both.

Um I I do if we have agreements with our vendors, I will scan those environments ourselves.

Uh that way we can make sure that they're uh they're safe and they're still secure.

Um for this one particularly, we'll work out the specific details of timing and who is actually doing the scans and at what level.

Um, the data at rest piece, I think is very secure.

It's just really looking at the uh the public facing pieces and making sure those remain uh meet security standards.

And does council get reports on that kind of thing, or does the city manager how does that work?

Sure.

Um, so uh generally I I collect those reports and I handle them.

If there's anything significant, I'll report those up through the city manager and we'll determine whether it's something that we can release.

A lot of times vulnerabilities are not public information as because we don't necessarily want people to uh look at those.

However, at any time if uh any council member has any questions about the security posture, I'm sure that we could provide some information.

So if there were a breach of or a leak or somebody inappropriately use the data, um that might be something that we would hear about in executive session if that happened, or or publicly, so depending on the type of information that's released, uh we do have we do have requirements for notification.

So uh those could be to the attorney general at the state and also the individuals and uh unfortunately we've uh exercised those uh about six years ago.

Uh so we're very familiar with those processes.

Okay, and I would be personally very interested in um data about equity.

So, like if you know 95 percent of our people coming to court are of one race or color, you know, that would be useful for us to know that we have a system that is you know infringing perhaps on somebody's uh civil rights.

So I does the system allow us to look at those sort of equity questions, um, LGBTQ, you know, women versus men, all of those things to get a report about that those demographic data pieces about who's going through our court system.

Sure.

We're we're not that far into the implementation and know like the full capacity of the system.

Um there they are do have some flexibility and data we collect.

Uh the means and how we collect that could be challenge.

I do know that the working with the police department, they do have a state mandate to collect uh contact information on anyone they come in contact with.

Um, and I believe that's all managed at the state, if I'm not mistaken.

Um, so we probably already have uh potentially access to some of the like just contact information that may result in to a fine or some other type of uh contact.

Um, as we as we look at implementing this new court system, we can definitely evaluate that and see what kind of reporting we can get out.

Um, and also ensuring that the reports that we can provide um are uh don't contain any other information that isn't necessarily publicly releasable as a balance.

So I would just like to say for me, to the extent possible, now that we're getting a system.

I know we've had uh just you know a backwards paper system, but now that we're getting a system to the extent that it can show us any revelations of equity concerns, that would be really helpful.

And I also get that it's awkward to ask somebody are you trans or are you Mexican or are you whatever, you know, at in a law enforcement setting.

So I appreciate the difficulty of that.

Um, but to the extent that we can look at our system and try and evaluate it for equity issues, I think it would be really helpful.

We'll do our best.

I don't know if anyone else cares.

Any other questions on this or on either of these two contracts?

All right, I'll turn it back to Councillor Johnson.

Counselor Jess, I believe there's two because there are two contracts.

There's two motions, and we'll vote on them separately.

I'm looking at our city attorney.

So what was the question, Mayor?

Well, we're voting on the contract separately.

I'm just saying two.

Oh, um, you could still approve those both with one motion for item E.

So thank you, and thank you for letting me ask those questions.

I really appreciate it.

Um, I would like to move that we proceed uh with the consent agenda item E.

Second.

We have a motion.

We have a second, any further discussion on this.

No further discussion.

Oh did you have further discussion?

I just wanted to say to Councilor Jensen, yes, there are others who care, and I appreciate your uh set of questions and follow-up questions.

So thank you.

Great.

Now no further discussion.

Uh all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed saying no?

No one opposed, that passes unanimously.

And with that, we close um consent agenda.

Before we move on to proclamations, I just want to uh turn it over to our city attorney.

Yes, briefly, mayor, thank you.

I just wanted to speak to the last uh public input comment that you received tonight.

Um that is definitely appreciated.

It was regarding a self-storage facility that will be coming before council, and it's also going to be going before planning commission for review.

Uh that is a quasi-judicial matter, which means that council and planning commissioner are limited to comments that they receive during the public hearing on those items.

And so um again, while the comments tonight are appreciated, I wanted to encourage the speaker to come back to either one of those public hearings or both and share your comments with counsel so that those could be and planning commission, so those could be considered.

Um, alternatively, you could submit uh comments in writing, and anyone's entitled to do that if they're not able to make it to either of those public hearing dates.

Um council will be receiving training soon, which is open to the public on quasi-judicial matters and the rules that apply under due process.

Uh, there's constitutional considerations there that apply for those that are unique to land use and development applications.

And so um anyway, I just wanted to let speaker know her comments were um appreciated, but that uh those would need to be given on the record in a hearing to be considered by the Planning Commission Council, and we certainly encourage the public to come back and attend either of those meetings or both or submit written comments if they'd like to do that.

Thank you, Mayor.

I appreciate it.

Thank you.

And I believe that training is a week from today at our next workshop, correct?

Amazing.

Great.

Well, moving on to proclamations.

Uh, for the first, I'll turn it over to our mayor protep.

Thank you, Mayor.

This proclamation is for Caesar Chavez Day.

March 31st, 2026.

Whereas Cesar Chavez Estarada Chavez was born on March 31st, 1927 on a small family ranch near Yuma, Arizona, and returned to farm labor in California and began advocating for farm workers' rights after serving in World War II.

And where Cesar Chavez influence has made a lasting impact on farm labor issues and inspired millions of Latinos to achieve educational and political success.

And where Cesar Chavez leadership will be remembered for utilizing the principles of nonviolence and service to community throughout Colorado and the West.

And where Cesar Chavez Endelers Huerta co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers of America, the first successful farm workers' union in the United States history.

And where Cesar's leadership or Chavez's leadership, the UAUFW won the first collective bargaining rights for farm workers, significantly improving the quality of life for farm workers throughout the United States, including the City of Lafayette.

And where Cesar Chavez passed away on April 23rd, 1993, and in 1994 was posthumously awarded the Presidential Meeting Medal of Freedom, the highest civil honor in the United States.

And whereas Cesar Chava's birthday, March 31st, is recognized as a holiday by the state of Colorado.

Individuals and organizations throughout this nation will honor his life and work.

And the City of Lafayette will continue to recognize the contribution of American civil rights leaders.

Now, therefore, the mayor and the city council of the City of Lafayette, Colorado, do hereby declare March 31st, 2026, Cessar Chavez Day, and encourage all residents to believe, like he did, that ordinary people united in purpose can do extraordinary things.

So moved.

Second.

We have a motion.

We have a second before the Cesar Chavez Day proclamation.

Is there any further discussion on this proclamation?

Mayor Protev.

Thank you, Mayor.

I would like to say that this is also Women's History Month.

Duaras Huerta did an amazing job and inspiring as well as Cessar.

And I think the example that we've seen, I'm glad it's recognized in the weeds.

We still have work to do in our city and across the country, but uh I like to remember that there are ways that we can all come together.

So thank you.

Amazing.

Any further discussion?

It's funny, the Mayor Proten took comments right out of my mouth.

I was about to talk about the Lord as Huerta who to be is equally as important.

It's totally fine.

Um, because there's other leaders uh within this space, including here in the state of Colorado.

You know, we all everyone likely knows the name Corky Gonzalez and everything that he did for the Latino community here.

So I'm very excited about being able to celebrate that.

So we have a motion, we have a second.

I don't see any further discussion, so all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed, say no.

No one opposed, that passes unanimously.

Moving on to our next proclamation, I will turn it to Councillor Gallegos.

The 24th annual March for Meals Month, whereas this year, Meals on Wheels programs from across the country are joining together for the March for Meals Awareness Campaign to celebrate its success and garner the support needed to ensure these critical programs can continue.

And whereas Colt Creek Meals on Wheels has served Erie, Lafayette, Louisville, and Superior for over 50 years, delivering more than just a meal to older adults, individuals with disabilities, and anyone in need who is at significant risk of hunger, food insecurity, and isolation.

And whereas Cole Creek Meals on Wheels works to address food insecurity and malnutrition, combat social isolation isolation, enable independence, and improve health for years to come.

And whereas in 2025, Cole Creek Meals on Wheels served over 77,000 meals to neighbors in need.

And whereas Cole Creek Meals on Wheels provides a powerful opportunity for social connection for hundreds of seniors to help combat the negative health effects and economic consequences of loneliness and isolation.

And whereas food insecurity is increasing substantially, and action is needed now to support local meals on wheels programs through federal, state, and local funding, volunteering, donations, and raising awareness to ensure these vital services can continue to be delivered for years to come.

And whereas Cole Creek Meals on Wheels continues to serve anyone in need of a nutritious meal, regardless of their age, income, socioeconomic status, and other factors.

Now, therefore, the mayor and city council of the city of Lafayette, Colorado, do hereby proclaim March 2026 as a month celebrating Cole Creek Meals on Wheels and urge every community member to take this month to honor the programs, the individuals they serve, and the volunteers who care for them.

Our recognition of and involvement in the National March for Meal celebration can enrich our entire community and help combat hunger and isolation.

So moved.

Second.

We have a second any further discussion on this proclamation.

Mayor Proton.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just like to say that you know the time that I've been on council, I've seen incredible support from Cole Creek Meals on Wheels.

And um through with all kinds of obstacles.

I was here during COVID and saw they made it possible to do what they could, as we all did.

And um really spun up quickly.

Uh and there was greater movement that we could move through the city better.

So I I can't thank Cole Creek Meals on Wheels enough for their consistency persistence, because I don't think anybody should go without food.

And I know that uh being on the downtown development authority, the DDA.

We are also keeping in mind that no one should be without food, especially when it's here in our community.

So we're continuing to make it possible to get food into the hands of those who need it, and through the mechanisms that are available.

So I do uh this reminds me to keep Cole Creek Meals and Wheels in mind when we are trying to ensure that food moves to those who need it.

Um that's all thank you.

Counselor Chelsea.

I I wanted to also encourage people who the thousands of people are listening tonight, that uh if you are looking for a volunteer opportunity, it is a great thing to do to volunteer for meals on wheels.

And my own father, who's a disabled veteran, uh, for a good period of time relied on meals on wheels and the companionship of the people who came to bring him food, and it was just a lovely experience.

And I too experienced during COVID many uh homebound people that I knew uh who could because of uh physical impairment or age couldn't get out and who really relied on our meals on wheels program.

So it's a it's a wonderful program, and I hope everybody will think about a volunteer stint.

Any other uh comments from members of council on this?

I will go next then because I want to echo the sentiment of counselor and the mayor of Pro Tem.

Uh Meals on Wheels is such an incredible, just an incredible organization.

Uh and I'll speak on something that neither of you spoke on because you already kind of hit the the majority of what they do, but they also have what I believe is called the Col Creek Cafe, uh, which is something that you can just go and have a meal at at Meals on Wheels, and they will not turn you away if you don't have money, if you don't, it doesn't matter.

Uh it's just such an incredible resource for our residents here in the city of Lafayette, but just for the region.

So I think they are an incredible organization.

I'm very happy that we're voting on this proclamation.

I know Don Morris from Meals on Wheels is here.

Uh so I will ask you to come up, but before I do, I just want to make sure we vote on this.

So let us vote and then you can come on.

Okay, we are first wheel, we're motioning a second.

Uh all those in favor, please say aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed to say no?

No one opposed that in the passage unanimously.

And I want to invite Don up if you'd like to give us a few words.

Thank you.

Um, not too much to add to that.

It's always nice to be thought well of by folks that are immediately involved in the organization, and some of you very well may be.

Um, I won't add much.

Uh, we have been in Lafayette as mentioned over 50 years.

We remain in Lafayette as far as a base for Josephine Commons and serve about 60 meals a day.

There's anybody's welcome, as said, uh to come on in.

Uh, we operate both our delivery and the cafe on a scale of you pay what you can afford to pay.

Over 65% of the people that we serve are not able to pay anything for their meals.

So very dependent on really individual donations as well as support from the municipalities we serve, Lafayette being our biggest supporter.

Uh, also uh the most number of clients or neighbors that we have.

40,000 of our meals uh go to Lafayette residence, either in the cafe, uh which we folks helped uh to support as well as home delivery.

It's all been mentioned about not only the meal, the nutrition, but also the personal touch and visit where we find people in distress.

We are able to link them to other community services.

We do save a few lives each year.

So I appreciate the recognition, the support.

We are unique in that we also serve all ages.

So that's not true of too many meals on wheels and no federal support, which may be a good thing sometimes.

But no, thank you very much.

If you do want to volunteer, just uh search Colek Meals and Wheels, or if you need our sources.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

Board member and kitchen volunteer.

That's awesome.

Great.

Uh we'll move on to presentations.

And we'll, of course, begin with the affordable housing fee study.

Uh good evening, Mayor, Council members.

Uh, Steve Morning, city staff.

Tonight's first presentation is from Matt Fosser with economic and planning systems in parallel with our land use code update.

The city has relied on both Matt and Molly Fitzpatrick with root policy to help Lafayette explore policies and regulations for both inclusionary housing and affordable housing fees.

Council last heard from Matt and Molly at their January workshop, and Matt's here tonight to present the preliminary findings and recommendations of the affordable housing impact fee study his firm recently completed.

Molly's also in attendance to hear firsthand your feedback and to answer, help answer any questions you guys may have.

Thanks.

Hello, uh, council members, thanks for having me uh today.

Uh I'm Matt Prosser.

I'm a principal with a firm called Economic and Planning Systems, where land use economics firm.

I'm based here in our Denver office.

And we've been working with you all on developing a nexus study to support your affordable housing fee.

And so what I'm going to do today is walk through an overview of how we get at setting uh to a point of setting a fee for your affordable housing fee, um, and then provide some recommendations for you all to consider as you move forward with both the land use code updates, uh considering an inclusionary housing ordinance and also uh updating these fees.

Um, this is a little overview of what we'll talk about today.

Um, so the purpose really of our project is uh recognizing you have a current fee uh that you charge on new development that offsets the impact for the need for affordable housing in the community.

