I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the evening. I'd like to call to order our study session for Tuesday, February 13, 2023. I will ask council member oh 2024 thank you for clarifying that year Going back in time. I saw Huey Lewis playing so I was going back in time out there in the lobby, but anyway I'll ask council member Pulaski to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance All right. the change is good for you. All right. Thank you for doing that. First item on the agenda. Consider appointment to the parks and recreation advisory board city clerk present. Thank you city manager Martinez good evening mayor and council. The Parks and Recreation Advisory Board is recommending the reappointment of Jeremy Hammond as a member of their board. Anybody have any reservations about Jeremy Hammond you said? Is that the same thing? Okay. Okay. I'm not sure if you're going to have a conversation. Anybody have any reservations about Jeremy Hammond? You said? Is that what's the name? Okay. Okay. I have no. I don't see any concern about that here. Are they still yes? We will have a resolution for you at your next meeting then. Okay. And then the next one I think you're hanging out for is the planning commission appointment discussion? Absolutely. All of you got the email that I sent, hopefully I think on Friday. And the recommendation from the interview committee was to appoint Mark Rawlings for the Ward 1 seat and Eric Nelson for the alternate member seat. According to your rules since we've never done this before, it's the policy regarding the interview and appointment the city council. We have a meeting with the staff. We will turn it members seat. We have never done this before. It is the policy regarding the interview and appointment procedures for city board commission and authority members. That was amended and approved on May 17th, 2022. the city council. It states under number two that the two city council members who conducted the interviews will present the recommendations for discussion when more than one applicant has been interviewed for one vacancy. So we had three word one applicants. So now it is up for discussion. Thank you for bringing those candidates to us and sending the email with the applicants. I'll say this real quick. I know Mark Rollins, I worked with him when I was on Burrow with him and I think he's a great recommendation. At this time, I would entertain us to look for other alternates. And that's my opinion about it. So anyone want to add to that? Mayor Pro Tem? Yes, I would add to that. And I would second the same question. I'm comfortable very much with Mark Rollings for the Ward 1 position and for the regular appointment. He's served for a good number of years on Burrah and has expressed an interest in serving on additional boards and commissions and moving his way. He contemplated running for city council this year. I think that that's the right approach. I'm concerned with both of the alternates having looked at their responses and applications. So I'm concerned with one who has lived in the city for less than a year. I know that's not a hard requirement on here, but looking at the rest of it and the recommendation that he'd be considered as an alternate. I don't. I wouldn't support that at this point. And the third candidate. His name I've now forgotten. Yes. Had a response that I confirmed with the folks who did the interview that effectively sounded like he was not comfortable separating personal opinion and desire in development space from what may be best for the city. And that answer is to me the opposite of what we need in the planning commission. So I would rather go back to the drawing board for the alternates. Okay. Thank you. Anybody else want to add? Council member today. Thank you. I'm also in favor of Mark and I have to give it much thought. I do have some concerns about the other two for many reasons, but I think I'm comfortable with just appointing the one and leaving the alternate open for now. And have other people apply for the alternate in the future? But yeah, it, Council Member Green. I just was, where did the recommendation for an alternate come from? We only have one member of the interview committee that was here, but if you can shed any light on that one, because again, and in some of the background and stuff that I've read about that candidate, I don't sure if he's going to be able to do that. Again, and in some of the background and stuff that I've read about that candidate, I don't think that he would be suitable. And again, I have some frustrations with Paul long he's been in the city. How much history he really has of Brighton and what might be best for the city. And so I really was I'd love to hear some of the thought process of why we even got that recommendation for an alternate. I wanted to add to that, Council member, today. Sure. Well, this is the first time I've been on any kind of committee like this. So I'm new and learning. And I think for all the reasons that were stated, it's really how I feel, not in a longevity in Brighton. And it was a red flag. It was torn. And again, I didn't, I guess I didn't know we could say and it was a red flag. It was torn. And again, I didn't know we could say no one for the alternate position because that's really how I feel. And yeah, not being able to separate emotions from, I mean, you have to do that. And sorry, that is a red flag for me. And that basically, that's it. I hope that helps a good way to get the job done. I think that's a good way to get the job done. I think that's a good way to get the job done. I think that's a good way to get the job done. I think that's a good way to get the job done. I think that's a good way to get the job done. I think that's a good way to get the job done. I think that's a good way to saying no. And so I think there wasn't an understanding that that was an option. Anybody else have anything to add? It sounds like we have the recommendation on Mark Rollins and then we will leave the alternate position open for now. We will continue to advertise for that then. Thank you. Thank you so much. So we were supposed to have a legislative update. to you to advertise for that. Thank you. Thank you so much. So we were supposed to have a legislative update. However, there was a scheduling conflict with our legislative people. So we will forego that for now, right? City-Mounted-Denis? That's correct. I take the blame forward too. It's my scheduling snafu. So, can't blame them if they're listening, even though they're getting paid nevermind. It's ours. It's my fault. So we'll have them on future. We'll get that up on a future agenda hopefully maybe in two weeks we'll see what we can do. Send them a calendar of a plan in the next study session. All right so next as this is the Parks and Recreation Show. I see Mr. Kyle's coming up soon. BJA Park, Tennis Court Replacement Discussion, City Manager Martinez. Thank you, Mayor. This is indeed the Parks and Recreation Show. I do wanna point out that we have more than one employee presenting for that department this evening. Not like last council meeting where we had one person from a community development. There were two from them. Ultimately there was two. You're correct. For this first item, we will have Ryan Smith, our parks planning and planning development and grants manager present. And I will turn it over to Ryan. Thank you, Thank you. Mayor Mayer, pro 10 members of council. Thank you for having me this evening. I am here to talk about the BJ AAPARC tennis court replacement. I just wanted to show a quick overview of the picture on the left is really zoomed out almost everything north of the bridge street there on the right just shows where the tennis court is in the side of the park in the southeast corner. And just some background for everybody. It was originally resurfaced in 2018 as part of the bigger park renovation. And we also crack sealed the tennis court in 2021. And it's deteriorated to a point that is very unplayable at this point. And here's a couple pictures to illustrate that. The picture on the left overview from the top. You can see where we did all the cracks ceiling. The surfacing itself has started to peel off of the asphalt. And it's, then that's our pulling out of the ground. It is in very, very poor condition. All right, for this one. So this is what we'd be looking for on the replacement. The picture on the right is actually an aerial view of Colorado Park Tennis Court that we replaced last year. It would be very similar to what BJA Park is slated to look like. Two tennis courts with permanent nets and then four pickleball courts, one on each side of the net. And our rec staff is working on a box where we can put in portable pickable nets so that people can rent them and play. So they're not always on the court itself. We did go out to bid for this solicitation. We received two bids back. And our recommendation would be bid number two for $288,930 with a runner sports surface. And I realized this, you really can't see this, but I did want to make it as part of the packet. So if everybody wanted to take a deep dive, they could look into the actual schedule for the replacement if it were to be accepted next week. The main points to highlight there is they're slating to start in mid-June and they would be looking to finish early September. It is a long process the concrete pure curing process is a month long. Same same with the surfacing itself. It takes a lot of time for that to adhere and make