Okay, thank you all for joining us tonight.

Uh the city council meeting for May 5th, 2026 will come to order.

We'll begin with a pledge of allegiance.

I can't care.

Clerk Beck, can we please get a roll call?

Mayor Tapia Vega.

Here.

Mayor Prakem Barnes.

Good evening.

Councillor Bolier.

Good evening.

Councillor Friedland.

Councilor Gallegos.

Good evening.

Councillor Gianola.

Here.

And Councillor Jensen.

Here.

Mayor, we have a quorum.

Thank you so much.

Mayor, I move to excuse Councillor Friedman.

Second.

There's a motion.

We have a second.

Any further discussion on that matter?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed to say no?

No one opposed it.

Passes unanimously.

Um thank you all for joining us tonight.

We will begin like every other meeting with our public input.

Uh if you wish to speak tonight's fill out one of the speaker request forms and give it to our city clerk.

Could you speak up?

Yeah, we can't hear you back here.

Can you hear me now?

That might be a bad idea.

It's like your mom.

Do you want my mic?

I've already asked.

Does that matter?

Perfect.

Okay.

We'll begin public input.

As uh many of you know, if you want to speak, just fill out one of the speaker request forms in the back and hand it over to our city clerk.

Everyone will have five minutes to speak.

When you do come up, just please state your name and record uh address for the record.

Uh we will begin tonight with Frank Archelletta.

First of all, before I get going, all of I used to recognize all these families here, or the old families of Law Fit and what happened, the moms and dads couldn't get in the swim pool.

These are the children.

I hope racist discrimination ain't going on right now.

What's happening right now here?

These families never did get no notice as far as this meeting.

They never received the notice back in October.

They never see the reports from the Underground Radar study.

The remaining 270 unused plots.

Council, do not betray the citizens, the senior citizens who own these cemetery plots.

City Council members do not rush the judgments.

Council, you must not pass resolution 2026-13.

The senior citizens who paid and owned these burial plots should have access and the opportunity to have notice that you're going to vote on resolution 2026 May 5th.

They did not receive the resolution 2025 77.

Yes case.

Okay.

CW.

Recommends that any excavation be undertaken with extreme care.

They're not saying shut the cemetery plots down to burials.

VPR results help to understand concurrencies between open areas as identified in GPR data, owned but unused plots.

Owned but unused plots.

The problems were in part of the old area.

Then they also said people are buried in the roads in the ball fields.

I told Christopher Keller with L ISA partners, LLC, who the city contracts out to do the burial, that they're going to hit a grade from 1983 epidemic.

Your state archaeologist was there.

Then all she recommended, moved to the site.

And they continued the digging and they buried Fred Smith there.

This was all in Potter's Field.

And the incident that the archaeologists were there was only a part of field.

Only three times.

Council, you must be on the right side of history, and for the true justice for all the people that paid in all these burial plots, based on all the evidence found in the GPR results.

There are still areas, many areas that we still have coffin burials.

The city did do a good job knowing where all these 270 unsure burials are at.

I can take the entire staff up there, council, we can walk the cemetery, and you'll see it all.

According to your map, it's all bundled up.

That's not the way it is at the cemetery right there.

After 98 years, our families have burial plots up there, and basically we have never had no problems.

We ask staff, is anybody buried there?

No.

And guess what?

For 98 years we've been burying our families, and there has not been any wrong things at all.

Council, do not betray the people who own these plots.

Council, you must be able to understand all the evidence and why resolution 2026-13 should not be passed and must not be passed.

Council, common sense is important.

The state archaeologists do not understand all the history of the Lafayette Cemetery and should not be able to recommend or to have the authority to close all coffin burials.

Because of this, then three burials that happened in the last 11 months.

Potters field, Beverly Abeta Smith, 22 years, Lafayette City Council from 1972 to 1994.

Say they had no major problems when digging graves.

If they did hit a side of a coffin, all they would do is move to the left or to the right and continue the diggings.

Council members, if you don't burial plots in the cemetery, you would also be traumatized because you could not be buried or your loved one would be buried.

Okay?

Now, these plots, if you pay for them, how would you all feel?

All the senior citizens of Lafayette who own these plots that were paid for, want to be buried with their loved ones, their great grandmothers, their great grandfathers, their grandfathers, their grandmothers, their fathers, their mothers, their brothers, their sisters, their aunts, their uncles, their cousins.

These families right here, they've been here in Lafayette for 100 years.

I know you're all very young here.

We know what the hell happened in this cemetery.

We've heard the stories over and over and over, racism and discrimination, and I hope right now it's not going again.

Thank you very much, and I appreciate it.

Thank you.

Up next we'll hear from James Ortega.

Good evening, mayor and council.

I'm James Ortega.

I live at 1250 Scorpio Circle Lafayette, Colorado.

I'm an 80-year resident of Lafayette.

I have I'm coming here tonight to speak in opposition to what you're trying to do with clothes in the cemetery.

I have six generations of my family buried up at the cemetery, and I choose to be buried with my parents and my grandparents up there.

I think a few things I'm upset with.

I didn't get notified by the city that you were having you were closing the cemetery.

I know in your letters here, your memorandum, you said that you notified everybody by mail.

That's not true.

I didn't receive a letter.

I just found out from the start.

I think it's really a mistake to close the cemetery.

There's no need to punish us all because a mistake has been made.

In this day and age of a ground pen and returning radar and the sophistication that we have with artificial intelligence to that, there's no reason we can't take a look at the grave sites that have already been purchased to find out if there's anybody in there so that we can you can honor our wishes to be early what we need to be buried.

I don't see any reason to do that.

You spend money to do a cursed review of the cemetery and made a decision to close it.

I think that's wrong, because I think we have the expertise today to identify those sites that are available and let us use those.

But I choose to be buried with my parents.

I purchased those plots over 26 years ago, and I expect you to honor that by letting us uh use those plots that we we purchased.

In closing, I wish the council members to take a look at respecting our family, our wishes that we have and honor those parents and grandparents, knowing that they would have up there, because they would mean everything to us.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Next we'll hear from Edith Ortega.

Thank you.

My name is Edith Ortega, more commonly known as Edie Ortega.

I live at 1250 Scorpius Circle, Lafayette.

James Ortega is my husband.

I would encourage you to vote no on this and go back and look at what you're trying to solve.

And I will confirm, by the way, we did not get your letter.

So I know some said they did, but we didn't.

I admit I've only been here 42 years.

You know, when you marry a native, you kinda get to take it all on.

So I would encourage you to really figure out what you're trying to do here, because the natives that I know, many in this room, want to be able to be buried in their cemetery.

And we have taken some family members to other cemeteries, the one on the hill in Louisville, occasionally.

But when we bought our plots, which we've had for many years, we put them right next to his parents.

And I'll never forget the day that my father-in-law, Jim's dad, also Jim, called and said, they're running out of plots, get over there and buy yours.

And we did, because it was that important to him.

So please reconsider this.

And if you need people to talk to, you've got a lot of names here in this room, and I know they'd be glad to help.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

Next we'll hear from Beverly Smith.

Good evening.

I'm Beverly Smith.

And I've lived here 84 years.

That's old I am.

I'm a little nervous.

I haven't talked in front of anybody for a long time.

But I worked for the city for about 22 years, and my responsibility was taking care of all the deeds and stuff at the cemetery.

I don't recall there ever running into any other remains or any other caskets.

One time, John Biggles, he was our grave digger.

He did get um get close to grave site that was on the side of one that he was digging, and I was called out because uh the director wasn't available.

So I went out, and it's like, can't you just put piece of plywood between the two semites, you know, grave sites, and then they're separated.

So that's what they did, but I never did hear of anything.

We have my sisters here tonight, too.

We have grandparents and great-grandparents from both sides.

We have our parents up there, aunts, uncles, and we bought our spaces probably 35, 40 years ago, and we were told they were open.

So I don't know.

Uh, you know, we haven't seen the grid.

We're in grid one in looking at the map, but we haven't been shown any results of any GPR, so I think when people come up, they should be showing everything.

There's, you know, it's something we all want to be with our family, and I'm sure you can address that and you can understand it.

Because, like I said, I've been here for 84 years and have all kinds of relatives up there.

And at one point, I even took care of all the paperwork on it.

So I know Bill Coleman, he was a superintendent at that time.

He did some kind of investigating or probing or whatever, and declared certain grave sites that were open, and ours were some of them.

So anyhow, thank you for your time.

Like I said, I'm definitely Smith, and I live at 1280 Scorpio Circle in Lafayette, and I've lived here all my life.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next, we'll hear from Doug Connerau.

You went in reverse order of what you got.

Doug Honor, 513 East Elm Street.

And I well, first of all, thank you for doing the GPR study.

It's important for assessing what you need to do in a decision you need to make.

I would request that a larger version of it be provided, though, a high resolution 30 inch by 30 inch, because if I took this, if I took this to the to the associates, the S E S W C A they'd be like, huh?

What?

And it's the same you can't.

You can't tell anything from this.

Uh whether even an expert couldn't tell anything from this.

So please please provide a larger version of that.

As mentioned a couple months ago to you, I am pretty um.

Well, the process itself was a little disappointing because people, not everybody was notified.

And this is typical process of the city that's occurred previously you're on an island and you know everything, and the consultants that are hired know everything, and and everybody else is left out of that process, and you try to send mail to them, but it doesn't get, but as I said previously, I would have been happy to help with it.

Frank would have been happy to help with it.

And um there, because there are a lot of people who didn't get notified of this.

Take everybody to the library and let's do a meet and greet and see you know, this needed to happen six months ago as well with it too.

But uh my my biggest beef is that uh whatever compensation you provide for people who choose not to be buried is inadequate.

Um, and you need to do an appraisal.

You need to bring somebody in to do an appraisal of what those lots are valued at.

In the last recorded deed, one of the recorded deeds that I found of an exchange of the property um in this is in 2004, price the lot, uh price the each each burial plot at $3,500 or at $1,500 a piece.

That that was in 2004, and you're you're offering $1,500 in 2026.

There's something wrong with that formula because the fewer gravesites you have, the more expensive they are.

So somebody needs to tell you you need to continue this and have somebody come in and tell you what those are worth.

They're worth a lot more than $1,500.

Culturally, I can understand why nobody wants from Lafayette wants to be buried in Lewisville.

I grew up in Lewisville.

Um it was it was there was a lot of hatred, and I can understand.

I my dad helped build Colt Creek Cemetery.

Um he's buried there or in tubing there.

Um, and it's not it's not very well taken care of, it never has been.

The Balon mode and it's watered, but very very little else.

So there have been problems.

Thank thank goodness for Bev uh until Bev was here.

The paperwork is is really good for deeds until we get to the late 90s, early 2000s.

Here's a deed for Ed Conway, who still has a vacant lot, says this burial site may be used for sculpture only.

I swear to God, that's what it says.

Sculpture only.

If you're an artist, you can put up a piece of artwork on your gravesite, but you can't do anything else with it.

There are 80 deeds that say this.

Somebody finally caught on to it.

This is from 2000, late 90s, early 2000s.

Somebody finally caught on to it.

2004.

Burial site can be used for purposes of entombment only.

Well, that doesn't make any sense either.

There are no tombs at the Lafayette Cemetery.

So those are the first two problems.

Then the biggest problem is with the running out of time, but whether it's a property right or a privilege to be buried in the Lafayette Cemetery.

It's the Supreme Court says it's a privilege.

It's not a personal property right, it's not personal property, not real property.

However, in your rules and regulations, it says section seven property rights.

All lots and burial plots conveyed pursuant to a deed of ownership shall be the sole and separate property of the owner, sole and separate property.

It specifically states that in city documentation.

In that instance, this is a takings.

Even if that's not the case, you need to assess how much they're worth and pay people back.

They don't want to be chewed, choose to be buried there.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Jay Sadler.

Sure.

I'm Jay Sadler to 204 Cameron Lane.

I've lived here about 60 years.

In 1978.

My wife and I bought two properties at the cemetery.

Well, at least we thought we did at the time.

That was implied that you know there were our lots.

We expected to be able to use them.

It looks to me like, and I understand you're running out of room.

I can see not except that selling any more plots.

But for the people that have them.

It seems like an implied right that they can use them.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And just for those of the audience before we move on to the next one, it's really hard for us to hear if people in the audience are kind of talking loudly or yelling out, so I would just ask.

Please just make sure we can hear her over here.

Just kind of remain quiet.

Up next, we'll hear from Carol Sadler.

Hi, I'm Carol Sadler, 204 Tamaron Lane.

I'm Jay's wife.

I've lived here 79 years.

So you know, I'm part of uh I'm Beverly's sister.

And when she was city clerk, she says, Well, I have a good deal for you for real estate in Colorado and Lafayette, cheapest real estate you're gonna get.

And so the real estate we bought were the lots up at the cemetery.

And all our families there.

I have five uncles of my brother of my dad that are there, five abedas.

And then I have all the mansenarises that are there.

I mean, we have I'll bet you 50 relatives buried at the cemetery.

And I'd like you all to look at yourselves wherever you're from.

How would you like your aunt who's still alive and her husband passed away, and she couldn't go and be buried with him?

And your uh your mother, maybe she lived to be 95, and her husband died when he was 50, and she can't be buried with her husband.

That's not right.

Um I urge you not to pass this resolution.

That the if you only have 270 lots that are available, let the people go up there, and then you have that uh study that you did to see if they're okay, and they are probably okay.

Uh I'll give you a little bit of information.

My brother in 2021, he passed away, and they had four lots there, and the city they wanted to sell them to other relatives, and the city said, no, you can't sell them.

You can only sell them back to us.

I mean, it's like your government is trying to take over what we you know, what we think are our rights.

So I just want to urge you to please don't pass this resolution, allow the 270 available lots that people have not used yet to use them because you have your study, and you many of them have not been used at all.

So that's all I have to say.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from uh Julie Blunt.

Hi, I'm Jubilee Floyd, 884 Taylor Lane.

Um I kind of got thrown into the bus at 6:30 this morning and saw this post about what was happening.

Obviously, I didn't get a letter.

Um my mom passed away last year, so I have um I know you guys have these.

We got these when we were going through my mom's stuff.

It's got names, got um, you know, who belongs where.

Obviously, ours are highlighted.

Uh my mom and dad bought property at the Lafayette Cemetery.

Extra lots.

Um, we have eight total uh when my dad was working for the city because our family was growing, and they wanted to make sure that my and my children and their families had a place to go.

Um my grandparents are there, my aunts and uncles are there, my cousins are there.

Um, so I'm not really sure what you're trying to accomplish.

Uh I know maybe you're running out of room, but the city should have thought about that a long time ago.

They had plenty of property around that area that they could have expanded and made room a long time ago to expand.

So I would suggest you rethink whatever it is you got going on.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Kathy Erickson.

I'm Kathy Erickson, and I live at 860 West Baseline Road.

That's affinity.

And I'm in apartment 132.

And I would like to tell you guys most of the people that you're dealing with are people that are born have been that are Lafayette raised, still here.

We're in our 80s and 70s.

That's the age group you're dealing with.

And all of us have family members up there.

Where my family is, there's a a plot of us, and there are three graves left.

My grave, my sister's, and an extra one that my husband had purchased when we bought ours.

The thing that about it is my sister wants to be a coffin burial so she can lay next to her husband.

I already purchased my burial plot, my burial service.

I got my coffin, my flowers, I got everything.

And I paid for it when my husband died ten years ago.

I want to be laying next to him.

I do not want to be cremated.

I that's why I went that way.

That's not right.

We have a choice of what we want.

We're still living in a free USA.

And I just want to let you guys know where we have our family plots, they're there for a reason.

That's sacred ground to us.

And we go up there and we maintain our grounds, you know.

I mean, those are all our loved ones that we have.

I've got my grandma and my aunts and uncles and cousins, and my that cemetery is full of my family, just like it is everybody else's family.

It's not this is not just oh, you got a plot.

Well, that's not what it is.

It means a lot more to us than just a plot.

And then and like I said, I want to be able to be by my husband's side laying next to him when God comes and calls us to be raised, and we'll be raised together.

Meaning my husband, my mom and dad, my brother, my sister, all of our family.

That's why we did that.

That's I'm done.

Thank you so much.

Next we'll hear from Tim Wright.

Um I wasn't really prepared to be speaking tonight since I found out about this meeting like two hours ago.

But uh listening to all the people that are here.

There's people I went to high school with, like Jill, Tony.

There's people that their parents kids I went to school with, but their parents are here.

My father bought four burial lots in 1971 when my dog my sister passed away from a drowning accident.

His wish was to have us all in one spot.

There's still two spots available, and that's where I plan to be interred.

I haven't made a decision yet whether to be cremated or buried, but that should be my right to decide since we've had these little plots for 55 years.

And from what I'm seeing tonight, you guys are going to make a decision of what whether or you want to have to decide if there's going to be any more burials.

I'm 62 or 63, I forgot.

But you're making a decision about burials right now in 10 or 15 years.

Are you going to be making a decision on cremations as well?

And saying no more for cremations?

And then what are we to do then?

I have no decision whatsoever after that.

You guys will all be gone probably in 10 or 15 years because of term limits and one thing or another.

But all these people here and myself, we still own those lots.

We have deeds for those lots.

And it should be our right to use them as we see fit.

If we want to bury somebody else in there, we should be able to do that too.

I'm just, I just asked the council to consider not voting for this resolution because you're gonna you're going to affect many people here in this room, and many people that aren't in this room right now.

I thank you for listening.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Sharon Stetson.

Good evening.

My name is Sharon Stetson.

I live at 626 Glenwood Drive.

And I'm here because I'm very concerned about your resolution.

And I would like to begin by explaining why the people in this room and others do not want to be buried in another cemetery.

We have people here that have been volunteer firemen for over 20 years.

We have people in this room who have been employed by the city of Lafayette or family members.

We have other people in this room that have worked in helping with the recreation of our children.

These people all want to be buried in Lafayette along with their relatives.

They don't want to go to another cemetery because this is their home.

This is where their family is.

She was a city clerk here for 20 years.

She devoted a great deal of time here.

Another one, Carol Sadler.

She worked in the recreation department, and she's a businesswoman here.

This is some of the reasons why I want to be buried here, and they the other people want to be buried here.

And many years ago we all purchased our lots, not recently, but a long time ago, because we planned to stay here, to be with our relatives, and our dear friends, and the firemen that have served this community.

And as per personal property, we purchased our right our pro our plots here.

With the deeds.

Thank you so much.

Next we'll hear from Dwight Erickson.

Evening, Cosman.

13912 Hudson Wade Thornton.

Yes, uh, we've heard a lot of uh situations with the families out here that live in Lafayette or have lots in Lafayette, and uh I pray that you don't pass the resolution because if the circumstances were reversed and you were out here and you were the age we were, and we we plan being buried here in Lafayette, my my wife has uncles, cousins, mother and father, I have my twin brother, my mom, um aunt and uncle buried up here in Lafayette.

And I just uh hope you take in consideration if the uh situation was reversed, you take in consideration our cares and our needs, and uh not pass this resolution.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Up next, we'll hear from Linda Rosales.

Just be here.

Oh, yeah, got the microphone.

Um Linda Rosales, 2323, High Lonesome Trail.

My husband, Larry Rosales is sitting next to me.

He's a proud Vietnam vet, and uh we just love the VFW uh memorial that they have at the Lafayette Cemetery.

We go uh every year for the memorial.

And um, I just want to say I am opposed to this resolution, and I hope you do not pass it.

It seem it's a rush to judgment, and um I think a lot more thought uh is deserving of this serious um seems like a land grab where they're taking the property away from the people and also limiting casket burials that seems to also be um trampling on religious rights, because there's some people that are Catholics and do not want to be cremated.

Um I also think that you may not understand the history of Lafayette, Louisville.

I was a little offended saying, okay, you can just sell it, we'll give you a thousand dollars, go to Louisville, but you don't understand Lewisville and Lafayette were rivals over the years.