Um these fees are typically referred to as a linkage fee, and they need a rec a nexus study that provides the rational connection or linkage between the fee you're charging and the cost of the community that's being generated by new development.

And so this study is to help provide that rational nexus and justify the fee that you have.

Um thing I want to note in terms of our philosophy for approaching our recommendation is first, we're really doing this to help ground our fees in that that legal nexus that's required for required for this type of fee, um, and calibrating those to market conditions.

Um realize that this is one tool that you have currently implemented and are looking at modifying for addressing affordable housing.

But there are other um tools that you may consider and you are in the process of considering to address affordable housing.

And so just really realize this is one of potentially uh many tools that you can use to address uh affordable housing needs.

Um really we we try to ground our recommendations in our market supported levels uh for a rate, and we'll get into that more, and also uh assessing regional best practices and so hoping to learn from what your peers are doing and how that might impact where you might want to set your fees at.

And so this slide provides an overview of the process that we go through to come up with a recommendation for a fee to address affordable housing.

First, what we do is we identify what we call the maximum supportable fee.

And so we develop what we call linkage models between residential development and the need for affordable housing, and commercial development and the need for affordable housing, and um identify what the cost of the community is from new development for affordable housing and what a supportable fee amount would be.

And so this is the maximum fee that you could legally charge based on this study.

From there, communities utilize what is known as a mitigation rate.

This is a percentage of the maximum supportable fee that you'd like to offset through your fee.

It's not often that you charge 100% of your maximum supportable fee.

And so we identify a mitigation rate that is one we think supportable by the market, in line with your peers, and also can help achieve some of your goals in terms of revenue generation and offsetting or mitigating that impact to the community.

So I'm going to talk through quickly the linkage models.

We last time I was with you, we talked about these linkage models, so I'm not going to go back into a lot of detail more.

What we'll talk about is some of that peer research as well as our development feasibility analysis.

So first, these linkage models, just giving you the same overview that we gave last time, explaining the process.

Really, what we're doing here is looking at what the impact of new market rate housing development is on the need for affordable housing development in the community.

And we do that by understanding how many housing units are being built in the community, what's the likely household income of those folks that are occupying those new homes, how their income will be spent through the economy here in Boulder County, and how many jobs that'll create.

And once we understand how many jobs you created, that we have an understanding of how many employees will be filling those jobs, how many new housing units those new employees will need, and what portion of those housing units and employees will need affordable housing that's not available in the market currently.

And we do all of these steps to get to the point where we identify what that need for housing that isn't affordable in the community is, what the cost to provide those units that are not able to be met through market rate housing, and we use that as sort of the nexus to what the impact is from new development.

And so this table provides sort of a summary of looking at a hundred new units of market rate housing, whether that's a for sale single family development or a rental apartment project, and looking at the assumptions and inputs that we utilize in terms of household income for new residents, what that creates in annual spending in the economy, how many jobs that supports, how many households that need affordable housing, what the cost is to provide that affordable housing, and what that is per new unit of development.

And that all ends up with a uh an estimated uh impact per housing unit that translates into a maximal defensible fee of around 34 to 38 dollars per square foot.

So uh is defensible under the linkage study to charge a developer of a new housing unit X you know, $35 per square foot to offset the impact of the need for affordable housing.

We'll get into how we set what the actual rate will be, but this is the maximum affordable fee.

We do a similar process for commercial development, it's a little bit simpler.

Uh new commercial space creates places where people will work.

Those people working in those spaces need housing.

Uh, and a portion of those new workers are not able to afford uh market rate housing in the community.

Therefore, there's a cost and a need to provide affordable options for those workers, and we use that cost as the basis for the potential fee you could track tie to new development.

Um this table summarizes that sort of linkage of a thousand square feet of non-residential development, how many jobs are produced or how many jobs would occupy that space from those different types of non-residential development, office retail, lodging, industrial, healthcare, institutional, um, what portion of the household, what portion of the worker households that are generated can't afford uh market rate housing, and what's the cost to offset that, and what that is in terms of a maximum defensible fee per square foot.

Um, as you can see, the maximum defensible fee per square foot for non-residential development is much higher than it is residential.

And it sort of makes sense you're creating places for workers uh to locate.

Um, and they also notice is there's variations between different uses.

Um, and so different uses like office versus retail have a different number of jobs per square foot, um, so number of people working in the building.

Um, and they also are paid different levels.

So service workers in retail lodging industries tend to be paid less, and then for therefore there's a greater need for affordable housing because they're generally lower paid uh occupations.

And so that's why there's some variation there.

So in summary, uh, this is the maximum supportable fee for those different types of development that occur in the community.

And what we're going to do now is talk about what is the mitigation rate of the maximum supportable fee that the city wants to set as a way to set our fee.

And so you have the potential to charge up to 100%, but many communities charge a much lower uh percentage because of the impacts on the feasibility of development.

And so we're going to dive into that important topic now.

Um before I move on, are there any questions council wants to ask about sort of the linkage models and the rationale there?

Yes, council member.

I'm waiting for the mayor to sorry.

Counselor Johnson.

I have never quite understood in these inclusionary housing models.

Why for sale and rental have different rates?

And your narrative doesn't really explain that, I don't think.

Could you explain that for me?

Yeah.

Um why do they have different rates?

Um, so uh the assumed household income in a for sale unit is different than the assumed household income in a rental unit.

Um, and so that drives different levels of spending in the community, and so a higher uh development that has higher value homes will produce more spending, which will produce more jobs and then more jobs that will need affordable housing.

And I get that in terms of the value of the home, but a comparable value of a home that someone is owning versus renting doesn't seem to me that it changes that at all because you still have to have a similar amount of income to afford that home, whether you're renting or you're owning.

And so what I still that what you said doesn't make sense to me in light of that, you know, you're and what I'm hearing is a lot of people, especially younger people are saying to home ownership, and they are renting, and so I still don't understand what the difference is if they have comparable incomes, comparable housing, why you would have a different rate for rental versus owner.

Yeah, so what's the rationale for the approach to that?

Um, I mean, that's I mean, the assumption is generally renting is more affordable, and so your rental units will be uh available to a greater pool of people that'll have a lower average household income.

And we use those average household incomes for the assumed products to kind of set what that spending amount would be.

Um, and so since there's a diversity of potential rental products and the rates that those would charge, whether it's a small studio apartment unit versus a for-rent single family, if that was a development product that came into the community, um, there is likely a lower average household income of the folks occupying those new rentals, and so the assumption is therefore the spending is less, and then you would have a different fee.

You could choose as a community to set a fee, a single fee for all residential as opposed to doing it based by 10-year.

And I think those assumptions recently have changed.

I mean, in my mind, in the real world, those assumptions are not the same as they used to be.

The market is changing dramatically, and um sometimes when um for sale housing is completely out of whack, you see a real shift in people in residential.

I've also seen in a certain community where um developers got a better rate for building rental, so they on their inclusionary housing, and so they built rental and then later converted to condos, which I would like to see us avoid.

Um I that's why I'm trying to get at this question to understand is there a real difference or is it just some assumptions that could be you could mitigate those assumptions by uh sort of correcting for income level.

Yeah, um yes, so they are assumption-based, and they're based on sort of what we see both census data in terms of existing conditions, your renters generally have a lower income than your owners, and then based on what uh achievable rents and sale prices are for new product being in the community, and we'll still see that split.

But like I said, there are you can use a more uh uniform assumption for all residential as a policy choice within um your approach to the linkage fee, which would result in largely sort of the same fee for different types of development.

And so smaller units being built might have a smaller, lower fee than a larger unit.

And so sometimes in like a resort community, you're seeing humongous homes being built, and there's an assumption those bigger homes have a much bigger impact on affordable housing needs.

And so some communities have tiered their fee based on the size of the home versus 10 year or using a uniform rate for all residential.

So that's that's good direction to hear from you if you're more interested in sort of a consistent fee for all development or a different way to do that.

Well, I'm just one person, so I don't I don't want you to assume the council is there, but I uh I also am very interested in what you had to say about it, a fee that changes for size, because like many communities in Boulder County, we are struggling to get smaller and medium size homes built.

So if our fee structure could be structured to incentivize smaller units by you know a higher fee for McMansions than we did for you know, one and two bedroom units, that would that fits with our comp plan and the kind of things we've been talking about as a community is you know, how do we incentivize the missing housing that we don't currently have?

So I I'm very interested in that, and I'm glad you brought that up.

And I I don't know, I we don't have to talk about it now.

We can talk about it again later.

I I don't have a question about it, but thank you for bringing that up.

Any other questions from council before we move on to the next section?

Oh my great.

Um, so next I want to talk about how we think about a mitigation rate and how we use that mitigation rate to ultimately drive what the fee levels will be.

So the first thing we did was to look at your peers in the front range.

Um the first thing I want to mention is that you are somewhat unique in that you have both a residential and commercial linkage fee in place.

Only Denver and Boulder um have those both or have a linkage fee program like you do or similar to you have.

Uh, a lot of your other peers um in Boulder County and sort of the front range area uh rely more on an inclusionary housing ordinance to address affordable housing um needs, and that's uh only charged on residential development and or subject to residential development.

Um and so you're somewhat unique, although your fee level, which is really low, it's one dollar per square foot, um, is not a major impact on development, and so it's it's sort of interesting that you've utilized this tool over the past, uh, whereas some of your peers haven't.

Um but I wanted to point out that sort of unique aspect.

Um, and as we started to go through our peer research, realize we're gonna be talking about some of these communities that have these inclusionary housing ordinances.

And within that uh ordinance, um, there is a requirement to set aside a certain percentage of homes as affordable.

Um, or there's the opportunity to pay a fee and lie.

And we looked at those fee and lieu rates for those communities that have an IHO to compare to what your potential fee level be from your affordable housing fee.

And I just want to reiterate those are separate tools that function similarly, and so can be confusing, but um, when we talk about some of the fee and lie levels for some of your peers there, it's not the exact same thing as the affordable housing fee, but is is similar.

So first, just want to talk about Denver.

Denver has a system that um applies a linkage fee to commercial development and also smaller residential projects under 10 units.

These are, and I should mention they have an inclusionary ordinance that applies to larger projects.

Um larger residential projects have are subject to the inclusionary housing ordinance, whereas smaller projects are subject to the linkage fee.

Um the fee rates that they have for residential vary between five dollars and eight dollars per square foot.

Um for commercial, they vary between two and a half and nine dollars per square foot, depending on the use.

Um Boulder has linkage fee for residential and non-residential development.

Their fee rates for non-residential development vary between eleven dollars and $35 per square foot.

Uh, I think it's important to note that the markets in Boulder and in Denver are different than the market in Lafayette.

The achievable home prices, rental rates in those communities are substantially higher, especially in Boulder.

Um, and so uh I want to indicate that they have really high fee levels, and those level of fees are likely to be challenging to be supported by new development within Lafayette.

Um, but wanted to provide the context of where they are in terms of their fees.

But wanted to provide the context of where they are in terms of their fees.

Generally, what you'll see is the fee and loo amounts equate to a per square foot amount of about five to 13, 14 dollars in your peer communities for residential.

And then there's Boulder that's about 40 per square foot.

For rental, the range is similar.

It's about five to twenty dollars per square foot, depending on the community.

More in that five to ten range for some of your neighboring peers.

And then Boulder much higher than the other communities.

So giving you a sense of where your peer communities are, both in terms of the ones that have a commercial linkage fee and then the ones that utilize IHO, but that also then have a fee and lieu.

And so giving that context, the major takeaways.

It's less common for them to use commercial linkage, so you're unique in that.

It is possible to use both a linkage fee and an inclusionary housing ordinance to address affordable housing needs.

Denver is an example of that.

And then these are the ranges, as we just mentioned for either their fee or fee and lieu for residential and their commercial fees.

So just setting the context of what your peers are doing.

Next, we did a fair amount of development feasibility analysis.

So what we've done is we identified several prototypes of types of new development that have been coming into Lafayette, built pro forma models to assess what the potential impact of different fee levels would be on the feasibility of development.

And this is really meant to help us gauge what fee levels might be supported through new development.

And to help kind of inform where you might want to set your fee level at.

Some caveats, these are conceptual analysis.

You know, each development project has its unique circumstances, whether that's site constraints, land costs, development costs, design.

And so while we might say in a one prototype is or isn't feasible in reality, you know, a similar project might or may not work depending on its specific context.

And so we're using our best informed analysis to kind of get a sense of what feasibility is for different use types.

And then also want to uh caveat that you know development, real estate development is inherently risky.

Um investors and developers are investing in projects in order to create a financial return.

Um this is not the only way that they can create financial returns.

Um project needs to be assessed in terms of its risk in terms of the investment that it's creating, and that's calibrated to the risk of investing in other things like stocks and bonds or other investment avenues.

And so there needs to be ample return for a developer to even consider building a project.

Um, the other thing I want to caveat is we're in sort of unique market cycle right now.

Um we've had a period of uh raising uh development costs through the pandemic.

Um, those have somewhat moderated but still have been elevated.

And then we also have a period of higher interest rates than we perhaps saw over the last 10, 15 years.

Um, and so those are compressing return potentials and are making some projects less desirable currently in the market, and realizing we're setting a tool that is meant to work over time to address affordable housing needs and that market cycles and conditions will vary over time.

And so something that might not work today may work tomorrow, and so we don't want to be too reactive to today's current market as we assess these.

So after all my caveats are out of the way, um, I introduced these development program prototypes last time.

Um we did a variety of different residential development types, a variety of non-residential development types to sort of assess what the impact fees would be.

I'm gonna dive into the findings of a few of those.

Um actually all of them, I should say.

So the first slide shows an analysis or a summary of the analysis we did of different types of residential development, ranging from a 50-unit single family development all the way up to a larger urban apartment with structured parking.

We assessed what the current development feasibility of those would be in Lafayette.

Generally, what we found is for sale projects seem to be performing better currently and producing feasible results or returns.

Our apartment projects or rental projects are sort of more on the borderline feasible standpoint currently.

Some of that is due to current interest rates.

