This meeting of the Longmont Parks and Recreation Advisory Board, and please come to order. Please call the roll. Miss Sue Alborg is absent. Mr. Jeff Ellenbogan is absent. Mr. Manoj Gawar is present. Miss Pedrois is here. Mr. Dan Olson is absent. Mr. Bob Putnam is here. Miss Cacha Stopli is here. And Council Liaison, Mr. Aaron Rodriguez is absent. Thank you. Any changes to the agenda? No. Okay, can I hear a motion to approve the agenda as it stands, unless anyone else has any? I will approve the agenda. Second? Eight seconds. All in favor? Thank you. Motion passes. Approval of the previous month's minutes. Any comments or corrections? I did not see anything that needed to be corrected. Okay. I'm going to move the minutes. Please give her a chance to... One second. All in favor of approving the minutes? Please signify by saying aye. Aye. Second. Public invited to be heard. Aye. Please state your name and address, and tell us what you're here to tell us. I'm here to tell anything. I'm here to observe tonight, so great. Well, welcome. My name is Dan Jones. I live at 825 Hullside Court. One month. With Saint Grenfey, we've been here a handful of meetings. We just had a tournament this past weekend with 170 teams. That was spread out amongst a handful of facilities. Sandstone being one. Pleasant View in Boulder being one. East Boulder Rec Center being another. Twin Peaks Charter Academy being another. And a late addition because a big chunk of sandstone was not playable, which came...obviously there was a lot of snow, which came to us on a Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday timeframe. We were kind of up in the air. So we had to move... We worked out to be like 50 or 60 games to Tom Watson Park, which your local business, that takes away a lot of people traveling through La Motte. Now they're just traveling through Boulder, Iowa, Gunnarow. So just...it's a great event, though. Give it a whether. Thank you. Old business. Do we have any old business? No. New business. Use of public places for crossings. Hello, Ben. Hi. My name is Ben Wagner. I'm with Recreation. And I also act as Ams Butzman for the city of the UOPP process. And I'm going to go over what this is about. Just so you guys know kind of what we do. Recreation's role within that system. A little bit about my role within that system. So... I'll move it started. All right. Come on. And if I screw up, give me a break, because I'm getting super nervous in new groups for me. If I've been around a while, I'm really comfortable with it. So what is use of public places permit? UOPP trying to use a public place for purpose of conducting a special event, organizing a black party, sellers of alcohol. You must obtain a use of public places special event permit in the city clerk's office. Do many people go and use the parks for weddings? Yes. Which part? The most popular part for weddings is both Roosevelt and Dawson are two most popular parks. They don't use the mansion? This one is about... Use of public places is always specifically about outdoor areas. So that's a great question, because that is specific to outdoor this whole thing. So some examples of what we have. Rhythm on the River, that city event, left-hand run by left-hand. Longmont Symphony is kind of a group effort between the city and the symphony. The downtown concert, so LVBA, our parades and races, that's a lot of us. In recreation, Cinque de Mayo, and then some private events. Weddings, Roosevelt, Sandstone has become a more popular spot for weddings. We've been getting more out there over the last couple of years. It's pretty small, but it's a really neat location. A lot of family and company peg-mechs, a lot of... that will come into this, it will be graduation parties, for example, when they do alcohol. So alcohol is the determinant? That's kind of the determinant in those private events. And class or family reunions. And so these are the things that kind of, is it required? And there are some gray areas, and that's sometimes where I come in, is to try to help private citizens or organizations to understand how to maneuver, do they really need one? Rachelle Hinman also with Recreation, really. This is really what she does, and then I'll jump in and help her where it's needed. We have road closures, selling something, serving or selling alcohol, charging. Amplified sound. There's a good one. So, for example, a radio set on a table, it's technically amplified sound, but we kind of look at it as something that is put forth to an area. Not ambient music, not background music, but something that is specifically amplified for the event. Just try to use common sense, for example. Is there a, do you collect sales tax when it has admissions or anything like that? I mean, is there, is having these events, is it able to raise money for? Well, there are fees involved, so there are city fees involved, but sales tax, no. Allowing things that are sold. Oh, not admission charge. No. Admission is pretty rare for an admission charge. We don't see that very often. See if you don't care whether the private party is charging or not. Okay. So, pick a little left-hand. Yeah, left-hand. Yeah, so we get a cut of that? No, they go through the fee. Yeah, that's a good point. So that would be one. A left-hand event would be an example of a four-feed event. We don't have anything to do with that. They pay for use of public places and the use of the park itself, which we'll get into a little bit. So, how do you get started? Here you go. We're talking about the number. Block party's 20s, ninth last year. Use of public places with alcohol. 40 of those, just alcohol in public places, just a few of those. And then 80, so combined. You can do a combined, but right about 160 events that are like this. So there's a lot of them. A ton of them, they just kind of go through the process. We don't see family parties. We don't need to see that as a group. To get started, they call Recreation, or they can call the city clerk's office, and we'll get them to the right person. I think one of the things to point out too is, if it's a park shelter with no alcohol, Recreation schedules all of those, and there's about 1,500 of those every year, that don't go through this process unless they want to have alcohol or they amplify it sound. So, every weekend from, every weekend from the middle of April when the bathroom's opening until they close in November, with a particular analysis on the summer weeks, it's dozens of shelters rented every single weekend. And that's a process that we take care of again outside of this process. Okay, where can I have my event? This is where we try to help. We've got, Lomont's got great facilities, lots of nature areas, 45 parks. We try to figure out, there are parks that are appropriate for some things, some parks are not as appropriate. Trying to fit the square pig into a hexagon. Road closure, obviously a huge deal with where your event is. We help determine, and usually we'll start with Rachelle in our office, and she knows, she's been doing this for a while, so she knows what type of event will fit in particular venues, and then try to help them pick one that's going to be most successful for them. And that's sometimes where I'll get involved with them, as far as trying some additional help from me. One of the things that we've done in Roosevelt Park is we have implemented quiet weekends. There were so many things happening in the park that the neighbors were being impacted every single weekend. So if we have two events back to back, two weekends, the third weekend is what we call a quiet weekend, and we don't schedule anything in the park that weekend. Don't schedule anything at all? Versus scheduling the quiet things? No, nothing at all with you anyway. Yeah, it's, you know, I feel like shelter might be better. I'm sure quiet things can be easy to come out. Yeah, yeah. But a shelter rental at Roosevelt, like the Stone Shelter, which we've been working on, that would be something we would rent, but that's usually a kid's part of that sort of thing. Okay. Okay, the process with recreation services. When they call us, what type of event is it? What type of thing are they doing? Are they selling things? Are they doing alcohol? What are the numbers involved? Work on the location kind of went through that a little bit. Parking spaces are a huge issue. Is it a race? Is it a concert? You've got to have enough parking. Neighborhood, Jeff hit on that a little bit. We try to think about that with every event. There's been some weddings that we've had at Dawson, for sure, some big ones out there that the neighbors are close. They're really close. That can be a big deal. And are the amenities appropriate? Do they have the shelters that they need, and they have playground, open space? And then we go through, we'll collect the fee for an issue, the facility permit, which goes into the process as recreations part of, here's us saying yes to this event. Ben, is the fee a fixed amount, or is it from rate depending on the size of the event? It depends on the size of the event. So I think it's 100 and over. I don't have the exact number. Yes, yes. Slighting. And then when the customer goes through and does the UOPP, that's what they want to have, is that facility permit. They put that in their UOPP application, and that shows that they've got the location rate. Okay, so some other factors that go in, once we get into the UOPP process, which is in the clerk's office, it's a pretty extensive form. We're working on it, trying to get it so it can be online eventually, where they can just, I imagine TurboTax myself, where if you click something, you skip the next eight things. We're not there yet, and so it tends to be a little bit of a long process, but we're working on it. So you have need insurance, sanitation, both bathrooms and garbage. That's to have a plan. We do have guidelines for the amount of porta-potties included in addition to the amount of toilets that might be within the park. The environmental impact, I don't know about that. The park impact. High-risk activities, so are they doing a climbing wall or animals? High-risk activities. High-risk activity. Again, the neighborhood impact and back to the park again, they're always a huge factor. So we've got to have a certificate of insurance with City of Longmont. Sanitation plan, the impact and parks kind of works on that. They will take that piece and determine what's going on in the park. Do we have issues in it? Do we have a flooded park previously? We need to stay