For the record, once we go back to council chambers, I have no idea how I'm going to do this without snacks. Brian, you never did it without snacks. Oh yeah, I forgot. Yeah. I never did it without snacks. More snacks. Thank you, Marcia. Mayor, you're ready to begin. You're muted, Mayor. You're muted, Mayor. Again, I'd like to welcome you all to the city council agenda. I'm sorry, to the city council regular session meeting of June 30th, 2020. It would be a remote access. I'd like to go ahead and call the regular session to order. Can we start with the roll call, please? Mayor Bagley. Here. Council Member Christensen. Here. Council Member Douglas Farring. Here. Council Member Martin. Here. Council Member Peck. Here. Council Member Rodriguez. Can't unmute. Erin, you're here. He is here, but he's having trouble unmuting. There, go ahead. Here. Council Member. There we go. Council Member Waters. Here. Mayor, you have a forum. All right, great. Thanks, everybody, for being here. Let's go ahead and start with the pledge. Marcia, do you want to lead us this this time tonight? Sure, why not? Everybody has to follow. That's right. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Thank you very much. All right, just a quick reminder. Anyone wishing to speak during first call public invited to be heard or in a public item or hearing item, that would be item nine. You'll need to watch the live stream of the meeting and then call that number, 1-669-968-33, and enter that meeting ID.  We'll identify you by the last four numbers of your phone number.  So that's how that's going to work. Let's go ahead to go to item 3A. Do we have a motion to approve the minutes of June 16, 2020? So moved. I'll second it. All right, all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, the motion carries unanimously. All right, agenda revisions and submission of documents and motions to direct the city manager to add agenda items. Councilmember Waters. Thanks, Mayor Bagley. I may be the only one that's thinking about this being a good idea, but I'm going to make the motion. We're all aware that we had a ballot question fail last November on extending lease periods from 20 to 30 years in the city charter. It seems to me that if there was ever a time when we ought to be more aggressive in the pursuit and the enabling of public-private partnerships, it will be in the post-pandemic, not post-COVID, but the post-pandemic period. That ballot question failed. There's no money tied to it. The reason it failed, I think we did, and those who care about this in the community, did a poor job of explaining why this would make sense in the long run. I think our performing arts groups in town, anybody who's interested in investing in Longmont sees the wisdom of creating lease periods that would approximate mortgages. None of us would, when we got started with our homes at least, were willing, I suspect, to take out mortgages that lasted for 20 years. We were looking for 30-year mortgages because of how you amortized costs. I think it'll be a mistake if we don't put that before the public again and then do better outreach with those in the community who care about this and make the case that it's in our long-term interest to permit longer leasing periods to enable public-private partnerships should we choose to pursue them. So I'm going to move that we direct staff to bring back to council the same kind of question we put on the ballot last year that would require council improvement. Second. All right, we have a motion on the table to place once again the question of increasing city leases to 30 years. Do we have any debate on the issue? We're going to go with council member Christensen first and then council member Peck. I do understand why I think most of us have 30-year mortgages. I do understand this. I just question bringing it back before bringing it back to a vote at this particular time when people's minds are on other things and I would rather see it come back in two years when I think it has a better chance of passing. You know, I'm not opposed to it. I just don't think this is really the time. I understand why various people who want to invest in the city would like it to be back now. But given that it was already voted down just recently, I don't know that it's a wise thing to bring it back at this time. That's all I'm saying. Council member Peck. I agree with that but my other concern is because you want to bring it back so soon is are we going to be able to reach out to people and truly explain what it's about? I'm not sure that the public understood what this was really about. So I'm questioning the staff's ability not their the time wise, the ability to reach out and market this correctly so that the residents actually understand what we're doing and why. So I do think with everything that's going on perhaps we should wait. I understand it as well and why we should do it. I just don't want it to fail a second time because we haven't given it enough time or explained it correctly. So that's my concern. So I'm not going to vote for it right now. Councilman Martin. I think that we are debating the subject rather than the motion which is to consider the subject. I think that it's critically important to rebuilding an economy and that therefore we should at least have the debate while there's still time to get it on the ballot. I also now that we all understand that the public didn't understand in 2018 I think that it'll be a clean slate. I doubt if anybody even remembers because it seemed like such a puzzle. But if it's explained correctly I don't think it'll seem like a puzzle and I think everyone wants our economy back. I don't see any other hands. I'm not ready to debate the issue right now but I will vote to bring it back so we can have the discussion. I think it's an important enough topic to at least discuss and then we can vote it down later if we want to but before putting out an agenda at least discussing it I would have if we were discussing it tonight I would probably bring up the fact that there are some very influential political behind the scene figures that don't want this to happen and would want some assurance that that we could overcome that obstacle. But anyway, seeing no one else. Councilman Peck?  I want it to come back. I just want to make sure we do it correctly. I wasn't talking about you Councilmember Peck I'm saying there are people who advocated against it none of the council members I'm just saying there are people in the community who were vocally against it and I want to make sure we figure out a way to overcome what we've faced last time. That's all I wasn't implying anybody here. I'll vote to discuss to put it on the agenda to discuss. Thank you. Let's go ahead and vote on it all in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, the motion passes unanimously and I look forward to vigorous debate. Councilmember Christensen. Sorry. On Monday night we had it there was a another listening session for early childhood education and it was very, very illuminating to me and it made me realize how, you know, we all are having very, very different experiences of this and it made me realize how very different the experiences of people who have small children people who are essential workers people who are in the daycare industry are having a really nearly impossible time and they could use some help and I know we're spending our contingency money down but that's for emergencies. This is an emergency and since we have a bit of money there even though it's not a huge amount of money I would suggest that we contribute several thousand dollars of that toward the early childhood education with the group in Longmont with the idea that they would distribute it evenly to the daycare centers that are having so much trouble. Okay, anyway, do we have no money left? No, no, I was actually going to jump in to say a couple of things we're working on we have the 200,000 that council set aside in terms of early childhood programs we also have the CARES funding that we're looking at and so what staff did this week similar to what we did on the business side we put out an essentially trying to get an unmet needs assessment with all of the early childhood care providers to really see what they need so that we can be more targeted. That was going to be something that I was going to update you all on the COVID piece but it works now. So once we get that back then we'll be able to figure it out. One of the big issues we're seeing is the need for PPE and we're trying to look at it in a similar way that we were talking about with businesses. So that's part of that. Yeah, because they are, I mean thank you Harold. I wasn't aware that some of the CARES money was going to be able to go to the early childhood people and that's good. So okay, I'll withdraw that until we figure out how much is going toward them because they're having such a hard time and every one of these daycare centers is worried that if one person gets sick the whole thing will shut down and these are all just for essential workers. Yeah anyway, we all know this but it's anything we can do to do that but to help them would be helpful. But let's wait, I'll wait until you update us. Thanks. All right, who else? Councilman Martin, you need to wave your hand harder. I'm kidding, you wave it pretty hard, I just didn't see. Thank you Mayor Bagley. Our Public Works and Natural Resources Division has been doing Yeoman's work on keeping our public open spaces operational. They've been facing a large number of public health and safety issues around it because of the extraordinary crowding that's resulting from people having flexible working hours and people not being able to do anything but local outdoor recreation. And I think that it would be helpful at some point while it's still summer if the public and the council got a full report of what's being done. I don't want to make a huge amount of work for them so I'm pretty sure these are pretty eloquent people if they can just talk to it, I'd be perfectly happy and four weeks after we're through with the Climate Action Task Force would be plenty good time if they don't want to do it sooner but I just think it would be useful for us to have the information to tell our constituents when they write to us about it and to get this case in front of the public so that maybe people will be a little more measured in the care they take when they use these public amenities. Council Member Peck. Thank you Councilwoman Martin. Actually that was what I was going to suggest something similar but mainly it is coming from Macintosh Lake at this point. What I would like and I was going to make a motion to have either put it on a study session agenda or have a special session for City Council as well as the Parks Department and Public Works to have an open discussion of ideas actually as to what we can all do to help because I think that as we've been getting these emails that the Council itself has ideas as to how we can work together to make this happen so I am going to make a motion that we put on a study session or a special session staff's choice in the next couple of weeks or before August to have a discussion with a report with Council having ideas and something we can actually give to the public. So that's my motion that we direct staff to have either a special session or on a study session a report and Council input on what is happening to our natural resources and a step forward. I will support that and second it with the stipulation that it needs to be a study session so it happens on Tuesday night when people are watching. Okay I agree with that. I've noticed though Councilman Martin that when we had our other special session because it is the COVID and people are at home and they're not working that they're more tuned into turning tuning into another meeting on a different night they're not as busy and they're at home. So that's why I wanted to leave it up to the city staff because I don't know what they have scheduled for study sessions at this point. So I don't know. What do you think Councilman Martin since you're the one do you still want it to be on a Tuesday night? I prefer a Tuesday night but I don't want that to be a reason to stop it because I do think it's important. So you know again I would like a goodly audience for it because I think the word needs to be spread and the people need to understand what the staff are dealing with. Okay so I'll take that as an amendment to the motion that we have it on a Tuesday night. Thank you. And I do second. Thank you. All right there's a motion and a second to bring back and have a discussion on a Tuesday night study session the environmental impacts of what's going on out of McIntosh Lake and I would assume that would also incorporate what we might need to do it out at Union but Dr. Waters. I just I just want to clarify is this limited to McIntosh? Now I think there are issues that I'd like to learn more about from a staff perspective on Deccan's Park, other parts of the Greenway at Union. I think I mean certainly we've heard a lot about McIntosh and knowing what we're doing and what the options are and idea generation. But I think we have issues beyond McIntosh and it would be helpful to get a broader perspective on kind of what they are and levels of intensity and because they may there may be different solutions or options we ought to consider in each venue. Thank you Councilman Waters and that is why and I probably didn't say it correctly but I said our natural resources our other natural resources and I didn't name them specifically but I agree with you. All right and what the big question I was actually going to talk to Harold with this week was it didn't seem to be a problem when Union was open and so if we're now consolidating everything at McIntosh I just want anyway let's go ahead and vote and we can talk about it and have staff come back and we can do it then. All right all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right the ayes have it carries unanimously. All right thank you anything else from Council? Mayor I have just the reminder that we have sent out that substitute letter of agreement for item 8f on presented agenda tonight. All right then we will get we'll hit that 8f. Let's go ahead and move on to City Manager's report on COVID-19. How are we doing Harold? Actually Mary we've got two items we've added to that are going to be regular City Manager reports. It's going to be COVID-19 and the housing authority as we move forward. Jeff Zajak is on the line and he's going to talk about some numbers. A couple of issues that you already brought up that we were I was contemplating how we move forward and bring those to you all. When we talk about the great outdoors what I would say is that was actually a topic of conversation today and my administrators call with public health. The we're not unique right now in the issues that we're facing in terms of the great outdoors and what's really happening. And in some ways in certain cases it's not as bad as it is in other areas because of the trail heads right now in the foothills and in the mountains are creating a significant issue for the county as they look forward as they're trying to deal with it and the number of people they just have congregating in those spots. That's actually going to touch on some of the masking conversations that are coming out some of the requirements that will be brought forward are not requirements but public information that'll be brought forward. In addition to the many of the points you made when we talk about the issues that our public works department and parks and natural resources are having they're not limited to actually Macintosh where we're seeing similar issues at Union similar issues at Dickens we had a huge issue occur at Button