sure it's right before we let anybody back onto it. And at this time I'd be happy you have any questions. Yes, thank you. And I do see, I have it. I pulled it up so I can zoom in on the, on that timeline a little better on my end. Um, I've got questions. Councilmember Tadeo. So I was approached by a resident about wanting more pickleball. And it was explained. I don't know anything about pickleball. It was explained that the nets are different heights. And so can you, it sounds like you are addressing that. Can you, can you dive into that a little bit more detail? Yeah, so you can technically play pickle wall with tennis nets if you were to lower them. It's definitely not ideal because there is like, I think I believe a three inch difference between a tennis net and a pickle wall net. But that's what our rec staff is working on is a system to get actual portable nets in a lock box over there where they can call the rec center. Our rec staff is currently working with different parks and rec agencies such as APACs, Westminster to try and figure out the best solution that they've had success with. Very good. Thank you. Mayor Prattin. Thank you. I'm excited to see this. I do have two questions for you. The first one, I think I've heard the answer, but let me just ask again to be sure. It seems that we had some issues with the post-tension concrete at Colorado Park last year. Is this the same vendor as was doing that? We did have issues last year. We got all those corrected, that we had to do with the new agenda. We did have issues last year. We got all those corrected. This is a different vendor that we've used previously at some of other parks. I thought I heard that last year was the new one. We're returning to group we're comfortable with. Very much so. Yes. second one is I'm looking at again multiple years of ward two tennis court replacements and the presentation to us shows how desperately unplayable these are. Is there any way that we can get just a little bit farther ahead in the schedule and get to them before they become completely unplayable? Absolutely and that's and that's what we're working with right now is we're trying to get to a point where they are at a very good condition in this post-tension concrete. It will last a lot longer than asphalt. So as we replace them year over year, it's not as likely we're going to be coming back every year to do that. So yeah, we're working towards a more proactive approach. Okay. I know we only have so much capital fund per year, but it felt two years in a row if we're getting that far down, then our cycle of refresh isn't quite active enough to get there. But if the change in material helps to increase that, that is a big difference. Absolutely. The asphalt is very detrimental to these courts. It's the post-engine concrete that'll last a long time, and I don't expect to be back here to present something like this to you any any time soon. Excellent. Well, then I'm all for it. Thanks. Good question. Councillor Mare Poloski. Thank you, Mayor. I agree with what the Mayor Pro Tem just spoke on behalf of needing to be on these things a lot sooner. But these courts only lasted six years. Is that typical? Or is it depend on the material or the company? It's because of the asphalt surfacing. It breaks down way quicker. That's why this post-tension concrete. We shouldn't probably throw our money away doing those in, huh? And that's kind of exactly. That's the direction we've gotten to move to this post-tension concrete because it lasts so much longer. It's more cost up front but it lasts significantly longer than the asphalt. Great. Super. Okay. Thank you very much. I'll still remember green. Thank you, bear. A couple of just process questions. You say they're going to be able to be a lock box for these pickable nets at the court site. And then they'll have to go to the rec center to get a key or what? And the rec center will have to be open, of course, for them to play then. Sure. So that's what a rec center is working on now with different municipalities that already do stuff like this Apex and Westminster. It would be more of a call or reserve it in advance and they'd give you a code so then when you showed up on site. So it wouldn't have to be the rec center. It was open if you had reserved for Saturday, say 10am, you'd have a code to get into the list lock box. And is the code going to be able to be changed or once they get the code, they're going to always be able to get in there? That's situations they change the code pretty frequently, but I know there's some blue tooth options out there now That they can even change it from a phone. Okay. That's good. Now and my other question is is there anyway we could bump up that schedule We're gonna basically go full summer without use of any of these courts Under your current schedule there. We start in June and not get done till September So is there any way you could bump that up? You know even in the demo start a little earlier or something. That's my goal. So I haven't been able to talk to this company obviously until I hear what everybody at this council has to say, once I do, I'm going to push to move a lot of that up. Again, this is one of the few companies that is very reliable in this industry. And I think that plays into it, but I do plan on pressing that up quite a bit. I would appreciate that because again, we're gonna have it done for the winter. Absolutely. Good question on the timeline. I was wondering if I was gonna ask. I mean, what kind of temperatures do you need to get that done? I mean, we're gonna hit March really soon. We'll see 50, 60 degree days. That's prime to me. Yeah. it's the big problem is the nighttime time time. Right time. About 40. Yeah, they'd pave highways in the winter. Come on. All right, concrete too. I've seen it, but it'd be else. All right. If it's okay with council, I'd like to put this on. Yeah, I think that's appropriate. the . If it's okay with council, I'd like to put this on the scent for next week. I think that's appropriate. We're going to go into that. Absolutely. Okay. Thank you. And then the cherry meadows park construction. Council. City manager Martinez. I will turn it over to Kyle Sylvester. All right. Thank you Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem Members of Council. Thanks for having me tonight. So we're going over Cherry Meadows Park Construction. So Cherry Meadows is an undeveloped 4.3 acre site that is designated for Park use. The site will serve as a neighborhood park for the surrounding community. Construction shall include water-wise landscaping, zero plants, that kind of thing. Playground, a loop trail that connects to the neighborhood and the regional trail along the south edge of baseline road. Shelter irrigation, picnic tables, dog stations, and other park amenities. And I do want to point out this park's kind of split in half between blue grass and native. So that's for water conservation as well. That's where Terry Meadows is located. The big green area there is the rec center and you cut the pitalo pathway that kind of goes down through to the east. Terry Meadows is there in the red right off of baseline between 17th and 15th. That's what the park looks like in its current state. Again, it's kind of an open area right there and we're going to be turning that into this. So this is kind of a first line right there, and we're gonna be turning that into this. So this is kind of a first line of concept drawings that we had a while back, but you can see the playgrounds there on the east side. We have a lookout tower on the left that kind of overlooks the retention pond and the wildlife, you know, cat tails, that kind of stuff. There's a loop trail there, and some other park communities like shelters and whatnot. And there will be access, it's kind of hard to tell, but maybe that lays right here. There's a stair set coming down into the park from the sidewalk and ADA access over here by the street. So this is what I'm most excited about. We had a really good concept with our design team and they went with that whole kind of riparian look, if you will, so we have some dragonflies and butterflies in there. And this is a climbing structure. You see here on the right, and there's a three slide tower here for the playground. And I think that's a pretty unique look. Good character. We also have some sensory panels that are kind of in these beehives here. These are beehive climbers. A little swing, we call that an arch swing and then just some shade butterfly effects that go with it too. Should be noted that we also got a grant from this in 2022 for $600,000 that will go towards the cost of this. So that certainly helps a lot. That's from the Adams County Open space. And the final procurement slide here, it was advertised on BIDNet. We got four BIDs for that park. We're going to accept BID number three by elite industries as the BID has been deemed the most responsive and responsible of those received. The recommendations based on the firm's past experience on similar projects, staff expertise, positive feedback from the firm's references, and the BID amount was within our budget. And it is not the low expertise, positive feedback from the firms and the bit amount was within our budget. And it is not the low bid, but it's the company that had the most experience with parks. The low bid didn't have a lot of experience with parks and we didn't want to invest in that. We thought that was a better bid for that. So, I know that was a little quick, but I would