Council Member Hidalgo-Ferring. Here. Council Member Martin. Here. Council Member Peck. Here. Council Member Rodriguez. Here. Council Member Waters. Here. Mayor, you have a quorum. All right, great. No flag, but let's say pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands. Indivisible with liberty and justice for all. Visible. I will never ever.  We all know the pledge now. All right, the let's go ahead and just remind everybody wishing to speak during first call public invited to be heard. Well, you're going to need to go ahead and watch the live stream. Instructions for how to do that is to. We're going to go ahead and throw up the number and then at the appropriate time during the meeting, you'll get three minutes and we'll ask Susan to go ahead and call on you. So get ready for that. But let's go ahead and do we have an approval for the April 28, 2020 minutes for the regular session. Mayor, I'll move approval with one, one change, one amendment. Okay, what's the change on page? I think it's for it was highlighted. So I'm not certain who intended to break it to our attention. But the there's a reference to the night site on page four, middle of the page. I think it's K-N-I-G-H-T as opposed to N-I-T-E is it not? That is my error, Council Member Waters. I highlighted it, so I would remember to check it. And thank you for correcting that. I remembered it for you. But thank you. I think so if we could change N-I-G-H-T to K-N-I-G-H-T, I'll move approval of the minutes. Okay. It's been moved by Council Member Waters and seconded by Council Member Peck. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, the motion, the minutes of the April 28, 2020 regular session have been approved unanimously. Let's go ahead with agenda revisions. Anybody? Oh, for just a second, I was like, oh, we got through one. All right, Council Member Hidalgo-Ferring. Sorry. Okay. Yeah, we're not off Scott free yet. So, you know, last week, and I just, I wish that I could like come back with immediate responses. This was, this came to me after some reflection. Last week when Council Member Peck brought up the idea of allowing the, the airport, the proposition that they're wanting to put on the ballot to be able to kind of go through and ask for city council support, to make this go forward. And, you know, I still, I still agree that they need to have the signatures. But after thinking about it, and then I later, I had a chance to talk to the folks who are putting, bringing forward this, this ballot initiative. And one of the things that came to my mind was, you know, if, if council has an appetite for this, and I would really like to, to hear from the group to see, to have them come back, present more than just what the three minute public invited to be heard would offer, but really hear and give us the opportunity to, one, ask questions and to offer input. Because in the event that they're able to acquire the necessary signatures, and in the event that this would pass, this would have implications that would affect the city. So, for them to come forward, present their ideas, and then have us, you know, open it up for us to be able to offer input, ask questions, make recommendations. If council has the appetite for this, I would move that we put an item on the agenda to hear them, to hear them speak and open up for us to, to respond to, to their request. Do I have a second? Second. All right. It's been moved by council member Devo Ferring and seconded by council member Christiansen. Council member Martin. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. I would not vote to do this for two reasons. One is that essentially would be asking for only one side of the issue to be, to be heard. And I have consulted with the staff inside the airport, inside the city to figure out how much work it would take to put together a report on the potential costs to the city. Should we have to put every airport funding measure to a ballot in the future? And should we have to make good on the grant assurances that we're already liable for without seeking grants from the FDA, any future grants from the FDA? And given the uncertainty of the city's finances for the next year or so, that's taking a giant risk to put this on the ballot without knowing it, without knowing those facts. And the staff has told me that with all of the emergency work that they're doing right now, they really couldn't get that information together. So I think that they, as I think I stated last time this came up, I think that this issue needs to be deferred for another year. Since either way it goes, it's a, it's 20 years minimum to the closing of the airport. I don't see any harm in deferring it for a year where we don't have a pandemic in that particular year. All right, Council Member Pick. So, Council Member Helgo-Ferring, is your motion to just let them make a presentation to let us know what it's about? It's not really about putting it on the ballot. It's not about putting it on the ballot. I don't agree with that. It is to hear them present and do it in a way where we can respond to them and make recommendations. If they so choose to move forward with this, just because I think that if they get the signatures and it passes, it's going to impact us. It's going to impact the city as a whole. So at least this gives us the opportunity as well to ask questions, make recommendations, express concerns in an open forum. So I have no, I have no problem with them presenting their, their issue. I mean, this is not like a group that is just sprung up from the earth.  So any opportunity for us to allow our residents to speak? So I'm for it. Just clarify, good question of the folks you're sponsoring. How many of them are residents of Longmont? So I, I spoke to, I spoke to folks that I spoke to. I believe both of them are residents of Longmont. I know one was for sure. But, but yeah, I would have brought it up last week had I thought about it. But it's after, after some reflection, I thought about, well, you know, if it goes in on the ballot and it passes, it's going to have implications for us. So I would at least like to have an opportunity to ask questions, express concerns, make recommendations, and have that back and forth dialogue where we are all present. So that was, that was my intention of bringing it forward. That was something I asked of them if I brought this forward, would they be willing to do? And they were in agreement with that. But it's not in support of having them put this initiative on the ballot. It's just I want to hear what they they're having to say based on the information that they have. I don't see any other hands. I'm going to vote. Okay, so go ahead, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. On that occasion that we hear a presentation from, if we do, I would like to also hear from David Slater, if possible, to hear what his, his thoughts are as far as to the substance of the presentation. So we're not just getting one side of the story on that particular evening. As far as actually, and since that's, that's the motion, I would be inclined to, to vote for it. I don't think that we should short circuit the process of signature gathering. I think that they should at least go through that process before they lobby city council to put it on a ballot, whether that's our prerogative or not to do. So that's just my opinion on the subject. I don't see the other hand. I guess my, I guess my thought in general, I guess at the end of this term, I'll serve 10 years on city council in one capacity or another. I just grow weary of spinning our wheels on things that we have so much to do. And this is something that if somebody, if a citizen or a group of citizens want to put something on the ballot, let them go out, collect petitions and go on. I think it's a mistake to start allowing citizens who want to, I mean, we're all aware of who are political allies and where our alliances stand on council. And I just think that allowing people to start coming and taking council time, again, we are allegedly in the middle of a pandemic, you know, and so donating time or giving time to a group that has been around for a long time, we can all read their ballot wording and their language. We know what it is and we know. And so there's no need to give them free publicity if they want it on the ballot, haven't go out and collect signatures. I just, I value my time. I value this council's time. And we have other things that I think we should be worrying about. So let's vote. I don't see anybody else. So all right, all in favor of directing staff to bring back presentation where the, not staff, I know the three, we're directing staff though, we can't do anything other than direct, we're directing staff to bring back presentation to be provided by the group who wants this airport ballot measure put on the ballot. Say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. Nay. Nay. All right. The motion fails four to three with myself, council member Martin, council member Waters and mayor pro ten Rodriguez voting against. So thank you. All right. Anybody else? All righty. Then let's go ahead and I saw I admitted Jeff's edge into the room. So can we go ahead and go on to the city manager's report? You're here, right? All right. Looking good. All right. Harold times yours. Harold, you're muted, bud. I read your lips. Dang it. Nice. Yeah. Um, just lost my can. Okay. So I'm just going to be a quick update in terms of what we're doing related to opening some work that we're doing that is coming up on where a PIT team is working on and then where we are on some facility questions, and then we'll turn it over to Jeff to really hit some of the testing components that we talked about last time. And then we'll go to Jim with the financial updates. So one of the things that came up this week and this was a product of a conversation with the Longmont Economic Development Partnership is our public information team is really working on something, a campaign related to wearing masks. And one of the things that we heard from several of the businesses that were represented in that economic development meeting was really wanting to, and council members, Martin and Waters can chime in on that based on what they heard. But generally what the business is indicated to us is that they wanted to be part of this broader public information campaign in terms of wearing masks. And they thought that that would be really important for those individuals going to their facilities. I know several of those facilities have started placing that requirement on their own, and they just wanted to be part of a larger community effort in terms of really marketing in their words. And this was their words. And if I misstate it, I know council members will correct me, but they really felt that wearing masks was important to how quickly they can come start back in business. And they wanted to be part of that initiative. Did I get that correctly? Council members, Martin and Waters, go ahead, I would reinforce what you just said. I don't know if it's fair to quote anybody. Can we quote any of the members of that board? It was a public meeting. Well, so Eric Wallace was, and I'm going to speak for Eric, but he was very specific that he would like to, he thinks of his tasting room as Longmont's living room and would like to invite people back to the living room, but they can't do it unless people are wearing masks. He's not going to expose his staff to what might come through the door with people that aren't wearing masks. So his message was, if you want to resume some symbol abnormally, the quicker you get there and the safer you get there, wear a mask. And he's willing to be on record and be part of that campaign. So I wanted to bring that to council's attention because that's a fairly quick shift in really also the work that we're dealing with different groups within our community. Council member Christensen. I think that it is a very good idea. I think that there's a widespread misunderstanding of a lot of people saying, why are you, we're lowering the restrictions and letting people get back into things and you're putting more restrictions on us. Masks, as Mr Wallace has said, are a way that we can allow people to gradually get back into participating in businesses. It protects the people who are working in the stores and it protects the people coming in from spreading it.  