Lafayette City Council Meeting – March 24, 2026: Quasi-Judicial Training, Retreat Summary, Ballot Measures, and New Ideas
Lafayette City Council Meeting – March 24, 2026
The Lafayette City Council held a regular meeting on March 24, 2026, featuring a quasi-judicial training session by SERSA, a presentation on the 2026 City Council Retreat summary, discussion of potential 2026 ballot measures, and several new ideas from council members.
Quasi-Judicial Training
- Sam Light, deputy executive director and general counsel for SERSA (Colorado Intergovernmental Risk Sharing Agency), provided training on quasi-judicial proceedings. He explained the critical difference between legislative and quasi-judicial roles, emphasizing that when making decisions on specific land use applications, council members must act as impartial judges, not advocates. Key topics included avoiding prejudicial pre-hearing statements, managing ex parte communications, handling public testimony, weighing evidence, and ensuring due process. Council members asked questions about ex parte contacts (e.g., meeting with developers for general discussions), public comment procedures, and the handling of petitions. Light stressed that process is as important as substance and that a fair, defensible record is essential to protect against liability.
City Council Retreat Summary
- Sarah Miller from the Ottawa Group, along with city manager Alex and other staff, presented the outcomes of the two-day retreat held in February 2026. The retreat aimed to strengthen council relationships, create shared understanding of current work, and identify three to five strategic priorities for the next two years. Facilitators observed strong ambition, humility, and a desire to close information gaps. Four proposed priority areas emerged: affordability (holistic view including housing, wages, child care, social safety nets), economic vitality (including economic development, arts, downtown vitality, commercial occupancy), sustainability and resilience (climate adaptation, wildfire, drought, utility outages), and community engagement and communications (improving constituent communication and board/commission work). Staff mapped existing plans and ongoing work to these areas. Council members discussed the interconnectedness of the priorities, with several emphasizing resilience, economic vitality, and the need to avoid overburdening staff. No formal action was taken, but the priorities will guide future work planning and the work plan dashboard will be updated to reflect them.
2026 Potential Ballot Measures
- Staff presented one item for council consideration: an extension of the property tax that funded the Great Outdoors Water Park (originally authorized in 2014, generating $5.5 million in general obligation debt). The tax is set to expire at the end of 2026 and currently costs the average household about $34 per year. The extension would not increase the tax rate and would provide a dedicated source for ongoing maintenance and capital improvements at the nearly 55-year-old facility. Council discussed the need for improvements (filtration, mechanical systems, building enhancements), sustainability (water usage, tree canopy, grass replacement), affordability (access for low-income families), and community concerns about tax fatigue after the recent large bond passage. Council directed staff to continue exploring the extension and bring back more detailed information on costs, potential uses, and feasibility. Additionally, Councilor Bullier raised the concept of ranked-choice voting (RCV), noting successful implementations in Fort Collins and Boulder. Council expressed interest in exploring RCV further and hearing from the Boulder County elections director. Councilor Gianola suggested a charter cleanup to address potential issues like vacancy appointment terms and gender-neutral language; council supported exploring this as well.
New Ideas
- Councilor Jensen requested adding a letter of support for former Boulder County Commissioner Elise Jones (currently on the Transportation Commission) to the April 7 agenda, and also proposed scheduling a discussion on statewide and countywide ballot measures. Mayor Pro Tem Barnes suggested a potential council position on a county measure to increase commissioners, but after discussion, council preferred to wait until the measure is officially on the ballot.
- Councilor Bullier introduced two ideas: (1) joining the Strong Cities Network, a global consortium that provides tools and resources for community resilience and preventing extremism (free to join, with no membership cost); (2) exploring an opportunity cost charge for long-term vacant commercial properties to incentivize leasing, especially in light of the upcoming Sundance Film Festival. Staff noted that a discussion on vacant properties is already scheduled for June.
- Councilor Gallegos proposed a tobacco retail license and vape waste ordinance, backed by Boulder County Health, the Lafayette Chamber of Commerce, and others. The goal is to reduce youth access to tobacco/vape products and ensure safe disposal. Council expressed support for exploring this idea, with attention to enforcement costs and staff capacity.