It's a little less friendly of a lending environment, especially for that type of development.

And so those are kind of on the edge, but still fees generally feasible in the community depending on the project.

And so just want to set the context that you know our for sale housing seems to be a feasible development project type that's continuing to work in the community.

There's a little bit of a lull or slowdown in apartment development in the metro area.

And that's reflected in our analysis as well.

But as lending conditions improve, that's likely to return, assuming employment growth in our community continues.

So what we did is we developed some summary charts to kind of give you a sense of what different mitigation fee rates, their impact would be on the increased cost of development of a project.

And so this looks at that for sale, those for sale project types.

And this chart on the Y axis shows the percent increased development costs from and then on the X-axis is your mitigation rate, all the way from zero or baseline up to 100%.

And generally what we're looking for is fee levels that would stay under about three or four percent of increased costs for development.

Generally, what we found is that level of increase could potentially be absorbed by development without creating major feasibility barriers.

And so finding what range of fees might fall underneath that sort of threshold is where we we looked for.

And so what we found is from a for sale standpoint, a mitigation rate of about 15 to 25% results in a fee on new development of about five to ten dollars per square foot.

That level of fee is generally we think something that development could absorb or take on in order to create affordable uh revenue for affordable housing.

And so our recommended up to range if you were to change your fees, um, would be up to a mitigation rate of 25.

We'd likely suggest if you were going to increase them in that 15% level is a place to consider.

Same analysis for rent development.

So we looked at a walk the walk-up apartment or garden style apartment and more urban product, assessed what that percent increase development cost would be from our fee, our change-in fee and related mitigation rate, and found about five to eight dollars is where we felt sort of was a supportable range.

Um that's an increase in development cost of about two to three and a half percent.

Next thing we did was look at development of commercial, uh, the feasibility of commercial developments.

It's a little more challenging picture here than residential.

Um of our development types that we are looking at, uh, the prototype, you know, was very challenging in terms of feasibility currently, specifically office development, as you might imagine, is a challenging thing to develop these days, given the overhang of existing space and hybrid work policies, as well as less space demand from office workers coming out of the pandemic.

And so that's a much more challenging product to build be built today, whether or not you have a fee or not.

It's it's gonna be challenging to build.

Generally, retail is can be feasible.

Uh, hotel industrial seem to be feasible development types.

And so realizing that you know some of your commercial development products have some challenges with feasibility currently.

Um, increasing a fee on them will only add to those challenges.

So it's something to consider as you may think about increasing your fee on commercial development.

Uh so we did the same sort of analysis of looking at what potential mitigation rates and related fees would be for different types of non-residential development.

This shows retail development.

Generally, our recommended range is between one to three percent if you were to increase your fee.

Um, we would probably recommend to start at that one percent, especially if you're not wanting to uh if you're a little bit concerned about a negative impacts on commercial development in the community, starting lower on the mitigation rate would be recommended if you were to consider increasing your fees.

This shows office development, sort of similar findings of a fee around two to seven dollars per square foot, um, and then industrial sort of same range.

Um I will stop there before I do the big reveal, and if there are any any nuanced questions about development feasibility, we can address them now, or we can address them after I go through the recommendations.

Um, Mare, I'll leave it to you to Yeah.

Before we go to recommendations, any members of council have any questions on everything we just heard?

Councilor Judson.

So you have commercial res uh, I mean, commercial findings, you have uh retail, you have industrial, and you have retail, I think are the categories.

Do any communities ever have different fee rates for different like as you mentioned about office being so difficult right now?

Do we have to apply the same rate to office as we do to let's say retail?

So um, yes and no.

Um in your nexus study, um, for it to be legally justifiable, you would want to set a consistent mitigation rate um for all non-residential developments, so say one percent.

And that'll have a varying fee level depending on the use, because some of them create more need for affordable housing or another.

And then if you were concerned about a certain use type, um not being able to um be affordable or you want to encourage that, our recommendation would be to set the fee level mitigation rate within your nexus study, and then after that, develop or enact a policy incentive to where the community chooses to either lower or waive your fee for certain types of development that you'd like to see.

And so within your nexus study and your ordinance for the fee, you don't want to be picking and choosing favorites.

You want to have a consistent approach to make that legally supportable, and then from there you would our recommendation would be to set some sort of policy um or incentive program that the city is then reducing the fee or waiving the fee for certain types of uses that they'd like to see.

Um generally we would recommend those to be related to uh the uses or perhaps the size of development is another way to consider that in terms of maybe we want smaller commercial buildings to have less of a burden than a larger so you can't use the fact that we have a bunch of empty offices as a reason not to not to charge offices the the fee?

I think you could do that through your incentive policy.

Um, but I wouldn't do it through setting your fee.

So I would set your fee um uniformly um in terms of your mitigation rate, and then have a follow-up policy to where the community, because it's so challenging right now for office, we're waiving the fee or we're reducing the fee through this policy.

And that's that is something communities do.

So it's not wouldn't be uh extraordinary.

Any other questions from council?

Council Friends.

Um I'm curious.

So Boulder and Denver have commercial linkage fees, and we do too.

We're the third in the region.

Yeah, why do our peers not have those fees?

Um I think there's probably a myriad of responses that I think um I think for a lot of communities, the desire to attract employment and support employment uh outweighs perhaps the the impact on affordable housing needs that they have, and so they they feel like they don't want to be more punitive on that.

Um, we also have kind of found that there's more opportunity for uh producing affordable housing units or fee revenue through residential development because it's just such a bigger part of the market in terms of development.

Um yeah, I think maybe sort of the feasibility of certain commercial development products is a little more tenuous and challenging, and so wanting to tread lighter on impacting the ability to attract a retail development that creates creates sales tax for the community.

Um it's sort of you know that weighing those competing economic development objectives, and I feel like they've felt like the impact from new residential, especially um the rising cost of that is something they want to address more than perhaps the impacts from commercial development.

Has there been a trend over time of folks having commercial linkage fees and going away from them?

No, I don't think so.

I think Boulder and Denver throughout the year have kind of vacillated between doing different approaches uh related to different considerations.

Uh there are ongoing legal challenges, both to the use of affordable housing fee, which is incessant in essence, kind of like an impact fee, as well as challenges to inclusionary housing ordinances in Colorado and throughout the nation.

And so there might be a consideration that uh affordable housing fee might be a little more justifiable and less legally um potential for legal challenge than in IHO would be, but I I'm I'm not an expert in that.

But the those are some of the considerations that we've we've seen over time.

And then this question is maybe to your recommendation.

So maybe as you're going through that, that would be helpful just to think of this.

Of is there are your recomm is your recommendation, I suppose, driven by the data saying this recommendation is gonna lead to certain outcomes that you this council values.

Uh I think the the purpose of while we're doing the study now is to provide the nexus study so that you have a rationale or you have a legal support for your current fee and an update to your fee.

Secondarily to that is uh the expression from the community, I think from you all to try to address affordable housing issues in the community and place a greater sort of uh I guess burden on new development to address some of the the challenges that new development creates in terms of providing affordable housing.

And so the assumption with that is you'd want to generate more revenue out of new development, and uh our analysis was to help you sort of understand if you were to update your fee because you want to generate more revenue.

This is where we generally think the level of a fee would be.

I would leave it to you whether or not you want to change that fee.

Um we're kind of providing if you were to, this is what we think you should go up to is sort of the direction we have.

Okay, I'll probably have more questions when we get through that.

I'm but just a couple, I want to make sure I'm thinking of this in the same way that you are as you're going through this, so I'm understanding.

So just define feasible for me.

Feasible is uh so we have a couple different metrics of assessing feasibility.

And so we um the most common one we use is a measure of yield on cost.

So we compare for uh rent producing product, so an apartment, commercial space, an office space, it produces a rent, which leads to an annual income for the owner of the building.

We compare that income stream annually to the cost that is to develop.

And generally there are kind of industry um metrics of return that need to be met for a project to be quote unquote feasible.

And so depending on the use, there's a different yield on cost, say for residential, it's like six percent.

So your annual income needs to be six percent of your development cost to indicate that we have a development, uh feasible development.

Another way we look at that is we model a project to see what potential revenue it could generate.

We compare that to the cost relative what to the price of land that somebody would need to pay for a site in Mafia.

Um and so we compare what an achievable land value would be from what we think a project can create to what the cost of land is in the community, and it's sort of referred to as a residual land value analysis.

And so there's a couple of measures that we try to get at that are indication of where we see developers comfortable with uh the risk to go forward with the project.

Um we do that through both market um market data that's provided quarterly by different shops as well as interviews with developers that are active in the region to understand what rates of return they need to see for them to consider a project.

Okay.

So for my fellow political science majors, maybe they they make enough money to make it worth their time.

Yes, exactly.

Um there's a minimum threshold that we think they need to hit where they it's it's riskier, it's not it's not too risky, or there's not enough upside for them to actually invest the dollars.

Yeah, got it.

And then I just had a question too.

And you said uh, you know, basically like as you're looking at this, right?

The the fee could be absorbed by the developer, right?

Uh is that what happens?

They absorb the fee into profit.

It it's is a mixture of probably absorbing some of their pro or eating into some of their profit and also the potential for slightly higher costs or prices, rents or sale prices of the product that they're creating.

Thank you.

Yeah, counselor Fuller.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Uh, I'm gonna piggyback on a few of counselor Fridland's comments, so thank you very much for the presentation.

Um with the range of of fees, uh, I'm not really clear.

Are are peer towns and business municipalities, are they seeing better outcomes?

Are they seeing different outcomes?

And if you could kind of walk me through, all right, Louisville doesn't have this, but we do Boulder has an exorbitant rate.

Well, what kind of outcomes are they arriving at through kind of the math that they have?

And maybe you'll get to that as we go forward, but I'm struggling.

Yeah, um so uh it's the fee level is all sort of connected to the costs to you as the community to provide an affordable housing unit.

Um, and so um that's sort of the start of where it's at.

Um, the ultimate goal of either an IHO or linkage fee is to offset the impact of new development on the need for affordable housing by either requiring developers to build on site units through an inclusionary ordinance or to pay a fee that you can then use to build affordable housing units either yourself with your partners.

Um and so uh the fee level or the set aside requirement for an IHO is tied somewhat to obviously these tools, not obviously that's the wrong word.

These tools need new development to work for them to produce units or revenue.

So we can't put them so high to where development doesn't occur where it's a useless tool.

Um and then also you have goals in terms of the amount of affordable housing you want in your community.

You know, um a lot of communities set a specific target, like we want 10% of our housing units to be affordable.

Um they can base that on sort of different things, including a housing needs assessment and other tools to sort of assess that, and then they utilize a suite of tools, and this is one of many to try to address that need uh for affordable housing.

This tool in an IHO is tied to addressing the ongoing need, not your existing need.

And so ensuring that as your community grows, you're able to continue to support uh providing affordable housing in your community.

Um to go into even more detail.

Um, in terms of a fee in lieu in part of an IHO program, um, developer will have a choice whether to build units or pay you a fee.

Um the cost to build the unit to developer roughly would translate into what you would set a fee at, perhaps potentially.

Um, and so there's some interplay in between whether or not you want fees because you think you can produce more units to the fees, or you're a smaller community, you don't have as many development resources, you'd rather a developer just build your units, and so there's some interplay in terms of where you set your fee.

I apologize.

As a fellow political science major, I'm still struggling with this.

So because I'm trying to think about how we would benchmark Lafayette with with a peer community, and given the range uh of numbers, I'm having a hard time doing that.

And so you look at us and our population, our location.

I would generally use um so as we're doing development fees to be an feasibility analysis, we're looking at achievable price points and rental rates for different and we can compare those to where you are with the other communities.

Generally, the cost development lafayette, the cost to develop in Lafayette is generally the same as it is in Lewisville or Longmont or Broomfield.

You might have some different fees, but it's generally the same.

And so you would then assess like, well, is it a lot more attractive to live in Broomfield and therefore they can charge larger home prices?

They might choose to have a higher fee because of that.

Um, I think generally you would use that barometer of where your achievable price points are next to your peers that kind of help set your level of fee.

But some communities want to be more aggressive in their revenue generation, so they'll have a higher fee.

Um, and some want to be less punitive and a little more concerned about the impacts on development, so they might have a smaller fee.

And so it's a little bit of a policy discussion there.

Thank you.

Um a couple months ago, Colorado Public Radio reported that this has been the the last year was the slowest growth in Colorado's population since 1989.

Um but I saw earlier in the presentation that the housing demand here is still quite strong.

So could you help me understand how you're balancing those?

Yeah, I would uh I think that's an important consideration.

Um I think generally uh the front range as many places in the US underbuilt housing for several years, and so we're addressing sort of a deficiency in housing, which it has an impact on the price of housing, and so we're somewhat addressing those challenges over time.

But to your point there, you know, sort of the rate of growth for the community um is slowing, um, at least currently, and so that has impacts on demand, and if you're a less attractive community, then perhaps um there's less potential future demand for housing in the community.

But you live and are in an attractive place in Colorado, Boulder County continues to be an attractive place for both people to live and work, and so while the state overall might not grow as much, there are certain municipalities that might be more in demand.

Great, thank you.

And just my final question to build on counselor Jensen's point, and I imagine there may be some legal issues that our attorney could speak to as well as you, but if we do have an interest in smaller homes for fixed income seniors, people starting out, is there a way to calibrate the residential fee, or does it have to be strictly residential or non-residential?

Um so you'll you need to have the rational nexus between commercial development and residential development.

Um so you want to set a separate fee mitigation rate for those.

They can be generally the same fee based on what you set the rate at.

And there are different approaches you can take to illustrate what the rational nexus is between new development.

And so, for instance, if you were interested in different fees based on small houses versus big houses, we would do analysis to see if bigger houses are producing more jobs that require affordable housing than small houses, and there's likely that finding based on previous studies that we've done, and that would be a way to address.

But we constantly want to tie to what a defensible linkage between the need for or the impact on affordable housing needs in the community is to new development, and then if you're wanting to offset those impacts, we would recommend you would use a separate policy incentive to address those impacts because we can't legally pay play favorites through uh the use of the two.