be happy to answer any questions. All right. I know we've been talking about this for a while, so it'll be good to get it going. It's got questions, councilmember Snyder. Thank you. Great presentation. Now you live in the neighborhood. So nice park. I'll be good. But one of the questions I had and there's absolutely no additional parking. There's just the street parking there. So is that because this is designed to be kind of the residential park and not what we call a neighborhood park? Okay. All right. Right. It's that way a BJA park as well. It's just street parking. Council member Green. Thank you, Mayor. What's the timeline for this one? So it's going to take a little while to get some parts ordered, especially the playground parts. So it's going to take a little park. We're hoping to get construction by April and that will go through the rest of the summer. I hate to put a stamp on it, but I'd say by November we should have a new park in there. Another window park. Do we have non-portable water running to that site? We do not. Thank you. We're put them. Thank you. The first thing I would say is thank you for the open space grant and the application for that and the work to make that happen. As I understand it, this is a part that we actually carry the obligation to create as opposed to the developer. That's correct. It's a unique situation. We usually have the developer build it and we reimburse them. But this is a situation that for whatever reason we agree to it and we're building the park this time. So I was appreciate the assistance in coming up with funding for that. Yeah. And the department does a tremendous job with that. The other question is probably neither here and there and the neighborhood park designation probably helps it, but it seems to be in pretty close proximity to Brighton Park. And I didn't know how those relate, how the service is provided or the people for whom it's being built may differ. Yeah, it is in close proximity, but we still like to see based on our master plan anything within a five minute walking distance of a residence. And we feel, because Terry Meadows is its own subdivision, if you will, there on the hook to get a park built, you know, as part of their subdivision. So we put that in for that reason. But I think it's still on the north and the town and it's in a decent spot. Yeah, I don't have any objection to it. It was just sort of interesting to be in that proximity, although there really isn't anything further deeper into that development. So it really is the space is available towards the edge of it. And then I see a fair amount with the walk-in trails. Does this tie into trail systems from the rec center or are there parts of the community? It will be tying into the baseline trail. That trail we actually maintain that hooks into baseline and goes east to 19th and then back down to Pitaro. So, and then of course once we develop out more they're going to have, I think they're adding bike lanes at some point to baseline, but I don't know when that's going to happen. Great. I was appreciate that they didn't do any kick. It's a wide, I think it's a 10 foot trail along baseline. Perfect. Thank you very much. All right. Council member Tadeo? Oh, Council member Wurf? Thank you, Mayor. I've just got a couple basic questions. Was this park and this may apply to the previous one too? Part of the budget for this year. Did you have to borrow money from any other departments or anything like that? No, we did not. No. We have appropriate budget for it. Yep. Okay, thank you. It's all I got. Thank you. Didn't take it from youth commission. Don't worry. I'm just curious. Council member today. Thank you, Mayor. Um, what are the chances since we have a beautiful park nearby at the rec center of turning it into a dog park? Not that one. into a dog park. Not that one. You know I had to throw that out. We are looking at dog park options though still. Thank you. I'm not going to say about it. Yeah it will be another type of dog park. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Fiddler. Thank you Mayor. It's really a follow up from Councilman Worse question so I'm going to put you in an uncomfortable spot. Are you ready? So I've heard a couple council members ask about timing. Everyone's anxious for you to go. Let's get this thing going. What's your best estimate on the amount of time loss by having to bring that back to four council to have this discussion and then wait another week to have us approve it? It could six weeks at least. Yeah, at least. Yeah. At least. Yeah. Okay. Two months, two weeks. How long have you had the project ready to go? Six, six, eight weeks? Yeah. Okay. Projects were budgeted for cooling grant money. You guys have done all the all the background work. You have follow-up procurement processes. You've made your selections. And if Aaron is to Michael, he's got to put a agenda together and there are things that come up. And you guys are kind of in the queue, so to speak. That's right. I appreciate the answer to the questions. That's fine. And in some of these cases too, like in this particular situation, there is a little delay to be fair with I'm not sure if you're going to be able to do that. There is a little delay to be fair with with the ordering of the playground pieces and stuff there is a delay for that. So that's added into that. But I would never want council to be an obstacle to you getting your work done and I appreciate that. The efficient and quick time possible. As people are worried about getting in the ground. So I'll stop there. Thank you, Mayor. Anybody Anybody else? Oh, I put them follow up. Just one follow up to that. Does that mean that you're saying by talking about this meeting to this subject tonight and then voting on it next week that seven days cost us six weeks on the schedule? No, still just getting everything on the agenda and the schedule as far as once the contract bids come in, it's a process with everything. So it's all added up. Right. But it's not the fact that we've got seven days between this discussion and a vote. No, no, that doesn't delay it six weeks. Maybe the process in general could delay it. If that makes better sense. Thanks. You guys are going to give me a trouble. Just. All right. If nobody else, I don't see a problem with getting this on next week's agenda. Great. Well, thanks. We're excited to get it in. All right. Thanks. And then the Waterside Demolition Design and Install. Little Carleens coming up too. City Manager Martinez. Closing out the Parks and Recreation Show tonight, we have Carleen Watts, our Assistant Director of Recreation Services. Along with the whole team too, who's going to stay up here? Yeah, thank you. They're going to support me, I guess. Good evening Mayor, Mayor Pro Tem and members of Council. Thank you for having me here this evening. I am so pleased to be here to present you the water slide demolition design and install. So the slide was built in 1992 and the staircase was replaced in 2013. The slide was then closed to the public in early 2023 due to extreme corrosion. The high humidity and heavy exposure to chlorinated water makes the indoor aquatic environment extremely corrosive to steel. In January of 2023, an inspection determined that the steel had outlived its typical lifespan and a full replacement was necessary. The solicitation is to design a new water slide to mimic the current path, demo the existing slide, fabricate and install the new open body flume. During the process, the vendor will need to evaluate the footings and determine if a replacement is necessary. The completion of the project is projected to take eight months, with only the last two months affecting our operations. In order for the demolition and the install to take place, the aquatic team will need to drain the pools in August. This aligns perfectly with our natural break from summer swim lessons and our carousel team. Additionally, the closure would fall over our annual maintenance shutdown. This is a regular reoccurring closure of the entire Brighton Recreation Center used to perform necessary maintenance that cannot be completed during normal operations. For our new members, this has been a challenging project that has taken over a year to obtain bids. We have put this project out four times over the last year with the most recent receiving one response for the amount of $476,200. I'm able to answer any questions at this time. Thank you, Carly. I'm gonna start real quick. This is a golden opportunity if there's any more maintenance projects that need done outside of our normal two week shut down in September is there something else that needs done while the pools drained there's no aquatics available for two months what else can be done yeah I'm sure our aquatic team has plenty of just normal yearly maintenance that we could step in and do. I know that we have a replacement of a broken window as well that needs to be taking place. So we might be reevaluating some curtains in the aquatic area. So definitely taking the opportunity to, you know, inspect the drains all of those things so that in that time we can get as much done as possible. And then will the residents have access to a neighboring rec center, like we normally do during the two week shutdown, for this time for two months? Correct. So for Lepton Recreation Center is currently doing an aquatic expansion right now. And we have been partnering with them to allow their members to use our aquatic area during this time in collaboration to have our