off and area, for example. There you go. Bounce houses, kayak pools, fireworks, jousting. Yeah, it happens. Not traditional horse, but we do have the anachronistic groups. It's exciting to create an anachronistic group. Anachronistic there. Thank you. Do you remember? I have a couple friends who are. If I was, I wouldn't out myself. So again, neighborhood impact and Jeff hit on that number of events. Roosevelt Star. It can be every weekend at Roosevelt. We can do stuff. And back to the park again. And then we'll offer... That's not in English. Yeah, it's just representing that everybody has to do... You probably didn't just put words in. Yeah. No, they're not. Anyway, door hangers or something that we do around that we do and events that happen that the area is surrounding. So they have to have a plan to notify the neighbors and we require them to go through and put door hangers on and give them a template for it. We'll really help people try to do that to make sure. That's one of the biggest things always is to make sure the neighborhood knows what's going on. If they know your problems, they'll take you down. I guess the door hanger includes contact information. On-site. On-site. Oh, good. This is great. I've lived a couple of houses away from Roosevelt for, well, on and off since 2003. And they do a great job. It used to be, you wouldn't know about it. These guys did a great job. They get flyers three or four days beforehand and tells you all the information you need to know. So it's working well at Roosevelt anyway. Thanks, Steve. One of the questions I was going to ask at some point, but I'll ask it here, is if you have an issue with something that's going on in a park or whatever, but you're not a neighbor and you don't have a door hanger or a flyer, how do you know who the contact is? Well, that would be, you can always call the police. So non-emergency dispatch. And that's, they're the right people. You're going to tell them what's going on or what your concern is. Yeah, it's been one of the police. But the police can often contact recreation if somebody's around.  They have their own call list for us. So if it's something that really needs to happen, I'm on that call list. Jeff's on that call list where they can get, they can always get a hold of one of us. Police can and we can maybe help with that if we need to on an emergency basis. Well, because I know that, you know, some of you know that like I've been to events at Prospect or whatever, and I found all the people in the hand kept parking and stuff and then I don't know who to go tell that. I would call the clerk's office in that sense. And since then in Prospect, they don't do those large events anymore based on just the amount of people they ended up getting. It was overwhelming. Who's in charge of monitoring these programs and stuff? And who's in charge of like, is there a park police that we say or the police department? I mean, who can have some control over? Well, the reason that we do this process is so that when they do the event, they have the event organizer and that person is responsible on site for the event that day. We have their contact information. We can contact them. That is the responsible person. Our process with a problem is through emergency services or certainly recreation if we're around or we can be gotten hold of at any time. So we don't put at a private event like a left hand event other than Jeff may go out to listen to music and some of our people always do. We don't staff that. They don't have a staff person on that. Obviously, our events, it's full of our staff. So we're not just worried about that. Staff or is it working out okay? It's my belief that the system has been working pretty darn well. Usually, these bigger events are people that have been with us for a while. They know what they're doing. Left hand is a great example. They've got a pretty dial-down. And they have to have so many police officers for hundreds or thousands of people that are there. If they have alcohol. Anytime there's alcohol, there has to be police. Police department has started also requiring security officers in the sense that they're not there about alcohol. They're there if something bad goes on in the event. They found that being present ends the situation much quicker than if they have to be called into the site. Yeah. The police have done a good job the last two years of refining that to make sure there's enough security at any sort of event that might have a risk like that. So that would be that level. A little bit about that. Notice is the one you needed was close to the neighborhood. Yeah. Sandstone. Yeah. I think there's two neighbors there. Yeah. But at Willow Farm we would require Willow Farm, Thompson and you know, any of the places like that. Okay, so traffic control. This is a really big part of a lot of events because it's a triathlon, it's a bike race, it's a bike camp. Lots of those that happen both with us and with the public. That's where we come together. We have a traffic control meeting and meet with that group about what their plan is. So at their own expense they have to go to a professional company a lot of times around here it's level and barricade, that's who we use to put out traffic control devices and have plan to have event personnel have volunteers have police when traffic control is needed as a particular intersection. So before permit is approved, we have a meeting and I'm in that meeting which we'll talk about my role a little bit with that. So the alcohol AOPP put in a little bit about this so this is kind of specific needs for just the AOPP is a little bit different. We try to so you don't have to go through the whole process just to have alcohol and these are the guidelines it doesn't actually come up a whole lot just the AOPP but the rule is if you're privately giving so it's a non-profit or something and you're giving alcohol to your group you have to keep it within 50p from the reserve portion the shelter reserve portion and we need that outline of what that looks like. If you're selling alcohol that goes into you have to have a license for that day you have to have a plan with a map it has to be venced you have to have security so people cannot go without alcohol in that area. Rhythm on the river, that's what we do we go through that process we don't have to go to court if we've done it the year before but we do give it to the court they make it available for public comment during a period of time before the event if you went out to Rogers Grove in June you'll see our poster out there that says when our actually you see our poster out there when our hearing is if you would like to comment so that's that's that part no glass bottle things in city parks so will the request be approved several factors involve the staffing needs impact the neighborhood are the annual events you have to have a completed permit and insurance once they've done the process it's rare how many times do you think I don't think we've ever denied an event so we try to give them enough information so that when they go through this process and they come out the other end they're going to be successful often we'll have some tweaks at a traffic meeting something pops up we need to have them make adjustments but we want them to be successful that's my main role successful when they run into some roadblocks this is everybody that can be involved it's everybody can be involved we got everybody all the way out to council if we had a something that was real big when I think like the concert we had at union heaven fest anybody any group in the city just about can be involved how many no it's been 2006 no it was when I was here I know a time slide I was here no it wouldn't be earlier than that because Bessler was still here when you start 30,000 people out there so all of these groups this is just to show that we have a system within the computer and everybody gets to take a look people that are responsible for good marriage you're supposed to sign off on here's one of our permits we give it to them, this actually is a volleyball permit that's it that's the process we give that out to them to get that done so near the end here my role I will be an official position I don't get paid for it thanks Jim I'm Zvezven for the city of Laumont this has evolved the idea of helping applicants find ways to be successful with their events with city departments that they might need permission interaction and assistance from so I think the way this my position, current position to doing this evolved was sometimes among TV I try to put it delicately sometimes individuals in the public can have difficulty with parts of the city at times dealing with them and getting some things done so my role is to go in there and try to help to mesh that help them to get together bring them from here to here Jeff started doing that five years ago or so because we had some difficulties at some traffic meetings it turned out to be a really good thing and I really enjoyed it myself so that kind of is what my role is it doesn't come up a whole lot absolutely but once in a while I think us in recreation we're used to dealing with the public a lot so that kind of is a natural thing for us okay do we have any more questions there are a guy in an orange shirt right oh yeah orange where's the orange shirt by the way who's the guy with that gotcha see that was at the gate of the race when I was near Jeff because I smoked him he was a granddaughter he couldn't keep up that's Jeff's granddaughter Rob you had a question I would assume there are well 50 or 60 homeless people in town or is it more than that more than that I would guess it's higher I would guess it's higher than that it's higher than that in any case are they a problem for these events? yes not generally there are always specific things that can come up at an event but in general when you have large events people experiencing homeless that are chronic that we know of for example at the memorial building quite a bit they don't want to be around large crowds so when a large crowd like that happens they tend to go elsewhere things can come up from time to time but no it's not a problem on any basis any other questions? thank you Ben appreciate your time anything else from you Jeff? no thank you I'll take this okay we're going to review the recreation cost recovery policy is that your Jeff? yeah this won't take very long every couple of years we just want to cover cost recovery for recreation based on the city council's policy that