Thank you, thank you, Mayor.

Councilor Gianolo.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, just one question for me, and this relates to what you were talking about mitigation rate, and then we've been talking about the fees in dollars.

Yeah, you know, in all the peer comparison, we're looking at fees in dollars.

How does the fee comparison in terms of mitigation rate work with someone like Boulder, Denver?

That's a good question.

I don't know off the top of the hand what mitigation rates are for Boulder or Denver, and you can pull that data forward.

Um the um fees in lieu charged by the communities that have in IHO, uh, it's those are likely calculated through a different approach, and so we don't have that same mitigation rate comparison fee.

Okay, thank you.

Yep.

Any mayor protagonist?

Well, thank you, Mayor.

Um so these questions are making me wonder if uh I thought municipality or when a municipality moves towards build-out.

I mean we're looking at re redevelop.

If if in the in the example that the larger homes do a better job of generating for affordable housing, or they create more need for affordable housing because they create more spending in the economy, as that's the way they create more need for it.

Um assuming is it fair to assume that larger homes are require a larger income and the smaller need for or less of a need for affordable homes?

So at some point do these converge and we're at build out and there's no this this this we're at a we're in an ideal place where we've got the housing, everyone has affordable housing who needs it, and everyone uh where we're built is built.

Uh there, I mean, hypothetically, there could be a place where you do an amazing job of creating affordable options, maybe market conditions recalibrate fairly drastically, and there's less of a need for you to generate revenue to keep up with your need for housing affordable housing over time.

Um I don't know how likely that is.

Okay, so the probability of that happening is low.

Yeah, but I mean, the um another cav or sort of consideration to your comment is you are reaching sort of build out, which you say you would say, and so the importance of a tool that is uh designed to work with new developments is probably lower than tools that help address existing affordable housing.

And so the importance of a tool that is uh designed to work with new developments is probably lower than tools that help address existing off housing.

Okay.

And so I think that's important to consider as well.

Thank you.

Counselor Jones.

Just following back on Counselor Barnes about that.

Given that we don't have a ton of new parcels for new development, has anybody applied this to redevelopment or um how does that work?

It's generally uh you can kind of somewhat set which type of projects it applies to, whether it's only new construction or a substantial rehabilitation of a building.

Um there's different thresholds you can set, but a redevelopment in theory would probably be um would have to pay the fee just a new greenfield development would too.

And so that's um, but there is some sort of um there is some flexibility in where you set that sort of threshold for when it applies, whether it's you have to tear the building down and you're building a whole new structure, or if there's you could say if there's a substantial change to an existing building, then it applies.

Um so mountain communities, resort communities that have a really high affordable housing need, they set that level at so you know wherever they can get to where a substantial change to a building triggers it.

Um, whereas communities like yours that perhaps don't have such a drastic need and such a big impact from um you know people rehabbing buildings, you might set the threshold at different point where it's if we're doing a whole new building, that's when it applies.

And so we'll work with legal to uh define that in a way that's justifiable in the law, but there is a little bit of flexibility where you can apply that.

Thank you.

All right, Mayor, I'm so sorry, I'll be brief.

Um, how often do our peer communities change their fees?

And could we plan to change it regularly?

Oh, sure.

Yeah, um, gosh, I would say probably three to five years is the general time frame.

Um, and yes, you could you could change your fee after six months if for some reason it was um the nexus study provides the legal um study to justify the fee, you're gonna probably have a fee that's much lower than your maximum defensible fee.

And so if you want to adjust underneath that study, you can do that as much or as little as you want to.

I wouldn't recommend doing a lot.

Um at some point that Nexus study will get out of date, but you know, it's probably good for a good five to ten years, probably.

Um I believe we're ready for the last section.

Yes, all right, big reveal.

All right, residential.

Um this type of development seems to be able to absorb the additional cost from if you were to increase fee a little bit better.

Um, we also, based on the type of development that's likely to occur in Lafayette in the next five to ten years, a lot more that's gonna be residential development.

So you have more potential to generate revenue through residential development.

Um we do think that it might work well to utilize an IHO and in conjunction with a residential linkage fee where smaller projects are subject to the fee, and then you use the IHO for larger projects.

Um, in our coordination with staff, MOLE root policy and clarion working on the land use code generally, as you'll see in a second, that's the approach we think might work well, given that you already have the fee in place.

Um, and if you were to change your fee to increase it because you want to generate more revenue, we think a mitigation rate of 15 to 25% would put you in line with your peers and not reach a threshold where we think there's real detrimental impacts on development feasibility.

And so if you were to increase them, that's the range that you would consider.

And that's about five to ten dollars per square foot, depending on the type of development.

Commercial standpoint, um, as we talked about, some commercial uses are a lot more challenging in the current market conditions.

Uh, there is a potential that higher fees could impact commercial development, especially since some of your peers don't have this fee.

And so something to consider if you were to increase your fees on commercial development, we think a pretty minimal increase is recommended.

A mitigation rate of maybe one or two percent would be recommended, which would translate to you know, anywhere between two to five dollars per square foot.

Um, and so we would we would recommend starting smaller and and perhaps uh lower on the commercial side given current market conditions and your competitive standing with your peers in the market.

Um so ultimately we developed kind of a recommended direction to help provide you uh this direction down the path of the land use code update, considering inclusionary housing ordinance and updating the fee, and so in coordination, this is generally the recommendation that we have now, and sort of our our question beyond um if you have additional questions, I'd love to answer them.

But our quest tonight, our request from you tonight, generally for staff and us is are we on the right track?

Is this path that I'm gonna recommend in a second the path that you think we should consider?

Um, and if not, we want to hear um other ideas.

So recommendations.

First, we uh we think even if you don't really change your fee level, we you should update your fee ordinance.

Um the next study that you've created.

So whether or not you want to up uh increase your fees or not, you should update your ordinance and reference the nexus step.

And so you should do that no matter what, even if you're not increasing the fee or doing anything else.

Um we think you should consider a minimal increase of the fee on commercial development, a one percent mitigation rate would be our recommendation.

Um you generally a little bit more revenue, but not have uh um big impacts on development feasibility.

Um and then based on conversations related to how to address affordable housing needs in the community.

We think enacting the fee on smaller residential projects is a simpler uh strategy for you to consider.

And so the recommendation is for projects under 10 units to have them be subject to the affordable housing fee, um, and then utilize an IHO program to address affordable housing needs from larger residential projects.

And so one of the reasons Molly is here tonight is to talk about any questions about the interplay between an IHO and the fee and where the land use code update process is in relation to this specific fee study.

So with that, I'll stop talking for now and address any questions or love to hear your thoughts on our recommendations.

We're gonna come back to this and obviously talk about this, but I know because it's quick, can you just go over the next steps real quick?

Oh, yeah, sure.

Uh yeah.

So largely um we just need to finalize the linkage model and our feasibility analysis.

So if there is some direction to consider a different approach to the fee, we could modify our analysis and update the the models to address that from there.

We'll finalize the report, and then you all will use that uh report as well with our support to update your fee through the adoption process of an a new or updated ordinance uh that comes before council.

Perfect, thank you.

Okay, now you can go one to one back.

Uh now we'll open up to council.

Counselor Johnson.

So on page 15 of your um slideshow, um, you have this sort of fee and loo estimates for one, two, three, five, six locations.

Um what you're recommending for us is the very lowest of the what's currently being proposed.

And Boulder and Broomfield and even Longbunt and Lewisville seem more like they're more partners with who we think we are, I guess.

And so I'm wondering on that, why we are at the lowest end.

What makes you think that's where we belong?

Um well, um, you're a little bit smaller, and so you have uh fewer development opportunities, and so for these tools to work, you need new development to occur, and so a little bit of fear of not being too punitive.

Um in our conversations with the use of an IHO um and some of the direction we've heard through the land use code project and from you all is generally there's a little there's desirable uh desire for smaller infill developments, and so if we were to use a fee for just smaller projects, it might make sense to have that be a little less punitive on those smaller projects because we want to encourage them more, and we have the opportunity to do that through this fee study.

And so those that was sort of the rationale to where we got to.

Well, we're pretty similarly sized to Lewisville, which I know is at the 924, but haven't done much.

They have an inclusionary housing ordinance and they haven't really used it.

Um they probably I think have some fees they collected from what is it called North the one behind King Supers, whatever that is, um North something.

Um but anyway, I I I know they they have not done much with their ordinance and superior, which is also our neighbor hasn't done squat with their ordinance, they have one affordable housing development.

They have one affordable housing development.

So it's hard to compare to them when it seems like they're not as intentional as we want to be about developing affordable housing.

But I'm not against the five dollars.

I'm just even though you answered my question, I I wasn't really satisfied with the answer.

It didn't sound very much like it's just like let's be conservative to start, is what I heard.

Is you know, and make sure we don't we don't ruin developments we might like to have because we're overpricing ourselves.

And I I think that's a legitimate point of view, but I I'm not sure if it's correct.

You know, that that's just uh my concern is five dollars when long run is at 1350, you know, um, and Lewisville's at $9.24.

I it doesn't feel to me that those are our competitors for developments, I think.

And so I I'm just I'm struggling with that five dollars, and I'd love to hear what fellow council people think about that five dollars.

But I have a couple more questions, if I could ask them.

Um one quick response is they do you those communities are utilizing an inclusionary housing ordinance in the fee and lie that you set in that ordinance can be different than the mitigation rate you have for a smaller project, and so you could very much set a higher fee for larger residential development projects, larger fee and loo for larger residential development projects through the adoption of your IHO.

And so that might be one way to consider addressing.

And so I think you characterize my sort of uh tread lightly, be conservative ethos.

It's also if we're gonna apply this to smaller projects, let's try perhaps be less punitive because we're supportive of those smaller in-field projects.

So my thank you.

My next question is about the 10 cutoff.

Um so let's say developer was doing nine units and they wanted to bring us uh an affordable housing unit within that as part of the IHO, which is a term I have never heard before tonight.

Um I forget the term that you've been using in conversation.

Is that it?

Yeah, okay, good.

That's fine.

It just it's new to me.

Um would we be bound to let you know say no to them and say we have to have a fee?

Uh or do communities make exceptions if a developer really wants to do some sort of inclusionary housing in their smaller size project.

Uh I think you could set a policy uh as a city to waive the fee if somebody is providing an alternative statistication.

Yes.

I so not in your fee adoption, but in a subsequent policy incentive, you could say if you have an uh alternative that you want us to consider, we would consider waiving the fee.

Okay, that's awesome.

Yep.

Uh just as much flexibility as possible seems to me to make sense.

And then lastly, do most communities apply these fees to affordable housing, or do they waive them for affordable housing?

Generally wave them.

Okay.

Great.

Other members of council.

Um thank you, Mayor.

I would just echo everything councilor Jensen has shared.

Uh the question I have, I'm kind of want to pick at the logic you're sharing.

Because we're smaller and we have then fewer places to potentially develop.

Would that not give us potentially more leverage and there'd be more interested parties since we only have a few on offer?

Whereas a municipality like Broomfield has a tremendous amount of space.

Great city, but they have a lot more to work with, whereas it's quite a bit fewer.

Uh the question would be if the developer felt there was a greater return opportunity in Lafayette than it would be in Broomfield.

And so is there enough of a value proposition for them to pay a higher fee in Lafayette versus going over to Broomfield to build housing that's no sorry, if I could just follow Councillor Jensen.

The $5 fee versus the $13 fee.

Yeah.

So it's substantially higher in Broomfield.

And so if I follow Councillor Jensen's logic, we're talking about potentially I I think um our range generally recommended range falls between within those peers, or generally, so if you're wanting to uh prioritize generating more revenue and perhaps being at the upper end of where your peers are, I think that's totally your your policy choice.

And I think we kind of gave the higher end of where we think we we would recommend going from a feasibility standpoint, um, which is kind of where at some of your peers are right now under the great.

Thank you.

And uh in the next steps that Mayor Tapia Vega asked you to put on the screen.

I don't see I'm gonna presume that there's opportunities for public input throughout that process.

Uh yes, through your um for the specific fee through your adoption process, those would be uh public meetings, which would allow anybody to come comment.

Outstanding.

I just I love everything you were sharing about ensuring as much flexibility uh as possible.

Thank you, Mick.

Council Fred.

Thank you.

Um so uh hearing some of my fellow counselors, I think what I need more of is I don't understand your basis for 15% mitigation rate.

Um I I don't know if I mean I think what you heard in response, what you said in response was well, we want to be conservative.

So I guess if that's the basis, I don't know that I think that's a struggle for us to make an informed decision on a policy choice.

Um that a little more context, yeah, please.

Um for your four rent development prototypes that we looked at.

So a garden style apartment, a what we called an urban product, which was more uh if you have structured parking, sort of what we introduced there, and maybe a little bit higher in product.

Those projects were pretty borderline in terms of their feasibility.

They're you know, they might not attract development currently.

But if I can I I'm sorry to interrupt you, but if I can't, I don't understand how this fee has anything to do with the feasibility of those projects.

The feasibility of a project like that is market conditions return community like this, right?

The more cost you add to the development project, the less return for the developer, and there's less interest in them investing in your community.

Yeah, yeah.

So a project like that may not happen in our community because it's right on the line, and if we further nudge it, it's not gonna happen in our community potentially.

Yeah, more or less, yes.

Okay.

And so I guess in terms of you know, asking about path forward, I think my response is I want to I want to be able to have the policy uh discussion about is it 15%?

Is it 20%?

Should it be 15% on this type, 20% on this type?

Um, can we we can't do that?

So yeah, so what so 15% on this type means this, 15% on this type means this.

So if we go to 20%, then that means that these types are completely off the table, right?

Like, I just I I'm not sure if I'm not sure if we have enough right now.

I don't feel like I have enough right now to really make an informed policy decision on this question, which I know you're just asking for feedback, so you don't want that yet.

But that's I think that's my uh feedback on the path forward.