members be able to use their space. Additionally, we're still working with a few other rec centers to have that option during the August and September time. Fort Leptin is one that I have solidified right now. So we believe that their project will be done before we have to shut down our aquatic center. There's this projected to be done in May, early May. So hopefully they are not extending into August. That would be quite... There will be a little bit of buffer there. Yes. By the way, as Fort Leptin has a great lazy river too, if you know I said if we had one. Thank you. Thank you. Council members Snyder always is only open for two months out of the year by the way. Thank you very much for the presentation and I'm excited to see that slide get replaced. It's quite expensive and I understand that a lot of that is liability insurance, completed job insurance trying to find somebody that will actually do the projects. I get it, but my concern is they have to inspect the case on after they tear it down. If they have to replace those, is that included in that $476,000 bid and if not, do we have an estimate of what you're going to have to come back and ask us for in addition? Do you have some kind of a number from them if they do have to replace it? Yes, thank you. You are correct and we already are working with our procurement office. We have a solicitation already written up and we know that it will cost in the range of 150,000 to 200,000. Well, also how much will that add to the timeline of the closure, too? We have outlined up. And again, the company that we are working with, the one that submitted the solicit or the bid, they believe that they will be able to identify if they will need to be replaced earlier on than the actual demolition of the slide. So our hope is that we would be able to identify that early on, get that presented to you in the next month or two, and then have them lined up ready to go immediately after the demolition, therefore not adding any time to the installation. Does that make sense? Okay. Well, it's Council member Green. And so what are we doing with the new slide to make sure that it doesn't have the same problems this slide has? Because it is going to be in a wet environment. It is going to have the same humidity in problems in being a wet environment that this current slide has. So what are we doing so that this won't happen again or at least can last longer? Absolutely. So normal maintenance and inspections throughout weekly, daily and even monthly will take place to educate you about a lifespan of a slide. Indoor aquatic slides usually last about 25 years. So this slide is at 30 years. So it has outlived its lifespan, and that's why we are seeing the corrosive environment that we're seeing right now. Is that it? Okay. Councilmember Tadayle. Thank you. You say that you we had difficulty getting somebody to submit a bid. How much experience does this company have? Since it's basically our only choice. So this company actually did the replacement at Port Leptin Recreation Center for their sites, stairs to their slides, excuse me. They've done a few other slide remodels here in Colorado as well as in South Dakota. So they've done quite a few slides. The nice part about the company is they've got quite a few very well-known subcontractors also on their list that are highly regarded in the aquatic industry for slide remodels. That's very reassuring. Thank you. Anybody else, any questions? Comments, concerns? Ready to approve for next week? All right. Thank you. Good job. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Good job. Thank you. Move and write along. Discussion on governance. Open meetings law, open records, and ethics for city council members. And this would be city attorney called her own. Thank you. Mayor, Mayor, pretend members of Council. Some of you who have been here for while know that annually around this time, normally we would have Cerca representatives come and do a presentation. The content of their presentation is wrapped into what I will be covering this evening. Additionally, as you recall, we updated our ethics code last year. I did a series of presentations for pretty much every department in the city for employees in the city talking about ethics reviewing the updated ethics code. So we'll talk a little bit about that as well. And this year, in addition to City Council between myself and Yasmeena, we will be doing a presentation to all of our boards and commissions. So I was privileged to already do an ethics presentation with the Youth Commission, and that was very fun. So let's see if you can ask questions. Yeah, that's good. As the youth were asking questions, because trust me, they had some good ones. So that and and the whole point of this as I have been telling everyone right ethics isn't easily black or white. It's not always yes or no. So one of the goals is to have ongoing discussions, right? We want to talk about these things. We want to talk about what the best practices are on an ongoing basis, not just once a year, but maybe once a month. So governance, you are the governing body of the city of Brighton. Does anyone want to try to answer what it means to you? Governance? This is going to be an interactive presentation. This is not the only question in the presentation. I want to take a stab at it. Okay, well, we'll continue. So as the governing body, what it means for you all, where you find your sources, well, that didn't work. They just jumped ahead. I don't know. Oh, you wanted us to answer the things that are on the slide. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Well, apparently, they're not going to show up. Exactly. Right. So they are your guidance, right? You look at the charter. We look at the charter first every time. Then we look at the municipal code. Then we look at your city council rules. You are as a body who sets the policy and who provides the big picture. We are now doing annual strategic planning. Thank you, City Manager. That's coming up next month. And so that the answers are in the presentation in the packet, but apparently we're not going to see them here. But thank you, Tom. OK. The animation doesn't work thank you, Tom. OK. The animation doesn't work as well, apparently. So I don't know. We'll see if this works at all. So the next question is who governs? Did he cast a button during the interview? Yeah, because now you know the answers to some of these are in here. Correct. Yes. I don't know the answers to some of these are in here. Correct. Yes. I don't know what happened to the other one. Right. As individuals, you can't make something happen. You can't force things to happen. It is you as a body and that is the majority. That is what governs. And unlike other governmental entities, I know the answers in the packet and on the cheat sheet in front of you. Right? But we're unique in our nonpartisan requirement and that's every local government in Colorado. But right at the county, at the state level, that is not true. Yeah. We are not unique. It's every city and town. And school district. Yes. You don't have to put a party on your balance. Right. And then, um, here's the other question. I didn't give you the answer to this one. What's the role that the mayor has? Is the tiger. Is not the typewriter. The mayor has one of nine votes. The difference is that the mayor runs the meeting. Yeah, and you're correct in Robert's rules frequently. the person who's chairing is your tiebreaker, often at a legislative level, at the state legislature, at the federal level, they're the tiebreaker. But here the mayor is one more vote of nine. Although the mayor is the ceremonial head. So frequently your resolutions may say the mayor can sign things. The mayor is the public face for all of you, but in terms of governance, it is still the majority and the mayor is one vote of nine, just like every one of your votes. There are some cities where the mayor is the tiebreaker though, not in this city. of your votes. There are some cities where the mayor is the tiebreaker though, not in this city. Yep. So. So which are your employees that you directly appoint? point. I don't. As councilmember Polowski said, it's the municipal judge, the city attorney and the city manager. And why is that important? I gave you a cheat version of it, the charter, but I didn't give you what the charter language says, but I'm betting Peter can quote it for us. I can't quote it directly. For the item, but everyone else in the city reports to one of those three. Those are the only three who we have any direct assertion of authority and over. the city's city's city's city's city's city city city city city the city. Yeah, can be have a have a slightly different role but. The brightened version our charter is the what we call the Council manager version. And our that provision in our charter we call it the non interference provision right there is a provision that basically says, you can tell your director pointies what to do. That's pretty much the city manager and the city attorney, but that the employees that are our employees, you as a council may not interfere. You can't really judge what to do. And the judge, you cannot tell any municipal judge what to do in an individual case, but you can provide direction to the court. You can ask for specific programs, for example, like if you would like to see a teen court program or if you'd like to see a drug court. You can provide the same policy direction, but you will get into big trouble if you actually try to