And we're good to go. Thank you. Good evening, everyone, and welcome. I now call March 8, 2022 Longmont City Council regular session to order. These meetings are still being held remotely due to the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic. To view the live stream go to longmont colorado.gov forward slash agendas, or to the city's YouTube channel. You can also watch it on the longmont public media dot org channel or Comcast channels, eight or 880. Can we please start with the roll call. Absolutely mayor peck present council member dog will fairing. Here, council member Martin. Present Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. Here. Council member waters. Here. Thank you. Thank you. Can we all sit for the pledge of allegiance, please? So I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the United States of America, for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. As a reminder to the public, anyone wishing to provide public comment during public invited to be heard must watch the live stream of the meeting and call in only when I open the meeting for public comment. I'm not able to access the meeting at any other time. Anyone wishing to provide comment on second reading, or public hearing items should call in at that time and not during first call public invited to be heard. Anyone calling during first call public invited to be heard with comments about second reading or during items will be asked to call back in when second reading and public hearing items are announced. Right on the screen now the instructions for calling in to provide public comment. The toll free number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. Watch for the instructions to be displayed to be displayed and write down the meeting ID when it is displayed at the beginning of the meeting. Wait for the mayor to open public comment and direct callers to call in. Please say to call in dial the toll free number into the meeting ID and when asked for your participation ID, press the pound sign. Please mute the live stream when you call in and listen for instructions on the phone. Callers will be called upon by the last three digits of their phone number and comments are limited to three minutes per person. I want to state their name and address for the record prior to proceeding with their comments. Once you're done speaking, just hang up. So thank you for putting that on the screen Dallas. We now have to two meetings to approve the minutes of the February 8 2022 regular session minutes. May I have a motion to approve those minutes? I'll move approval of the February 8 night 2022 minutes. Thank you, Councillor Waters. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Councillor Yarbrough. So the February 8 minutes have been moved by Councillor Waters, seconded by Councillor Yarbrough. All those in favor, please raise your hand. All those opposed. Thank you, that passes unanimously. May I have a motion to move the February 22 2022 regular session minutes. I'll move approval of those as well. Thank you. A second. I'll second that. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't see you fast enough. That was seconded by Councillor Hidalgo-Ferring. All those in favor, please raise your hand for passing them. All those opposed. Was that an opposition, Councillor Martin? No? Okay, that passes unanimously. So we are at the city manager's report. Harold, do you have anything for us tonight? Mayor Council, I have a couple of things. One, I wanted to let you know that if you saw the presentation that Merrick afforded to you all, we have dropped below the high transmission rate. And we're pretty close to moving to the yellow line. So that's aligning with the Council direction to go back at the end of the month. So I just wanted to clarify that. In the midst of everything that's been going on, we have been working on the task force for attainable housing. You all may have seen that as a line item that I listed in the information I sent to you all. In looking at that direction, I've put together a group, some recommendations, you know, representation from large business, banking and finance, small business and service industry, housing impacted residents, developers, builders, education employers, and then a representative from the LADP board. Just to let you know, I'm going to be bringing this to you all on the 29th. But the 1 question that I had for you that wasn't really clear in the motion. Was how you wanted to approach appointing the task members, the task force members. I can bring that to where I can bring options for council to do it. We can bring it where we can look at staff doing it. I can bring you all of those options as I'm pulling that together, but that just wasn't really clear in that motion and I wanted to get some direction from council before I bring that back on the 29th. Thank you, Harold. Councilor Hidalgo-Ferring, you were the one that made that motion. Would you like, do you have any input on how these are going to be appointed? I do trust staff, but I guess ideally what I would like to see is just a compilation of who you have selected for us to review. So if there are extra people that maybe you think we need to make a decision on, that can definitely happen. But, you know, I know it's very hard to collect, find people committed to doing this and having the time. So I think, you know, once we have them, once they agree to it, you know, I would, I would think it's just, let's take what we have. Does that make sense? So I'm hearing is me coming forward with the recommendation of people. Yes. Yes. Do we have any other comments from counselors on how you would like this to proceed? Councillor Waters. Just to clarify, Harold's going to put together the, the task force membership. And are we going to bless that or simply be informed? Personally, I don't need to vote. I trust you all to put together the right kind of group. I'd like to be informed about who's on it. I don't feel the need to vote on it. I guess that's my point. Okay. It would be nice to be clear what, what, what direction we're giving the city manager. Yeah, I would just like, I would like to be informed. Now in the event you have a lot of people and you need our help with kind of narrowing the list down.  I just was, I didn't want to come back with not, not bringing what council wanted. So I will build that out with, with the names based on what I see when I bring that to you on the 29. Are there any other discussions by the counselors that haven't weighed in on this? Do we all agree that that is the direction we want to give Harold. Okay. Harold, you have your direction. Thank you. Sorry for bringing this up. That was just the gap that I needed to clear up. So I appreciate it. No, I'm glad you did. Thank you. Yes. I think we need to go back to item five agenda revisions motions to direct. Oh, thank you for that. We do. Are there any agenda revisions that counselors would like to ask our city manager to put on a future agenda? And I do see counselor Hidalgo faring and counselor Yarbrough hands up. So we'll go with Hidalgo faring first. Thank you, mayor. For this, you know, I'd like to make a motion to direct staff to research neighboring cities to find out how they are utilizing human relations commissions to address community needs in regard to equity diversity and inclusion and bring back their findings and recommendations that would help that would best align with what we said, our priorities back in the, I believe it was the 2020 retreat, the very retreat on what our priorities were in regard to social equity. Do I have a second and then I can speak to my to my motion. Okay, that's been a motion's been made by counselor Hidalgo faring and seconded by counselor Yarbrough so we open up for discussion counselor Hidalgo faring are you ready to explain your motion. So I know that staff and I've had several conversations with different members of staff in regard to equity and the equity work that the, that the city is doing, and that we have essentially, you know, during our retreat that we had said that we value we prioritize this work in, in setting policy and practices. So, you know I feel like this is the first of many action state steps that council as a whole should be adopting and should be moving forward, so that we can create truly create a inequitable inclusionary community. So I have a discussion for many other counselors. Mayor Pro Tim Rodriguez. Thank you, Mayor Peck. I've had similar conversations myself and I've gone back and forth with those folks. And, you know, also myself in pondering the question of whether it's most effective to have that be in folded within city, or have it be independent third party that has city representation on it. And so I kind of think it might be the most equitable if the city does not actually do any of the appointing and things like that, not adding that to say, help council appoints advisory boards and commissions and things, and letting it be somewhat of a self appointing board, but also making sure that we have representation on it and that it does it directly advise city council. Those were some of my ideas when I have had this similar discussion with with stakeholders. And so, you know, those are, I guess, my two cents, and glad to hear other feedback. So just to ask a question, Mayor Pro Tim of, are you talking about a board on social equity, or are you, I'm a little confused about that. Sure, it sounded to me that the, the motion was concerning a board. Okay. Thank you. What I thought we were talking about. Okay, I have counselor Martin and then counselor waters. Martin. My concern is that we have just received a very long list of items that the staff is already engaged in. And I have a personal concern that the board must go faster.  And every board that I sit on has already incorporated the equity lens into its policies and procedures, and are making equity based recommendations to the city. So I, I question whether the there is a need for this board and if so I would like to understand better what it would do that we are not already doing. Thank you counselor waters. Yeah, just what I heard the motion to be was to direct staff to conduct research. And whether or not there's a board independent third party, whoever would be maybe the product of what the findings are, and a recommendation. So just to be clear, we're not talking about appointing boards. Who appoints boards are we that's not in the motion the motion was to direct staff to do research. It wasn't time bound. It wasn't a date specific. And the, and the staff could very well turn to lmac, I assume, to elicit lmax talent and expertise to do that, assist in that kind of research I assume the staff could do that anyway they want to approach it, just to be clear on what the motion is and what we'd be voting on. If somebody just maybe a counselor counselor council member, dole go faring just to clarify. Yes, I'd be happy to and then. Okay, so I look at what the charge of lmac and the work they do, and how they are their volunteers. So I start thinking about, you know that their background in and there might be people who are already on lmac who decide, you know what I want to be a part of a work that looks more in depth in policy and practices, and I have the background and expertise, and then they can definitely apply or, or pursue that route. But what I see lmac focusing on and what they do is huge work, it is around cultural engagement, it is around education, and, you know, more of a community building and and sharing out of culture and diversity in more of a, I don't want to say a social network but but definitely, you know, hitting those events and and making sure the representation is there and voices are heard. That work is totally different from looking at policy and practices. And so I go back to what my I know as a member of the equity council or ethnic minority advisory council for the Colorado Education Association, where we actually went in and looked at policy are our organizations bylaws of practices interactions, and then we went through it with not just an equity lens but we also have the educational background that backed up, you know just like we have experts in planning and development, you know making those decisions in the planning and development board and commission. I'm just looking at somebody who has that expertise, but before I even go on to that piece. Do I is it time. Yeah, it really is. Okay, because I could I could go on forever in a day but I know Harold also had some input as well.  What I am seeing the research for is to how, how do other cities embed equity in everything they do. What are their practices, and how do they make it work. I think the research I would be interested in, so that we're not just paying lip service to equity. We're actually embedding it in our work. So, counselor waters. Thanks for your pack I wasn't making a case realm back I was just suggesting they might be able to help whoever's going to do the research I was just curious to hear again what the motion is and I appreciate council member dog affairing all that experience but I'm still not certain what the motion is. I wasn't hearing it. It is to appoint boards. No, it is to do research and then the staff would decide how to proceed how to proceed with that research is that is that the motion that was my motion if you want I can repeat it. If you please repeat the motion and then, if we have no one else, we're going to go ahead and vote on it. Okay, so my motion is to direct staff to conduct research in neighboring cities to find out how they're utilizing a human relations commission to address community needs in regard to equity, diversity and inclusion, and bring back findings and recommendations that will best align with our priorities on social equity. Do you accept a friendly amendment to that as an inclusion, I guess. I would like to hear it first. Of course. Social equity, you know, to me that term doesn't isn't far enough in that. How do we actually use this in our policy decisions. How is it embedded in everything we do. Perhaps you said that but is that what you're implying in your statement. Yes, I am so if you have a better word Smith. I just want to make sure that we understand. We're going to go ahead and vote on this I'm going to hopefully restate this correctly, and that the motion is to direct staff to do research on other cities on how they incorporate social equity into their, the decisions that they make. Does that cover it. One moment counselor Martin I will call on you. So how they're utilizing specifically human relations commissions. Okay, thank you address community needs. In regard to equity diversity inclusion and bring back findings and recommendations, and perhaps we could just stop there. Okay. Thank you counselor Martin. I actually my question because I kept hearing there's not a commission and then there that this does lead to a commission, and I would like clarification as to whether the intent is that it leads to the creation of such a commission in Longmont or not. Okay, one last comment please. It may or it may not, but I really want to focus looking at is the commission route the route we want to go, or in their research are they finding other avenues that that cities address that. You know I've done my own research and I'm seeing that there are more human relations commissions that are addressing these issues so I want to start with that, but I want to see here the findings. Thank you. So all those in favor of this motion please raise your hand. All those opposed. So this passes unanimously. Is this motion clear to staff. It is. And what I was going to say is I know there was a something about the work component of this. I wanted to also say that we're also members of the local and regional government alliance on race and equity and that's a group that does a lot of this work. So, much of this we're going to reach out to folks that have probably already done it to help us pull that together. So I wanted to address that point in that. Because of what we've been doing internally as an organization, we have those connection points. Perfect. Thank you Harold. Councilor Yarbrough you also wanted to direct staff. Mayor Peck, mine isn't as. Mine is very simple. So, as you all know, I have mentioned before at one of our last city council meetings where doing a presentation from city manager. I'm going to be welcoming us on the workplace of the of the future. And I have brought up an idea of an internship where we will grow our own staff. So I met with members of the Chamber of Commerce and Sandy Cedar to brainstorm about how this would look and we started looking at an outline and everything so as there. This is definitely an interest in partnering. I would like to work on this and would like to make a motion to ask staff to bring an outline for a program that we can could consider. Councilor Yarbrough, when you say an outline, can you specify what that outline would be for? Well, when I present this to you and when we talk about it, I want to be able to be able to make sure that it will be clear as how it would this program will function. This internship will function. I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I'm trying to get the motion clear. It's an outline for an internship. Yeah, an internship program with the city. And is the internship program for to train staff or elected officials? Staff? No. Oh, okay. Thank you. Do I have a second for that? Motion. The motion is to direct staff to bring back an outline for internship within the city.  