One thing that I will summon is so we're producing uh the study, uh the report, which will include both sort of the rationale for the fee um and how we got to supportable fee levels and then our development feasibility findings, which I'll have much more detail.

Um that can provide some more insight into specific feasibility of certain projects, um, which might be better consumed in sort of reading a report than a council presentation.

And so that we intended definitely through the adoption process for you to see the draft report, have to be able to review it and weigh the mitigation rate and some conversation there too.

And so um, we're open to um how you might want to see that path go forward, whether it's you know just moving into the adoption process or subsequent sort of workshops.

I I'm I'm open to discussions with you all as well as the city manager and staff on that.

So yeah, yeah.

Fair enough.

Uh, I think the other thing I would say too is I have this question that keeps coming up in my mind.

I've been thinking a lot about um like uh abundance theory from Ezra Klein, and it's another gentleman who wrote it too.

And like I think sort of what we're doing here is adding cost to housing to make housing more affordable elsewhere.

And I just don't know if that makes any sense.

Um it probably does.

I'm sure people can convince me that it does, but just like right off the top, uh, it feels it feels like we're like too far into the trees and not like looking at the system and saying like the system's too expensive.

So how do we deal with that or can we?

Um like the other thing I'll add too, and then I'll let others jump in is um I also see the recommendation about inclusionary housing ordinance, and we didn't talk too much about that tonight.

I don't think we're meant to.

We will talk about that at a later date.

Yep, but it does feel like this piece of it is like a subset of that, or could be as you've described.

So I do think that to really make this make sense.

I think we do need that additional context to then go here.

Um so I'll just say those two things where I'm uh I'm kind of just struggling to un you know to really understand like what is the best best path forward for us.

Um I this is an important step.

We got a lot of information um to really be able to make an informed decision, but I don't know if um I feel like I have enough really tonight to say, like, yeah, we should definitely do 15% of X, you know.

Um, so just feedback and I guess also maybe some jumping off points for my for my colleagues up here.

Counselor Johnson.

So what I am taking from this, which is very useful, there's a lot of really good stuff here, is that we have a gap between what people can afford and uh what we offer in the way of housing, and this mitigation rate is how far towards closing that gap do we want to go.

And this five dollars gets us a 15% closing of the gap.

And if we want to go further to close the gap, we charge more than that.

The people who are paying this are the developers, and the market decides how much of that they pass on to the consumer or how much do they eat, and we don't really know that, right?

So some of it what is likely to get passed on to the consumer, but it's also going to be influenced by what their competitors are charging for similar housing, and we can't really factor that into our decision.

So I I think the thing for me that I would like to see is a graduated rate, almost like a backwards graduated income tax rate, so that the kind of housing that we have said we want more of in our community gets lower rates on this mitigation fee than the housing that people that if it were passed on to people, like big expensive homes, they can clearly afford it.

So our rates, so that we're not doing as much, David, of what you're saying, is that we're trying to soften that blow a little bit by to the extent possible, passing higher costs on to people who are already wealthy, and lower costs on to people who are not.

I I didn't know uh that that was something we could do, and I'm excited to see what that might look like.

So for me, that additional information is necessary to proceed and go and see what that looks like.

Um so uh I'm I'm I'm excited about that, and I appreciate especially on the the commercial piece of this is that it I think you said some good things about wanting to attract business and businesses that provide uh revenues so that we can continue to do programs like this, you know, and so we don't want to go overboard on the the commercial side, and I think if we could adjust the residential side to be more graduated, it'd be more exciting to me.

Um you said Molly is here to talk about uh the inclusionary housing.

So, David, uh we do have a person here who can talk to us about the inclusionary housing piece.

Is that something you would like?

Well well, we certainly could.

I don't know if now's the right time.

I think it's coming back to us in the land use update process.

Right, and it'll be one of a bajillion things we're gonna get on that night.

Yeah, so um I have a we have not talked about you know in the past we've used the 12%, which is our um, you know, we have a goal of 12% affordable, but we're playing catch-up in many ways because we haven't had an inclusionary housing ordinance.

So is 12% the right amount, 15%, you know, uh a boulder goes to 25% on their inclusionary housing uh, you know, what they're requiring.

So we haven't talked about that at all, which is I also think is an important piece of this.

Um and I guess probably not tonight, you know, is not the time to do that, but I would like personally to see this go forward with the exception of what I just said, which is you know, um reverse fee for lower fees for smaller homes.

Yeah, and um, and I think we're not voting tonight, right?

So, does everybody think that's useful information to have?

Counselor Jensen, if I could maybe just volley it back to you in this way.

Um, I don't know if we've really decided what are our policy priorities around this concept, and then what are those priorities, and then what does that mean in terms of numbers?

And so I wonder if we go the other way rather than saying let's have graduated numbers get to a number, let's say what are we trying to accomplish with this, and then what are the numbers that help us achieve that goal?

Counselor Friedland, if I if I may.

One thing that I think might tie a few of these threads together is you know, you talked a lot about feasibility in response to Counselor Fridland's question in terms of the developer's perspective, which again I respect that that's important.

But I think many of us are particularly intrigued by feasibility from a prospective homeowner, prospective resident, prospective renter, like what's feasible for them, what kind of math makes sense for our community from kind of from the residents' perspective.

So I'd love to see a little bit of that as well.

Yeah, somewhat um, and this will be somewhat talked about in our study as well as other efforts, but um how we identify what the cost for affordable housing is by looking at where there are uh affordable affordability gaps in your community currently for renters and owners, and so we've assessed um based on what achievable rates are for new developments, at what point would a household of a certain income be able to afford that new product or not?

And that's sort of there's a tie there somewhat that gets to that.

It's not full picture of your housing needs in terms of what's available in the market compared to the different household incomes you have in your community, but there is some nexus to that.

Um, generally we are only accounting for the cost to address the gap between providing um an affordable option for different income levels and what the cost of providing a market rate at home is so there is some tie in our nexus there, but it's only related to new development and sort of the average cost of new development and not the larger picture of your overall existing housing needs in addition to future development.

Council General.

Yeah, I want to come back to this concept of the progressive rate and just poke and prod a little bit because the way I look at this at a if we still just assume a five dollar per square foot rate, does this already achieve that because these more expensive homes are generally larger square feet?

So you have a let's say a 5,000 square foot home versus a 1,000 square foot you know studio or you know, kind of smaller housing, that rate is necessarily gonna be larger on the larger home.

And maybe is the question then could it actually stand to be even higher?

And I want to think about this in terms of you know, these policy incentives, like I'm just like on fire about that, because I think that gives us all the flexibility that we're asking for.

Like we could set the rate, let's say we're gonna set the rate at a 25% mitigation rate as the baseline, and then we can come in with our policy incentives and say, oh no, if you're building, you know, units that are a thousand square feet, we're gonna lower that rate as an incentive to something that's equivalent to now three dollars a square foot because we really want to encourage that type of uh development.

That it sounds like something we could do under this.

Yeah, that's that would be our recommended approach.

Um I will caution or caveat that we need to have a legal discussion about how far the incentives can go and how finite and prescriptive those can be.

Um so uh there may be some limitations there.

Um but and yes, generally the way you describe it is you would set a uniform mitigation rate or fee level um and then use your incentive policy as a way to kind of provide more opportunities for the types of development that you'd like to say.

And and we can do that for both the residential side and the commercial side.

Yeah, yeah.

And so this is crazy.

Can we set a commercial rate?

You know, again, whatever rate we decide uniform across the board, and then can we just say as a policy, we're gonna set that all to zero across the board?

Um, just to say because we don't want to disincentivize commercial, we're gonna have a fee, but we're gonna waive it for all development.

Is that is that in the cards?

Uh I don't want to say it's zero.

I'll say I've never seen that done.

Um I'm not sure I have an answer.

The question is what what is the policy levers that we can pull in setting this this policy incentives?

Um yeah, I mean, I think I don't I wouldn't see the the rationale for even setting the fee if you were gonna create the incentive if you wanted to change it, you would just adopt it an ordinance when you felt like you're ready to.

Um I would I think there needs to be some rationale and stated policy objectives that the community has that the basis of your incentive program is for, and so there's a consistent clear message to development market and the community why you're doing this.

Um and then there are legal questions about uh how you can set the incentive that we can have um to figure out where you might run into issues in terms of which types of development you want to incentivize or not.

So okay, thank you.

Uh another question I have is how does this all connect with the land use code project?

I am a little bit confused on sort of next steps with respect to that.

Yeah, uh I think Steven would be the right person for that.

Yeah, I guess I could start too, because I want to I I well, what I was gonna jump in and say is um the comment that was made of like we're gonna be reviewing a lot of things that night.

This is related but separate to it, so it is a separate ordinance.

The inclusionary housing is a separate ordinance, this fee would be a separate ordinance.

So I would anticipate given the robust discussion tonight, we'll have a separate conversation.

So it's a parallel path, um, but it won't be necessarily incorporated in the larger ordinance of the land use code that you'll be considering.

So we can adopt the land use code and still continue to work on some of the nuances within um these two inclusion and housing and impact fee discussions.

Okay, do we still have the land use code working group?

Yes, they have one meeting left.

And is it worth asking them for input on some of these policy incentives?

Because I think that getting some input from the community might be useful to understand the kinds of policies we might want to set or where we might want to incentivize different types of development, given that they're already considering the broad scope of land use code, which is what kind of developments are we gonna even allow.

Sure.

I mean, I think uh the conversation is then how quickly you want these two pieces to move forward as well.

And um, as we are going through this process, especially for the newer members, it might also be helpful to have kind of a stage, like a setting of the stage of what's existing in our current economic development and housing plans and what they say what our needs are and what our strategies ought to be.

And then um maybe we could do that at the forefront and then tie back into this, and then that way you could see the connections maybe a little bit more clear versus kind of starting.

And I think our comp plan too also addresses some of that, doesn't it?

Uh as you were talking, Adam, I it just occurred to me about the comp plan and the land use working group.

There may be other things we want to incentivize, which oh my god, this just opens a big can of worms, but like we have a mixed use uh sort of support for more ability for people to walk and uh go to the store in near their neighborhood or you know, go to child care or a park or whatever.

You know, it could be that there may be other things aside from just size, like if you are a mixed use development, you get less of a fee because you're helping people, you know, not to have to get in their car.

And I don't know what all other criteria there might be, you know.

If you serve if you're a business that serves low-income people, I don't I'm not even suggesting that, but I'm suggesting that we haven't really explored the full panoply of things we'd want to give lower rates to or incentivize.

Like we know we are a community that is in desperate need of child care.

Is that something you know what could be the kind of things that we help people do through these incentives?

And that's a big big sort of thing to think about with all.

I mean, maybe we could do part of it to start and then have a longer term project to look at what else we might want to incentivize, you know, after we have more time, because otherwise we'll never get this ordinance done.

Uh so but I think I think there are things we have already stated in lots of ways that we would like to see our community look like that could be included in this sort of uh different fees for different things.

Go ahead.

Mayor Proton.

You haven't spoken yet, you can go ahead.

You go ahead.

You're sure I'll I'll come back.

Okay.

Um I I just wanted two two points of clarification.

So slide 21.

There is a reference to health care.

That's potentially feasible.

No, uh, I got the wrong slide.

Oh, I think it's commercial.

Sorry.

Yeah, yeah, there we go.

Oh, it's not feasible.

Okay, that's myself.

Yeah.

Um that'd be like a healthcare clinic medical office type project is what we modeled there.

So I if I might be wrong, but long ago I heard that we had more that was the highest employer type in off yet was people in the healthcare.

And is that related to why this is not feasible?

Is that we're built out with healthcare?

Maybe I think it's compared to I think the closest product type is office, and it's more expensive sometimes to develop those medical facilities because there's more specific requirements, whether it's sinks, whether it's you know, drainage, whether it's you know, more clipping.

Backup gas generators and all that so uh so the next the other question is um until someone said broomfield, this didn't dawn on me.

Uh someone mentioned there's a lot of space in Broomfield.

Is there?

Okay.

Um there's also a lot of space in the Erie.

Yeah.

Uh and they're developing a great deal.

And I you know, I I have in my head, infrastructure matters.

Like, does can the city support that?

And that's obviously something the city deals with.

Does that land on the developers in any way when they're looking at feasibility?

Like how much infrastructure already exists.

Like Lafayette, I mean, if we do this right, we'll see development where there's not a lot of need to like create a subdivision.

Well, we already done that.

But um well, development projects, depending on your community, but generally development project has to pay for the infrastructure that's needed to support its project directly at its site, and then there's communities that also utilize things like impact fees to address larger regional improvements that uh there is an impact on.

And so regional roads may need more capacity or investment because you're adding more cars to the road, and so a community will charge an impact fee for roads.

And so generally uh, yes, developments through either what you require them to build in your standards, uh in addition through the use of impact fees, uh development usually has to pay for the infrastructure that they are created.

Yeah, right.

So it's I mean it's more of a holistic picture of like is does it make sense to put this here considering as a transportation alternatives and that and the as Councillor Jensen was saying about the child care, uh, all these other issues.

So that it's uh I just needed to put that in context.

Yeah, that's that's all I needed.

And some sites have more infrastructure needs than others, and so that's you know, that's an impact on why certain projects go forward and set up and done.

Okay, thank you.

I believe there was a few more comments on the side.

I mean, thanks, Mayor.

I my comment is more for council, so I don't know if it's appropriate to raise this yet.

And the comment is you know, kind of next steps directions.

I mean, I was hearing from Council Friedland that he's not ready, or he needs more information, or I drew the I drew a picture of a stool.

Uh we this is one leg of the stool of our affordable housing strategy.

Um incentive policy is a leg, I think.

Uh inclusionary housing ordinance is a leg.

There's probably other legs.

I don't know that we can make a decision on this one leg without seeing the whole stool.

Okay.

And so, yes, I do have hesitation because I don't see the whole picture.

And I I guess my thought is there is one part of the question recommended direction, slide 31, that I think I do feel comfortable with, and that is the very first bullet point, which is update the affordable housing fee.