interfere with a criminal case. As a council. As a council individually, as a council member, it can be actually cited as interference in a criminal case, and you could be criminally cited for such interference. So you can direct you such as a team corridor drug court. We have to be as a council. Correct. As a council, if you wanted to direct a programming ideas, that would be as a majority of council. So, Cerse would talk to you about your best practices. So I want to be sure we cover that because if most of you know Cerse is our insurance, the act is our insurer. They're not technically an insurance company if you wanted the technicalities. But what Cersei wants you to understand is what are the things that you can do to help us avoid liability? How do we not get sued? Right? And so one of the things is you have changed your role. You're not just a citizen, but as a public official, you have now this public facing persona. It also, we're going to talk coming up in a few months, in a couple months about social media. Right? What you say and what you do matters in a way that it may not be taken quite as seriously or have the same impact when you're an individual citizen only. What protects you is to follow our procedures, whether that's what's in the charter, in the code, or even our own rules. So our own consistency and following our own practices. Anything that we have in our municipal code or our rules, you all as a majority can change. So if there's something you don't wanna follow, let's do it right, change the practice, change the policy first, don't just ignore what we have written in our code. So that helps all of you avoid liability. Cerca will provide representation, plus you have protections under the Colorado Governmental Immunity Act for tororts, which is just legal language for cases involving injuries. We do not use Cerca if we get sued on a contract breach, for example, that we either defend in the City Attorney's Office or we hire other council, but anything that is involving injury, damages, that is a surce provides coverage. If you're acting within the scope of your employment and if you're not acting willfully and want in me. So what is within the scope of your employment? You might ask because you're not exactly employed, but your essentially your job description is what is in the charter for what your responsibilities and duties are. So that's your job description. If you ever wonder if it's within the scope, you certainly could check with myself, but you can look first to the charter. That is your guidance. When we talk about acting willfully and wantonly, there are things that either I've told you here, or you have known because they have been in law enacted for a number of years. So if you openly choose to discriminate someone on the basis of their race, you would be acting willfully and wantonly. That is a law that has been in effect for a long period of time and you should know that violating that is acting willfully and will intently. And then Cerca doesn't have an obligation to defend you and the Governmental Immunity Act doesn't protect you. And just remembering that you're part of a whole body individually, right? You have very little authority, but you as a body have a lot of authority, and as long as you are acting as a body, that also protects you. So any actions, right, votes that you may take up here on the dius will downstairs at the dias. You are protected for those votes and generally for anything you would say. Any questions about that? So what I just did in five minutes, Cerca does in two hours, just going to say. So I probably left out a lot. No, you got the important points. Okay. You have some council member Fidler. Please have a move back to slide. The use is out of my head. We only have power. Council member. Well, these are So that's the city manger. Yes. Man, this is a manger. That's my Christmas name. It's too early. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So you know Yeah, yeah. It's really hard for the city manager to tell individual council members. I'm good with this that or the other. Say, oh, I'm sorry. Maybe you have a better city charter. You're not allowed to do that. It's been a really bad spot. So I'm going to put the expectations on this council. We have. We deposit governance in school district. expectations are that this council will be involved in the police is that. Here we have, we need positive evidence that this will district. I actually do not buy a given report on that with enough people to step outside of that and not act it within their governance. I've never reported that. You should report that. I'm not actually having that. Right, but that's my point. It puts it to use end costs. I'm really out of reach a buy. It is our role that is in its fall and on the board then the government to police that if you want to just wonder what things are in case this. Well, you're right. The primary ones holding each other accountable are you guys, right? These city council, you as members are responsible for holding each other accountable. the city's office is the city's office is the city's office is the city's office is the city's office is the city's office is the city's office is the city's office is the city's office is the city's office has provided some support in that provided some support in that arena in terms of, you know, maybe this is crossing a line. especially in light of the new especially in light of the new ethics code where you can get new ethics code where you can get an opinion, a formal opinion from the city attorney's office that protects you one way or the other. But generally speaking, yeah, the city manager is in a very difficult position if asked, and or told. And I'm not going to say it hasn't happened right it it definitely has happened that individual council members in the past I'm not speaking about anyone on council currently but there certainly were requests you should fire this person you should hire this person it it has definitely crossed that line and only you all can truly police each other. And what is our recourse? The censure is censures about the only thing you can do is only a bit official. Censure is if you are looking to discipline, however, in the spirit of transparency, which is our next topic, honestly bringing it up, right? By not talking about it, you allow it to continue. But you can bring it up at a study session and say, hey, I understand this has happened. And we as a body didn't give this direction and nor do we want to interfere with the city manager or city manger, whichever one. And we, you know, we want to be really clear that we have not given that direction as a body. So, remember, Blosky? Well, I'm sorry that not every member of council is in here tonight to hear this. And you can take that however you want. But one of the things I'm curious about is we've talked since I two years ago was placed on council About looking at the charter and readdressing some specific You know the whole I have you gone through that process yet? Are we started or be going to or what's happening? That is actually on an agenda for the end of March End of March. Okay. That's, I think it's really important. And I think all of us need to be sitting here and thinking about different aspects of that to try to take the pressure off of Michael that I know he's faced many times. So, and whether it's Michael or whoever it is, whoever's in that position shouldn't be having to face or you either. And that's, I want that stuff to stop. So that's where I'm coming from. Thank you. Anybody else? What protection does the city have? Oh yeah, helping the mic. Sorry, thank you, Mayor. What protection does the city have to avoid liability? You know, I know this is talking about what we what protections we have. What does the city have to avoid liability? You know, I know this is talking about what we are protections we have. What does the city have with you know, with Michael acting as a city manager, what protection is afforded to him? So similarly, for city employees, acting within your scope of employment and not acting willfully and want to apply to city employees as well. and not acting willfully and want to apply to city employees as well. For the governmental immunity act, most actions are protected, but then there are explicit areas that are not covered. We do not have governmental immunity for certain things like known hazards. We don't operate an electric utility, but I believe that's one of the exempt ones that's not covered, you know, protected. So there's a list of things that are, we don't have governmental immunity. We also purchase some extra extra protection extra insurance, I guess. So for example, the Rule 106 that went up to the district court, so an appeal, a Rule 106 is an appeal of a final decision that we have made, that the city manager is made, or that we as a council have made, we have an extra line of coverage for that. For it only covers the first $10,000, but it provides this coverage and then we take over from there, which is very helpful. We also have the ability to get extra cybersecurity insurance. So we purchase insurance for the areas that either the CGA, the governmental immunity act doesn't cover or source that doesn't cover. The other questions? Okay. So along with liability insurance, let's talk about open meetings law. And what is a public meeting? I'm pretty sure everybody knows the answer. How many people get together does it suddenly become Three or more you've got it. I know you all knew