We used the packing out late on Friday, didn't you? I did. They wanted to make sure some information was in there. And then it took me a while to read it, three through it, so. Yeah, well, you can get a chance to read it again. Yeah. We were waiting for quota information, I think, right? Yeah. And then, attention. Yeah. Mostly with the lunch. Good. Are you? I'm pretty nice. I always tell them. It's on. Usually northern guys don't really work that much. Everything's all right. Everything's good. Tough rock. Yeah. They didn't put it on their work site, though. Late Friday night? Wasn't it in the paper Friday? I don't know. Well, the Friday night paper edition. I know it was in the Friday morning paper. Maybe it was Saturday morning. I don't know. It was in the paper. Yeah, it was in the paper, but I don't think it was until Saturday. Perhaps. Because I checked northern north side two or three times. All the papers, none of the papers. It was fine. Were you happy with it? Yeah, I mean, it works good for us. Yeah. We needed a tiny bit higher, you know. It won't hurt. It's that 70% this year or so. That's kind of the norm, isn't it? I was just saying, that's the way it's been for us. Yeah. That's kind of what we expected. It's kind of that. They don't go a whole lot to do that. They don't go a whole lot higher than what I do. Not very often. Last year, you know, occasionally they'll be 70% this month, and then like a 10% in June. Something mental quota. But yeah, it seems like. They did that last year when it was so wet. They did a big 80%. Okay. Three o'clock. Dang. I will meet you in order. I'm your O'Connor. Tom Duster. Here. Scott Holwick. Here. Roger Lang. Here. Renee Davis. Here. Dan Wilford. Here. Ken Houston. Here. Wes Lowry. Here. Kevin Bowden. Here. Hope Bartlett. Here. Alex Merklein. Here. Chris Huffer. Here. Let's talk about approval of previous months. Minutes. Anybody got any comments or questions about last month's minutes? Doc, do I have a motion to approve? Submove. Second? Second. Okay. Move in a second. Home page. Say hi. Hi. Hi. All right. Thank you. Kevin. Yeah. Hello. Hello again. Don, hello again. Thank you for having me. Thanks again. Okay. All right. Thank you. Well, thanks. Thank you. So, and, thank you, and thank you for being with us today. Thank you, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, Ralph Price reservoir at Button Rock is at an elevation of 6,388 which is approximately 12 feet from full or approximately 13,683 feet which is down approximately 2,500 acre feet from full. Union reservoir is currently at a gauge height of 24.7 feet or 10,419 acre feet which is down 2,300 acre feet from full. Reswars at the end of March were at 76% of full and which is a little bit higher than last year about 10% higher than we were last year at this time so and for there's no bad guy will let Alex talk about that. He's got a presentation for you. Okay. Or you go well. Anybody have any comments? Kevin? Questions? All right. We'll do it later in the... You'll do it during the draft report. Okay. Any public invited to be heard today? Agenda revisions. I've got a request that we take item 8B and put that at the end of the minute.  I hope to the end and she doesn't get on so I'm going to take a little time on that. So if that's all right, can we hold that to the end of the minutes? I mean the agenda. Okay. Very good. Thank you. Development activity. Yes, is that your... Yeah. So you have one development activity that... Seats your action. It's on the Erwin-Thomas Convenience Platte. That's a 32.875 acre parcel located south of Colorado State Highway 119 west of North 119th Street. So straight south of the Costco. Historic water rights were transferred at a time of annexation. That transfer satisfied the direct flow up to one acre foot per acre in the storage. So therefore Erwin-Thomas Convenience Platte being applied to the cities where all water required and policy upon satisfaction of the 32.875 acre foot deficit type of conveyance of Platte. Any questions I can tend to answer? Is this the property that came in with the Costco property? I mean is that part of that package that we produced? It's not part of the Platte package. This would be south of that. This is a completely separate piece. So the last time you've seen this land in front of you was part of the annexation when it was annexed under Erwin-Thomas annexation number one. Okay. So I'm just kind of curious. Yeah. I'm trying to piece in more Costco. I guess Costco's north of that, huh? Yeah. Yeah. This entire parcel was the Erwin-Thomas annexation and then Costco planted right up here. And then this is just Costco and there was a... I think it was a golden property. Yeah, it was all part of that. Okay. All right. And again, the conveyance Platte doesn't allow for the development of the property. They'll come through with a separate final plan at some point in the future. This is just to create an opportunity for them to convey land. Yeah. So just out of interest more than anything else, is there some rounding going on? So is 34... is one share of the bonus-stitch companies that meet the foot? So that was the water that was transferred at historic. We applied a credit for those 34 shares towards the entire annexation and that credit satisfied the not less than two acre foot breaker required for the direct flow. So the 34 directly doesn't tie any way whatsoever to the 32.875. Those are separate. It was after that 34 was applied that it left a one acre foot breaker and that's why we have the 32.875 acre foot that they need to satisfy in the store. But the 30... presumably the 34 shares is worth, let's say, something more than two times 32. Because the annexation was much bigger than that. I don't recall at the top of my head how big that annexation was. Any other questions? Is there a motion to move this item forward? So... Second. Okay. Moving second. All in favor? Do you mind if I say aye? Aye. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. We'll take... I don't know... why don't we take this... We'll just take this item A, A and I don't want to skip from that one, is that all right? Yeah. Is this you, Alex? Yes. Okay. Hi. I hope my face is a little more familiar to you all. Even though this is only my third meeting here. But so this year I was tasked with updating the city's water supply and water shortage implementation plan for this year and then the early part of 2025. So as many of you might know, the purpose of this plan is to manage the city's water and to try and anticipate, identify and respond to water shortage that the city might encounter. Currently, the conditions we are seeing is around 143% of projected demand for 2024. The snowpack stream flow and storage for the St. Gray Basin is around average. And our 2025 and 2026 projections are above the trigger points for an increased drought action level, which essentially indicates that long mark would need to change from a sustainable conservation level in the future. But of course, that can always change as climatic variability can also change. The city finished the 2023 irrigation season with our local reservoirs at around 86% capacity. And our current projections show that by July 15th, the local reservoirs will be around 96% full. So the current level of drought, we are suggesting that the board keep it at a sustainable conservation level, which will pretty much mean continuing everything that we did last year into the next year. The evaluation of the relevant data, we recommend that we remain at a sustainable conservation level. Here is a graph of the snow water equivalent for the South Platte River Basin. We're just above the median currently, median. And as of April 11th, we are at 105% of median for the South Platte and for the Colorado River Basin. We are at about 106% of median. Here is also a map from the US drought monitor of current drought conditions. And we are looking pretty good for this time. Of course, that's always a condition that can change. And I will continue to monitor and try and maintain up-to-date records in terms of trying to evaluate what lawnmots' drought conditions should be. Factors that could maybe possibly change lawnmots' outlook, an increase in lawnmots' customer water use over what we had projected, a significant reduction in late summer precipitation, significantly abnormal runoff, and major fire could also be pretty disruptive. How was that CSU when the current peak fire happened in that? Incredibly, incredibly disturbing. Quick question on the... Can you go back on? Yeah. Significantly abnormal runoff. You mean less than we are proposing? Abnormally lower abnormally? How are you talking about runoff? It could be either. I would figure less runoff would probably be more drastic change to the drought level. You don't see that, though. It doesn't look like that now. Okay, I'm just curious. Okay, thanks. Do we do any soil moisture monitoring in the Sebring watershed to check for runoff viability? In our CS reports. We don't do any of that. Alex, on the previous slide, I think, too, we'll talk about 10% reduction in water use for all city uses. Is that 10% over the 23 year, or is there a benchmark? And we're going to try to maintain 10% less than that benchmark. I mean, obviously, year after year after year, you can do 10% less. And then we're struggling. Or we're to the point where, now we're troubled. Or we're not meeting. So what is that number? It's not a... We're all looking at each other. Overall, gold is to reduce all of our city water use. About 10% over... If you want to really say it's back to our 2002 drought, and what were we using before that? It's more site specific. We're obviously not going to reduce every year 10%. But we've done a number, as well as the parks department has, our golf courses. Everybody in the cities worked towards keeping... Not increasing water use for the same amount of use or land. It's really just keeping that conservation mantra in this organization. I'm sorry I came in late. But this is city with a capital means not the whole population. This means municipal uses. Yes. I think it's what we'll show later. We're already well below pre, let's say, whatever the benchmark that you cited. 2012 or 2002. So again, it's just kind of like a recognition that the city is trying their hardest to find reductions wherever they can. This is the difference between just kind of general conservation and kind of benchmarking. And to give the citizens some credit, we are in about that. If you go by gallons per capita a day. Per capita, yeah.  Which was always our goal to get there. Both in city use and in citizen use.  