Um I mean, even back in the 60s, you know, a uh a white person couldn't marry a black person or or a Hispanic person couldn't marry an Italian person from Lewisville, and that changed.

Um so hopefully, you know, you all take consideration, not rush to judgment, and also there was something missing from the resolution that I thought should have been in there, and that is if a casket burial was considered, a special approval process had to take place, and in nowhere it mentioned who was going to pay for this.

Now, there's some people in this audience probably that don't have the means to pay for the archaeologists to come out or the other uh the ground printing people to come out and do this special study, so it's gonna cost them money.

So if that needs to be resolved as well, how is that going to be paid for?

And so I'm just thinking that the resolution was kind of rushed through, people didn't have weren't aware of it, and a little bit more time and thought and input needs to go into it before it gets passed.

All right, thank you.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Catherine Ishman.

Hi.

Well, I kind of have the same kind of questions.

Um for and for one, it's hard enough, you know that our parents uh had to make those plans, you know, to uh buy their plots.

You know, I'm speaking for my dad, my sister, but my dad was born in 1913.

He's got seven children buried there.

I want to ask questions like I think that more people would be here today.

If this wasn't pushed through, uh I think that Lafayette needs a little bit more notice and even maybe even legal advice, because who is the SWA surveyors of New Mexico surveying our Lafayette Cemetery?

Why don't we have Lafayette surveyors here?

What I mean.

Shouldn't we have the rights if we already own our property?

We already bought those plots.

We have to arrange for the funerals of those people that already made those plans and they ahead of us.

You bought a piece of property, you didn't buy it.

You would have bought it, but you wouldn't have bought it if you knew there was a body underneath either, right?

It's common sense.

So the city's better, I should think you would figure it out and not have these people here.

It's hard enough as it is that they have to go through this.

Shame on you.

Move it out.

Don't do this.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Tony Munoz.

Hi, I'm Tony.

I'm at um it used to be 500 East Baseline.

It's now 214 North Michigan.

And I too I'm a little nervous, so I apologize for my voice.

I have both grandparents buried in at the cemetery.

Large portion of aunts and uncles.

Of course, I'm here to ask you to please really think about all of this.

We do have mass there once a year with Father on All Souls Day.

And I do go for the uh on, you know, when we honor the vets.

My father was a veteran.

He is from the 82nd Airborne.

Um and so uh he's buried there, of course.

You know, my grandparents, my dad, uh all my aunts and uncles, everybody in this room.

Well, almost everybody, but a lot of you guys I know really, really, really well.

Like I know their parents, their grandparents, their aunt and uncles, everybody.

So we are Lafayette.

So it's ever so humbly asking me, please think about this with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, all your ethics.

Please make the report open to everybody.

I love to go up there.

I was just up there looking to help, and not even my family.

It's a removed family member.

They're in California, they call me.

Can you help my sister?

She can't manage to get my brother's ashes to the grave site.

I said, I'll call the city right now.

Got an answer right away.

I know how much it is, I know how to do it.

She was so helpful.

We still cannot get this woman to move forward and her family's suffering.

We're like, give them the ashes.

We Tony's helping us.

Please.

We're we're all a big huge community, guys, and so sorry, so emotional.

It's just we all love each other so deeply, and we've all been raised together.

And so when when we get married, we all come together.

When we die, we all come together.

When, you know, whatever the thing is, you know, my brother's 80th birthday is July 4th.

We're all going to the VFW.

And that's why I'm here.

He's got two plots.

Him and his wife, they they don't go out, you know, they go to the VFW in the daytime.

The minute the sun goes down, they gotta get home.

And so he's like, I'm not going over there.

So here on behalf of, oh, and here's Anita Fresca's calling.

Um, Trudy Thrasher reached out.

You guys, I don't know what else to do.

I I I made chicken, I made chicken tonight.

I had this beautiful, I'm like, okay, I'll put my shoes on and go.

I I wasn't prepared.

Um, but uh, and this is a lot of our elders, so please really think about it, and a lot of Catholics, and I don't want no class action lawsuit creeping up, like our tax dollars going and people getting divided.

It's emotional, guys.

Please, I know everybody's kind of looking down, some of them, and they're like, I don't want to hear no more.

And thank you for your time.

We really appreciate all your work.

I know it's not like a glamorous job.

And so thank you for you know spending your your nights with us away from your families and listening to this really heartfelt uh topic.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Jill Ortega.

Well, good evening.

My name is Jill Ortega.

I live at 603 East Baseline Road in Lafayette.

I've been a bobcat, my family on both sides, my mom.

And I'm sorry I'm a little emotional.

But we just lost my father.

September 3rd.

And he was seriously the pioneer.

He was born on Down Street in Lafayette, born in his house.

He was a birth home or a house birth.

And so my father, the man that he is, he planned.

And he bought five plots.

You all, this city, who we played football, chairleading, swimming, parades, supported the town, my parents did.

My family, the Ortegan's, these all these people here who have plots, that bottom.

You guys have to honor that.

If we have a casket, doesn't matter what religion you are, whether you get burnt, whether you go out on a American Indian, they burn them on a polls.

There's many different ways.

I'm a Catholic.

I want to be in a casket.

It is my God-given right to be in a casket.

One.

My dad died.

My mother has the God-given right to be with her husband in a casket.

You guys sold it to her.

You sold it to my dad.

You said, hey, here's your plot.

You're you're good to go.

My dad took care of business.

God rest his soul.

He had a beautiful send-off.

We want to do the same for my mom.

And she should have the right to be by her husband.

Not in Louisville.

I would not separate my parents.

They were married for 63 years.

Why the hell would I separate them now and their resting place?

My nephews are buried there that were murdered.

My dad, the man that he is, gave his two plots up so that they can be buried and be with their grandma and their grandpas and their aunts.

All of us.

Now one thing that you all are missing, a cemetery is a healing place.

It's a healing place.

When someone dies, I don't know if you people have lost someone, but it hurts.

It hurts very much.

That's why you have grieving places.

When we go to our cemetery, we receive graces that God gives us.

I don't know what your religions are.

I know mine as a Catholic.

It has healed my sister who her boys were murdered.

It has healed my siblings for the loss of my brother, my grandparents, my uncles.

We go there to talk to them, to pray for them, to come together as a family.

And to separate my mom and you people telling me I can't put my mom in a casket.

That is morally and justifiably wrong.

On your part, if you allow this to happen.

What kind of people are you?

That would do that.

If you don't have no more room in that damn cemetery, I shouldn't say that, Lord, it's a holy place.

But you have another place.

That's right, don't mock Jesus or God.

Because right now we're in end times, number one.

Number two, new people that want to come in here, and they want to be buried.

Well, okay, it's close.

And right now you gotta remember.

1800s, you had um pioneers going through this bloody place.

You had American Indian shop.

They would bury him right there.

That is sacred.

Those are sacred places.

And you should not disturb that.

You should not open up a grave and disturb the dead.

That is wrong and it's inappropriate.

And shame on you for doing that.

Because that is wrong.

And the only thing I gotta say here, we are a family.

We are a community in Lafayette.

I don't know you people.

I and I should know you better.

But I'm a busy person, just like everybody else in this room.

We have children.

We got sports.

We got to go home and cook, feed the dog, do the laundry, do the dishes.

Do I have time to meet you?

No.

Did I get a little paper about the bloody thing?

No.

My mom is put in a situation that she doesn't even know that what now, well, she might know.

I don't know because they just told me about it.

But there is no reason my mom cannot have a casket.

It is not right for you people to say how my mother should be buried, or me, or any of these people.

If they want to have a burial in a Viking ship and be burnt off, that should be their right.

We are Americans.

But if we want to casket in that Lafayette Cemetery, by golly, that's our God given right.

And if I want to be cremated, that's my God given right.

Thank you so much, ma'am.

So think about it.

Do the right thing.

Be moral.

Have justification.

Up next, we'll hear from Matt Wright.

You mean counsel?

My father is also here.

As he stated before, my grandfather bought those plots back in 1971 when my aunt was had a drowning accident.

Those plots are still there to this day.

Now my biggest issue, I know I'm on the younger side.

I did grow up in this town.

I know a good many people that are sitting in this room.

And I have to think about for my parents when they go.

We don't know when that's going to happen.

I don't, and nobody in this room knows when that's going to happen.

And they need to be prepared, and I need to be prepared for when that day does come.

And it shouldn't matter what my parents' dying wishes are.

If they should want to be buried in a casket, if that's what they want, I'm going to make it happen.

I feel that it is not morally right for anybody in this room to have that right taken away from them.

I understand the cemetery's full, and it's quite honestly, it's been full for a long time.

We've no, I think everybody in this room has known that.

Whether the plots have been bought or used, or it's still available.

But every plot in that cemetery, I believe, has been paid for somehow, somehow.

I understand that things get found in the ground.

I do construction work, I do dig in the dirt.

I found things that have been shocking.

And I'm sure for the poor people who did find that that was probably a life-changing event.

I understand that.

But for each person in this room who has a plot where the family is buried here, they should have their right to be buried where they want to be how they want to be.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Thomas Alley.

Hello, I'm Dr.

Thomas Alley.

I'm from Broomfield, your neighbor.

But we went through, I wanted to commend your you guys on uh having a study session on considering rape choice voting.

Um we did a similar thing in Broomfield, where the city council had study sessions.

They then referred it to the voters, and we had a successful um vote on that where we've adopted rape choice voting and we'll be using it in 2027.

I helped uh initiate that campaign there.

And I just wanted to say that I think it is important to carefully consider this as a viable option uh for your city.

I think um, you know, ranked choice voting is a fairer system.

It gives a voter more choice.

It allows them to vote for who they love, who they like, and who they can stand by ranking the different members.

And then in Broomfield, we have uh single winner contests with our city council and our mayor.

Um here you have the unique opportunity of using multi-winner ranked choice voting, which leads to a very desirable outcome, which is called proportional representation.

So that you will, if you have groups that are divided in in the city, uh you will the share of votes for one side will be represented on the city council.

The minority will also be represented on city council, which is a much fairer system than the first past the post system we have in most places, where often the majority rules even on at-large councils.

And I just want uh you to carefully consider that this could be a of great benefit to the city and from the experience of someone that's looked at this issue for for quite a while now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Zach Kramer.

I'm gonna take a picture of this.

All right.

Hi, Council, thank you for the opportunity.

Uh my name is Zach Kramer.

I live at 435 Blue Ridge Lane here in Lafayette.

Uh the printer there doesn't work, so I'm using my phone.

Apologies if I'm staring down at it.

Um again, thanks for this opportunity.

I don't take it for granted.

Um I'm here to speak in support of ranked choice voting.

I've attended Longmont's council in support of it, and I am excited that uh my city is considering adopting it as well.

The current political system does not represent the people.

Thankfully, we live in a system designed for change.

At present, everything is defined by which side you are on as a result of our two-party political system.

George Washington predicted this.

He warned that the two-party system would only erode democracy and kindle animosity.

Instead of seeing each other as people, fellow citizens, neighbors.

We'd see each other as the enemy.

Sounds familiar.

Under the current system, rather than voting uh for the candidates that represent my values.

I'm often left with no choice but to reluctantly cast my vote for the lesser of two evils.

Because not doing so could spoil the election and ultimately elect the worst of two evils instead.

It's easy to understand why so many people have lost faith in our system.

Ranked choice voting is a tool to fix this.

Rather than being forced to choose a single candidate, I can rank candidates.

Power that has been co-opted and sold by the DNC and GOP alike.

It empowers voters to cast ballot for the candidates, not the party.

It holds elected officials accountable to work on behalf of their constituents rather than corporate donors.

And it allows for candidates who step across the false political binaries that have led uh to our extreme political animosity today.

Um I hope to see our city uh lead the way in this effort.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Grant Swift.

Good evening.

Um Grant Smith 608's Geneseo Street.

Um I do not have family buried in Lafayette.

I moved here 35 years ago to teach Lafayette youth, and I want to give a shout out to Andrew Middle School and Sanchez Elementary.

Um my thoughts tonight are my own.

As you know, I'm on two committees, and um in one of the committees that I was on, there was a public meeting um having to do with quasi-judicial processes, and I would just like to read from one of the slides of that meeting, and it talked about due process.

And I'm just gonna quote here due process requires fundamental fairness in any government action that may deprive a person of a significant property interest.

And then later on in that same slide, it says procedural due process requires notice and a fair hearing before an unbiased and impartial decision maker.

So I'd like you to consider that tonight.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Michael Watson.

Mike Watson, 708, South Carolina Avenue.

On the shoulders of giants, we stand tall.

These are the giants of Lafayette.

I moved here 11 years ago.

I fully recognize that I am a young upstart in this community.

However, on one hand, on the one hand, like every time the cemetery issue comes up, it's an amazing opportunity for someone like me to learn and experience the history of Lafayette and meet the people who literally built this town.

On the other hand, shame.

Shame, shame, shame.

How dare you do this to these people?

You guys are going to vote.

Katie, shame.

You've mastered the art of staring at your computer with an expressionless face, but shame.

I'm here on behalf of my neighbor Dolores Lopez.

When I moved into my house five years ago, Dolores Lopez was one of the first people that I met, and she has been a rock for me and my family for the last five years.

When I lost my my stepmom, she was a shoulder that I could cry on, and she offered me comfort.

When I lost my brother two years later, she was there for me.

She is struggling with health issues as so many of our elders are.

She has a plot next to him.

Do not separate them in death.

Do not ask for her to be cremated or moved to a different cemetery.

That is wrong by every metric, by every ethical system that humanity has come up with over the years.

That's wrong.

You guys are gonna vote on a proclamation probably in a few minutes, honoring the elders of the community.

These are the elders of the community.

These are the people, the elders of the community are the people targeted by this, by the cemetery closure, by the actions undertaken by the city.

Honestly, for the past what, 70, 80 years?

I mean, it did it like a lot of people who've come up and talked were Catholic, they were Hispanic, they were they were the sort of minorities who've experienced discrimination in the city's past, in our nation's past.

Honestly, I would have thought that this could have been a closed issue when Frank Archelletta brought it up two, three years ago, however long it's been, however long he's been coming here and talking, talking to you about the history of discrimination, the Lafayette has perpetuated on people who are not white Protestants, on people like my neighbor.

I just want to make sure that the right thing is done.

And I actually trust that you guys up there, I mean, I've spoken with each and every one of you, and I I know that 100% your heart's in the right place.

Um I can be a little bit critical of some of the actions that the city has taken in the past, but I truly believe that everyone up there will vote with your heart, will vote with your conscience, um, we'll vote with your spirit, and do the right thing.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from John Lemke.

Good evening.

My name is John Lemke.

First, I want to say I feel bad about the snow.

I was born in Buffalo, and I feel like I brought it here with me.

Second, I'm amazed at how close you guys are to Bounce Empire.

If you haven't been, I took my daughter there to K-pop Demon Hunters Night.

I will tell you, it is unbelievable for little girls who want to bounce on the uh giant inflatable trampolines there.

Highly recommend it.

Um, but I'm gonna talk about something a little more serious.

I live in Longmont.

I ran for city council there.

And I'm here to advocate for ranked choice voting and explain to you why.

I knew as a voter why I supported it, but it wasn't until I actually ran that I understood the benefits as a candidate.

I met with another candidate named Alex Calcoffer, and we talked and we realized that we had very similar views.

And I didn't think that it would be a good idea for me to run because I thought we might split the vote, and he said, you know, the more people that are out here advocating for the same things increases the chances that we can move public opinion.

I'm pretty certain that Alex and I did split the vote because neither one of us won.

He's now on council though, because the mayor uh one of the counselors became mayor and he filled their seat.

So he's on council.

Uh voters experienced the same problem, the vote splitting problem.

Uh and voters have to vote strategically.

We got to see it in Longmont Live on Reddit.

Uh people got together, they had a subreddit discussing of the four candidates for mayor.

Everybody, a lot of people had their very least favorite candidate.

And they were all trying to plot on Reddit who to vote for of the remaining three to make sure their least favorite candidate did not win.

We got to watch it live.

Uh and it was really fit phenomenal because it was like the proof was in the pudding.

Um Longmont, the race that I was in had six candidates, two winners.

Uh, the person with the most votes who warned one with 29%.

Uh I ran and campaigned on ranked choice voting because I do not believe that people should be uh governing if you only receive 20% 29% of the vote in your race.

Um there's a much more um maybe bigger example.

Uh in Aurora, Mike Hoffman won because the two people he ran against were both very similar, and he was very different from those two candidates.

He won with just over 33% of the vote.

Um the other two candidates combined who were very similar, almost clones, had nearly 66% of the vote.

So the person who got elected is very different from the people that voted for him.

Uh I'm sure that in the study session we'll talk a little bit about it, uh, what it is, but basically you rank people if there's three candidates.

You vote number one, who you love, who you like, who you can live with.

Whoever gets the least votes is eliminated.

You look at those ballots and you look at who is number two, and you move the ballots to whoever's listed as number two, and you keep doing that until somebody has over 50% of the vote.

It helps find consensus candidates.

Uh the barriers aren't aren't really high.

The machines that the state, everyone state has, they can all kind of do the counting.

They can do it for single winner and multi-winner.

Um Boulder County's clerk has already run ranked choice voting elections.

Um there's a lot of interest and momentum in both Longmont and in Denver, so it's been very popular among the people there.

Um there's one thing that may come up that I want to I want to stress is not that big of a barrier.

Right now, the Secretary of State has not checked the box that the machines can be used for multi-winner ranked choice voting.

The machines can do it.

They literally have not just checked the box that says yes, you can use them.

So uh Longmont is really leading the charge, uh, in my opinion, because I think we're the furthest along to get the Secretary of State to go ahead and check the box so that we can all legally use it because from a technical perspective it's fine.

Uh I hope that I'm an inspiration, and you guys can uh join uh Longmont and Denver in the momentum.

Um implementing ranked choice voting in cities has an unbroken streak of over 30 in a row.

I actually think it's over 40, but I don't remember exactly.

Um so it is very, very popular at the city level uh among citizens when they get the choice to implement.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Denise Walker.

Hello, council.

Um my name is Denise Walker, 2500 South Public Road.

Like a few other people before you, before me, I wasn't planning to speak, but here I am.

Um so I'm speaking on behalf of the proclamation for older Americans month, and I just wanted to highlight a couple of things on the proclamation, which you'll be reading, I presume in due time.

One is that the theme is championing your health, and um which is key, of course, to supporting quality of life, if not also longevity of life.

Um, very important.

And um I'll circle back to that a little in a minute with a personal remark about that.

Um, another thing I want to highlight on the proclamation is under the um events that are coming up.

Particularly if you are an older adult or if you know and are caring for an older adult, those are those are important things to have on your calendar.

The other thing is I also want to give a shout out to the recenter and the senior silver the silver sneakers classes at the Rec Center.

They are awesome.

I have been participating in several of those.

I've had two, three of the instructors, they're all amazing.

When I first went, I was sort of skeptical, thinking, oh yeah, right, you know, they'll have us do simple little things, you know, the because we're seniors.

I'm telling you, they kick ass there.

I walk away going, oh yeah, okay, this is great.

And I have a personal living situation where there's a little fitness center, so I can do a lot of them on that on my own.

But there are things they have me doing that are good for my brain health, my physical health, and just my mental health.

And I can't think of a better place to age in place than Lafayette.

So thanks so much for your support.

And go older Americans.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Danielle Suzuki.

Good evening.

My name's Danielle Suzuki, and while I am no longer a Lafayette resident, I am a healthcare worker in this city.

And have a deep appreciation for the city.

Tonight I'm here speaking on behalf of my mother, Anita Maynard, and the rest of my family regarding the casket burial moratorium at the Lafayette Cemetery.

My father passed away suddenly, September 4th, 1999.

When I was 10 years old.

And at that time, my mother purchased two lots, two plots in the Lafayette Cemetery.

One for my father and one for herself.

At the time of purchase, my mother was shown a map by the city clerk of all the plots that had been checked for remains and were cleared.