Is this something that could be, you know, moved down the line? You know, I guess I just want to hear more about what this program is about. So really, I'll second it for debate. Okay. So it has been the motion has been brought by counselor Yarbrough and seconded by counselor Hidalgo faring. Open it up for discussion. Counselor waters. Thanks, Mayor Peck. When we received the report or the update from Joanne on the worksheet and a number of working groups are doing under the kind of the heading of workforce of the future. That that is in that context of that presentation that the discussion occurred about internships, as I recall. And I'm not opposed at all to the idea of internships. I think it'd be terrific to have internships, but it seems to me that the staff has got a number of moving parts in the context of that work. And I'm not certain. Well, I am certain that I'm not comfortable in asserting us as moving something in that body of work. I don't know if that's going to be higher on the list or lower on the list. I think I think the staff is keenly aware of what the challenges are and what needs to happen. You know, if that's one of the things that they're going to bring to us as a policy consideration as opposed to an operational concern, which it seems to me it is more of an operational concern. But for us to start meddling, or I don't mean that I don't mean that pejoratively, to actively participating in setting priorities in the context of that work of one thing over another, I think is either premature or really not our role. I'm not, I'm not, I'll listen to the other discussion here, but it does. This seems not to me to be something we, we direct as a council we receive and then decide, you know, what's what are the recommendations we're going to get in the context of all that work that we'd have a chance to vote on. Thank you, Councilor Waters. Councilor Martin. Thank you, Mayor Peck. I have a similar concern having having just reviewed the list that the city manager brought to all of us. I'm a little boggled by it, because we have so much work to do. And it seems to me like an internship program, given the effort that Mrs. Z's put in in the, in the last six weeks or so. It seems that what we should be doing is they that is part of the budget process we should should consider they will automatically create internship positions if that seems to be appropriate. And I wouldn't want to put any, any, any loading on the work plan before that point. Unless there is a special purpose for it. I, I don't think that we need to give specific direction on it. Thank you, Councilor Waters. Mayor Pro Tim Rodriguez. Thank you very much. You know, I'm, I know that the city does do IGAs and whatnot with other organizations for internships. And I think it'd be a net benefit to the city to look at an internship program. But as Council Member Martin noted, this probably will take it a budgetary act as in, identifying a staff person to run an internship program. And so I know that the, the budgets, while we look at them later on in the year, they get submitted early in the year. And so I would hope that there would maybe be somebody in the staff or, or, you know, I'd be open to saying that staff should look at adding a budgetary item for an internship program. Because I do agree that not just for maybe some equity purposes, but the way our current political situation is going, it's hard to get very good and talented and qualified people that want to do this kind of work for the pay, which is, you know, in not at least it's, it's around market. But still, you know, we need to do some recruitment into this kind of field work, if you will, as far as administration, as far as public surface is concerned. I would want to say that the budget be looked at as maybe a possibility for a internship coordinator for the next year, not this year, obviously. And that gives plenty of time to look at all of the studies look at things like that and really build this thing in responsible and I guess, you know, well thought out manner. So, I'd be open to supporting that conversation. Councilor Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. Is that an amendment to the motion, or is it a different avenue to look at. I am not trying to make an amendment to the motion. I'm just strictly saying, as far as as a process is concerned, that to me seems to be the most logical way to move forward with trying to institute a new program. Okay. Councilor Yarbrough. Thank you Mayor Peck. Thank you for all of your comments. This internship program is exactly what we are what I am looking for is a focus on recruitment and exposing young people like some of our front range students who are already looking for internships. We have a pipeline straight to the city. For those people who are looking for accounting jobs for those people there are so many different avenues that they can be work as an intern. I know we do have some interns that within the city, but this internship is just different departments and to provide more useful people and recruitment for the workforce workforce of the future program. And so this is just like a supplement part of it. And those who may even think about wanting to be a future city council person. They are different. You know, we have talked through it and went through it but it's still, we need to ask city staff what would be more beneficial for them as well. So that's what that's the direction to have the future conversation to add an agenda for a future meeting, put it on the agenda. Thank you for that clarification Councilor Yarbrough. Do we have any other discussion on this topic, Councilor Martin. You're muted. You're muted. Yeah, thank you. Sorry, I'm neither for or against doing it. I have the reason one of the reasons I would like to state that I was suggesting rather than working it as a separate program was just roll it into the staff budgeting. And I think one of the recommendations that have already been had is I have a real strong objection to unpaid interns and we don't have any budget for interns right now. And I think that's a real equity consideration is that they're not be unpaid interns. So, if we could clarify, if we could clarify that that this program comes, you know, in good time in terms of the staffing plan as opposed to being a separate program, then I would support it otherwise I don't want it to displace anything else because we've got some really heavy items on the plan already. So, maybe the city manager could weigh in on whether that would, you know, whether that's work, or whether it belongs in this in the budgeting process, naturally anyway or whether it should be considered as a separate program. So, I think if this is something that let me back up a little bit. This is also something we've been talking about as staff. Just because it is getting harder and harder. The number of people to kind of echo what Mayor pro Tim Rodriguez said, when you just look across municipalities across the nation. There are job openings all over the place. And we're seeing different. The pipeline of folks going into this, this profession is shifting on us pretty fast. And so we have talked about the need for that type of program as well. I'm a product of an internship program that was focused on what we're doing. Sandy, that's actually how Sandy got here. They used to have your long internship programs. Obviously it's a different type because the ones we ran were more focused on graduate level students in public administration, political science, things like that. But then they have different levels of those. And so if council wants us to look at that and look at funded internships. That is something that does need to be incorporated in the budget process because we don't necessarily have the funding now. So it would be something that we would evaluate, present to council and then make that as part of potentially the budget process because we would have to ensure that we have funds available for it. If that's the motion, then I think that's the path to move down on this one. Thank you, Harold. I am going to make a friendly amendment to your emotion to your motion. Councilor Yarbrough, that we direct staff to put into the budget process this year, a program for funding for a funded internship program. Would you accept that amendment Councilor Yarbrough. Yes. So, um, I think Councillor Hidalgo faring you seconded this motion. Would you like to second the amendment. Sure. Okay, thank you. All those in favor of Councilors waters I see that you. Again, I just for the sake of clarity. I just want to make sure that what we're the direction is to bring us back in the context of budgeting. Correct. We would see a line item. And then whatever that format takes, likely I'll be out of product of the work that Joanne's ass and her working groups are already engaged in, is that yes, I would think so and that would be Harold's because we are directing staff. I think that whatever Harold city manager sees that working that I from my perspective, that's what we would accept. So I think that motion has been clarified all those in favor please raise your hand. All those posts. Thank you is that direction clear to staff. Great. That was a pretty good discussion. Moving on. We don't have any special reports and presentations right now we do at the end of the meeting. So this is now time for people to call in for public invited to be heard. The information is going to be displayed on the screen. Dallas, thank you. Please mute your live stream and dial in now we're going to take a five minute break to give everyone time to dial in. Thank you. Mayor pecking council, we are about 30 seconds down from the five minute mark week. So Dallas, let's wait, let's pull everybody in who is on board everybody who's waiting and then we'll close it. Actually, everyone who wants to get into the waiting room. Let's get them in and then close it. Mayor, if it's all right, we're going to give just another moment for Dallas, he's having a little bit of a technical. Challenge will give him just the people just another moment if that's okay. Of course, yes. Thank you. So may I'm going to go ahead and admit all these people while Dallas is computer actually. Okay. Went down I'll admit them so and let them know what's happening. As Dallas gets back on. Hey, that sounds great. Good evening to everybody joining for public invited to be heard. We have just let you in the meeting and we'll be with you just a moment we will be calling on you by the last three digits of your phone number. And if you can mute the live stream that would be very helpful listen through your phone. We'll get going here in just a moment. All right mayor, if you are ready. I will see if I can multitask help Dallas here. So, thank you color with the last three digits. 042. Could you please unmute yourself star six and state your name and address for the record color with last three digits. 042 color 042 I'm going to ask you to unmute. We can hear you now. Like a Verizon, it's like a Verizon commercial from the 1990s. Yes. Thank you very much. Please say your name. Maria Conroy 417 Emory Street. Good evening, Mayor and City Council members. I did send you an email earlier today with my comments. Did you receive that donkey ton up forwarded it to you. Thank you. Okay, very good. All right, great. Well, it was great to be with long mantras last night in person and hope to be with you in person again soon as well. It was a great meeting. And oh boy, third street our local throughway connecting East and West is a topic of much debate and passion. It was a wake up call for me though personally and hopefully to the city manager and the staff as well. The conversation was mostly respectful and thoughtful. There were a lot of passions. The third avenue update project is not on good footing at this time, but we, I do have every confidence that this can be solved with the city manager at the helm. I think we have an opportunity together to do this right. The third street project became a project for what reason is not completely clear. No, we're on the engaged site. Could I find this information well documented. No staff last night could articulate precisely how a few residents were able to convince that the administrators and engineers that this there was a problem that could be fixed with a limited observations and goals. The second project has become an example of how not to run a public process and does provide, you know, an opportunity to correct those and get back on proper footing. There's a big, there's a big learning there and to me, the biggest thing is that the staff decided to not take this to the transportation advisory board. Had they done that proper process would have been endeavored and there would have been hopefully a workshop to have brought people together to have worked through some of the issues that we're seeing now. So that's the main thing I would say I have some observations. The public process in general was inadequate. Residents were not notified about the March 7 meeting until the fifth, most of them did not receive notification until the fifth of March. The signs for this project that no parking signs in front of West Side Cafe were erected December 28. So almost a full three months prior to a discussion with the public about this. So, I believe that this was initiated without proper consideration for the historic or future plans. Notably, one thing was that the staff had just recently put up a sign to slow down traffic just in that same block. And here we are removing the traffic that could have prevented some sort of a block to a mitigation to the speeding traffic. So I, if I were in your seat, I would direct the city manager to provide a plan on how he's going to get this back on track. I would look to build authentic transparency and run the process through the tab. I would press pause and remove the no parking signs immediately. It's crushing a business. While we figure out what the right is for. Thank you, Mariah. And I know I'm out of time. And so thank you for being here and taking my comments. Thank you for your comments. Can we have the