There was 10 facilities in the city that utilized water. Aberdeen golf courses, Aberdeen parks, right? And from then to now, we've added additional facilities that use water. You have to consistently adjust for increased use. But on a decreased per unit basis. So you keep track of that on some level. I mean, because it's going back to 2002, you don't have the exact same things. Now that you know too, it's expanded. I think that's what we're kind of saying. It was to not really site specific. There was probably some areas that may have not reduced in that period of time. So I think that the goal of that comment was to say, we're going to set the standard. We're going to be the ones that the citizens can follow. So we're going to, when and where it's practical, we're going to try to do those things that get the best conservation first. And we continue to look at other ways to keep making water conservation. And I hope the report, she has that information part. We'll get there later today. So the other side of that is, as we, well, as the advisory sustainability advisory board came up with, was it a recommendation for a 30% reduction like three or four years ago? That wasn't the sustainability advisory board. It was a climate action task force that city council commission came up with that. And how, I mean, how was that based on what we have here? I mean, who makes those decisions? If you don't mind, I was on the task force. I would love. And we had, in the water group, there were just some real fanatics and it was not based on data at all. They just went, we need to save water. And I had no idea where our watersheds were or anything. So they had this fantasy that it was all going to go back into the Colorado. So yeah, it was based on nothing. Who has rejected it and sustainability advisory board rejected it and everybody with the same rejection. So we didn't adopt it. Okay. I did have a quick question on the no surplus water declaration. What's the implication for that? I mean, it sounds like it's how we have been lately, but is there, does that affect leases or anything? Not for our one year that we've already have set up and not for our long term. Okay. It would be for people that are coming in front of this, at this point, we're saying we don't have any additional water that we're going to be willing to lease out. Now over time, as we're very conservative, we want to make sense, we don't know how much people are going to use. We're going to make sure that we have enough. And so if you went back in history, we used to do our surplus water through the state rail, Uptown Water Conservancy District, very labor intensive effort. We used to do it in-house, which was even worse. And so now we consider our surplus water level, the water that we carried over, that we were unable to take use of this year. So you have a maximum of 10% that you can carry over. So we carried over, I don't remember the exact percentage, which is called 14%. So that difference went over into what would be available for the regional pool. So our surplus essentially is going through the regional pool program administered through the Water District. Got it. Okay. But no water releases beyond that. No water will be on that. We still get a lot of calls on surplus water. I was asking for agricultural water. Okay. I got the feeling that this was similar to last year, but how long, when you say back in the history of, can you give me a time frame of when we were leasing this water and when we stopped? Probably prior to the water. And that was probably just like it. We had stopped. Definitely been in a lot over 10, over a decade. I think you haven't been leasing it. Right. Not beyond the regional pool. Okay. But we trained people before that to call us and now we still get those calls. We didn't get your training. We're doing a good job training for the next 10 years. Okay. Other questions for Alex? Just a quick question. When's the last time we've been other than sustainable level? Is it? We've been back a long time? Yeah. 12? 12, maybe. 15 months. No, I think that was one. It's at least here. It might be. Actually, there's nothing that's even longer than that. We went, I know in 2003 we did for a short period of time. 2002 and 2003. Yeah. That's one other period. It's always been sustainable. It has been. I think it's been a testament to the citizens doing their conservation and everyone in the water department, staff and water board, making sure that we always have a good strong reliable support. And was there something to clear it around the flood? But that was shorter time. Yeah. Exactly. That's what we said. About, yeah, about 2003. I think we did that. Okay. 2002 was kind of a dry year. Okay. No further questions. I guess we're looking for a recommendation to City Council to approve the proposal. And Alex was saying that we're going to keep our sustainable conservation level as is going into this year. So. I move that we recommend that City Council. Okay. Second? Second. Okay. Move them second. All in favor? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. Thanks so much. Thank you. So everyone, one more question that doesn't have any bearing on the vote. So, but the, like, so if we wanted to kind of like think about additional kind of sustainability factors or something operating within that definition or those guidelines that are present for the sustainable kind of designation, would that be a place where that type of work could be done? You know, so like, for example, if you, I mean, just out of just general kind of best management practices, kind of water conservation, water sustainability, like changing some of those bullet points might be a place where that type of work could be done. Absolutely. I think that's true. Yeah. And I have to give Water Board a lot of credit when we first developed our planning processes. We just said, I can't remember what we called it.  So that's really how we came up with that. Sustainable water conservation level is to always have that out there. So yeah, that's a good point, Tom. That's exactly why we do that. Okay. So we're going to carry 8B to the end of the meeting or later on. So 9A legislative report again. Yes. We really just gave you a quick list of some of the bills that are sitting on the legislature. We really don't have a lot, aren't asking for any action unless Water Board wants to take action or make a recommendation on any of them. We're going to kind of tag team on this. We've got a couple of different ones. Hope's going to talk about a couple of water conservation ones. Chris is going to update us a little bit on the, I'll call it, Farmer Waters US Dredge and Fill bills that are in the legislature. I would like to highlight just one bill, which is the CWCB project bill. That's the third one on your list there. That's the typical every year CWCB puts a project list bill in front of the legislature. So it's House Bill 1435. Most of these bills sees a couple of more data in the position on what's somewhere staying neutral. This one we staffed and recommended the City Council to support it. I've kind of, some years we support this bill, some years we just stay neutral. Honestly, it almost, well as long as I've been around, it's always passed. So it's really a non-partisan, very positive bill for the state. For us though, one reason we're recommending supporting it. The first is in that bill is continuation of the satellite monitoring system. The state has to appropriate money every year. The satellite monitoring system is what the state uses to do all of these string gauges. I mean we directly use that. It gives us data from all the way from the mouth of the same name. So that, not only us, but everybody in the state. So that was very important. The second thing is modeling and data analysis for the upper color or commissions. Development of operational guidelines for Lake Powell and Lake Mead. That's obviously a real big issue right now. And getting that going. The most direct one though is in section four, which is on page two of the bill. The very first one is CWCB authorized make loans. And number one is an amount up to $155 million to the Windy Gap Fermi project. When I first saw that $155, I panicked a little bit. But so as part of it, it'll actually be part of our catching loop conversation. It's anticipated we'll have some change orders and some additional costs. When the Windy Gap Fermi project to pay for that, the Windy Gap Fermi project is going to, or has asked, has applied to the Colorado Water Conservation Board for $65 million loan. That's the number that's in your catching loop packet. We're 75 or 90 of that. 75 to 90 of that. The $155 million is actually the original loan of $90 million, which was part of the original financing. Long months not part of that. That was for the participants who didn't bring cash to the budget, whereas we brought cash. But we are part of the $65 million. So it's kind of weird. The $90 million was approved years and years ago, but because there are increase in it, they have to ask for the full amount, and I don't ask me why. But so that is a direct financial interest for this project. So we did recommend that. It hasn't gone too far. It wasn't introduced until April 1st, just a couple weeks ago. It's passed already, though it's already passed the annual Water Resources Committee to send it on to the Appropriations Committee. Because most of this money comes out of the severance tax, they don't have to come up with money at the legislature. It's almost guaranteed to pass. That's one bill of great interest to us that will benefit us. And then I'll turn it over to Chris. We would like to talk a little bit more about the budget fill. Chris, I don't know if you heard yet. Scott just got an email from Sean. We just found out they've amended the Senate bill to strike the DNR. So now both bills say CPHE. Yeah, I haven't, damn I got to save email. We haven't looked at the documents, but that's the summary of it. So yes, I've been following both the House and the Senate bill. And we, through City Manager's Office, Sandy Cedar have provided comments to Representative McCormick, who is on the House bill. We had some concerns about CDPHE being able to administer this type of a program. And we gave support to, I guess what was originally the Senate bill. I did listen to both the Agricultural Committees for the House and for the Senate. And I'm assuming that in the Senate bill, at the Agricultural Committee, there was six proposed amendments. And I thought they adopted four of the six, and I thought that they had not adopted changing it to CDPHE, but maybe something happened in between and I will say, listening to all of the testimony and the way that the State House does things, I'm very, very appreciative of our Council and our courts. We handle business. So we're continuing to watch and follow those, but we had supported the Senate bill and had asked for the House bill either to be amended or a no vote on that. So that's where we are today. Okay. And Chris, if we have bad information, we apologize. We didn't read the five attachments that show amendments. I'm scrolling through them right now and I haven't seen any. I will go back and look at it too, just to see where we're at. Yeah, but that was today for sure, so. And things seem to hold and hold and hold for a long time and then all of a sudden everything happens. They got the long bill done, right? I'm sorry? I said they got the long bill done. Well, did they? Yeah, I think that's probably why people watch it and it was breaking. Yeah. That's in the typical last three weeks. Session. I get it. You get it. So anyway, we'd be happy if there's one additional information on that. And then there were two water conservation bills that HOPL informed me about. I'm already signed by the governor, so. Yeah, so.  