And she chose two next to each other, which on the map from the GPR survey that was done appears her plot is vacant, as well as a few adjacent plots.

My mother still has a copy of this map.

She was shown in 1999.

Regardless of the city being aware of this issue, they still sold these plots to my mother.

And now my family is stuck in a situation where my mother will not be able to be buried next to her husband, as she does not wish to be cremated.

And due to this city's willful negligence, my mother's wishes for her and my father's final resting places are being denied.

Therefore, we respectfully request first city council wait to vote on this resolution until all current plot owners are notified of the survey results, keeping the most vested in this decision, up to date on the results, and offering them a chance to express their feelings to this council.

And second, we request the city, make an exception and clear the plot where my mother is supposed to be buried, using the best available data at our disposal, as well as supervised by the state archaeologists to confirm that my mother can be buried there when she does pass.

Like the exception that was made for another family during this moratorium.

I know I've said a lot, and I know we've said a lot tonight, but most importantly, please consider a request for an exception for my mother to have her final resting place next to her husband.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Andy Valenzuena.

Hello, everyone.

Just want to talk on the issue with the burial plots.

My family's buried there.

My dad bought these plots in the 1950s.

My mom, my dad, my grandma, my grandpa, and my first wife are buried in those plots.

One left, which is mine.

And it's up to me whether I choose to do either or I understand that part.

But I just need you to understand that those plots were bought by my father, which our plot is still there, our family plots there, and I plan on being there.

It's and my wife's name is next to mine.

So uh just would appreciate your consideration for this uh and not have uh long residents like myself with five brothers that grew up here in the you know early 50s all the way through to now.

I'm a retired Marine of 28 years, did my service, came back home.

I live in the house I grew up in for each genus.

Did not receive the letter, but I'm glad I have friends that are back here that inform me of this situation.

Uh two-time commander of the VFW post here, all state commander both years.

Uh so I'm just telling you that I want to lay next to my father, which is a uh Korean Korean veteran.

I want to lay right next to him, and I I don't want to be considered uh any other place, but right here where I grew up.

And last but not least, um I talked to some friends I had from the Marine Corps, and one of them is a Marine Corps lawyer, and he's still a lawyer today.

Think about these things before you decide.

Negligence, breach of contract, mishandling, all includes class action.

Just remember that.

And every one of us in this town that still have enough plots have the right to do a class action soon.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Up next we'll hear from Edward Heitzman.

Uh hello.

Hold this.

You can start the time.

Okay.

Um, I'm a PhD candidate at the University of Colorado Boulder in mathematics.

Um my thesis is about auditing for STV elections.

Um and the subject actually already came up earlier today.

Um, and I came here today to first of all commend the council on seriously being one of the cities in Colorado to first consider the use of STV for city council elections.

Oh, yes, sorry.

Uh single transferable vote is the multi-member version of ranked choice voting.

Uh so in particular, if you were to use a ranked choice voting election for four candidates, that would be an STV election.

Um I want to talk a tiny bit more about the status of auditing uh legally and uh academically in a second.

Um I just before that want to add to the kind of list of benefits of STV that was brought before the council, that it is also inherently insulated to gerrymandering.

Um in light of the recent Supreme Court decision that we had on Wednesday, gerrymandering is on a lot of people's minds, and STV, our multi-member elections in general is just a natural solution to these types of problems.

Um I want to emphasize the proportionality of the outcomes that you typically see under an STD election.

Uh so for example, um my understanding is that Lafayette is 75% white.

Um using the current election method that Lafayette has for city council, if that block of voters were to vote cohesively, were to pick four candidates and all vote for the same person, they would get all four of the seats in a given year.

Um, and so we qualified that as a failure of proportionality.

Um and for example, Lafayette has about 20% of that population is um Hispanic or Latino, and such a group would be completely locked out of the election if the 75% group were to vote cohesively.

Um and STV is a natural way to solve this type of problem.

Um just as a purely structural um election, like just in the way that you run the election.

Um to speak a tiny bit more about the status of auditing, so I I want to correct something that was said earlier.

My understanding is that the use of STB elections in Colorado currently would be legal under the regulations of the Secretary of State.

Rule 26 of the Secretary of State Um includes some clauses about single transferable vote.

However, I do admit that um they have um specified the rules that the county commissions should implement to use STV elections a lot less than other election methods, so some work remains to be done there.

Um I guess I would compare the legal status of auditing for ranked just voting uh currently, or for SD specifically in Colorado to the status of auditing for instant runoff voting elections, which are the single member version of STD.

Back in 2020, when Boulder first decided to use IRB for mayor, which is to say it hadn't been done before, but it was possible.

And from an academic point of view, I also want to point out the Secretary of State is still laboring under a misapprehension from around 2019 when these when the current best auditing methods were written for instant runoff voting.

The misapprehension being that single transferable vote elections simply aren't auditable.

And academically we no longer believe this to be true.

We have since then developed new frameworks that allow for the auditing of these elections.

And the consensus I won't speak for everyone, but there is a strong sense academically that by the time that Lafayette would be thinking about running an STD election, STD at the scale that Lafayette would be using would be auditable.

Great.

And yeah, I just want to, I guess, finish off by kind of emphasizing a small difference between instant runoff voting, which is the single member version of STV and STV itself in terms of proportionality of outcome.

So that proportionality of elections that I was talking about, where a group worth 25% of the electorate can't get locked out of a four-seat election.

That only happens if you run this election as a multi-member election.

And something that I've seen in other places in Colorado, Denver, for example, is that when city councils are thinking about trying to move to a more proportional system of elections, they consider IRV on the same status as single transferable vote elections.

And I just want to emphasize the outcomes under these two systems are very different.

And if proportionality is what you're going for, SDB is really the thing that you should be thinking about.

I think you for your time.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Celeste Landry.

Good evening, Lafayette City Council and happy municipal clerks week to Clerk Lynette Beck and Deputy Clerk Christy Orzola.

My name is Celeste Landry, and I don't live in Lafayette or Lafayette.

I grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana.

I do live in Boulder County.

I'm speaking as an individual with a lot of experience and knowledge on voting methods.

Thank you for holding this study session on the two forms of ranked voting authorized in Colorado statute.

I'm pleased that Lafayette is learning about the proportional multi-winner form known as single transferable vote or STV.

It is true that the Secretary of State has not written the rules as county clerks want them for conducting an STV election, but since 2008, we have in Colorado revised statute 1-7-1004 the statement the Secretary of State shall adopt rules on the conduct of elections using ranked voting methods.

The rules shall prescribe the methods and procedures for tabulating, auditing, and reporting results in an election using a ranked voting method.

It goes on to say the Secretary of State shall provide guidance and advice to the governing bodies and designated elected officials of the local governing governments of the state.

So it's about time that the Secretary of State make this a priority, and having Lafayette request the rules could help bump STV rules up on the Secretary of State's priority list.

Some people will say that Lafayette has a diverse city council.

In other words, they will say there's no problem to fix because the council is representative of the community.

My comment in response to that is Lafayette got lucky.

Right now there is no electoral structure to ensure proportional representation.

But Lafayette has the opportunity to change to a proportional voting method to ensure for all time that you have proportional representation according to the will of the electorate.

So maybe some people vote strategically, only voting for the one council member that they really want in order to boost that candidate.

Lafayette's current vote for four system is a winner-take-all system.

Please see those rack cards that just got passed out to talk about the difference between single winner-take-all and proportional.

It's this one with the pie chart.

Perhaps you saw the MS Now opinion piece from three days ago entitled The Best Response to Supreme Court's Calais ruling.

Proportional representation.

Louisiana versus Calais is the decision that gutted the Federal Voting Rights Act.

It's prompting big time gerrymandering.

Every single winner election is also a winner-take-all election.

Last year, Colorado passed its own voting rights act, so we have some safeguards against the gutting of the federal version, to ensure that minority racial groups can elect a candidate of their choice, Colorado Voting Rights Act or COVRA, allows these protected groups to file vote dilution claims.

Single transferable vote has been implemented to result to resolve vote dilution claims because in other places because proportional representation gets rid of vote dilution.

It's great.

This fall, Boulder County voters may see an initiative to go from three to five county commissioners.

Boulder City Council member Nicole Speer and I wrote a guest opinion for the Boulder Reporting Lab in February, making the case for offering voters a proportional representation option for electing county commissioners.

I encourage you to check it out.

And the main point is proportional representation is great at the federal, state, and local levels.

By the way, back in 1917, Boulder was the second city in the nation to adopt single transferable vote.

We used it for 31 years.

There were several attempts to overturn it, but none succeeded until 1947, the same year that New York City also stopped using single transferable vote.

That was the McCarthy Red Scare era, and people were particularly fearful of political diversity, so communists were often targets.

My husband grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which started using STD in 1941 and proudly continues to use it to this day.

It's one of the most liberal cities in the nation, yet it always elects at least one conservative for its nine member council.

More voices get a seat at the table when we have proportional representation.

More voices means better decision making, less group things.

So please move forward with advocating for STV implementation rules with the legislature and the Secretary of State's office.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we will hear from Christina Miller.

Hi.

I'm a little nervous.

I don't have anything prepared because I just found out about this meeting from my cousin a couple hours ago.

And I drove almost two hours in the snow and the traffic from Denver to be here.

My family first moved to Lafayette over a hundred years ago and resided at 401 West Cannon.

I'm here to represent my ancestors because they can't speak.

My family's the manzanarises, the Atensios, and the Roblitos who have been in this community, like I said, for a hundred years.

I grew up and spent every summer here.

Lafayette is a great place.

Everybody in this room has come up and been so compassionate and really spoke about their families and what this community means to them.

And I know what this community means to me.

These families worked hard, they paid their taxes, they loved hard, they had sorrow here, and they just want to be buried here.

My entire family is buried in Lafayette Cemetery.

Sorry, I'm a little emotional.

My dad died, and he was a great man, and he wanted to provide for my mom.

So they bought their plot over 30 years ago, their plots.

And now my mother, who's listening by phone, who's 83 years old, should be enjoying her golden years.

Instead, she's so worried because she don't know, she doesn't know where her final resting place is going to be.

She's a Catholic like many people here.

She grew up going to the Catholic Church here.

She was married in the Catholic church here, and she cannot be cremated.

That's one of the options that she was given.

Another was that they exhumed my father's body so that they could be together.

I'm speaking from my heart because I didn't prepare anything.

I'm asking you to please listen with your heart.

When you became a council member or the city manager, you did this.

This is a hard job, and I appreciate you taking the time to listen.

But it's a hard job that you did this because you wanted to change people's lives.

You wanted to have an effect on this community.

This is your opportunity.

There's eight of you.

There are hundreds of people.

Every person in here that's gotten up and spoken represents hundreds of people.

Sorry, I'm really nervous and emotional.

Um, but like I said, I'm speaking for my ancestors, and I can feel them here with me.

I want you to think, are you married?

Are you a father?

Are you a daughter?

How would you feel if this was your family?

This we're talking about eternity.

I want my mother to know that she's going to rest in peace.

I want my father, who was such a great man and provided for her to be at peace as well, knowing that she's going to reside next to him.

And my manzanaris family and my great-grandparents and my grandparents.

Thank you for listening.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Stephanie Carpenter.

Hi, I'm Stephanie Atencio Carpenter.

I'm actually Christina Miller's cousin.

Um, so it's kind of like hearing from the same family, but not.

Um very eloquent in what she said.

I agree 100%.

A lot of her family is my family.

I was a half hour ago sitting in my living room in Broomfield and watching this, and I suddenly felt like I had to come and address you directly to tell you about my experience with this whole thing.

My father, um well, our my all of my relatives are also buried in the Lafayette Cemetery, with the exception of my father.

Um he was diagnosed with cancer last year in January.

He didn't get a full year.

And two months before his death, they received a letter saying that the plots that they bought 50 years ago in the cemetery were my parents, my grandparents, all my aunts and uncles, um, my mother's parents were buried.

He couldn't be there.

So he passed away on uh Christmas Eve.

So which made it even harder to handle all of this.

Um we were faced with a situation where he didn't want to really be cremated.

Um he kind of considered it, I think for us because I was so upset about the situation, um, and my family was so upset.

Um I I was upset about my aunt whose husband is buried there, and now it sounds like she won't be able to be buried there.

I spent a lot of time on the phone with your consultant, and I understand the situation that or the things that led to this situation, that there are a lot of things that happened before any of you ever came along.

I worked for this city and county broomfield for almost 20 years in the manager's office.

I understand what you're facing.

But I would also say to you that you have the responsibility and the opportunity to make it right, to do right by all of these people whose loved ones have been here for so long, and to to think about the situation that we were in, we had to find another cemetery for my father.

He's buried in Broomfield.

He wanted to be here.

My mother is an only child and can't be buried next to her grandparents who are now really here alone.

Um Christina said it's eternity.

I know they're gone, but my mom wanted to be buried with her parents and my and my father's parents.

Um this is a hurt that won't end because we didn't get the opportunity for an exception.

This all happened when the ground penetrating radar was taking place.

I'm just asking you, please, please don't do this to the rest of the people sitting in here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next we'll hear from Rob Glenn.

Good evening, uh Rob Glenn, 401 West Cannon Street.

Um good evening, Mayor and Council members.

Uh I first want to acknowledge how sensitive and emotional this issue is for the families affected.

Uh for the staff of the community, there's no easy perfect answer.

And there's really no right answer with these situations when all's been learned over.

I've kind of been a large part of getting to learn all about the cemetery issues just since last August when I started coming to a lot of the city council meetings.

And seen a lot of this process and appreciated the work put into to getting the results and finding out information.

Uh when it comes down to you heard a lot of families tonight, or people speak upon their families and their sons that aren't represented.

Uh my heart goes out to those families now facing uncertainty after purchasing plots in good faith and now potentially being told these plots may not be honored as originally intended.

I know a lot um when I think about my grandparents and before they passed the thought and effort, even my grandmother, not like Harley, but she made it a point was like if I die first and my grandfather was still alive, she wanted to make sure that if he ever somehow got remarried, there was never another woman put on top of him.

So I know the seriousness of this not to be lighthearted, but like that goes so deep in like how much thought was put into the family members that were discussed tonight, and like I said, even art getting a chance to be a voice tonight.

And I think that's an opportunity is I don't know if this is something that can be done for circumstances like this, but when you look at process, and I've gotten to sit in front of a lot of um where you all reviewed spars and so on for different uh buildings.

There's usually in a situation where there's there's brought in there's public hearings and opportunities that are in the policy for something serious of a building being put.

Well, these are your lives and where they're gonna be put.

And is there an opportunity to more bring this to the public or even like there's a presentation tonight?

Usually when we look at something being built, the presentation's made, there's a public hearing after that, and then you'll have your questions, and it's timed and everybody has the facts because the packet gives what you all are gonna hear tonight, but you're gonna get a lot more context that I'm looking forward to hearing on the studies that were done and the information that's being brought.

So I ask, is there an opportunity to look at process going forward for something as is largely serious is what's being considered as a proclamation and I of creating a more process where that presentation and the individuals won are getting a lot more awareness and time frame of that to that presentation is made to where they can hear or whether it be online or in person, and then three have their public input after that into where then you can take all that information in together when you normally have your quadratic judicial moments.

So just the food for thought.

Don't know if that's plausible or doable or not, but something we're not thought about, something this sensitive of an opportunity that could maybe be thought about going forward.

Thank you.

I'm not saying any more speaker forms.

Um is there anyone in the room that would like to speak that has not had the opportunity to speak?

Not seeing anyone, I will turn to our city clerk, see if we have any calls.

We have three people online, Mayor.

All right, we will start with uh caller with the phone number ending in two nine four.

Talking is now available.

You will have five minutes.

Phone number ending in 294.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hello.

Great.

Uh good evening, Mayor and Council members.

My name is Emmy Pfizer.

I am the chief impact officer at Colleges Colorado, which is a cross-partisan organization working to strengthen democracy across our state through community-based efforts and policy change.

I live in Denver.

We work with communities across Colorado.

I had hoped to be there in person tonight.

I made it about halfway up 36 before I made the decision to turn around because of the snow, but I really wanted to make sure I could still speak with you tonight.

I encourage you to support referring a ballot measure to allow Lafayette voters to consider proportional rank choice voting.

Across Colorado, we are seeing something shift in communities across the state, and especially here in Boulder County.

There's growing momentum to rethink how our elections works.

Older voters have already adopted an implemented rank place voting, and after it first used, nearly 90% of voters said it was easy to use, and they were satisfied with their voting experience.

Longmont is currently actively considering it.

You've heard that tonight.

Nearby communities like Broomfield and Fort Collins are already using it, and more communities are exploring it next year and in the years ahead.

Proportional ranked choice voting creates space for more voices, perspectives, and ideas on council.

You've heard from other commenters tonight about how that works, but it really changes the experience for voters in a meaningful way and makes everyone's vote more likely to count.

It brings more people into the process, younger voters, independent voters, and others who often feel like the system doesn't fully reflect them.

And ultimately, more voters see someone they supported represented in their local government.

Colorado has a long history of leading on innovative voting practices from mail in ballots, the same day registration, to piloting mobile voting for overseas military.

Those changes happen because leaders at every level were willing to move the system forward.

And this is another one of those moments.

From what we're seeing across Colorado, voters are ready for a conversation about better ways to elect those who represent them, and I encourage you to give Lafayette voters that opportunity here.

Thanks so much for your time.

Our next speaker uh has a phone number ending in 582.

Talking is now available.

Oh I didn't have my mic on.

Phone number ending in 582.

Caller with the number ending in 582 talking is now available.

Oh can you hear me?

We can, thank you.

You may go.

Okay.

Um my name's Anita.

And I've lived in Rosia on my life.

Um I stand with everybody there that is against you closing uh uh cemetery.

I do have family that is buried there, and I have plots, and I did get a letter.

Um and I have plots there also.

And I have a I'm wondering how you all came to the decision to close the cemetery when you received a report um stating that the overall appearance or the overall organization with the graves at the cemetery was that they were in their role.

There's no evidence of stacked or overlooking graves.

So I'm wondering, you know, after receiving that information, why would you want to close that cemetery?

Well, actually, there's not that many people left, not that many grades left.

Um I too want to be buried there, and I have another grave for one of my children, or you know, what one of my family, whoever may need it.

And I just feel that, you know, we've gone through a lot about this cemetery this last few years.

And I just feel like this is just put out there again as another obstacle for us to overcome.

So I would ask you to look deep into your hearts and think about your own family members.

How they would react to being having these graves for so many years.

We've had them for so many years.

When my mom bought her grave, she paid twenty-five dollars for that grave.

So that gives you an idea of how long ago and how far we go back.

And so again, I stand with everybody there asking you, please, please do not close the cemetery to those that it is still available to.

And I thank you and have a good night.

Our next caller has a phone number ending in 757.

Talking is now available.

Phone number ending in 757.

Hello.

We can hear you.

You can go.

Uh my name's Christopher.

I live in uh Luna committee co-op.

I've heard a lot of emotions today about this graveyard thing, and that's understandable.

But what the people aren't understanding is that there's a lot of misinformation going on.

There's a lot of people who don't understand the whole concept of what's going on.

They don't realize that graveyards fill up.

That's the reality of it.

They fill up and sometimes greed gets in the way, and that's why we have the situation we have now.

It's a horrible thing, but we need to be responsible about it, not emotional, responsible.

I think people need to take a step back and look at the bigger picture of what's going on about it.

Find out the information about it that's they need to understand, and then go forward.

Or as the voting is concerned, I'm not sold on the the STV voting.

I'd like to see way more uh information on it and all of these people that are coming in from outside this city coming here to talk to us about our city.

Uh stay in your own cities, people.

This is our city.

We'll deal with uh us.

You deal with yourself.

Thank you.

Have a great night.

Council, you're doing a wonderful job.

There are no more callers.

Thank you so much.

And with that, we will close public input.

And we will move quickly right into the next consent agenda, which has uh four um agenda items, uh including uh agenda item A, April 21st, 2026, City Council special meeting minutes.