Rock and just the number of people that we were having up there and where they were parking and I think we've gotten a handle of those issues based on where we were early in this to the point where we've assigned a police officer at especially on the weekends to both Button Rock and Union and then we have a roving police officer that's working at Macintosh and Dickens you all know that we obviously had to close the bridge because folks were jumping off of the bridge and we knew that the water level was going down just to give you a sense of the types of issues that we're chasing even after we gated it and closed it we still had issues with people walking around and climbing the bridge and still trying to jump off so what I can tell you is generally we're chasing these issues all over the community right now and then obviously you know that's in addition to the normal items that we're working on so I appreciate the opportunity for us to bring that back we're probably going to bring it back at the next study session I know David and his group have been compiling that and working on these issues you know as councilmember Martin mentioned earlier the buoys are out on Macintosh as we were trying to get there so they're just trying to tackle these issues one at a time and and really deal with them to the best of their ability so that's when we'll bring it back at this point it was a day of change in terms of some of the items that were released and the governor was talking today about protect our neighbors and what that's going to look like Jeff will obviously touch on that his presentation I think probably one of the most significant changes today is that the governor announced in his press conference that within 48 hours he is going to close bars and nightclubs and I think what you're seeing is that something that is happening in many states right now based on the increased the cases that they're seeing in various states I know as a point of reference when I was talking to my mom earlier she was saying that they made the same decision in Texas a couple of days ago you may have seen many of the that state was being profiled about the number of cases that were specifically related to one a couple of facilities in Houston and Dallas so you're just seeing states really move from this to give you also a sense of what we're doing internally I have not allowed work-related travel because of many issues and I've actually have extended that out and I haven't created a date certain on it just because we're not sure what people are going to get into and what states are going to do specifically we heard that locations in the northeast were saying if you come from an area that has a growing caseload you're going to have to potentially quarantine yourself for 14 days it's actually not a new thing why he's been doing that from the beginning it's the first time that it's really been something on the mainland us and so we're just going to continue that in terms of work related travel based on we don't want people to get stuck we don't want people to go somewhere and then find out they have to quarantine so we're managing all of those issues internally as well and we're trying to work with Jeff and his staff in the county as we all try to understand what protect our neighbor means and when we can get in there and I'll cover some points after Jeff's presentation but generally today was another day of change and we don't understand it all and we're going to work to try to understand it in the next couple of days Jeff are you ready Susan can you run Jeff's presentation or do you need me to Jeff let me know when you're ready I'm ready you can pull up that first slide thank you Harold thanks mayor thanks council members appreciate being invited back what I'm going to do is run through the latest data updates that we have it'll be similar to what you saw last time and then on the end of this what I did was I added a protect our neighbor update so I wasn't able to see the press conference today with the governor so I didn't hear the details but I did see what was sent out and writing so I'm going to cover those pieces with you let you know what what I'm seeing and when we might be able to move to that next stage this first graph is just again our total case count so we're at 1392 in Boulder County we have not seen much change in the number of people that deceased and again the majority of the people that we've seen deceased in Boulder County have come from long-term care facilities I will talk on a slide in the as we're coming up the work that we've done to really put some supports into those long-term care facilities which has really decreased the numbers so the next slide one moment there you go there you go this is this is the number of deaths in Boulder County the orange represents long-term care facilities the blue represents others that are not in long-term care facilities and as you've seen that I've presented before that is consistent with what we're seeing in terms of data across the country definitely the largest percentage of the impacts are associated with our oldest percent of the population and it's also critical why we need as we move forward we need to make sure we're doing everything we can to maintain support for that critical population if you look at our hospitalizations you would see that the majority of people hospitalized are going to be people above 50 years old but the the graph really jumps up when you start to get above 70 years old so those are our that's our population that's most most at risk and the population that we definitely need to pay attention to next slide this is the total number of positives that we've seen in the county in in terms of our testing and again what you'll see here is that early on in this process that orange represents long-term care facilities we had significant outbreaks that started right after we got into covid and it was when they're in those facilities really difficult to control as I've said before but with a lot of work both from our staff as well as from the directors and the staff in each of those facilities we've really been able to to get the spread of the disease under control and those facilities are doing really pretty well next slide this is our five-day average a number of new cases and what you can clearly see here is that spike which is associated with what I'm guessing you've all heard about and that was the outbreak that was associated primarily with parties that were up on the hill during the week the last week of May and into the first and second week of June we do have that outbreak under control as you can see our cases are continuing to decline we don't have we are not seeing any other outbreaks in the county that we are not able to effectively control quickly so the majority of the challenge here and this was a pretty major challenge for us just to give you an example and those of you who are who are tuning into this for every positive case it generates roughly five contacts of people who were associated with that case that's the average for every positive case investigation it's two hours for each of those five contacts that we have to investigate it can range anywhere from 30 minutes to two hours depending on the complexity of it so that generates a lot of work in a very short time and it's why it's so important as we move forward with protect our neighbor that we have the ability to control the spread of that disease so again that's the majority of what you're seeing in that spike right there Boulder County as I had reported in the previous weeks has been doing really well really appreciate everybody that's been really working hard and sacrificing to keep our numbers low and this is an example of what can happen if we don't pay diligent attention to that next slide this is a really busy graph but what I want you to pay attention to here is that the one the bar in red is Boulder County so you can see that we popped up when we had the outbreaks we're now on a decline these other these other lines that you're seeing are the Metro Denver area and the point here is that you can see that there is increasing cases across the Metro Denver area none were as significant as ours our graph our peak was higher than the peak at any point during COVID with this outbreak associated with the hill but there is increasing cases across the Metro area we are seeing in general those numbers between the 20 and 40 year olds primarily with a concentration more so in the 20 to 29 year olds so we do that is part of what we're seeing across the nation as well it's part of what you what Harold just talked about and what we know we need to focus on as we move forward next slide this is our total testing and what's important to note here one of the one of the protect our neighbor requirements is that we have the ability to test up to four almost 500 cases per day we we easily have the ability to do that in Boulder County so that is not a challenge we have tested and I'm going to show you on the next graph in just a second that what we need to do is be able to test number one all symptomatic cases in Boulder County we can do that across the board right now we have multiple testing sites those are available on our website and we've expanded our testing to the contacts of those people who are symptomatic so that we can more effectively control the spread of that disease so if you go to the next slide without getting too technical here the bottom line is you want to maintain less than a five percent positivity rate and that is what this graph demonstrates we are between between two and four percent and that's that's good that means we are testing enough of our population that we are identifying the positives that are out there when you start to see positivity rates up in the 20s you are in an active outbreak where you're not in control of that situation and that's part of what we're seeing across the country right now but in terms of testing we're in good shape we do have ability to test and get outside of just symptomatic to now test contacts of people who are positive next slide this is the rate of residents who have tested positive per 100,000 population even though Longmont shows up as the highest here the majority of the new cases are coming from Boulder and again that is associated primarily with the outbreak that we've seen there next slide this is the hospitalization data that you've seen me show you before what you're going to see as I go through these next couple slides is just that again our hospitalization data is good for Boulder County even though we've had a few more people show up in the hospital that have been COVID positive our hospitalization rates are still very low and continuing to stay very low and this just shows what our rate looks like compared to the rest of the metro area and again Boulder County is that red line on the bottom next slide this is the total number of patients hospitalized in Boulder County due to COVID-19 and just demonstrates again what I just said which is our hospitalization rates are low and are staying low and that's what we want to see as we move forward next slide this is what we're facing that I'm sure everybody's probably been hearing about and listening to on the news so this is the United States we are now at roughly a little over 40,000 cases per day that is higher than any time during this pandemic from the beginning so we are headed in the wrong direction we do want to be very thoughtful and careful about how things move forward and because we don't want to be in some of the places in some of these graphs that I'm going to show you from others across the nation that again I know we've all been hearing about so at a nationwide level and Colorado level we have reason to take pause and make sure that we're being really careful and thoughtful about how we move forward if you can go to the next slide so I'm not going to go through all these but I just want to point out a few that are pretty challenging Florida, Texas, Arizona the steepness of those curves as you can see creates massive challenges if you look at that graph again in the entire previous time in the outbreak those states are far above the numbers that they saw any time previous during the outbreak and those are pretty challenging situations Colorado is down there on the in the middle and it's it's pretty we're pretty low in Colorado because because we've done a good job and we want to continue to do a good job you can see that we do have a tail up just like I showed you with those metro cases we do have some increasing cases and I think the governor is being prudent about making sure that as we move to protect our neighbor that you have to meet certain metrics that I'll talk about now to really make sure that we're not just jumping ahead without being really thoughtful I think the governor's watching the cases that are occurring around in other states he's meeting with his staff at CDPHE they're doing a lot of analysis and they're doing a lot of watching and they're being cautious so if you can go to the next slide so in order to go and again my caveat here is I did not hear the press conference today but I'm you I took the materials that I saw distributed today and pulled from those materials we will have more information by next week as we move further into this but to enter protect our neighbors and really the biggest difference between protect our neighbor neighbor at this point and where we are right now is that you can open up all areas at 50% of pre-pandemic levels and the only caveat to that is that you cannot go you cannot do that in areas where there's more restrictive order so as as Harold just mentioned the governor is announcing or has announced that they're going to be closing closing bars and night clubs so that would be an example where you obviously that doesn't apply to that 50% but this really opens up all areas to 50% capacity and that still maintains some of the social distancing requirements that the modeling is showing that we need to do in order to be able to move into the fall without surging our hospitals to a place that others are facing right now so again I think it's a very thoughtful approach I appreciate how the state has approached this and really been careful about looking at metrics so for each of the things that you see on here low disease transmission levels local public health agency capacity for testing and hospital ability to meet the needs of all patients there is specific metrics that we need to meet in order to be able to they're calling it certification so we have to do an application process where we demonstrate how we meet these different metrics and then if we meet those metrics then we are certified to move into a protect our neighbor framework and if we don't then we stay at safer at home and obviously the governor still maintaining three different levels stay at home so if we have to move backwards which none of us want to do we all know that we have safer at home and we have now protect our neighbors so those three categories will still remain and then there will be counties that are at different levels depending on whether they can meet the metrics in these areas or not next slide these are this is additional requirements each county that applies has to have a mitigation and containment plan that describes what's what they're going to do if they start to fall out of the compliance with the metrics that we had to meet in order to get into compliance that includes things like just as an example really a lot of this is based on that case containment so we can lean on we have mutual aid agreements that allow us to lean on our neighbors on the state the state has brought in as i'm sure you've all heard a fair amount of americorps folks who can do contact tracing so again i think