Yes. Okay. All right. That's okay. Go. All right. So Senate Bill 24-05, which is the prohibition of non-functional turf, artificial turf and invasive plant species. This is the one that was passed and signed by the governor already. So we just wanted to give a quick overview of it. I'm sure you guys have seen it. But basically it's prohibiting non-functional turf on commercial and institutional or industrial property. Common interest community property, which is HOAs, non-recreational sites in those HOAs, such as the entryways or the breezeways between homes. Street, right of ways, parking lots, medians, transportation corridors. Basically the best way to think about non-functional turf is if people are recreating on it. It's functional. If they're not, non-functional. So anything in our arterial spaces, right of ways, anything like that, that has historically just been an easy pass of Kentucky bluegrass will no longer be allowed from the state. And artificial turf will no longer be allowed on any spaces except for athletic fields. So those are okay. And they're not allowed on homeowner response. It's my mistake. And then they also defined water-wise landscape. So I just wanted to put that out there as well. It's water and plant management practice that's intended to be functional and attractive, emphasizes the use of plants that require lower supplemental water and prioritizes the seven key principles of zeroescaping, which were coined by Denver Lar. The city of Longmont is in a good place. We feel ahead of the game because we just received our code review and recommendations report. So that is, we had a code review and recommendations report by a third party consultant. And it's currently going through the planning and development department leadership. They're taking a look at it. And then myself and the sustainability and environmental planner for the city are going to council in July to provide information on the recommendations report. But mostly we're going to be those recommendations and ask for direction will be driven by this Senate bill. So we hope to bring code updates, design standard updates driven by this. Senate bill in July. So that is great. And then we also have our turf replacement plan up and going. We should have that by the end of May. And just a reminder, that is a project with Waternail Alliance. And they are putting together a plan for us to be able to identify non-functional turf on city owned properties using a matrix of variety, different measures so that we can identify turf replacement projects that we want to do on city owned properties, including heat index. So it won't only be water conservation. We'll look at heat index. We'll look at communities like low impact development, lower served communities, those types of things. So it will be great. Hopefully by the end of May we'll have that report. So we can bring that together. And then lastly, the gray water bill that is in legislation. Under current law, local governments may opt in to gray water use, but this bill proposes an opt out system. According to our planning department, we will opt out as we wait for Boulder County Department of Health to develop regulations. And then our planning and building inspection departments will take the lead on this issue. So the bill proposals, what do you see as some of the bigger impacts for us in Omaha? Are there anything significant? For the gray water or for the non-functional? No, for the bill that's addressing turf, the whole, you know, the other things that you mentioned. Yeah, the non-functional turf. I actually feel really good about where we are. We're ahead of the game because we've already had our code reviewed. We're already looking at a turf replacement plan. And our environmental and sustainability planner, he reviews all of the development plans, all of the landscape development plans for everything that comes into the city, residential and commercial. And so now moving forward, any projects that come to him with non-functional turf, he will not approve them and send them back for redevelopment of their landscapes. So that's good. I feel good about where we're at. I feel like we were heading in this direction regardless of state direction. So I don't think there will be any unforeseen circumstances. That's good. Yeah. The original bill or the bill sign gave all the entities until January 1st, 2026. So honestly, yearning it out, we just got to scramble a little bit if we were starting new today. Yeah. But because of hope, sacrifice, and water. And our growing water smart contingent in the city and the work was done for a long ways down the road for this. So that's really going to... We're fortunate not to be starting from ground zero. We're fortunate. We're going to close down. I'm sorry. What are you doing? Well, I was just going to say, it will impact the way future arterioles, future non-essential arterioles look. But if it's not going to be significantly impactful to us? No. I think we're going to be fine. Yeah. Yeah. I was listening to the discussion on the gray water because all the same people wanted us to cut our consumption by 30% or whatever are really into gray water. And, you know, in Long Mountain, we don't want any gray water going down our storm sewers, right? Because we have sensitive riparian areas right here. But it looks like... That's okay. It looks like these are... They were amending it to restrict it to indoor gray water use like flushing your toilet. Did that stick? No. That is something we would do locally. Oh, okay. We are most likely going to need to do that just from a water rights perspective. Northern water, therefore, in the past, we couldn't do gray water at all because of the CBT component. Now the Northern Board has said internal gray water is okay. But external is not. So if we... If at some point in the future, if we want to allow it, we'll have to get around that issue most likely by saying no outside gray water use in the inside. So for both reasons, it's probably going to be that way. Okay. They've decided that's a workaround... I mean, because historically, CBT water, I just could never be reused. And that was the agreement, let's say that they had with far downstream users, essentially. And so they've squared this with their own... I mean, they're trying to update, essentially, but keeping true to that intent. Yeah, yeah. Their philosophy was it was internal for using your shower water to flush your toilets. Kind of a secure route inside the house, but eventually it's the sanitary sewer system and it's released, treated and released. And there won't be, I mean, there won't be evaporated loss. Exactly. If you reuse it outside. Right. Okay. Interesting. Any other comments on water conservation? Thanks, Cole. Are you ready for me to go through my report? Sorry? Is that next? Yeah. I'm next. I continue. I'm sorry, I didn't know you were done. That's okay. We didn't speak to you. It's a segue. Yeah, a great segue. All right, carry on. Great. So just here to report the annual water conservation report from 2023. It's also in your packet, but I've printed about this in case. So this, the graph here is our gross gallons per capita per day and our population line. It continues, our water use continues to decrease as our population increases. This is seen industry-wide and a big part of that is the, just the natural conservation that happens as standards with fixtures and irrigation standards get better. So our toilets don't flush four gallons anymore. They flush one or less. So that's a large part of it. Our 2023 gross gallons per capita per day was 114 gallons, which is down 43% from 2002. And 2023 saw a 19% reduction in demand in our raw water demand from 2002. As was noted earlier, our goal is 10% currently, a 10% reduction in demand. So last year we doubled that. I would love to take credit for all of that, but we had a nice spring. So that's okay. We had a great demand here. So down below here, we have our programs and services lined up by our big breadwinners. So Resource Central, we offered the lawn replacement program, the garden in a box discounts, slow the flow appointments, and water-wise yard seminars. So we estimate 4.2 million gallons saved with those programs. Our northern water programs, we have our landscape consultations for large properties like HOAs, non-profits, churches, schools, city properties, irrigation audits on the same types of things. But they also do large property irrigation audits for like golf courses or properties that have complicated irrigation systems. We started a new program with Northern Water, our CII, which is commercial institutional industrial audits. So we put two city properties through that audit. We put our rec center and the service center at this building through those audits with the Brindle Group, and they were really great. And so a large part of this 4.85 million gallons projected to be saved comes from those commercial building audits of how much water we can save if we upgraded our fixtures if we do all of those kinds of things. And then city-wide, we've got two community grants. So two HOAs got large northern water grants to do turf replacement projects. Efficiency works is where we do our rebates and discounts. We saved 0.81 million gallons through there. And then our Growing Water Smart, I presented to you all a while back about our Growing Water Smart. This is just summarizing that larger report of the 2.3 million gallons saved. So annually, our program saved 12.16 million gallons. Our average monthly water use for single-family residential accounts is shown right there. And so we continue to perform well based on our average. And then below, I won't bore you with reading all of them, but below are some program highlights, Kensington Park. The code review for resilient landscapes is that code review and recommendations report that I was just briefly talking about. And then our non-functional turf replacement plan is also that project I was talking about just before where this will help us identify how we can be better for our water efficiency standards and practices within our city. And that will help us kind of codify and or put in better design standards moving forward. That's kind of impressive, really. Yeah. Very good. And using that. Maybe Marcia, your little project contributed a lot to the savings too. Your long project. Your long personal one. Yeah. Didn't use that much to begin with. Sadly. Oh, that's right. Excuse me. The X-axis here on the water use in 2023. Is that like a water review? Prison opening? It's annual, January to December. We use billing data for that. Okay. And questions for Hope? Good job. Thanks. Thanks for not drilling me with all the questions. Okay. Can you take now and see? Sure. Just a quick update on the Windy Gap Firming project. Actually, you know, it's continuing to go well. I had a really good construction season this winter. We did get snow, but not very little. They didn't disrupt the construction. Probably a little bit less we would have expected. So they did very well on construction this winter. But since our last waterboard meeting, the projects hit a number of milestones. The first, of course, is that it hit 50% of the embankment height, which is really great. It means everything's going along pretty well. The plant is completely constructed. They've essentially got the grouting work done. And of course, when you hit, once we hit, by hitting 50% of the height of the dam, it triggered the second payment on the federal lawsuit. So that was a $5 million payment over to the west slope for the settlement on that lawsuit. So as you might remember, the $15 million settlement on the case, $5 million immediately, $5 million when it hit 50% construction, and $5 million when it's completed. So two-thirds away on the payments of that. And hopefully that last payment will happen next year because it's currently projected to be complete with the reservoir construction in August of 25, so just a little over a year from now. The other major milestone was on the tunneling, on the outlet tunnel. They actually hold through a couple weeks ago, which is very good. So now the tunneling is complete. They'll finish the last of the lining of the tunnel. They're actually just now starting to put in the outlet pipe itself through the tunnel. So that's very good. By doing that and starting that, they'll then be able to start construction of the outlet tower, which is really the most important thing to get going up, because it's at the very bottom of the reservoir, and you want to get that tower going up so that you get out at the bottom of the reservoir. The inlet works, the valveing for the, you may remember we talked a little bit about the valveing for that control house. Some of those valves were coming from Germany and were kind of being held up over there, for ransom I'll say. The contractors find they're going to be able to resolve that and have all been a couple of the valves on site. They'd have to settle with the valve manufacturer on some claims. Because of the length of time, they had some claims for increased costs. Those are now