People keep asking the wrong question as Councilwoman Martin said last week. It's not about protecting us by using masks from getting something. It's about protecting other people from getting what we may or may not have since none of us, very few of us have been able to get tested. So I really applaud the business community for standing up for this and wanting to participate in information. I think that will be really a very helpful thing. So Jessica will be leading that initiative and then they're going to port into the broader group that's composed of Kimberly Scott and the rest of the group. We are continuing to work on a reopening plans. I will tell you I have the opportunity to meet with our employee advisory group and they mentioned some things that as we were moving through, we didn't catch provided us with some really good information. And at the end of the day, I said to Council that we're going to want to make sure that when we reopen something, we feel like we're hitting the needs of residents of our community that are going to go to our facilities and also our team members at work in those facilities. And so based on that input, we have sort of held a little bit and really working on a communication strategy with people that are going to be asked to come back into our facilities once we reopen. Remember, we still have to hold to the 50% standard or we're trying to hold to that. But we felt like we needed to have more engagement with our team members in terms of taking that next step. In addition, as you know, we're starting to look at some of our outdoor recreation facilities. We did receive some guidance from the county. Kate, who is the attorney working on this regarding outdoor facilities and municipal buildings, as you all know, we made the decision to close the Swing Beach at Union Reservoir. That was really a product of not being able to control the situation and how people were approaching social distancing and those issues and really managing the staffing levels at the same time. We did go through a soft opening of our tennis courts and pickleball facilities and I know that they may have sent that information out or it'll be coming out very quickly in terms of how we're going to look at that. I think again, when we look at the requirements in those facilities that we see from the state, we're going to be monitoring that and that's the one thing we really ask is our community to adhere to those requirements at those facilities. It's not a pleasant situation for us to have to go in and make those decisions at other locations. I know there's a lot of questions about sports builds. Today on the county administrator call, let me back up a little bit. So we did receive some draft guidance. We're in the process of reviewing that draft guidance in terms of outdoor facilities and municipal buildings really touched on senior facilities, libraries and in those locations. There's going to be a meeting that we have the ability to participate in to have a conversation on that on Thursday to ask any questions and get clarity where we need it. We're also meeting on Wednesday as a staff to prepare for that meeting. And that's basically the administrators group to where we get in and dig into some of those details. But the one question that keeps coming up, so we went through this in terms of golf courses and the tennis facilities and now we're starting to see it in baseball fields and what we're hearing at this point that was presented in the administrator meeting is that at this point, based on the state's order and the governor's order, team sports are not allowed at this time under the governor's order. However, and I will say Kate's been great on this, she also understands the questions that we're asking in terms of some of the differences. And I think they did commit to reaching back out and trying to get more clarity on that particular question and so we can discuss it on Thursday. But again, what we know right now, based on the governor's orders, those sports, team sports aren't allowed at this point. We will have more information on that. I do see a question on that issue. Dylan? Let's go, let's go to Council Member Peck, Council Member Martin, Council Member Christensen. So, Harold, thank you for that update on the ball fields. But did the governor give you a reason why the ball fields are not open now? That's actually the question coming in and what we're trying to understand and hopefully we'll have more clarity in a couple of days. It's not really ball fields, it's team sports. And that's what we're trying to figure out. All right, thank you. I think our next is, is doubles tennis a team sport? Because singles would be, in fact, slightly easier to maintain social distancing? Well, I think, again, those are the details. I think what we understand is singles and doubles are allowed. And then it starts getting into other questions. And so hopefully we will all have more clarity on that on Thursday. Council Member Christensen. We got a letter or I got a letter from one of our constituents, Richard showers, who missed the date to get the annual pass for the reservoir. And now we can't get it at all for a year. And I'm just wondering if I realize it's closed now, but it won't be closed. Forever, or maybe even the entire summer. So is there something we can do for people who missed that date?  The annual pass was really good for somebody like Mr. showers who's retired and so I'm just wondering if there's something we can do about that. You know, I see Dale coming on. I got Council Member Christians and I think at this point, all we're saying is we're not selling season passes right now. I would fully expect as we get probably into June and later that we would resume season sales. And I think the other thing that we'll look at this is a good question is how do we bring some of those components into our online world? And so if you could send me that, I did not see that email. But if you could send that to me, we will look at it. Thanks. Thanks for clarifying that two deal. All right, Harold, keep going. All right, so so really the point I think on on these two issues is we're really starting to dig in into some of the really detailed issues right now in terms of how we open our facilities, what facilities we can open, how do we open those? Are they in compliance with the state orders? And we're really getting into a lot of detail. As I indicated to you all in the last conversation, you know, as these orders come out, it is in some ways just as challenging to to move through the minutiae and understand what we can and can't do as it was when they were coming in. In some cases, I would say it's actually harder because then you're dealing with new orders that take certain things out of play and put other things into play. I actually spent a fair amount of time this weekend on one of those issues. So a lot of conversations really happening right now, just so you know how the process works, we pour it into the county structure, they then take those questions and then they push them into the state structure via CDPHE and the attorney general's office. And then it has to move back down. And we've actually talked about how we can work collectively to get some answers more quickly when things are pending. So that's something that we just have to continue to work with our partners on. At this point, I will turn it over to Jeff to to talk about those issues in terms of the testing, what it looks like. I know there was a question from I believe Council Member Waters last week about how did we establish 500 as a number and what does that look like? And then there were some specific questions about the staffing from the tracing components. So, Jeff. Thank you, Harold. And thanks, Mayor. Thanks, Council Members, for inviting me back. Here's what I'll cover. I'll talk about the I heard several things from Harold. Role of testing was safer at home and criteria and hierarchy for who gets tested, how fast testing gets ramped up and where. What about this 500 number? How will contact tracing work with testing and community testing? What are the plans and what does that look like? So that's where I'll head unless I hear something different from folks. And I've had some internet connections issues tonight. So let me know if I am cutting out at all and I'll turn my video off. But for now, I'll keep it on and we'll keep going. So first, let me just talk about the rule of testing was safer at home. And I've combined the why the 500 number because they really go together. So increased testing is important in terms of our ability to move forward as we begin to lift portions of the order. And the reason that's important is if you think about the orders, they really held the numbers down. So the orders were effective at not having a lot of people integrating. People are staying at home. I know it was extremely painful for so many people to be in that space. And I want to thank all of your listeners who really helped us support getting to where we are now because your ability, your willingness to do that has helped us get to a positive place. I'm happy to actually share the slides that I presented to the city of Boulder tonight, which really demonstrate the positive trends that we're seeing. But anyway, the reason that testing is so important as we move forward into lifting these orders is because we know that it's really important for us to be able to identify all of the folks in the community who have positive symptoms. And where the 500 number comes from is a Harvard Global Health Institute research paper that has provided guidance nationally to all the states. And without getting into all of the nitty gritty details, it basically looks at what kind of testing do you have to put in place in order to get to about a 10% positivity rate or less in the community, which really means that you've done enough testing to identify all the positives that are out there. And the number that comes from the 500 is what came from that study, and it's 152 tests per 100,000 population. So that's where that 500 number comes from. That does not mean that we've tested everybody in the community. It means that we, with that number, we're targeting that we have the ability to test all symptomatic people. We have not been able to do that up to this point. I know there's a slide, if Harold puts that up there or whoever has access to it can put that up now, I can show you what that looks like right now in Boulder County. I'm gonna keep going as that's getting put up, and then you'll be able to see the actual numbers. But what we can do now is we can actually map the number of tests that we are doing per day. So we can see how many tests we're at. We absolutely know that if we hit that number, we are gonna sufficiently reach all of our symptomatic population. As a matter of fact, we're likely gonna reach our symptomatic population before we hit that number. The only limitation in terms of us being able to get that number is not our capacity in the community because we actually have it there. And I'll talk about who's doing testing at this point at a community-wide level in a minute. But it's really only the supplies that are limiting us. So we have confidence that we can probably get to close to 700 tests per day when we look at all the testing capability that we have for community-level testing within all of Boulder County. So and it's important again because as we test more people, we're able to identify who's positive. And the key component as we know that more people are gonna be interfacing, more people are gonna be integrating. We've got a little bit more now of an open retail type scenario so we know that there's more people out there is we need to be able to identify who's positive and then be able to do the supportive isolation and quarantine to control the spread of the disease associated with people who are identified as positive and to do all the contact tracing that's necessary to follow up with