our state has taken a a really proactive and careful approach to moving this forward and that is part of what we would need to do in order to move to this next level and to make sure that we're staying within that next level these components that you see here about how it must be approved are new components which i think again are thoughtful this needs to be approved by all local leader local electeds county commissioners mayors hospitals that serve in our county law enforcement and emergency management across the county and the local public health director and in addition to that the plan has to demonstrate how counties will promote public compliance with the guidelines and i just want to give a plug to all of you folks in longmont and how much work and partnership you've demonstrated and helping us meet that specifically herald and his staff have been wonderful they've been at the table with us really working through challenges when we're running into them police department's been completely supportive and as has your staff with educational approach as well so your your commitment to this is going to help us make sure that we can move forward based on that and then how counties will increase mask wearing we did extend our mask order indefinitely when i say indefinitely we'll continue to obviously look at the mask evidence the mask evidence is getting stronger and there's more demonstration that masks are reducing the spread of disease and that is going to be as as you see here one of the requirements is we have to demonstrate that we can continue to do that we will be also doing a monthly monitoring we have set up a monitoring program in addition to the surveys that we're doing with our businesses to ask some of these questions we're doing on the ground monitoring across jurisdictions on a monthly basis that includes looking for are the are our businesses as an example following social distancing requirements and are they following masking requirements we're looking in different cities as well as the county and we'll continue to use that to help guide education efforts so when we run into hot spots we already have a team that's in place that includes some of your staff from code enforcement as an example that are meeting and talking about where are these hot spots showing up and how do we make sure we're dedicating more education and support to making sure that we are actually following our mask assessments have been very positive we haven't done one in the last three weeks we will be doing one next week but the last one that we did was demonstrating that we have a very high compliance rate with mask wearing which has been great and then the last thing is how will we have to demonstrate how will how will increase influenza vaccine uptake and of all the years of how important that is this one is critical if you think about the symptoms and the requirements for having people stay home when they have any kind of symptoms that look a lot like vaccine I'm sorry a lot like COVID and influenza together those have similar type symptoms so having people get influenza vaccine this fall is going to be critically important and the state has made some money available to local public health agencies to support more education and outreach around that so I believe we'll be able to meet all of those things based on things that we have in place right now but just note that it will need to come to local electeds to submit the application and that's all I have at this point I don't have any other things I guess the only other thing I would want to emphasize to everyone that's listening in here is our ability to really control the spread of this disease we don't we all know we don't have enough people to assure there's enforcement everywhere we don't have enough people to do education in every single place more people are out in our communities it really does come down to each one of our individual responsibilities to do everything we can to maintain social distancing of six feet from each other that will help us stop the spread of the disease where it's difficult to do that where a mask a mask is making a difference and if we can continue to do that we can continue to keep our numbers down I think part of the challenge that you're probably also seeing at the national level is there states now that are putting travel restrictions in place because even if Colorado is doing pretty well we know that we have a lot of people traveling in and out of states and those people can spread that disease that if you remember the graphs early on that I showed you there was a lot of associated spread with travel we don't want that scenario to happen again so so that is just those are all things to pay attention to as we continue to to look forward I want to thank you all thank you Councilor Christensen you're muted Pauli I thought I did Jeff thank you for your leadership on this and and thank you for your kind words about our staff our our staff and the police department work really really hard and they're under huge amount of stress right now so one thing I am wondering I realize that Weld County is not considered I guess part of the greater Denver Denver metro area but not to be snotty about it I'd like to see the statistics on Weld County because I think it would make us look good I just think that would be interesting to look at the second thing is as you mentioned I there are states that are putting restrictions are on people who travel out of the state there are a whole lot of people I know who are angry at the city council for not having fireworks this year which we could have had if they would just follow the guidelines but so they're planning to go up to Washington to Wyoming which is of course having spikes in their record so I'm a little worried about people going up to Wyoming and getting sick and coming back down here do you have any guidelines or suggestions for how to handle that? Well I don't know that we can prohibit people from doing that but what I'm going to say to you is the same thing I said before people are putting our economy our society at risk if they go into places where there's lots of people in crowds and you can't maintain social distancing again we can't control every single one of those situations and unless people take personal responsibility to avoid those situations we will see this disease spread I know thank you I wish people really understood that the only way we can open up again and get back to normal is if people do follow social distancing and hygiene and general courtesy and okay thank you if I can jump in real quick while Jeff's still here too Susan I'm going to share my screen one of the things and this was just updated after Jeff sent his power point on their website so you'll see the correlation and if you all can see this as Jeff talked about at least how the state's issuing the rules we know we know what the you know I call it we know what the game is that we're playing now and what we're playing is don't have increased cases have the capacity to trace have the capacity to test and to give you a sense of the impact on this how people and how they approach things really impacts our local businesses and the people that work in those local businesses because Jeff and his staff are actually working to get ready to look at a variance that would have allowed us to operate a little bit differently or in a different way and be more open because of the way our numbers were looking before they could submit the variance we saw the increase in cases in Boulder and so that did not allow us to open up more businesses and so at the end of the day you know that really hurt our local businesses and the people that have to work there are the people that work there in order to you know to expand what they're able to do and when you look at this chart this is really important to me and Jeff if I'm missing any of these you help me on this one if you remember we were at 500 a couple of weeks ago and we sort of held at 517 and we were almost double the cases of Boulder Boulder is now 12 cases from from Longmont and what's interesting is when you look at the population they lost probably 20,000 students so we're probably the largest city now in terms of population but they've caught up to us in cases and then if you come up here and you look at this chart and this is exactly what Jeff was talking about the largest growth in cases occurred in this 20 to 29 demographic and that was what was associated with what they saw on the hill and in those parties and into your question is those increases really penalize our local businesses in terms of how they're going to be able to operate and how we move forward because that is what the state is saying that Jeff and we all have to look like in terms of whether or not we can move into the protect our number phase or protect our number protect our neighbors phase the numbers are going to be how those decisions are going to be made based on what the governor's communicated and so now if they if the variance was in play it's really protect our neighbors you have to go 14 days out from this in order to just consider it so it's really delayed what we're able to do to support you know our community they get that right Jeff you were perfect all right councilmember redargo farry okay so I had a couple of questions around the mask you had mentioned something about a mask assessment what does that entail what is that we you said there was one three weeks ago you're we're coming up to another you know I just wanted to know what that what that yeah it it entails there's two components to it one is asking the businesses what they are seeing we have a series of I think it's about 20 or so questions happy to share this with all of you and we're asking business what they're seeing relative to social distancing and masking we asked other questions besides that and we are also doing on the ground assessment so we are going into stores of different sizes and I may not have all these details exactly correct but we're going into stores of different sizes small medium large and we're doing on the ground assessments and we're watching in the stores are people maintaining social distancing at six feet or greater and then what percentage of people are or are not and then in those same stores we're also looking at are people wearing masks or not and so that's the type of assessment that we're looking at and we're doing that in different geographic areas including mountain versus planes and municipalities okay and the target is really 80% if we see about 80% of the public utilizing masks we're okay I don't know if I I can tell you that because I haven't I haven't modeled that specifically so I don't know that I can speak to what would happen if 80% were versus 60% as an example what I can tell you that is that in any scenario where you can't maintain six feet social distancing and it's six feet social distancing just so you all know what CDC's guidance is it's six feet social distancing if you're less than six feet for more than 15 minutes then you're at increased risk for spread of the virus so wherever there is less than six feet if you're not wearing a mask you have that much more ability to potentially get the virus we know that mass will reduce the spread of large droplets and there's some more articles that are coming out that looked at states that had mandatory masking versus non-mandatory masking and what that looked like in terms of total amount of virus spread in those states so the bottom line is whenever you're going to be even challenged about being within six feet you should wear a mask and masking is not the panacea but it's an important tool maintaining six foot distancing is the number one thing obviously hand washing making sure that you're thinking about when you put your mask on and off you're not contaminating yourself those are all important pieces that taken together can make a big difference and have made a big difference and are you finding that when you look at what information the World Health Organization is sending out CDC other states are you finding that it's coming more in line or is it still because I know early on there were just different messages all over the place yeah yeah definitely there's been different messages all over the place without a doubt and what I would say is that the Centers for Disease Disease Control has been for it's probably over a month now been recommending masks to the general public I haven't looked at the World Health Organization lately but there was a time when the World Health Organization was saying you only need masks for people who are sick but we know that masks make a difference now as an example the Surgeon General is speaking really clearly about masking and the needing for masks in general public because we know that it reduces the spread of large droplets it can be effective at reducing the spread of the disease especially in some of the states that weren't necessarily pushing that mask message you're now seeing a lot more mask messaging being pushed because people know that it can help assure that we're doing everything we can to keep our economies open and our ability to be able to move and not be in a lockdown type or a state home type situation okay thank you all right Harold what else do we need oh sorry Dr. Waters didn't see the hand thanks Mayor Magley Jeff just building on on the conversation you were just having we continue you wouldn't be surprised I'm certain you do as well get a fair amount of incoming messages about how dare you require even though we're not requiring right I mean there are explanations that come from the county about masks under what conditions but all right do you have any advice on on what the specific messaging is I mean this is since it's voluntary for the most part because enforcement is so difficult are there are there are there any messages that are more persuasive than others is it I suspect shaming is not the right you know approach but it's hard not to I mean how to what what what have you learned if anything about here the two or three key points or messages that are more likely to cause people who have chosen to turn make this a political statement to turn it into an understanding of what we that we are responsible for one another or it's about the common good or it's just about the economy and trying to you know keep our economy moving well I can say a couple of things so there is there are some people and we do we do get that same feedback as well there and there is some folks who for whatever reasons they have just don't believe that masks are an effective tool and and even when we provide messages and we show information it's still is not very convincing so and I completely understand that that's the world we live in and we know that what I try to make sure that we're emphasizing to people is that this doesn't help me specifically it doesn't help you specifically that we're protecting each other because we want to protect our community and our economy none of us want to go back to a place where we're having to shut things down that's not good for anybody and we all know it and that's the message that we keep trying to get to people I can tell you that our chamber is a hundred percent behind both our chambers are a hundred percent behind this we've been working with the chambers who have been emphasizing the same thing the importance of social distancing and masking helps all of us and when we don't take responsibility for that we can see outbreaks that occur that then put all of us at risk not just not just us individually or our our parents or our grandparents but but again our society and our economy so I think it's really important that we continue to emphasize those things and and it's up to people's individual behaviors they're the