settled, unfortunately. But they had the valves in Germany, and they wouldn't ship them until that was settled. Very important to get them, because the valve house is essentially ready to set those valves in and put the top on. They didn't want to have to set the, the buildings are designed to take the valves in and out. They didn't want to try to do that the very first time. So now that those large valves are going to be coming, they'll be able to get that down and so on. All in all, it was a really good month. Since our last meeting, we've been keeping the project moving forward. No real issues. In terms of the connectivity channel, it is, of course, down for the winner at that elevation. Don't work in the winner. But it's functional. We've actually been running along through it. That mostly be plantings and getting the diversion structure, where you either divert it into the reservoir or let it continue down the corridor. That control work needs to be done. And just minor cleaning up. The project should be all in the way. Probably the most significant issue right now is nutrient control. This is part of the project we agreed to nutrient neutrality. And that's because of the higher water quality in that area, it's very difficult to find anything to clean up. So good news is that the Three Lakes Water and Sanitation District, has agreed to take on a whole bunch of septic systems and bring them into the system to treat the water. Not that it doesn't get treated somewhat in a septic system, but certainly it doesn't get the treatment than the modern treatment facility would do. So we're going to get some nutrient reduction through there. That's really all I had on the project. I'm just out of curiosity. The amount of labor costs in the labor, a complete zero to 50% of the reservoir, versus 50 to 100%, is the top portion, a lesser amount? It is. That's why we're... Yeah, that's why we've had a couple years, two and a half years, a little over a year to go. Because as you go up, you're going to get... Now, you're going to get a lot longer. The width of the dam is what's going to... I guess I'll say is the challenge now. It's... They're just about... I don't know if you remember, there's a low spot on the west side that will have to be filled. They've been building the dam up to a ridge line, and then there's a low spot that will fill and so they're just about to jump over to that and do that work, because once you get to the ridge line, you've got to take the dam up, you know, level. When that gets done, then it's about another, easily another third larger crest width, and that means really long runs with your core. But yeah, you're getting narrower and narrower. And we're halfway in height, but probably closer to two-thirds, actually in height, but constructive. It's going well. That's all the foundation work is done, it sounds like, so all the grouting... Yeah, all that's below ground, I mean, below-ish ground, and so you wouldn't even... Realize that it happened necessarily if you're just watching the dam rise, I guess. Yeah. And that's all the area that you have that's most unknown, so I'm certainly, you know, how it's produced. You know, just kind of not aside, but anyway, I heard that Northern Water is doing tours, busing people out to observation points now.  You can get on Northern's website and sign up for any one of the tours. They're doing them every week. I think you can sign up for May and June right now, and then a little bit later on, they'll open up July. Yeah. See the... Yeah, this gets much narrower. You can see this lower area over here. Yeah. As soon as they hit here, then they have to go and fill that in, bring that up, and then you've got a much longer dam. They've got anything on this end, or is it pretty normal? It's pretty normal. I mean, it goes very steep. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's fun to go through those pictures. Yeah. Any questions for Ken? It's good reporting. Thank you. Yeah. Okay, so, let's move back to item 8B, cash and loo. Okay, we've got a lot of stuff to talk about. So, you know, before we even think about cash and loo number, maybe you'd like to take us through what you've got here. Okay. Yeah, I'd be happy to do that. I did make one of the comments. Renee, did everybody get it? Renee, maybe after you get through, and if you want to talk about anything that Renee submitted, we should do that. Go ahead. Okay, cool. Thank you very much. Yeah, so, firstly, we wanted to bring our quarterly review of cash and loo forward. And then, at the same time, we've been asked to review the overall program, so we wanted to combine the two together. We have really two areas that we need to consider when looking at the recommendation for the current cash and loo price. The construction project has been going well, so as you recall in 2020, at least 21, 2022, we looked at the cash and loo program and it was both water board recommendation and council accepted that recommendation to base the primary basis for the cash and loo on the Windy Gap Fermi project and the full project, i.e. the parent project which was the diversion dam and the pumping plant and also the Windy Gap Fermi project. So the original project at the last setting we decided to use the current market value so to speak of the Windy Gap parent project. At that time PRPA had sold some units in around the $30,000 per acre foot range and that's what we used $30,000 for the parent project and we had already set because we had made our payment for the construction of the Windy Gap Fermi project that was $18,500 per acre foot so that's the 48.5 that we have currently been using. PRPA, what out to auction some additional units and they're working on the last of that so we believe by this summer we'll easily have that information but we weren't ready to well PRPA asked us not to release any information on that until they were completely done with all of them including taking them to the board of northern because that's all sensitive so what we put in the back of today was just looking at the Fermi project and Water Board can we've talked a little bit about the potential change or increase for Windy Gap Fermi the art the actual change orders there have been a number of change orders executed there's a few more in review right now and of course we've paid the already inherent in the 18.5 number is all of the cost for the federal losses that was $22 million for the delay cost for the contractor $15 million for settlement significant the cost increases that's already included in the 18.5 so we know that it's included but because of how high that was that ate into the contingency money for the project so we're at a point now where we need to plan for covering any late change order requests pretty much know what most of those are probably one of the bigger ones was the density of the fill and I think we talked about that one before I mean the good news is it's going in more dense we're getting a better an even better embankment that's good the bad news is we've got to buy more rock because it's going in more dense so that is going to you know we've got to pay for the rock that's mine and put it in the dam so that that increases the price a little and you know getting vows out of Germany and everything else right now the best projection at completion of construction was about the $65 million increase that we talked about earlier that's in CWCP project because that amount is a very reasonable estimate of what that final bill will be and what additional money beyond the money that was originally transferred for the project that's been applied for the CWCP's board is approved to be approved by the legislature which we feel will the project's bill we feel it's probably timely now to go ahead and do that in the overall cost of the Fermi project so that's just a simple math of about $750 which is actually when you consider $18,500 an acre foot project $750 additional given the fact that the federal law is that's not a bad increase but we felt that it's probably timely that we include that in the cash so really we feel the option would be to wait until a little bit later until that actually those changes are signed but they really the final numbers don't change that much it's reasonable so that's why we have our recommendation that Waterwood may want to consider going from $18,500 to $19,250 which makes the overall cash loo $49,250 so I'll stop there on the recommendation and then the second half of this what I'd like to go into is requests for staff to look at the whole cash loo program and I guess I'll ask would your preference be to leave the recommendation until the end or take action on that now or jump right into the review of the whole project I would prefer to wait until the end okay that's perfectly fine so let me kind of set up the stage for what we were asked and why we were asked really it comes down to the city has been looking pretty hard about what can we do to help in development of specifically residential units for citizens prices of housing continue to go up and there is a concern both for attainable housing and affordable housing there's also concern that or a desire to be economically commercially commercially viable to get new commercial development and industrial development in the community so the city is kind of looking at all of its processes in the whole development arena and one of the things that we were asked to do is look at cash and loo that's a big ask that's a big subject and it really has to do I will say the cash and loo the raw water requirement policy that the city has had formally for over 60 years now has served the city very well I believe Longmont has one of the best water supplies around because of our raw water requirement policy and our water boards and councils in the past have excellent work and so that makes us I believe the most challenging the most competitive in the area from that standpoint that being said we've been asked to look at a number of them so first thing we wanted to do before we got into reviewing the aspects of specifically the cash and loo portion of our raw water requirement but also the raw water requirement policy itself you can't change cash and loo without changing the raw water requirement policy the first thing we wanted to do was just kind of give a historical context so in the write up because I know the water board knows our raw water requirement policy but for citizens I tried to give a short summary depending on the citizens want to review the water board and get up to speed on this subject then we wanted to put a little historical context because it's really easy to forget all these numbers and over time so our first one on page 37 of the packet our first item we put in there the cash and loo fee what it's done over time started out $100 in 1965 and it's gone up and down and actually if you use like the last 10 or 15 years it's gone down as much as it's gone up about equal number of changes so water board has tried to follow what is happening in our resources world but of course we're all aware of the biggest increase was a couple years ago when we went to 45 the second summary is actually cash and loo received two reasons you know obviously we've received most of our cash and loo in the last 10 years the biggest portion we've received over the life of the project part of that of course was because the cash and loo is higher but an equal reason for that is that non-historical water rights are almost exclusively used to meet the deficit whereas today non-historical water rights are getting much harder to find and much more expensive I would assume in those numbers though there is also a growth which has also been I would assume a little bit like this among what? Absolutely you can really see the 75-84 period where IBM and George Tech and those things kind of busted out and the housing crash? The