next caller. Yes, I am back and I will happily get the next caller caller with the last three digits for. To two color four to two. If you would please hit star six to unmute. Hey there, can you hear us? Yeah, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thanks. Very good. Good evening mayor mayor pro tem and council members. My name is Melissa Schopen, and I reside at 128 sombrero court in Lyons, Colorado. I am a landlord in Longmont and I'm here to ask you to consider tabling the rental licensing issue that has been before us for quite a while. I'm speaking to you now, because several things have changed from the last time I talked about this. I just wanted to alert you to the fact that I think this will increase a lot of costs for landlords. I've been looking at the median rents brought to you by hot pads and the median rent for all of Boulder County for a two bedroom apartment is $2,100. The current median rent for an apartment in Longmont is $1,800. In Denver, which recently enacted rental licensing, their median rent is $2,400. And as I'm sure you're well aware, we all are facing a lot of increased costs because of insurance property taxes, materials and labor. One of the issues that council had. They did a survey, I believe, and when I looked this over, it appeared to me that neither tenants nor landlords were in favor of this rental licensing program. The council also wanted to know what kind of stock of rental housing that we have, and I hope you will consider pushing the crime free multi housing program, which gives you an idea of some of the rental stock. I also think you can contact the Boulder County Assessor or probably some real estate agents because I get things in my mailbox almost every day about somebody that wants to buy my properties. I do own eight buildings with 38 units, and so you know my median rent is $1,100. I'm trying to keep it that way for my two bedroom apartments. So I hope the other thing was about tenants being afraid to complain. I do see now where online, if you just Google landlord Longmont, you get the city of Longmont's website to come up. And so perhaps we can see more complaints and see if this is really an issue that we are faced with. I know council has a lot of things in their lap and affordable housing is a big one. And I hope I can continue to provide it, and that you will vote no on the rental licensing program. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Melissa. All right. Perfect. And with that we will go on to color with the last three digits 499 color 499. If you'd hit star six to unmute please. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. Great. All right, thank you. This is Joe Kelly, a Barbary Drive, and may my remarks benefit all beings. To continue where I left off last time I spoke, a winning attorney on the recent EHT versus FCC case over outdated radio frequency guidelines. Daphna talkover said, microwave sickness is likely the most immediate and widespread manifestation of the adverse health effects from radiation emitted from wireless devices and infrastructure. At least 10% of the population has already developed symptoms. The rates are likely higher end quote. As you already know, I am one of those statistics. As for the smart meter opt out. Is it fair that people like me with EHS with a toxic response to things wireless should be forced to pay for protection against having a wireless meter? Or should people instead be given the choice to opt in with no cost to those who say no. I'd like to announce a virtual town hall meeting on smart meters with four international and local experts taking place next Tuesday, March 15th at 1pm. It is free and open to Longmont residents and the public concerned with this topic. A replay will be available. It's easy to attend. You just go to www.smartmetertownhall.com. And I'll say it again, that's www.smartmetertownhall.com. Frank Clegg, the retired president of Microsoft Canada and founder of Canadians for Safe Technology in February of this year had the following to say to the New Hampshire legislature about wireless infrastructure. I am one of the experts brought in for the 5G Commission investigation. I've met with scientific experts from around the world and have concluded wireless technology is not safe. I am especially concerned with 5G and the impact of wireless technologies on children. Clegg also made these footnoted points. Wireless technology is no longer advanced technology. It has outlived its useful life as a main source of connectivity. Wired connectivity eliminates harmful radio frequency radiation. Wired broadband is at least 100 times faster, more reliable and resilient, and is far more protective of privacy than wireless connectivity. According to the IEEE, wireless technologies consume at least 10 times more power than wired technologies. Greenpeace reports if the cloud were a country, it would be the fifth largest consumer of energy in the world. So tell me again, why are we moving to more wireless infrastructure in the form of smart meters? Please go to www.smartmetertownhall.com. Do, thank you very much for your comments and for that website. Yes, please come to the meeting. Thank you so much. Next caller, please. All right. Next caller with the last three digits, five, two, seven. Caller five, two, seven. If you would please hit star six to unmute. Caller five, two, seven. If you would hit star six on your keypad. Okay. Caller five, two, seven. We will come back to you in a little bit. Caller with the last three digits, five, seven, eight. Caller five, seven, eight. If you would please hit star six to unmute yourself. Hey, can you hear us? My name. I can hear you. Can you guys hear me? Yes, you're good. Thanks. Awesome. Thank you. Hey, thank you, mayor. Thank you, city council. My name is Wayne Ielo. I live at 1276 6th Avenue, which is near the corner of sixth and Sherman about one block from the west side Tavern. I'm calling about the parking signs that have been recently installed there. I attended the meeting that we had last night and I would like to thank Mr Rodriguez and Miss Martin for attending as well. And if any of the others that attended, I didn't notice you, but thank you for attending. I drive because I live in the area I drive on third ab I drive on Grant Sherman and Francis streets on a daily basis. I make a lot of turns on the third and off the third. And I know the intersections really well. I can tell you that the parking signs were never a concern for me or where people parked. What concerns me about third Avenue is the speed at which people drive. I do go to the Tavern frequently, maybe once a week, let's say, and I have to walk home because I'm only a block away and crossing that road at any time is a dangerous thing. And so I'd like to see more effort put into studying the speed at which people drive. When I look at the parking signs that have gone up, one thing I'll comment on is when cars are parked on the sides of the road, it seems to me to actually be safer. People drive slower and people do not pass me on the right. If I'm making a left hand turn off a third, for example, heading down Sherman or heading down Grant or any of those Francis, any of those streets over there, people will pass on the right if there's nothing there to block them. When there's cars parked, they can't do that and passing on the right is never a good idea. I've never had any line of sight issues that the city said that they identified. During the meeting last night, the city admitted that some of the line of sight issues they had identified were incorrectly identified. They were going to go back and actually take some of the parking signs down so there's a bit of confusion as to what is proper, what is not. One of the things too that I think was an earlier caller mentioned was the city just did not, the city staff did not follow its process for gathering community input prior to these changes. This affects people on all sides of the issue. At the meeting last night, it started off polite, but it got a little heated toward the end. At the end of the day, people were not aware of what was going on and it's had impact to the business. It's reduced the business of West Side Tavern, which is a really bad thing for that particular business, especially just recovering from the COVID effect. It's also impacted residents on the streets where now people, since they can't park along third, they have to park on the side streets. One woman was breaking down in tears at the meeting last night because she has a son and now people are parking in front of her house. She doesn't know what to do. Her son has some sort of disability and she needs that spot. So my point is really not to get into all the details of what was talked about at the meeting last night, but just to say that this seemed like it was a rushed job for whatever reason process was not followed. And I would really like to see those signs immediately taken down or respectfully request that and then have the proper process followed. Let's have the meeting. Let's get the community input. There's obviously a lot of changes coming to third. They're going to tear it up for water. They're going to repave it. I think they're tearing it up for some other reason. There's going to be blockages on that street. So I'd like to see the proper process. Thank you so much for listening to me. Thank you. All right. And moving on to caller with the last three digits, 696 caller 696. If you are there, do you mind hitting star six to unmute? Hello, everyone. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Okay, great. My name is Angela Green. I own a Longmont rental property and live on Twin Lakes Road in Twin Lakes condos and gun barrel. I've owned rental properties since 1973. For the following reasons, I think a rental license inspection program is wholly unnecessary. Colorado has a warranty of habitability statute and Longmont has mediation services and building code enforcement department. Apparently it's only a small percentage of Longmont tenants have registered maintenance complaints. My tenants have never been afraid to request repairs. On a regular basis, landlords and property managers already inspect their rentals for needed repairs and maintenance. Tenants are responsible by lease agreement for reporting needed repairs to the landlord or property manager, even if the tenants are not inconvenienced by those items. How would you feel about strangers inspecting your private home? Tenants don't like it either. Deferred maintenance accumulates and is income regressive because it creates greater maintenance costs. Landlords care about the condition of our rental property. Deferred maintenance is a financial drain and obviously non-beneficial to us. A licensing inspection program is an insult to landlords, tenants and property managers.  A better use of time and resources could be programs to help fund mold mitigation and programs to train handy persons. These programs would fill a need and benefit both tenants and landlords. Loan programs for landlords without sufficient resources to repair their rental property would be helpful. The city could educate residents about the causes and curses of water damage, mold and other potential hazards. A few reasons why repairs are neglected or delayed are an insurance claim taking longer than expected. A tenant went outside of the lease and repaired something incorrectly and perhaps made the problem worse. Landlord doesn't have sufficient financial, mental, physical or service provider resources. A landlord and tenant can't agree on how to solve the problem or who is responsible. Sometimes a landlord doesn't know about the problem and the biggest one I think is poor landlord-tenant communication. Over 70% of survey respondents strongly oppose a rental licensing and inspection program. Therefore please abandon your plans for this time consuming creation of red tape. Instead create more housing ownership programs and build more rental property. Angela? Thank you. Thank you for your comments. That took exactly three minutes. Exactly. Oh my God, I got it perfect. Thank you so much for listening. Blessings to you all. Okay. And moving on to the next caller. Caller with the last three digits, 1, 9, 9. Caller 1, 9, 9. If you're there, do you mind hitting star six to unmute? Caller 1, 9, 9. I can hear you and see you. Can you hear us? Hello, my name is Joseph Solomon. I am with Vivo living and I am not sure that this is a proper time to comment, but I did want to comment on reservation item number nine. So I'm willing to stand back if council would prefer to that I stand back until that item is called. Yes, Joseph. If you wouldn't mind, we do have quite a few people calling in. So maybe at second public invited to be heard would be more appropriate. Absolutely. I will stand back. Thank you. Perfect. And moving on to our next caller. Caller with the last three digits, two, zero, two. Caller two, zero, two. If you would hit star six to unmute. Hello, can you hear us? Yes. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Okay. This is Polly Kristen. Longmont Colorado. Both rental licensing and inspections are critical for the health and safety of Longmont presidents and also for the city's residents. And the city's use in future planning without this crucial public database. It's impossible to know the scope of Longmont housing crisis or adequately address it. which is a fairly simple issue. We license and inspect all restaurants in the city because people spend time, purchase, and consume food and beverages in an establishment, and they have the right to not have their health and safety at risk from fires, building collapse, contamination, et cetera. Residents of Longmont spend even more time living in their homes, be they rental or owned. They also have a right to live in a home in which they and their children do not have their health and safety at daily risk. Inspections are also essential, but require a more detailed and thoughtful discussion. Colorado has one of the least regulated housing industries in the country, and Colorado also has one of the highest costs for rentals and homes for sale. Although speculators and landlords reap a handsome profit from these businesses, they extract profit from their tenants yet are mostly unregulated. It has been said that the city receives only about 60 complaints per year from tenants. That's because tenants know they will be evicted if they complain. More frequently, the rent is simply raised and they're quietly forced out. While Colorado now has a warrant of habitability, there's no way to enforce this. And once again, this places it between the tenant and the landlord. Inspections would take it out of the hands of tenants versus landlords and give the city the responsibility for inspections, just as with all new construction certificates of occupancy, there is a need for inspections every three years for any unit or building over eight years old. Single family detached homes need to be included in this inspection as they have in my extensive experience worse maintenance and more problems. They also tend to have more people per unit such as families with small children who are even more vulnerable to hazards in their homes. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Polly. Great, and moving on to our next caller. Caller with the last three digits, seven, six, five. Caller seven, six, five. If you would hit star six to unmute. Caller seven, six, five. If you are there, would you hit star six to unmute, please? All right, we're gonna go back to our first caller who we missed. Caller with the last three digits, five, two, seven. Caller five, two, seven. If you are there, do you mind hitting star six to unmute? Caller five, two, seven. Do you mind unmuting for me? Okay, Mayor and Council, we have two callers left that haven't spoken, I'm asking both of them to unmute. Do you want me to give it a little bit more time or what's your... Yes, please. And Dallas, I realized that Joseph Solomon was calling in about Vivo, which is nine D on the consent agenda. So if Joseph, if you are still in the waiting room, I don't know, do you think he left, Dallas? Yes, he did leave. I can reopen if you'd prefer. Oh, well, as long as we're waiting for these last two to unmute and come in, yeah, let's just open it for Joseph Solomon, I hope he's... I'm here. Hello, caller seven, six, five. We can hear you, can you hear us? Yes, sorry, I don't know why it wasn't working. This is Anne-Marie Jensen with the East County Housing Opportunity Coalition, which includes Valmont and the other cities east of Boulder. And I wanted to say that I'm glad to hear that the staff is appointing an attainable housing task force. Echo supports particular attention to entry level for sale housing, which is I think how most people define attainable and we would love to have a member of our group included in that, but we also support lower-end housing. And with that, I wanted to thank you and Vivo Community Living for including both more affordable housing than they were required to under the inclusionary housing ordinance and deeper affordable housing than they were required to. And they went as low as 50% of AMI when most projects like that go 60 to 80% of AMI. So I wanted to thank you, your staff, for negotiating that and also Vivo. I also wanna commend the city for acquiring the Costco site and dedicating nine acres of affordable housing at that site. And we look forward to working with you on that as well as the 100% affordable project of this week. So we think you're doing a lot of good. We thank you for that. I know how much attention you pay to housing. And I can see that on your agenda. You have several housing items and I just wanna thank you and appreciate the things that you are doing. That's all. Thank you, Ann Marie. All right. We did get two callers back. I will go to the one that we haven't hit yet, caller with the last three digits, 888. Caller 888, if you are there, do you mind unmuting for us? Hitting star six. Hey there, caller 888. Do you mind muting the live stream in the background? Yeah, okay, got it. Perfect, thank you. Go ahead, welcome. Hello, Mayor Peck and Council. My name is Phil Kerrigel. I live on Grant Street in Laumont, about a block from the West Side Tavern. And this concerns the conversation about Third Avenue and Sherman. You know, from a 50,000 foot level, Laumont is going through incredible growing pains. And I'm sure that that pain is felt by everyone on the screen right now, from affordable housing to RTD to everything else. Bringing it back to Third and Sherman, I would ask a request that you use this Third Avenue and Sherman situation as a test case for the future of neighbors and neighborhoods that are gonna address these exact same concerns. You've got people who have lived here for years and years, and it's a small town memory and a small town living experience, versus the growth that is happening at a rapid pace in Laumont. And that as you and the operations department and city engineers address traffic situations, that you use this major corridor. I know it's not actually called that, you know, in engineering terms, but Third Avenue is a major cut-through between Main Street and Hoover to deal with many situations of the ideal test case. You have neighbors who feel like they're in danger crossing the street. You have neighbors who feel like they're in danger crossing off of Sherman onto Third Avenue. You have a small business involved. And I would implore you to really, I know you already to some extent are, but really focus on the situation with Third and Sherman to create a best practices that can be rolled out to the rest of Laumont as this situation occurs over and over and over again throughout the city and the however many years it is to come and ask you to, you know, just do whatever you can to sustain small business and protect people at the same time. And I thank you for all your hard work.  Thank you. Thank you, Phil. Thank you for your comments. Thank you. All right. And then call her with the last three digits, 1, 9, 9. Call her 1, 9, 9 if you unmute for us again with star six. Hey there. Can you hear us? Hello again, mayor and council persons. This is again, Joseph Solomon from you go living and again, we're standing by to discuss item number nine relating to the conversion of the hotel located at 1, 9, 4, 0 Ken Pratt Boulevard to 210 apartment units. Is this an okay time to speak? Yes, Joseph. Now is the time to speak on it. Fantastic. Thank you very much, mayor and council persons. First of all, I wanted to thank you, those of you in particular who had the opportunity to come to our open house a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, while I could not be there personally, I know that Dan Norval, our CEO, as well as Leslie and some of their team members were there and it was a tremendous opportunity for us to connect to the people of Longmont because we are really environmentally based, socially conscious and it meant a lot to us to connect with you. So first of all, a big thank you to the city, to yourself and all of you for being there. We are a pinnable lifestyle housing provider and it is by way of converting functionally obsolete hotels such as this property that allows us to really transfer a functionally obsolete property that is sort of transient and are proud to have a socially minded project that then can service the local community. At the beginning of this session, social equity was mentioned and we are really proud at Vivo to be very mindful and participants in our development to provide social equity in our projects and we think that this project is the epitome of the type of projects that address community needs, that provide inclusionary housing and by having, and don't forget, this particular project has, excuse me, 26 affordable units that it is a, I think an example, a prime example of the social minded type of projects that we're alluded to earlier. So I hope that that's all taken into consideration as a council member, Marcia Martin pointed out in her beautiful article, I think it was from yesterday if I'm not mistaken, our properties service the whole spectrum of the rental population. We service people who are maybe leaving their parents at home for the first time and renting for the first time. We service workforce and members of the community that are teachers and firefighters and police officers and we service all the way up the chain to retirees who maybe are empty netters as well. And what we offer is beautiful, fresh accommodation that have lifestyle amenity range. Joseph, your time is up. Thank you so much for calling in for your comments. Thank you all. I hope that this is approved and we look forward to working with the city. Thank you. All right. And we are back to our final caller for a third time caller 527. If you were there, do you mind hitting star six to unmute for me, please? Caller with the last three digits, five to seven. Please hit star six to unmute. Hey there caller five to seven, can you hear us? I can. Great, thank you. Hi there. My name is Wes Isbets, you're 730 Kimbark here in Longmont. I would like to thank the council folks and the city manager for the meeting that was held last night about the Third Avenue parking things. I would like to say first of all that there was a lot of controversy last night and a lot of confusion and a lot of passion. And I would also like to apologize for any hostile feelings that have been expressed in a very difficult couple of years with the COVID lockdown and things that have gone on. It's been very difficult for the business and for the planning of the business. It was expressed last night and admitted that there have been and talked about tonight several errors that had been made in this process. The current condition that exists has actually increased the life safety risk versus the goal at the moment was to decrease it. The increased speed on third combined with the pushing the cars into the neighborhood without lighting or crosswalks and neighborhood, the irritation and conflicts that have happened have just escalated. I would ask the council to put a motion to reset the parking issue or the parking situation to how it was prior to this recent change in the week between Christmas and New Year's and to redirect the city manager and everyone to give this a chance to do it correctly. And that is my request and thank you. Thank you, Wes. So, Dallas, do we have anyone else? That was our last caller, Mayor Peck. Okay, thank you very much. We are now onto the consent agenda. The clerk, please read the items on the consent agenda into the record. Absolutely, Mayor Peck. And I just wanted to note that item nine I, resolution 2022-33, is being removed from the agenda and will be brought back in the future. It has some incorrect exhibits in that item. So that one is, will not be blessed tonight. So item nine A is ordinance 2020-07, a bill for an ordinance approving an amendment to the total property mining and surface use lease agreement between the city of Longmont and aggregate industries, WCR Inc. Public hearing and second reading is scheduled for March 29, 2022. Nine B is ordinance 2020-08, a bill for an ordinance amending the Longmont Municipal Code regarding the 2021 edition of the International Building Residential, mechanical fuel gas, plumbing, property maintenance, energy conservation, swimming pool and spa, existing building and fire codes. Public hearing and second reading for that is also on March 29, 2022. Nine C is resolution 2022-27, a resolution of the Council of the city of Longmont, Colorado, finding that the petition for annexation of parcels of land located in Weld County and Boulder County, state of Colorado, known as the Pechal Open Space and Quicksilver Road annexation, generally located on the east side of Countyline Road, south of St. Breen Creek and north of County Road 20 and a half and Quicksilver Road between 119th Street and Countyline Road. Substantially complies with the Colorado Revised Statute section 31-12-1071. Nine D is resolution 2022-28, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving a voluntary alternative agreement for the Bevo Living Hotel conversion development as satisfaction of the city's inclusionary housing requirements. Nine E is resolution 2022-29, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving a voluntary alternative agreement for a housing development proposed by Sunset Element, LLC, as satisfaction of the city's inclusionary housing requirements. Nine F is resolution 2022-30, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and the Longmont Housing Authority for support and services. Nine G is resolution 2022-31, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the first amended and restated intergovernmental agreement between the city and Boulder County concerning the use of a city of Longmont Van for the COVID-19 shelter for the homeless. Nine H is resolution 2022-32, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and Boulder County for utility billing assistance to Longmont residents. Nine J is resolution 2022-34, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city of Longmont and Boulder County concerning asphalt chip and seal on North 75th Street. Nine K is resolution 2022-35, a resolution of the Longmont City Council establishing the fee for cash and lieu of water rights transfers. Nine L is resolution 2022-36, a resolution of the Longmont City Council renaming the park site formally known as South Clover Basin Neighborhood Park as the Clover Meadows Neighborhood Park. Nine M is resolution 2022-37, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city of Longmont and Boulder County for an amendment to the declaration of covenants, conditions and restrictions on Boulder County's Western Mobile Lake IV property. Nine N is resolution 2022-38, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the amendment to the intergovernmental agreement between the city of Longmont and the Colorado Department of Human Services Office of Behavioral Health for contract amendment number five, for original contract number 18 IHJA107352 for Longmont Public Safety's Co-Responder Program. Nine O is resolution 2022-39, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and the Colorado State Patrol for a memorandum of understanding to permit the Longmont Police Department to conduct commercial vehicle safety inspections. Nine P is resolution 2022-40, a resolution of the Longmont City Council authorizing a lease agreement with option to purchase between the city of Longmont as Lessee and the Huntington National Bank as Lesor for golf carts for the city golf courses. And nine Q is resolution 2022-41, a resolution of the Longmont City Council calling a special municipal election to be held Tuesday, November 8th, 2022 to fill a vacancy in the office of city council member at large. Thank you, Don. Do any council members want to pull items from the consent agenda? Councillor Waters. I'd like to pull item 9K, the cash in lieu for water rights item. Okay, are there any other items that need to be pulled? Councillor Waters, would you like to move the consent agenda then minus 9K? I will, I'll move the consent agenda minus item 9K. Second. Thank you. Thank you. So that's been moved by Councillor Waters, seconded by Councillor Martin. All those in favor, please raise your hand. Thank you. That has been approved unanimously. So we will move on to ordinance of second reading. We don't have any tonight. So we'll go right on to the items removed from consent agenda. Councillor Waters, you moved nine removed or pulled 9K. I did. And let me just say up front, I support this recommendation to increase the cash in lieu payment from the 18,000 to the 48. So this is not my concern. I am concerned. Or maybe I just would like to hear Harold talk about or whomever Harold would be the right person. There was some discussion when this was introduced about flexibility in terms of timing of implementation and well, maybe not in terms of timing. I would like to know if there's any flexibility in terms of timing. Because when I think back on the inclusionary housing ordinance, when we adopted it, there were projects that were in a queue. And we said those projects were not subject to what we were in the process of crafting at the time. Anything that came in after that was subject to the inclusionary housing ordinance and should be. And I'm wondering if we're thinking about this the same way, first question. And that is if there are their projects somewhere in a process of application for annexation or in the development process, we're doing this now is going to surprise people with the additional costs. Number one, number two. There was some discussion about the flexibility Harold for attainable and affordable housing and how this would be applied or waived for the kind of housing stock that we need because this surely is going to add cost to the development of residential housing. So my question is where is the flexibility? What should the community know? What should we know about scheduling or timing for implementation and flexibility once it's implemented for projects that we would like to make certain we're doing everything we can to keep residential housing costs down. So I'm going to start actually. So, Dale, I don't know where we are on this but people pay the cash in lieu at time of Platt. And so, yeah, you're correct, Harold and Council Member Waters and I see Ken's on and I think Joni's also on this evening and Glen. I am not aware of projects that are at the final Platt stage or that would be immediately impacted by the project or by the increase in the cash