people that were exposed to the person who's positive. And that contact tracing, there's estimations of up to 19 people per positive as an average that can go much higher or it can go lower depending on the scenario. But we've actually built our staff to be able to have the capacity now. We are staffed up to a place where we could fully handle an increased number of positive cases. We're actually in a great place in Boulder County in the last week, we've seen an average of about 11 new cases per day. And that's a decline of six cases per day from the previous week. So even though as testing increases we expect to see increasing numbers of positives in our community, we're actually seeing declines in all of our numbers right now. We would expect, I don't wanna lead people to think that we're not gonna see more new cases likely because we will as we expand our testing beyond where it is now, we know that we'll identify more positives and that's a positive thing in the community because then we can make sure that we're doing the isolation quarantine and that we are actually identifying people who are positive versus right now we don't have enough tests to do that and people could be spreading the disease more readily. So that's why that is so important and where that 500 comes from. And what I don't wanna do is be hooked specifically on the 500 tests per day. And I think it's important to explain this because we were likely, even with the testing that we have in place now in the community level, we are advertising right now if anybody has symptoms. So this is for anybody that's symptomatic. So if they have a cough, they have a fever, they have shortness of breath, they need to just contact their physician. They can get referred to a testing site. We do have some testing sites in place. So in Longmont, that's UC Health right now. We're also under conversations right now with Salud. But there's multiple sites around the community and there's a couple, I believe they're currently doing community testing, but I think it's next care, urgent care in Longmont as well as MedExpress, urgent care. If I'm correct, I can make sure I'm validating those things. But I believe those two facilities in Longmont are also testing. So if you don't have a doctor as an example, you can call one of the urgent care centers. You need to call them first and let them know that you have symptoms and that you'd like to be tested. Or you could call UC Health or you could call actually any of our hospitals and let them know that you're having symptoms and they would be ready to accept you if you're meeting that criteria for that testing. The idea again at first is to make sure that we're testing all positives in the community. We believe we can, we'll be able to do that readily. We are hearing and we have increased if you're looking at that graph that we are seeing testing increase. And we have been told by the state that more supplies will become readily available to us as we move into the next week, two weeks, three weeks and four weeks. So I actually feel like we're in a good position in Boulder County to be able to get to the 500 number pretty readily. And that we will actually be able to then expand even more so into some asymptomatic testing in the community. So people who might not have symptoms but we believe they could be in a high risk position. So think about people like the contacts that I mentioned about somebody who's come into contact with a positive. We're doing some contact tracing to follow up with them. They don't have symptoms yet, but we wanna watch and make sure that they don't identify with symptoms and we can test them because they're at higher risk. Expanding to places like our other essential services that are in our community. Some of the folks that are in vulnerable populations that are asymptomatic, we could start to reach out to as we begin to get more testing. And the state's encouraging us to do that as we move forward. So again, I feel like we've really got the infrastructure in our communities that will allow us to build the testing that we need to be successful. We've already started a lot of that. We've already done tests. When I talked about that positivity rate of above 10% that you're not maybe doing enough testing and below 10%, you probably are doing enough testing. And right now in Boulder County we're at about 13.9% positivity rate. So, and that's at the testing that you're seeing on the screen right there. So we'll continue again to increase that as the weeks go forward and we'll continue to expand with infrastructure that we have in place now in our community, some of that community-wide testing. Just so you know, we have pretty good geographic location in terms of testing. So Clinica's testing in East Lafayette, we have Boulder Community Health and Boulder Med Center and in the city of Boulder. We have a physician that's up in Netherlands that's running tests for the community up there. We have had a Kroger testing with CU that occurred and is also gonna, they're looking at continuing that testing with them as well. So we have pretty good geographic representation of testing and that does not include people who are being tested, testing through their hospitals as an example because they're already associated with a physician who then refers them to the hospital to get a test. So that's just the community-wide testing that I was talking about. And then really the last point I wanna emphasize is that from an infection control standpoint, as I'd mentioned, we have staffed up. It takes about 0.75 FTE per case and that includes all the infrastructure you would need around that supervision when you start to get to more than six, seven people, resource coordinator data analysis, all those kinds of things. And so at the amount of staff that we have right now today, knowing that our average case load is about 11 right now, we actually have the ability and staffing to bring in people that could do as many as 40 cases per day. So we're pretty well set to be able to expand our infrastructure in our testing or I'm sorry, our containment at Boulder County Public Health and be able to get to more cases if we're starting to see more positives and we have the infrastructure to be able to increase that even more, the state has notified us that they have roughly a thousand contact tracers at the statewide level. And they can, those people are available to local public health agencies across the state and they can be brought in pretty readily to expand the contact tracing if need be. So let me just see if that answers most questions or if people still have more they want me to talk about. Councilor Christensen. Thank you, that's, thank you, Jeff. That's really very helpful to know that there is a lot of, a lot more testing going on for the virus. I'm interested in knowing for those of us who are pretty sure that they had it to know about serological testing. Are you doing any of that? And where? Yeah, there's about a thousand serological tests that are run in the county. I don't know all the places that those are being run but what I wanna say about that is you've probably heard this as well is that with serological testing, we can't guarantee because we don't know how long immunity lasts. I mean, it's a good predictor and indicator of what might be happening in our communities but there's still not a lot of really high, I can't think of the word, accuracy associated with some of those tests. So I can follow up and let you know where those things are happening. I think Quest Labs, there's a fair amount of places where you can actually get the testing right now but just so you know from a policy standpoint we are not yet using that testing to say, okay, you can now go back to work or do those kinds of things. It's a good indicator for what might be happening in our community and it's gonna get better. So we know that testing will continue to improve and at some point that in combination with PCR to look at how long do people remain in, do they have the virus versus not and how long does that immunity last will be important components going forward. Yeah, I would think it'd be very helpful especially if there is a resurgence in the fall to know how long the immunity lasts because we really have no idea whether it's a couple of months like some coronaviruses or whether it's could be more long-term and it's important for us to collect the data when we can but as you say, there are many different kinds and many different levels of veracity. So, okay. Yeah, I would appreciate knowing where that is. Thanks. And if I can add to what Jeff stated, we're having similar conversations with our medical provider and groups that wanna conduct studies and our population, especially those that have been working. And it's the same answer. It's really a look at what did that appear to be in the community, but in terms of the answer I got is in terms of if you're gonna use it as to whether or not you have to wear a mask or whether you're immune, they're all giving the same exact answer that Jeff just gave us in terms of what that can be used for at this point. Council Member Waters. Thanks, Mayor Begley. Jeff, remind us of the number of days for which during which an individual might be infected but not symptomatic. Thanks, Council Member Waters. Appreciate the question. It can be up to 14 days total. Most people I believe are showing symptoms within two to five days and the important note here for people is that for people who become symptomatic they can actually spread that disease before they're even showing symptoms which is why that social distancing aspect, the masking that you've just talked about here are important tools in the strategies to reduce the spread of the virus. So just because somebody is not showing symptoms definitely doesn't mean that they don't have the virus. Also there is people that can remain completely asymptomatic but still spread the virus throughout the whole entire period that they have the virus. So those are important components. So from an epidemiological perspective I get the numbers, the 150 per however many thousands in the Harvard study and how you roll up to the 500. But just let me help me process just a bit here. So I understand the implications. So at 11 cases positive a day, is that kind of what we were yesterday or today? 11 cases? Yeah, yeah, best from now is up today. So that would presume based on just kind of an epidemiological basis that if it takes let's say 10 days to become symptomatic you've got 110 people out there infected but not yet symptomatic, right? If you're- That's correct. You can pretty much assume that, well, I don't know if I should, you can assume that there's definitely more people out there that are asymptomatic besides just the symptomatic for sure. Yeah, because if you're only getting tested when you're symptomatic and testing those who are symptomatic gives you 11 a day and you've got an incubation period of four to 14 days you've got some number of people who are infected not yet symptomatic and potentially contagious just trying to get an idea of what the actual likely exposure is because of the numbers of people. Absolutely, it's a great question. I appreciate the question very much. And we would need to be above 500 per day because that 500 per day again is only an estimate of symptomatic. We're probably gonna get to that before we hit that but to get to all those asymptomatic people you really wanna have that less than a 10% positivity rate. If you look at what they did in South Korea the amount of testing they had their positivity rate was around 3% so they were doing massive amounts of testing. When you're less than 10 you have a pretty good indication that you're catching most the positives the lower that rate goes the more indication that you're catching all positives but we would have to significantly expand our testing to get to that point for sure. There's no doubt about it. So if I think just one last part of the question is how it applies to the city maybe just starting with the city of Longmont staff. Harold, this is not intended to put you on the spot but I think we ought to have an answer. Are you comfortable with what Jeff just described as the number of tests if we let's say we're doing 500 a day and understanding you're still bringing people back 50% you're staffing at a 50% level day to day right to honor or to implement or abide by the social distancing but that still leaves a fairly significant unknown. I mean, that's a fair number of people coming back to the workplace on which we're not symptomatic and based on the numbers Jeff said some may be infected. Is that that's a fair assumption? At what point is there enough testing or enough assurance that we're comfortable saying come on back staff and are there areas where we're comfortable in saying that and areas where we're not? You're muted.  