housing crash of the late 80s Well I was thinking of the 08 Yeah you can really see the 08 because we went from 4 to 1 The oil crash really slowed everything down Well not only did it slow things down but before that the developers were getting a little hand with vacant lots and not only did it slow it down but then they just said well we'll just fill it in and then that's probably why the 10 million 2000 2022 was still, it was 18-5 so it went way out of range with the other years but yeah it was then we re-grade that surplus and so that's overall we've collected a little over 18 million dollars for captioning the World for the Life of the program then the next where we expended that I just have the last 10 years because I didn't want to send somebody down in the basement of the city center in dusty boxes we can do that and we will try to get that information but I didn't have enough time to get all of that exact numbers and I hate to say it but we're right in the middle of our budget season and I didn't want to burden our budget folks ask them to walk away from what they're doing to get that done but essentially in the last 10 years we spent about 235,000 in water conservation the law board may recall about 10-15 years ago we decided to spend some of the water conservation funding comes out of cash and through water acquisition because the philosophy is that if you know we can either save water and spend our money and that will save we have to go get water or we can go buy water so it was felt try to kind of target about half and half water conservation we have a base budget that comes out of water rates operations and then we have additional money that comes out of water conservation so that's about 235 we have about a lot of direct water rights in the last 10 years we spent about 200,000 on water rights which is not a whole lot mostly mostly the next I am the one you have for me we have been trying to basically save that money because once we issue the bonds we pay that every year so we spent I can't remember exactly around 4-5 million for cash that we sent up to northern as part of the overall package for payment, the wind to gap and then we made a payment this year about 1.9 million on the bond and we'll continue to do that each year the amount of the wind to gap for every project except for new development will be paid for cash moving through water acquisition the amount is for existing kind of firm enough we did firm up some of the existing water supply and that's that comes out of construction or operations fund and I don't have the exact numbers on all that because I don't have the amount they paid this year for the bond but we'll get those exact numbers over time then we also started an economic development incentive that comes out of cash moving that's very very limited but we've only used it one time it's been there for about 10 years it's only been used one time to be honest it was a cost so that was $478,000 and then we also paid for some water core costs for transferring water rights to the required that was $66,000 so we've got about $12 million that we've paid out in the last 10 years of the 2018 we've got about $5 million in the water acquisition fund right now and then we had to spend a million or two probably 2013 on other water rights so that's kind of where we are overall but we're seeing fairly good with the water acquisition fund at $5 million we're you know we're concerned that we continue to have enough money in there to help pay for the Windy Gap firming project because those payments come every year at $5 million plus water that's enough for about two and a half years and then we'll have some water acquisition funds coming in in the future hopefully to stay up with or ahead of that that bond it is backed up by our in addition to the cash in the water acquisition fund we also have a Windy Gap surcharge on the TAP fee and that Windy Gap surcharge plus the water acquisition is what we'll use to pay for Windy Gap firming and that should keep us up there but we'll we'll see you never know the future so that's really where all of that's going on so then I wanted to jump into some of the questions that we were asked specific and we're not going back to the water acquisition fund yes wasn't the water acquisition fund used to purchase part of sandstone ranch some of the water rights associated with it and I'm just thinking of some of the other things I thought that the water acquisition fund was used to buy the more recent corner of McCall Lake wasn't the acquisition fund used to buy the Adams property up in Button Rock so I'm just saying that was other directions but I was just thinking that there was a lot because I just off the top of my head thinking sandstone the water was a lot more than 206,000 up I'd have to go back well I mean in your reign between yeah because that was in 1988 or whatever when we get okay but I'm sorry just time goes back here can is the surcharge review annually reset or is that index in some fashion because obviously there's a component of that that goes along with inflation it has been looked at a couple of times really it's based on the percentage of the tap fee so as the tap fee goes up it's going to inherently go up a little bit but so it's fixed it's a percentage of surcharge of 120% I don't know that's helpful thanks just a question before you get into the review issue number one where did these questions come from that originally came down from the city manager's office who was looking at overall city and everything that's happening was council involved in any of these questions was it you know council did not send any questions or any questions to be sent to you so these are city manager city manager's office that's going to be good okay you want to get going on yeah I'll jump into them the first one is what is the impact of cash on the cost of development in the community one of the things we wanted to do was kind of put it into perspective so what we did is we took what the actual cash and loo that has come in so we looked at all the plots for the last 10 years there were 36 plots with deficits approved 70% of them paid at least some cash and loo a lot of developers will pay bringing some non-storpal water and then just kind of supplement you know the last little bit with cash and loo 602 acre feet of deficit paid by cash and loo deficit from non-storpal water was 249 acre feet but over 10 years that represents 5300 units of plots that had deficits so that comes out to $2,298 per unit putting that into perspective per living unit per living unit I would say per house, per loo per apartment we have a 20 unit apartment there in that number 20 units wait, no, say that again so is that per unit of single family housing or is that per unit of multi-unit? it's a cooperative both units and admittedly we're putting in more if you put in apartment units your per unit cost is going to go down way down if you have housing single family housing then it's a little bit higher if you've got one big huge business you know it's much higher so what we wanted to do was kind of put it into context if you put as a unit cost today how much of that is a portion would you describe to cash a little not that we would argue everything you can do to bring down the cost of housing is good but just wanted to keep it into perspective of what that is and keep it in mind that that's the cash in the portion not the non-historical let me just ask a question your first sentence as far as to express the cost of cash in the housing has recently created substantial impact on the ability of development I assume that's saying create a negative impact on development making it there's a perception out there that development is not slowing down in Longmont and it's fairly robust now that's just a perception I hear from a lot of people so my question would be is development actually slowing down in Longmont cash in the side I'm just curious about that so it's a really good question I can't tell you but we certainly can get that information I don't know Chris do you have a might have a little more sense than I if you look at straight numbers of numbers of class that we've processed or numbers of permits that are going out permits is a little hard because I think we're still up in the seven to eight thousand permits but what are those permits for per year but the language we can put numbers to is that we are processing fewer plots and fewer units per year than we have in the past but wait yeah I mean sorry 2020 like hit building department processes hard so there's I think your data could have noise in it interest rates have gone up I mean there's a lot of different factors that drive that drive this I think it's a great question but it's going to be hard to really suss out is it because interest rates have gone up and so the housing market is cool I don't know specific cause to effect but I think what Ken is showing too though is that the overall impact of paying cash in lieu for a unit is not substantial is not substantial when you are selling a unit for three hundred four hundred five hundred thousand dollars two hundred and two thousand three hundred dollars is not substantial in that total cost accurate I think there's a couple other factors that are coming in here so there's a lot of interesting public perceptions going around and some of them are very active public perceptions in that the public is raising fuss probably against their own actual interest but what's really going on in terms of the council is that we don't like to approve single family developments so on the one hand you can build departments or you can build townhouses and single family developments but because of the construction defects a lot of nobody wants to build condos which is probably what we really need in Longmont is that idea or conception is it all off at all or is that alive and well people still don't want to touch condos well it's not that they don't want to touch them it's that it's very expensive to touch them the lawsuit and stuff no because they have to buy insurance policies to finance their project and stacked flat type condos because they've got so many units per building the way the construction defects law is written is makes the insurance policies really high because the presumption is that you're going to do a class action thing you're going to have to touch every single apartment if one apartment is defect or one flat is defective so and the legislature does not seem to have gotten their heads around that problem so there was actually a law that they failed but I not sure but there was a bill that actually made it worse they wanted to add consumer protections so they toughened up the law in the form that it's already in and like I said this excuse me the city weighed in to oppose that and I don't know whether that doesn't be good but you know the legislature is not on the right track to fix it yet but in this condo situations got to be a state problem it is, it's a state problem but Boulder County is worse often most places because we're landlocked we have landlocked ourselves and so it's hard to find places to build single family homes and right now what's happening is we're building a lot more for sale townhouses and the Mustang project that the city just did real soon now we will release the data on that that pretty much tells you how to build for sale properties at least cost but that is a problem and then to go all the way back and answer the question it means that per unit is a bigger chunk of smaller units because what's happening is that we are we're tending to approve high density proposals and the other thing that's going on is that they're taking a long time to get permitted and partly it's because the neighborhoods are rising up and forcing charrettes and lawsuits and all kinds of craziness because they don't want