Item B, first reading for ordinance number 10, series 2026 adopting 2025 Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code by reference.

Item C motion to approve an amendment to an intergovernmental agreement between Boulder County and the City of Lafayette regarding the administration of a waste reduction incentive program for businesses and authorize the city manager to execute the amendment and item D motion to approve the fourth uh amendment to the regional grant management system collaboration agreement.

Is there any items council would like to pull?

Not seeing any.

I will take a motion.

I don't know.

The consent agenda or approval second.

Motion we have a second.

Any further discussion?

Yeah.

Uh all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed say no?

No one opposed.

That passes unanimously.

Uh we will move into proclamations for tonight.

Uh if I could I I know we have a process outlined here on our agenda.

I wonder if it's possible we could reorder this in the interest of the public who are here speaking on uh item number J if we could move that up before the proclamations.

So I believe we can make a motion to reorder the agenda if we have a second when we vote.

I think that's completely possible.

A question are we taking testimony on Jay at that part?

Presentation.

I know.

Okay, I knew that, but uh, I thought you were saying people wanted to talk.

Well, we've heard from the public tonight on that.

I think they it would be in the public's interest if we uh advance that in the agenda.

So I'll just leave it this note.

I'll move that we we uh proceed to item J and hold the rest of the um proclamations until after item J.

Second.

We have a motion, we have a second.

Um discussion.

Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed say no?

No.

That passes five to one.

We'll move on to regular business.

Uh move on to item J.

Uh resolution 2026-13.

And I will turn it over to our deputy city manager.

Okay.

Actually, we'll give her a minute to pull everything up and then we will turn it over to our deputy city manager.

All right, thank you.

Mayor and city council.

Just give us a minute.

Um, we do have a consultant, Jenny Strum, who is joining us remotely from SWCA, and then um we have Dr.

Holly Norton here as well.

So we're just gonna take a minute and make sure that we can get um Jenny in remotely.

Um, but she is on.

And so let's get that set up.

Okay, there we go.

Great.

All right, thank you, Jenny.

We're gonna get started.

Thank you.

Happy to be here.

Great, thanks.

Okay, good evening, Mayor and City Council.

We're here tonight to talk about resolution number 2026 13, a review of the GPR findings and resolution regarding closing the Lafayette Cemetery to casket interments.

As I mentioned, we have tonight Dr.

Holly Norton, who's from the Colorado Office of Archaeology and Historic Preservation.

And she's here with us and is going to be um joining for part of the presentation, and then to answer questions as well.

And then we have um Dr.

Jenny Strum from SWCA consulting who um conducted the GPR um research, and she's going to be available for questions.

So the objective of this presentation this evening is to present the findings of the rate of the GPR radar research and consider a resolution to rescind the moratorium and permanently close the cemetery to casket interments.

We're going to talk about the background on this matter, go through a summary of the GPR findings, and talk about next steps and questions, and then the consideration of the resolution.

So, in terms of background, a little bit of history.

Um the city took ownership of the cemetery property um in 1891.

Um it is very old, nearly 140 years old.

Um it does have a potter's field, which which is a part of the cemetery and areas throughout that are unknown or unmarked burials.

So these were burials that were um conducted informally and included unmarked burials.

Um we also have uh a lot of historic burials that occurred and some records that are incomplete throughout periods of time.

Um that started as early as um the early 1900s.

We have gaps in some of our records around you know where burials occurred and and who was buried in some of those areas, and then also um throughout chunks of time, up until um you know, really into the towards the 1950s.

And throughout that time also cemetery practices varied.

Um, we were under state regulations throughout that time, and as you can imagine, uh regulations kind of iterated throughout that time, and also um practices kind of iterated.

We had periods of time when we worked with mortuaries to actually buy or have chunks of our plots, and they would then sell them, and then we would have the records get the record from them.

There are periods of time when we don't have records.

So there's a lot of different kind of varied practices throughout history.

And in 2000, we stopped selling plots entirely because we knew that we were reaching capacity.

Some of the residents mentioned that.

And at that time, we acquired the Col Creek Cemetery, knowing that we were going to be out of room in the Lafayette cemetery.

However, we did still have a lot of plots at that time that had been purchased.

You heard from people who had purchased plots as far back as the 50s.

And so we have a lot of plots that were acquired in our records, you know, 80s and beyond.

So we now have over 270 plots within the cemetery that remained remain owned but not utilized.

And just to tell you a little bit, if you're not familiar with how the Lafayette plots were sort of plotted, if you were to look at the a map of the cemetery, it's basically a grid.

And so you would just see a grid of plots, and there are rows and numbers, and when each person or family purchased plots, they would get sort of a number and a row, and they would be assigned what that plot was.

And so that's what it's not like when somebody passes away, we bury them where we can.

They have an assigned plot and location in the cemetery.

So that's that's what the cemetery sort of map or the plotting looks like.

The city also owns a number of plots, so it's just about just under five acres, and there are just over 4,500 plots in the cemetery.

Um30 are reserved, and so that would include those plots that people had purchased but are unused.

There's a number of plots that the city has sort of taken over, put it put as city-owned plots.

Some of them have trees on them or shrubs, or have been deemed unusable.

Some of them have been deemed deemed unusable because we believe that they might be occupied.

Um there's a number of those plots that are sort of out of out of order or not able to be used.

Um, and we our records show that we have 4,735 interments, and that's coffin and crewmain's interments.

We're going to talk more about the GB GPR findings, but the the in terms of the data, um, they found 3,504 coffin um coffin interments or coffin graves, and about 2,179 markers visible on the surface.

So just to talk a little bit about the current conditions and what we have encountered over the last you know, 10 months most recently.

So beginning last September, um, we've had recent observations of possible human remains during our routine burial practices.

And that's happened when our staff were out conducting uh a routine burial of a casket.

And um we also have had data and field observations that have occurred when we're out in the field again conducting burial practices where we've had an open plot where we believe that no one is in the plot.

We it's owned by somebody else, and we've found that there has that that that's there's someone in it, that there's a casket in it.

Um, either we've run, you know, kind of run into a casket, whether it's a corner or a full casket has been in that plot, um, or that there's been some kind of sort of infringement where it's a portion of a casket in that spot.

So that's kind of been something that's that's occurred.

Um it's occurred prior to September as well, where we've had those issues.

Conditions and ongoing burial activities like this, um, they're really putting city and staff at risk.

It's actually there's there's uh regulations around uh what you do if you encounter human remains when you're conducting a burial.

So the city has we did the right thing in um September of last year, and we reached out to we followed the protocol outlined in state statute, and that's um involved contacting the state author the local authorities, and then ultimately the state archaeologists, and we became connected with the state archaeologists who came on site and started working with the state archaeologists to better understand the conditions at the cemetery.

Our city attorneys have also been involved regarding this matter to make sure that we're not putting the city at risk and that we're remaining compliant with with state law.

So I want to turn it over to Dr.

Holly Norton and have her talk a little bit about her involvement and some of the recommended actions that she has provided for us for us through this process.

Thanks, Megan.

Good evening, everybody.

So yes, last fall, when I first came on site, there was a lot of different activity, and because of all of the human remains that were being encountered really rapidly in a short amount of time, I recommended a moratorium until you all were able to get some more information.

That is when you acted very quickly and you conducted the ground penetrating radar survey with SWCA.

A couple of things that I'd like to make sure that we understand prior to really digging into the GPR data.

First of all, SWCA is a very well-respected company.

They're what we call a cultural resource management company, so they specialize in archaeological investigations.

They have an office here in Broomfield.

I know many people who have worked for them in many projects that they have done.

Dr.

Jenny Sturm, who was the principal investigator on this is part of their Albuquerque office, but this was a Colorado project.

As the state archaeologist, I have a really unique role in this with you all.

I have the privilege of providing technical and other assistance, but I also have some legal authority and jurisdiction over archaeological sites on public lands, which includes the city of Lafayette.

So really what I have been attempting to do over these last several months is for us to really understand what the issues on the ground are so that you and the community are informed about that.

I feel like perhaps we missed one of our okay.

So as Megan said, uh the city identified what they thought were possible human remains, and they followed the correct protocols.

They called local law enforcement, which included the coroner.

At the end of the day, it's law enforcement and coroner's offices who get to identify whether something is what we call a forensic value or archaeological.

Human remains that are a forensic value are more contemporary and might have some relationship to criminal activity.

Obviously, in this case, that was not what was going on.

With a known historic cemetery and with the condition of the remains that were identified, it was really quickly apparent to all the different agencies involved that this was an archaeological matter.

Three other women, all of whom who have PhDs for three days.

Typically, when a grave or a burial is encountered, we can take care of it in a day or less.

So we spent a lot of time assessing the situation and making sure we truly understood what was going on.

Over those three days, we recovered human remains, the actual physical bones of people who have been buried in Lafayette Cemetery, as well as fragments of their coffins and other items used in the cemetery.

These are the physical remains of humans that we now have the duty to take care of in a very responsible way.

After those three days, soon after that, there was another planned burial.

I agreed to come back and help to monitor that burial to try to make this situation that you were all navigating as smooth as possible.

During that monitoring situation, we did encounter yet another coffin that had to be avoided.

In almost every instance that I have participated in the last eight months with this city staff in a reburial activity, we have encountered previous human remains.

It's not like the movies, right?

This isn't quite like when gravediggers are looting a casket in a horror movie, or when we're encountering Dracula.

There's not an intact coffin.

Soil is very dynamic.

You have groundwater percolating up, you have rainwater and snow water percolating down, you have microbes, you have insects, you have worms, you have a lot of things acting on the caskets and the people buried in them so that those bodies are reclaimed, right?

That's part of our burial tradition in the Judeo-Christian practices.

That is part of the reason that people choose burial, is so that those bodies and those coffins decompose.

And so what we are finding is not an easy situation where the skierstid, uh the steer skid, excuse me, or the backhoe is coming down on an intact coffin.

What we're finding is after the fact, after the that heavy machinery has pulled up that soil, it has broken bones, it has fragmented already fragmented coffins, and it has caused more damage.

And so then it takes even more ability to identify the damage and the impact that has happened to the people who are already buried here.

The GPR data collection, as I said, was done by SWCA.

Um I have worked with Dr.

Sturm in the past on other sensitive projects.

In my opinion, she is the preeminent historical cemetery scientist in this country.

Her company was out here for almost two weeks doing data collection.

Um as you have seen from the report as well as the memo from city staff.

Um it was done in a very methodical way.

Um areas were gridded.

The data was analyzed by Dr.

Sturm and two other geophysical archaeologists who work for her.

In case there are questions about what actually was done out there, I'd like to talk just briefly about what ground penetrating radar is.

It is electromagnetic geophysical method that transmits radio wave pulses into the ground to study the subsurface.

In a little bit more vernacular language, what that means is that there are pulses of radio waves that come out of this machine.

It's very tiny, like a smaller actually than most lawnmowers.

And those waves travel through the ground, and they, as they encounter different types of soils or different types of materials, then it bounces back in different ways.

And what it creates is this map that is a series of blips to the uninitiated, like you and me.

Um, this gray box here is an example of what that looks like.

Um these blips, these anomalies, these differences in how these radio waves are coming back to the surface to be recorded by the GPR device, is what tells experts like Jack Dr.

Sturm what underneath the ground looks like.

GPR does not provide pictures or photos or anything that we may have seen on CSI, right?

This is not CSI Colorado.

Um, and so it takes expertise to understand how those soil changes look and what they mean, and then how we can interpret them.

Again, you know, just to kind of make sure that the community understands what is possible with GPR.

We see changes in soil.

We can, from those changes in soil, we can identify numbers of burials.

We can even identify sizes and depths of burials, orientations, layouts.

We get other cultural features such as utility lines, and that occurred with your GPR study at the Lafayette Cemetery.

And then we can get non-cultural disturbances like tree roots.

What it can't do is tell us who individuals are.

Again, we don't see skeletal images, we don't see the people.

We see the area where they were buried.

We can't tell what communities they come from, when they were buried, or their causes of death.

So these are kind of our limitations in how we are applying GPR.

For this particular study, it was very straightforward.

The soils in Lafayette are excellent for this type of investigation.

And so the GPR was able to identify intact caskets, burials without caskets, which is not that uncommon historically.

Collapsed caskets, which is also quite common from historical burials, and then graveshafts, which again would be a disturbance in the soil where somebody had dug a burial place, but for whatever reasons, the actual coffin or burial itself might not have been seen by the GPR.

The depiction of the cascade placements on the map might be slightly shifted, and I'm going to discuss the again the limitations of that map in a moment.

Trees, roots, and utilities are more shallow than typical graves, and those interfere with the GPR mapping, which I'm going to discuss in a moment as well.

So this is a portion of one of a portion of the map of the cemetery.

This map, like all maps, is not reality.

It is an interpretation of what may be on the ground, but it is not an exact replica by any means, no more so than you know, your GPS to get here tonight is an exact replica of the outside world.

These orange boxes do not denote exact places where individual burials are.

Dr.

Sturm and her team interpreted those blips from that gray box that I showed you earlier.

And this is their best approximation of where individual graves most likely are.

Something like a utility line, because it has metal in it, will interfere with those electromagnetic radio waves that are coming out of the GPR.

So you're going to get bad readings essentially, or no readings.

So city staff went ahead with one of my staff monitoring to again ground truth this situation.

And they excavated in that quote-unquote clear area to try to bury this spouse.

And they came down on another gravesite that people, another coffin fragment that people didn't know were there previously.

What's also significant about this is that the spouse who was buried in 2023, a very new, very modern and fresh, relatively fresh, excuse the terminology, grave did not show up on this GPR either.

So the 2023 grave didn't show up, and this older historical grave didn't show up.

In this case, in my opinion, city staff worked really diligently to try to shift and find an area close by that that spouse could be buried.

So that burial was able to happen, but it was very much without a lot of room between other burials that are in that area.

So we have to be careful with taking just a look at how this map is portrayed and say that there are open areas that are going to be easy to have burials.

The summary of the GPR findings are that there were no large open areas that are devoid of graves.

How those are investigated is very serious and challenging question.

Again, due to some of the factors that I identified earlier, there is some potentials for misidentification of graves, both false positives and false negatives.

Given the density of the graves in this cemetery, again, you know, we believe you have to be extremely cautious and undertake any excavations with extreme care.

And I do believe that the GPR data reinforces the recommendations that we should avoid casket burials in the cemetery.

I think at this point I turn it back over to Megan.

But I'm available for questions afterwards.

Okay, we're going to take questions at the end.

So let's just get through next steps.

So we have before you resolution number 2026 13.

This is very similar to the moratorium that's in place.

It closes the Lafayette Cemetery to cassift burials, but there are no exceptions.

The plot owner is offered three options moving forward.

Kermain's burial in the Lafayette Cemetery in compliance with the Lafayette Cemetery rules, exchange of their plot for a plot in the Colcrete Center Coal Creek Cemetery or a sellback of the plot to the city for $1,500, which is the current price of a plot at the Col Creek Cemetery.

The city manager is authorized to amend the Lafayette Cemetery rules to carry out the intent of this resolution.

And the moratorium, which was authorized in November of 2025, is rescinded as of the closure of the cemetery.

The closure would become effective in June 30th of 2026.

As an aside, the closure effective date would be somewhat consistent with the timing of the installation of the names of the unrecorded burials that council has requested previously that is in the works right now.

Staff is working on having that created as we speak.

A little bit more about the closure information.

The remaining plot owners would be notified by letter regarding the closure and their options.

So we would encourage anybody who did not get a rec get did not get a letter and is a plot owner to contact the city and let us know their address.

I did write down some names, and we have the names of those who who spoke tonight, and so we will cross check the names to see.

But um that is definitely an issue.

We know that again, some of those some of those addresses may be you know 50 years old.

So we will send letters to those and actually intend to send letters to to our entire list about um a reserve resolution if a council is to um take action and for those owning plots, we would request a response to better understand their future future burial um decisions around um any closure at the Lafayette Cemetery and the Col Creek Cemetery.

And we would like to update our records related to contact information so we have updated information.

And we are happy to answer questions again.

Um both Dr.

Strom and Dr.

Holly Norton are happy to answer questions.

Um city attorneys, I think, can answer questions too if you have some that came up during the community questions, and I'm also happy to have any questions you might have.

Thank you.

Uh questions from council.

I have a few questions, May.

Councilor Bowling.

Thank you, sir.

Um thank you very much.

Uh and to um our state archaeologists for the presentation.

Thank you also for the remaining uh members of the public.

I'm glad folks went home given the snow that's still falling.

I'm hearing a bit of a of a talking past each other from what we're hearing from the public and what we're hearing in the staff and state presentation.

I think the presentation from city staff and the state has been excellent, but it also doesn't at all fit what we're hearing from the public.

So I think there's this two track, and so I think we need to try to meet those.

We heard from a lot of residents today.

Why are you doing this?

And in the long presentation I heard, because I think I'm a bit familiar with this issue, like my fellow counselors, but I wonder if we could just state very clearly why this is even on the table, as clearly as humanly possible.

Yeah, so um we are in a situation right now where um you know the city manages the cemetery and the cemetery is full, and so we have reached capacity for this cemetery, and it's a it's a again, it's just under five acres, and so there's a limited amount of space and the amount of um burials that have occurred in the cemetery and with the plots that we have owned but are you know not occupied, we we do we can no longer fit any more you know, basically any uh casket interments in the cemetery with without encountering other grave sites.

And so our goal is to protect those who have been buried in the cemetery already and to protect those who would like to be buried as well as staff.

I mean, I think we um you know that's yeah.

I I appreciate that if I could, and I'm not speaking for the city or for the state when I say this, if I could boil that down to like one sentence.

I'm hearing when we try to dig to bury deceased Lafayette residents, we hit another casket almost every time.

Or we're digging human remains.

I take the point.

I just want us to be really clear about that because I think in the verbiage and specificity, we are losing the main thing, which is we don't want to disturb other people's fancy.

Correct.

So I want I want to hit that point.

Thank you.

Uh point number two, I think we collectively have a process issue to sort out.

Um I'm very sympathetic to the argument I've heard from a few residents this evening that this is such a special weighty topic that we probably should have had a separate session specifically dedicated to this.

So I wonder if Mr.

Mayor, if we could consider that for the future.

Um a third thing, I you know, we heard from a lot of residents that didn't receive the the mail, so I'd really appreciate your note and staff's work to take down those addresses and reach out to them.

But I I'm trying to wrap my mind around how many people we're talking about because I believe there's a couple hundred plots in question, but we know there's something like 40 people this evening, and they speak for other residents.

I would love to know what is the plus or minus number.

I'm sure some members of the community have a good sense of what that number is.

I think that would help us discuss this and look at this topic in public.

And lastly, um, given that we're absent to counselor and given the the freighted topic, I am uncomfortable with deciding tonight.

I'm open to changing my mind, but I'm uncomfortable with deciding tonight, and and would just put on the table that we do have the option to push this decision to the right.

Thank you.

Any other questions, thoughts from council?

Council Janola.

Thank you, Mayor.

Um I do have some questions for uh the state archaeologists, if you wouldn't mind.

Absolutely.

Yeah, I want to just talk a little bit more about the ground penetrating radar.

Can you can you just help us understand?

You know, are there other ways that we can investigate what's going on below the ground that are non-invasive?

So there's a suite of tools called remote sensing or geophysical um tools, geophysical investigations.

These are the sorts of things that Dr.

Sturm specializes in.

Yeah, I'm sorry, can is the microphone catching me?

Okay, go ahead and try again.

Yep.

So there are a number of tools.

There's called geophysical um investigations, remote sensing.

So there are other types of similar tools, something like you know, magnetometers or others.

Given the I think kind of confidence level of this study, I don't I wouldn't typically recommend it as being worth your time.

However, I think that if there are additional studies that would make the community more comfortable with understanding what is going on underneath that, then I would always urge you to do those things and see what you can identify.