that one You know the the the purpose of it was always intended to be Transparency and that policy making is done in public session We have on occasion not very often had some sort of issue. I can't remember what it was, but about a year ago there was something that everyone wanted to discuss. And I said, you can't, it doesn't, we can only meet an executive session when it falls into these set categories. It is, you know, there are things that maybe you wish you could have an executive session on, but you cannot. And you must have those discussions and sometimes they are difficult discussions in an open setting. And pretty much that's probably me, that's the stopgap, because I'm the one that says, mm-hmm, that doesn't meet it and we cannot do it. If you wanna know generally what we can meet in executive session for legal advice, personnel decisions, if we are purchasing real property negotiations, anything that's confidential or proprietary, otherwise if it was set out somewhere else that is confidential, that's kind of, I think I said personal. See if we're saying all right. That's what we're agreeing. But if a legal question arises during a meeting, we can ask for legal advice without doing a 24-hour in advance notice of an executive session. We should because that's already on the agenda as an executive session. No, we don't have an executive session under the agenda, we just have an issue under it, but we want some legal advice as part of the discussion it came up where we ask for legal advice, we could then ask for an executive session for legal advice about that issue. Correct. Yeah, generally, I mean, we do it all the time where a question may come up and I will answer that question. But if at some point the question that came up was something that I felt needed to be discussed in an executive session, we would not call an executive session on the spot. We would have to notice it. So what I would have to do is I would have to answer, we'll have to discuss that later. Because there are times that the information that I'm going to share with you is not information that can be in the public realm generally, right? That involves litigation or personal actions. There's really no other categories. Anything else that you would ask me in an open session, I would answer. But anything in those two categories, I'm going to withhold. Council Member Klowski. Can you tell me, under executive session, that second item line there, should must be specific enough? It should be being there. I'm curious. I'm not. I'm being. I know. This is what I get. I don't think I had. Yes, me and I didn't correct any of this. Yes. And actually, thank you for pointing out that bullet because that is actually what Aurora just got in trouble for three weeks ago. The decision is very recent. I would say our postings for executive session are very good. We meet the letter of the law. We say what the purpose is and you have to say what the purpose is and what the statutory citation is. Some jurisdictions do a laundry list and they cite all of them. Well, that doesn't tell you what you're actually going into executive session for. That doesn't meet the requirements. But the other thing that doesn't meet it if the topic of your session isn't specific enough to let the public know what you're actually talking about. And we always do. I don't know if you've noticed, but our emotions will always say, right? We're talking about, we haven't done a purchase of real property, but we would say a purchase of real property if that's what it was about. We have even said when it was involving personnel, we have named the person that we're talking about. When we were talking about a specific council member in executive session, we named the person. So we have been quite specific and I feel comfortable, but a lot of other jurisdictions are having to change their practices because they have been vague and just use the language in the statute instead of actually saying what they're talking about. So the executive question or executive session question I have is we know that these apply to us, but I think we may need to be influencing some of the other entities where we sit on the boards. In particular, I'm thinking at the moment, I don't think the notices from the housing authority meet these requirements. So while we don't. We merely have seats on that and we point people to it. I think we have an obligation to make sure that the entities we sit on are the same. So while we don't, we merely have seats on that and we point people to it. I think we have an obligation to make sure that the entities we sit on are the same. Those that we actually manage, maybe Legacy Foundation or Burrow would be a better example of some that we have more direct influence over. Are we looking at their policies and advising as well? We do not get to advise those who have their own legal counsel. So the housing authority in Burra have their own separate legal counsel. But when you are on their board and acting in that capacity, you are correct. You have that obligation because you as individuals can be held responsible for not meeting the requirements of the executive session law? The open meetings law. My second comment on open meetings is just an administrative one, but it's one that in many organizations is merely a nuisance for us. It begins to start the law and that's just being very careful on reply versus reply all. If we all receive an informational email from the city manager or from the mayor or from the city attorney, if you reply directly to that person you're having a conversation, if you reply to all of the council members, then you are creating a meeting and a conversation. And when that has to do with, are you going to attend an event or do you want this for supper? That's probably not terribly problematic when it has something to do with an issue that's coming before us or our position in a lawsuit then that becomes tremendously problematic. I'm glad you brought that up because if you notice in the outlook, if you just simply try to go to the if you're in the app for Outlook and you just simply try to reply by just typing in the text below it automatically assumes you're applying all so you need to make sure you're applying directly to that person you intend to have the information to just don't reply there you go. just don't reply. There you go. Council member Fiddler. Thank you, Mayor. Just a curiosity for me. So Cheryl does a great job inviting us to everything under the sun, right? And I mean, that's so many opportunities to be with us Chamberlain Chins, the Penhack Center, Vantia the Night. So there are often three or more of us in a room. And we, you don't, there's no business occurring, but art. What does that look like? So there is an exception for social meetings, but I have also that this is the reason why Cheryl sends you the invites. I have confirmed with her and she is correctly posting any of those meetings where three or more of you have RSVP. So that is why she tracks those RSVPs and then she posts them. If they are 100% easily purely social, she does not. But anything that posts even in agenda, even if it's a social agenda, she will post that as a meeting. I think a good example of that is the ad cog meetings. So I'll have those quarterly dinners with their neighboring municipalities. And there could be three or more of us out of table. Now we shouldn't be discussing business obviously. It should be more of a social setting, but it's good to have those posted just in case. And she does post those. Yeah. So we, she and I have conferred and confirmed. Yep. I think when we have the combined 27J and Commerce City, um, combined me, I believe those get posted to. And I think on the agenda's below when, when, uh, 27J hosts, I think it says there will not be business contact that or something like that. Yeah. Anybody else? No, it's time for ethics. Leave you. I could give you the scenario that I employees gave, but I want to make you answer that one. Okay, so let's talk about ethics. It is section 210 of the municipal code. And the first question I always ask is who is covered? Are you, can you guys answer who all is covered by the ethics code? All of us sit in here. All of you sitting here? And the employees. And the employees. All of the people come to the meetings. Where are the employees that attend meetings? Yes. And many of the volunteers appointed to our boards. And board and commission members. Any board and commission member that's a city board or commission? Contractor and employees. Not our independent contractors now. I think it's important that everybody realizes it's not just about transparency and conflict of interest, but as stated in the code, it is to discourage actions that create the appearance of impermanence. And what is the purpose I ask this one just so that I have the opportunity to read to you what the language is because I think it's important that everybody realizes it's not just about transparency and conflict of interest, but as stated in the code, it is to discourage actions that create the appearance of impropriety that undermines the public trust and prohibits public officials and employees from acting on any matter in which he or she may have a conflict of interest. And I think folks sometimes forget that the appearance of impropriety is sometimes just as important as whether there's an actual conflict or an actual ethical issue as to why you shouldn't participate. Cam. There's, it also seems sometimes that the state statutes I