to build it all so one thing that I wanted to say because I've got to leave it 430 unfortunately just when we're getting to the good stuff but I read Renee's memo the thing that jibes the most and it was a good memo overall I thought so but the thing that jibes the most with any of the recommendations that Renee made was that we want to revise the fee and loo less often and on a date because that's consistent with the affordable housing fee and loo that's the feedback we got from developers just to clarify, I proposed annually which would be more often less frequent review more often change because we haven't changed it in a year and a half two years, two years what I was going to say about it was that a year apart probably isn't enough what difference does it make if you say it's two years or three years the way the fee and loo is because what a developer cares about is can he get locked in his financing before it's going to change under his feet and if it takes him two years to get financing then he can look at where he is in that revision cycle and do well with the bank what? no double digit increases oh yeah although yeah I think keeping it small is probably a good idea in general but interestingly enough on the affordable housing side they didn't say that they said what we want is to not change what we've got when we're in conversation with the bank yeah they were actually advocating for a big increase in fee and loo because it's so far out of balance they just wanted to know when exactly it was going to happen so I unfortunately have a thing I don't think that's a big deal timing it kind of on an annual giving everybody understanding there's a change here if we're going to change it and this is the periodically when we're going to do that I don't think that's a big issue well it's a big issue for the developers well no I mean to put on a schedule so the developers know when that's my point it's not hard for this board to do that's a sense of yeah our variables don't move as much as some of the other competing jurisdiction variables do because the other ones that were based solely on CBT saw the rates go like this in a period of about nine months so they had to adjust relatively nimbly to reflect the true market price we're not based on that we'll not change substantially year to year based at least on what we're basing on today we change it yeah so the developer perception is based upon other jurisdiction challenges that they face and the developer perception they were really caught in between a rock and a hard place this year because we had all the supply chain stuff and inflation all that who thought it really messed up their costs and their financing but yeah but the main point they said was they wanted to date certain and it might be even interesting to align that change with the city's other fee and loot changes I don't know something that understands construction better than you but it seems like that's a coral area all those changes to happen in lockstep hate to see you leave Marcia do you think there's anything else I know I'm feeling fairly stupid these days I'm always trying to get a sense of where the console is on things and you're our link to where the console is so I'm just saying we may not finish this discussion today you know so if we don't please come back next time but I don't know if we will but it's a media issue it's very important too it is because we have a big housing deficit which is it's more difficult because the public doesn't like building housing right now so before you leave can I ask you do you think $2,300 is a significant impact to development you know I don't I truly don't have a feel well it's a little different than that too it's not $2,300 it's some incremental small amount it's like $300 really I mean like I think it's $5,000 well yeah I guess what I'm saying is we would have to relinquish the entire cost of all the water in order for $2,300 to be the actual amount that would see right like if we changed our procedure it says that there was a 10% change or something that's only like $2,200 or $2,200 or something okay so are we done with issue one hahahaha aren't you glad you got your out of the way thank you for that well we sort of got into issue two as well no I I agree with the concept of timing it my personal opinion is we ought to set something in the fourth quarter and tell them we're going to be effective in January first something easy for everybody to understand they would like a longer lead time I was going to say we should probably have our process like if we were to make some change we should make our process in place so we make a decision by June that gets implemented by January or you know they do revenues and expenses incorporated in the budget process so that everybody knows that everything is going to get a 3% or 4% or what that might look like and it's set for the year the movement is incorporated into the budget process I don't know what the lead time is maybe a quarter's time is too short a quarter's time is too short specifically for developers financing projects they've got to get all that stuff done where they do much and in context of the overall discussion we have been asked about the possibility which we'll at some point we'll have that conversation too we're asked is there a possibility that I don't just make up about time when they sign the annexation agreement or when they sign the PLAT can we establish lock in for a set period of time and I'm just going to make up a number of two years then they would know what we don't want to do is lock it in we occasionally will have somebody you know I had this PLAT in 1967 you'll get something like PLAT in 20, 30 years but there's a a request out there can we help the developer by giving them a certainty of two years three three three years but we're not going to she'll have to preface all of this we're not going to even ask one of her for recommendations today I'm going to come back next meeting with a proposed schedule where we look at all of this it's going to take some time so all they wanted to do was outline all the issues today so you can be thinking about it we've got a whole ton of information we've got with the water board to make decisions but this is exactly what we wanted I'll watch the last half and now that you're going to recommend next month yeah we won't wrap this up yeah we're honestly thinking we wanted to introduce it today probably in May and June we'll come back with a schedule for doing the whole process and probably July, August, time period we'll come back with a number of studies we need to do to provide water board with information like you know what are all the other communities we can bring that information we also want to actually talk with the development community and find out directly from them what is the biggest impact to them we don't want to be changing this we don't want to be changing this all around and have them saying well actually we like that we had it go ahead I understand so with that said part two of the day discussion is really just information for us the initial issue of bumping cash and loot of 49-250 is something you want approved today or is that again down the road if you're comfortable with just doing that as a change then yes we can take a recommendation if you want some immediate changes to the code then that will take a little bit longer as we go through this one of the requests we've had is don't do a lot of changes so we have to put it in are you comfortable doing this change now and waiting for the change on the parent project maybe a year from now what would you rather wait we'll know this summer the last information PRPA we don't have the information my feeling is let's not do anything until we get the information I don't like to make decisions if there's something that's going to impact especially with everything we're talking about my preference is we don't change anything until we get all our information and I'm going to respectfully contrast that I would like for us to have some deadline of not just waiting for the next best thing I feel like we're overdue for a change is my opinion we're overdue for a change it's been two years we had some information in October on a plan to do so and now here we are in April and we haven't changed so again this is why I think the deadline and annual deadline could be helpful for the board because sometimes it feels like we're waiting for the next best thing the next is a quarterly review and it would like us to get just waiting for that I was just going to ask Renee so when I read memo and thank you by the way for the thoughts on the page because it's really helpful I guess I didn't understand until I hear you speak about it now that like are you suggesting that at those yearly intervals that there is a change but there's almost like a necessary change at every single one of those intervals rather than it's not the quarterly review that we do right now where we say well let's just leave it how it is but instead it sounds like you're saying fewer reviews but more individual punctuated kind of changes absolutely and I know it seems so differently but my belief is that if you have a 3% increase or 5% increase whatever is kind of warranted but if you do that annually that's great if you do it every 2 years and now it's a 10% increase that seems to me like it would be hard to deal with I know I as a rate error which is a different thing but when I see a 10% rate increase I'm like ouch that hurts and if I were planning so our cash is small compared to a unit but it's a chunk of money and to bump that up by 20% that seems to me to be I would like to see small annual and not just review but changes I mean we're recommending to see council changes but take action and kind of a do it sort of thing like the deadline element of we're going to do something why don't we target we will do something this year to be effective January 1st and use that kind of as a guideline so maybe we need to make the decision in June July I don't know what but I don't think it makes sense again to do something now before waiting for information that's just my feeling but I think we ought to have something targeted that will make a change and have it effective the 1st of January that's just my thoughts I was just going to say that from a developer's perspective they buy 2x4s or something like close to anyway right so they see the change in timber or something like instantaneously water sells so infrequently that we really have no understanding of like the market price of water at any given moment until those those momentary or episodic kind of instances when there is an auction when there is a something you know I don't think those are going to be selling every year it's not a bit yeah I guess I'm wondering like what we've been doing is that we wait until we see what the real market change is we haven't had the information in these last 2 years to really say that we should make a change because we have those 2 years have been kind of devoid of information right and so if we were to implement some kind of I don't know you have to have a really good discussion I guess about like how do we make decisions based on what we think the rate or what we think the water is going to change in value over this time to kind of like to kind of average over these episodic changes right so in other words rather than just 2 years from now change at 10% what if over the next you know every 6 months it goes up 1% or something right it's a different mindset in one instance we have these periodic instances when we definitely know what the water is worth the other instance we're going to be kind of like assuming or kind of like projecting in the future but we think the water will be worth in 2 years and then try to smooth over this huge change what date do you propose do you think we'll