Um I would recommend talking to a professional who understands those since Jenny has been out here and knows the property, knows the soil types, all of those things, she might have a different recommendation than I do.

Yeah, I'd love to hear from Dr.

Sturm on this.

Um if there are other ways to investigate this, what those are, how how they compare with GPR, and you know, their their precise, are they less precise?

Are we kind of dealing with state of the art here?

I'd love to hear thoughts about that.

Yeah, thank you.

I it's a great question.

Um GPR is really considered the gold standard when it comes to cemetery and unmarked burial and forensic applications for a couple reasons.

It's a very high resolution method, uh, more so than some of these other techniques that Dr.

Norton just mentioned.

It is also the only method that actually gives us depth in the ground.

So we can make that determination if there are overlapping burials or stacked burials or tree roots on tops of burials.

That is the type of information that is is possible with GPR.

We are using state-of-the-art equipment, um, so no no need to fret about that.

We're using state of the art processing and bringing our experience to this analysis.

Um now Lafayette is complicated a little bit by the fact uh that it has a lot of standing headstones, um, which precludes the use of some of these other methods.

Um all geophysics really require open, clear ground surface, and GPR is one of the only ones that can navigate around headstones to still get that high resolution data again in a way that is non-invasive.

Um so again, just want to reiterate this really is the gold standard for these types of studies.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate that.

Um thank you, Dr.

Norton.

I I have some more questions for staff.

Um so if you wouldn't mind.

Um I want to talk a little bit about you know how the results of the study have been communicated to the community.

Yeah, the this um the we just got the results of the study and we have reviewed them and shared them.

I mean, this is the first time that they're being shared, so we've posted them.

I mean, it's a um relatively it's not a lengthy report, it's a you know relatively brief report kind of summarizing what the findings are.

And so this is the first time that they have been shared with the community and um and we're sharing this information, you know, with the council as well.

Okay, appreciate that.

You know, and I I just want to kind of maybe echo Council Burlier's point of it this seems very fast to have this shared with the community on Thursday, and then we're making a decision tonight.

I I kind of wonder if the community wouldn't appreciate a little more time to understand, review, really take this in before a final decision is made by council.

So, you know, to to I don't know if this was exactly your point, Council Boulder, but uh I would be in favor of delaying tonight's vote.

Um again, we don't we don't have a full uh slate of city council here, so I think there's there's reasons to do that.

Um I do have some more questions, so I want to keep going.

Okay.

Um have we uh I want to talk about the rules of the cemetery.

You know, you shared with us in the packet the I believe they're the current rules of the cemetery.

Yeah, the current rules, and I'm I think I think Aaron or Mary Lynn are city attorneys are are best first to talk about them.

But yeah, we should we include in the packet the current rules of the cemetery, which were I mean the most recent rules are from 1999 because you know we haven't been um selling any you know basically any plots since then.

So Aaron can you and my question is really how often are the rules changed?

How often do the have the rules been changed?

Do we have that information?

Rarely, I believe is the answer to that.

That the last one was from 1999, so that is over 25 years ago.

And and I we're talking about people who have bought plots 50, 75 years ago, and presumably under different rules.

If the rules have changed since before 1999, they've at least changed once.

And I want to understand, you know, what were those folks' expectations when they purchased those plots?

You know, have those expectations been continuous.

I look at the rules and they say things like the director or someone can sit say where the the burials will take place.

It's not like you have a particular right to a location.

Um is this the expectation that folks currently have?

It sounds like maybe not.

And is that what they had originally?

So I think there's some confusion uh certainly among the public and and for me personally, I'm confused by this to just know you know what how are we having the misalignment of expectations here?

Yes, I think I think one of the issues is that the rules have said, I think for several iterations, that it's subject to these rules as they may be amended.

So it's kind of fine print.

Um, but I that I think historically was the alert that was tried to be conveyed to people that conditions may change.

Yeah, and it sounds like we've encountered that in some actual burials where someone thinks they have a plot, we go and we dig, and oh look, there's a coffin there, your your plot is actually occupied, so we need to put you somewhere else.

Um the uh Mary Lane, do you want to speak a little bit more?

Can I give a little bit of sure just uh briefly, council?

We have looked at deeds uh that have conveyed cemetery plots.

I've found one as far back as 1906, and then I looked at a few from the 1990s just to see what the language was in those deeds.

Um it was substantially the same, believe it or not, uh, between 1906, again, that's just happens to be the farthest back one that I've looked at, and the ones in the 90s, and all of those deeds have again very similar language that does that says um, for example, uh space numbered X, whatever it is in the Lafayette Cemetery, um, is conveyed subject to the following stipulations, agreements, and understanding.

It is stipulated, agreed, and especially understood by and between the parties that the premises uh is conveyed subject to I'm sorry, that the said premises shall at all times hereafter be subject to such ordinances, rules, and regulations of the city as are now in force, so depending on the year that the deed was transferred, or which may hereafter from time to time be passed, adopted or established concerning the cemetery, and also subject to such laws at the state of Colorado now in force or which may hereafter be passed concerning cemeteries or titles to lots in the same.

So every deed is I mean, I'm making an assumption here.

I didn't look at deeds in every year between 1906 and 1998, which are the years I did look at.

Um, but the language between those two is the same, and it seems to be a pretty standard cemetery deed form.

The you know, looking at the deeds, it appears to be a form that um maybe many cemeteries used in the state.

And so uh they were all conveyed subject to um our rules and regulations and state law as it applies to cemeteries.

Um it's these are not very long documents, they're about one page.

In fact, I think all of them are one page unless they couldn't fit the notary block on it.

There might have been a second page.

Um I hope that that's helpful.

Really helpful to understand, you know, kind of this at least some of the old rules have have kind of the same language in it.

I think it's probably likely, but though we don't know for sure.

Um Deputy City Manager, what you talked about the grid, the map, the grid that folks have.

They can bring a piece of paper and it shows their you know, spot highlighted in pink.

Um we now know from the rules that they're not necessarily entitled to those locations based on what the rules say and and likely what the rules uh were that were in place when they purchased their plots, and certainly the rules that have been in place for the past 27 or something years.

We now know from the rules that they're not necessarily entitled to those locations based on what the rules say and and likely what the rules uh were that were in place when they purchased their plots, and certainly the rules that have been in place for the past 27 or something years.

Um the the grid, how many how many spots are on the grid?

Um I don't know if you have.

Well, first I would say I don't know that they got with anyone got the grid and they said this is I mean, what's in what's in their agreement is what they would receive is that you know that this is the plot that you're assigned, or that you're you know, and and it again is subject to the rules and regulations, and yeah, so um we have um Alex is gonna help me find the number, but um it's over just over uh a thousand a thousand, I think, but he's gonna help me find it.

I I guess I well, my question is you know, if we looked at the whole grid, yeah, how many grid locations are there?

Yeah, I know exactly what you're asking, and I'm can't I I'm gonna have to look up he's gonna look.

Okay, and and my my question then is you know the ground penetrating radar identified a number of burials or graves, or I I forget exactly how the terminology was.

And then there were a number of plots that were you know city kind of reserved because they have you know stones or trees or you know, things like that.

Yeah, and one of the I don't know if you could maybe put that slide back up.

Yep.

Um there was a mismatch there for something for me that that looked like we had more interments than we actually have plots.

We do.

So we have 4557 plots, and we have 4735 internments.

So we're already 200 and or 180 burials over capacity.

So to me, this already says that now the the cemetery is over capacity.

We have more burials than we actually think we had plots.

Am I reading this right?

Yes, and um our rules allow for one coffin and one cremaine per site.

Okay, and so this is coffins and cremees.

So our records are not great.

And so we have records that show there's interment, and in some cases we don't know if it was a coffin interment or if it was a creme interment.

It just says that there was an interment in that site.

So this is what our records show for how many interments we have.

So some of them we and we can have two, and we have can have two in some sites.

So yeah.

Okay, okay.

And then so that that's really helpful to understand that.

So that helps why why we might have more interments than we have plots.

So we have we have 4,557 plots, and sorry, I shouldn't touch the screen.

And 1,130 of those are reserved.

Okay.

And that includes those that are owned and unused.

So some of those we you know, we know there's around 270 or 80 that uh that we have owners that are outstanding that they own, they haven't used.

Uh-huh.

And then the city has between 350 or um to 400.

So we we have um several that are deemed um unusable and that the city has taken kind of ownership of, and then we have trees, shrubs, we have a number that are off the map that are like on the road, that are in the roads, because it's just a grid that's been placed over the cemetery.

Understood.

And so and we have uh again, understanding this and looking at the number of graves that were found in the ground penetrating radar data.

It looks like we're full.

Is really what the numbers are telling me, what the radar data is telling me, what the state archaeologist is telling me.

We even considering that we have 270 plots that are still out, let's call them outstanding.

Um we're over capacity, we're full.

Um okay, so thank you for clarifying that.

Um, another question I have is what options have been explored or could we explore to expand the cemetery in any way?

Are there have there been options that have been considered?

Because it may be that I could see community members who say, Well, I still want to be buried in Lafayette.

As there's still an option, is there has that avenue been explored?

I don't I don't believe that we've explored looking at any other properties or or land.

I mean, I I don't not in my time with the city um here in Lafayette.

I know back in um 1999 when they were looking is that right, 1999.

And I'm specifically this this specific location, this same cemetery.

Is there room to take over a road, block that road, take that space?

If we took over a road, we would be unable to conduct burial operations.

So, you know, the burial operations um occur with mechanical equipment, and so you know, you have to be able to get excavation equipment.

We already our cemetery has already been known um by our city operators, and then we have also used some contract operators to help with our burials, and it's kind of known as a very tight cemetery, not only because it's heavily, you know, it's it's heavily occupied, but also because of just the logistics of the small of the tight road.

So it we would it would be we wouldn't be able to really conduct, you know, our our operations if we took over those roads to get the trucks in and out to take you know to take excavate dirt.

Um yeah, and I guess you know, there are roads that are not within the cemetery current boundaries.

There's a physical road that cars drive on.

Correct.

Both on the north side of the cemetery and on the east side of the cemetery.

I think there's a walking path and maybe a road that's like a a service road for the service road for Rex Center and I'm not saying that we we I'm just putting out their concepts and ideas to say I I really wonder if there's the ability to explore additional options from from the report, it also looked like there were old roads in the cemetery that had been that were historic at one point.

And I mean, all we know is that it looked like there were old roads that then were taken over, but then new roads were kind of configured.

Yeah, and I guess on that point, did the ground penetrating radar go under the existing roads that are with it?

Because I think there's like a road that goes straight across and there's a road that kind of curves around.

Did the ground penetrating radar look under those roads as well?

We yeah, uh uh Jenny, I'm just gonna confirm with you on that because I know that we identified some sites under those roads.

I don't know that you did a comprehensive review of the roads within the cemetery.

We we we did do the roads in the cemetery, we surveyed the the entire cemetery.

Um we did not and some of those main roads we did not identify any unequivocal graves under those.

There were some that appeared too poke into them.

Yeah.

So it would be flight for the map.

So th thanks for clarifying that.

You know, I just again this this to the community and to me, this feels like a drastic action to close the cemetery when there are at least roads that have uh space available and you know, could we close some of the roads and and reclaim that space and let folks bury their loved ones in the cemetery?

Possibly, but I just want to make sure that if we're gonna go as far as taking the drastic step of permanently closing the cemetery, that we explore all the options before we go there.

So I I think that's my last question.

I want to give uh other folks a time to to ask their questions.

Thank you very much.

Councilor Jensen.

When you excavate and you find human remains or a coffin, do you go back to any data that we have and look at whose grave might have been disturbed, give any notification to a family, or do you what happens when you think, oh gosh, you know, we've just dug on top of a coffin.

Well, so in the occurrence, the recent occurrences that this has happened, it was after the soil was removed off site.

And so we because we have it, we we put the we put the soil, we take it to a space and then bring it back to fill it while we're conducting the burial, um, you know, ac actually having the service.

And so um there's a pile that has, you know, where we've actually brought dirt from previous burials.

So it was we were unable to really determine if that was you know where it came out.

Yeah, from that exact site.

Um but that's just say you've got a hole and you know you've taken some material out of the hole and you've took taken it over to your pile, that hole, does it have any documentation that somebody was in that particular space?

And then is there any action taken to say your loved one's grave was disturbed and I mean I I would I would you know yield to to Dr.

Norton because I I think uh what the action we take is we follow the state statute because we are it's against the law to if we encounter human remains, we immediately would, you know, contact we'd follow the statute, and then uh I I we would ask them what our actions would be.

So yeah, I might further elaborate.

We wouldn't have dug if we felt like we knew that's a good point.

That's the challenge is oftentimes because it was unmarked, we wouldn't have known.

I mean we could make an assumption it's within our radius, but then we're notifying a whole bunch of families and maybe unnecessarily upsetting them as well.

So it is a real conundrum when we hit that, because we wouldn't have anticipated any of them.

Well, and what I'm seeing that is so hard is uh a bunch of people who want what they believe they had committed to and paid for, and that means a lot to them and their family, but also people who maybe don't live here anymore who feel my mom and dad are at rest in Lafayette and safe and where that I want them to be, and that's part of their mental health and their you know grieving process is to know their family is cared for.

So if we did what people tonight have asked for and tried to find ways to accommodate more graves, caskets, and in so doing, we kept running into this problem of disturbing other people's graves.

We don't have a place for that person, and we have also disturbed someone else who's resting in peace.

And it doesn't feel to me like unless we expanded it, as cancer counselor Gianola is talking about.

We don't really, even if we wanted to do everything that was asked of us tonight, we don't really have a way to do it without disturbing somebody else.

That's not true.

For years and years, this has been happening.

Mr.

I I I know I I understand this this is a difficult topic, uh, trust me.

I understand.

I just I just can't have people interrupting council.

I understand.

And we can have an opportunity to do it.

It is not a public hearing, so basically that is okay, they're still buried.

And our drugs like that's where the problems were, and that's what they are getting like.

They didn't identify the rest of the entire thing.

Your kings were buried here just last summer.

You're no problems.

No problems at all here.

It's up to you.

There were other people buried.

No problem.

The Cassie says, no problems at all.

There's been so many other burials.

Again, I don't want to interrupt the meeting or please, please, please.

I I understand.

I truly stand you totally wrong.

There are availabilities of those cemetery.

Okay.

I again I I don't want to have to take the action of putting us in a recess or having to take any further.

I I want to make sure we we get our questions out, we get everything answered, and we ideally get to a vote of some kind tonight.

I I understand this is a passionate topic, and I understand it's a topic that's very personal to a lot of people.

It's personal to me.

Uh but please, I just I want to make sure council gets gets our our chance to ask the questions and and get there.

So I appreciate you all.

I appreciate you all sticking around.

I know it's getting late and I know it's snowing outside, but just let us get through this.

Uh that's we really want to just get this done.

And unfortunately, we cannot take questions during a process like this, but I again I appreciate everything in it.

Counselor Johnson.

Thank you.

Right.

So one um I mean, I was just over there looking at it this weekend, and I think you know, there's a ball field right to the east, right?

Um has anyone ever talked about taking away some of the ball field space and expanding the cemetery?

And I'm not recommending that.

I mean my kids are ball players and they would hate me.

Um so I'm not sugg you know, it's just in terms of options that are on the table.

Has anyone ever explored that?

Not to my knowledge.

Yeah.

And and if we took away a ball field knowing the baseball community as I do, that would not go well.

Um but there might be another location for ball field that we could trade this for something like that.

I mean, I'm just I'm just spitballing here, you know, ideas or thoughts uh of things that nobody wants to do this to these people.

Nobody is excited about this, and everybody's heart is breaking for the pain that the community is feeling about this.

But we have our expert and we have rules about not disturbing human remains and state laws about not disturbing human remains that we are in a pretty stuck place about.

And so um I just want to see if in the you know, and and not only that, but we don't want to talk about this forever either.

You know, we have a very full agenda with lots of things on it, and the amount of time another solution might take could be a very long amount of time.

And so I just I'm trying to think if there are one or two other options we could throw out there that we could pursue to see if there's any alternative, and and that would take another meeting, but and I again I'm a baseball mom, I don't want to make baseball go away.

I don't want to make baseball go away.

But um I I don't know what other council members think if that's even remotely, you know, an idea between both reconfiguring the roads and then um finding another way to access the cemetery and maybe looking at the ball field situation might there, I mean they're not gonna be right next to each other.

It doesn't, you know, some people who want to be next to each other may not be able to be next to each other, but they might be able to be in the same cemetery if we did something like that.

Those are just uh ideas to say, you know, can we pursue those?

Okay.

Um another few more questions.

Before we do that, I just kind of want to bring us back to the the resolution at hand and the one that was uh noticed is to close the cemetery.

I I appreciate that there are ideas to maybe expand or maybe do other things, and we can certainly give uh direction to staff to look at those for a future time, but at the moment I just want to make sure we're kind of keeping on track and speaking to the resolution that we are we are looking at.

Uh any other questions from council?

Uh just one question.

Um Dr.

Norton, are you directing that we close the cemetery?

Are you formally recommending on behalf of your office that we close the cemetery?

I am formally recommending that you do not have casket burials in the old part of the cemetery.

I am not directing you.

This is a decision that council has to make and that council should make with the community.

What you cannot do is continue to rip up human remains.

And we have to have a different alternative.

Can you uh elaborate on that?

If if tomorrow we we dig and we hit human remains, what are the repercussions for our city?

That's that's a complicated question.

Um there are uh civil penalties for knowingly disturbing um archaeological sites in the state statutes.

Um I mean, worst-case scenario, we're gonna get into protracted legal arguments between the state and the city of Lafayette, which I don't think either one of us want.

I would prefer not to be in a position of conflict with anybody in this city, right?

So I think that my recommendation is that the community comes up with a plan for what the future of the cemetery looks like, but it can't include pretending that there are not previous burials and then calling me four times a year when you accidentally hit one, or however often it is.

That that cannot be the plan.

Um thank you so much.

Mr.

Mayor, I I just I guess I would offer that part of why I'm struggling with this is I agree and stipulate with everything that we've heard from staff about the fullness.

I also respect that we've heard from quite a number of members of the community that this is incredibly impactful to them, and and I believe that.

I also am getting the sense that some members of the community don't feel they've been fully heard out by staff.

All parties have equal uh uh claims on the truth.

So what I might offer is postponing voting on the motion tonight and instead trying to find a way to have some kind of a mediated conversation between the different relevant interested parties so that we can kind of hash this out because personally I think this is it's this is not a good process to get to a good outcome where people feel heard and respected because we're up here on the dice and they're down there and they can't weigh in.

It just it feels very inequitable.

And so if there's something maybe um a little flatter, a little more open, a facilitated dialogue, we may still have to close the cemetery because of what we've heard to casket burials.

Um but I wonder if that might go a long way towards meeting folks where they are and trying to grapple with this.

Uh I appreciate that.

I want to make sure other counselors uh have their questions answered, but before I will I will just respond to that real quick, just in terms of process, if that is something that council wishes to move forward on, I will just remind us that under Robert's rules, if we do table something and we do so indefinitely, and then I adjourn the meeting, it is essentially dead.

So we would table something to a certain date of the future uh at a future meeting.

So just in terms of procedure, let's remember that because if we just table, it will die uh at the end of the meeting.

But I will give other counselors the opportunity to ask questions if they have any.

Councilor Guyes.

I had a question regarding cremation burials.

Are we encountering human remains um during those types of burials?

We haven't had an incident.

We haven't had that occur.

I you know, um, I don't know if you want to talk about if you could comment on the depth that you observed um in your GPR data collection and analysis, and if you felt like that there was any irregularity in our cemetery, that might be helpful.

Uh yeah, so as I understand it, um all the cremations are usually on top of the of the calfets.

Um so they're they're a little bit more shallow.

Um the cemetery in general, the depths are very consistent.

Um again, we didn't see anything odd in terms of of over overlapping or stacked burials or anything like that.

Yeah.

Does that answer the question?

Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I think we we haven't had any um challenges or we haven't seen you know, had any observations.