can't. I there's. It also seems sometimes that the state statutes and municipal code are pretty heavily focused on direct financial benefit as the gain there are certainly other things that matter for ethics, but that's the primary one that I see that the rules apply to. Correct, and you're jumping ahead, so we'll get there. It's a good job. And how would you all define confidential information. Confidential info. Correct anything in executive session is definitely one. We also receive emails that may contain privileged information for lawsuits or maybe identified in the header as confidential. That's good. The definition in the code is basically any information that you receive that is not available to the general public. And you've received that information because of your position with the city. So sometimes you receive information early that will be released to the public. But while it is in those early stages, you are receiving that because of your position. The city manager will be sure to indicate when those circumstances occur, but you cannot disclose that until it has been publicly released. Now, let's talk about a conflict of interest. And this is what council member Padea was talking about. I would say when you talk about conflict of interest both in state statutes and a municipal code, the focus is very much financial. And a conflict of interest. Let's see. And our code, there's eight of them. I would say they pretty much all have to do with a financial interest just worded in various ways. So, for example, a substantial interest in any transaction. A relative with a substantial interest, a substantial interest in a business, a substantial interest, as an affiliate of a business, being an officer or an organization, having an official position with an organization. So it goes on but they pretty much all say the same thing. A substantial interest, our code does have sections. So if you are ever analyzing whether something is a conflict of interest, sometimes our code is using substantial interest and sometimes it is just using the term interest or financial interest. So the definition of a substantial interest is what's on the board, which is a financial stake, which when you consider all the circumstances would tend to influence the decision of a reasonable person faced with making the same decision. If any of you have ever talked to lawyers, that is how we like to speak. I'm not saying I speak that way, I'm just saying that is lawyer speak. We assume that there is a reasonable person out there who is the aggregate average person and what they would do is what they're saying is what they're comparing this to. And that is when in the legal world when we use definitions or we talk about a reasonable person or that is what we mean by that. But sometimes we're talking about just generally an interest and that could be pecuniaries, another term for basically financial, a property interest, a commercial interest, but when we use the term financial, I wanna point out that it has the, or any other interest. So that is where it can be much broader than just financial. And I always point out the accept because sometimes folks get a little confused. All kinds of things come before you as a council. There are questions sometimes about whether you may have a conflict of interest. One of the key exceptions here is if it impacts everyone, generally situated in the same situation, that is not a conflict of interest. So that is why when making, for example, land use decisions, some of you may be more impacted, some of you less because it's in your neighborhood or not in your neighborhood, but you still get to make those decisions generally because it's not impacting you. It's not a decision for your block. If it's a decision for your block, I'm going to have you recuse. But if it's a decision for your neighborhood, it's impacting the entire neighborhood, not just you individually. And that's why you don't have to recuse. It's impacting others who are generally, it's a larger group than just you or just a few of your neighbors. Is that not just neighbors, but your ward? Your ward's considered your neighbors. Is that what you're meaning? Or correct. If it impacts your ward, you still get to vote on it or not vote on it because it's impacting a larger group. Okay. Well, you said if it's on your block, you would have us recuse. Oh, if it's if it's if it's a decision that's only impacting one block. So if we were talking about tree heights for tree height for like just one black. It was more like a mirror. It was greater than one block. I don't know if it was my block. So... Like there were speed tables installed like right, like within feet of my house. Correct. And I don't recall that you got to vote one way or the other on whether those speed tables would be right in front of your house or not. Yeah, they were, I mean, we didn't, I mean, I voted along with everyone else for the placement of them, but it was a whole like so many streets. Correct. You voted for multiple ones that were impacting multiple neighborhoods because one impacted you, you got to still vote because it was impacting others generally. But if it just impacted me in my process. If it had been just the one, yeah, you wouldn't have been voting on that either, but it just been the one. The other thing that is important is when we're talking about complex of interests, substantial interest, I need to let you know what the definition of relative is because it is not just your conflict of interest, but a conflict of interest if it also could impact your relative and when I say relative, our definition is any person related by blood, marriage or adoption through the second degree of out. I know he's related to everyone. But put that in like much more plain English that is your spouse, your parents, your parents-in-law, your brothers, your sisters, your brother and sisters-in-law, your children, your children-in-law, your grandparents, uncles, nieces, nephews, aunts. So it is not just your immediate family. Peter, sorry. That is correct. That is not marriage or an in-law at this point. No. Okay, we're not going into that. Okay, true. We're really sitting up on the old wall. She doesn't want to better go get me. I don't think anyone's gonna go tell her that. Thank you. So within Article 210, we have the 2-10-30 that I call the Shell Naut section. It's such a fun section. It is right. You cannot use your position for financial gain. You can't use or disclose confidential information for personal gain or for relatives gain. You cannot take official action on any matter in which the employee has a conflict of interest. You've already observed how we handle that, which is to have the individual council member state that they have or may have a potential conflict of interest. They recuse, they leave the room and they return after the voting is concluded. And you will not perform any official act on any matter that impacts your interest. Those are the straightforward shallnots. We continue with you shall not use city property or employee services for personal gain or advantage except like any other person who is not a city employee. So yeah, that's not allowed. But if you wanted to rent a park for a family gathering, you can fill out an application and pay the fee just like any other individual who lives in the city, right? So if it's something that's generally available to everyone, you can do the same process for the same benefit. Where GITS tricky is, you shall not accept a gift. And what is a gift? It cannot be straightforward. It's actually in the code. The more important section is what is not a gift. the more important section is what is not a gift. But would anyone like to take a stab at what is a gift? Because what I have in yellow is what is not. Oh. Mayor. Yeah, go ahead. I'm just curious because on the 5 o'clock news today, the mayor of Denver was honored with tickets to the Super Bowl. Is that a conflict? That is a gift that is impermissible under the state law and pretty sure under Denver. At the count of so to he and his son both were given tickets so I was just curious how she's not the city attorney for Denver. Thank goodness. I'm letting everyone know here what is not a good idea. But if we were to get a gift, I think it's good for us to consult with our city attorney to see a fact that it's acceptable or not. There is a state of dollars limit on. Yes. So let me let's start. What is a a gift is anything of value without giving adequate and lawful consideration again, sorry for the legal term, but it's valued less than $65, that is not a gift. If it's a gift from a friend or a relative, on a special occasion is what it says. But basically, your friends and relatives can still give you gifts. You can get paid for speaking, giving a speech at a public event that is not a gift. You can be paid for your work, your salary, congratulations, or whatever your work may be. You can be paid for your work. That is not a gift. your work maybe, you can be paid for your work. That is not a gift. Where it gets trickier is things like conferences or if someone wants to gift you things. You may accept payment for someone can pay for you to travel to attend a conference if they are a nonprofit organization or a governmental organization. But if it is a for-profit organization, you will not be able to accept that. If it is something that's important to you to attend, the city will pay for you to attend. So you just have to bring it up to the city manager and council has