So yeah, so when we look at when we look at reopening we're looking at a number of things. And so the first is what can we reopen via the orders? What do we need to reopen and why? And all of this starts coming together. So when you look at our workforce we had approximately let's say I believe the number is around 63% of the individuals that were able to that were at home working from home in that world. The number we're working in the facility was primarily composed of public safety, public works and people that just you couldn't do the work from home court code enforcement and those types of things. So when we look at bringing people back we're gonna ask a couple of questions and this is part of why I was saying we had to pull ourselves back a little bit. So the first question is why? And when we ask the why we wanna make sure that we can adequately serve the members of our community if they're not being served now via an online function or a telephone and those types of areas we know that's the case. So then we're gonna get pretty specific pretty quickly in terms of okay what is it that we need to open up? Then you start adding these other layers in terms of the guidance that we have in play in order to ensure that we're able to protect people to the highest possible degree. Nothing's ever a hundred percent. So then we put in the plexiglass locations where we serve customers. We're gonna do the wellness checks when people come in and we have a series of questions you do take check the temperature of those individuals and they have to go through all of that process and then we're gonna ensure that they're adequately social distance and they're working environment. If they're going to go into any common area then there's gonna need to be masking requirements and we're still building all of these components as we move forward. We then are in communication with our healthcare provider and our healthcare provider has also said they're going to test anyone that is symptomatic at this point. And so where I'm starting to really take all of these components together is you have LUH, I'm assuming, I think I heard this LUH, UC Health and Kaiser all increasing their testing capacity that I think is not counted in just numbers. Is that correct Jeff? The UC Health is definitely part of the community testing program. So they would be for sure. But in terms of the insurance, those that are insured and so we're bringing that together. So to answer your question, A, we need to really ensure that what we're opening is really getting at a need. Opening it in a way to minimize the opportunities for people crossing each other and then opening what we do in a way to ensure adequate social distancing. And today I can't tell you that date. We need to have all of those plans together but everything you're hearing is coming into play and making that decision. Thank you. Thanks Jeff. Sorry, Jeff, do you have anything else? The only other thing I would add just to what Harold just said, if you're okay with me doing this is that what we'll be doing is we'll be watching the data closely for these next three weeks. And I think what Harold said is right on track. We wanna try to minimize to the maximum extent possible the interactions of people where they're gonna have a difficult time maintaining that six foot distance. Without that, it's really hard for that virus to spread. So knowing that we don't have perfect testing in place but the testing's improving, it's getting better. The more that people can really follow those guidelines the better it's gonna be for our businesses, for our economy, for people to be able to get back to what I know they all want to do. And again, until we have a vaccine or a treatment that's more readily available we'll be working under these conditions for a little while but if people can follow those guidelines it's gonna help us move forward for sure. So that's the last thing I would add. So much appreciate again being invited back by all of you. Council member Waters, I probably should add this to the answer your question. If we open something and see we're having issues where we can't manage the social distancing and folks aren't following the guidelines that's what's triggering then us to go we need to rethink this and that's why we're pressing those issues. As we look forward there are a number of facilities that people are asking for. You know, we get a lot of questions regarding rec centers and playgrounds and those issues. We're still under orders that those can't be open. So we're not thinking about that because we're still prohibited via the state orders on some of those locations. Dr. Zetch, thank you very much for coming and being here with us and for the work you're doing, appreciate it. Thank you, Mayor, appreciate all of you. Mayor, the last piece I need to turn it over to Jim so he can give you a financial update that he promised you all last week. Well, Mayor Bagley, members of council, Jim Golden, the chief financial officer, I assume you can hear me. All right, so like Harold said, I talked to you last week, told you that our sales tax in March was up, turned out to be up 6% since your email a couple of days ago that gave you a breakdown of those results for March. So I've taken the data from that further, breaking it down to find out what businesses are generating tax versus aren't and have used that to revise our projections and also considered where we are today, what we've seen where some businesses have begun to reopen and looking ahead of try to project over three months, April, May and June, what our sales tax return may be in those months based on those type of estimates with some sort of return to some businesses coming back into play during June. So what I ended up with was we have projected decreases in April and May of a little over 40% for each month compared to last year, April and May and then in June, about a 32% decrease. After that, I'm going back to the logic that we would have a recession kick into place for the final six months of the year. I did raise my projections there to an 8% decrease over the 2019 tax period for those months last year. Overall, that does actually reduce our sales tax projection compared to what I gave you a month or so ago and it reduces the shortfall by about $700,000 for just sales tax. The other thing I did, by the way, I did email you all this information just at seven o'clock. Actually didn't finish this up until during your first executive session today. So I wasn't able to get it to you any earlier, but you will have all this information in an email for you available. But in addition to the sales tax, we staff took a deeper look at the general fund revenues once more while other revenues there as well as revenues for some funds that we didn't take a look at last month. And that in turn has increased our projections quite a bit. So overall, the total shortfall in revenues due to COVID for the rest of 2020 is projected to be $18 million. So that's compared to, I think I gave you 15.3 million last month. So some of that increases, I've told you that the sales and use tax portion of that is $12.3 million. There's another $4.16 million for reduced revenue throughout the general fund from other sources. A big deal of that is recreation revenues from the fact that many programs can't be offered currently and may not be offered for some time. The other things that also impact our investment revenues, development revenues, fines and forfeits, utility desks connects, union reservoir fees, museum fees, and then some smaller licenses and fees. We have $2.85 million of that is recreation revenues again from programs not being able to be offered in the future and looking to something starting at some point in July at a low level. The street fund, moving into some other funds, we increased the street fund for $475,000 of highway use tax revenue that we're projecting we probably won't receive with gas taxes very likely being down quite a bit. Our lodger's tax fund, we projected $300,000 shortfall for the year. We have $400,000 shortfall in the golf fund projected. And then we have some smaller funds in the community services areas. We have funds for senior and museum and Cal Hand House. Each of those individual funds, we have active programs that are offered in those areas that obviously are not continuing. So they have some smaller impacts as well all adding up to the $18 million. There's 11 funds that are impacted in this $18 million projection. The change to the sales tax, we actually have a decrease in the amount of impact to the public improvement fund and the streets fund and the open space fund. And the public safety fund. So for the streets and open space and public safety, it's less that we need to cover than what we reported to you last month. So that's easily covered already. We've identified those areas that we can turn to for savings or reserves. The street fund only increased because of the highway use tax I talked about. So it was only a few $100,000 increase. Again, we already have identified enough cuts and deferments in that fund to be able to handle that decrease. General fund is a little bit more significant of an increase due to that, that recreation impact which honestly is one of the last things I got into this today. So we haven't had a lot of time to be able to adjust for that. But what we along with the fact that we're cutting programs, it does also have somewhat of an offset in some expenditures related to some of those programs that are not gonna be offered. So there's at least $800,000 of reduction that we pick up on the expenditure side. We had a lot of, we had an extra a million or so of general fund savings originally identified. So it's leaving us with about 158,000 more that we will need to identify to cover the shortfall projected currently for the general fund. So some of those other funds, the smaller funds and the golf fund, we still need to do some work within those funds. Fund balances will come into play for many of those funds as well as hopefully our ability to reduce some expenses in those funds to cover their shortfall. And staff's gonna be doing some more work to identify that. And finally, the lodger's tax impact did speak with Nancy and visit Longmont and they've already made some adjustments. They furloughed staff down to quarter time and they've cut a lot of expenses. They were already projecting the impacts themselves. So that is all of it. So what I do when we, I did this data I gave you tonight. The email doesn't have the identification of all of our expenditure cuts. We're gonna update that and I'll send that out to you when that's complete. But what I just gave you was a short summary about what I just covered tonight, just now. That's all I have. I could answer any questions you might have. All right, Jim, thank you very much. Tough job, but you're rocking it. We appreciate it. Thank you. All right, sorry. You don't want to worry Jim. I didn't see the guy up in the upper right-hand corner of my screen. Great, Jim. I'm back. When you're first cut at this, you were projecting a $15.3 million shortfall in general fund, as I recall. I know that was early on in this process. No, actually that was city-wide. That wasn't just a general fund. What's the number? Is there, what's the equivalent number? Is the 18 million now the equivalent of what you saw then? You were estimating 15.3 is now the 18 as we've gotten further into this. Right, so 15.3, when I looked at it last month was overall impact that we identified due to the COVID event. Now we've adjusted that to 18 million, but we did expand how many funds we were looking at. And that's how you got from the 15, 3 to the 18 because of the other funds. Yeah, and plus I did change some assumptions. I remember I talked about it being down for two months. Now I'm kind of using three months. A higher amount of recession. And in the savings you've identified a couple of areas where there would be savings. And when you flush this out, that's what you'll share with us more of that detail. That's correct. Yeah, all right, thanks, Jim. You bet. All right, still thank you. And you're still awesome, Jim. Thanks. All right, let's move on to the consent agenda. What time is it? We're doing all right, right? We're going to be going on an hour. Actually, let's go first call public invited to be heard. So can we flash up that, the number? So we would invite anybody to dial in at<PHONE_NUMBER>. Let's take a two minute break while we allow people to call in. We can kill two birds with one stone. If you can hear me, let's get going again. Mayor, I've let two callers in when you're ready. All right, we're all back. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven. All right, let's go ahead and start. All right, guess who have just called in for public invited to be heard. The first caller that I'm going to unmute is caller that has a phone number that ends in 918. So I'm going to unmute you. If you could state your name and address before you begin, thank you. You're unmuted. This is Kim Gibb, Sherman Road. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Okay, great. All right, thank you. So I did want to make a few comments about the proposed airport-related ballot measure. First, I want to thank you all for having the discussion about allowing us to present information. I want to talk a little bit about standing and who has standing to support this measure. I'd like for you to all think about how you feel regarding the oil and gas operations in Weld County. Not just you council, but the folks who are listening and how you feel about the air quality in Longmont being negatively affected by oil and gas operations that are completely out of your control. That's how I feel as a gun barrel resident, as a non-Longmont city resident living underneath the flight box in gun barrel and having no voice, no voice at all over airport decisions and about the nuisance that is caused by airport users in your town. So I'm asking you as my friends to join with us and support this ballot measure that will restore more accountability to Longmont voters. The provisions are very simple. It would require that Longmont voters be consulted and that they would consent to an airport expansion, which by the way was promoted by people who don't live in Longmont. You might recall when Jeff Bowman, Dave Kopp came to city council and promoted this airport expansion. They're not Longmont residents. They're not Longmont citizens. They are wanting to exploit the airport for their own gain. And regarding financial accountability, you know, the Longmont budget is really none of my business. I am not a citizen there, but I think many Longmont citizens don't realize that that airport is getting direct and indirect subsidies from the general fund. The annual discount on the administrative transfer fee, that is money that is coming out of their pockets. And so when you talk about how this isn't a good time to talk about the budget, it's not convenient because of a pandemic. Well, think about your budget and how that airport is siphoning off funds from Longmont citizens. So I am very proud of my role in this organization. I'm very proud to support this ballot measure along with Longmont citizens. And you can bet that we are promoting a ballot measure that is in the best interest of Longmont citizens and we'll finally give them a voice. All right, that's three minutes. Thank you so much, Kim. All right. Okay, we had a last minute guest, Marilyn come in and she did not call in because there is a delay. Marilyn, could you try and disconnect and come back in via the telephone? And I'll give you that opportunity to do so so that you can speak. Hopefully you know, there she goes. All right, the next caller that we have, your phone number ends in 971. I'm gonna unmute you if you could go ahead and say your name and give us your address. You're unmuted. Yes, my name is Jim Graham, 726 Arrowwood Street. I'm president of the Lidex softball based out of Longmont and I'm here for myself and at the direction of our board of directors. I'm not here asking you about opening or closing any public asset. I only wanna highlight important considerations that should be taken into account. Admits all the important sectors of society that have begun to reopen. I wanna draw your attention to the sporting industry which is a multi-billion dollar industry. You won't be surprised to hear that we have local data indicating our children may be suffering emotionally, psychologically and physically due to the prolonged isolation from school and organized sports. This is particularly true for young people who are using athletics to pursue their education and prepare for international play. For them, sports is not merely a recreational pastime but a necessary pursuit of their very personality, education and professional aptitudes. As our state and localities begin to open, various industry sectors have been consulted as to their needs and ability to establish the necessary protocols to phase open. It has been pointed out to me that grocery stores, liquor stores and dispensaries were remained open partly because they had a plan. Golf courses were opened and remained open during the extended stay at home order because they had a plan. Tennis courts, public pools, summer day camps are now being considered because there's a plan. What is lacking for consideration of the sporting industry is the presence of a plan. Elite X has offered this council just such a plan, safe to play protocols for the eventual reopening of ball fields. As you take up this issue, we ask you to consider the following. The need for input from the public and sporting industry experts, the inconsistency and confusion created by the phrasing quote unquote, no team sports. Is it the intention to disallow an organized activity that is currently allowed for the general public? And if so, why? We further ask you to consider the following distinctions and the variable consequences they might have. Indoor versus outdoor activity, contact versus non-contact activity. Recreational programs versus controlled club programs. The sport industry is much bigger than just a municipal run program. Team sports is games and competition, not practice and working out. Single team practices should be treated differently than games with two or more teams. So one might consider a phased partial opening to registered user groups for practices under strict protocols. This would allow authorities sometime to evaluate those protocols for their effectiveness. I submit to you that sports should not be characterized as trite and should not be categorized with quote unquote, recreating. It's a multi-billion dollar sector and there are many local businesses whose owners are suffering because they are closed down but for the existence of a plan and someone who will listen. I'm proud to be from Longmont. I'm proud of you all. And I'm here to partner with you in any way that I can. Thank you. Well-timed. All right, anybody else? Mayor, that's all that I have. All right, great. Then let's go with, Polly, do you have a concern? Yeah, Marilyn Belchinsky was going to speak and then she, I don't know what happened to her. Yes, we saw them come in using the app. So she may not have wanted to speak. And when I addressed her, she hung up. All right, well, if you're watching Marilyn, you're going to have an opportunity at the end of the meeting to do another final call public invited to be heard. So we'll make sure that we open up again in a few minutes. So, all right, let's move on to the consent agenda. Anyone want to pull anything before we read them? Polly? Yeah, I'd like to pull A. Okay, anybody else? All right, let's go ahead and read it and we'll ask again. All right, Don, do you want to go ahead and read it? I would love to do that, Mayor. Thank you. Item 8A is ordinance 2020-24, a bill for an ordinance authorizing the city of Longmont to amend the leases for advanced brand municipal airport hangar parcels known as Elite Aviation FBO hangar parcels one and two and Elite Aviation FBO hangar parcel four, public hearing and second reading schedule for May 26, 2020. 8B is resolution 2020-38, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the Intergovernmental Agreement between the city and the Longmont Housing Authority for the implementation of the Aspen Meadows Senior Apartments Acquisition and Rehabilitation Project. 8C is resolution 2020-39, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the Intergovernmental Agreement between the city of Longmont and Boulder County Public Health for a mutual aid agreement concerning performance of public health inspections. 8D is resolution 2020-40, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the Intergovernmental Agreement between the city and Boulder County Public Health for its Genesis Project. 8E is resolution 2020-41, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the Intergovernmental Agreement between the city and the Colorado Department of Transportation for grant funding for the 2020 Click It or Ticket Campaign. 8F is resolution 2020-42, a resolution of the Longmont City Council approving the Intergovernmental Agreements between the city and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives for firing range and training center use. And 8G has approved the Latino Chamber 2020-2021 agreement for economic development services. Council Member Christensen. But if you could do that a few more minutes, that was awesome. I could do that all night. I wanted to pull the one on Jen and Sister just to ask a question. I forget which one that is. Oh, D, sorry, D. So we're eight A and eight D both. Then I move the consent agenda minus items eight A and D. I'd actually like to pull C too. I move the consent agenda minus items A, C and D. Second. All right, it's been moved by Dr. Waters and then seconded by Council Member Martin. All in favor of passing and moving the consent agenda. Say, hi, hi, hi, hi. Those opposed, say, may. All right, the consent agenda minus A, C and D passes unanimously. Let's move on to ordinances on second reading and public hearings on these matters. So let's go ahead and ask people to call in. If you're gonna call in, make sure you do it now and do it for, I guess we just have one, but we're gonna go ahead and move forward. And a lot of second. All right. So ordinance, second reading of ordinance 2020-22, nine A on the agenda, for an ordinance conditionally approving the vacation of seven utility access and storm drainage easements within the West Grange filing two subdivision, generally located south of Nelson Road and east of 75th Street. So do we have any discussion or questions from Council at this time? All right, let's go ahead and just wait about 60 seconds to see if anybody calls in. All right, let's go ahead and close the public hearing on ordinance 2020-22. All right, do we have a motion? So moved. All right, I'll second it. Go ahead, Dr. Waters. All right. So we had a motion for the passage of ordinance 2020-22 on second reading by Council Member Peck. I seconded it. All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed, say nay. All right, that motion passes unanimously. Let's go on to the consent agenda items that were pulled. Let's take it in order. Council Member Christensen, eight A. Okay, in going through this, I'm kind of amazed that Elite Aviation's name on the lease has been incorrect for what? Several decades, that seems kind of odd. Secondly, it seems kind of once upon a time, maybe 10 years ago, Vance Brand actually had several people providing gas services and repair services. And they were kind of forced out. And to me, it's