in lieu. What I will say is you're absolutely correct. This kind of an increase in the cash in lieu is bound to have an impact, right? A cost impact on development. I think the core issue still is what flexibility do we have? And Harold and I did chat about that today and I do believe we absolutely have a strategy and flexibility around affordable housing. I believe we have the capacity to also bring forward for your consideration the application of a similar albeit it might be slightly different policy for attainable housing. And so I don't think either of those are areas of community interest that need to necessarily be directly impacted by this, frankly, the price of getting water to our city right now. So I don't know if that helps, but I think we can address a couple of the issues that you're mentioning. And I'm not aware of any project and I could be wrong, right? That's immediately in the pipeline that would be surprised by the change. Harold, do you're muted? I'm sorry, can I just respond just to Dale in anticipation of what Harold's about to say? Sure, go ahead. Just Dale in terms of, I have no doubt you can figure that out, just figure this out. But we all know how certainty or the lack of it plays out in the commitments that we need from developers and builders to accelerate the kind of housing stock we wanna see available in the community. So more information is better than less information to reduce the uncertainty or to increase certainty. So maybe if we knew or they knew that we're not gonna, this is not gonna apply to affordable or attainable housing. And there are simple ways to handle this. Anything that's in the same place in the process, where we excluded or included projects in the inclusion of housing ordinance. Now, I'll just listen. So thank you. If I can, I'm gonna take the easier question is the affordable, the attainable component. So when council discussed this last time, we pointed out that we could look at something for attainable. And it wouldn't hit the time when we were bringing the resolution. In terms of affordable, we already have the system in place to deal with the cash and loot component. And it's what we utilized actually when we purchased the nine acres associated with Costco to satisfy the deficit. So on the affordable housing side, that's set. And so whether it's 24,000 or 48,000, that's in the process. And so that's one component of it. What's in my mind in terms of the attainable component is that we utilize the same process that we have for affordable. And we either go to the original $18,000 that was in play prior to that, or we go down to half of that, which is $9,000 per acre foot for attainable housing, which would be lower. My concern about going to zero on attainable housing and zero both on affordable housing is that you would disincentivize affordable housing because they would be the same. And those are the items that we have to bring back to you all in terms of that piece. But to give you a sense of what I was thinking, it's giving council an option of either going back to the original cost or going back to something in the neighborhood of half the original cost if we wanna incentivize attainable housing in that process. That's on that side of it. And that's what I was thinking about pulling forward. In terms of what's in the system, and I'm gonna probably need Gene's help on this one, is that I would assume that if you are in the process, meaning it's already been submitted and you're in the process, the old fees would apply to you. And if you haven't submitted and you're not in the process, then the new fees would apply to you. Eugene, is that a accurate assumption? Mayor and council Eugene May, city attorney, yeah.  So for those that have submitted their application, they will get the old fee of 18,000. Those that have not submitted an application will get the new fee. For commercial and for housing that is other than attainable? That's for anyone. So anyone that's in the system that has submitted an application, they're coming in under the 18,000. Somebody who comes in Tuesday and submits an application, they're in the new rate. Even if the application would result ultimately in the construction of attainable housing? No, so if the application would result in affordable housing, then we would look at it through the affordable housing program that we have in place now. We do not have a program for attainable housing. And that's the one that we said we would have to bring back to you all and adopt. And so, and that's the one where I said what I was looking at is taking the same mechanism for affordable that we already have in play. Take the attainable housing definition and look at tiering it based on the rate. And so if you were at 80 to 100% AMI based on the number of units on the number of acres, that may be 9,000. If you're at 100 to 110, that may be more. And tiering it similar to the way that we have the inclusionary housing so we don't have different scales that we're using in that process.  Mayor Peck, may I ask one more question? Yes. Harold, that goes down. This is back to the first of the two questions in terms of implementation. It seems to me that I think it's the right decision to make, but it seems to me we ought not to be implementing it and risk the either slowing down, moving forward with attainable housing until a policy comes back. I think we ought to wait to implement this until we have a policy. So we know there's not gonna be, we're not gonna burden with this decision attainable or residential attainable or affordable housing and it won't be affordable attainable housing. We're just talking about appointing a task force, et cetera. It doesn't make sense to me to implement this if there's a risk that we're gonna burden housing that might have qualified as affordable. So that's my last comment. Thank you. So Councilman Waters, do you want to move 9K? I will, can I ask one more question? I don't need to drag this out. Just, what are the- You're pretty much at your time. What are the influence? All right, then right now I'd have to move it and vote against it and I don't wanna vote against it. Okay. I will move that then. I move, let me look at the number of 9K. I move ordinance 2022-35. Second. All those in favor, raise your hand. All those opposed. So that passes four to one with Councilman Waters in opposition. So that brings us to the next part of our agenda but I'm wondering do we need a break or can we get through the next presentation and take our break at the next public we invited to be heard.  Okay, let's take a three-minute break. Councilman Hidalgo-Fairing. All right, we will take a three-minute break. Thank you. Mayor Peck, I believe you requested a three-minute break. We are at the three-minute mark. If you'd like, I can, we can hold out a little bit longer but if you and Council are ready, I can drop the slide. You are muted. I am muted. Go ahead and drop the slide down. Sounds good. So we're just waiting for the Mayor Pro Tem. There he is. So we are at the exciting part of our meeting tonight which is the presentation on the rental subject. Whoops, I'm getting feedback. Rental license procedure. I would like to make statement here first. Let's have the presentation and then Councilwoman Hidalgo-Fairing had said she would like to make a motion and then we'll open it up for the discussion on the rental license if that's okay with everyone. So Glen or Dane, whoever's going to go forward. Sure, I'll kick it off. Glen Vandenweig in your planning director and we do have Dane Hermsen here who is our senior housing inspector but I think our city manager, Harold Dominguez wanted to make some opening statements.  Okay, all right. Great, well thank you Council. We did want to present the results of surveys we took last summer. We repeated it. We first put out the survey in June, July and got a pretty good response but we did go back out then the next month to get additional responses. We ended up with about 753 total responses. So not bad but I have about eight slides and if you could bring that up, Dallas. Okay, so we didn't ask the questions in this order. We just kind of put the results in this order because it kind of made sense as we kind of up the requirements in the rental housing registration and inspection program, kind of what the responses were. We've got a number of, we have these stacked bar charts. So the top color, which is orange is a landlord who owns numerous properties. The olive green is a landlord that just owns one property. Then we have the green which is, I guess we define it as a concerned neighbor or a concerned resident of the city of Longmont that wanted to weigh in on the program. The light blue is property managers. And then we highlighted the bottom which is actual renters and how they voted on the various questions that we asked. We did highlight the renters because I think that's what council was concerned about is are we reaching them? Are they getting access to the services that code enforcement and Dane provides as far as making sure we have safe housing in our community. So I think overall as we go through the slides, I mean, one of the trends we kind of saw is certainly you would understand and I think you heard it tonight, if you're a landowner or a landlord, you're not in favor of additional regulation. However, what was kind of unique is if you're a renter, they were kind of split on whether additional oversight, additional requirements was a good thing or a bad thing. And you'll see that as we run through the slides. One of the other things that kind of stood out to me is the total right hand column is NA. So those are folks that took the survey but for whatever reason, they did not answer these particular questions. I'm not sure why. I think part of it might be that maybe they don't understand the program or the requirements very well. So that kind of points at maybe an issue that we need to solve going forward. But our first question was simply do we wanna keep the status quo? And that is if you make a complaint about a housing situation, you would apply, you would make that complaint to code enforcement and Dane would be the person who would go out and inspect and see if there is a housing issue. So the left side is most desirable and the right side is least desirable.  But again, when you look at the renters which is kind of that bottom pink area on either end of the spectrum, there's those that are in favor of keeping it the way it is and there's those that think maybe it's not enough. So if you could advance the slide, Dallas, then we asked about a simple question. Should we do more education for landlords about IPMC which is our international property maintenance code? That's the code Dane uses to make sure that we have safe housing in the community. And maybe the landlord wouldn't know about it unless we had to run a licensing program where we know who they are and we can provide that education directly to a landlord. These results kind of fell right in the middle. That's semi-neutral. I think number three was slightly approving of that action. So kind of right in the middle. But again, if you look at those that did chose not to answer this question, there's quite a few of them. So again, that's one thing that raises some concern with us. Next slide. So here we had a little bit more specific. Do you think the city should require licensing and yearly license renewal for rental properties? And it was pretty evenly split between renters that felt either yes or no, almost exactly the same. If we did have opportunities for people to enter open-ended answers in a number of questions and just perusing through those, there were a few trends that I saw from renters. I think one of the concerns why they did not want additional legislation, additional requirements was the feeling that it would get passed on to them and they would end up paying a higher rent. And then I think we heard from one of the callers, another big trend in concerns from the renters specifically is a loss of privacy that they feel that their home is their castle and they don't necessarily want our inspectors. As great as Dane is, I can't imagine, but some folks don't necessarily want him inspecting their unit. Next slide. So we take it a step further. Do you think the city should require systematic inspections for rental properties? Now we start to see a little bit of increase when you look at the responses from the renters. Slightly higher increase in those that felt that that's a good idea. And we did have a few respondents that said, yes, sometimes I do have issues that I raise and they don't get taken care of very quickly. But again, those that were against it, the two main themes was a concern about raising my rent and that it's kind of a government intrusion, there's a loss of privacy. One thing that was kind of jumped out a little bit was the concerned neighbors. So that is the green area. Certainly seem to think it's a good idea to do a systematic inspection of rental properties. We did see some that they feel that they may be detrimental in the neighborhood, a few comments to that effect. So next slide. Then we asked the full gamut. Should the city enforce the code proactively by licensing and inspecting rental housing at regular intervals? Again, on the scale to the left is most desirable. People think that's the greatest answer. And on the right would be least desirable. And you can certainly see when you add in all of the respondents that it's not a popular idea. And again, when you look at the specifically the renters, they're split very close to 50-50 of whether they're in favor or they're against the full program that we presented back in last June, which included registering rental properties and then inspecting every two years any rental property that was attached and over eight years old. Next slide. So we asked the same question and in more of a policy framework, how supportive are you of allocating additional resources of the city to a rental housing inspection program? On the left is not at all supportive, which certainly got the greatest votes all the way to completely supportive. So again, that you look at the renters and they're pretty evenly split on either end of that spectrum. Just kind of gleaning through some of the themes in the open-ended questions that were answered. Some of the things we saw was the city doesn't need it. We haven't really shown that we have an issue with the state of our rental housing. The fear of the costs just get moved on to the renter that we could use the funds for other beneficial things for renters. For instance, helping them move up into a home that they could own. And a basic idea that it's a waste of taxpayer money. So those were some of the themes we got out of this question. And then we dive a little bit deeper into very specific things. So if you could go to the next slide, Dallas. So if we were to create a rental housing licensee and or inspection program, what are the housing types that should be included? On the left is basically a duplex or a triplex. And then you go up in density of an apartment complex with 10 units or more. In the middle is a mobile home park. The next category to the fourth column to the right is if you're renting a room within a house, you're just, you have roommates and you're renting a room. And then we go to a single family home and then very large complexes up to a greater or between five and nine units. Kind of an even split. I think all the way across. I think there's a little bit more bias towards the larger apartment complexes. I think when staff proposed that we look at specifically attached units, there's a little bit more code requirements that go along with higher density housing. So I think you're seeing here that the fear or the concern would be with the higher density, but pretty well evenly split across the