ones who are going to make the difference and again I just want to say thank you to so many of the people who have really worked so hard and sacrificed because our numbers outside of that outbreak were very positive and have remained completely positive especially comparative to the metro area so we can do it together and this is not forever we're going to have a vaccine at some point that's going to be available but we do need to be diligent in the interim everybody can I follow up one with one more question to Harold again Harold what when we get questions because we do I just got an email just before the council meeting expressing concerns about enforcement where are we with enforcement are we still in an education phase where we always be in an education phase is there a point with individuals where it's no longer education but people do get cited have anybody been have any people been cited are there places that we are paying to which we're paying more attention with more vigorous enforcement than other places just give us the gestalt and what we should know and how we could help the community understand what can't what can we do and what can't we do with respect to enforcement yeah so I think generally what I would say and Jeff's talked about this and this was also the topic of conversation if you talk to any of the administrators what you will see is we just don't have enough bodies to be everywhere to enforce everywhere but what we do try to do is really target that so you heard me say on the weekends when we do see certain upticks we are devoting officers to assist our parks and recreation staff and you know a big shout out to those folks because we're asking them to come in for overtime to help us on these items and so we are specifically placing folks around Macintosh Union Dickens in Button Rock as I said earlier we are still trying to really approach it from an education standpoint because we're also finding that actually we get more compliance with that that approach than you know just issuing tickets because all you do is really then create a situation where people become more entrenched in their position and try to talk to them about well here's who you're really impacting and so what we've always said in this is and our officers have this discretion at all times it also is going to depend on the situation how many people we're seeing how they're approaching it you know it's one thing if it's you know five people it's another thing if it's a hundred if it's a hundred we're probably calling we're calling Jeff and it's not just us it would be us in the county health department and others all engaging in that particular issue so the answer is we still really try to to take the education approach we are targeting people based on where we're seeing significant pushes and where we don't have enough people to to respond but we also can't do that all the time because in the middle of all of this what we're also dealing with is our normal daily activities and the staff loads that that presents and that really ties into what you all were talking about in terms of the challenges that we're facing with our parks folks so I didn't probably give you the numbers and I can get those numbers and see what we're really dealing with what I can tell you is that the reports that I get in terms of the number of calls we're at least getting into the system those have gone down for a long lot and we've been pretty stable in terms of the issues that we're having to deal with we're not seeing it as it were other than what we're seeing at McIntosh and the calls that we're all getting on that one of the other challenges in this is how to you know when they define it the family group and how do you verify who's part of the family there's a lot of nuances in this that don't make it as simple as as as we would all like it to be all right councilor peck thank you mayor bagley I just want to say because there are probably more people watching at this point in the council meeting than later during the comments is that for those of you who think long went doesn't have the right that we shouldn't be enforcing or telling people to wear masks I want you just to look at the country New York Connecticut New Jersey now have banned travel from Florida they know Floridians are allowed to go into that tri-state area because their numbers are so high they did not comply their mayors and governors did not take this seriously also with Arizona and Texas their mayors and governors didn't take it seriously at all we now have Europe banning travel from the United States because they do not want they don't feel that the United States is taking this seriously enough and they don't want their numbers to escalate again this if you're only concerned about the economics of this look at the economics of us not being able to go to Europe on business to conduct business as usual so we all have to take personal responsibility none of us want to be police so I am asking you please comply with the mask and the social distancing we don't want to go back to safe at home or even more stringent measures so I'm asking everybody in this community to please comply thank you all right Harold anything else I was going to do a biobot update but we've kind of gone long on this one so Robert, Annie and your group if you're here we'll bring it back the next time sorry about that right thanks Harold I do have LHA now yep go ahead so as you all know you passed the resolutions and we talked about the that I have been now on the board appointed the executive board member and we've got our team in place I just wanted to give you a sense on who we've brought in to work with this so generally you have three of us Kathy, Karen and myself that are working on on pretty high level to mid-level issues generally with the housing authority typically what I've taken on and that is really working on the information technology and maintenance side directly Kathy is really working finance construction Karen is taking the organizational and residential culture and operations obviously all of those at different times I'm getting briefed on it by everyone in terms of the work that we're doing Jim Golden is coming in and out advising on our finance components Jim's going to be more involved with this but in addition to that we've taken Tracy DeFrancisco who works in our community development department has experience with housing authorities she's spending a fair amount of time there operationally with in the building working with them to really work through policing issues and understand what's going on so that we can have as much data as we possibly can get as we move as we're moving forward Kendra Daniels who came in with our disaster recovery and really did a lot of accounting with the feds there has also we had some capacity with her we've asked her to jump in and she's working at Kathy on the accounting and financials Kathy Woods who is over our ETS department is the project lead that I'm working with on the technology issues and those are significant Jeff Cedars working with the facility maintenance group as we do this and then we put together a team of Michelle Wade, Carmen, Ramirez, Ellie Berkto and Karen and I'm probably missing other folks really on the residential organizational issues and then our public information team with Steph Bergman and Marika are really jumping in to help us get that information out at the moment we're still really in triage mode in terms of the items that we're dealing with the first one that we're having to tackle and we're going to have to deal with it quickly is really in the realm of technology you know the analogy that I'm using with everyone else is if you're a carpenter you really kind of need a hammer and a saw to do your work in many cases they don't have a hammer and a saw to do their work and an example of that is the majority of their computers are older and they can't even handle the current software requirements one of their financial financial analysts her computer won't even allow her to open two spreadsheets at once without crashing it's approximately 10 years old and so we're having to really dig in on just the core infrastructure in that piece you know we know for two years at least they've been on a month-to-month contract with their computer provider and so we're working to understand what that looks like and how we can bring that in and really gain an economy at scale with our system that then ties in to the camera systems that we have at facilities and then their security systems and trying to integrate that so we can operate more efficiently and effective instead of having multiple internet providers we want to be able to take it to one and multiple phone carriers but the good news is I think where we were a couple of weeks ago and where we are today is we really now completely understand that issue and we're moving forward in terms of designing the plan that we need to really create a more efficient and effective operation building maintenance you know it's interesting as we talk to him you know we know there's not an ongoing maintenance plan there's no ongoing capital replacement plan but in terms of the maintenance supervisor you know what I would say is he just doesn't have time to deal with it based on the staffing levels and so definitely you've had some good conversations that's where we're going to go in and help them and try to bring those things together based on the audits that we've seen and some that have come in you know one of the things that we're doing is we're going to bring our city's personnel rules and purchasing policies and establish those and put those in place so that we can ensure that we're in compliance with federal and state requirements in addition to the audits that we've received and then at another foundational level is really bringing in training for the for the folks that are in various positions because we've also seen that that's really been an operational issue where folks weren't necessarily trained appropriately to do their job and you know again that's another issue that's that's really foundation to the to the organization so you know generally Kathy made the comment to me earlier and she's like we're going to give them good news I think in many ways this is actually good news because in a fairly short period of time the team's been able to come in and really dig in and we can set courses that are you know directions we need to go in on all of these issues and can start moving on that and then in the middle of this kind of tacking on to what we talked about with the COVID where we still have our daily issues we need to deal with where the suites get hit by lightning lastly and and so then you have a situation where you're trying to do this work now you have air conditions going out microwaves going out range is going out telephones and so you're trying to very quickly circle around that and deal with it and I think that's where you really then start looking at capacity and capability and so in about two to three days yesterday by the by the end of the day yesterday everyone that was without an air condition we actually had the portable air conditioning units in their facilities we got the adjuster to come out and so we're really looking on that broader replacement piece but those are really things that occur that we're all heading this way and we all just had to kind of stop what we were doing and jump in and start dealing with this issue as a team and it worked well I mean again so that's a positive thing seeing how you move through these challenges and how you can get through it and I was really happy with the way everyone came together to deal with that issue on another note in terms of the main office we're looking at a soft opening next week an official opening the week after that um the big thing that we're challenged with right now and this is again where we're tapping into other resources with Michelle Wade Dan Eamon and then Eugene and Liz and the attorney's office is really start understanding the rules regarding our multifamily facilities and specifically those facilities are for older adults in terms of how we can open those because as you saw for the from the presentation they can be challenges related to the COVID world and so we haven't made a decision yet on those facilities because we really want to understand the orders understand the risk before we make a decision and like many decisions I've had to make recently some people don't like it but at the end of the day you know our responsibility is for the self health and safety of the individuals that live in those facilities and we're going to make a prudent decision on that so we'll know more in the in the very near future I'm going to turn it over to Kathy really quickly so she can she can give you the good news because Kathy actually has a lot of good news on things that we've been able to deal with that were were challenged they were opportunities and she was able to move through those with her team Kathy Hi everyone so the best news that we have so far is as of about a couple hours ago we are 100% least and occupied at Fall River apartment so we met our goal of having that done by the end of June staff did just a fantastic job in moving through those units as soon as we were opened up and people could start going back in and looking at units so we can start our qualified occupancy July one and then in about three months that shows our stability financial stability at the property and we can convert everything to a permanent loan structure so that's that's really excellent news and Kathy one of the things in terms of the relationship I know in terms of finding the people that we could move in there there were conversations and what you all were seeing on the housing side that we have internally and really connecting with the housing authority which is something we've been wanting for a while and we were actually able to implement it which helped I think with that is that correct right yeah as they moved through the wait list pre-COVID things were going really well and then when COVID hit and they went back to the wait list folks were not some folks were interested so we reached out to our senior services staff and Carmen and her group and some of our other partners and put the word out that units were available and and that really helped to move those along and helped us move through much quicker than than what we probably could have otherwise on the other properties we have been working diligently on getting vacant units on the market and rented as of the middle of this month we had 23 vacancies I think this is what we reported to the LHA board at their June 16th meeting we had 23 vacancies for a 22,500 rent loss and as of today we're down to 13 vacancies for a $14,500 rent loss so those are moving through pretty quickly and we're starting to get a rhythm for turning those units we are reviewing leases at all the properties to move to a more uniform lease that meets all federal and state requirements we've been reviewing rents the rent structures to ensure that they're compliant with all the different funding sources and that we are moving rents up where we can and where we need to and just making sure that we're following all the requirements we've been also reviewing property budgets to reviewing the budgets against the current status and resources to expenses to ensure that we're capturing all of those and how that all rolls up into the Longmont Housing Authority's overall budget making sure that admin fees and different management fees get processed and moved up and that we're capturing everything that's owed to that so there's been a lot of work especially Tracy's been working a lot on ensuring compliance with the rent structures and the resources on every