The June 2, 2026 Lafayette City Council meeting began with the unanimous formation of a cemetery subcommittee (Mayor Tapia Vega and Councilor Boulier) to study the future of the Lafayette Cemetery and address community concerns over a proposed moratorium on casket burials. Public comments dominated the evening, with nearly 20 speakers expressing emotional opposition to any restrictions, demanding plot-owner rights, and criticizing city communication. The council also held a public hearing on a sketch plan amendment for the Willoughby Corner PUD (phases 2 and 3), receiving substantial public testimony on housing mix, height, and outreach. Three proclamations were passed (Pride Month, Gun Violence Awareness Day, Elder Abuse Awareness Day), and Ordinance 10-2026 adopting the 2025 Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code was approved on second reading. An update on the inclusionary housing ordinance was presented with no action taken.
Clerk Between please get a roll call. Mayor Tapia Vega? Here. Mayor Pro Tem Barnes. Good evening. Counselor Bolier. Here. Councilor Friedland. Councilor Gallegos. Good evening. Councillor Gianola. Here. And Councilor Jensen. Here. Mayor, we have a call. Thank you. Mayor, I move to excuse Councilor Friedman. We have a motion to excuse Councillor Fridland. Second. Seeing none, all those in favor say aye. Aye. Anyone opposed say no? None opposed. That passes unanimously. Great. Thank you all for joining us tonight for being here. In a typical city council meeting, this is the time when we typically go to public input and we give you the chance to speak to us. We will get right to that, I promise, but we're changing things tonight just ever so slightly. As a council, we believe that there was something we need to address up front and just make sure everyone gets a chance to hear it. So there's only one quick agenda item before we move on to public input, and that is agenda item A under council appointments, which is the confirmation of the cemetery subcommittee. Uh and I don't know what that decision will look like. And I don't know when that decision will come. But I think everyone agrees that at some point in the future, whether that's the near future or decades from now, there will have to be a decision made about our cemetery. Um there was a lot of work already done on this, and I do want to uh shout out our staff um because there has been years of work going into this, and there has been plenty of consultants and analysis and studies done around the cemetery and recommendations brought forth uh and even a recommendation that came before this very council uh about a month back. But the one thing that was made clear was from our community, from you all, that that was not the answer at that time. And being that we are representatives of this city and being that we are people who want to do the best for our city and want to stand by our residents. At the time, we heard you and we continue to hear you, and we appreciate you coming to us and letting us know. And the most beautiful thing to me is the fact that that is still the form of government we have. It's a form of government where people get to speak and their voices are heard, and our representatives, being us in this case, get to act upon the wishes of our people. So thank you for making your voice heard. The conversations continued as weeks went on, and of course, uh hearing you all come to our city council meetings made an impact, a great impact upon every single one of us. And in having those conversations and speaking to residents, I know most of members of this council, including myself, walk the cemetery with Mr. Archaletta. We want to understand exactly what it is that's going on in our cemetery. We want to have a good sense of understanding before any decisions are made. And in doing so, our city manager had an what I think is an incredible idea, which is a subcommittee. Uh a subcommittee is a small committee of a couple counselors, in this case it will be two counselors, who are tasked with simply understanding the issue, and ultimately at some point when we feel like we have what we need and we feel we've engaged enough and we've heard enough and we've learned enough, we will come with a recommendation to the rest of council. Uh we do this a lot. Currently there is a vacancy on our planning commission, and there's three counselors that will take on a subcommittee to interview the applicants and then bring a recommendation towards city council. So it's it's a pretty regular thing, but in this case we wanted it to be specific about the cemetery.