Um I think we feel the depth with which we typically conduct the cremeans.

It's there's you know, less of a chance or that that's gonna be an issue that we're gonna be getting a coffin or that we're correct, yeah.

And when when we would identify um cremains, they were more shallow than casketed burials.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Yep.

Mayor Broad time questions.

Yes, I do.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh first I'd like to acknowledge all of the individuals here in this room who obviously are very upset uh about what they're hearing.

And we hear you.

And as a veteran who recently buried his mother and his father, who is also a veteran.

Um I understand where you're coming from.

I also understand that the understanding when your parents bought these plots, they would be together.

And I I recognize that together means together.

And I I you know, I I wasn't here when the Louisville Lafayette uh situation was occurring.

Uh but I understand that.

And at the same time, um we are dealing with a location that is incredibly packed, full of humanity, spirituality, history.

And as we've heard tonight, some of the families who are in this agreement or have been in this agreement with the city for over a hundred years, or at least a hundred years.

Um I do have a question.

Uh thank you uh Dr.

Stern.

Yep, Stern, yeah.

Stern.

Yeah.

Um for explaining where cremates are found or the depth at which they're found.

I I I have a question.

When we look at ground the ground penetrating radar data versus the other techniques that are used, and then literally doing as an archaeologist does and look at physically what's there.

Is what is the besides the magnetometers?

Is there is there benefit in bringing in with GPR being the gold standard here?

Is there any benefit in adding richness to the data that is in the ground by adding these other data collection techniques?

And is that at the surface or at depth?

I'm just wondering if those other techniques could add value to the GPR data.

Uh I guess that's a question.

Do they would the how many are there that would have value if any of them do?

Yeah, I it's a great question.

Um so again, Lafayette is is a little different, a little special because of the number of standing headstones at the cemetery.

If we were dealing with a totally open, unmarked cemetery, which we do a lot, I would say absolutely let's throw some other methods at this.

Let's see what else we can add.

I'm not recommending that here because it's going to be very difficult to even maneuver uh the instruments um given the number of headstones, the number of trees that are here.

I I also question the utility what they might add, given that this is an urban environment.

There's a lot going on.

We have irrigation lines, pipes, um, overhead power lines, all of that can affect the instruments in various ways.

One thing that you could consider um to add richness to this is actually some more surface mapping, which might be a really high resolution mapping of each headstone to further correlate where we are identifying each burial in the GPR with what we're seeing on the surface.

See if we can match up those headstones a little bit more closely.

There might be some other surface mapping we could we could do as well that could further elucidate some of some of those patterns.

Thank you.

I did have one more question for Dr.

Stern.

Stern Stern, yeah.

I can't get that.

Understanding that we potentially could have, and I understand that cremation is not work for people of Catholic faith, maybe others.

But if we were to be would it be possible, and in your understanding, Dr.

Stern, that if we understand who is in is very committed to getting uh into the Lafayette Cemetery as cremains, since they are closer to the surface.

Is it feasible to find space in some or any of these cases to have remains as close as possible to where they want to be?

Potentially, yeah.

You know, we we we have that data.

Um it would require sort of parsing through some very specific areas.

Um if I'm understanding your question correctly, if we are looking at individual plots, burials, uh and determining what is kind of there in the very near vicinity.

Um, you know, that that's just a it's a different level of analysis, but it is possible.

Thank you.

Uh, that's all the questions.

Any other questions from council?

Seeing that I just have one question, and it's for our uh state archaeologists.

It's um similar to a question asked earlier by Council Polier, but I just want to make it as clear as possible.

Uh you talked about archaeological sites and how your office works on these, and then you talked about the specific legal authority that your office has over these archaeological sites.

Can you talk to that specifically in reference to our cemetery and maybe what next steps would be if you were to have to take any sort of route further than what we have up until today.

I I'm you kind of trailed off at the end, so I didn't quite understand.

Just what next steps would be under under that legal authority that your office has.

So, under the legal authority that my office has it's it's a it's a difficult authority that I tread lightly with.

Um of my predecessors have uh used a hammer.

Um, I prefer to work with communities and have a good relationship, and that we co-steward your sites together.

And so my role is to help you find the best possible way forward in stewarding and preserving your cemetery in this case.

Um, there are legal consequences potentially.

But I don't think that those are what we should be discussing.

And I think what we should be discussing is how we work together to come up with a good plan for this.

I I understand that.

Okay.

Yes, yes, I fully understand that that is.

What I wanted to do is just for, of course, our edification and then that of the public if you could speak to maybe at a high level, if you will, but just kind of speak to what that may look like.

What what what the legal code is?

And we don't have to speak specifically to this.

Uh we don't, and if you want to make it more uh baby speak to examples of times your office maybe in the past has looked and used or legal authority across the state for other archaeological sites.

So our office has used our legal authority to stop construction projects to stop other development until appropriate um archaeological work has been done.

So we haven't had a case such as this for a cemetery.

So usually what we're talking about is a site that does not have human remains.

Um and in those cases, again, there are brief pauses.

Um I don't believe that there, I can't come up with any example in my tenure that we have had a permanent stoppage where somebody or a municipality was not allowed to move forward with their plans.

What we have done is we have requested and worked with them to make sure that they are doing appropriate mitigation or the appropriate studies, working with the descendant community, doing the appropriate work so that they're not just destroying history and that the public has a right to have some sort of compensatory measures for that history.

Remains are a little bit different, right?

And so when it comes to human remains, again, typically with other historic cemeteries, it hasn't been this kind of case.

Every single one.

And they are often outside of the legal boundaries of the parcel, outside of a fence line.

They are where people did not expect them to be.

Well, in the many cases at this point, actually, where we've worked with historic cemeteries.

Many municipalities or communities have recognized that that might be an issue or that they have gaps in their knowledge.

And so there was more proactive work in getting GPR or ground survey or other things that we've discussed tonight accomplished.

They tend to be individual burials.

Sometimes they're pre-contact burials, and so they're related to the Native American community.

We don't know where those are until they're encountered.

And in those cases, we work very rapidly and efficiently with our partners to make sure that those are taken care of in a respectful and responsible manner.

Um, as we're trying to do here tonight.

So, and we do stop activity until we can take care of those burials in a responsible way.

Thank you.

Counselor Jonesen.

Of the 270, this is a question for staff, I think.

Of the 270 plots that have been sold, do we have enough information to know is that the whole problem or is it less than that?

Are there people who no longer want to use their plot?

Do we, you know, what is the size of the problem of people who really want to be buried there and that we have no room for?

Do we know what that is?

Um we don't.

We don't know again, because we don't necessarily have the best contact information, or we don't know if we have the best contact information for all those folks.

Um we don't know if some of them, you know, are deceased or if they've been buried somewhere else out of state, or if they don't even know that they own a plot, or you know, if there's something else going on there.

So we we don't have full, you know, information about their status.

Could we get that?

I mean, how how difficult would it be to get a real picture of how many people were talking about?

I mean, that's you know, that's that's part of that's part of one of our next steps would be you know, outreach to those folks to see what their kind of desires are, what they would like to do with their plot, if they're not able to be buried here, what you know, what are their preferences, um, and to get a better understanding about what they're you know, what they would like to do, and and also to get better contact info.

But I suspect we won't hear, you know, we won't hear back from everybody.

So I think this is going to be no matter what action is taken, either tonight or in the next year.

This is this will be an ongoing issue that will continue to emerge where um somebody won't hear about this and they will, you know, come in and say, you know, I owned a plot and I never heard about it.

It's just it's gonna be, I think, very difficult to reach every single person.

So the attorney.

Uh thank you.

Just to add to what um deputy manager Davis was saying is that our outreach is only as good as the information we have.

So I don't want to um, I don't want counselor the public to have the impression that that we can track down everyone.

Um, our cemetery rules do specifically say that the plot owners are obligated to update their address with us because what we have is the one in our record and our rules say that if they change their address, they need to let us know.

So we're limited.

We can certainly, we did send letters, it's my understanding we sent letters to every single uh one of those um plot owners at the address we had.

Um I mean it it's so I just I just want it to be clear that we can continue to make efforts, but we're limited in the information we have, unfortunately.

If I could just very briefly, Mayor.

Um I I I stipulate that point.

I know there's been a lot of hard outreach.

I do know a couple members of the community who I think would be glad to participate in in that outreach so we could build out a spreadsheet of these are the people, we've located them.

This handful is open to cremains, the rest prefers cassiate because that would be really helpful for us to be able to take a decision.

And then number two, could we go to slide nine if you don't mind, just forward four?

Um just to expand on um a point that counselor Giannola was making earlier, and and I I stipulate we need to get the the equipment in via the service roads.

But I guess, and and forgive me, this is kind of a of a naive question.

Could you just sort of put like a an X in the middle of the road and then work out from there?

Because according to the GPR uh image, which unfortunately isn't in the slide deck, you see the thousands of graves in little orange boxes, and the service roads are pretty clear.

And so I wonder if we could get an answer whether that's feasible.

Again, that way you wouldn't need to drive over.

You would have the X and you would work out on in the various service roads.

Um if we could get an answer to that for a future conversation, I think that would give us something to hang our hat on since I really appreciate Councillor Jensen's creativity with the ball fields up north, the Bob Berger Center uh east.

But to me it does seem like we have some possibilities within the space.

That would be really helpful to know.

Thank you.

Apologies for speaking for you.

Okay.

Um so there's a there's a few things here, and I just want to kind of get us back on track.

Um from what I we obviously we there's a there's a motion for the resolution, but from what I hear from a few counselors, it's for a few different reasons.

First, just to allow the public to kind of digest this information a little longer, have it with them and just understand and maybe they have the possibility to ask questions or to speak to counselors, whatever they want to do in the in the time uh we give them, just kind of give them a little more time with the with the report with the information and with the data.

Uh secondly, we don't have a full council tonight, so that's been another reason that I've uh I I kind of heard that of at least a few members of this council uh wish to table this item.

I just want to kind of see where the rest of of council is on this item.

I just candidly, I think I'm ready to make a decision tonight.

But if the majority of council believes tabling the item is what we should do, then that may be the route we'd go.

Councilor Gallegos.

I would be in favor of tabling this decision.

I'm personally struggling between emotions and the facts that the state archaeologists shared.

I'm also Catholic and believe my religious beliefs may sway my decision.

Great.

I mean, someone can make a motion to table the item.

Mayor, before council makes a motion, just a point of order.

Um your options in terms of considering this item at a later meeting would be a motion to postpone to a specific date, so a specific meeting date.

Um alternatively, you could move to postpone it indefinitely, wherein it would be up to council to decide what when to bring this up.

So it's uh you need to either select a specific date when you'd like this to come back to council.

Um, or you could postpone it indefinitely, or you could take no action.

So I just wanted to be clear about the terminology.

It would be postpone indefinitely.

Does it not is it not taken as a failure at the adjournment of the meeting?

Um it would allow you.

Okay, so I'm looking at our rules.

Um it would allow you to cease consideration of the item when it isn't desirable either to approve it or to defeat it.

So when you're not ready to take action, you could also just choose not to take action.

So uh it just would need to be called back up by council at a later date, not by emotion.

You would direct staff when to bring it back.

So can we talk about how much time we think we need then?

I saw Council Gianola send it.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mayor.

I I just on that last point.

Um if we if we don't do something tonight, whether we're tabling that or to a specific date, or we're postponing it indefinitely, or we take a vote, and the answer is no, what is the status of the situation in that event, in any of those events?

It would if uh you postpone it, obviously you'd consider it at the meeting you choose.

Um if you don't take action or you postpone it indefinitely, you've taken no action, there is no more status until council directs staff to bring it back up.

There's a on that we we have a current status of the cemetery.

I guess this is where I'm going.

Our current status of the cemetery is that there is a moratorium on on burials.

And that stays in place if we take no action.

Yes, so this item would be done.

Yeah.

Uh the moratorium would be unaffected.

I see.

Yes.

Sorry, it wasn't picking the next step.

So it's the moratorium.

No change to the moratorium either.

Do you have a question, Councillor Jones?

Well, my question is to get the I'm more concerned that the community hasn't had time to digest this.

I think whatever we do, we have a difficult, awful situation, and more time may or may not make that better.

Uh but the community hasn't had time to digest it.

Some people didn't get the notice.

And I feel like in a representative democracy, we need to make sure we hear from the community about things.

So I don't know what we think that amount of time would be a month, two months, six weeks, uh, you know, where we would feel they had adequate opportunity to look at the drawings and the report from you know the architect and feel comfortable that they could give us feedback.

So I I'm gonna jump in here and say we have a moratorium in place.

And if we were to take no action at some point in the future, we could direct staff to bring this back.

So if we take no action, we could give our residents as much time as we feel they need instead of forcing us to postpone it to a certain date tonight.

Yeah, but I I personally think we we just should have a kind of a plan about when we so people have a sense of how much time we're gonna take and when you know they need to be thinking about coming back.

Not that we need to be precise, but just to you know, some framework of how much time so you know they can go on vacation or do you know do whatever they want to do.

Did you um yes?

I was just curious how long we felt it would take to send letters to those people whose contact information we now have but did not have previously to make sure they have the information they need.

I mean, we could, you know, we could turn around sending letters to you know all plot owners, but I think the question is if we're gonna be asking for feedback, that would be a longer turnaround.

So I think we would just have to evaluate what the if the intent is just to sort of inform and seeking input on this.

Um yeah, I think we uh if we're just if we're just informing them that this is a potential action that's going to happen.

We've already sent that letter regarding the moratorium.

So I mean, our next step communication was to let them know if there was a status change essentially.

Yeah.

Councillor Ginola?

Well, I think we have a status change in that the state archaeologist has recommended that we close the cemetery to casket burials.

So we have a status change in that we can now share that information with the the plot holders.

But I also wanted to kind of come back to uh an idea that Council Council Boyer uh brought up, which was some kind of mediation discussion.

I mean, I think that could go a long way to you know sharing this information, maybe in a more digestible way with the community, hearing a little bit more from them and what ideas they might have, or or some of the ideas that we've kicked around tonight, if those are even acceptable ideas to give us the ability to make a more informed decision that would help address some of their concerns.

So I'll just you know say that.

Are you recommending we take no action tonight and direct staff to set something up like that at some point in the future?

That sounds like a good idea to me.

Yeah.

I mean, I don't know how that works.

I think we might have a mediation expert here who could be the most uh knowledgeable on the well, Counselor Joseph.

I used to do mediation and I think part of our the limits of our mediation is what's practical and legal versus our our you know what people want us to do, we may not be able to do.

Yeah.

And it's not that we don't want to meet them halfway or mediate or that we just may not have the ability to do it.

So I would say we should start out with just more information, talking to people, sharing, and also perhaps if people have ideas for us about solutions, because I think just simply set saying to us, don't do this.

We don't want you to do it.

And now after you've heard the constraints that we have, um, you know, help put yourself in our shoes, which is you know, how do we do this?

If we want to help you, what's the answer?

And you know, come up with ideas, and then if any of those have possibilities, then I think a mediation might make sense.

But until we start with that first part, I'm not sure I think it makes sense.

Okay.

There are a few ideas out there, and I think staff has noted a lot of these.

Uh and it sounds like just from looking across the room, it does not sound like council wants to take action on this item tonight.

I just could not.

Okay.

Uh or to our city attorney.

What do you recommend in this particular instance?

I'm I mean, this is really up to council.

You've had a lot of public input tonight.

Postponing this item to another meeting gives the public another opportunity to give you more public input after hearing the information tonight.

Um I mean, from from my perspective, I I would want whatever you do to be compliant with the open meetings law.

It would need to be a public meeting.

It would need to be properly noticed.

Um the format could be directed by council, but I just wanted to give you also that option that if you postpone this again, you could have you will have another public input session for members of the community to speak to you again now that they've heard this information.

It's so uh so I will be concerned from a open meetings law perspective and ensure that whatever you do will be compliant.

But um we don't have a particular format in mind for you.

No, well, yes, and maybe that's me for asking the question incorrectly.

Um I think we all want to comply with open meetings, and I think we just want to give our residents a little more time and we want to figure out maybe a better way to uh to work through this, but just in terms of tonight, is there anything you need legally from us?

We're not taking any action, so I think we can just move through it.

But is there anything specifically you want from us?

I I do not need anything from council.

Um just if you just if you make a motion that it would be a motion to postpone um and not table, just procedurally.

That is a very fine procedural point that's a good idea.

I move to postpone this item indefinitely with the hope that we revisit it in it in the near future.

I'll second.

We have a motion, we have a second.

Uh any further discussion.

Councilor Gianola.

I do have one other thing to say.

You know, we have we have a lot of public hearings.

Um, and in those public hearings, we hear from property owners.

And they we were always told these property owners have rights.

And we bend ourselves backwards and forwards to listen to the public and to listen to the property owner.

And you know, somebody wants to build a building and they they have these specialists who come up and they say, Oh, we're complying with all these rules and laws.

And and I mean, here I don't know if we say we have a property right, but we have someone who's purchased uh uh an entitlement and how we're not treating this just the same exact way that we would treat other entitlements that we face that are property rights, kind of befuddles me.

Um so I I'm glad that we've heard from the public.

Um I I'm inspired by council to think harder about this to get to a decision that you know will impact the community.

Um so thanks for a great discussion.

With that, all those in favor say aye.

Something else.

I'm so sorry.

Mayor.

Uh I I just wanted to add that I I think there's more there's more here than a process and a comparison of property to who owns it and who doesn't.

Uh I I want to recognize the fact that there's an in public comment.

I don't know if everybody heard that, but there's a reference, there was a reference to a breach of trust from the community.

And I I I want to acknowledge the fact that there are people asking us not to do what they are afraid of what the city's going to do.

Um I want to respect the fact that this it took there's a lot of people who came in here who wouldn't have come in here and did tonight because this is really it really hits deep.

It's it's family, it's spiritual, it's it's what makes Lafayette great.

Um and it there's you know that thing that makes Lafayette great is is apparent tonight, and it's been apparent in other times.

And I I just want to acknowledge that uh there's there's there's a deep hurt from um this impact, and I would like to I would like to say that this is what I feel like this is what we can do to begin to acknowledge uh again that there's there's a lot of things that we can't fix that we didn't that happened that we can't fix them, but we can we can make an attempt to um bring resolution to hurt that um is deep.

Uh so I just wanted to say that before we don't do anything.

Okay, we have a motion to postponed and definitely in a second.

Uh so sorry about that.

Any further discussion on this?

Seeing none, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed saying no?

No one opposed, that passes unanimously.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We will move back into proclamations.

And uh for the first proclamation, agenda item meet, I will turn it over to Councilor Johnson.

Let's give a minute for these guys here.

Okay.

Um I have the honor as the oldest member of council to uh do the older Americans month proclamation.

Uh just so everybody knows I'm going to be turning 70 this year.

Whoa.

And now it's your turn to say, but you don't look like it.

You don't.

You look good.

Anyway, um, so uh May tway is older Americans month, and this is a proclamation honoring older Americans.

Uh whereas communities across the nation celebrate older Americans month each May to recognize the contributions, strength, and resilience of older adults, and whereas older adults play a vital role in our community as volunteers, mentors, caregivers, and leaders, sharing their knowledge, experience, and talents to enrich the lives of others, and whereas this year's theme, champion your health, emphasizes the importance of prevention, wellness, and personal responsibility as cornerstones of healthy aging, and whereas promoting healthy lifestyles, staying socially connected, remaining physically active and accessing preventive health services, empower older adults to maintain independence, dignity, and quality of life, and whereas events offered by the Lafayette Senior Center in May include the older adult sock hops, hikes, orthobiony, Medicare Help Center, a trip to Assault Cave, smart driver programs, a disaster and emergency preparedness presentation, a solutions for aging in place workshop, and national senior health and fitness day celebrations.

And whereas our community is committed to supporting older adults through programs, services, and partnerships that encourage lifelong learning, social engagement, wellness and active living.