never really a very good idea to have just one monopoly out there. And if you read the lease, I don't know what the original lease said. So I'm not sure what's changing, but it looks to me like this, like Elite Aviation, which actually apparently has a different name, but they're based out of South Carolina. So it appears to me that, and I have nothing against Elite Aviation, they make tasty food and they do a pretty good job. But it appears that they are providing really all the services that a city would normally provide out there. They're providing pilots lounge, they're providing food services, they're providing gas, they're providing a pair. It seems to me it would be prudent to look at this contract a little bit harder and see if that's really the direction that we want to go for our airport in the future. Or at least discuss it or hear from Mr. Slater or someone and have some kind of discussion about this rather than just pass this lease and not discuss it at all. Anyway, that's my opinion. So I can jump in. So when we actually went out for the FBO, we conducted an RFP process, our request for proposal, which are obligated to do under the FAA process. So it could be competitive and they were the ones that submitted into that RFP process. And so that's typically the selection you go through. I think you're correct, there were two FBOs out there. One decided to, I guess, stop providing that service at that point in time. I want to say it was a few years ago and then that's when we went out with the RFP for the next provider. Generally what I can say, working with other airports, one of this size, it's unusual. It's highly unusual to have two FBOs in that process. And so I can get David to look at that issue, but I can't say that it was a competitive process. It was through the RFP process in terms of the selection and how that was conducted. Thanks, Harold. It's nice to know that you did go through the RFP process. Council Member Peck. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. Harold and Joanie, how many applicants did you have for that RFP process? Were they the only ones? You know, I can't remember because that was a while back. This contract is actually the contract that was awarded in that RFP process a few years ago. So they're still under the original terms of that RFP process. This was a contract amendment to deal with the name change and some of the other components that they had to adjust. But we didn't go through one recently. They were awarded the contract a few years ago and it's the same contract with those. I'm sorry, I keep interrupting you. How long is that contract? When does it expire? I'll have to look at it. Joanie, do you have that? I'm trying to read through it now. Hang on a second. Okay. And then the other question that I think Council Member Christensen asked, typically FBO services at an airport do provide the pilot's lounge and other amenities in terms of they just don't do fueling operations. And they typically are engaged in the maintenance activities for those airplanes as well. Okay. So that's not inconsistent in terms of what I've seen at other airports in terms of FBO operations. Well, you can email me or something. I don't really need to know. I'm just kind of curious. Thank you. Council Member Peck, we'll make sure that we give an update before the second reading. Okay. Thanks. That'd be great. All right. Anybody else? Can we think about? All right. Polly, do you want to make a motion? Or Council Member Martin, do you want to make, did you? Okay. Council Member Christensen. I'll move it. I move adoption of A. Okay. I'll second it. All right. It's been moved by Council Member Martin and seconded by Council Member Christensen. All in favor of passage of resolutions. Ordinance 2020-24 or 8A on the consent agenda. Say aye. Aye. Opposed? Say nay. All right. That passes unanimously. All right. Let's go ahead with I pulled 8C resolution 2020-39. And I guess my only concern is, I guess my only concern is I understand that the county needs our health and, I mean, they need our people to enforce their health department orders. So number one, who's going to be enforcing police, code enforcement? Who would be doing it? And what's the criteria? Mayor Bagley, members of Council, Joni Marsh, Assistant City Manager. So with the agreement that's before this evening, this is specific to code enforcement staff who are not peace officers. And this isn't required for the police department to assist. However, the police department and code enforcement are all going to work together as needed to respond to requests from the Boulder County Health Department to look at violations. If you look at section two under the participating agency responsibilities on page four of that agreement, it's pretty clear that what they're, they're not asking us necessarily to act in a law enforcement capacity, but they're really asking us to help check and basically be eyes on the street to see if the types of complaints that they're receiving actually are factual to start with. So what I'm hearing is that we would only be responding to the county request, but we're not forced to comply with their requests, nor are we sending in our police. It's just code enforcement upon the county requesting, right? That's it. That's what this agreement does. And it would, a list they send us and today they've been fairly benign. Okay, all right. And then we can also change it at any time, right? Great. All right. So with that, I move ordinance or sorry, resolution 2020-39, eight second, second. All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right. It passes unanimously. And then what was the last one? D, who pulled that one? Me. All right. Councilman Christensen. Okay. This is regarding the Genesis, Genesis to program. I just would like to ask a question of Karen Roney if she's here, I thought we already funded them. So did we not fund them in the last round of requests? So Mayor Christopher Christensen, Karen Roney, community services director. Hello. So this is for the Genesis program. Not that there's two programs from the Genesis sister program which is the one I think you're talking about. Oh, okay. You're the human service agency. We only funded one. And Genesis sister is a part of the children, youth and families division budget. They're line on request that they fund every year. Okay. Okay. All right. Do you want to go ahead and make a motion, Polly? Okay. I move resolution 2020-40. All seconded. All right. It's been moved and seconded. Any other discussion or debate? All right. Seeing none, let's go ahead and vote. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed say nay. All right. The motion passes unanimously. Okay. Let's go on to general business. We don't have any right Harold. All right. Let's go ahead and take just a 60 seconds to see if Marilyn pops back on. So Marilyn, if you're waiting for final call, let's do it. Mayor Betz. Yeah. She texted me and said that she is not going to. She didn't have a question. She actually logged in. Perfect. All right. Let's still take about another, let's take 90 seconds to make sure the public has its opportunity to call in and tell us their thoughts. All right. Unless somebody wants to keep waiting, we're going to go ahead and move on. And if somebody pops in, I guess we'll back up a little bit. So let's move on to mayor and council comments. Does anyone have any, anything they're dying to say? All right. Let's go ahead with start. We'll start the clock. All right. Council member waters. Thanks, Mayor Bagley. Yesterday, I received a letter from a resident. It's such a, in these times of so much heartache in so many places, it was one of those letters that ought to be shared because it's a good news story in terms of long month and in the performance of long month staff. So because I didn't ask for permission from the resident to use the resident's name. I won't, but I will say publicly, thanks for sending the letter. The resident knows who she is. So this starts off saying, I love living in Longmont among other admirable qualities. We enjoy exemplary services in numerous areas. We have excellent water, electrical services, solid waste disposal, the limb diversion facility, street crew, parks and recreation, fiber optic internet service. And we have the forestry department. So this is about an employee in the forestry department. First sentence of the second paragraph says, I want you to know I recently had perfect dealings with one of your employees, Oscar Harkin. So Mr. Harkin, if I'm mispronouncing your name, I apologize, but you don't get these letters very often. The resident goes on to talk about what an extraordinary job this individual did on a tree in this latest yard that had been split from snow and how many times you came back, how courtesy was. For final sentences, in these days of so much negativity, I just wanted you to hear about a very positive experience I had with a member of your staff. So forestry staff, one of your crew, must be proud of. Thanks for your service. Council Member Christensen, I think you're next. Okay, well, I also had wonderful dealings. I think I reported this several weeks ago with the city forestry department and we had that snow and a giant chunk of my tree fell in my front yard and they came and removed it and they were great. So it is nice when people take the time to write us and actually say something good about staff because we really do have an incredible staff who are doing huge amounts of work more than usual lately. I did want to, because I just cannot express my frustration at the information we got in the information part of our thing on the town of Firestone referral in which they're planning to develop 75 acres adjacent to smuggers, which doesn't really is not compatible with our land use or our water resources or impacts or our transportation infrastructure. And there isn't a thing we can do about it. And that's, I think, frustrating to all of us. We specifically tried to get smuggers to come here to provide jobs, well, for everyone in the area but especially for Longmont people and now we're going to have piles of housing right next to it which will be good for some of those people but it won't be good for Longmont people. So anyway, I just want to have a little rant here for the fact that Firestone did their little tunnel into Longmont annexation and these sorts of things, problems will just keep cropping up. I guess there's nothing we can do about it but none of us are happy about it. Anyway, everybody stay calm and be patient and be courageous and we'll be back to normal more or less, eventually. Thank you. Anybody else? All right, Councilor Peck. Thank you, Mayor Bagley. I echo Councilwoman Christensen's concerns about the Firestone development but I was heartened with the response by our staff in that their watch, from the looks of it, it looks like 119 might have to be expanded for the traffic, et cetera. So keep up the good work staff and keep us informed about that. The other thing I want to say is that the Longmont Community Foundation has so many great accounts on it that we can donate to and one of them is Neighbor to Neighbor. This account is specific to Longmont which I, if I understand that correctly and it helps with rental assistance to our residents and it's been doing a great job. One of the organizations that gets money to help renters is the Our Center and there are other organizations but I talked to Erica Josempa the other day and they're running low on those funds. So we need to continue to help people with rental assistance. So you can go to longmontfoundation.org, click on the donate tab and then just scroll down, find Neighbor to Neighbor COVID-19 and you can donate there. So this is a great way for the community to help each other and thank you. Have a great week. All right, I guess the only thing that, okay, sorry, Council Member Hidalgo-Ferring, you're up. So I just want to do a quick shout out to the Longmont Museum and Cultural Center. Every Thursday, they do an online, sometimes it's art and sip, other times they've done just presentations. Last week, they did one on Looking Back on Longmont, the 1918 flu pandemic and it was really insightful. It starts at 7.30, I really enjoyed it. So I plan on hopping into their WebEx little gatherings, meetings more often. But yeah, this Thursday at 7.30, they're doing a paint and sip at home, origami and every Thursday it changes themes. So it's just something to do and I appreciate their enthusiasm and the work that they've done in getting art and culture to our community. So that was it. All right, I guess the only thing that comes to mind is we could have done something about the Firestone property a while ago. I did mention that we could have annexed it into Longmont and I was attacked by our former city manager and other members of the community saying that, oh my gosh, it's never gonna be built.  