Yeah, the current affordable housing fee so that it ties to the nexus study.

Sounds like we should do that.

Do we need to do that separately?

Um I would recommend that we just incorporate it in any changes that you make to the ordinance.

It's just a simple reference to say that this Nexus fee was um created.

I just don't want to shoot ourselves in the foot of like not you know, checking that box if we needed to do it sooner because we need more information or more time.

I think if we were a challenge, we have the reference, and it doesn't necessarily need to be legally adopted until then.

I s I certainly don't want to wrap this up, but I I know this isn't final, so they're gonna come back and we're gonna look at this, and staff certainly I think has some direction as to what we want when we come back and kind of look at this.

And yes, like you said, there's uh there's other legs that we will certainly look at because we need the stool to actually sit up properly.

Um just any any final thoughts for staff before we move on.

Anything that you you definitely want to see when we come back and make that final decision, anything you desperately require before you can make that decision.

Well, I would like to see the graduated, not just uh one rate one that and I I see some nodding.

Does uh does other do other people uh you know support that I'm also curious to see it just because the flat fee as we know is regressive, 25,000 on a McMansion is nothing.

Uh $5,000 on less uh low-income individual is a fair amount of money.

So I'd be interested in that.

And uh how do people feel about five dollars?

Do we think we should look at other options in addition to five dollars?

Yeah, absolutely.

I I mean I don't I I still don't really understand what the reasoning for 15% versus 10% versus 25% is still.

So I think yeah, I think we need to keep thinking about that.

Absolutely.

Anything else from numbers of council?

Councilor General.

The one thing we haven't touched on a fair amount is the commercial fee.

You know, we've talked a lot about residential, but are there thoughts about it?

Well, I would love to see us look at maybe certain things that we'd really like to see in Lafayette that are missing, and we don't have to go through the whole universal list of everything.

But if child care, for example, which you know, we all talked about during our campaign cycle, is important enough.

Maybe there are a few things like that.

Not I don't want to do the whole universe of things, but what are those things?

You know, let's say we are missing a health clinic, you know, which we're not, but but let's say we're in desperate need of a health clinic, you know, that might be the kind of thing we want to uh change the fee structure for, and so maybe in testimony from the public, we can hear, you know, what are the things that are worth making some changes to?

And I think child care is one of them, but I don't know what else there might be.

Yeah, and I wonder, you know, things like job centers, you know, the industrial kind of more job heavy thing might be something that we would want to incentivize, whereas retail we might want to incentivize because of the tax revenue.

So I think there's different trade-offs to this.

So I think that's a bigger policy discussion.

I guess my question is more do we think the two dollars, like we're asking five, is that the right number?

Well, we're currently at one.

Right.

So I I would think we don't want to go below one.

And you know, you know, in a tough economy, it's hard to look at adding to that fee.

But you know, I think we should draft one and look at it and make a decision.

Yeah, what I was gonna suggest is I think it also might be um important for you guys to see how the the dollar, so we're talking about like a one to five dollar rate, but we're not saying what that means to a certain type of development, right?

We're going from $20 to now $200 because we're increasing it 400%.

And so I think maybe a few different examples as well would be helpful for you all because in the grand scheme of things, the commercial revenue that we bring in is substantially lower than what the residential will be, even if the dollar amounts are relatively equal, just because of how it's calculated.

So we'll bring that information back as well.

So I don't feel like we need um firm direction on it, other than maybe just a little bit more discussion around it and some like maybe it goes up a little bit.

Perfect.

Does council feel good about that?

This will come back and we will make a decision at a later date.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for this.

Yeah, thank you.

Fantastic.

We'll move on to our next presentation.

Uh the memorial plaque recognizing the unmarked graves.

Oh, our deputy city manager, Megan Davis.

Okay, good evening, Mayor and City Council.

I'm here this evening to talk about the cemetery, Lafayette Cemetery Memorial Plaque, and we're gonna go through some background, a little bit of history, um, the purpose, and the proposed plaque language and location, and then some next steps.

So a little bit of background on the Lafayette Cemetery.

It's one of two cemeteries that the city of Lafayette owns and operates.

The Lafayette Cemetery is a historic cemetery, and just a little bit of context around what's in the cemetery.

Um, we have marked graves in the cemetery with visible markings on the surface.

So that means if you walk around the cemetery, you'll see headstones, gravestones, flat gravestones, some very old and historic and some newer.

There are also several unmarked graves in the cemetery where you won't see any markings.

So there may have been um old graves where there were wooden wooden crosses or wooden markings that have long since gone.

And there are many of those, but we have documentation of many graves that occur or many burials that occurred there, but there are no markings that remain there.

Um, and some that may never have existed, but we know that there were burials that occurred there.

We also have several unknown graves where people were buried without any record of burials.

Some of those occur in the Potter's Field, which is in the northeast section of the Lafayette Cemetery, and there are others that occur throughout the cemetery where we may have lost or incomplete records.

For example, we have periods of time where we don't have records.

In the early 1900s, there are some years where we don't have any burial records.

And then there's some other periods of time where we have gaps in records, for example, when we had a private mortuary that was overseeing some of our burials.

So what we're going to talk about tonight is that last bullet, which relates to the unknown graves where people were buried, where there aren't records of the burials.

So a little bit of background around this issue and the recognition of these unmarked graves.

In September of 2023, City Council held an initial discussion regarding options for a memorial plaque to honor these those buried in these unmarked graves.

And in November of that same year, the history museum staff presented some draft language for potential memorial plaque.

And council requested at that time that the staff and history museum review the available historic information and come back with revised memorial plaque language.

So after about two years or year and a half of reviewing a lot of data and information, the Lafayette Historic History Museum, state historians, and local community members reviewed a lot of the history that had been gathered by local community members, and during that time, also the City of Lafayette and the Lafayette History Museum entered into a MOU, a memorandum of understanding agreement for the History Museum to have a more kind of formal role to conduct his historical programming and research partnership for the City of Lafayette.

The City of Lafayette does not have any historical staff resources, so we don't have staff historian or anyone who provides those resources on staff.

So the Lafayette History Museum worked together with the folks in the community and with the city and looked at a research review of some of the research that had been completed and recommended new language for the memorial plaque.

And in October 2025, council reviewed, well, prior to that, council reviewed that and recommended the memorial plaque, and it was installed in October of 2025.

So the purpose of the discussion tonight is to recognize the historic Potter's Field and to continue to memorialize and honor the individuals missing from the Lafayette Cemetery, and to recognize and reflect on the rich history of the cemetery.

And given ongoing community conversation around the inclusion of names to address that ongoing desire of including the names of the unrecorded burials in the Lafayette Cemetery.

So the current plaque location is in the northeast corner of the cemetery, as you can see on this map.

This photo depicts where the cemetery plaque is located that tells the story of the potters field and the unmarked burials within the cemetery.

You can see the sort of triangular-shaped rock on the right is the language in English, and then we also have the same plaque in Spanish.

When we place these stones, we anticipated the potential for having the names at some point.

And so we thought that perhaps that could go somewhere near and maybe even in the middle because we could have a space where it could be centered and also out of the way of people kind of walking through and have it be kind of a whole memorial kind of area.

So that white rectangle that you see there is the space that we thought might be a good placement for this.

We've been thinking about and talking with our parks staff and our arts and cultural resources staff about what some potential plaque designs would be.

One would be something that is upstanding upright on the right, and then we could have all the names listed, like you see here.

We also could look at more of a headstone type style that would be on the ground oriented in a way that it could sit sort of between or in front of the rocks that would have all the names listed.

So right now we're looking at kind of feasibility, um, cost, ability to add names over time to any of these and what that would take and how we could accommodate that, um, sort of you know, maintenance and all those factors, and we want to be able to, if there are additional names that are identified over time, we would review and verify those through the Lafayette History Museum and anyone who brought those names forward, and then we would um look to kind of batch those every couple of years because we wouldn't want to be adding those, you know, on a month by month basis.

It would be quite a process to you know, etch those or have them added into the um bronze.

So that's something we we would do kind of in batches.

So next steps.

Um, no council motion is necessary this evening, but we're seeking direction regarding the addition of this um new plaque or um stone with names identified by um the resident groups who have brought this data forward, and if approved, staff will proceed with sourcing and installation of the memorial plaque.

And happy to answer questions.

Amazing.

Thank you.

Okay, we will get to discussing this, but before we do, I know there's a few new counselors here, uh, and the history here is long, so I just want to make sure there's no questions before we uh start talking about this.

Counselor Jensen.

So the the 200 or so names that we currently have.

I know many members of the community participated in doing the research.

Did the history museum have any role in that?

Did they verify it?

Did they do uh what was their role in all that?

They did.

So um Frank Archaletta and Doug Conroe did the majority of the research, and then um the history museum I know has met with them a couple times and also has reviewed um reviewed the data and kind of cross-checked a lot of the data to see, you know, where the resources and information has come from.

They have um you know, databases of the newspapers as well, and so they reviewed that.

We there are a couple of questions.

Are some of our um arts and cultural resources staff right now who works closely with the museum as well as Melissa are kind of doing another kind of pass through and working with the museum and Doug right now to look at some of the outstanding questions that we have had about some of the data, so we're kind of doing a little bit more of that to just just sort of verify um some of the questions and names that that um we have questions about.

Yeah, so it's kind of been a joint effort, but all the all the initial research and data work has been done by um Mr.

Archiletta and Mr.

Conroe.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Any other questions from council?

Council Friends.

And the museum uh supported the recommendation last fall of putting the names, including the names.

Yeah, they're um they they're they had some changes to the plaque language to yeah, but that but the names they were supportive of putting the names on, and they did, you know, have some questions about updating it.

Logistics, yeah, yeah, exactly.

But generally they were supportive in it.

And they have agreed to do ongoing sort of verification, but also I think in terms of resources, they want to make sure that they don't necessarily have the resources to do that, you know, um, immediately, and so I think having the time to be able to batch those and you know, do them over the course of a couple years will help them as well.

Counselor Gallegos.

I just have a question about the proposed height and how much space will be available for additional names.

Um, you know, I don't know that yet.

That's one of the things that we're looking into is you know, we've kind of just done our just the cursory kind of look at what sizes we'll need and if we can fit the names on, and so we haven't done really a full um size and scope and gone out there to see exactly what what dimensions we would need in the field.

So this is just looking at some of the styles and the potential design.

So that's what we'll do, which will help us kind of narrow down what our options really are going to be for the for the um the type and style.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Counselor Justin, I believe you had your hand of.

Yeah, so I heard without a lot of information to but to help me understand it more completely from two people that the language of the plaque, uh, at least in their mind, doesn't fully accept responsibility for the role that the city had and why these names were not uh buried adequately, or these humans were not buried adequately.

And I'm not clear where we are on that.

It doesn't, I mean I'm reading the the little Pottersfield uh thing that's here in the packet, and it it doesn't really say the city had any role.

It it sort of says, you know, we all sucked back then, you know, and we were not doing good things, but it doesn't accept responsibility on the part of the city.

And I would be perfectly fine with doing that, and I don't know if in the past when you guys have considered that there was specific language, sounds like you had a four-three vote with stronger language, and nothing in this presentation tells me what was that stronger language, and should we reconsider this now that we're adding names?

I don't have any information here that tells me anything about that.

Well, I that wasn't requested by council.

You're welcome to go back and look at the council packets.

I didn't include it because I wasn't really, but we did include when that council discussion happened the you know, the the analysis of the history museum around the research that was conducted by residents or by yeah, by residents, their research and what the kind of concerns were with the um I guess with the conclusions around the research and the information that was actually you know gathered and and what's how those conclusions were represented and how they were the history museum saw them.

And so that was the conversation, and so they put forward both of them put forward information and and papers, and council made a decision decision around the language that came before council multiple times.

And that sort of stuck because it's already on the plaque.

So at this point, we don't really have the opportunity to change that unless we want to spend more money changing the Potter's Field plaque at this one.

So that's really not an issue tonight.

Yeah, I think we're we're specifically talking about the plaque with the names, and just to give a little bit of a context and background.

Original, my first ever meeting on council, which was at the end of 2023.

Uh, we talked about this language on this plaque for and it took roughly two years for it to actually come back.

So we have two sets of language.

One was from our residents, and then a revised version that was from our from our history museum.

And ultimately on council, I think the night we we made some different edits, and then ultimately that's what we have here today.

But yeah, I just that's what was installed.

Yeah, that's what was installed.

But yeah, I think I think tonight we we want to just get council's thoughts on the plaque for names.

Um Mr.

Mayor.

Yeah, uh, just a few quick things.

One, thank you so much for the presentation.

Um so excited to be able to just like field an easy ground ball, right?

It's just coming right at us, and we get to get this right.

So that is that is exciting.

Um I I wonder if to Councilor Jensen's point, because I don't know that we should revisit the currently installed plaques, but you know, a number of us were at the outstanding exhibit at the collective that Director Hanson and Frank Occoletta and many other people uh contributed to.

So I wonder if there's a way to this plaque of names, 200 future more, to include some language that also brings the rich findings and um sober assessment of our history and the list of names together in the context of those plaques.

Uh and then also doesn't face south since we had our conversation on signage and deterioration facing south.

But those would be some of my thoughts.

We can kind of bring those things together.

And just to you know, they don't face south.

No, I mean for the new one.

Oh, it would face for it.

Yeah, as well.

Yeah.

Right.

Well, plus it's made out of metal, right?

It's not painted.

Metal still deteriorates.

That's true.

Yeah.

Okay.

I want to bring us back to the discussion now that questions are out of the way.

I think the exact language was unless council objects, staff will be moving forward with this.

So I will open it up to council and just see.

Does anyone have any thoughts on or objections?

I don't see any.

So it sounds like we can move forward with this.

Uh genuinely, thank you.

I know this has taken a long time, and uh, we appreciate all that staff has helped us with.

And we also I always speak on behalf of council, and we want to thank all the residents that don't let us forget this and bring this up and bring this to council.

So thank you to everyone involved.

Yeah, fantastic.