we are required to recover 80% of every dollar that we spend excluding capital over $5,000 so as an example of that if we buy a treadmill at the rec center it costs $4,900 we have to cost recover that one if it costs $5,001 we don't have to cost recover that's just a simple way to explain that difference community events that are free are also excluded sort of events like rhythm on the river and mom not lights are not included into the cost recovery because they are generally free to the public sports field maintenance several years ago recreation started marking fields and there's really no way to directly recover all that money so that's not included in cost recovery youth enrichment programs that are offered specifically for at risk kids the one program that we do now is our teen soccer program that is run through along with the middle schools we have about 10 teams that participate in that all other items are required to be recovered all salaries all costs of doing business utilities gas that sort of thing are all included in the division's cost recovery are the items that are excluded is this a list that has developed organically and you're making your own guidelines or is this pretty pretty set by this the policy that was included in the packet council is the only ones that can do any type of exclusions or changes to that policy adaptive events are generally included in the cost recovery but we internally within recreation have made a decision that will recover about 50% and then cover the rest of it for that, yeah and that seems to work out really well again, those are the exclusions again community events and youth programs any specific questions you have so far I was just wondering can you obtain grants from different people to account for that 80% I guess my next question is how hard is it to get the 80% since we opened the rec center it hasn't been very difficult at all we have averaged around 90 to 95% each year I will put a caveat on the behalf of Babatom that it's only including those things that are in the recreation budget so one of the things that a lot of other places may not be able to do but facility maintenance and facility operations for example, they do a lot of the maintenance facilities, we don't have to cost recover that because it's not in our budget at some point in time the city manager is going to move all those costs into recreation not necessarily keep the cost recovery at 80% but he really believes it's important to be able to demonstrate to the community what it really costs to run the rec center or Roosevelt activity pool those sorts of things so we have a budget this year of just over 5.8 million dollars our cost recovery revenue amount is just a little over 4.5 million dollars and if you exclude those items that I talked about the field maintenance and so on it brings our cost recovery budgeted this year to about 4.2% so it goes across all of the facilities it's not facility by facility? we can calculate it that way but it's the bottom dollar that consoles worry about and then we also do a scholarship program that really is not included good or bad in cost recovery and I say that that way because we really know dollars that cover the nearly 90,000 dollars that are given away in scholarships each year we just absorb that in our operation of the 90,000 that is given away on average about 68,000 of that is actually used by those that get the scholarships these scholarships are sports and stuff so they can be $100 up to $100 anybody 18 under the age of 18 and they can be used for any program within recreation except contracted programs so if we contract a karate class it wouldn't be used because it would actually cause recreation to have to write a check to that contractor but a lot of the scholarships are used for summer passes to be able to use the different facilities when kids are out of school these are individual scholarships to individuals as opposed to programs that can be subscribed to at no cost thank you any questions? that 84% of what is the target was A is the target so this year about that target yeah and generally we'll probably come in depending on what happens in our world and the impact that might have on our facilities but I would guess that so far January, February are have been pretty good months were 75,000 plus ahead of last year so I'd anticipate that we would be up 88 by years in again that's projected not knowing what's going to happen anything else for Jeff on cost recovery? open space acquisition yes it's me so this is a property that we have talked about in the past Dan's not going to say that he's the one who brought it in the past but this is what I like in all of this Clover Basin and so at Nelson Road on the 7th of February here yes this is Boulder County's Law and Reservoir and they have another whole section right here and then this is Clover Basin and since 2014 Pram has taken us to Boulder County and said what are your priorities for property acquisition this has been on that list since 2014 and then Dan brought it back in 2019 and we give a little bit of background here because the county came to the city and said hey this property which was known as the Johnson Land Trust was sold and now it's back on the market to carve off some of the acres around the Reservoir and said would you like us to proceed with this and we said that would be great the county was willing to take on the upfront cost of doing this so they're doing the full acquisition that goes to Boulder County commissioners tomorrow for them to approve this with the understanding that the city's goal would be to try to come to an IG agreement with them that we would participate in half that acquisition of the cost sequence is off because the county had a willing seller and something they knew we wanted to do so they were taking that risk but because council and Harold everybody wanted like a 90 day leave time to get new items in front of council we'll be taking this to city council on May 19 so just for this board if you hear about it you're seeing the paper it's a property that has been out there from this body and from the office space program since 14 we've been taking the lead on this the negotiations are coming from money up front and then the city will have some time to pay that back actually over time so we do or do not have a legal obligation to pay it back at this point we do not have anything written that is the intent I think the party's in good faith this has been on our list is the liked versus business but until council approve that we do not have any sort of formal obligation to do that and what form do you see that taking there'd be an IGA the county would do the acquisitions they would then sell the back to the city and they would hold a conservation easement to kind of make sure that we maintain those open space values that's also something that the city council has required that the city does anyway so when we purchase an open space property we have to go to another party and ask them to hold a conservation easement so it'd be the same sort of situation but instead of the city seller wanting someone to hold a conservation easement it'd be the county selling it to us and they would maintain and hold that conservation easement to make sure that those open space values sit I think in the city and county they're pretty much online they start looking at open space values viewsheds, wildlife habitat non-passive recreation those things that we typically see in county open space and again I think out here we'd be looking at things if you think about logman, reservoir or a pressure flying trail around it we'd be probably looking at the same things up here through a public access so that'd be one of the things that we definitely have had to talk to the county and to the county's constituents that you know what would this look like and if the city goes through and council directs us to continue with this negotiation with the county and the IGA we would do a public process and that would be how we would determine what's appropriate use out there also natural resources staff would be involved in that and it may turn out just like logman closures on this end because of osprey there may be significant wildlife habitat out here that we may not be able to open the whole property up so those are things that are hard for us to come out and tell neighbors and stuff what it'll look like because one we haven't done that natural resource inventory and two we haven't done a public process and that's what a long model it comes to those conclusions on what it would look like is through that public process with natural resources staff weighing in on what that might look like can I just zoom in on that can I get so the other thing is you know is it the the city has about 95-99% of the water in this so we really do manage a lot of this there's 50 and that company that I'm a polar basin reservoir company leases out the surface use at this point those are all things that could change if this use have ownership of this running property so basically the reservoir company owns this little road around it and then this portion up here what the city time you purchase it is basically this area around here to give us all this area so there could be something there's parking and stuff in here but again it's not a big parking lot I think some of the neighbors are concerned that when I start thinking about other city facilities that look like McIntosh Lake and would their backyard look like that and you know it's hard to say it looks like in 20-30 years but if you think about kind of the porosity of McIntosh Lake and people can come in from the backyards and side streets and neighborhoods this does not have that same sort of environment around you're willing to get out there you have to work a bit more for it you have to be able to go into a hike and jog in or probably deal with some limited parking at a spot that is pretty much constrained by adjacent landowners and I think you know as you see it looks like a public process we're always looking to get input from the surrounding areas to make sure we're fitting the surrounding areas as well and I think that more rural areas would be something that would try to keep that feeling rather than a more urban part to it. The one thing I wanted to add is that we've also been petitioning Boulder County to have access to the AHI sorry it comes down to here open space that they bought we think there's a good potential this is a 10 acre future neighborhood park site right