property and we're slowly making our way through that on the Aspen Meadows Apartments refinance and rehab that is back on track I think we reported maybe last time that we had lost our investor they pulled out in the middle of the COVID and we were able to find get down Manny sorry dog we were able to find another investor we've been working on all the paperwork that they require that we're going through everything again with a new investor on new forms we're confirming pricing and construction schedule with the contractor that we have on board we have had to change because now we're not going to close and start the rehab until probably mid to late October so we're moving the whole schedule from starting on the exterior if we could have started in July we would have done a lot of the exterior work and then moved to the interior we're going to have to flip that so we have to reschedule everything and figure that out and the impacts on the residents and we're working on a relocation plan for those residents because some of them won't be able to stay in place when the elevator gets replaced or when the windows are going in or when their units are being worked on so I'm trying to figure all that out we have been working with our city purchasing staff to get us quotes for motels costs of motels if we have to move people in moving pods to have on site and also I guess that's the three things that we've been working with them on and Molly O'Donnell from my staff is taking on the construction oversight so there'll be a contractor they'll have a project manager but she's going to serve as the LHA's project manager to make sure and look out for the interests of the housing authority during all that and has already started work with the contractor and getting everything set up we've also unique thing that I don't think they've ever done before is we are bringing in our maintenance staff to look at some of the specs things that are spec to see does that make sense to them do they have something else that works better and the other properties that we can get some economies of scale by specking all of the same AC units in every building eventually get to a point like that so then we've got some efficiencies and we can purchase ahead to a certain extent and be able to move forward on that a little bit more quickly and then Cameron from our facilities management staff is also helping to review some of those things and then finally I wanted to report on the voluntary compliance agreement our fair housing and ADA agreement that we had with HUD the housing authority had with HUD it is a big agreement and there's a lot of work that has to be done around that we have submitted all of the required updated policies to HUD for their review so they're all with HUD for them to review they'll get comments back to us and we'll go back and forth probably a couple times on getting those all up to date and then we can disseminate those out and make sure everyone's following the same reasonable accommodation policies grievance policies all of the things that comply with their housing and then we're going to need to start on a unit by unit building by building inspection putting out an RFP for a architect or a consultant to come and help us implement that by inspecting all of the buildings in the unit and then telling us what meets ADA code and what doesn't and how can we move forward with that we will probably link that we saw some economies of scale if we link it with and include in the RFP to also do a capital improvement plan and a maintenance plan for each building as well get two birds with one stone kind of thing for the same same pricing or the same under the same contract that will have to wait until COVID restrictions are lifted and we can go into units but we're going to get ready so that as soon as that happens we're ready to go I have to say HUD has been really good at working with us and a couple times we've had to ask for some extensions especially on this piece because of COVID we couldn't go into inspect units so that has been postponed until the end of this year and they said if we need another postponement depending on what's happening that we can do that as well so as long as we're staying in touch with them they have been really good in working with us but that was a really important compliance piece that we have to make sure that we pay attention to and don't let fall through the cracks and that we meet the requirements we need to meet I think that's all I have oh I did want to also say we did just enter into a contract with a consultant to go through and look at the LHA from the perspective of former housing authority director so she's going to look at financial she's going to look at job descriptions are people doing what they is in their job description do we need to look at restructuring and just really taking some like an outside look at things and giving us some feedback on that which we can then compare to what we're finding as well so that should be done by the end of July her report back to us so all right the only question I have Harold is I actually asked for some information from the from our human resources director about additional responsibilities that were being pushed on to you and Kathy and Karen and reallocating budgets from LHA to you I know you feel uncomfortable talking about that but when can we expect to hear from her probably by the end of the week perfect I will await that conversation then I'll put it on the agenda when I hear from her all right great any other thank you very much Kathy it sounds like you guys have a daunting task and we appreciate everything you're doing you're doing a great job and keep it up so so I will say there we've also been keeping track of some of the things like that and facilities work and the ETS work so to have a new IGA with them or an amendment to the IGA I think we said we were going to start doing that bringing back separate ones or smaller ones that are more specific to exactly what work we're doing so we are tracking that and probably we'll have one I would guess Harold in the next month yeah we're going to need another IGA we're going to need it we're probably going to have to step into this incrementally similar to how we approached it with the flood where we had one and then we amend it because the first one we have to get in is on the ETS side so we can get that system stabilized and that's going to be the base for a lot of things that we have to do and integrate the Yardy system into how we approach it are there any questions are we good it looks like we're good thanks Harold it's 8 30 so we try to do public invited to be heard before we take a break is that okay all right let's go ahead and actually no let's take a five minute break while we wait for people to get on public invited to be heard and then by the time we start again we'll cut off the list and that way we'll we'll know how many so let's take a five minute break but we'll now move on to public invited to be heard so if you were listening to the broadcast this time go ahead and dial<PHONE_NUMBER> and then enter the meeting ID and get in line and then we also asked you get in line now for ordinances on second reading which is matter nine and we'll be back in five thank you everybody mayor we're ready for the public invited to be heard when council is ready all right let's go ahead and if you can hear my voice let's get back on there's four of us here there's five so it looks like we have three callers and the slide has has stopped on the screen so do you want me to go ahead and close public invited to be heard all right let's go ahead and close it and I will admit all of them and call them each one at a time okay actually it looks like we have more than that we've got one two three four five guests that have called in cool the first guest your phone number ends in three seven six I'm going to unmute you would you please state your name and your address and you have three minutes guest three seven six do you hear me oh I'm sorry this is yes two three seven six yes sorry yes Christine Dominic I'm at 1003 Sunset Street hi so I am so my background is I market ironically I'm marketing director of center of health so I know a lot about what's going on with COVID behind the scenes within the health system there but also I'm the wife of Hayden Peacock who is the owner of the Chinese medicine clinic in downtown Longmont so I wanted to express my concerns in regards to the parking and the closing off of lanes on Main Street and the two concerns that I have are his clients specifically so he sees a good bit of individuals who are older and if you know about the circumstances with COVID sorry that you know there's a lot of restrictions in terms of moving around and I can talk about anecdotally with my own mother her being restricted from the activity that she normally would do as an older retiree to the point where there's mental health implications of that so by closing off the parking and Main Street significantly is going to really make it challenging for his clients to be able to access his clinic because they are utilizing his services in a safe way to be able to get care and be able to interact with somebody that can provide that care both you know he's acupuncture but also from a mental health perspective the other concern that I have is just logistically with the closures you know the allyscape is what I would think would be a fabulous idea but also like I said logistically you're closing it off my concern is having outdoor diners not wearing masks and then having these other people moving about on the street on the on the paved area with masks and you've spent a good bit of time talking about concerns with masks and unmasking so if you actually have these patrons in the alley it would eliminate a lot of concern that maybe patrons who are just walking up and down the street with their masks would have with the patrons that are not I mean I know there's a lot of misinformation about what is or isn't okay in terms of mask wearing but you know people are still going to think what they're going to think and it may actually cause issues with individuals wanting to actually come downtown so also thirdly I mean I should say just the traffic issues and what would happen pushing all that traffic that highway traffic onto residential streets so I mean that's a third point so that those are my concerns I'm going to keep it short I know I'm only have three minutes but those are my concerns and that was three thank you very much appreciate it thank you very much bye bye okay next caller your phone number ends in 396 I've just unmuted you can you hear me yeah this is Scott Cook at the Longmont Chamber thank you you can hear me okay yes we can yeah so this is okay great Scott looked in the Longmont Chamber 528 Main Street good evening Mayor Bagley and City Council the Chamber recently took a position to support the LDDA's request for lane closures on Main Street to expand public space in the downtown for pedestrian cyclists and additional space for restaurants and businesses the city and LDDA staff have worked quickly with CDOT and have been granted permit for the closure we understand as has just been mentioned that there are some concerns from the public and other businesses however survey results show that a majority of respondents support the plan and I know that the LDDA is working closely with impacted businesses and some changes have already been made to accommodate that I believe it's also some concern with the fast pace of this request the governor and CDOT have also worked very quickly and that is what is often called upon us in a time of crisis years of work and planning has brought our downtown area to be something all long not can be proud of many of us remember a time on our downtown the center of our community was not nearly as vibrant as it is today but we could be in danger of losing that if we do not use all the available tools to help save our businesses the chamber and the LDDA interact daily with businesses that are struggling right now some will not be able to survive much longer and some have closed already in recent messaging from the chamber and we heard a little bit about this tonight from Jeff earlier recent messaging from the chamber and with our regional chamber partners we've asked everyone to remind themselves of what their phrase we're in this together means we believe it means putting up with the small and sometimes larger inconveniences we have to undertake to support our local businesses lane closures will be one of these inconveniences for us but it very well could mean survival of our downtown businesses the chamber asked that the city council support the LDAs request for main street closures thank you thank you right thanks Scott okay next the next caller your phone number ends in six nine six you've been unmuted could you state your name in your address for the record you have three minutes caller six nine six do you hear me I'm gonna put you on mute again and we'll come back to you caller four three nine you've been unmuted caller four three nine yes yeah can you hear me yes we can okay this is Devin Quintz 9-11 Venice street and the downtown business center I'm just good evening mayor and council members I'm just calling in in support of LDDA's proposal to reduce traffic on main street to enhance the business properties and allow people more space to social distance and enjoy our downtown it's been proven over and over again that people walking biking are the ones who bring business to a downtown not people driving by at higher speeds I think this is going to make downtown a more pleasant place to be I'm at least for the next three months and hopefully we can look at doing something longer thank you very much thank you let's try that last one again guest whoop I guess they just left all right last one guest eight nine seven do you hear me I've just unmuted you hello guest eight nine seven would you like to speak all right let's go ahead and conclude first call public invited to be heard and if that person comes back they can get in at the end they can call in and express their concerns so let's go ahead and move on to consent agenda and introduction and reading by title of first reading ordinances Don can you go ahead and read those for us I can mayor item 8a is resolution 2020-55 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city of Longmont and St. Rain Valley school district for the wild fixture replacement pilot project 8b is resolution 2020-56 a resolution of the Longmont City Council authorizing agreements between the city and St. Rain investors LLC for the purchase of real property for the resilient St. Rain project item 8c is resolution 2020-57 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and the Colorado Department of Transportation for a special use permit for restaurant and retail use of the state highway right of way including waiver of use fee item 8d is resolution 2020-58 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city of Longmont and the federal aviation administration for grant funding under the coronavirus aid relief and economic security act 8e is resolution 2020-59 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and the Board of County commissioners of Weld County Colorado and all other Weld County municipalities for collaboration agreement related to distribution of CARES Act funds and 8f is resolution 2020-60 a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the intergovernmental agreement between the city and Boulder County the city of Boulder the city of Lafayette the city of Louisville the town of Erie the town of Jamestown the town of Lyons the town of Netherland the town of Superior and the town of Ward for Boulder County collaboration agreement related to the