Uh that was our last presentation.

We will move on to regular business.

Finally, regular business.

And the 2026 uh citywide concrete rehabilitation and citywide street rehabilitation.

I will turn it over to Casey Carlson, senior civil engineer.

Hi.

Good evening, Council, Mayor.

My name's Casey Carlson.

I'm a senior civil engineer with the city.

Tonight I'll be going over our 2026 citywide concrete and street rehab projects.

Just to preface it, the concrete contract is the one we would be looking for a motion on tonight.

The asphalt and the concrete kind of go together.

So that's why we're presenting them at the same time.

Asphalt would come at a following meeting just on consent.

So covering both tonight.

So to kind of outlay what we'll discuss.

We'll go over our pavement analysis and roadway selection, and then get into the street rehabilitation change order.

Again, not looking for action on that.

And then our 2026 concrete rehab contract, the one we will be looking for action on, and then take any questions at the end.

So getting into our pavement analysis and roadway selection.

Kind of a summary of Lafayette's street infrastructure.

We have approximately 118 miles of roadway, equaling a total network valuation of about 117 million dollars.

So that's one of the city's largest assets.

That's broken down into arterial streets, being about 13% of those roadways.

An example of that would be like a South Boulder Road type of roadway.

Collector streets are about 14% of that roadway network, and that's a street similar to like Emma.

And local streets are the remaining 73%, and that's a street like Whitetail Circle.

So our roadway network is generally analyzed every five years.

In 2020, we got a pavement condition index report or PCI.

That report gives us like a five-year plan on roadways that are in most need of repair, best method to repair those to kind of stretch out the life of that roadway in that asphalt.

For 2026, we just underwent and are currently working on getting a new PCI and uh asset inventory and working towards a new five-year pavement management plan with that.

So the PCI report that we get will give us roadways graded zero to 100.

Uh zero is completely failed, and 100 should be a brand new roadway.

Um we typically perform mill and overlay improvements on roadways that fall within the 35 to 55 range.

Uh crack sealing is usually 35 to about 60, and then patching, which is our other kind of major asphalt improvement, um, is just as needed since that's a more localized repair method.

The goal is to catch these roadways before they become backlogged, you know, according to this chart, which is around the 35 mark.

Roads that fall beneath that value typically require a full reconstruction, and reconstructions tend to be about eight to ten times more expensive than like a rehab type, like a mill overlay and um crack ceiling, that sort of thing.

So, kind of our selection process.

Um, you know, first, like I mentioned, we get those five-year PCI reports.

Um, we look at what roads are in most need of repair based off that report.

Um, that kind of sets the precedence of keeping up on our infrastructure.

Uh, we then look at ProAG and ADA improvements associated with those streets, as well as any multimodal transportation plan or MMTP and Vision Zero Action Plan improvements that can kind of be tied to those roadways.

Um the thought is if we're there doing improvements, let's do as many as we can to you know give the greatest improvement value to that roadway while we're doing the work.

Some of those selection improvements I'd mentioned ProAG.

Um, ProAG is public right of way accessibility guidelines.

Um, that is under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Um, so some of those upgrades or updates include curb ramp upgrades.

So primarily upgrading ADA ramps from older diagonal ramps to directional as shown in the photo on the top.

MMTP improvements can include cheros, dedicated bike lanes, installing missing gaps in our sidewalk network, and updating signage and striping.

And division zero action plan improvements can include things from the MMTP as well as crosswalk visibility enhancements, driveway improvements, and enhanced bicycle lanes.

Road safety audits are another thing that can be conducted to help back the Vision Zero action plan to determine the best methods for different types of transportation and safety improvements that are feasible for certain roadways.

Some challenges with roadway selection can include right-of-way limitations, private property encroachment, such as fences or outlaw buildings, community concerns such as the MMTP Vision Zero Action Plan, resident communication, missing sidewalk sections, and community slash business outreach set to the coordinating access restrictions or closures for some of that construction.

So getting into the asphalt specific details for the 2026 citywide street rehab change order.

The overall objective is to maintain the city street infrastructure.

Kind of the main one that you might notice if you're driving in town are potholes because they jar you and wake you up.

Those are formed when water gets beneath the roadway.

When water freezes, it expands, when it thaws, it goes, you know, seeps back into the ground.

So there's a void created.

Over time that void collapses, that creates a pothole, it invites more water into the ground, and that's for the most part how most asphalt deficiencies take off.

We've had a 2.6 million dollar annual budget.

With that, we've done the crack sealing, mill and overlaying, uh chip sealing, and patching that I had discussed.

Examples of each are on the right.

So the top photo is an example of what a crack seal looks like.

The middle photo is a mill overlay.

That's where the top inch and a half to three inches typically of asphalt is removed, and in kind asphalt that's new is paved in its place, and a patch is a localized, just full depth repair of the asphalt.

For 2026, we have a budget of 5.2 million, and again, we plan on doing crack sealing, mill and overlay, and patch work with that to maintain the streets.

Just to break down that 5.6 million dollar budget.

ESI is our asphalt contractor.

Their estimated contract is just under 3.7 million.

42% of that is for mill and overlay improvements, 9% is for that asphalt patching, and 1% is for crack sealing.

Just some photos showing what those mill and overlay improvements look like.

So last year we did uh a mill and overlay on Nyland Way, just off baseline over by the water treatment plant.

Um you can see the photo from before and after.

It's pretty rough shape, extensive deficiencies, and then the photo is taken from current.

You can even see an ADA ramp upgrade, kind of on the right side of that photo where the existing concrete diagonal ramp was there, and now there's a directional ramp with a detectable panel in its place.

And just another example.

Last year we did 111th street.

Um, so again, just a before and after photo showing kind of what those improvements look like when they're done.

Here's a preliminary map of our asphalt uh improvements for the year.

Um, subject to change during construction, but that should be relatively what we're looking at doing this year for asphalt improvements.

And we can get into the concrete rehab contract.

Again, this is the one we would be looking for a motion on tonight.

So the similar $5.6 million pie chart, but focusing on the concrete numbers.

Uh, the contractor's bid was just over 1.9 million, and that includes 27% of that is for the ADA ramp improvements discussed.

7% is for kind of slips, trips, falls, cracked panels, broken concrete.

That's addressed through the sidewalk fee fund.

And then the miscellaneous, such as material testing and traffic control, kind of is split between the two contracts.

Again, just some more examples of those ADA improvements.

So you can see kind of the before photos show a single diagonal ADA ramp with no detectable surface, and the afters show two directional ramps with detectable surfaces.

And here's a map of our preliminary concrete rehab locations again.

Could change during construction.

A lot of the improvements are adjacent to roadways where we're doing mill and overlay improvements.

Like I mentioned, ProAG requires us to do the ramp improvements and bring things to current standard.

So a lot of that is adjacent to those roadways.

And I can take any questions you may have.

Any questions from council?

If not, we can go to the motion slide.

Oh, I don't see your hands.

Yeah, it's um it's not as much of a question as a comment.

Uh I noticed the this is incredibly well thought out, it seems to me.

And I I have to tell you the 111th asphalt and the right there at baseline and carria.

I'm so glad you're doing that because I almost died in one of the I'm kidding.

Uh but those holes are huge.

So I really appreciate and you're doing the concrete and the asphalt in the same place at the same time.

That's just fantastic.

It the area that's um east of one, Wanaka Lake.

South of baseline.

That looks like almost every street over there, is that uh we've done in the last few years, we've done a lot of the asphalt patchwork um in preparation for it, and we've addressed a lot of the concrete, like the broken concrete and things like that in that neighborhood already.

Um so kind of at the end of our construction season, if we have any quote unquote leftover money, we prep for the following years, and we kind of get ahead of that patchwork that needs to pre-seed the mill overlay.

Um so we've been doing that in that neighborhood the last couple of years, kind of prepping to tee it up to make the mill overlay easier, essentially.

That's excellent.

And one point we did get, thank you.

Uh we did get the um a little distress about the different color of the concrete.

Uh is that due to it's just the other concrete's different type of concrete or something.

Um older concrete typically didn't have a curing compound applied to the surface of it.

I'm sure you've maybe heard that the new concrete is very white.

Yes.

Uh yeah.

Uh that's not an older concrete, that wasn't really a thing that they did.

Um that cure compound will eventually wear off.

Um, but truck to truck and mix to mix concrete is always a little different in color.

Okay.

Um, even in between trucks on the same section of sidewalk, you can tell after it's cured where where the pour ended for one and began for another.

Um, that's just through minor, you know, changes in the sand and the rock and things like that.

Um, so there's always it's not gonna be it's almost never gonna perfectly match.

Um, but yeah, it's typically brighter because of that curing compound that they place over the top.

And is the curing compound is that make a cure faster or um it retains the moisture of the concrete, so it actually kind of slow slows down that process.

Um, so the the chemical reaction has a longer time to take place, and that forms stronger bonds in that chemical section.

Um it gives you a stronger product overall by slowing it down.

Yeah.

Does it does it retain like greenhouse gases too?

I don't know about gases.

Okay.

No, that was a problem.

Sorry.

I'll save that for meet somebody else over there.

Thank you.

That's all I have.

Uh Council Gianola.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um, I had some questions about the PCI report.

Could you just talk a little bit more about what's been done in the current project for that?

Yeah, that the current PCI uh consultant is actively working on it.

Um we don't have any of those numbers or anything yet.

Um in 2020, a different company drove through town.

Um it was essentially a van with a ton of sensors on it, and it detected you know bumps and cracks and things like that.

Um this consultant has like a 360-degree camera that takes a photo every half a second, something like that.

Um it uses AI and then human support to compare all the roadways, all the cracks identified by each of those photos, and it can could give you a rating based off that.

And this is being done citywide.

Yeah, all of the city so it includes these roads that are gonna be correct, no overlay.

So these were selected based off that 2020 data.

Okay, yeah.

And will we have the updated report when this is taking place?

Uh we should.

That contract with that consultant is set to we should have everything in our hands by the end of May.

And when does this project start?

Our contractor wants to start early April.

Um we use the 2026 data to build the program for 2027 to 2032 or 31 five years.

Yeah.

Yeah, just a couple more questions.

Um, does that report give insights into drainage on the gutters, things like that?

Um it can.

Um, they have sensors in their car that can tell like roughness.

Um, so like for instance, if there's a large dip in the roadway, it could pick that up and kind of flag it as a potential drainage issue.

I don't know that it would identify issues in the gutter pan itself.

Okay.

Um, but when we go through and do the concrete ahead of the mill overlay, uh, we'll go through and mark anything that needs the ADA upgrades mentioned, as well as if there's obvious pooling or drainage issues, we'll have the contractor repair those.

So then it doesn't.

And that's kind of where I was going because I've seen some of these neighborhoods where there's pooling, there's like it doesn't drain completely or properly, and just hoping that that can be addressed when these types of upgrades occur.

You know, in my neighborhood in particular, we had this done in some parts of our neighborhood.

And with the ADA accessible ramps, it actually uh worsened the drainage.

And so I want to stress that that is and hope that that can be addressed going forward.

That is a common uh consequence of upgrading those ramps.

Um so to make things compliant with you know wheelchair site impairments and things like that.

Um things slopes typically have to be fairly flat, so we do run into some drainage challenges with that.

Yeah, okay.

Yeah, and I I guess that's just kind of due to the nature of those those requirements.

Yeah, okay.

Thank you.

Any other questions from council?

If not, we can go to the next slide.

I'll move to approve the contract with uh Lightfield Enterprises Incorporated for the annual citywide concrete rehabilitation project.

Second.

We have a motion, we have a second.

Any discussion on the matter?

I I just have one, so we got like I don't know, 200 pages of the contract.

Umbody expects us to actually be approving the actual contract language because I I just want to clarify that we're just approving this motion and nothing, we got all this sample concrete concrete contract language.

We don't have to approve that, right?

It's just for FYI.

So uh by approving this, I believe by approving the site, we you are approving the contract.

So the contract's already been drafted and approved by the city attorney's office as to form, okay, but we do still need council to approve and authorize a contract because of the dollar amount.

Right.

The contract decision to contract, not the wording of the contract or the specific language or I mean I am not capable of uh giving approval to a contract.

Like that's why you have a city attorney's office.

So we are responsible for working with staff to make sure that our contracts are drafted in compliance with Colorado law, especially with respect to public works contracts.

Um anyway, so so I can I can assure council hopefully you have uh have that assurance in the city attorney's office, but we have a contract, it's um relatively standard for our construction contract.

That's what I figured.

Yeah, so no, just I just wanted you to read them, but we don't require you to thank you for that clarification.

Any further discussion?

Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed saying no?

No one opposed that.

Pass unanimously.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That concludes regular business.

We'll move on to staff reports, and we will, of course, begin with our city attorney's report.

Hi.

Um thank you, Mayor.

I do not have anything specific to reach over tonight.

Um, and I I know that you already announced regarding the first executive session on the agenda tonight that that will be taking place at a later date.

Um, I don't believe I was able to give uh specific advice to council on that tonight, but um, as far as proceeding with the next two items on the agenda regarding the executive session, I would recommend you just not take action on that item, and that'll allow staff to reschedule it when special counsel is available.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

Uh, next is our city manager's report.

Thank you, Mayor.

Good evening, council.

Um, so just a few things for this evening, a reminder to our community that the spring 2026 board and commission recruitment is open until March 20th, so the next three days.

So if you have anyone that is interested, please remind them to apply at the link there below.

And then also we're really excited as we continue through the 701 Pocket Park um project.

The next step is now naming.

And so uh today we released um a survey online at that Lopea Listons link that you can do too.

Um, as a reminder, this park is going to be at the corner of Kimbark and Public Road, and um the first parks the city's constructed in several years, if not maybe a decade.

So very excited for that.

So um, we will be doing kind of a two-step community survey process.

The first step, which is this survey will invite residents to share kind of ideas or themes that resonate with them as far as far as um what the park should reflect, such as is it related to old town or is it related to natural assets or heritage?

Um, we also invite people to um provide any names that they are interested in.