here here's Dry Creek park right here the Dry Creek Greenway trail essentially goes from the mall Village of the Peaks to 75th on uninterrupted at this point in time we would like to make an under path on a north 75th street to connect into AHI which is a five mile loop there and then we've talked about well gee if we go up here do we do another box underneath Nelson Road to connect that as well some really great separate across and so those are things that we're thinking about as we're making purchasing this land and trying to make longer pedestrian connections for people to use for recreation Can you tell us why? I don't know if I knew the something planned unit not urban plan What is that? Nelson Road is one of my short cuts to Boulder traffic, relatively traffic to Boulder and I drive faster walking and sometimes you see motor boats pulling skiers and at this facility here it has floats on it let's have the answer to Paige's question first and then we'll get to Rob's question so I don't know if this time would describe better but a planned urban development is something you typically see in a more urban environment you know accessible shopping those sort of things that come with more of that urban feeling so that people have access to that in a non urban environment it typically is trying to keep that urban feeling to allow for a lot of development and stuff and are you seeing something that I'm just going to ask that question what this is going to be developed so I just don't know what that is Clover Basin Ranch that is that's already private property that exists I'm not sure what they are going to do with the private property I could I don't know from the county but I really don't know the same color as county conservation so that they probably so sometimes with conservation uses they allow for that the development of X number of houses on that so that the conservation easement asks that you have to put all your density in one portion of that and leave the rest undeveloped so I'm speaking a little bit out of school because this is the county's process but they will do that so that people can potentially get an additional unit on it but it's because it's clustered in an area that preserves the larger integrity of the property if you're looking at that map right here right now we still as of the day before going to the county commissioners the sellers live right here and they're concerned by the trail right along the property so they ask if the county sells this to the city that if they could have the ability to have the county maintain a conservation easement over this it would not allow the public upon this little strip right here that still allows for opportunities around the whole property but it gives them a little bit of a buffer so we're still having that conversation as of today and Rob was asking about current recreational and use of clothes well I was just thinking that it's a I see a lot of birds right on that degree there it's a stop on the migration route and I see motor boats and water what's the plan what's the county's vision of what's going to go there so again that's the piece where first of all again this will continue to be owned by the reservoir company until at some point the city has full ownership I'm sure that will then be something that we look at doing but right now the reservoir itself is owned by the reservoir company so they're the ones that lease that recreational component of it given when the city had that we would be able to have those conversations at that point on what is consistent with the use out there and I think it would have to resource that this is one bias lens to look through is really recognized as a great sample of migratory birds and having been out there along through there are some picking tables and stuff right here just looking across this to the west that western view out to Longs and Meeker across that with the waterfall on it is a great opportunity I just thought it was closed it is closed because the reservoir company is still closed I can just get close we really when we put this in that's one of the things I think the crowd and natural resources and open space program said this would be a great opportunity we are again I don't want to step out there's like I would say there's no do we have public process one of the things that natural resource really talks about really this had an opportunity to put a bird line somewhere out here where people just can go out and have this a little less intensive use on this property and try to highlight some of the view sheds and the wildlife on this property so soft surface trails maybe get some bird lines but again that's just David talking from just looking throughout there that can go into the public process turn over to the professionals that company on the who on the water so the majority of the water rights are owned by the city at this point so I can imagine at some point that we would have the ability to bring those in and then there really would give us a lot more opportunity to deal with the recreation on the water as well as those picking tables and everything else about this I think we could manage it much more holistically once the city has purchased it from the county and taken over all the rights I think it's about 95-98% the city has the rights and the reservoir at this point I know we haven't really talked about it too much in this group but we're in those two hats for city employees and when we say we have 90, even 9% there's still a fiduciary responsibility to that water and that company so the city sometimes has to act in the best interest of the reservoir company and the ditch company while still recognizing they are city employees but they still have those two hats and when they're voting for something that let's say by having that lease to a ski club reduces the fees and assessments on the reservoir company reduces the cost to the city to maintain that they have to wear that hat when they're voting at the time so once it really switches over all to the city then we can take a look at it as well it's a challenge to be in a video with them how are you wearing right now as you're speaking because they go back and forth really well but it's hard as not a person who's in that to understand where they're coming from and if you think if you're the house that had those shares on that company and you've been paying historically a pretty low fee for your water and the city decided that the city's best interest not to have that lease anymore but then all the other shareholders ended up having to pay more because that lease went away that's the piece where they're still trying to wear that hat and the city shared the piece as well so it's that piece they've been looking at all times how they did to Resport company while still under Desiccant as a city employee so do you need any action from this I don't think we do I think it's been the fact that it's been to this board before they put it on the agenda in 14 it's been part of the CIP process and then Dan did an update and it looks like it was actually just December of last year when he brought the whole list of properties and asked for his board's direction if he wanted to move forward with that so at this point it's informational I guess I think it's information seriously can you go a little down go I'm sorry who owns the land near the Lagerville reservoir Boulder County actually now owns this is what they consider HII property that's basically what they're on the board they own this whole section and down here there's a lot of them in reservoir complex I took a walk to find my walk cause it was a good trail there nice to see it it's a very nice loop when you get down there it's just a really unique place because it drops down into so you kind of lose everything around it's just amazing views off to the west you don't see the housing, you don't see the roads you don't hear much so it's a pretty unique spot it's just being very nice to that up there and I guess maybe the one thing that because I had it on the agenda this group is we're going to Boulder County tomorrow and then we have council coming up that this group would want to take a vote and say they're supportive of us moving forward with this acquisition that would be a cultural objective did we do that in December? what's that? what did we do in December? that's like it was kind of a big group as part of the bigger group here's a lot of things going on and you're good with that and to be this individual property then because council will probably have that alright I'm willing to entertain a motion recommending to council that the city proceed with cooperating with the county on this this purchase and a potential future IGA does anyone want to make that motion? thank you ok let's review it prab recommends to city council that the city proceed with a cooperative a cooperative agreement with Boulder County for the McLaughlin Open Space acquisition for the I can't pronounce it McLaughlin Acquisition I was going to say I can't pronounce it but I can read it off to you so prab recommends to city council that the city proceeds with a cooperative agreement for the McLaughlin Land Acquisition with Boulder County it goes with spelling actually this is a type of a C oh god N-C-L-A-C-H-L-A-N exactly ok the motion has been made in a second any discussion all in favor all opposed motion passes unanimously thank you field trip ok so the background here is that on this board we generally at some point in the summer have a field trip to some place that is not this room sometimes this is in conjunction with another advisory board or another group some sort and so we are here in March and we have not yet planned a field trip for this summer and so examples of previous field trips have been going up to Ralph Price Reservoir I'm out to Union Reservoir do Union Reservoir stand still so this is an opportunity unfortunately while we have quorum we do not have full attendance members of the board if there is some part of the city's parks and rec operation open space natural resources that you are particularly interested in don't know very much about this would be a good time to say can we go yes yes Dickens yeah it's really a new place I don't know going along the trail along the river too I'm very interested in this three hours today so I can do it at any point and tomorrow we've done internal tours to help get staff up to speed and everyone's got other citizens really impressed with that thing I just quickly appreciate that I would