distribution of CARES Act funds and Mayor Staff has a brief presentation on item 8c all right Councilmember Christensen I would like to pull 8c do you want to move the consent agenda Councilor, Councilmember Waters I'd like to pull 8c Mayor you're muted well I moved I moved the consent agenda less items 8a and 8c second all right we moved in second did all in favor say aye aye aye oppose say nay all right the consent agenda minus 8a and 8c passes unanimously Harold can we go ahead and have the 8c presentation please were you gonna go to second reading first oh yeah let's do that good point good clock Harold all right let's move on item 9a ordinances on second reading and public hearings on any matter we're gonna go ahead and ask everybody to go ahead and call on the number if you have any comments or questions ordinance a or ordinance 2020-26 a bill for an ordinance making additional appropriations for expenses and liabilities to City of Longhorn with the fiscal year beginning January 1, 2020 do you have a report Harold yes Mayor we have a brief presentation from I don't know if it's Jim or Theresa so if we could go ahead and ask people to call in for 9a and 9b as well at this time go ahead and call in and go ahead and we'll go ahead and take public hearing after we hear your brief presentation Harold Theresa is at your gym one moment Theresa you should be all set thank you good evening Mayor and City Council I'm Theresa Malloy budget manager can you hear me all right yes we can okay thank you so this evening we wanted to take just a brief moment and update you on this additional appropriation so each year at about this time each year we do bring our carryover appropriation to you and since this is our carryover it is a very large appropriation much larger than the appropriations that you typically see from us throughout the year so this appropriation is 140 almost 140.3 million dollars it includes 35 different funds and for ease we have broken this appropriation into two components and presented them separately in our council communication for you so the first component is 1.2 million of this is new dollars so these are this is appropriation for funds that you have not yet seen in any prior year or any prior appropriation so this is essentially the type of appropriation that we typically bring you each month so that comprises 1.2 million dollars of this 140 million dollar appropriation the bulk of this appropriation however 139 million dollars is carryover from 2019 or prior years as well because in some cases we have been carrying some of these funds for a few years now and so this appropriation in total brings our total 2020 budget at this point in time to 495.5 million dollars and what I wanted to do was just talk to you a little bit about the the carryover piece so certainly if you have questions on the new dollar piece I can answer that for you but I'm going to skip down to the carryover piece and in the council communication we call this unexpended carryover items from 2019 and so our city charter states that all appropriations will lapse at the end of the year in all funds except our public improvement fund and so for projects mainly capital improvement program projects where we have full funding for the project appropriated but those funds are not spent we need to carry those over to continue those projects so the bulk of what you see in this appropriation is carryover of dollar wise is carryover of our CIP program you will however see some other carryover items so other one-time type expenses that we have budgeted in 2019 but those projects were not completed and we still are actively working on completing those projects those are included as well and the other type of carryover that you will notice in this in our council communication is dollars for grants that we have received in prior years that you council did appropriate through an additional appropriation ordinance last year but again those grants were not fully expended so those are slightly presented slightly different in our council communication rather than showing them coming from fund balance as most of the rest of our additional appropriation items are indicated these ones you do see an offset of revenue so even though we're offsetting it by revenue it is from this perspective carryover and so just a couple wanted to highlight just a couple items for you one of the big projects that is included in this carryover is our is our windy gap project and that that's a very large project it's 35.58 million dollars in the water fund is 4.12 million dollars in the water construction fund it's almost 5.6 million dollars in the water acquisition fund so those dollars are all being carried over for that specific purpose we also have in several different funds carryover of our resilient St. Brain project so another big project that's being carried over and then in our CDBG fund we have 16.7 million dollars of CDBG disaster recovery funds from our flood event that is still unspent funding that we are carrying over so those are just the few that I wanted to bring to your attention I can certainly answer any questions that you have on any of these other items or if I can't speak to them specifically I know we probably have staff in the audience that can help as well all right thank you very much for that presentation I'm seeing no other questions let's go back to the actual ordinance and open it for public hearing do we have anybody in the queue yes mayor we have one individual I'm going to admit them thank you caller 696 I'm going to unmute you if you can go ahead and speak do you do you hear us I can hear you fine can you hear me yes go ahead sir I thank you all my name is Hayden Peacock I'm the owner of the Chinese Medicine Clinic for 10 years down at the intersection of 4th and Main and we have 200 plus patients that see us monthly downtown I'm here to say that this proposal is going to cause chaos downtown it's going to eliminate 100 parking spaces from Main Street that there is no good plan in order to be able to do anything about in terms of relieving congestion and parking for downtown excuse me I'm sorry Mr. Peacock I'm sorry so so right now you I mean theoretically you can take your three minutes and say anything you want but right now we're talking about a bill for an ordinance making additional appropriations for the expenses of the budget I would cut in to talk and and this is what I was intending to talk about and I got cut off earlier right again it's it's freedom of speech go ahead take your take your remaining remaining time that's fine I apologize okay so you know it puts the finger on the scale for certain businesses above others and the person that called in earlier that was suggesting that the LDDA is working with all businesses downtown is not being forthcoming about what's happening I'm downtown I'm trying to work with the LDDA to have conversations with them they don't particularly want to hear what what we have to say and on their website it suggests that one of the goals of them of the LDDA is to maintain a diverse range of businesses and prevent displacement of existing businesses and this proposal is going to do exactly that we do not have any kind of parking stability downtown in order to be able to accommodate what they are talking about doing and I if we had more time and insane minds could rule the day here we would end up in a position where we could have longer conversations about redoing the entirety of downtown Longmont based on unelected people that don't have any consequence for the decisions they make it's the businesses that are going to suck with the cause of this so I appreciate everyone's time sorry I'm in the wrong spot here but I was on the call earlier and got cut off and I appreciate the new finish about that that's all right thank you Mr thank you very much Mr. Picard all right is there anybody else to the queue no mayor not at this time all right Dr. Waters move approval of ordinance 2020-26 okay it's been moved and seconded moved by Dr. Waters seconded by Councilmember Christensen all in favor vote aye aye aye all right the opposed say nay all right let's move on to item 9B ordinance 2020-27 a bill for an ordinance conditionally approving the vacation of a five foot wide electrical utilism within the brussell subdivision if you may it's plow filing one generally located east of mountain press court south of Maxwell Avenue and west of High Plains Drive do we have a motion I move approval all right it's been moved by Councilmember Martin it's been seconded by Councilmember Christensen do we have anybody in the queue for public hearing no mayor we do not all right seeing no for the debate all in favor say aye all right okay all right opposed opposed say nay all right the motion passes unanimously let's move back to item 8C Harold I'm sorry let's go ahead and have that brief presentation now if you don't mind actually you know what let's do 8A first let's get that one out of the way who pulled that one was that you Dr. Waters it was let's do 8A first all right you want to put that one first because you think that one's going to go really fast that's true maybe I'm wrong I've been wrong so much the last year well it will probably go fast and I to Councilmembers and I spoke with Dale about this yesterday I likely will vote in favor of this but I do have some questions and I don't know if Dale or Ken or Francy who would be the right person to ask but I'll start with this based on the write-up it looks like based on our audit the efficiency of the fixtures in the elementary school we concluded and the school district concluded they could reduce consumption substantially in the school by doing this retrofitting of fixtures and in related water controls is that a fair conclusion to what we've read Dale are you taking that one Dale why don't you Dale why don't you take that one or Francy one moment Dale do you got it Francy yeah Councilmember Waters that's correct we worked with the school district to identify this particular school partly as a as a pilot demonstration to see how effective it is in a school setting we're also trying to do this obviously as an education effort with the students and so multiple things we're trying to accomplish through it so Dale you know my question here is the fact that we're working with the school district is a good thing the fact that we're auditing efficiency is a good thing what I'm puzzling over is what why the city is reimbursing the school district $25,000 to retrofit equipment that this the school district why wouldn't the school district be doing that on its own why do we need to be reimbursing school districts going to benefit by lower costs whole communities going to benefit by greater conservation the environment's going to benefit by greater conservation why don't we create an incentive for a school district by the way it just announced a short time ago they were going to they had enough money in their reserves to build a swimming pool and cover operational costs and I just it just seems odd to me that this that the city reimburses the school district to do what they should be doing anyway all right I changed my mind let's go on to 8c just kidding I think I can respond to some of that but Council Member Waters and Mayor Bagley and Council I clearly understand your your question there what I would say to that is that the school district is not otherwise required to do anything right now the current fixtures that they have in their school meet all of there's no law on the books I should say that would require them to move forward now to achieve greater levels of efficiency and so that's why we seek out partners to try to do this with that's part of it and my guess is could the school district afford to do this they very well may but if you look at the the multitude of schools that they have across the district they may or may not be able to do this district wide I think the district is as interested in in the effort as we are to see how effective it is our hope is that we're going to show that you're right they're going to save money it's going to help educate the kids on low water use fixtures and we'll see where it goes I mean that's part of the thing this may be a one and done we may do it one time and find out it wasn't as successful as we hope for but I think that's part of the reason why we are wanting to partner with them so Dale for us to know requires setting some performance targets and collecting data yes the last conversation I was in as a council member regarding data in the school district they do it schools the school district refused to share data with the city to support a proposal a grant proposal to secure funding to install a traffic signal that would increase the safety of children crossing county airport road as I recall yeah so how confident are we that this is that this what's different about this that the school district would provide or share data on this project when when our previous experience has been that they don't or choose not to I think one of the key differences here is it's the the city owns the water meter and so we have access to the data and so we will it'll really be incumbent on the city in this case to share the data also with the district on what we're doing so we will be already having the data if you will in our hands we will then be able to do the analysis on the data so we're not dependent upon the school district for data collection no okay last question and I'll mute myself I'll ask one more question I'll move approval and then I'll mute myself and listen but the last question is this this is this is about water conservation and and what might make a difference in one school and then could be generalized to others is the swimming pool proposal that we've read about in the newspaper is that going to concede conserve or use more water than the school district is using right now are you asking me a question on that council member yeah yeah I am well I'm going to watch a speculation it would increase their water demand I would certainly assume yeah that's those are the things that are you know I just look at and wonder about the logic of it all like I said I told Dale and I and I and for council members I'll I'll move approval but it's a head scratcher for me in a lot of ways second all right it's been moved by Dr. Waters and seconded by council member Martin seeing no for the debate all in favor say aye aye aye aye the polls say nay all right item 8a passes unanimously now let's go on to 8c and talk about the c dot stuff main street etc Harold so we have Bill Greenwald I think Tyler's on the line Phil's going to do a factual sort of overview of this of what we're talking about here Kimberly's on the line and she's going to talk about the DDA perspective and I believe we also have Chris who is the board chair of the downtown development authority that's going to speak to this with Kimberly so Phil do you want to start out yeah I mean I'm going to turn it over yeah do you have the map or are you going to show your screen or is Susan going to do that we're going to do that once Chris introduces the topic and Kimberly has a little introduction so I'll turn it over to Chris for a discussion all right thanks Bill Mayor Bagley City Council City Manager thank you all for your time and your leadership Chris McGillbray Vice Chair of the LDDA Board Chair of the Longmont Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors Main Street Business Owner we've never experienced anything like COVID-19 and its economic and community impacts we've never experienced such a dramatic change in our town think about this just six months ago Longmont was ranked number one boom town in the country we had record unemployment rates we had a thriving economy we had a thriving downtown a lot has changed