I think we give some suggestions, but clearly we have a very creative community and uh looking forward to seeing what they might um come up with as well.

So um again, feel free to uh share this link.

It'll be live through April 15th, and then later this spring, the second survey will invite the community to vote on kind of a short list of finalist names based upon the ideas received.

And then um one thing, sorry, Alex, if you could go back.

One thing I neglected to put on here, but I think it's really important um for the community to know is please please please do not be turning on your irrigation systems.

We have seen a huge uptick.

I know it's warm.

Um, hand water your trees and your plants, but leave your lawn dormant.

Uh typically we don't need to do a delay and save until April time frame, but we're already starting to kick up messages.

So it's really critical for our infrastructure to kind of keep it in that winter mode until we are um able in that capacity to serve residents with that broader water usage.

So apologize it wasn't an actual bullet, but um very important for the community to understand.

Uh looking forward to your um March workshop, as we mentioned earlier.

You will have a quasi-judicial training this week given by special legal counsel from um one of our partners, CERSA.

We also be um kind of wrapping up and putting a bow on your city council retreat, including um scheduling out certain items that were left unsaid at that retreat, um, and then talking about 2026 potential ballot measures, and then the April 7th meeting.

Uh you will have a presentation on your land use code final recommendations again, aside from the conversation we had tonight, um, a resolution for our poet laureate program.

So we are very excited.

We had several applicants this year, and so a community panel is recommending a poet laureate and then ordinance to codify massage facility licensing and ordinance for your first budget supplemental, which is um largely your project carryovers from 2025 that are continuing on.

So that is all I have tonight.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Moving on to council reports, uh, Councilor Gianola.

Thank you, Mayor.

Just a couple items for me.

Um speaking of land use code update.

At the uh open space advisory boards meeting uh recently, they got a presentation about the land use code update with some new uh items that I don't think had been seen by much of the working group or or folks uh relating to wildlife standards, public land dedication, uh, and open space terminology.

There was a robust robust discussion, really like where that was headed.

Um so I think we'll hear more about that uh when the land use code comes to us next month.

Um, and then second, I just want to give a shout out to our uh sustainability team.

This this uh this meeting.

Um they recently published our 2025 climate action report, um, which talks about all the accomplishments that the city has achieved in the last year, um, advancing climate action, advancing resilience.

Uh, maybe I stole somebody else's thunder, but uh I see some hands moving over there.

We're just gonna just excited.

I I mean I encourage everyone if you haven't had a chance to look at this, take a look at it.

It is very well done.

Uh the the website is just really uh impressive, and and what we've achieved uh is is really commendable.

Um, and I'm just very excited to be part of this community and have this um you know moving in the direction of action.

Thank you.

Uh Council Bully.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh City Manager Manager stole my thunder about the poet laureate.

It's very, very exciting.

Can't wait for everyone to hear about our new poet laureate who has huge shoes to fill uh for Z Base speaks.

Um, and also kudos to the interviewing committee for Lafayette Cultural Arts Board.

They had really, really uh solid applicants, which speaks to the poetical nature of our town.

Um the public art committee is working on purchases of a few local pieces of art.

They're going to let us know about that process very soon, but they made some really good decisions that I think are really going to enrich uh our city.

Um the older adults advisory board noted two items that I really want to share with the group.

One is that many older adults in the community are missing the spotlight, which as council knows in light of our previous communications director's departure.

There's there's some communications that we want to stand up, but a number of folks have shared with OAAB that they they don't have full visibility into the range of offerings in the community, and so really put forward the ask to either have something like that return or for it to return.

I think it's been dormant for a few months now.

Relatedly, um, it was shared during OAAB that when our water bills arrive in the mail for many Lafayette residents who don't spend a lot of time online, they see that list of the month's activities on the right side of the Lafayette connection.

But oftentimes that piece of paper arrives 13-15 days into the month, and so all half of those activities have already passed.

So I told the the advisory board I would convey that to council and to city staff if there's a as we get bring on a new communications director, if we could think through how we can make sure that that folks who spend less time on their phones or online, smart as they are, um, they're able to get some of that information contemporaneously.

And then finally, uh happy St.

Patrick's Day.

It was really cool to see a lot of folks wearing green.

Um I went and did a deep dive today on Irish history in Lafayette, mining community, really, really rich history and what it means to be Irish in Colorado, Irish in America, very rich social justice heritage, uh rich uh fighting for labor rights and equal access, but also some of the most virulent racism and bigotry.

So very much the the American tale.

Um but as we uh wrap up St.

Patty's Day, just um enjoy the pint of Guinness in front of you.

Thanks to whoever brought that.

Council Fridland.

Umly thing from me, you should have uh uh forwarded email from me about CML policy.

If you have any comments, questions, there's a policy committee meeting this Friday, which is our best opportunity to make our voices heard within that group.

So if you have any thoughts, please share them with me, and I will do my best to convey them accurately.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Uh Mayor Protein.

Thank you, Mayor.

I'm gonna start with there is a Northwest uh mayor's uh commissioners council that I'm then uh you know have the honor of serving on right now.

And we'll be taking a trip to Washington DC uh April 20th 20th, no, 22nd, 23rd, 24th.

And during that time period, uh one of the monthly NWMCC meetings.

The mayor of Superior uh asked if the council would like to, while we're there, have a meeting with the FAA.

And there was some interest with not all of the members of the council, but I said that we were interested.

Since I'm there, that uh I'm going to be there.

And there is a lobbying firm called Dudco that works for NMWC, and they uh have been asked if they could make the arrangements.

Not this is not the typical type of work they do, but they said that they could definitely make the arrangements for us so that we could speak to uh some of the elected officials there, including representative the goose that'll make their effort to do that and representatives from the FAA.

So there's a cost to have this firm make the arrangements, and they would do uh follow-up.

They would get meetings for us and uh do follow-ups coordinate the after the meetings.

They would get meetings for us and uh do follow-up to coordinate the after the meetings, and there is a cost to the council of $10,000, but they will spread that out over uh four and uh installments, and that would they would invoice the council of $2,500 for each one of those four installments, and that still breaks out the fee to each municipal municipality who participates uh to $1,667.

So I guess my ask is is everyone okay with out of the contingency fund using that to support um the arrangement.

Total amount is sixteen hundred dollars.

I think total amount to the city of Lafayette would be $1,600.

$1,600, yes.

How much do we have in the contingency fund?

I don't think we've have we touched the contingency fund this year.

Just I would have to look, sorry, I apologize off the top of my head, but it would be nowhere near what the kind of total amount of 23,000 that you have in there.

That seems well worth it to me.

Okay, I just wanted to make sure that uh scaled up.

Uh that was one, and I would also like to bring up the downtown development authority.

Uh just so you know, there is a downtown improvement grant, and so far, $41,000, $41,148 of the 50,000 set aside in the budget, which we approved, um, has been given out to grant uh in the form of grants, one on uh uh one hundred one hundred and twenty-seventh North Harrison for HVAC replacement uh for business um there at 107.5 South Public Road, a patio winterization uh grant was given out for 8750, 8,750, and 11 North Public Road, another HBAC upgrade, and these are to keep the businesses thriving and vibrant going.

Um the I am currently on the creativity and cultural microgrant uh subcommittee, and we had as you won't be surprised, uh, these are grants to uh energize parts of the DDA, which is along the south side of baseline road from um the gas station all the way down to public road, and then a couple of like a block east of there, and then all the way down public to ending right here outside out front here uh where City Hall is.

Um so we activate parts of that members of our who members of our community and not necessarily live in the DDA have come up with some ideas, and I can't wait to bring, I'm not sure how many of them will be funding.

Uh, but uh these are some really exciting ideas about how to really address the creativity and the culture of Lafayette.

Uh no surprise there's some really fantastic uh applications put in.

Um I would like to say it's uh been a great run for our current poet laureate and uh I'm looking forward to the next.

Uh apparently the last time there was a poet laureate in Lafayette, it was 80 years ago.

And not even I was on council then.

So it is nice to see that you know we have some carryover and sustaining, and as was mentioned, yes, there's some very big shoes to fill with Z base.

Uh and lastly for the first time, I'm I'm working with one of our uh local business owners to create a Juneteenth community celebration in coordination with the City of Lyons and the City of Longmont.

So far, we have gotten uh offers to help support this from the Longmont Community Foundation, the Boulder Community Foundation with where we're looking, and it looks like we may get funding uh to support the event.

There would this would be over the Juneteenth holiday, which is Friday, June 19th, into uh Saturday um June 20th, obviously.

And the the way we're laying this out is longmont, excuse me, Lions would talk about Juneteenth in the past, when uh finally Texas agreed understood that they needed to emancipate everyone.

Uh and then Longmont would do Juneteenth future and Lafayette would be Juneteenth.

Uh sorry, Juneteenth present in the long line Juneteenth future in Lafayette.

So those are the best details I have.

We are looking to have a significant connection to filmmaking and the potential Sundance Film Fest.

Well, I guess the film festival is coming.

Um so more details as that develops, but I wanted to let you know that's uh in process right now.

And that's oh, and the other thing was Councilor GNL.

We were just saying that the uh climate action plan uh report uh update updates.

It's it's updating that incredible plan.

Semantic, semantic.

Yes, so that that's what we're that's all that uh councilor Jensen.

I sent y'all some uh materials today that we'll talk about at another time.

Um I'm spacing what they were about.

Um what was it?

I sorry uh work that Boulder is doing around Excel power shutoffs and uh right public utilities commission.

So it uh I met with uh the woman in Boulder, the staff person, Carolyn Elam, who is the point person for power shutoff issues, and she had some recommendations for us and some samples that I sent to y'all, and I'm told to bring that up at our next study session.

So you may just want to read the materials that you got in preparation for that.

Um, we haven't had any actual pre-planned power shutoffs here, but we I have had, and I'm assuming some of y'all have had some incidental where you know it just was based on the conditions at the time and and what they're trying to do about it and whether we want to help them or participate with them.

So that's one thing.

Um the other thing I wanted to mention is that we have we in Lafayette people who are facing eviction, have access to a program that's funded by the county but run by the city of Boulder to help provide legal services for eviction prevention.

So I just want to put it out there that if you know anybody struggling uh who needs uh help with any sort of eviction prevention, that um they can contact the city of Boulder.

I know it's weird, uh, and they are they are funded to work with everyone throughout the county, not just the city of Boulder.

Um, the other thing is um I found out recently about a program called the Esperanza Fund, which is located in the Longmont Community Foundation, but also serves all of Boulder County, and it is um a collaborative mutual aid effort designed to provide short-term financial assistance to individuals and families facing economic instability due to the threat or reality of immigration detention, legal disruption, or family separation.

Those are short-term stabilization grants, they're not a ton of money, they're not gonna you know set somebody up in a new home or things like that.

But if your car breaks down, maybe and you need a little help, you know, uh uh things like that.

Um, they they have and they run through all the nonprofits that are currently in existing in the community.

So if you wanted to see Sister Carmen or the Hour Center or any of those programs, they can access this fund.

You can't access it directly as an individual.

And then I kind of got uh yelled at by the county commissioners this week, or at least one of them, because apparently somehow we committed to doing something um called an ADU fair, which I didn't know we had committed to uh at some point in the future um to try to help people who are uh interested in building an ADU with the resources, how how do they get financing, give them a sense?

I think in my opinion, that makes sense to do after we do the land use code update.

Um, but I I just want to put that on our horizon thinking that it's something apparently this regional elected officials to end homelessness, which I am on.

Apparently, that was something all the cities in that group uh agreed to do, and we haven't done ours yet.

Um, I think it's fine that we haven't done ours, but I've been nudged that uh at some point in the probably in the fall, it seems to me, uh, is the time to start, you know, telling people, and they've done a good and I mentioned this before toolkit about what you can do.

I I think there's still a lot of questions for me.

If I were building an ADU, that toolkit wouldn't answer all my questions, but it's a what it's a starting point, and I and I'm sure there are people in the community who don't even know what an ADU is, what what it means, and how it might help them, and we could start there, you know.

Is we have this potential thing that is out there that uh we can help you do, and so I'd I'd like to see us put that in our work plan sometime in the future, and especially after Phil is done with the land use working group and uh he's got more time to do it.

And especially after Phil is done with the land use working group and uh he's got more time to do it.

Is that everything?

Yes.

Councilor Gallegos.

So I wanted to once again invite the community to the youth advisory board's event, which is coming up on April 8th.

It's called Teens Talk Adults Listen.

It's going to be held in the lower level meeting room of the library on the 8th from 7 to 8.

And I also wanted to add on that Lafayette communities that care will be sponsoring the event, and they are providing refreshments and Spanish translation services.

So please join us and bring up any issues that you'd like to hear a youth perspective on.

And then on behalf of the friends of the library, I wanted to share that their book sale is ongoing up until the 22nd.

So you can find great prices on all sorts of things, especially books, but also puzzles, um, some notebooks and different things that they have available.

Oh good.

So you might not want to hear this.

And then on the 22nd, there's also a special where you can fill a bag for five dollars.

So please um continue to support this great program.

They help support library programming such as the makerspace and the summer reading program.

So hope to see you there and find some great books.

Uh Counselor Gaygas, could you just repeat the date and time for the youth advisory board?

That's gonna be Wednesday, April 8th from 7 to 8 in the library.

Thank you so much.

Great.

Well, uh, thank you all for joining us tonight.

I will read us into executive session.

I move to adjourn to executive session pursuant to subsections 4B and 4EI of section 24-6-402 of the Colorado Revite statutes for the purposes of receiving legal advice from the city attorney's office and the city special legal counsel regarding agreement relate agreements related to the Sundar subdivision filing number one and Sundar subdivision filing number two, and for determining positions relative to matters that may be subject to negotiations, developing strategy for negotiations and instructing negotiators regarding such agreements.

Do I have a second?

Second.

All those in favor?

Any opposed?

Not opposed.

The city council will adjourn to executive sessions.

We'll not return to an open meeting.

The time is 8 51 p.m.

Thank you all so much.