have the numbers that we've been waiting for you know will that be done by June? it might be done for the June quarter of the meeting I just don't know when they'll end up taking it to the board yeah it's out of control pretty sure it's this summer yeah I think it's summer it's summer just because I'm a rate setting nerd and a system development charge nerd called Krupp versus Breckenridge where a developer sued the city of Breckenridge because they didn't like how the SDC was calculated and one of the findings in Krupp I'm not an attorney but was that you don't have to have perfect information to set a fee you have to have reasonable information and you have to have like a rationale that's consistent when you do it but you don't always have to wait for perfect information so I think that we can also use that to say hey we're gonna make a careful deliberative change but we may not have perfect information now I'm okay if we wanna wait a couple months but I also feel like we've been waiting that I really would have loved to not have to pay any of my inflation that I've experienced this last two years what's that last thing you said? I would have loved to not have to pay any inflation the last two years and right now the development community has not had to pay any inflation or any increases for two years they've had they've had a stay you've been too easy on them I I don't want to be too harsh but I don't want to be too easy you've got to throw in a needle here and so when you say wait till January I'm like oh I wish I could get that break you know so I would like to do it soon but I would also love information and yet we may not get perfect information I don't have a clear date for you you know and again the parent is one thing the change order is another do we anticipate another change order I mean we know that $750 is the cost for the change order is that not correct? yes that's the anticipated change to the completion of the construction I have no problem the 49-250 that's the depletion let me tell you what my well I'll tell you what my problem is cash in lieu we were looking to cash in the number last September I took it up to what 63 63 and now all of a sudden we're looking at $700 I don't get it to me that is what happened weren't the numbers any good last fall to go from 1 to 750 I think I think they were based on one sale right and I remember being a person that said hey wait it's only one of the units sold can we get all five units sold it was me that threw the flag on my plate guys September 1 included reflected the contemplated parent water adjustment where this 750 only looks at the one half of the equation only looks at that construction cost so it's just a matter of coming up with what is that what is the value of the parent water we thought we knew it but and again PRPA has asked us they're not going to share what that actually is going to be until they close on it so that change order is yes that's right that's correct that is known but if you change it modestly in the short term with the expectation that it's going to change substantially when that information is publicly available and on which of course you can shoot me if you want to but I'm not the attorney for a long time you guys have counsel so you can ask counsel what's defendable and what's not defendable because it is a rational basis that's not for us to that's for legal counsel for the city to say that's where the big step is going to be and the timing that is unknown and the price to that is unknown but it's going to be the big piece so putting it up by 750 for the next 90 days is not going to garner a lot of revenue from the city if there's development going through the next 90 days paying that the next step is going to be substantial we don't know the timing we don't know the price but we know it's going to be substantial relative to the $750 per unit cost or takeover so it's a conundrum and it's frustrating as I'll get out because we talked about this months ago my point is $750 it's kind of meaningless and my only point is that $750 is at that mini school and it's not that big a ticket item I understand but it's small but defendable so yeah that's how much you raise it twice then probably within the 80 days but you know I think if we were to say probably not we're going to raise it now today we're going to recommend a raise of this small amount and then we're going to wait until we get parent project data and we're going to raise it again in October and then starting in 2025 we're going to aim for an annual raise that's a little clearer and a little less it gives us the deadline to make the choice I think that would be still legit I think that would still be fair and clear to our public you know because we're kind of in this older mode of quarterly and we can deliberately change it and then say okay now we're going to go to an annual we can go to an annual starting in 2020 yeah me too I don't want to I said as far as I'm concerned as long as whatever we do is definable I don't want to get this up to you I was just going to say that's always been my thing too I remember so back in 2022 it wasn't just an increase in raw water value let's say that it was a complete change in the mode by which we evaluate the process right we didn't just notice that there was a reduction of water that increased the value instead it was no we're going to include now the original parent project amount in this new caching loop right and so we you all I barely did anything but you all went out and found how much a recent sale had parent project but that recent sale wasn't from 2022 either wasn't no it was much older and so the most recent data the caching loop was based on for 2022 was let's say 5 years ago or something it's been 2 years since then so every 7 it feels like every 7 years or every 8 years or 10 years or something we get like little episodic updates right so I think the question becomes what do we do in between right like how do we value water in between and how do we make that defensible because that is I think all of us all 5 of us have said that now like we need it to be defensible to feel comfortable with making these recommendations and the question becomes when you only have dots on your graph that go every 10 years the defensible part that's entirely defensible because that was actually a sale what do you do in between that makes it that still satisfies our need for the defensibility of the whole thing you know one approach could be and the city of Fort Collins contemplated this was a total water rights portfolio valuation which is the buy into their existing portfolio which is the buy method for STCs but it also looks at a broader swath and we could look at maybe a bigger market of water sales not CVT but you know maybe water sales of rights all along the South Platte River and then we could have some that's not every 10 years we could have a few more data points in there yeah but it is a germane to the St. Vrain I don't know we need to be careful there we need to be smart and just to I think that that was what city manager's office was thinking about is that we have garnered however many acre feet 28,000 acre feet that we basically have that in our possession now absent the ones that we the water rights we expect to get in with land that's still annexed in I want to make sure that everybody understands that too that we have our overall long-term plan anticipates getting all of those water rights and I don't want to lose that in this whole conversation there's water rights out there that we still need to get but that by paying for Jimmy Hall we've basically garnered the storage that we need and so what I've heard from them is can we set that a price that we have paid and that people are basically buying into that instead of trying to look for these one-off sales there's one data point that is now setting or changing everything can we say that this is what we've paid and do we modify that on an annual basis based on inflation or some other index the city has paid this much but as you buy into it you're obviously the over time the cost of money is going up so we need to index that somehow I think that that was their idea of how we give predictability to what cash would be instead of oh well there was a sale six months ago that now set this price and now we're going to raise it in over an hour's break but I think to your other point that you said earlier is that fair to everybody else that has paid in over the last 60 years just one thing to think of are you willing to wait a couple months until we get into summer and see if we have more information and we still struggle with it maybe move on then and do the adjustment is that I'm open to that you're all right with that I would like us to maybe have a deadline to try and get an adjustment maybe in 2024 we'll do a table to change your cash and loon and we have a next quarter and I don't think we can break anybody's heart because that's let's do that okay because I think you make a good point it's incredible with our data I mean that I don't want to be defending something I can't defend and speaking of credibility I want to say something that I don't think is happening but does it look fair if we change it at this point but a huge developments come in right before that and the point of change is one of our random quarterly reviews did we let somebody sneak in under the wire I'm not saying that that's what we do but there is a I think there's a potential perception of we're not getting it done at a set time and a set way and stuff is getting bias and we're not capturing full cost so there's a little credibility there too which is why I think the deadline is also in terms of credibility I think setting something that everybody understands and it's when it happens it would prevent some of the stuff coming in under the wire perception that that's what's happening Roger I'm going to use a little more comment Chris thank you for that perspective that helps to hear what you're hearing and channeling to us because that isn't really that obvious honestly I just would point out that I think you're right about having some index by which to value other than single data points every 10 years or so or less frequently or maybe more frequently in the future as people start to build other portfolios in excess when you get water and realize they can let go of a little bit so they're all that but the hard part is it's hard to tie in my opinion the price of water to any CPI construction whatever that is it would have to be a fairly novel water rights index and the South Platte River might be a way to look at that it's actually not bad if you look at the whole South Platte River over time it doesn't necessarily 100 grams of steam if you're looking at regional elements and all that it really hasn't held up very well in my opinion relative to inflationary pressures because it doesn't reflect building or construction it just doesn't it's the buyers and the sellers that set the market and they do it for very different reasons but the index idea has been it would make sense to think about how we could use that to replicate the increase in value of water and it's very vocal you can look at a basket and maybe more closely follow the trend line so I think that was a good comment I appreciate that you got something Tom I was just going to say this almost starts to look like maybe creating our own index which would be hard to do defensively as we agree on here and so but you could potentially use those episodic sales to adjust so we wouldn't be as nimble perhaps as doing it this way like being able to adjust the price our cautionary price instantaneously or something in response to the water to the water sales but like if we developed or if we decided upon some kind of percentage for example that every year we would go by this percentage and then