board. So I think we have just one more slide. Here we asked, what are some of the things that you would like an inspection program to focus on? I thought we would see something more about exterior conditions of units, but they fell really into safety orientation, the highest being overall safety of the structure, structurally, and then fire safety. So probably not a surprise there. And then when you talk about concerned citizens that maybe live next door to apartment complex or a rental project, they're pretty evenly split across the board. So didn't see any big trends jump out, but this is what we learned. We certainly have a whole bunch of open-ended questions that we didn't provide, but we thought we'd give council start here and give council kind of an overview of what we learned from the respondents to the survey. Thank you, Glen. Harold, do you like to weigh in on this? No, I just wanted to say I know that as we've been talking about this council has, I've talked to all of you in different formats about this. And I know for us, I think the clarity on the inspection and the licensing piece and where council wants us to go is gonna be pretty important as we continue to move forward. Okay, thank you. Councilwoman Hedoggle-Ferring. Thank you, Mayor. I've had several discussions with staff and as well as tenants. And I, based on the findings of this survey, I think it's pretty telling the community input, the split results on some of these topics for tenants. And really what was our purpose? What was our underlining purpose for bringing this for discussion tonight? One of the things for me was that data collection piece. I would really like to move to change the direction to staff in order to meet the needs of collecting the data we need at the local level and use existing resources, our online platform. I would like to direct staff to create an online voluntary registry. So if we are single family, single family units, duplexes that don't necessarily, we can't access those as readily as apartment units, but we'd have to have that voluntary, for now voluntary. I just kind of really, just your name, you're renting this unit or you're renting this home, this address. So for us as we're making decisions for future building priorities, that we actually know what are the numbers of rentals we have, especially in duplexes and single family home. And in that respect, so the second thing I'd like to also amend would be rather than having the inspection piece, it really in tenants that I spoke with, as well as my own experience as a tenant is knowing what our rights are, having, we have Susan Spaulding, who is a great resource and she's been wonderful with providing information that we need, but to have a separate individual that would work in conjunction with her, whether and to really open it up to staff to see if we have the existing resources or staff that we need to work in conjunction with Susan to be able to have a tenants alliance while Susan maintains and focuses on the landlord alliance. And then from there, we can really evaluate what are the disparities platform for tenants that would allow them to voice their concerns in a safe, secure, and so they feel safe and secure in what they're sharing. So I heard part of that that you were making a motion. Yes, yeah, I narrow my language down. I just kind of want to- Can you make that very concise as to what it is this motion is? I like my words. So, I moved to redirect staff to create a, with existing resources, create an online platform or an online option for landlords to voluntarily register their units that they have for rent, as well as, and I have it written down here, staff to look at building that capacity for tenant landlord relationships. I kind of want to keep it open so they can decide whether you're going to use existing resources or if you need to add another FTE allocation. So you want a voluntary landlord online registry and a tenant rights person to work alongside Susan Spalding who focuses on landlord alliance. Yes. Am I stating that correctly? Yes, yes. Do we have a second? I'll second that for the discussion. Councillor Martin. I was going to second for the discussion if you didn't, but I am- Oh, go ahead. That's all right, because I'm going to vote no. And I want to say why. I originally supported this proposal and the reasons were pretty much the same as council member Adagio Ferring, which is that we need the data about our supply and the demand that we have for housing. But the thing is we got a grant and we're going to do a big needs assessment. And I think that that would be much more effective than a voluntary registry. So I don't think we need that. And the other thing that we did because when I was asking about resident complaints and trying to help people file a habitability complaint, I discovered that it was essentially impossible.  And that's been fixed. And about the time that that got fixed, I stopped having to help people get it done. And so I think that combined with the city's existing landlord tenant education programs, which are really pretty extensive, that I don't think we need this particular mechanism. And after we vote on, you know, or discuss Council Member Hidalgo-Ferring's motion and vote on it, I have an alternative motion to introduce. Okay, thank you, Councillor Martin. Anyone else? Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez. Thank you, Mayor Peck. So first of all, I would say thank you, Council Member Hidalgo-Ferring for your very thoughtful motion. I'm not going to be voting for it because at the end of the day, when I looked at those numbers that were provided in this presentation, there was not a clear mandate from tenants. And those are the only numbers that I was looking at, to be honest with you. You know, I appreciate our landlords. And as Mayor Peck and I at Coffee with Council heard, there are some legitimate issues that landlords face. And we can work with them in a proactive manner as long as they let us know about it. That being said, I will say that we should, you know, be it on the website or with the City Line and maybe Mayor Peck could do this in part of her portion of the City Line, but make it very well advertised as far as tenancy issues are concerned. The very real fact of the matter is though, is that when I got that email that we all received about the workload that staff has from City Manager Dominguez, I look at everything now with a much more skeptical lens about where do we put this in the agenda? Where do we prioritize these kinds of things? And to me, this is not something that is urgent enough, based especially on the fact that the tenants were not, like I said, a clear mandate, saying that they needed these inspections to happen, these licenses to happen. And I'm not against them. I will say that maybe in, you know, hopefully, a less pandemic world, a less housing crunch world, I would love to look at this. I think this is, we are chasing squirrels sometimes and I appreciate that because that's what we are elected to do, but we also need to be cognizant of chasing those squirrels. And this to me is something that we could do, but as a municipality of our size is not absolutely required. We are also not a university city, like Boulder is, so to equate those two things is different. It's very different. And so I would like to see any discussion of an actual ordinance tabled. I appreciate the survey that staff did, the multiple surveys actually that staff did. And just to speak to a somewhat different thing, I also as a real estate appraiser do inspections of homes. And it is disruptive and people do not like it. So if we are to see any sort of ordinance, I would ask that we only inspect between tenancy as in not while anybody is occupying a space because you could be there for 15 years and love it, right? You know, you can be a long-term tenant and there's no reason to continue to inspect them and disrupt their lives if they feel that 15, you know. So I think that this was a very good presentation. We know what we're looking at. It sounds like actually the city has a fairly decent enumeration of rental properties. And as I know that many of us met with the Barra ladies or at least one of the ladies. And I will say that, I don't know if you all would agree or not, but most of the complaints I get are from very large apartment complexes, not from say single family occupancy or, you know, smattering of town homes and condos and things that are owned by investors and landlords, if you will. If we're gonna look at this, I think it's most appropriate to look at it with the very large apartment complexes that are in town that we already get enough heat about, if you will. So thank you. Thank you. Anyone else want to weigh in on this? Councillor Yarbrough. Thank you, Mayor Peck. I guess my main concern it will be for making sure that the tenants have an option to disclose any issues that they may have because of the fear of being kicked out of their unit. I don't know if there is something like safe to tail kind of situation to where they can report the landlord and then maybe, you know, Dane, you can go by and just kind of watch and look around. I don't know the process and I'm not trying to, you know, make you do something that's not in your protocol, but what I'm saying is I think it is important to understand and listen to those residents who have a fear of being kicked out of their units because of some safety issues within their unit. But I do agree with the council members, my co-council members because I myself am a renter and I would not want my unit to be disrupted with people coming in and inspecting as well, but I do want to be mindful of the tenants who may feel like they don't have a voice and that they may not have an option either. So do we have anything in place for those tenants who are really afraid to speak out and then what is that process for them and so that they won't get exposed while there's whatever those measures taken to make sure that the tenants are safe enough for those tenants? Thank you, Councillor. Anyone else? So Councillor Hidalgo-Furring. Okay, thank you, Mayor. So, you know, at the end of the day, you know, I really want, one of the things that I noticed, especially when we hit some of those areas that were sweat, was that tenants and yeah, this is just from my own conversations with residents as well, that they, you know, there's, we have to have something in place and maybe staff, Harold can speak to this, what are we currently doing that really work to empower tenants to know what their rights are? And it could just be that we offer some more educational programs where tenants can attend, know your rights training, what is state statute? And it could be something as simple as that rather than going to a whole other command. So yeah, I kind of like to know what systems do we have in place that could be shared publicly? So, everybody. Councillor Martin, you're muted. You're muted, Marcia. I'm so sorry. Although we just did that, you know, as I was saying before, it was almost impossible to find the path to lodging a complaint. And now it's, there's a page that explains all that, tenants writes, how to file a habitability complaint and it's pretty good one-stop shopping and people don't need to ask anymore, you know?  Honestly, when I first looked at that page, because nobody told me it was up, so I found it when we were, you know, I was doing my research on this.  So I think we're good the way we are. Thank you, counselor.  Yeah, I was just gonna speak to a few of those points. So there wouldn't be any way we can go out and really do an inspection without the landlord knowing who reported it, because most of the issues are inside the homes and we're not gonna get in there without consent. But we do have a lot of resources we can use to support tenants, Susan Spalding and Adriana Perea do a great job as with everyone else in community and neighborhood resources. I also provide a lot of education, a lot of the calls I get are just people saying, what is the code? And they don't want me to go through and open a case. They wanna just know so they can go have the conversation with their landlord and try to work it out. So those are kind of the things we can support. Unfortunately, there is, we can't have it both ways where we can keep the tenant anonymous and not require inspections for everybody. There's just no way to do both. Good points, thank you, Dean. The reason that I seconded this is because first of all for the data to know how many rental units so that when we are saying, excuse me, that we need this many rental units and to meet our demand, we'll know what we have, whether they're vacant or whether they're occupied. But the other part was that we do have the landlord-tenant alliance and I've been to those meetings and the reality is the perception is that it's all landlords that attend that. Tenants don't attend those meetings with Susan Spaulding that are held on a monthly basis. It doesn't feel like there is a tenant ombudsman. And I think it's great that we have the website. Thank you for that, Councillor Martin. I didn't realize that that had been upgraded on our website. So perhaps we could... So my question and probably Harold could answer this. When a tenant calls, are they talking to a specific tenant ombudsman or is it Susan Spaulding? I wanna see if Karen or you want... So mayor and city council members, so we don't have a specific designated tenant ombudsman. So when folks call in for landlord-tenant issues, they either speak with Susan Spaulding or with Adriana Freya. So they cover rights and provide information to both tenants and to landlords. So, and I'm glad that I was just speaking basically to the monthly meetings that are attended by landlords. So I don't think the perception is there in the public that that is open to tenants. And that's where I am feeling when we talk about the equity lens and that everybody has a voice. Is there a way to specify a certain person that is open for tenant advocacy? And I'm not saying... And I really like Susan Spaulding and Andrea. I understand that. I'm just talking about the perception and is it possible to have someone specifically to address tenant issues? And then work with Susan and Andrea. But so that is my concern about going forward is that we are not including voices. If I can jump in, I think what I'm hearing are two things. One thing is how do we create a more robust platform for tenants that is similar to the landlord component? And I think we can look at that because that is something that we need to look at if the perception is that there's difference and we can definitely work on that. And then how does an ombudsman or other staff that we have within our broader housing maybe play a part in that? And I think that's something that we can look at especially as we're integrating housing work more globally with the housing authority and other things in terms of what we can do. So I think it's good feedback that if the perception if the perception is that it's different for tenants than it is for landlords, then we need to figure out how to address that perception and it's something that we need to do. And then we can assess what we have in staffing in terms of to look at different solutions. If we determine that we need another position or something to be that conduit, that would have to be something that would come into the budget process just because we don't necessarily have that fund right now. But definitely, I think for me, operationally what I'm hearing is we've got to talk about how we were creating educational opportunities for tenants and others to understand it beyond just that. And I'll have to get with Karen and the staff to figure that out, Karen. Thank you, Harold. Yeah, I was basically gonna say the same thing. So, certainly the intent and the