It was even a rumor that I owned the property and so we could have stopped it. We could have, but we didn't. So I just wanted to remind everybody. And then next, I think that I'm glad, Harold, you continue to do what you do as city manager. I can only imagine. I told you the other day that half the community thanks you for saving their life and then the other half hates you for taking away their civil liberties. And so I don't envy your position right now. And so I see and we talk daily and I just see the juggling that you do and how you walk the line is incredible. I wouldn't have the patience for it. So just as always, just thank you. Keep up. I'm in the half to love you, Harold. Say again? I'm in the half to love you, Harold. I think we're all, everybody on council right now loves Harold. I think I've not heard anything to the contrary. And then last but not least, I would ask that if anyone is watching right now that has any type of technical editing skills on the computer, if you could screenshot just the ability to be able to change Eugene's May, green screen headphones into something really cool and then post it, lightsaber like red or stars. I don't know, but I just every time I watch Eugene, I want to see that. So all right, anything else from other council members? All right, Harold, do you have anything? I'm on the editing piece. Nice. Nice. Eugene? Go ahead, Harold. Sorry, sorry. Thanks for your comments. Great team here. Phenomenal team that let's just do phenomenal things. And so it's always exciting. I said something every day, there's someone on this team that does something that encourages me to come back the next day. So phenomenal team all across the board. I did want to say, look out for more online functions because we have again, part of that phenomenal team, we're coming up with some creative options for more online programming. So we'll be hearing about that in the near future. Thanks for that mention and look for more. I did notice that the Longmont Museum is gonna be offering online classes, right? We have museum working on it, library working on it. I think Rec Center, Rec Group, they're working on it as well. So hopefully in the very near future, you'll hear more about that. All right, cool. All right, Eugene, do you have anything? Mayor, my son Riley will be thrilled to hear that you observed his green headphones on my head. Oh no, I wasn't, I was making a joke, but not really. I'm hoping that someone will. All right. No further comments, Mayor. All right, so all right, if there's nothing else, do we have a motion to adjourn? Council Member Beck. I'll make the motion to adjourn today. All right, Council Member Hidalgo Ferring coming in from the bleachers for the win. And it was seconded by Council Member Waters all in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. All right, we're adjourned. Thanks guys. See you and I'll come in tomorrow and sign documents.


Welcome back, it's still the breakfast and plus TV Africa time now to talk some politics. As part of its last-minute efforts to stave off any possible violation of the Electoral Act, the ruling all-progressive Congress APC has given a deadline to cabinet members and all the executive appointees at both the state and federal levels, within which they must resign their appointments if they intend to participate in its forthcoming round-up primary elections. According to the set of guidelines for the primaries, their appointees now have to, this Saturday, to quit their present offices. As part of this, a lot of people will be affected. The Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amici and all the ones who have a political appointment will be affected by this particular development. So just how far will they really go? We have two analysts joining us to look at all of that. We have John Gaule, a liberal, and Festus Tecumbo. Many thanks for joining us gentlemen on this particular discourse. All right, one would have thought that it would be the moral thing to do, knowing that you are in government and that you have intentions to the contest for the elections of next year. Ordinarily, the writing to be done will be to resign. Do you agree with that? No, I think so. Just like you said, it is a moral thing to do. It is a moral thing to do, it is a constitutional thing to do. The problem is that Nigerians are finding it very easy to lift the moral body. So a lot of our leaders lack that conscience, they lack that moral obligation to always comply with issues as these. But that said, I think the main problem here has been the confusion between the last amendment of the Electoral Act and the fact that the Attorney General had taken steps to procure a court order from Anabia State, Federal High Court, to try to nullify or make military deprivation of that Electoral Act. And then when that order was served, the National Assembly still went ahead and continued with the process of the amendment of that act. And I think also they procured an order of state of execution at the Court of Appeals. So I think in between that judgment and the state of execution and the additional National Assembly to continue with the amendment, I'm sure most members of the Federal Executive Council were hoping that that provision will not take effect. And particularly the Attorney General who we suspect was behind that court order from the Abia Federal High Court, you know, were also hoping that that provision of 30 days to the primaries to resign will not take effect. But obviously, because the National Assembly has passed the law because of the state of execution by the Court of Appeal, and that provision has taken effect, I'm sure they are court mapping. I'm really surprised that somebody who is the Law Officer of the Federation, the Attorney General of the Federation, will not appreciate or understand the implication of such a provision. I'm also surprised that key members of the Federal Executive Council, we've been written here, Metri, who is my colleague, having said that Speaker, two-time Speaker of the River Stickers of Assembly, will not understand the implication of Our firsts to Kumbo, are you still there with us? Firsts, can you hear us? All right, mercy, these are part of the discussions we were having, you know, drain of the press legal versus morality and all of that. And remember candidly, or vividly rather, is he going to talk specifically about the Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, who should know the right thing but is actually contesting that particular session in court? So, you know, apart from the fact that, you know, you have a morality conversation, you also need to look at what the party guideline says. Now, a section of, you know, the party guideline for the APC Section 3, I of the APC guideline for the nomination of candidates for 2023, general elections says no political appointee. At any level shall be given voting delegate or be voted for the purpose of nomination of candidate, any political office holder entrusted in contesting for an active office shall leave the office 30 days prior to the date of the election or to party primary for the office sorted. And let's not forget that you're going to have, you know, the party primary is for the APC that is slated for the 30th through the 31st of May. And so, that's a lot, but it brings us back to the conversation of how far have we respected our laws because we have laws. I mean, if we talk about a lot of laws, if we have implemented half of the laws that we have in this country, if we obey our laws, I'm not sure that, you know, Nigeria will be where it is today, not just to the ruling class, I mean the elite at this point in time. You also want to talk about the, you know, the followership. So this, you know, the conversation is very encompassing. We've seen a couple of times, I mean, several times where you have the president not adhering to several laws. I mean, there are different times where you have prominent persons. We seem to always obey the parts of the constitution or any guideline that suits our interest and concern. I don't know if you do have, you know, John Gall level or, you know, other guests. Okay. But as soon as we're able to have our guests join us, we continue the conversation. So it's encompassing. The issue of now you have the ministers. The ministers are saying that they're not going to resign. But the commissioners are actually resigning. No, not that's at the state level now. So at the state level, you have a lot of compliance.  Well, then you now come to the federal level. Some of these ministers are saying, hey, we're not resigning. For instance, you have, you know, Chris Singigay saying he's not gotten a letter, he's not been, you know, given that letter and asked to resign at the end of the day. So, but when you ask yourself, don't you think that this is actually the impunity that we constantly talked about? And do we have a system that can purge itself of all of this disobedience and not, you know, disregard for, you know, the law at the end of the day. So, but my fingers across, let's see what begins to happen. I mean, if you also have the attorney general of the federation, I'm not mistaken, correct me if I'm mistaken. It's also on that particular list. Right. So he should be the constable, you know, of the law at this point in time. That's why he's contesting it in court. All right, we'll take a quick break and when we come back, we'll talk some more, stay with us. Let's see the breakfast on plus CV Africa. We do have our guests on standby. I assume John Gall label who joins the conversation and festus to combo who's also on standby. Thank you once again, gentlemen, for being part of the show this morning. Okay. So, so let's bring in Mr. Festus to combo at this point. Mr. Festus, can you hear us? All right. So, so let's look at it now. So, for the guideline of the APC, he also talks about the fact that if they're sick, any political office, they need to tender direct ignition 30 days before this. And you have the minister saying they're not going to resign. What do you make of this? I mean, scenario. What do you make of the situation? Thank you for your for your for having me in your in your life show. You see, you see, there are two basic instruments that governs the general relations in Nigeria, the body constitutions and the electoral art of 2022 and the parties, parties, guidance, the driving guidance. And he stipulated in this document that political parties must must resign before 30 days before the general election, before the presidential election. So, so they have no option. They have to resign at their appointment because the beauty of democracy is a law. It's equal before the law. So no one should be more important or more powerful than the constitution. So they have to resign. They have no options. That's my opinion. So in in a case where they're like they have, I mean, they have rightly stated that they insisted they're not, you know, tendering, they're not going to tender their resignation. What will be the implication of that, looking at the primaries and also the general election? The National Assembly passed the Electoral Amendment law in February 2022 that stated that the political parties must resign before the general election. So they have to.  