Now, therefore, the mayor and city council of the city of Lafayette, Colorado, do hereby proclaim May 2026 as older Americans month and encourage residents of all ages to celebrate and support older adults by promoting health, well-being, and opportunities for active and engaged living.

I move it.

Second.

Any further discussion on older Americans both?

Sorry.

Any comment on older Americans?

I'm pro.

Did you have some?

Okay.

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed say no?

No one opposed.

That passes unanimously.

Next we'll move on to agenda item F proclamation.

I will turn it over to Councilor Gianola.

Thank you, Mayor.

I have a proclamation tonight for Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, May 2026.

Whereas this Heritage Month originated in 1977 and was officially signed into law in 1992 to celebrate the contributions made by people who are of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage, also AANHPI, to the country's culture and society.

And whereas the month of May was selected to recognize people of AA and HPI heritage for many reasons, including to commemorate the first Japanese immigrants who came to the United States in May of 1843 and marked the completion of the Transcontinental Railroad on May 10th, 1869, which involved the labor of many Chinese immigrants.

And whereas the Federal Asian Pacific American Council has designated this year's AA and HPI Heritage Month theme as a legacy of leadership and resilience, which pays homage to the visionaries and trailblazers who have shaped AA and HPI history and continue to influence the future.

And whereas the city of the Lafayette City Council celebrates all of those who are included within the AA and HPI community, which is made up of culturally and linguistically diverse peoples, representing populations from many countries and islands.

And whereas the Lafayette City Council acknowledges and appreciates the contributions in a variety of fields and leadership of the many Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders who have played a significant role in this in the region's history and the community fabric of Lafayette.

Now, therefore, the mayor and city council of the City of Lafayette, Colorado, do hereby declare May 2025, May 2026, excuse me, as Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, and encourage all Lafayette residents to share in this special tribute by learning about and celebrating the generations of Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders who continue to enrich the city, state, and nation.

So moved.

Second.

We have a motion, we have a second.

Any discussion?

I would just say I'm very lucky to be married to an Asian American, and I'm a huge proponent of this proclamation.

Any further discussion?

Seeing that, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed say no?

No one opposed it, passes unanimously.

Moving on to agenda item G.

Mayor Protestant.

Thank you, Mayor.

National Public Service Recognition Week, May 3rd through 9th, 2026.

Whereas National Public Service Recognition Week is an opportunity to express gratitude and appreciation for the hard work and commitment of our public servants across all levels of government.

And whereas public servants work tirelessly with dedication, integrity, and compassion to uphold the public good, inspire trust and confidence, and enhance the quality of life for all residents.

And whereas public servants represent a diverse array of occupants, occupations, including but not limited to inspectors, accountants, clerks, engineers, public transportation workers, technology professionals, administrators, public safety professionals, planners, parks, parks workers, analysts, utility workers, and countless others, and whereas many public servants risk their lives each day in service to the people of the United States and our community, and whereas while some public servants are very visible in the community, others work behind the scenes to ensure that services are available to residents and processes are open and accessible to the public.

And whereas without these public servants, continuity of service would be impossible.

And a democracy that regularly chang changes its leaders and elected officials.

Now, therefore, the mayor and the city council of the city of Lafayette, Colorado, do hereby declare May 3rd through 9, 2026 as National Public Service Recognition Week, and encourage all residents to honor and recognize the dedication, professionalism, and sacrifice of our public servants at all government levels.

Pass and adopted this fifth day of May 2026, so moved.

Second.

Any discussion on this one?

Councilor Gianola.

Thank you, Mayor.

I just want to thank all the public servants in this room for all the work that they do.

Thank you all.

Any further discussion in this proclamation?

Seeing that, all those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed say no?

No one opposed.

That passes unanimously.

Agenda item H.

Councillor Gallegos.

So proclamation for municipal clerks week.

And before I get started, I wanted to say thank you to Clerk Beck and Deputy Clerk Orzlak.

Okay, whereas the annual professional municipal clerks week was initiated in 1969 by the International Institute of Municipal Clerks and endorsed by all of its members throughout the United States, Australia, Belgium, Bermuda, Bulgaria, Canada, England, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa, and Wales.

And whereas in 1984, in recognition of the outstanding and vital services performed by municipal clerks and their dedication to public service, the Congress, the Senate joint resolution 92 designated a municipal clerk's week and authorized and requested President Ronald Reagan to issue a proclamation in observance of that week.

And whereas the municipal clerk role is one of the oldest of public servants and a critical part of efficient and responsive local government.

And whereas as local government has grown in responsibility and importance through the nation's history, so is the role of the municipal clerk, which provides a direct link between past, present, and future by preserving legislative election and other municipal records for posterity.

And whereas the municipal clerk has pledged to be ever mindful of their neutrality and impartiality, rendering equal service to all.

Now therefore the mayor and city council of the city of Lafayette, Colorado, do hereby declare May 3rd through 9th, 2026 as municipal clerks week.

And extends appreciation to the role and service of municipal clerks.

So moved.

Second.

We have a motion, we have a second.

Any discussion on this proclamation?

Mayor Proton.

Is it Deputy Clerk Orzlack?

Deputy Clerk.

Any further discussion?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed saying no?

None opposed.

That passes unanimously.

And to our last proclamation of the night, Councillor Fuller.

Thank you, Mr.

Mayor.

Proclamation for National Police Week, May 10th to 16th, 2026.

Whereas in 1962, President John F.

Kennedy signed a proclamation designating May 15th as Peace Officers Memorial Day.

And the week in which it falls as National Police Week.

And whereas the members of the Lafayette Police Department play an essential role in safeguarding the rights and freedoms of the residents of Lafayette.

And whereas it is important that all residents understand the challenges, duties, and responsibilities of their police department, and that members of our police department recognize their duty to serve the people by safeguarding life and property, by protecting them against violence or disorder, and by protecting the innocent against deception and the weak against oppression or intimidation.

And whereas the Lafayette Police Department has grown to be a modern and scientific law enforcement agency which unceasingly provides a vital public service.

Now, therefore, the mayor and city council of the city of Lafayette, Colorado, do hereby declare May 10th to 16th, 2026 as National Police Week.

And May 15th, 2026 as Peace Officers Memorial Day, and encourage all residents to formally recognize the 51 sworn members of the Lafayette Police Department for their faithful and loyal devotion to their responsibilities and their dedication to the community.

Further, the City Council of the City of Lafayette wishes to honor all police officers who, through their courageous deeds, have lost their lives or have but become disabled in the performance of duty.

So moved.

Second we have a motion, we have a second for National Police Week.

Any discussion on this proclamation.

Oh, Councillor Jensen.

I just want to say, you know, in some communities, people are afraid of the police.

And I don't feel that way in Lafayette, and I don't feel the community feels that way.

And that's a credit to the department and how hard we've worked at being part of the community and working together.

And I'm really grateful.

Profoundly grateful, Chief.

Mayor Proton.

Thank you, Mayor.

Uh I'm I was afraid of the police before I moved to Lafayette.

So I'm just gonna put that out there.

And uh I've had conversations with our officers and um they have told me that they want people to understand that they are actually here to serve and protect everyone.

And uh ask that we recognize that, so please uh to my colleagues here on the dais uh please do let residents know that our officers have the integrity that we expect them to have and their professionalism, and that we support their their actions from the chief on down.

So um shout out to all the police uh officers that we have here.

They're very hard working, and uh they got my respect.

So just want to make that clear.

Any further discussion?

All those in favor say aye.

Aye.

Anyone opposed saying no?

None opposed, that passes unanimously.

Um and before we get into presentations, we'll take a five-minute break, uh so we'll be back for 9-10th.

Refer to it as like dark magic.

I don't know.

Okay.

Well, I'll still bring us back.

Oh, there we go.

Um we're gonna move it to overview of ranked choice voting.

Before we do, uh it's uh the weather's uh getting a little hoa, and we just wanna run this by council see if we want to push anything specifically.

I'm thinking the economic development update to our next meeting.

Um Mayor, I move that we postpone the economic development update to our next regularly scheduled meeting.

Okay.

Second.

Any discussion on that matter?

Aye.

Aye.

Any opposed saying no?

None opposed.

That uh agenda item is schedule is moved to our next schedule.

What about the telephone or area plan?

Yeah, we'll do the other two.

Okay.

I will turn it over to our city clerk.

Okay.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Um, I'm joined tonight by Stephanie Ginoza, the Boulder County elections director, and we're gonna kick off a discussion for you about ranked choice vote voting.

Um this topic came up during your ballot measure um workshop in March, and so we're happy to provide you with some more information and then answer your questions at the end.

When we talk about ranked choice voting, we're using an umbrella term for methods where um voters can rank candidates in order of preference.

So there are two types we're gonna talk about a little bit.

Instant runoff voting is one type, and that's when one candidate is elected.

You're probably familiar with that from the Boulder Mayor election.

And in um in that method, it requires the candidate to receive more than 50% of the votes to be elected.

Single transferable vote, or STV is where more than one candidate is is candidate is elected, and that would be what would be applicable to the way we do our elections currently in Lafayette.

I don't know of a current community in Colorado that is using this type of ranked choice voting right now.

Um does have a lower threshold for winning than the other type, and that threshold is based on the number of candidates to be elected.

So in a four-person race where four people are elected, the threshold for winning would be just over twenty percent.

Um as an example, if we look back to the 2025 um Lafayette election, and these are the actual final results.

Um in this race where four people are elected, the threshold to win would be just over 20%, like I just said.

Um you can see from that far right column that after a first round of tabulation, there would have been no winning candidate, right?

No candidate reached that threshold.

So then here's what I think happens next.

If this were to have been an STV election, is candidate number 10 with the lowest amount of votes would have been eliminated, and those votes would have been reallocated based on the second preference on those ballots.

Okay.

And at that point, you take the excess votes over the 20 some percent, and those are somehow with dark magic proportionally reallocated to the other candidates.

Any questions about that are going to go to Stephanie afterwards?

I guess they're so yeah, I think the math is a little bit complicated, but those are the two general ways that the votes are calculated.

So this time, this is the important part, there's not a certified Secretary of State certified voting system that could be used in a single transfer, a single transferable vote election.

So that means that right now, the way we do our elections coordinated with Boulder County, we would not be able to do that.

In order for a voting system to become certified and be available for use, the Secretary of State would need to write rules for the voting system certification, and then the voting system providers would have to apply to the Secretary of State to have their systems graded against those rules.

So right now that's kind of our roadblock, so to speak, with this type of voting.

From a cost perspective, the city of Boulder paid an additional $77,000 for its first mayor in instant runoff vote election in 2023.

So they do go down, like their costs for the same IRV election this year in 2026 are estimated to be about 30,000 extra dollars on top of the regular election costs.

So Lafayette has coordinated four of the last six elections with Boulder County, and the average cost of those is just a little over $18,000 per election.

If we were to move to ranked choice voting when it becomes available, our estimated costs would include voter system, voting system licensing, voter instructional materials, printing costs, uh results and audit solutions, and the estimate for that, the estimate for that could be similar to the first year of Boulder's IRB race.

So we could be looking at up to around $78,000.

Okay, I'm gonna turn this over to Stephanie who will cover some of the finer details involved in green choice elections.

So just to start with, I think really big picture from an elections operations lens.

Um most of our operations do remain consistent when implementing any of the ranked voting methods.

Um but what I'm gonna focus on here is a couple of those key call-outs.

Um voters who are participating in a ranked voting election, um, their ballots would look a little different.

Um, so they'll have that ranking grid on it based on the number of candidates to be elected and the number of candidates running.

Um, and then with that will come additional instructions.

Um for City of Boulder, um, we landed on the best method for that was additional inserts in their mail ballot packet, um, as well as um socials, websites, all the other stuff that comes with it.

Um, but the direct costs that voters saw or that the city saw that voters received were those actual additional printed inserts to make it really clear that they were getting something new, and these were the instructions for how to vote this race.

Um the second thing would be that all that other stuff in terms of notifying voters and educating voters.

Um, so there would be a significant amount of collaboration between the city and the county.

Um, so right in plurality uh races right now, um it's pretty easy in terms of education or collaboration.

Um, those rules are not really changing often at this stage.

Um, and so with that, um, we are not needing to collaborate on education campaigns, website updates, terminology, anything like that.

And in the case of adoption of STV, we would need to partner and do that.

Um, the other thing that would look a little different would be the results themselves.

Um, so uh we would still post them through Boulder County, um, just like all of the results are posted, um, but we would look to try to do visualizations so that when we start talking about vote transfers and people start being interested in who got eliminated in which round, were the official were the unofficial results, that people would have a way to visualize like what's actually happening in the race and the results.

Um, and then an additional thing, um, so in addition to the all the things that we would do as a partner, um, there is a statutory obligation that would be new for the city, which is the city would be under a statutory obligation to conduct a voter education campaign.

Uh, and so uh what that would look like, um, I you know, it's kind of an open slate, I think, for what the city would deem appropriate.

So, um, how would you communicate how do you communicate with your community?

What would they need, what resources are already available to you?

Um, and so with that, the costs would be um essentially determined by the city, you know, whether or not you're using staff time or you need to employ additional resources to make any of that happen.

Uh those costs are not estimated in the costs that we mentioned previously.

Um you would benefit from likely leveraging materials from other jurisdictions from the city of Boulder or you know, potentially Loma, um, should the timing of things suggest that there's other jurisdictions in Colorado that have already used these methods.

Okay.

So that's the end of the presentation.

Questions?

Questions from council.

So lots of people I know, including the people who spoke tonight, talked about ranked choice voting as a way to get more proportionality.

I heard what you just said about how it's done, and I don't understand how that creates proportionality, and was hoping somebody could explain that to me because I don't get that.

Um I will say one thing to start, um, which is uh Buller County elections office doesn't have an opinion on whether or not ranked voting is better, worse.

And I didn't say better or worse, I just said more proportionality.

So I I think that question can veer on opinion on whether or not the method does create that or not.

So I'll talk about the math for a minute, I think, which might help with that assessment.

Um, and it may not, but we'll try.

Um, so in an STV race um with those winning thresholds that Lynette mentioned, the idea is that only the maximum number of candidates, only the exact number of candidates that need to win can win.

So in a four-person race, if you're at that 20, once somebody hits 20.001, there's not another 20% for a fifth person to win.

So that the threshold is that that's why those numbers seem low, but mathematically it gets you to that.

You can only you only need the exact number of votes you need to win to have the exact number of winners that you need to have.

So with that, um, as your voters rank their votes for preferences one, two, three, four, through ten, um, in round one, everyone's first preference gets tabulated.

Um, let's take an example where in round one, no one hits the threshold, right?

So all of our ballots, all hundred ballots are still in play, if if you will.

Um through that tabulation round, you would look at your lowest can't we look at your lowest candidate and say, okay, if candidate number 10 is the lowest, um, they will not be winning.

So we will take their ballots, so those are like in your mind, those physical ballots, and say, great, their second preference, reallocate their second preference to everybody else still in the race.

So even though anybody who voted for candidates 10's first preference is no longer in the race, now their second preference vote is being added to all of the remaining candidates.

So to clarify that, so you have let's say the number one candidate got needed 20 and got 24.

Yep.

Okay, different scenario, right?

A little bit more than they needed, and you're gonna reallocate those four.

And and how do you decide which four of the 204 that the person got?

Because the first ones might have a different second choice than the last ones.

Yeah.

Um so we haven't implemented this.

Um, and there are a couple methodologies to decide on that, and I I am not positive which one would be used.

Um there is math that can be done that takes you take all of the votes and then you use a fractions to say which percentage of the second choice votes for that surplus candidate, which fractions of all of their second choice votes went across everyone, and then you fract you start allocating fractional votes, which is where the math starts to get seemingly like magical and odd, because now you've distributed a vote fractionally amongst other candidates.

Um, and that's I think where the word proportional starts to come into play, because you say if if everyone who voted for candidate one, if you have surplus votes there overall, how did they proportionally then rank their next preferences?

And then you allocate those portions of their preferences to the remaining candidates.

So you took the whole pot of 22 or 24 people who voted for candidate one who also have a second choice.

And if you say candidate two got one eighth of those second choices, then they would get one eighth of the next round, something like that.

I'm going to say something like that.

We haven't implemented it, so I have not in practice performed the math at this stage.

And I think that's where we would have to do part of the cost will come into play around this, around validating how the voting system does the math and then being able to explain it through any of our tools or results reporting mechanisms.

But what I'm concerned about is you've got the cost, which you can figure out, you hope.

But what you're going to say to the voters is for this cost, you get this benefit, right?

And this benefit of proportionality or more representation or whatever you want to call it in the community has to somehow be something they can understand.

And it sounds like it's very hard to get them to understand how it would create that.

And in a nonpartisan community where you don't have party affiliation, and what are the things you're talking about getting more proportions of?

Is it people with wealth, people of different colors, different genders?

What are those proportional factors?

I think it's a proportion of just the voted preferences.

So in the in the context of we're talking about the the votes themselves, I don't think I think from a in elections execution lens, it's their voted preferences, right?

That that create the additional proportion, if you will, or the reallocation of votes to try to get candidates that more people prefer more of the time to be the winning pool of candidates.

So you could get a pretty if everybody who ran was a white male property owner Republican, you could get all of that because you don't have enough diversity in your candidate pool.

I I don't think the I don't think the RCV math guarantees that your candidate pool would create diversity, right?

So I think there's probably multiple layers there to achieve outcomes.

I mean, but you could say that for plurality as well, right?

So if your candidate pool has limiting factors on race or ethnicity or other things, I don't see how that might change necessarily with the voting method.

But if there was some diversity in the candidate pool, then the thinking is that this would get some of the people who are maybe in a smaller group more let's say it was you know had one woman and um like we did at the last election, right?

Uh and oh that's right, two of us.

Right.

I forgot because she was already on before, but um so you have two women out of ten, right?

So if you think that some people are gonna identify with a woman, um then maybe some of the time, or at least a little more of the time, then they would have more of a oh god, this is hard.

Um I'm not getting this very well at all, but okay.

It it's hard.

I I think there are um, and this is where I think there's likely some other resources.

So going down this path of info session here, right?

There's likely some other resources in terms of studies that people have done that might prove out because I think there's probably some basis for assumption in studies, as in like if your population is diverse, then therefore you should have diverse candidates, or you have at least a diverse set of views in candidates running.

So maybe they're not diverse in terms of looks, but they might be diverse in viewpoints, right?

And so if you if you take some assumptions with that with a diverse pool of citizenship, you have a diverse pool of views, and therefore this would be the outcome.

So I don't think it guarantees that, but I think it it there's studies that would build in some of those assumptions.

And are there is there data that shows that?

That I'm not sure on.

I mean, we have not, as the county have not researched this nationally.

Last question, and I'll let somebody else talk.

Um the people who spoke to us tonight suggested we we needed to put this before the voters.

Do we need to do that or could we do it by um just council via that's a city question?

Yeah, you would need to change the charter.

Okay.

Council Genoa.

Thanks.

Just a couple questions on how this works.

I'm confused with the counting of votes.

Yeah, because it seems like you can only do the second round once the first round is completed.

Absolutely.

So you have to actually tabulate all the votes until you so of the first round before you can do the second round.

And we know that it takes time to tabulate votes.

Yes.

Am I right?

But no.

Yes and yes, you have to um in ranked choice voting races, you have rounds.

Um but when you tabulate a ballot in the voting system, you tabulate all the preferences at the time of scanning.

So essentially you have a database of all the preferences.

So the rounds are achieved with the press of a button.

So there's not actually delay in terms of rounds production or like for results releasing in a ranked voting race versus a polarity race.

So what we see now is we see the final round of a one choice round as it the votes are counted.

Yes.

Would we in the reporting see here's the results from round one, round two?

We could see that as more votes are added.

It will change.

Because all the round every round will change.

Could change, yeah.

Could change.

Yes.

Um so the reporting could still be similar in that we would just collect the votes as they come in and update the graphs as they go, but now instead of seeing one graph, we're gonna see four graphs because we're gonna have four rounds.