purpose of our service that we offer out of a community neighborhood resource is equitable access for both tenants and landlords to address issues and to be well-informed. And so clearly we can look at our approach and making sure that we are reducing any barriers to access or really making it more comfortable for lack of a better word, for people to access the services. So we absolutely, we'll take a look at that. No, Councilwoman Hedoggle-Furring, is there any way you would like to redo this motion, or pull it and make a different motion or to direct staff to move forward with some kind of a tenant? I would like to focus on the tenant aspect so that would allow us, and I don't know if it's something that is, wow, let's see. Yeah, I'll change it. I can remove, and I think, we have other means of attaining who's collecting data on the rental. And Harold, this might be, can you help me answer this? Do we have a way to just pull up? So I was hoping that we'd be able to just have a database, where we can kind of get a glimpse of, okay, we need to figure out how many homes, single-family homes are for rent. What is the database that we can just pull it up? Glenn, do we have that? You're on mute, Glenn. Got it. I'm not familiar with the database where we have all rental properties shown. Now, certainly Susan Spalding has the folks that landlords that come to her meetings. Barhav has a certain amount of registration. Other than that, I mean, we would go back through utilities and try and figure out where the owner is different than the person paying the utilities. And you can make some assumptions that that's probably a rental property. That's a little bit, that's kind of a big data crunching job. That seems very timely. What I was hoping, and then Harold, the other question I have for you is if we just did something with our city website, our online platform, where a person who is renting their property can go in and say, this address, blah, blah, blah, is rented. How much will that cost or how much would that be out of city resources? I'm gonna ask Sandy, but I think if we could create just a webpage link and form that can download into an Excel, some kind of spreadsheet or something that keeps the information. I'm not seeing that that's, can we do that, Sandy, because it's a form that downloads into a spreadsheet? Yeah, we can gather any information that you're looking for from that. I'm not sure you need to do it then, Gage. We could find a way to do that. You know, of course, we'd have to get that word out around what that means and it looks like for people so that we're encouraging people to fill out that information. I think it's probably pretty easy to build the form and then download it. I think the work would be just in letting folks know and how we communicate that. Yes. But I don't see a lot of work on the form. Okay, so we really wanted that to be with the existing resources. The other piece, and I guess, for the tenant part, I would like to see, and I don't know, Mayor, can you tell me if this is different than what, because I had a few different notes, but I really want staff to use that, to look at our process and adjust what our process is in order to ensure that both tenant and landlords feel adequately represented in this process. I think that I understand what you're saying and how the motion should go. So we do have someone who is actively working with the landlords and holding monthly meetings, but we do not have that for the tenant side. We do not have someone who is highlighted, I guess, as the tenant contact person and the ability to hold meetings for tenants only, for education, for et cetera. And I think that that equity piece is what I'm looking for. And I don't see any problem with having people decide that they would let us know if they have a rental. But if we have that already and gather that data already and put it in a spreadsheet, then at this point, I don't know that we need to go any further with it. So Councillor Martin has a comment. You're muted, Marcia. If you go back to the presentation from July 1st, the council meeting where the direction was given, I believe that this should at least be investigated. There are two sources of this information, the county assessor's database and the census tract data, and both clearly say whether the property is owner occupied or whether it's a rental. So I don't understand the point behind doing something redundant to get that information and then in addition, maybe Harold or Glenn can clarify, we're doing this assessment, which I assumed would be both supply and demand, in terms of what housing stock do we need and the number of rentals in the system and the number of people who want to rent are both part of that. Am I mis-conceiving of that study or would that be correct? Are you referring to the dola grant that we received? Yes. I think we're going to try to get at those issues and really understand what the demand is in this. We'll have to work with staff to look at the existing databases to see how complete that list is, but that's part of that work, is to do that as part of the dola grant. In terms of, it's going to be a point in time though because in terms of, you know, that market's always changing in terms of someone moving, someone renting, so it will be point in time. Yeah, I just don't think you'd get any compliance out of a voluntary. I'm going to sign up and say, hey, I'm renting, but yeah, it doesn't, we should vote on this. Because we'd still haven't addressed the licensing program itself. Councilman, Councilor Hedoggle-Ferry. Okay, so yes, I will revise my motion and I would like to remove the licensing component of it, including the registry. It sounds like we will, you know, if staff determines, it was very difficult to attain that data, we can re-look at it at a different time, but right now I really want to focus on creating an advocacy support network for our tenants so that they as well, you know, because, you know, the perception and perception is our reality. And if we're truly wanting to create an inclusive community, we have to provide that tenant support component as we've done with the landlord alliance component. So I would like to move forward with that piece and just separate the two. So your new motion then, Councilor Hedoggle-Ferry is to direct staff to come up with an advocacy support network for tenants. Basically, would you change the support network to a contact person? Yes. For tenant relations and on-site contact person, which I am going to say, I like the word omnibus person. Is this making sense to you, Harold? Kind of. I kind of reiterate what I'm hearing. Okay. And to help me if this gets at what we're trying to achieve. I think what I'm hearing in motion is you want us to evaluate what we're doing now and look at creating a process where tenants fill more... Let me back up. Have a voice. Pardon? That they have a voice and that they're heard. So evaluate our process. So it is also more tenant-friendly, adequately represent or they feel that we're adequately representing both tenants and landlords. I think that's what folks are saying. And I think if that's the motion, we can definitely do it. We need to do it. If people don't perceive that we can do this, we need to understand that. But if that's the motion, I think that's pretty simple and clear and we can do that work and then we can figure out, do we need anything else to do it? Because we don't know what is it gonna be a full-time position you need? Is it gonna be a half-time? Can we absorb it? It's hard for me to answer that right now. But I think if it's an evaluation to ensure that we have something that adequately supports both tenants and landlords so that they both feel that they can engage in the process, I think that's it. I think it's pretty easy and we can do that work. Okay. Councilwoman Hidalgo-Ferring, is this in lieu of a rental licensing program? Yes. And inspection. Thank you. Okay. So the whole disc, and I will second that then. I do want to say that I brought this up in July and then put it on a later date at the end of the quarter because of what I've been hearing. And part of it was that, and this is in favor of landlords actually and property managers is that there would be, there were people that were renting an entire house or a three bedroom unit. And then they were renting out the bedrooms to families. And they weren't on the only person, everybody who is in that unit needs to be on the lease. Every adult, but they were not on the lease. So this came from a person in our community who runs programs and that was the, that's what I got from that person, which was why I was more in favor of landlords of protecting them, but we need equity. And for me, for this motion, it is in lieu of a rental program completely. And let's just focus at this point in time on having advocacy for tenants and see how that works, rather than as Harold says or told me, we don't need a hammer to, you know, shatter something. We'll move into it a little bit softer and see if we can open up to more discussion with the tenants having a voice. So that's why I second that councilor Waters. Like one person, as we're talking about voice, voice we haven't heard from. We haven't heard from it at tonight. And we haven't heard it from it in the other discussions about rental licensing is from Susan Spaulding. Is there a reason Harold or Karen, why we wouldn't be hearing from Susan? Not a particular reason. I think today we were focusing on the survey and specifically the motion on whether we move forward with a rental licensing inspection and that program. And that was really rooted in the survey in this case. So the person who knows more about this, about what we're doing, about what we currently do with, in terms of advocating for tenants, Susan Spaulding knows more about it than anybody on the screen, I think, maybe with the exception of Karen. And we're not hearing from her before we take a vote on this. That doesn't make any sense to me. So it's not that I'm unsympathetic to advocacy for tenants, but I'm not gonna vote for a motion to direct Susan Spaulding to do something and we haven't heard from our team and we have had no input from Susan. That makes no sense to me at all. And Mayor Peck, if I can add to that. Please. I think that's really what when Harold mentioned that I think what we heard pretty clearly from city council is the opportunity to really evaluate and explore the services that we are providing to landlords and tenants in our community neighborhood resource program. The perception that certainly that council members, some council members are hearing is that it doesn't feel balanced sometimes or that tenants maybe have... Just feel like maybe information or services aren't as accessible. That certainly is like I mentioned, that's not the intent and that would be remiss to if I didn't say that that certainly is not the intention of that program and the commitment from Susan and Adriana and the staff. So it would be fabulous to be able to have the opportunity to take this input and bring back a presentation. And I think the council member Waters' suggestion is that we would love to have that opportunity to explore the concerns and bring back for further discussion with city council about any improvements that we might need to make to address some of the concerns that we're hearing. Good point, Karen. And just as a reminder, this is nothing more than to put it on a future agenda. So whatever that encompasses, whatever players we need to bring into this, then that future agenda item would, that's when we would do that. Councilor... Order, really. I'm uncomfortable with doing a future agenda order in a combination with, in lieu of the licensing program. So I would feel more comfortable separating the motion to table the licensing program from the motion to look into better tenant empowerment. So could we vote on just tenant empowerment? And then I would like to make a motion to table the licensing program. Good point. Okay. So we have the motion then from Councillor Hidalgo-Ferring that we are going to have an advocacy support for tenants. Bring that back on future agenda that we would like a presentation from staff on how we can have and using the resources that we have to have a tenant advocacy system or program. Councillor Waters. So I've heard network, program, resource person. I honestly, I'm not certain what we'd be asking for. I'm with Council Member Martin in tabling any direction on rental licensing that we've seen from the data. That's not gonna be the solution to, it's a problem or that's a solution we don't have. So we're gonna make that motion. She's gonna make it. Well, I get that. Just let me finish. If the motion, I mean, if the direction is to ask Susan to come back and tell us what we're doing now and then decide whether or not there's a problem to solve or how much more we need to do, that would be a sequence I can understand. But taking a motion to give direction to either create a network or a program or somebody.  So we get some idea of the scope, the depth, the nature of the problem or the challenge from those who know most about it, seems to me that would be the sequence. But first get the presentation then decide whether or not there's direction we need to give about creating a network or whatever, I'm not still not certain exactly what it is where we would be correcting Susan to do or even reporting on other than tell us what we're doing and where the gaps are and what else we need to do to make certain that tenants are well-represented. Thank you. So I'm gonna restate that motion. Councilor Hedoggle-Ferry, let me know if this is what your intent was. So the motion then is to give direction to staff to bring back a presentation on what kind of advocacy support we have for tenants. Councilor Hedoggle-Ferry, give me a thumbs up if you think that's the motion we want. Okay, so I seconded that motion. All those in favor say aye.  