those sales essentially become mechanisms by which we adjust the percentage it would be a slower a slower role in other words we wouldn't necessarily say we're going to adjust it to 63,000 next time that we meet or something but instead we use those sales essentially say it's increased this much in the last 10 years let's just say let's assume that we need to go up by that percentage every year the number divided by 10 that percentage every year or whatever and then any sales that do happen then of course we would use that to then readjust the percentage or something like there's some other middle ground perhaps we wouldn't be responding instantaneously to these changes so we would be leaving some money on the table I think when it's all said and done but at the same time it would be more predictable for our community and maybe a little less money left on the table but to get to a schedule are you comfortable with deciding that something will be effective January 1st is that or is there something, pardon I would say at least make a commitment that we're going to make a modification by the end of the year so whether that's effective January 1st that's what we do currently the code would need to be restructured for us to do that because the way the code reads right now is that after the council approves the cash and loop fee it changes 10 days later right that's immediate because it's a resolution but that to effect this we'd have to change the code basically instead of a quarterly review we'd do a set June July that would be an effective date January 1st that part's pretty easy or you retrofit whatever we decide into the current code right so in other words like it's not some percentage per month or something we just implement the change every quarter every year or we'd make no changes for three of the quarters and we make one change the idea of one change in the first of the year we start heading towards that direction so are you alright with that? we'll just leave it alone for right now and hopefully West you can dig out some information go pound some heads West we're getting tired I think one of the things you can also do is in the recommendation that it becomes effective at a date certain so you can take a resolution in July that says this is the new cash loop and it shall be effective January 1st 2005 that's something that can be done without a code change but if we know that that's what we're going to start doing then we additionally have to do a code change which is an ordnance and that process takes three to six months and the ordinances aren't quick so there's some things I think that are available to your disposal now and then there's some other things that you guys are working through that we can use to set forth what it'll look like in the future did we come to an decision? leave it alone for right now not today not today but maybe we keep with our quarterly review for this year yeah well we'll have to do a code change and we'd welcome a change if you guys have the data because we don't want to under charge yeah we'll have the data this summer okay do we need to vote on what's been the change? I don't think we need to do anything actually not about change what do you accomplish not as much but it's common okay one thing I might ask though as we do this all this conversation I'm really appreciated and I think it's important to capture what's being said our minutes are pretty action oriented action minutes general discussion involved about that but for somebody that's reading it on the outside may not fully pun intended to appreciate what was being discussed the middle of it Renee said that was great I think the more in my mind I would offer that the board consider giving us some direction of what you would like us to see in terms of capturing what's being discussed so it's not just if it was generally discussed and here's the answer I feel like it might be helpful for everyone to hear that these conversation points now whether that's a more robust minutes or maybe it's we try to take what we heard and put it back into water board communications for next year for next month for you guys to understand but there's been a lot talked about here and I feel like we might do a disservice if we just say well we talked about it I feel like it would be more helpful to get somehow captured in the council communication where you've got what the board has moved in over the years since 1965 does it make sense to include maybe what the value for CBT is over the same time so people can see that this isn't necessarily huge jump versus CBT and I think somebody mentioned to show the population growth just to show that this isn't unreasonable or what's gone on over time is not unreasonable and they have things I mean you could pick out a loaf of bread what it cost in 1965 any of those things but maybe have cost comparisons for a share of CBT over time whether and again it's your time is not equal to the cash in lieu up until from the beginning up until 20 it's going to track really close because that's what it was based on you know an aster didn't that year where it changed now we're looking at something different the general public was starting to oh okay I get it now well to your point Wes are you looking for something from us more than what if you want to have a conversation maybe it's a general direction but you can at least give a suggestion to say that is important to capture what's being discussed because I need to go through six months of discussion only to have the end result that discussion granted people can go back and watch the video that's that's one way of capturing that we didn't have before but the written the written discussion I think is good to have too yeah I mean just to reframe that I mean I think we've all been in meetings right where like you have a meeting and then the next month you have the same meeting and you're like why am I in this meeting again right because the exact same things were just rehashed over and over and so just kind of a general I mean I think you know if you can do that I think we agree with what you're saying okay if you want to put a little more meat in it I think that's fine alright well we'll see if the I'm not necessarily saying this the way it should be but I think I'll have to talk with Heather too I mean I just didn't even have a conversation with her I don't know whether the minutes are best to stay action and then if they are it might be that in our in our next one or more write up we tried to recapture the major tenets of what were discussed here and then you guys could reaffirm that so yeah I see Chris that's my preference to us I prefer not to have the minutes try to yeah determine what was intended to be said yeah 30 days later yeah and you don't want 45 pages of minutes either that's just verbatim that's probably not I mean that may not be overly unbelievable I think it's incumbent upon all of us right to like some point in the next 48 hours or something write down almost kind of like the proposal or something for your like based on the immediate discussion we had here today like what's with what's I mean proposals maybe but like some kind of like hey here's what I'm thinking you know like about this issue and then that's what you kind of like refresh yourself on when you come for the next meeting and then we hit the ground running pretty well nope I never know I've done pretty good meeting minutes so I will report them to our staff we'll go over them we'll look at them but if you guys want to give us like a blur of well you already wrote a memo so that something like that no for you know the more that's part of the record at this point but that's been distributed and that's part of our record so that's different than the minutes it's attached to the minutes capture the synopsis of what was said not what I just said to my opinion exactly yeah so I've got notes Gleaned all right by the team we'll put together a statement and maybe we can send it to you guys I don't know how it works and you guys can be like no you misunderstood me you can get a stab at what we agreed on the timing thing I think you kind of get the sense of we want some regularity everybody wants some regularity and we've been I think we've been looking at it too often no that's a great job you thought that helped me she does do a great job doing just what she said capture those minutes it wouldn't be in the form of an email we wouldn't want to have a meeting by distributing before the next water board but we can at least have them I think available to what we heard for the next meeting and then we can maybe get into issue number three or issue number four I think we all appreciate it they're worthy of discussion and they're not quick answers some of them might be quick answers but if they're really thoughtful about they're probably not well thank you but I guess this will be continued next month yeah well yes that's okay yeah I find that while there's more no problem in waiting on that one this is a six or eight month conversation would a workshop be an appropriate format too I don't know my public meeting format we can do a workshop that's something we have to something that can maybe let us speak freely there's so much background we gotta get I don't think we can we'll be lucky to get it every month so that's okay items future board I don't think there's anything that we need to discuss anybody got anything just one quick thing on the items for board just to remind the board the National Guard training was under here at Bad Rock it was last week this week and next week they do their fire road training with uh we trained firefighters out of work with the aerial drops so we're pulling both the batchy and water shell helicopters everybody wants to go for a trip over there you don't get a ride you don't get a ride you don't get a dump dipping bucket Wednesdays and Thursdays so it's this Wednesday and this Thursday and next Wednesday and next Thursday so I'm not sure they'll fly this week because of the weather in fact almost sure they won't but if the weather's good they'll fly next Wednesday just go up for a short hike and make a a view or if you want a trip up there we'd be happy to drive right there and watch them but it's pretty fascinating to watch them work right anything else we're adjourned just real quick stand with our St. Brain is looking to do an open space sales tax extension in November they're trying to well they would like to come to the Water Board to get a a nod of support for that as well as the Parks and Recreation Board as well as the Space Ability Board just an extension you say what they're looking for is if you're familiar with the transportation tax is to make it a permanent tax as it exists now so they would like to come to the board do a brief presentation and I know that they mentioned that they would like to get a letter of support for these extensions so if we could figure out a way to get that group in here to do that I guess they could do it probably be better for the board I would think to have it scheduled rather than them to bob in and do their thing you want to work that through, Ken? yeah, certainly can we would have appreciate that well, anybody against it? I do know that they've changed the language of the open space sales tax to incorporate more forest health and water, riparian enhancement and preservation okay we'll schedule it this would be informational again, I think what they want at some point in time they're going to go to council to try to get it on a member ballot when they were looking for us to recommend something to council probably or a statement of you would support the extension what that might be again, they're going to be doing that with the department advisory board as well as the sustainability board we can put those options on okay alright, anything else? anybody? yeah