Yeah, essentially.

So we would still have unofficial results on election night that would be incomplete.

Right?

So that would not change under ranked voting.

Um so it could be similar today where you have four candidates and the leading the fourth and fifth plan candidate positions change as more results are released.

Uh you could have the exact same situation in a ranked voting results, um, where positions or the candidates whom are eliminated change.

And therefore the candidates that their votes get allocated to change the same way you could have those changes today.

Okay, that's helpful.

I was just confused because I thought we had to have it all in before we did this, but it makes sense that you just have the database and off you go.

Thank you.

You just said the candidates who got eliminated, sorry, changed.

How does that work?

I don't know.

Yeah, so when we would so today in plurality, um when we release unofficial results, uh you can kind of see who the top four are and who's in place five, right?

So when when night on election night comes and you're like, oh, I'm in the top four, I'm winning, right?

Or I'm I'm getting there, and then on later on election night we release some more results, and now fourth place drops to fifth place, right?

And so some of the positions change, or second place jumps to first place, right?

So you see those position changes as votes get counted in close races often.

Um you would see the same, likely the same thing in a ranked voting race.

So the positions that candidates are in at round one on the first set of results we release might be different in round one for the second set of results we release when we tabulate an additional 20, 30,000, 40,000 ballots.

And so they're not actually eliminated in unofficial results.

So unofficial results, just like plurality right now, would are unofficial.

So they're telling you the rounds, but they're not official, so they would replace the prior results each time.

So nobody gets officially eliminated until it's all over.

No, but we would execute the rounding, the rounds each time, because releasing round one results to you in a ranked voting election are kind of useless.

Like you don't have any context as to what like will actually happen.

So we would release all of the rounds unofficially each time we released results.

That's a data nerd.

This appeals to me.

Council.

Um first of all, thank you so much for the presentation.

Um I'm thrilled you're here.

Um I wonder if I can ask you to steal man ranked choice voting.

I've heard a lot about the costs and about the difficulties, and we've gone deep into the dark magic.

So we went very weedy.

But if we could take a step back, can you steal a man ranked choice voting?

And I understand with the hat you wear, you can't endorse or recommend.

But as an elections expert, can you make a positive case for it?

Because I've heard a lot of the critique.

Um, I think with my hat, I'm I I can't.

So what I would say is that hat off.

No, I cannot.

Um so operationally, it can be done.

So as an as an elections operations official.

Uh frankly, the costs are probably your biggest negative.

So operationally, in terms of execution, in terms of like processes we have to change, yes, there's work to do on those processes, but that work can be done.

We did that work for IRV.

No, right?

We had not known exactly what it would entail, but we did that work leading up to the city of Boulders election.

We made process changes, decisions were made, right?

We partnered with the state on rules, and we got to outcomes.

So I would confidently say we could absolutely get to those outcomes for STV also, even if there are unknowns today.

Gotcha.

Thank you.

That's an amazing answer.

Did I hear you correctly that you anticipate, we don't know, but you anticipate the costs would go down after the first implementation?

Yes.

I'm very curious.

We've seen ranked choice voting arrive in Fort Collins.

Are you in touch with your counterparts up there?

To some extent, yes.

How has their experience been?

So I believe they only did, well, I actually I know they they did instant runoff voting.

Um so their situation was almost identical, I think, to our situation that we did with City of Boulder and the Mayor race.

So is there something specific with that you wanted to know?

Yeah.

Because I really appreciate the curiosity and digging in from my colleagues.

But I also wonder, because I heard an excellent presentation, I believe, uh Mr.

Kramer talked earlier at Lafayette resident.

And I I kind of am afraid that we're making this more complicated than it actually is, since many of us engage in ranked choice voting constantly, right?

Like what do you what do your kids want?

Choice one, two, or three, and then you kind of balance them.

So in the the education campaign, because you've noted that there would be a statutory requirement to educate.

Have you heard from colleagues and counterparts elsewhere in the state how their education and communication plans unfolded, particularly because we have a new comms director here in Lafayette?

Um so yes and no.

I would say um yes, but no, because I think right now the implementation, uh Laramer and us did was instant runoff, and instant runoff is just easier to explain.

Uh and so we did not see voter confusion.

Uh we uh my office did not.

Um so I can't like assert that there was not any in the City of Boulder mayor race, um, but our office did not see uptick.

Now that could have been because of an education campaign that was massively successful.

Um it could have been because it's actually not as complicated as sometimes suggested.

Um could have been some mix for lots of voters.

Um but so we did not see a significant challenge um in getting voters to vote their instant runoff ballot, and I don't believe Larimore did either.

One challenge I will say that we did have um that was workable through is the words we use.

So um if in the City of Boulder example, um the city of Boulder amended their charter to do ranked choice voting, which we keep talking about instant runoff, and we're using all the words that right now Colorado statute uses, and in those are the places where there's a lot of room for miscommunication and trip-up on education and information sharing.

We're using different words, what we really mean the same thing, and then voters hear what Oregon did or right or what Alaska did, and is what Colorado did the same thing as Alaska.

And so getting really clear between your offices and you know my office as to what Lafayette's doing and what we're all calling it, is critical.

Okay.

No, that's fantastic.

Thank you.

Um I'm trying to wrap my head around is you know, you've noted that that Denver has to promulgate rules and that we're waiting for rules from the Secretary of State.

Waiting is an interesting word.

I'm happy to rephrase that.

Um currently, statute allows for single transferable vote to be executed.

Um the Secretary of State has not published the rules by which they would certify a voting system to run a single transferable race.

So a voting system provider, if they were to submit for certification, uh, I don't know what the Secretary of Office's response would currently be.

Um, but I don't see rules for it today, so it's possible their office's response could be, well, we haven't written rules for that.

We can't certify your system on that today.

So am I waiting for rules?

Hard to say, because as the elections administrator, um, whether or not I implement this, it's a bit of right, I'm serving entities that that have wants and needs.

So I don't have a need to have those rules created from like my office's operational lens right now.

Um an entity or a city that wants to use it though, would there anything preventing us?

And maybe this is a question both for our clerk and for our city attorney.

Is there anything preventing us from amending our charter in anticipation of future rules?

There's nothing preventing you from going to the voters to amend your charter as long as whatever you're proposing can legally and administratively be implemented, and I think that's one of the issues here, right?

And I think that's one of the issues here, right?

Yes.

So I I would stipulate that because it feels a little- I guess I'm hearing a little bit cart for the force, because I understand you are a partner and you serve your partners here in the county.

But there's still something happening in Denver or not happening.

But I guess my question is not yet happened.

Aligning with our comp plan as Lafayette is uh a bold place that leads.

Yeah.

Is there anything that would prevent us from doing all that and making that step in anticipation of a change down the line?

I I don't think I can answer that for the city.

Didn't Boulder um do theirs before there were the rules promulgated, and then as a result in them doing it, they got the rules.

Um partially, I believe.

So I know City of Boulder um prior to my role in my office started something similar with information sessions.

Um I don't know the extent at which they held them, right?

Or the extent at which the decisions they faced were exactly the same as the decisions you're facing.

Um in that timeline, um at some in 2021, there was legislation.

And that 2021 legislation was a legislation that created essentially the standard for IRB and STV as allowable voting methods under Colorado Title I.

Um I can't remember offhand which year Boulder put their question out.

And which year was it?

2020.

They put their question out in 2020.

So I don't know how their question was worded offhand for their charter.

So I don't know what they wrote in to meet legal obligations had that legislation not passed.

I don't know what they would have done.

Um I'm thinking about is so on on your very generously anonymized graph of the the 2025 election outcome.

Um so I'm number five on that graph.

I'm a loser.

And um my friends, Mr.

Glenn and Mr.

Watson in this room are also fellow losers.

And if we're in that club together, you know, between the three of us, that's something like math in front of other people is hard.

Uh 8,000 votes, 9,000 votes.

And I understand these are not individual votes because Lafayette voters vote on average for candidates.

I get that.

But I guess something I'm thinking about is would it be helpful for us to have like an illustration?

Maybe this is a question for council of like what a process like this could look like in terms of kind of the the movement as folks rank individuals that they vote for and those move around.

Something something a bit more tactile for us to uh take a look at.

Could be helpful.

Are you are you asking staff?

Are you asking the county?

Okay.

It's not like a counseling question.

Maybe it's a council.

Oh, wait, please.

Um I just figured out how weird I really am because your explanation made complete sense to me.

And I I think the number one, the visualization that you mentioned is gonna be imperative.

Number two, it's gonna parallel the other cities.

Because as soon as they start saying, well, it doesn't sound like that long one doesn't use those words.

Runfield didn't use those words.

So we just need to have an understanding.

Could it be called weighted voting?

Um, is it so is it I mean it's really weighted.

Your votes are weighted.

I mean, this is a the terms uh I have stuck with using when it comes to everything are the terms that are currently defined in Colorado statute.

I can say that the city of Boulder did not use those terms in their charter, right?

They decided that instant runoff voting was not the words they were going to amend their charter with.

So they did not.

And therefore, when we went to market, if you will, in 23 to run that first race and started that coordination, uh, we did have a lengthy discussion with them about what would we do now, right?

Because if if my office had started it, I would have called it IRB and City of Boulder was calling it RCV.

Uh and where we landed was that we would go with City of Boulder's charter.

Um so in this case, the there was no legal obligation our office saw within Title I that would require us to not take a city's certified content and publish it on the ballot the same way if you have a table measure or you know another charter amendment, the legal obligation for that ballot language to meet any statutory obligations on the city that certifies it to the county.

And so as we went through that process, the pros and the cons at that point in time they were the only one.

So we did not have a conflict across jurisdictions.

And so we went with ranked choice voting.

I would I would for the rest of my fellow counselors, I would or colleagues on council.

I would suggest we very clearly figure out what it's being called in different places.

It's different.

And there's we have a clear way to explain if if we can't agree on words, we have a fit kit, a way of communicate what they what they do mean across the border.

We're gonna people are gonna I think I feel like people are really feel like there's some something shady going on.

And it's not black magic, it's just analysis.

It's data.

It's it's there's nothing weird about it.

It will there will be work.

AI is black.

There will be work to um like I said, we because we have not implemented this yet, and no municipality has moved um to have a ballot measure at this point that I know of for STB specifically.

Um and I haven't seen legislation that would force the secretary to move faster, and I haven't seen draft rules from the secretary on the topic.

We have not explored how the results reporting you know visualization might look at this point.

I would venture others have.

So I would venture um that advocates for this type of voting um would be able to provide that.

Just quick um the other communities that are talking about it, what are the terms they are using?

Um I'm not positive.

Well, Longmont.

Longmont was a session like this a little, so it was a mostly question and answer.

So there was no decision or so I I don't know that Longmont has made any decisions or taking any action.

It was a lot of but when they talked about it discussion.

It also is sort of dependent on the kind of like whether you have districts or at large, right?

Um it depends if you need multi-winner or single winner as well.

Longmont needs both.

Okay.

And then Broomfield that came here tonight that he used the term ranked choice voting.

Um he didn't use STB or I believe Broomfield only has single winner races, so they would be using IRB, but I don't know if they're calling it IRV or they're calling it ranked choice when the city-county discusses it.

But that would only be single winner races.

And and given that around across the nation, people are calling it ranked choice voting and they don't have these terms.

Maybe this is like in the details, but the title or the you know, the way we talk about it is so they can look it up online and come up with information on it.

Might need to be the more generic term than the specific.

Yeah, I I really appreciate the presentation discussion.

One thing I I would love to see is a future conversation, and I I don't know what capacity it makes most sense, but where we hear sort of a variety of different angles, because I'm very empathetic to the position you're in and the hat you wear.

So I I respect that.

Um I think you know, Lafayette residents would probably ask us what problem are we trying to solve.

And at least for me, I'd be very curious for other folks' perspectives on this, but for me, it's if your winning candidate doesn't get a C, your vote evaporates, right?

No.

Leave your phrase.

Um if you vote for a candidate who doesn't make it in our in our current system.

Say that again.

If if you vote for a candidate who doesn't make it onto council in our current system.

In our current system.

Are you represented on council through your vote?

I'm hesitant to still say yes because in current Lafayette race, it's a vote for four race, and it's difficult to assert whether a voter chose to vote for one person or four people.

That's true, but on average, how many does a Lafayette voter vote for?

I have never analyzed that.

It's like 2.5.

You have analyzed that.

Yeah, yeah.

It's it's roughly roughly 2.5.

Because it and I'll I'll just make a comment.

Our current system, you are incentivized to strategically vote.

Because if your candidate is going to be neck and neck, you even though you like this other candidate, you were incentivized to not vote for them because you want your candidate to get over that edge.

Would that be a fair characterization?

Uh I am not going to opine on voters' motivations when they fill out their ballot.

Sorry.

Sorry, I am uh and that's and that's completely fair.

And that's why I think it would probably serve us collectively well to have um more representative uh presentation or presentations.

Council Genova.

I wanted to come back and talk about cost again.

The cost estimates that you put up for Boulder.

Yeah.

Appreciate that.

Boulder has like three times the number of voters.

Yeah.

That Lafayette does.

Does that weigh into what the costs might be?

Some of the costs, yes, some of the costs no.

So most of the work in our year one costs related to new processes and new systems that either needed to be implemented or developed.

So the year we did um Boulder, there was not a statewide risk-limiting audit that we could leverage, and so we had to develop the audit process.

So a cost like that is irrespective of the number of voters.

The insert itself is correlated to the number of voters, so your insert costs would be lower than boulders.

So from a bolder lens, um year one, probably closer to a bolder number because of all those processes and results and audit and like pieces that would come into play from an ongoing lens, probably lower than the 30, because once we're in an ongoing model, a higher portion of the costs become voter-driven versus those like startup costs.

Thank you.

Council Johnson.

So process-wise, if we were to do this, and I may need staff input here.

Um if we wanted to put this on the ballot for voters this year, um, what would be our timing to have make a recommendation to voters?

That they would then that would go on the ballot.

The city clerk and I might need to tag team on this.

So I think I believe what counselor Jensen's asking is when would we need to have a ballot question certified or decided by council to put it on the Boulder County ballot for a charter amendment?

Um those is that what you're asking?

Well, it's not the Boulder County ballot.

It would just be the long term.

I'm sorry, for that coordination election.

Boulder County for coordinated election.

Yeah, for a ballot, right?

Um there's certain dates there, but I think that there's also a broader kind of work plan date of like if we want to bring in other perspective, right?

So I think we would need to go.

Yeah, I get that.

But I am I'm trying to work backwards for that.

Which is it's typically your last meeting in August, you pass the resolution because this isn't a Tabor notice under my understanding, and then um then Boulder takes it from there in September.

Yeah.

So late August.

Late August.

So if we wanted to get more information and the pros and cons.

And um, I'm really interested in this proportionality question, and I know other cities in the country have done this, so maybe even though nobody in Colorado has done it.

I heard say Paul, Minnesota, Cambridge, Massachusetts, some other entities that may have had success, and maybe some communities that have not had success, you know, that have found it too cumbersome, or you know, people don't get it, or whatever.

But if we were gonna get that kind of information to us, are we is council thinking we would want to do this for this?

We are going to have a very full ballot uh in 2026, and is that the time to include a governor and important midterms and you know about 10 different statewide ballot measures.

Are we thinking we want to do that in 2026?

Because I I'm hesitant because of how crowded the ballot is.

I would jump in there and say I I I have the same fear.

It's it's governor, Senate, everything uh it's there's so much going on in the 2026 ballot.

Um and I also would want to kind of look at what other municipalities do just from my perspective.

I I think this is a great idea.

Uh I understand that we have kind of a weird system where we're all at large and that kind of makes things a little bit difficult.

Or maybe just waiting.

No, not waiting on the Secretary of State.

Not waiting.

It's the raw word.

Uh but I know that it makes things just a little bit different uh for us.

So uh for that reason, and then just seeing what happens in the region around us.

I don't think going to the 2026 ballot would be uh what I would recommend.

But uh I wonder how their counselors feel.

Mayor Proton.

Mayor, I I whatever language we use to just to describe the fact that there aren't uh rules for the Secretary of State's office yet.

I think that's something that we can't uh we can't know if that will happen.

For us to shoot for 2026 is that's an unknown.

Uh so I appreciate that we could shoot for it, but with a crowded ballot and uncertainty.

And I would think that maybe if there's a model that we use, it could be similar, or that this Secretary of State sees works, might also see that those could be applied to the other municipalities.

I feel like it's a group effort.

That those rules could be useful for other municipalities if the Secretary of State were to think those were it was a good thing to do.

Um the rules that they would draft for voting system certification would then be applicable to any jurisdiction that would implement an STD race, right?

So those rules would not be unique to Lafayette, they would not be unique to Longmont.

Those would be the base rules that are then used for our system certification.

Once system is certified, then I think it becomes a matter of adoption with a municipality and implementation at a county clerk.

But our charter amendment would be this year.

We wouldn't have the rank choice voting till the next election cycle.

So if we got a charter amendment, I'm not recommending this, but if we got a charter amendment this year, then they'd have till the next election cycle to do their work.

That's my understanding.

But I I I I'm still on the crowded ballot.

I I love this point.

I think it's such an important uh corrective.

I also would note that even with a crowded ballot, we are likely to see a lot of interest in democracy this November.

Uh we've certainly heard it from the public uh a great deal.

And I think for many of us, we've all had to vote for people, the lesser of two evils kind of thing, because we know that we can't vote for sometimes we can't vote for our uh preferred option, because we want to throw our vote away.

And so I wonder if co-locating, again, all the assuming all the steps are followed, co-locating a ballot initiative that's very focused on democracy and providing residents more choices.

Um in such a big election year might actually be to the benefit for a lot of interest.

Councilor Gianello?

Yeah, I I mean I I think that's an interesting point.

I mean, if we're focused on democracy, wouldn't we want to put this on a ballot where we're expecting a large voter turnout?

Huge turnout.

And I think that to me weighs in favor of doing it when we potentially despite a crowded ballot and complex question if we think that turnout is high, then that can show us that Lafayette either has the will or doesn't have the will to do it.

Um I I did have one more question about kind of Boulder County specifically.

And maybe this was addressed before, and I just wasn't I didn't catch it.

Are there other municipalities that have a multiple winner type election in Boulder County like we have?

There are other municipalities.

The only other municipality that I've engaged with that's discussing considering STV is longbot.

Okay, and I might the reason I asked for Boulder County specifically is some kind of cost sharing, like I imagine the audit and all that process can could get shared if there were two municipalities that were kind of trying to do the same thing.

Or three or four or how whatever.

Yes.

That is a fair assumption.

Thank you.

Mayor Proton.

Um just sort of point of clarification.

I believe the city attorney said that we could pass the charter if it was possible if we had the capability of doing this.

Is that did I hear did I miss here?

I am uh what I mean by that is as a policy question for council.

Well, so legally, can we legally do it?

State law Secretary of State or not.

I'm saying that you need to consider as well, and maybe this is a better thing for the city manager to say, but administratively, can we?

Okay.

What does this look like if we move forward, especially without Secretary of State rules in place or the other rules?

But if there was capacity at the city, but there were no rules from the Secretary of State.

If the city had capacity, if everything was in place except for the rules from the Secretary of State.

That's not a question for me.

Yeah, so that would be a question for management on whether we could do this.

Well, maybe the charter.

Could we write this amendment?

Uh to put it about could we write it in such a way that it would not take effect right away.

There would be some lead time.

Is that possible?

And if not, why not?

It's policy.

I I'm sorry, it's possible.

I I don't know if it's it's up to council.

I I don't know if that would be the best way to do it.

If you're we'd want to know why you're doing that and what else would need to happen first and are those things going to happen.

I just um it's it's possible though.

I just don't know if it would be a good policy decision, but that is council's purview, not mine.

Yes.

That sounds like a yes.

Uh I'm not nope.

I that's well, I mean we can do the policy.

Yeah, so we can specify it doesn't go into effect until future elections.