in six months I think we all can agree we've experienced sudden shuddering of many of our local businesses that have resulted in significant loss in jobs and sales tax revenue and just a couple of days ago my favorite breakfast shop downtown closed Andorine and this was a business that made significant contributions to our downtown so I wish I was here to say that it's going to get better super quickly but our recovery is going to take time and a lot of patience economic sustainability is a top priority for our city and as an LDDA so the question is what creativity can we do to support economic sustainability for our downtown and for our small businesses what creativity can we do to support economic sustainability it was this question that shaped the context of the recommendations that are before you all to discuss today the main street closure now is the time more than ever for creativity innovation community collaboration to bring attention people in commerce to the heart of our town which is our downtown and do it in a safe and compliant manner the LDDA Board appointed a task force and a marketing committee recently to look at this question what can we do to support our businesses we heard from retailers that restaurants are a driving factor in the foot traffic for our downtown community we've experienced an unprecedented amount of unused parking in our lots and we've heard the work that the worries and concerns of all types of businesses on how they will make it through this health crisis we spent years investing in our downtown community we feel that it was stronger than ever before and that we had historically low vacant rates we had highly engaged new businesses and more feet on the street than ever before downtown has the largest concentration of locally owned businesses in our community it's truly what main street America is all about the LDDA Board encourages you to be creative with ways we can make our downtown a safe and sustainable destination for all this is an experiment this is not etched in stone this definitely has an eraser at the end of a pencil this is not a new idea but has been continually suggested and discussed in our community there are other communities that are using similar type approaches such as Greeley and Lewisville so I was one of the earlier in this process which feels like forever ago it was about 30 days ago we began to vet the viability of main street closure of lanes and my first reaction may have been similar to your first reaction are you serious our main street do you realize it's a state highway you're contemplating closing lanes so there was personal resistance that I had to this idea in the beginning and the chaos that was mentioned earlier that it may create going through the process of vetting the viability through a lot of community discussions with the business resilient task force with our business community with the chamber of commerce and as well as serving our business owners that are going to be in this area and property owners have changed my mind I see that the positives outweigh the negatives some of the positives are that it's going to stimulate hopefully the goal is is that it stimulates economic development it could increase the vibrancy of our downtown short term right this is not a long term play this is a short term play it could increase sales for our restaurants and retailers to create a unique experience when you're driving through downtown during this time you may slow down because there's something cool happening it's pretty exciting and you may just find a parking spot a block to the right or the left and take your family out to dinner and buy something at a retail shop it's going to encourage us to slow down hopefully and buy stuff and so the LDDA through this process we conducted a survey to look at the viability of this process and what we found is 72 percent percent of those that took the survey indicated initial support there was some concerns 16 percent had significant concerns and looking at the themes of those concerns that emerged from the survey and the thoughtful discussions that we had it came it was basically traffic congestion was a big concern and parking those were by far the two biggest concerns which Kimberly will discuss what we are looking at in terms of responding to some those concerns we do have to be mindful this will impact those in the downtown we're not naive to think that this is going to be easy for everybody because it's not going to be we don't have all the answers and we can't see into the future but we do believe that this is worth a shot thank you again for your leadership during this time and I'd like to pass the baton to the LDDA executive director Kimberly McKee thank you Chris and thank you mayors and members of council Kimberly McKee executive director of the downtown development authority as you all know these are unprecedented and trying times for our business community and our residents with this ever-changing climate things are moving at a very rapid pace so we just wanted to talk about a time frame or a timeline of what we've explored we've worked with businesses to navigate guidelines of how and when they would be able to reopen I worked with our folks in traffic and assistant city manager Joni Marsh to investigate how and which businesses could expand into the alleys and I know that a lot of people are asking why that is not the option most of our restaurants and businesses are fronted to Main Street that's how they were built a hundred years ago so this option doesn't allow for an immediate line of sight for those businesses causing them the need to have additional staff to do a lot of setup tear down the alleys are still the primary spine for trash deliveries and other ongoing activities I can ensure you that our businesses are working very hard to reinvent the way they serve our community they're working tirelessly to balance staff with inconsistent customer counts and other obstacles this is not a case of them not wanting to try believe me they're trying everything that they can we did work with a few businesses that are able to utilize the alley but it was not a very widespread desired option for the past nine years I can't tell you the amount of times the LDDA has been told that we need to make our to make our downtown stronger we should make it a pedestrian mall or we should have one lane of traffic in each way with diagonal parking or we should build a tunnel for cars underneath the street people are craving this kind of pedestrian environment we've heard this again over and over as a suggestion to help with COVID-19 so many people have told me about their experiences in Louisville in Boulder and all of these other communities that are using their streets for this type of purpose our answer was always no this is a C.highway and they would not allow this to our surprise on June 11th Governor Polis announced the can do community challenge challenge asking local communities and their resident businesses to find new opportunities to restart commerce in ways that are safe and sustainable this includes finding innovative ways to reuse our public spaces and help more businesses thrive in a world of social distancing he has courage C.dot to work with communities to open up its right away for businesses and allow the community more space to socially distance while patronizing our local business community this initiative allowed for us to truly investigate the idea of rethinking how we use Main Street downtown was where our community began an intimate environment where businesses are fronted to the sidewalk it is intentionally a pedestrian environment that is an important assets to our businesses but it also offers unique challenges when we expand into the outdoors I forwarded you all a recommendation letter from Boulder County Public Health on the importance of outdoor spaces research and surveys done by the downtown Boulder partnership which we got the results of they surveyed a thousand Boulder County residents it shows that people are more comfortable with outdoor activities that survey in mid-May showed that 18% of Boulder County residents were ready to go inside a restaurant but 50% would go outside so you can see there's a huge difference in the comfort of Boulder County knowing this city staff put together an application for the permit of a one-lane closure and was approved by CDOT and the federal government to use this right away we envision this as a place where people can not only patronize businesses but spend time outdoors in an urban environment we hope that this is a place where people can bike and walk we understand that there are still conversation about how we can do all those things safely within this space but we at the DDA are committed to working toward a solution to allow all of these activities happen within that space we've been working with the Longmont Museum on that historic walking tour if this is past we're going to put different markers out on the street as well as have our creative community come out to provide art we have identified lighting banners and other things that will create a true sense of place within this corridor we'll be working we hope to work with Visit Longmont to encourage safe travel within Colorado for people to come and join our main street as Chris said we understand that traffic and parking are a concern we are embarking on a seven million dollar project that will make Kauffman Street a transit spine to alleviate congestion we can offer an alternate route to take Kauffman between first and ninth looking at signage to tell people who do not want to sit in this temporary lane closure can use Kauffman as a spine if we have been if you have been downtown lately you may have noticed that we have more available parking than ever before with most of the workforces at 50% or lower we are not seeing the parking concerns of the past last year this would have been a different conversation I have been working with Carmen Ramirez and her parking team to audit the lots for the past week in the morning and the afternoon they take their observations of what kind of parking that we have they have never seen any of our lots or streets exceed 80% capacity and there are very few that hit that mark most of the parking lots and streets tend to be only between 25 and 66% full at one time there is more parking downtown than we've ever seen before as a backup if we do see some parking congestion we are talking to the Elks and a few other folks about private lots that will help add to that supply if needed as you may know we have heard a significant amount of concerns from the 300 block 300 west block of main street the recent announcement that tangerine is closing and today the governor's order to close bars and pubs again the DDA staff has worked to devise a plan to use XS sidewalk space on third avenue for the southern most restaurants and and have identified some alternative space for some retail classes although not our original vision council may want to consider stopping the closure at fourth avenue on the west side of main street it is disappointing to some of the business owners on that block but we would like to be mindful of the concerns of those business owners that have such concerns about this and make some accommodations if you can or you all would be able to if you wanted to as Chris said this is truly what main street America is all about and we are working on some solutions this is an experiment one that is not a new idea but one that has been continually suggested by our community we don't have the all of the answers and we can't see into the future but we do believe that this is worth a shot an ideal situation would be to keep the closure through mid to the end of September and these unprecedented times we will strongly monitor and evaluate the impacts Tyler and Phil can speak more on what they will track from traffic impacts and we will monitor our pedestrian counts our parking supplies track sales tax and really look at what this is doing for downtown as a whole the loss of our business community the loss of our local business community impacts all of us we are working hard to retain what we have worked so hard to build together downtown Longmont has bigger hearts and we hope soon stronger streets our hope is that a rising tide raises all shifts and that this will help all businesses we won't know whether this works or not again unless we try I will turn it over to Phil and Tyler to more fully discuss how those closures would work Good evening council this is Phil Greenwell Transportation Planning Manager with the City of Longmont I think rather than going to the details we just turn it over to you right now and ask I'm sure you have some questions about this this a proposal or this resolution for this Intergovernmental Agreement so I would turn it over to council and if needed we do have a closure map if you'd like to see that as well I've just got one question and Marcia I'm going to I'm going to call on you my only question is I commute every day from South Longmont to North Longmont and a lot of us commute from north to south south to north and I am inclined to vote for this my only question is have we done a traffic study to I mean I've got 20 employees that are making that commute how much time are they going to be you know every day how much time are they going to lose in their commute if they're coming up 287 as a result of of going from two to one yeah mayor thanks for that question we we have not done a detailed or a detailed analysis of actual loss of time on those travel times yet but we are going to measure them very carefully and make sure that we are not adding many many minutes to your commute as far as that goes but maybe Tyler has some more information about actual trip making efforts through that area as we shut down those lanes I will just mention I do want to mention that we are asking RTD and they are saying that they will move buses over to Kimberk so we're going to move the bus traffic off of main street to help you get through this area help everyone get through this area we're also as you've heard earlier we're eliminating parking which is also takes up quite a bit of that outside lane right now as far as removing some of that capacity as people try to stop in traffic and then back into a parking space so those those two elements will be eliminated with this proposal and I'll turn over to Tyler so you're giving me a word that it's not going to be substantial is that what you're saying I would like to do that so Tyler stay me transportation engineering administrator so so not sugarcoated it your your travel times are going to go up we do fully anticipate that we are measuring travel times between first and ninth right now we're going to measure those travel times as this setup is implemented and as it continues so we'll have that number to report but I don't have a model run to really estimate what that impact is going to be at that point this kind of came together relatively quickly and to do that type of model takes a pretty substantial modeling effort that frankly we didn't have the time to do right now um I will say we have done this similar setups before with construction as we were going through I think it was 2017 repaving or reconstructing main street we had times when we had traffic down to one lane each direction and shifted on the one side of the street I think what we saw with that was a lot of drivers picking alternate routes and so I think we saw volumes go down one of the other things we see right now as we're watching we're checking volumes across town and impacts to stay-at-home orders on main street in particular we saw a pretty good reduction in the first couple weeks with stay-at-home orders we saw traffic volumes go down about 60% of their normal normal