And in any way, they are not being deprived of contesting, you know, because by allowing appointees to conduct a general election, they can do some leverage in terms of influence of what they let to it. It will not be a fair election anymore. What is the consequence? All right. But looking at all of that, one would have thought that, you know, for someone like the Minister of Justice, who is also nursing ambition, you know, to run for elective office, he would actually know what the law says, because judging by the APC new guidelines, they have 30 days to do that. But he's actually contestant. That particular section of the Constitution, that some section 84, subsection 12, what does this really tell of people who should understand the law? The question goes, does the Minister of Justice, this is more powerful than the President that signed the bill into law in February, that stated that the appointees, the political parties must resign before the general election.  They just have to resign. They cannot manage the political engineering for their interests. The interests of 200 million people should be paramount down the interests of few politicians that are trying to shame the laws. Are you getting it? Yeah, go ahead. I can hear you. Go ahead. Yeah. So, I mean, this is not something that is to be up for public debate, because the Constitution is paramount. It's not something that you're up for public debate, you know. The court, the case is the court, but we can't, I mean, the election is just by one year from now. We cannot wait for a case that cannot be decided because we have to go with the Constitution. We have to go with the Electoral Act, that was amended in February, 2022. That's it. All right, so let's have John Goh level at this point.  What becomes of, you know, the primaries? Will they be asked not to be part of it? What's going to happen? We'll like to share your thoughts on that. Okay, I think the implication is very clear. By the provision of the Constitution of both parties, the two major parties, EDP and the APC, by the provision of the Electoral Act, you know, resignation is a precondition to qualification to run the elections. So for instance, if the original of the federation does not resign, check it is to the primaries, he will not be screened by the party as a electoral panel because each of the political parties also has a screening process. That screening process, this is certificate of qualification to contest the primaries. It is only after you have been screened, you get the certificate of screening that you can take part in the primaries. And when you win the primaries, your name will be forwarded to INE. Now, the implication of contravening the provision of the Constitution requiring all political opponents to resign is that any political party who does not resign will not be screened by the screening committee of the political party. And the screening committee of the political party is your first level of trying to get your candidates to be, your candidates who eventually will be nominated to be duly qualified in the sense that they are not duly qualified. The other party, after the nomination has been signed to INE, will take the party to court and you lose your candidate. And by the time you lose your candidate at the point of nomination, you cannot replace them. A typical example is what happened in Zanfarah State where APC won the House of Assembly, House of District and Gobernatorial elections. And they lost all because of lack of qualification of the candidate. In that case, it was because instead of doing indirect primaries, indirect primaries and all of that, and the primaries was taken to Abu Dhabi instead of Zanfarah State. So that's what you find. The party is trying to put together a first hold with an internal cleaning system. The internal cleaning system is to ensure that all of our candidates within the party are qualified. They have complied first with the position of our constitution. They complied the position of the electoral and the position of the constitution before they are duly nominated. Don't forget that the political party is entitled to nominate one candidate among his best material. So by the time you bring up the authority of the federation as Gobernation Candidate for Tabis State, having not complied with the position of the APC constitution and the electoral and PDP who just waits, once his name is nominated, they're going to cut the sector aside. And then APC will not have a candidate in that election. That is the implication. And I think that from my experience, no political party will take the risk. Because the risk that I also have an insurer, you don't have a backup plan, once your primaries go on and the winner of that primaries, you cannot also replace the winner of the primaries. You know, if there's no police side and you go ahead to seal in for that primaries and get the nomination, PDP will wait on the left side. Or in the case, maybe APC will also wait on the left side. And then you're going to use the nomination. So but at the end of the day, let's also look at this now.  Well, I think that it's not a question of lacuna, it's a question of interpretation. You know, the difference between the legislature and the executives is that where the legislature has a responsibility to pass the law, it is the responsibility of the judiciary to interpret the law. And so that is why usually in law, we say that the transparency of what they call to say in fact and nothing more pretentious is what we mean by the law. Now what that means is that no matter the position of the constitution, sometimes they highlight the summary or the legal imprisonment of the constitution or of any statutory provision of the constitution, comes out clearly by better expression by the judiciary. So what I see happening here is that from the provision of the electoral act, the provision of the party constitution, what the attorney general of the federation is trying to do, is to try to get an interpretation that seems to the fact that they are not entitled to resign. Counting on the provision of the interpretation, which is also a law of the fed, one of the laws of the federation. Now, we need the interpretation and they are trying to imply that a political appointee is not entitled to resign, that they are not among the bracket of their appointees that should resign. Which the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal have already pronounced on who is a public officer. The electoral act is said on its own in the interpretation provision of the electoral act has defined with the public officer. The constitution of the federal public on its own has defined with the public officer. The constitution of the APC on its own in the interpretation provision has defined with the public officer. The interpretation has lost its definition as defined who is a public officer. And a public officer is anybody, a public officer differentiated with the political appointee. A political appointee is a person whose rules is appointment at the mercy of the elected officer. For instance, the president of the federal public of Nigeria, all the ministers are all political appointees. The commissioners in the state appointed by the governor are all political appointees. Public officers are civil servants. There are different repetitions to it, but I think what they are trying to push for now is to say that they are public officers and not political appointees, which will not move water. The law is very clear. The Court of Appeal decision is a supreme constitution to that interpretation. All right, let's have your final thought on that.  First of all, I don't make the comment about what my colleagues said about that political appointees claim to be a public officer. The law recognizes them as political appointees. And the appointment is at the mercy of the appointees, which represents the government. So they cannot claim to be political officers. And at the end of the day, the constitutions have to be interpreted. But I mean clearly stated that the political appointees, they have to seek public offices, have to resign before the relations. So that is what I feel is going to be the case at the end of the day. They are trying to see what the machine below, shame the practices and get their opinion. And shame the political interests. So quickly, let's also bring John Gull. This probably might just be the last for us here. What's really different now?  So what is different now? I was elected. For instance, the difference is that three things. First, public officers are civil servants. Political appointees are appointed at the mercy of the governor or the president or the chairman of the local government as the case may be. And their tenure is tied to the tenure of the governor, the minister, the governor, the president of the chairman of the local government. In my own case, I was elected for a fifth period as the member of the House of Assembly. I was elected for four years. So from May 2019 in the first year to May 2019, the fourth year. The same reasoning the president was running for his second term, he would not return because his tenure is guaranteed by the Constitution for four years. That's why President Buhari, having been elected in May 2019, May 2019, May 2019, May 20, 2015. Then the person in office They have the M6 by the constitution for four years, and within that four years, they cannot resign. It's either at the content of the election and we can return back after the second when you get a bad tenure, or you lose your election and leave the office. So elected officers don't resign. It is appointed officers who resign. So should we not also consider elected officers resigning? No, because that would be wrong because the tenure of the elected officers is not heard at the MSE of an appointment. It is heard at the provision of the constitution that guarantees it, you know, the four years. So you cannot terminate the four years in between. Bob Ayos? If you are entitled, if you are second term, like in the case of a governor, who is entitled to get a second term after they will get another term, that second term will terminate on the date of his inauguration, the anniversary of his inauguration. So a governor is elected into office, for instance, in May 2019. His tenure will terminate in May, 29, 2019. His tenure will terminate in May, 29, 2023. Within that period, if he's entitled to a second term, the constitution, the electoral and the constitutional party allow him, while in office, to seek for a second term because his tenure still exists has not been terminated by a virtue of the provision of the constitution. All right, we'll just leave it at that. Big thank you to public affairs analyst, John Gore, Libo, and of course, Amfestos Tocumbo. Thanks for the thoughts that you have shared today. We do appreciate it. Thank you, Dr. Fibilish. Thank you so much for being part of the show. But Justin, just before we move away from this, don't you think that, you know, it's a good thing that was saying that let's have disappoints is tender to your resignation. And the question for me was don't we, or shouldn't we consider elected officers also tendering their resignation because we understand the dynamics. I mean, the role that, you know, the power of incumbency has always played for every other elections. And so beyond the, you know, all of the externals, I mean, all of the things that we know, but we also understand the power of influence.  Oh yeah, well true, because that's very debatable because some people would say that, fine, haven't been enough is, still been enough is rather, and you're thinking of contesting that you might not really channel all your resources, all your time and energy on government and governance. There's this talk that they might want to divert government money into the campaign and the election process. And that would actually affect, you know, the people at the end of the day. Well, it is still debatable, but there's this, there's still the constitution which has actually guaranteed them, you know, the rightful four years to be treated. But the constitution was made by man and for man. And that's it. All right, we'll take it away from here. We'll come back, we'll look at politics still, but in another direction. This time I will be focusing on a drug integrity test in a moment. We'll join us again.