love to see them too Rob? yes I also would like to say nice to see you and I think I'd like to visit a golf course I don't play golf well I've never been we're not a golf board there's a separate golf board there's a separate board for the golf courses we are not a golf board he's got two boards he's got two boards we used to be the golf board but they have their own board now so if you want to go golf and just go Jeff will give you a pass scholarship let's have a club let's you know, rough in that we want to go to Dickens Farm area because I think everybody's excited about all the new developments all I would add is that there is going to be some sort of grand opening for Dickens and not only Dickens but to celebrate the resentencing of the project and Council's plan for development of the land north of Boston Avenue and it could be a cultural event there's lots of things that are floating around out there that staff I met with them last week but they're looking at something in late May to do some sort of a celebration out there and like a Monday afternoon or Wednesday afternoon or something like that so I'm happy to get tours at that point also if you wanted to go somewhere else if you were able to attend you will be invited to that I don't know a date yet but I select the idea something geared towards this court so that we can ask questions so are we looking at July? whenever if you could give us proposed dates we can check to see about getting are you going to invite Council again? absolutely so get on Council agenda and see when that will work let's look at July this would be in lieu of the July meeting typically in Pennsylvania July 13th is when the meeting is scheduled we're going to synchronize your calendars tell me what works, who doesn't work we'll ask this question again next month when maybe some more of our members will be here I will start with I'm open the 13th or if some other day is better I'm sorry I was again July 13th I just mean I'll be here okay so let's attend to plan that for July 13th and go to Council I can definitely cover Steve but he's involved but he does a great job I'm going to grab tour anything else on that ongoing items everybody take a cruise through ongoing items questions, comments, concerns I'm excited about the Mackintosh like interpretive something yes, Daniel's done a really nice job with that I think it's going to be ever aware of that or has it been a little bit of an update on that or an aligning additional I'm also excited about Daniel potentially getting a volunteer coordinator yes, as are we all I have a couple questions when I saw that Olander property sounds like they're not going to work with us anymore I'm just wondering what so I think what the challenge is is when we just got we've gotten so fortunate we've had a lot of willing it's always a willing buyer, willing sellers we've been able to make some good deals happen, Olanders have been out there for a while we've been talking to them but it's never lined up and I think when they finally lined up we had committed some other resources to other projects we were in the process of trying to negotiate different term agreements and I think they were needing to try to cash out and unfortunately they didn't come to us with that offer and they went and reached out to the Olander family said something doesn't work we're used to willing to work with the city and they that's it, yes, they consider that at this point sounds like they found someone that can meet their price or terms do you anticipate what the United States will happen with that property? You know it's hard to say they have told us right now that it is a far more out of the really area so that could be for the next six months the next six years but we really don't know and my other question I see Jim Crick's name on here and his charge to leave the name on the unnatural stream borders so sometimes what he's doing so it's a collaborative effort between him and engineering and operations who does and our floodplain engineers to really do something that I think is unique in the fact that we have a very managed creek that comes to the town that really is a water delivery system that if you look at all the rights and who owns the water and it really has for the last hundred years been a water delivery system but trying to manage a way that allows for the natural areas to exist and co-exist with that make sure we deal with our floodplain to keep people safe during flood events make sure that as we allow things to grow back to be natural that it doesn't impact that floodway so we can get in and clean it up and clear it out manage this resource and very, very multi-pronged balancing act that Jim has just kind of worked with but I think it's really good to work with Jim and Daniel this morning walking around the same frame east of Martin Street and I heard Jim say to somebody that oh no this is because they were asking why we would have to pull out all the the volunteer Cottonwoods and Willows and Jim's like oh it's an engineer channel that's the first time I've ever heard him say that but it's true it's not necessarily a creek anymore it's an engineer channel that acts as a creek as it moves to the city and so he's been working with the storm drainage engineers and operations folks so much that he understands that now that we're trying to make it as native and as appropriate as we possibly can with other goals in mind especially once we took FEMA dollars and they said that you have to engineer this in a way that passes 100 year flood through your town so that's kind of since I've been here I think on those groups it really has been how do we take an engineer structure put it in a way that tries to achieve as much natural capacity possible and then overlay it with as much natural environment as possible knowing that underlying structure really has to function as that carrying capacity for the water delivery flood conveyance as well and talking about pulling those little willows the engineering doesn't point that it's like a bathtub that it holds that's not it put a bowling ball in it it starts to overflow so we we designed the tree we came down all of every tree in Willows on that creek we designed that there can be a tree here if you get another tree that creek no longer holds that capacity so we have to get a management program that allows us not to let it get back to a point where it doesn't carry the capacity it was designed for so it's going to be an ongoing maintenance piece that we have to we've talked to Danielle and she doesn't find anybody interested in pulling native plants from my pairing area so it's not a very hot a volunteer project and FEMA could come back at any time and say we're not meeting the requirements of the money you're giving and they said they could start applying money back I know if Dan were here he would find out that in two weeks is the chick Clark fishing Yes, Lori is running it for this year Lori and Scott Severs Dan's recovering from surgery so he'll be out for another four or five weeks All of your kids 15 and under send them over to Yeah, they always have a great time Anything else in ongoing items? I see restaurants are opening soon Anything in the recreation ongoing items stuff? It's just 16 17 No wonder Rob's confused it says golf fitness right here Well we're doing things for golf Okay Items from staff Steve Yeah Let's see I'm going to pass these around So you may have seen the news recently that Longmont has adopted a new brand and logo and they are looking to incorporate that into signage and everything our website has been transformed and our business cards and mailers and utility bill and all that sort of stuff are in the process of being changed to accommodate the new brand that city manager's office I don't think I like to counsel the brand I think it was just an informed sort of thing but they have a new logo it was in the paper the other day this is something that's been engaged Longmont the survey ends today I don't know if that's today this morning or today midnight this is the survey so we printed it out for you but they really only ask you if you like option A or option B there wasn't any chance for comments or anything like that the idea behind this is that it's going to be you know grand entry signs and let people know when you're entering Longmont whether it's coming south on 287 from Berthold coming west on 119 from the highway coming through the diagonal from Bowler and I'm not sure how they're going to address coming from the west but looking into the big entry signs and then there's just a generally assigned package for vehicle navigation and then the thought is to have some of this downtown this project was funded in partnership with the downtown authority, Visit Longmont, and the city paid some too so as part of this consultant's task is to come up with wayfinding signs that integrate this new brand into the city's greenway and park system and so you could be seeing on page where Public Library is on your that could say Sandstone Ranch that could say Clark Park so that's something that we're working with the team the project began last year in March and there was some public outreach last summer but neither Kathy nor I were involved in it so we don't know exactly what that looked like apparently they had there was an event at Roosevelt where they had a tent asking people what they thought about the new logo and brand and something at the farmers market there we're working on final design and an implementation plan and the designs will be done at the end of April there's two consult well the city brand was done by a firm out of Cleveland and the woman who is doing the actual design of the signs that you see here is out of Pittsburgh which she lived in Colorado for 20 plus years and moved back there to take care of an alien parent and so she's Colorado's heart so she knows you know about the area which is good but it does include you know gateway signs wayfinding signs for vehicles pedestrian wayfinding signs street signs if you go over the village to Peaks you'll notice that the new logo is on some of the street sides over that area parking signs destination signs being park entries and city facilities and then wayfinding, regulation and kiosks and things like that in the greenway along greenways and parks DDA has half million dollars ready to start building these things they're going to be building one there's a median just in Main Street adjacent to it's not south Main station what's it called the old butter