what we'd see on a normal day that has come back we're at about 90% of pre-COVID volumes so volumes are a little bit lower than normal so that's in our favor right now as we're looking to do something like this but ultimately travel times on that route unfortunately your route Mr. Bagley will be impacted by this okay yeah though I guess the only I'm gonna vote vote tonight but I'm gonna I don't know how much time or money we want to dedicate to this but I'd have that I'm all for this and I hear everybody's I hear Kimberly McKee and I hear Chris McGilvery and I hear in theory it's great for downtown my question is what's the trade-off 100,000 people other businesses in town are not located in the downtown district and I want to see the downtown district thrive the question is what expense because if other people and I'm not saying that oh this is all about the bag of lofty I'm not saying that what I'm saying is I'm assuming that if I've got employees that are gonna say I don't want to drive up there anymore if you add 10 minutes to their commute as they're coming in from Lafayette and Broomfield I'm assuming other businesses would also have a similar problem so I guess my question is what's the give and take so I'm gonna vote for tonight but I'd like to know I mean if it's if it's 15 minutes that's terrible it's two minutes not a big deal all right Council Member Martin thank you Mayor Bagley I have been doing two things one is looking at national and international data about projects like this and they seem to have in common a lot of initial resistance in terms of people believing that that that their business needs to be driven straight up to in order to thrive and things like that and the other thing and finding that the outcomes turn out favorable after all and the situation results itself to be for the benefit of of everybody the other thing I've been doing is listening to the local objections and seeing what people are really finding as the problem so I have two questions about the local objections one of them is what do we do with the bicycle traffic and it seems to me that the bicycle traffic falls into two cases one is the through bicycle traffic that isn't going to stop at downtown but is going to be possibly disrupted by the rerouting of traffic and the other one is how are cyclists going to be accommodated that are headed downtown which is something that they have always said yeah we need we we want to bike downtown make it work for us so those are the two questions you can answer them in either order you'd like as long as you tell me which one you're answering and then I'm sorry the bicycle question is really one question the other question is I've been looking at the parking in the back on Kim Bark and Kaufman and seeing that regardless of the through traffic on Maine those parking lots are just not as full as they used to be can we make more parking for disabled persons back there um so that the alley entrance works for less able people or differently able people because I think solving that problem is for example going to address a lot of Mr. Peacock's concerns and if if that's part of the plan then I feel a lot better about it well I guess I'll take a shot at the question mayor and council member Martin starting with your bicycle question I think what we're doing is we're really trying to still work with the avenues that are very low volume right now and getting people into downtown through those avenues and I think that's been working really well I know I you know as a as a bicycle commuter myself I use Fourth Avenue quite a bit and it's really really very easy quite frankly and Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue are all East and West very easy to get into downtown the bigger question is the through downtown that I think you mentioned and we really have been pushing bicyclists to use the alleyways and I understand that there are some issues with partial closures of the alleyway to traffic but I think that they're still open for bicycle use and Kimberly feel free to chime in if this is incorrect information but my information is that most all those alleyways still remain open to bicycling and then when we do place the barricades this is kind of my issue and I've talked to a number of you about this is that I originally last Monday talked to the Bicycle Issues Committee that's kind of a group that we used to link in and communicate with the bicycle community and I did tell them that we thought we were going to have room to bicycle with these closures on Main Street and after kind of discussing it and talking about actual space needs we weren't sure if that was true or not and so I had to kind of back off of that a little bit and it caused some consternation within the bicycling community and I certainly apologize for that but I think we're just trying to be on the safe side err on safety here and just say that we don't know exactly what this is going to look like when the barriers come down we've got 17 feet of space for the travel lane and the parking lane so you know that's not going to be very much space you put a three foot wide barricade in there you put a two feet away from traffic there's five feet gone from from that 17 feet so now you're working with 12 feet so it just becomes this rule of numbers but things can move around and I think once we set the barricades that area really becomes the area for the for the businesses we're going to make sure the traffic flows freely on Main Street but behind those barricades we're going to try to create I believe LDDA is going to try to create some space for the bicycling to go north and south as well on that because we realize the Kaufman and Kimbark are going to be busy with increased traffic loads and and they're not really great places to ride bicycles right now with diagonal parking backing out so hopefully that answers your first question about bicycles as far as the parking goes you know if you have a handicap placard you can park anywhere in the downtown for as long as you want to and so we are taking away those those spaces in the front but there are no right now there are no handicap parking spaces on Main Street they are all in the you know those those city parking lots of the LDDA parking lots that are off of Kimbark and Kaufman so technically we do not have any ADA parking where you can park with the placard and have that spot saved for you so that is kind of a non-issue in our mind but we would like to take a look at what we need to do for those parking lots and make sure that there is access but again if you have the handicap placard and we're talking about 25 to 66 percent utilization in those in those parking lots you can use that parking placard and park anywhere in any time spot for as long as you want and so that kind of goes under the radar a little bit just turn over to my colleagues to chat any more about if I missed something on that oh thanks Phil I just wanted to say I was unaware that the time limitations didn't apply if you have a handicap placard so that's excellent information and definitely satisfies my concern Mayor you're muted you're muted Chris is in and then the council member Peck I see in the bottom okay I want to thank councilwoman Martin for asking those questions those are two of my concerns to the ADA and the bicycling I really would like to have bicycling a bicycling lane I I'm having a hard time picturing what this is going to look like now it seems like we're going to have one lane of traffic but then we're going to have a whole bunch of barricades is that right because I went down today and I mentioned I measured the sidewalk the regular sidewalk is 18 about 18 feet so they already have 18 feet but we also actually have to still use it as a sidewalk people have to be able to get up and down it so I'm wondering how much extra space people actually be gaining by this I've been mentioning Louisville for years and years and nobody seems to be very interested now I'm heartened to see that people are sort of interested in what Louisville has done although they're they have a different situation in different kind of town but they just close that they do this every summer they close off they they use the parking space they put flats out that are basically pallets covered with inch thick plywood and the city stores these every year this evolved over time from somebody a city council person actually observing somebody doing something rather clever so they use that parking lane in the summertime as extra seating well that's I don't know how wide a that parking lane is 10 feet 12 feet I think it's more like seven to eight feet oh okay still that's enough room for table and chairs and so that would still allow you if we closed down one lane of traffic it would give them more room if they used that parking lane in this summer um to put out pallets and expand their tables there although that would cost them more money you know this is we do have to be creative I went down there tonight and I had dinner my son and I had dinner at the at the pump house and as usual there was no parking in the parking lot and back there never is ever ever ever in my experience and so we had to park and walk about three blocks that's typical for the situation you know when you measure stuff in the morning and in the afternoon that's all well and good but most people are going to be down there at night and at night it's it's always packed you can drive around that parking lot forever and you will not get a parking space there um uh it's the same thing down by the Dickens I um I am worried about the parking I mean I'm frightened by the fact that I look at all the empty storefronts down there we had as as Chris said we were doing wonderfully and our downtown is so much better because of Kimberley then when I moved here when it was just nothing 30 years ago and it's been wonderful and we want to keep that it's a huge generator for income I mean for jobs for entertainment for economic vibrancy in this town but we also have to have a balance between people who are handicapped having access the biking biking being you know the biking community being able to get around the neighborhoods not being any more impacted than they already are people parking all over and creating problems all over so yeah none of us none of us here is God nobody's got any answers we have to do the best we can to try to find creative solutions I'm I see the point of Mr. Chris Jensen from the elite barber shop and I also see the the the points of Mr. Peacock from the Chinese Medicine thing I do think some businesses will be adversely affected by this and I worry about that but we have to try to figure out the greatest benefit for everybody to get through this difficult time so I would vote for this if we if we allow somehow to have a bike lane going through there so that bicycles which are the way that people can get downtown and go to these places I mean people talk about foot traffic but people are not going to be walking from all over downtown to downtown they have to get to downtown and park and if we are pinching the traffic to 50 they're going to avoid downtown like the plague and then we eliminate parking they're really going to avoid it so I do worry about that but I think it's worth a try until the end of September I think we have to try to do something to help people and so I will vote for this provided we have some bike lane have a bike lane because otherwise I think it will really be doing a lot of damage Let's go to Council Member Peck then Council Member Susie Dogel-Fairing then Council Member Martin Thank you Mayor Bagley So I have two concerns and I had already asked Phil I talked to you on the phone about this so I'm going to let you explain it because you explained it so well to me and the question is well the normal process for something like this would be that it is brought to Council and we put it on an agenda etc etc that didn't happen and I was concerned about why the rush how did this happen how can we haven't heard about it and you explained it very well Phil so I'm going to turn it over to you to please let everyone know how why this is such a rapid response to the business community and to LDDA Take it away Phil Mayor and Council Member Peck I'm trying to remember what I said but I think you know I think Kimberly did a really great job in explaining kind of that timing you know we're talking about June 11th was when we started hearing about this and it's June 30th today so we're really trying to you know we really did get quite a kickstart on this as far as you know trying to get going with what we had heard and the different things that we heard from the different businesses and folks the piece of it that really kind of I think Kimberly really mentioned was the idea that we really looked at the alleys first and that was really where we wanted to go and so alleys really became the key focus initially when we were talking about business expansions and it was quickly became evident that the businesses couldn't make alleys work as well as they thought they could or as well as we thought they could so the next option was looking at Main Street but the very first reaction that everybody had was who's going to want to sit next to four lanes of traffic while they eat their dinner and try to converse with each other it's already kind of difficult that some of these outdoor seating venues already so what can be done to kind of mitigate that and that was the idea of could we take a lane and slow traffic down a little bit and calm traffic a little bit with this with this proposal so that's kind of what you see in front of you tonight so if I can if I can jump in to kind of help with that too so when we talked to council about what we were going to look at for the alleys and the process you have to go through liquor licensing and all of those components while the state relaxed a lot of rules and processes in terms of bringing it through the operational issue also becomes more challenging in terms of the licensing aspect and Kimberly kind of touched on this is because you have to make sure that you can when we expand the premise that you can ensure that you're properly monitoring that premise as part of the licensing process and so there's very few based on access points to the alley that can actually do that I think there's really only one that has that line of sight and so then when you take a facility that's challenged financially and then you add additional costs for them in order to be able to expand to increase the 50% margin because of the licensing piece that becomes an additional issue that's in play as well that really has made the alleys more difficult to work through So I think that that part you're right Kimberly explained it very well and I guess what I was getting at for the conversations that I've had from the residents is that why are we just hearing about this how come you're rushing it through and what I understood from our conversation was that we Harold could do this based upon that emergency authority that we gave you I forgot what it was called already because we needed to get seat out on board we needed to be able to that was going to take longer than we thought to get their permission etc so it was all fast-forwarded that way rather than coming through council and getting it on an agenda and discussing it and carrying it out for a long time so do I have that correct is that because people have been asking why are we rushing this when in fact it is the process that is rushing it not necessarily the need so I hope I understood you correctly with that so I can also jump into that one too so when we talked about the use of alleys I know we did mention that there was a possibility of looking at Main Street during that conversation but we also indicated we did not know ho