- Mayor Pro Tem Barnes raised several additional ideas: providing receptacles for unhoused individuals to clean up their camps; a green streets pilot project using bioretention gardens to manage stormwater and reduce heat island effects; compiling a comprehensive story of the airport noise issue for public communication; recognizing the 33rd anniversary of the passing of former Councilor Tiny Briggs; enhancing Veterans Day observances with the Buckley Guard; expanding chat-with-council events to different community locations; and establishing a CU internship to assist with council communications and research. Staff will incorporate these discussions into the upcoming communications update in April.
Key Outcomes
- Direction to staff: Continue exploring the water park tax extension and bring back detailed financial and operational analysis.
- Direction to staff: Begin exploration of ranked-choice voting, including a presentation from Boulder County elections.
- Direction to staff: Explore a charter cleanup process.
- Direction to staff: Research the tobacco retail license and vape waste ordinance, including enforcement and cost implications.
- Direction to staff: Connect with Strong Cities Network to evaluate membership benefits and staff burden.
- Next steps: A communications update in April will cover chat-with-council formats, internship possibilities, and other engagement ideas.
- No formal votes were taken; all items are at the exploratory or directional stage.
Meeting Transcript
I know it's time to start mining. I can listen to this idea of getting back out on the road. So what you're thinking about. Crazy like that. March twenty-fourth, twenty twenty-six. A couple agenda items tonight, and we will get right into the first one, which is our quasi-judicial training. Welcome Sam Light from SERSA. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, Council. Thank you, staff, for having me out. Good to see you all again. Spend a little bit of time. I understand I got a couple of new faces on the council as well, correct? Yeah. All right. Well, congratulations to the new members. Um, by way of further introduction, I'm Sam Light, and I'm the deputy executive director and general counsel for an organization called SURSA, which is an acronym for the Colorado Intergovernmental Risk Sharing Agency, which is kind of a mouthful, which is why we call it SERSA, right? So we're the city's insurance for provider for property and casualty insurance coverage, right? So the bread and butter things that we do is obviously get the insurances in place for everything from your properties like this building to your vehicles, both for autophysical damage and vehicle liability to kind of the more interesting risks and exposures that public entities face, things like we provide the police uh law enforcement liability coverage for your police department. We provide the coverage that protects you against what we call Colorado Governmental Immunity Act tort claims and slipping falls, property damage, personal injury. Perhaps of interest to you all is that we provide public officials liability coverage. Wonderful, right? Which protects you and provides you liability protection for alleged claims of wrongful acts, is what they call it under the coverage document. That's the only issue. That's the nomination that the council or council members in their official capacity may have violated someone's rights or violated a statute giving rise to some civil liability. So that's the bread and butter stuff that we do. But SERSA is a little bit different than a commercial insurance carrier. We are what's called a public entity self-insurance pool. We are owned and controlled by our members. The phrase public entity is important there because our only book of business, our only members are Colorado cities and towns and affiliated entities. So we ensure about 90% of the cities and towns around the state of Colorado. And being part of a pool is we kind of share this attitude towards risk management with our members. We're a public entity ourselves at CERSA. So we're an extension of our municipal members. And so the way that informs our approach to risk management is kind of the shared attitude that we're all in this together, right? And proactive risk management is an important part of that commitment, right? To being good stewards and fiduciaries of the interest and assets of the city and for us for the pool as a whole. So the way that influences our approach to what we offer our members is in addition to doing the bread and butter stuff, we all offer all sorts of risk management resources. And the one that I do most often is trainings for elected and appointed officials and staff around liability risk issues. For you all this evening, we're going to talk about risk exposures and best practices for quasi-judicial proceedings, which in our world uh is a source of potential civil liability, particularly if there's missteps, right, in the way we handle quasi-judicial proceedings. So we're going to spend some time uh talking about those issues and providing you all uh with with some training. So let me just make sure I can advance the slides and we'll dive right in. So here's kind of an interesting fact. For the new members, who are the new members since uh last election? Congratulations. So, quasi-judicial rule to you is kind of a new thing, is that a little bit? You've been exposed to this issue, been involved in some of these proceedings. So here's an interesting point. In Colorado, right? It's not true in every state, but in Colorado, we have the power locally, right, to make decisions affecting individuals' protected property rights.
openpublica.com