ball development that's now condos it's not first in main but I'll call it that just for lack of a better term south main station that's what it is it is I call it first in main the transit center I get that mixed up with the RTD facility that's coming but south main station so they're going to be putting a median in 287 there with a sign such as this and they'll be looking and trying to install some new wayfinding signs around downtown Kathy and I are trying to figure out how this will be distributed throughout the city over a period of time we currently don't have any budget or staff time allocated toward this except what we're trying to scrape out to go to meetings that we're doing these days and if we were to change every sign within the park system the cost would be pretty high very high and so we're trying to figure out whether we spread that over a number of years or if we just implement it as assigned deteriorates and if that's the case it could be 50 years before we have a whole new sign package and so I wanted to really update the board as far as what's being worked on we have a sign package that we developed back in 2014-15-16 it was adopted in 2017 or 18-17 I think that we've been working on we've been using and it's not only Kathy and me it's engineer folks like the woman who's building spring golf too trail she'll be using sign like that developers when they have to install signage they have to meet our standards so it's a pretty big group of people that would have to change this person is going to be coming up with something that's it sounds to us like it's going to be a graphic representation of what the sign should look like but not a true sign design which will have to then hire somebody to go in and do and so would that be just the parks, recs, open space signage it would be so does the DDA have money for this or is it a long one? well long one would have to budget we're talking for their area but for the city we're talking changing the badges on police officers uniforms changing the decals in every city vehicle it'll be an intense endeavor and so if we are tasked with doing this there'll be a monetary challenge we're not sure how we're going to fund that there'll also be a staffing challenge because this is something that would take a lot of time and effort and so it may end up pushing some other projects that we have been talking about with you down the road based on what we're hearing from the signage developers so yeah I think we have to be tasked with this it's something that again as far as funding and stuff after a city management council we'll work with the sign how we prioritize things but I think one of the biggest pieces for us is the logistics of how we do this in a systematic way so that again like Steve said if we have funds and we start replacing signs more times so there's a sign in the back part of Golden Ponds it's new and there's a sign over at Dawson that's new but we just go ahead and try to tackle the input signs the feeling of this is now that the branding is happening so I think that's the real conversation right now is how do we logistically implements in a way that takes our resources and time and tries to get the biggest bang for the buck on that a very rough estimate would be two and a half to three million dollars just for the parks and greenways one of the things that we've also Steve and Kathy did very good about working with the consultant on is that even though we want to have the branding of these identity that I think we worked very hard over the years to try to make sure we're on the same greenway you know you're on that versus left hand greenway and the consultant is kind of used to writing some of that through so you still have a little bit of feeling that you're not just on a greenway and long month but you're on the same greenway versus left hand greenway versus somewhere on the sandstone ranch so I think they are listening to us as far as how we implements in a way that identity of some of those underlying or is I think very special to the community we're hoping that's the case and we're there I don't think we're there right I did you know the language I say she uses kind of driving those underlying pieces I also assume that there's a certain portion of this problem where there is a perfectly good sign there and you want to change how it looks you know and you're using the word branding using the new branding but I assume there are also signs that need to go up that don't exist and big ones tomorrow they have nothing to do with this because there's not a plan yet but once there is a plan there's presumably a gap to be filled signage wise and so this is not nearly a they were all green before now they're going to blue exercise not necessarily there are signs so part of it is when we finished our sign package in 2017 the goal was to get an intern to go out and inventory all of our signs we have not yet been able to accomplish that but we really need to know we have an inventory in our Hansen program which timber is described to you guys beforehand which is really our asset management program it just says sign we don't know what that sign says if that sign is necessary if that sign what condition that sign is we just have signed and that's what we have not yet captured is going to reach park and along the greenway systems and saying okay we have 40 signs in this park we could probably get by with 30 they need to be here they need to be this size and have this message and that's something we have not yet tackled so my question is part of this is work that you are intending to do and that will need to be done whether there's a new brand or not this is definitely it's a challenge there's a direction to go that way but still the concept phase we have that gap there's signs to be put in because Steve's doing new parks Kathy's doing renewals so it's kind of that we'll just hold off on the signs and maybe do temporary well we don't have a standard for temporary so maybe we just minimize what we're putting in so we can hit those basics just to go in planning and to your point that yes that was a project that we would have to do anyway but if you remember in February we brought to the board the 42 projects that we're not yet working on that wasn't one of them so it's not even that it's not even that far along in terms of planning well no it's good to jump up above the 40 whatever and push those down with any of the decisions on that comment to this board are we just starting to form but you're welcome to make comments otherwise but yes you're very informed at this point thank you Steve David oh I'll go back to you as well actually the Dickens event I just wanted to mention that not I've already mentioned it that was the other thing that I was looking forward on I talked about Clover Basin going on May 19 as far as going to take it at the council we're going to have a information it's an information night so we'll always be giving a study session there you go it's a study session so we really like talking about some of these things before they get in front of them so we're talking about Clover Basin Steve has worked in the park which is not quite the same as Clover Basin but two parks that have some challenges with naming some funding issues, some timing issues we want to get that out in front of them so they can kind of understand what they'll be seeing when we get there so let Steve talk about those two and then the other piece of legal has asked us to take to council is that our current code language says that in the disposition of open space we have to have these criteria that I think has been very good about meeting in the past that it has to be to achieve a goal that has a higher value to the city if you sell this property you'll be buying something of a higher value well as they've looked at that they started looking at our conservation easement piece and we're actually selling a piece of open space to someone else to hold that conservation real property interest in that property and the code also says you can't sell an open space for less than the purchase price so there's a conflict in saying well we have said we're selling the conservation easement for half the price of the property but we're retaining the other half of the property they still don't think that lines up with us selling a portion of the property at less than the purchase price so I see that we've had the conversation with legal owners for a while and I think open space entities have done this for a long time and you recognize that private properties are made up of bundles and sticks and bundles for the price that it's worth our code does not state that that clearly though so I think what our legal council is asking us to do is clean that up so it's clear to everyone so I think rather than trying to have a debate over I think what we're going to try to do is just clean it up so down the road in the future people recognize that whatever portion of the space you're selling the whole has to equal the acquisition price so if you sell a conservation easement these pieces have to add up to the whole so those are the big pieces conservation easements are lost on some if you recall south clover basin neighborhood park is this area in here and I brought that back to the board that one's pretty easy you guys recommended clover meadows park to council and I'm now just getting around to writing the council comments suggesting that to them there will have to be an amendment to the developer of this land right here gave us $800,000 to move that park up in the development park development process $650,000 for design and construction and then $150,000 for maintenance problem is that agreement was made back in 2013-14 they just said $650,000 well in 2014 $650,000 in 2020 that's about $550,000 depreciation has happened there was no escalator and also it said that the city can contribute a maximum of $100,000 which will need to contribute more than that so those are just some things that I'll be bringing to council for them to understand before they adopt the master plan the other one is the workman if you remember right that's right here south here's the museum and rec center and that one if you recall the naming was just name it after we don't have any park names with Hispanic families and so we haven't felt comfortable comfortable going to council and just saying these were three Hispanic people that were recommended by the public what do you think so we are engaging with 100 or so Latino leaders the email starting next