All those opposed. So that passes with three in support for it doesn't pass. You had four council members yourself, council member Hedoggle-Ferry, council member Martin and council member Yarborough for it, council member Rodriguez and council member Waters against. Thank you. This discussion has gone on so long, I think I'm getting blurry. So that passed with four of us as Harold Dominguez stated in favor and two with councilor Waters and councilor Rodriguez opposed. Now, councilor Martin, do you wanna make your motion? Yes, I move to postpone indefinitely. I think it's the right thing to do any consideration of a landlord tenant or a rental licensing and inspection program at this time. I'll second. I would like to amend that to say table the motion to a date uncertain rather than you're muted. Yeah, I was just verbally waving my hand. So yeah, I'll use that language, that's fine. Okay, so that has been the motion is to table the rental licensing agreement to a date uncertain by councilor Martin seconded by councilor Waters. All those in favor, raise your hand. All those opposed. So that passes unanimously. Thank you. I personally think that we needed to have a discussion about this number one so that tenants know we're listening and that landlords know that we care a lot about our residents in this city and how we are treating them and how the landlords are being treated by tenants. So thank you for the discussion. We are now at the second public invited to be heard the final call. It's time to call in now for final. Mayor, sorry. Oh, I'm sorry, we do a couple more. I would like to invite you Don for this is the 2022nd city council meeting calendar. If I'm correct, what we did was to change our calendar to three meetings a month. And we said at the end of the first quarter we would look at that and see how it worked. So Don, thank you. Yes, exactly, mayor. And we now just need to schedule the rest of the year. And so we presented a possible calendar for the rest of the year based on the three meetings per month scenario. That certainly is not action you have to take. We could put in any schedule you would like to adopt, but we made that assumption and presented a calendar in your packet and we could walk through those months one by one. And then also Harold would like us to consider how to weave in LHA board of commissioners meetings. Harold, you're welcome to add more detail about that. I think one of the things that we were looking at is when we look at the time on some of these meetings, especially ones where we have LHA items, it does create some issues. And so in terms of the LHA board meetings, we can use the remaining day that we could use that fourth Tuesday to do that. And then if we needed it for some reason for city activities, we could do it there. Or we could look at a different day for the LHA meetings, but we do know that that's kind of a pinch point in terms of the meeting length generally when we have those LHA items. And we're gonna have, as we're moving into development, we're gonna have more coming in on that. But that's up to council as to what you all wanna do. If you wanna stick with the three days, we can stick with the three days. But it was really that LHA piece that we need to keep in mind on this one. So before I call on you, I see your hand, councilor Martin, but I would like to make a statement. I thought when we decided to go to the three days by majority vote that we would debrief at the end of the first quarter and see how that worked for staff as well as for council. Did that work as far as so, Harold, if you end Dawn with the scheduling, can you give us a statement or two as to how that has worked for you in this first quarter? Did you like it? Did you not? Was it easier? I'll let Dawn go, because Dawn's the one that has to prepare these every week. And so that mean every week she was having to get this, I'll let her talk about that. Then I can talk generally about some of the other items. Okay, thank you. Mayor Peck, thank you for asking that question. I think it has reduced the need to, it's one less council packet per week, one less set of minutes in that regard. But I think in terms of the question, we all had our eye on and Harold can speak maybe more to this. I think we wondered if the flow of items would be too much on three meetings a month. And I think we've done a pretty, meetings have been reasonably balanced. They haven't run to 1 a.m. And I think staff is getting the business done they need by and large. So in that regard, from my perspective, I think it has functioned fairly well. Thank you, Harold. I think what we had to do as staff is really force a further look in planning and in terms of issues and what we're looking at. And that's really based on how we can structure the agendas and what that really looks like. I think in some cases for staff that inadvertently ended up having something on every meeting, I mean, that was a press because they were spending a fair amount of time just getting council comms ready, in addition to the other work. I think the challenge that I saw, and this is why I brought up the Housing Authority, is that became an interesting dilemma for us when we only had the three meetings because fitting that in when you're loading these other issues, then became another challenge for us. And so that's why I said we're gonna have to figure out something for the Housing Authority meetings. And if we wanna put that on that other Tuesday, I think that streamlines it a little bit. And then if we need it for other city items, we could do that as well. But generally I think we're shifting into being able to adapt, but it definitely has taken some pressure off on folks that are constantly in, some people just get in the role of having items and almost every study session and every meeting. And when you look at the time on that, if you go two to three hours pulling the item together, probably closer to five in the week, I mean, that could be additional workload for them. So I think we can obviously accommodate whatever council wants, but we're getting used to it. So I'd like to open it up to the counselors then on how it has worked for you, Councillor Martin. Thank you, Mayor Peck. I have essentially two things to say, but I think city manager Dominguez has maybe hit on something that would make everybody happier by putting the LHA commissioners meeting on the fourth Tuesday, because this is terribly unpopular with the public. They think we're slacking. Now, I don't think we're slacking, but it is, but I just have to say it's really unpopular that we don't meet four times a month anymore. And the other thing is personally, it's been bad for me. I have felt disconnected from the flow of the council meetings. And I think especially since we're going after this month back to meeting in person that if we meet four times a month and even if one of them is a commissioners meeting, then still we come together and still the public are seeing us meet and are present and are invited to be heard. So I would like to move that we go to a four meeting a month schedule with the fourth meeting designated as an LHA commissioners meeting, but can be used for another purpose if the LHA doesn't need the meeting. I'll second that motion. Okay, it's been a motion to have four meetings a month with one of them being a flex meeting or an LHA commissioners meeting. And that has been seconded by councilor Waters. Councilor, Mayor Pro Temer-Rodriguez. Thank you, Mayor Peck. I would just like to add my two cents in the sense that lately our LHA meetings have been somewhat ad hoc. And when you look at those, that is more difficult actually for myself in terms of my work life schedule. And I assume it's actually more difficult for my other council members who are maybe not retired in the sense that if we know we can plan ahead of schedule for Tuesday night meetings, for instance. And so that makes it a lot easier for us to possibly do LHA commissioner meetings. And so I have no problem with designating Tuesdays. It's just easier to plan for instead of some ad hoc meetings. And so I'd love to hear the opinions of my fellow council members who also work full-time currently because I feel like they will have more input as far as how it works for their schedules than maybe myself or for some of the other council members. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor Pro Temer. Councilor Heddle-Ferring. Okay. Thank you. And thank your council member, Rodriguez for pointing that out. I know for me, I just my Tuesdays, I have my staff meeting right after school. I'll come and do my, I just know my Tuesdays, my family knows Tuesdays, everybody leave me alone. I have my meetings. Those are my meetings. And I think so the problem that I've had with the, we have a meeting, we don't have a meeting, it becomes a challenge for me scheduling. But the other piece, it's like, it's not about me. So really I want to look at what the impact that it has on staff, they've been able to make it work. They've been able to get used to it. I just worry that in the event, as we start having more and more things come to our, added to our schedule, maybe they all fall at the same time or they're all heavy topic items. Like a couple of the things that I thought was easy. I didn't word correctly, so I'll own that. And it became a larger discussion. And then I think we run the risk of then having those 1 a.m. meetings. So I just, if we have those weekly meetings, keep it as we had in the past, might shorten those times that we are meeting. For me scheduling wise, it's easy just to block my Tuesdays aside. If staff and the rest of council decide, I want that extra, the ad hoc meeting day set aside, I'll go with that too. So I'll be flexible, but my preference would be just to, let's keep consistency, please. Councillor Yarbrough, do you want to weigh in on how this affected you? Well, I guess I probably, being on council in general affect me period, because I mean, this is all new to me. So, in that way, you all have been on council previously. So you were in a routine before. So I will say I appreciate even given the opportunity to try it out. So I do appreciate that. And also staff had an opportunity to see how they can function with the three a month as well. So for me, I know I'm the newest member. So all of this is absolutely new to me. So it seemed like it affected you all in much worse than it did myself. But again, I never had to really depend on every Tuesday night. I have meetings every week, but not particularly every Tuesday night to depend on that. So whatever is best for staff and, I mean, we all receive those emails, people feeling like we're not doing our job, although people are coffee with council, we attended all these other meetings and then like the rest of us, the three of us that actually worked full time and scrambled to get to these meetings as well and do our homework. Yeah, it's challenging, but we are here before our community. So whatever is best for the community and whatever is best for the staff, I'm all for it. I just appreciate the rest of you all for even trying it out. And so I just wanna say thank you for that. Hey, these are good comments. So we do have a motion on the table to, let me see if I can reiterate this. The motion is to have three meetings a month, three Tuesdays a month with the fourth Tuesday, if there are four Tuesdays in a month, to be a flex or LHA commissioner meeting. To basically be scheduled and have staff schedule that fourth meeting, however it suits. Yeah, I mean, I would think the LHA meeting would come first and a study session if it's not, but that was the way I moved it, but yeah. Okay, thank you.  I was just gonna confirm the four Tuesday would be an LHA and if for some reason there was a scheduling issue, we could create a study session or regular, I mean, we've gotten into issues where we have grants or even like Costco where we've had to hit something, we could schedule it as a, so if we hit it as an LHA and if we needed it, we could use it. Okay, sounds good. And mayor, if I could also just clarify, when we say the fourth Tuesday, we don't mean specifically the fourth Tuesday in the month, we mean the extra meeting after the three are scheduled, correct? Four Tuesdays a month. Correct, thank you. I just wanna make sure I captured it correctly. And remember there are some months, March for example, is one where we just wouldn't have it because of seeing of national league of cities and spring break for those. And so those are months that we can figure out the housing authority agenda where we can shift it if needed in those months where we have those challenges. And staff's very good at that. And so that's the motion on the table seconded by councilor Waters. Councilor Waters. Just to clarify, Harold, there's nothing in this motion that constrains what we need to do in September and October with, because you can just call those the special meeting or the whatever the fourth meeting and do the budget work that we need to do. Yeah, no, in this calendar, if you will see September, even with this, we did say in this calendar, the due to the need to present the 2023 budget in September and October, we recommended keeping all meetings as proposed based on that because of the budget cycle. But that would be one where then the LHA, we're gonna have to plan so that we can hit October and August on the LHA piece. That way we don't take a lot of time in September. So you're comfortable with this motion because you can use those meetings in September and October. Yeah, September, in any form or for any reason that we need to use this. All right. And it does also give those folks that are having to churn these council agendas and do all of that some time to get minutes and items ready too. So, and it lets us focus on LHA and have a date that we can focus on because it's equally challenging for us when we have to schedule these meetings at Hock based on our schedules as well. So I think that helps with the LHA stuff. Okay, we have a motion on the table. All those in favor, raise your hand. All those opposed. So that passes unanimously. Thank you. So Donna, are we gonna go through the calendar now? We certainly could, we probably should just to make sure that we are all understanding where we're headed very quickly. Dallas, do you mind putting the calendar up and so we can all look at it? So you would have if proposed or if you adopt as a proposed LHA on the fifth usually LHA would fall perhaps on the first Tuesday in the month and then a regular study and a regular session in April. Does that, should I just run through and then you can, we can go back to funny dates. Okay, moving to May Dallas. So we'd have an LHA meeting on the third a regular study, a regular, we have a fifth Tuesday if there's some hot topic and we needed it but likely fifth Tuesdays we usually don't have. Moving on to June. June would be tight. We could do an LHA meeting on the seventh perhaps coupled with a study session depending on volume. A regular session canceled the 21st for CML and then regular meeting on the 28th. That's probably one where we would plan the LHA meetings for May and then let's look at July. Correct. Yeah, you could use that fifth Tuesday and May perhaps instead of the first Tuesday and June. Moving on to July. So you would have a LHA meeting on the fifth and then a regular meeting. We do want to confirm you want the open forum there but that's where it would fall in kind of your normal rotation and then a regular meeting on the 26th. Moving on to August. You'd have an LHA meeting on the second. There's five Tuesdays in August. So a regular study and then a regular meeting and then there's a fifth Tuesday there if it were needed but perhaps not. Scooting on to September. This is when we have all meetings scheduled. So the study regular, study regular kind of the regular cadence onto October. Same thing, study regular, study regular for those budget meetings. November is a little bit tight. We could do a study or work around November for LHA or do a study and LHA. We can work through it. Cancel the election day meeting and then a regular session. We could cancel or hold the meeting the week of Thanksgiving and then a regular session on the 29th. Doing it this way, keeps the two weeks between regular sessions and allows ordinances to fall that regular pattern and then the required notice time between meetings. So that's why I tried to find the two weeks between and then moving to December Dallas. Because December is strange with the holidays, the regular meeting the first Tuesday, a study the second Tuesday and then a regular on the 20th, cancel the 27th for the holiday. So, if that looks good to me, it's good to you. It does, Councillor Martin, how do you feel about it? Well, the last day and the fifth, the fifth Tuesday in August could be the LHA meeting. So we would be safer not doing them in September and October, right? Yeah, and I don't know if Jim's on. I think we're gonna need that to give you all the budget. Or that. Because Jim, we're required, right? To give them the budget by August 31st. And Jim's not on tonight, Harold. He's on vacation, I think. Yeah, okay. So I think that's the one we're gonna need for the budget anyway, but we can work through the LHA piece of it. It may be LHA and budget. Is there anyone that is opposed? Oh, I'm sorry. We're normally coming into the last minute on the budget, giving it to you all. I think that's what I was trying to get through when I said flexibility is that staff, staff knows how to do this. So is there anyone that is opposed to this calendar? Great. All those in favor of just accepting the calendar as is? Should, I suppose we should have a motion on that. Or can