week they'll have three weeks to suggest people who are of Hispanic descent that meet the criteria remember the criteria that were there and then we'll have a public meeting that basically invite people we'll hear about it as well who want to come and prioritize those we'll take those priorities to the council to try to find a name for that park this park also will need a little bit of extra money a little bit of extra money to build the irrigation pond that wasn't budgeted at the time of putting the CIP together so those are the sorts of things I'm going to be bringing to council and on May 19th, May 26th they'll see the resolutions with the proposed names the supplemental appropriations and the agreement the annexation agreement amendment to reflect what we talked about in the 19th it was conveyed to me that it's a bigger conversation to council and since it's complex they wanted to push that out and have that conversation with them the only thing I had comes from the clerk's office and the clerk is recommending that all board members create proud only email so that all business that's regarding proud is done through that email that way if there's ever a public records request that they're not going through your personal email it's all done through that proud dedicated one and would ask that you consider doing that I can't say that it's mandatory but would ask you to consider that here in the next week or two and then get that update to Aurora if you would but then we get a a long one I don't know I don't know the answer I will ask that yeah they do it for council I have no idea what the process would be to do it for board members thank you Jim I just report, who knows I don't have anything page page why do I keep doing that I started that last week it's like a thing we had talked at the last meeting about potentially doing kind of a survey of meetings if people are going to be able to attend because I know there are fairies and I know I have work complaints with June and August and I know I think you said Dan and Sue are out in June I think so so I just think it would be good to submit dates around and have everyone say they know their availability but just to collect it because I think there may be some that we want to change because we may not have a quorum absolutely open to schedule changes if necessary the most important thing is to have a quorum which is four of the seven members obviously prefer to have a full attendance so good that's it Rob I forgot yes Steve I forgot something you would ask me about the prize of the CIP schedule as it revolves Dale has to have all the draft CIPs to city manager's office May 1st so that's a rough internal deadline April 3rd May 1st for CIPs? no it's April 3rd the system closes April 3rd alright that's why I said that my computer died or I pulled up an email that was an email we just got from standard it's no it's said it needs to go there until our deadlines are going to be first or second we need to roll tomorrow then I am not going to have everything ready by April 3rd I'll tell you that that's what it said but if there are any thoughts from the board now or emails to Jeff and David would be a fight tomorrow that's kind of why I was wondering if there's a significant delay in some of the projects we talked about because of the wayfinding and signage it would be helpful to know what might get delayed we don't necessarily know that yet it'll be the Dale and Harold decision we would propose things to them at this point if the public would like to be heard I took notes on a couple things first at falter park upgrades Kathy Cron I'd love to hear a little more about that if possible just because we have been here for a handful of years and are pretty dependent on it and there's changes of foot we'd like to know sure the crux of that project the crux of that project is what's that? that's a major one April 3rd is ridiculous so yeah, no, May 1st at falter park yes, I'm sorry I need to find do you hit R for me please? there's sunsets you can come across just to your right across right there yes, that's sunsets so it's further down just try to notice that where the track is the main part of that project is the demolition of the restroom slash pump station building and rebuilding a new ADA conforming modern day restroom and pump house there'll be some work on the ball fields right here along the edge of the infield we'll be working on this bed right here and the entry sign some minor irrigation modifications the playground was redone three years ago or so and I'm not sure that's pretty much what's involved with that questions so the grass area is not going to be impacted and if it's being rehabbed is it a better baseball facility is that being prescribed to be baseball specific? no still planning for St. Frank's soccer use and I know that it's in her plan to accommodate game usage we'll be bringing in two sandalettes for the spring season anyway so the bathrooms will be out of order so there'll be restrooms there for people to use and then the only thank you for that the only other question I have and this is not just driven by conversations I've heard here but other through city california growing direction of a lot of 113,000 people are going to be in long line more higher density and every time I hear we keep on talking about that use of parks and then we get new parks on the ballot are done right because of the scope of the work do developers have to have a certain amount of open space or park if they put it in an apartment complex or town hall because more people same amount of old parks those are bigger that they're going to be overused more people with fewer backyards also exactly with the new code update which was staffed in last year they did away with what was called common open space requirements but there are landscaping requirements for developments depending on what it is if you're asking whether an apartment complex needs to have x number of acres around it as far as green space that's not the case the new code is good well there is the park fee the park development fee for every certificate of occupancy for a building so the apartments it's for each apartment building houses for each house that developers pay that go into our park development fund which pays for new parks the fund that Kathy uses for park renovation comes from a different source and that's from the two dollar fee mostly from the two dollar fee from the community which raises about a million dollars a year but there's not an explicit per hundred you know per thousand people X that I know pretty well so like this area this is let's see here Stephen Day Park so this is Wolf Creek if I remember right something like that this is the pocket park for the development to have but it's private property we don't own it we don't manage it there is likely there is likely a easement over it so if you were but riding your bike through here and got stopped you probably have a right to be there but we would never program that for any sort of event or anything like that it's not a city park correct same goes for this area here and this area here so those that was the old development where they were were required to set aside a certain amount of acreage for common open space areas for residential development that has shifted I guess within the planning community and so the new code changed that just like there's no parking requirements for new items anymore and I don't unfortunately I don't know much more details of that because I don't look at public property I don't really follow private property as much I don't know if there's ever going to be a recommendation but that seems like something that is very near-sighted but what we are hearing is that there is a there is an inflow into the public purse for new parts based on certificates of occupancy but not necessarily a requirement that a particular amount of new part can be built correct thank you anything else no thank you on that case I think we're done I will entertain a motion to adjourn I move we adjourn thank you is there a second all in favor motion passes unanimously please adjourn thank you very much I want to hear a


In this video, I'm going to be talking about the new virtual mic feature that was added in Ecam Live version 3.10. So if you have been using the virtual camera, the idea behind this might seem quite obvious, really. The virtual camera feature that we've got in Ecam Live takes all of the visual output from Ecam, so basically just exactly what you're seeing of me now. And then it presents that to the computer as if it was a camera source. So then in other applications like for example Zoom or Microsoft Teams or Google Meet or whatever it is that you're using, you can then select that as your camera source. And that means that all of the Ecam Live visual goodness goes into those applications. And so you can do great looking presentations and things like that using the full Ecam Live production capabilities to feed into those other applications. But until now, the audio wasn't actually making it from Ecam. So you would either be just having all of the Ecam visuals going in but then just using your regular mic going directly into those applications or you would use a program like Loopback to sort of do some slightly more advanced routing of audio from Ecam into those applications. And I know it's something that a lot of people found confusing. There was often questions about this in the Ecam Facebook group of exactly how to use Loopback and all these sorts of things. And if people even needed it, certainly I've got a video on my channel which is do I need Loopback? And now certainly that one is a little bit out of date and the answer is probably for most people, no, because the virtual mic will do it for you. So basically the virtual mic does for audio what the virtual camera does for video. So that basically means that all of the audio from Ecam Live including your microphone going into it but then also any sound effects, any background music, any things like that that is all then going to feed out of your Ecam to this virtual mic that can then be used in any other application. So I think it's easy if I just show you this, isn't it? Let me come into my demo mode and so here I am. I've got my just my Ecam window open and if I go to output here is where we can see our virtual camera and this one is on and now we've got virtual mic just beneath it. Now if it is the first time you have installed version 3.10 and you haven't activated this then you will see a thing that says install virtual mics. You just need to click on that and then it will prompt you to enter your password, your Mac password and it will just do a couple of seconds to install it and then you're ready to go and then just make sure that it is toggled on. Incidentally with these things in here, so we've got virtual mic, virtual camera, audio monitor out, video monitor out, the sharing window and so on you do get this little notification just up here in the sort of top left of the main window, the main Ecam window and so this is telling me that my virtual monitor is on this one is my sharing window, my virtual camera and my virtual mic so that's what these little symbols are here they just indicate which of those is on or not. Once you have got it on though then you can go into whatever application it is you want to use it in so let's talk about zoom shall we, one of my favourites and I'll come over to zoom now and so this is in the zoom settings and just as before where we went into the video and in video settings we could select the camera and we're basically just selecting the virtual camera and as you can see it's given a preview that is basically a preview of what you're seeing now just in there so that's basically taking all of the Ecam video stuff and putting that into zoom as a camera. There's a few little caveats around this and I've made plenty of videos about this before about using Ecam with zoom so for the virtual camera so I won't go into all those now but we'll go into the audio because that's what is the new feature. Well now just like we could select the virtual camera from Ecam Live now we can also select the Ecam Live virtual mic and you can see that as I'm speaking this little bar here is sort of bouncing up and down showing me that is hearing my voice but also if I was to play a little piece of music out of Ecam Live you'll notice that it is also picking that up if I stop talking for a moment so the fact that that little bar is jumping up and down tells me that zoom is hearing that audio and that's showing that it is picking up the virtual mic and this is the thing that it just was not doing before you would have to use something like loopback now there is still a potential use case for loopback because all we're doing here is we're taking the audio from Ecam into zoom that is what the vast majority of people would ever need to do certainly with loopback so they've got some sort of production going on in Ecam and they want to feed it into zoom there is still a use case for loopback though and that is if you are in the rather niche situation where you are say you've got interviewees in Ecam Live interview mode and you also want them to be able to hear what's going on in the zoom so say you're going to have like a panel discussion you're feeding that into zoom and then you've got a number of guests in zoom that are going to be asking questions and you want those to be heard for example by the panel then at the moment the routing of the audio from zoom is not becoming back into Ecam in quite that way so I mean if you're just doing a webinar for example where it was just only one way then the virtual mic would still work perfectly for that because you could have your Ecam Live interview mode have your guests coming on and then that would just be feeding into the webinar the one way discussion if you like of just speaking to your webinar attendees in that case you still wouldn't need loopback but that is just where you may still consider using loopback but again I've got videos on loopback on my channel so I won't go into all of those there are a few audio settings that you may want to consider checking though now that we are taking our Ecam Live settings into here before I tell you about that I do just need to mention this thing that's just down below me actually the Ecam Live Masterclass so this is a course that I've created to basically, if you're online encyclopedia for all things Ecam Live you'll always know that the information here is up to date and there is 150 videos plus more being added as we speak and this is all everything from beginner to advanced level of Ecam Live and all the different ways that you might use it so for example I do have a whole section there about using Ecam Live with Zoom with Teams, with Discord, things like that but then also obviously for using it for live streaming and recording which I also do and cover extensively and really just all of the different features and they're all broken down into different sections so we've got sections on specifically overlays all the different kinds of overlays working with scenes, different ways that you can work with scenes all of these different things and then what this means is because they are broken down individually section by section it means that as Ecam Live is updated these videos will be updated for those specific things and if there is a new kind of overlay that is added in, who knows then that new video will just slot into place as well so it will be continually updated I cover Stream Deck obviously how to use Stream Deck and Loop Deck with Ecam Live how to use Ecam Live for presentations with PowerPoint and Keynote and things like that it's basically your, as I say, online resource for all things Ecam Live you also get $150 worth of bonuses with it as well and the course itself is $147 so effectively you're $3 up before you even start so head over to Ecam Live masterclass.com and sign up there today but I digress slightly let's get back to Zoom and I want to tell you about these audio settings that you can change in Zoom because you are a, certainly if you're a good Ecam Live masterclass student you'll know to pay a little bit of attention to your audio and buy a little bit of attention, I mean you will be really concentrating on getting good quality audio when you're using Ecam Live and that also goes when you're feeding into Zoom as well through Ecam Live now Zoom is going to assume that you are one of the masses you're not one of the tiny few top percentile as you are is concentrating on looking and sounding good in Ecam and on Zoom as well and so it is assuming that you've got probably pretty bad audio quality maybe you are using the Max built-in microphone and you've got an old Max so the fans are wearing up and maybe you're in a noisy coffee shop or something like that so it is assuming the worst possible case and Zoom is going to be trying to fix all of these potential problems that you might not even have so down here you've got a few settings that I want you to just draw your attention to so the first one here is automatically adjust microphone volume so that is something that if you are paying attention you don't really want Zoom trying to be in control of your volume especially if you are doing things like playing in audio playing in sound effects maybe you're playing sort of movie clips or things like that I'm sure that you are you know being attentive to your levels and things like that so that one probably is on by default I would recommend turning it off again if you are paying attention to these things you've got this one here suppressed background noise and that is to try and filter out some of this background noise I'm going to skip over this one for a moment because actually if we do this next thing this one is actually irrelevant so this background noise suppression the default is auto you can leave it there if you want but I'm going to recommend that you come down and you toggle on this one here music and professional audio so it says show in meeting option to enable original sound now original sound is basically meaning it is just going to take whatever audio it gets and this is you know assuming that music and professional audio is people who are like you professional audio people who are spending a little bit of time and care and attention on their audio so we want to enable this one because we do not what we're doing to a much greater extent than the majority of zoom users so we're going to do that one where it says enable original sound and we've got a couple of other options here so once you enable that one you'll see this little pop up comes down here all these extra options and the first one is high fidelity music mode now we might not be playing music you might not be you know playing guitar or piano in your zoom meetings however toggling this one on will just improve the overall audio quality and take more of exactly what's being given to it there is a little caveat here and a little little box which is basically saying this is going to have a greater impact on your processor power and it's also going to have an impact on your bandwidth usage as well I'm going to assume that if you are an e-cam folk you've probably got yourself a reasonable setup and you've also potentially got a reasonably good bandwidth as well so it's something to just bear in mind but I think with modern bandwidths modern internet speeds and with modern max and things like that this is perhaps not so much of an issue so I certainly leave this one on high fidelity music mode echo cancellation I leave that one off because like all good people I wear headphones whenever I am on zoom calls either in ear monitors or over the years or whatever it is and I recommend that you do the same and if you're doing that then you do not need this echo cancellation the next one is stereo audio mode now obviously this is a mono mic so there's no need for stereo right well yes except if you wanted to play music and things like that maybe you're doing like I don't know a zoom co-working session or something and you want the audio to go over in stereo then you can enable that but once again you've got this caveat that it is again a sort of potential going to lead to potential increase in bandwidth usage and all those sorts of things so that is just another thing to bear in mind but I would certainly have my settings set like that that is in fact how I have my settings and that will just lead to a better quality audio for your participants so that is basically all there is to say about the e-cam virtual mic actually from the e-cam point of view it's pretty simple to set up isn't it it's just a case of toggling on and then select that as your audio source this works as well in obviously teams anywhere else that you want to use your mic on your system so that is all for this video we don't go anywhere because there is some more videos about some more great new e-cam live features coming up right now so I'll see you in those videos