actually a budget for that but we do not want you accepting that free conference for if it's a for-profit organization. Council member Green, thank you bear what if they want to pay for you to attend a conference where you're going to give a presentation. So technically, I'm going to give you speech. Mm-hmm. And that, I mean, essentially that is payment for your speech and that would be permitted. Yeah, I mean, when you get the invite, yeah. And then they find out you're not from nine news. And I would say things like tickets, yeah, to sporting events and those kinds of things. That is, I think, in part the reason why the state constitutional amendment was added, that is where the $65 limit comes from is the amendment that was added to the state constitution. It ratchets up every five years. So we were at $50. We're now at 65 inflation. A cup of coffee costs a lot more today than the years too. But we do have some ways around it. So, for example, Cheryl, since you invite two events that are maybe ticketed events, you're allowed to attend some of those events because sometimes the city is the sponsor for the event. Sometimes it may be because it's a nonprofit organization offering those tickets. But we do have to analyze those when those offers come up. That's my Vagrina question. I'm just looking for loopholes. I have friends that have avalanche tickets. have friends that have avalanche tickets. They don't even live in the city of Brighton and previous, they've given me a ticket or two to attend. Would I that still be a gift now? Is there a close friends that are? It would still be a gift, but thank goodness there's the personal friends. As Tom Green not as council member Green, they don't care that up next to their Prussia that I am but they give it to his board president notice I heard that. You got to I only have one more slide that is very much a reminder as you're aware we do get open records requests fairly regularly. Lately it seems like an incredible amount. Natalie could probably tell you but I feel like we're up to a dozen a week. It's been quite nuts. But when we talk about open records, open records is defined as all writings made or kept by us as a city. But then writings actually is defined to include maps and videos and any other type of recording. So writings doesn't mean writings, writings just means anything. And I say this because, right, we live in a world of right, instant messaging and text and emails. And we are sending messages back and forth all the time. And I always want to remind folks that, you know, don't ever write an email that you don't want to see in the front page of the paper. We do get open records or quests, especially when it's for emails. We have the ability to run those email searches through IT. We'll tell you we've had a request, but we aren't necessarily going to run every email by you. We're going to release it if we are required to. And if there's a request for that, text messages are under the law, under Cora, a bit more of a question, but I am going to tell you that if there's ever any sort of litigation, and you discussed the topic of that litigation, we will be pulling those text messages for discovery for those purposes as well. So the message on that one is yes, think before you hit send on any of those things The good thing about these meetings is that they are also recorded Our study sessions used to not be recorded You know they ever need to be cord. I mean easy to pull they only need a cord They just pull it up on a video from the website. Yeah, these kinds of things are that any of your meetings correct They are an easily accessible public record. We try to make it that way. We are making all of that also more accessible to the disability community. I don't know if you recall, but we added closed captioning only year, year and a half ago, year and a half ago. And so it's not, it's about making it public, but it's also nowadays about making it accessible. Yep. But we can't be held liable for anything that's willfully and wantonly in error that's set in a public meeting or not. You can misspeak and you would not be, you would be defended. However, again, the, the wanton in willful is if you choose to openly discriminate or make threats towards others. Those are things that would not be defended. Good question. Anybody have any wrap up comment? Question? All right. Thank you for keeping us out of the show. Welcome. You're only your second month. Remember that. All right. Thank you city attorney Calderone. So the next item is our policy items. If anybody has anything to bring up, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you. I do have three things that I want to bring up tonight. The first one is I've learned today that officially our youth commission is not able to attend the NLC conference. And it appears that the rules for attendance seem to have changed over the course of this year. And I'm disappointed that the NLC has not made that possible for us to participate in. And I actually think that that's worthy of having the council as a whole communicate I would like to see if people are willing to support having our city manager work with our youth commission adult response and send a communication on our behalf. by half. I'll be sending a letter. Yep. Signed by the council. Signed on behalf of the council. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's an important event. It's something that they have done an excellent job representing us at. And I don't like the idea that they've been frozen out of that. I guess the attendance was limited this year, but the rules on how that was being enforced didn't come into play. It wasn't a certain or a limit on the number of participants per city, and it really came a bit out of the blue. I'll be seeing the NLC board president, David Sandor while I'm in LLC. And I can mention that, but I think having a letter as well, signed by the council would be something that would get their attention. So, do you have a comment and about that or okay, we'll keep Peter going. Yep, sorry. Okay. The second one, I know that you were, I'll let you bring this up if you wanted to. Do you want to bring anything up on the construction defects registration? Why didn't we bring that with you? Well, just so you know, the Metro mayors is in the midst of writing a letter of support for the latest litigation or not litigation, the latest legislation on construction defects to limit some of the liability is going on so we can actually get things like condominiums built in the state. And so I'll be signing that letter along with however many mayors decide to sign off on that. And so that's coming soon. I saw just a very preliminary letter that should be going out next week. And I think there are a few things that we may ask you as council members to express some opinions or that may ask you the ability to express an opinion on behalf of the council, because I think there's some legislation being introduced what came as Senate Bill 2013 last year, the land use bill from the governor's office was easy to oppose because it was one bill in every city in the state was opposed to it. That's going to be much more challenging this year where I think there are about 12 bills, but we're definitely broke it up to engage in that communication on a regular basis. My last piece is sort of an ask of staff because I don't think there's a direct answer on this tonight, but with affordable housing being such an incredible topic and I know we have a strategic planning session coming up and I'm imagining that there's going to be something there. I think explicitly what I would want to know is a council members where can we work to set policy and make our policy clear or establish appropriate exceptions to policies to encourage affordable housing. Because I hear from housing authority or hear from developers, well, we just can't get past X rule. But I don't know what all of those those rules are and where our department has already taken those things into account in developing land use code in developing municipal code. may need to act and perhaps even change guidance from where it was before to be able to encourage that. As an example, I know that there's a draft bill out there to essentially undo all minimum parking requirements at apartments and make those parking requirements, parking space requirements unenforceable. We just went through the action of increasing our parking requirements given our circumstances in Brighton, which may be different from a community that lives directly on a mass transit rail. But that also is a concern. There was a public meeting not too long ago that was looking at design options for Adam's point. The space for the old courthouse was at 19th and bridge. And having groups sit there with the models of what buildings are and what the required parking spaces for each are, it may be a realistic affordable housing question for them to come and say, if we're on this line, if we're this close to a grocery store, could we make I'm asking for a comment for the staff members to be able to answer questions and to ask them to come and say if we're on this line, if we're this close to a grocery store, could we make an exception? So I don't know what we can do about that or how we would do it. So I'm asking for a comment of for transportation for whoever else maybe connected to that to prepare and educate us on what we can do and what decisions we might need to make. City Manager Martinez, any comment from that? We could probably dedicate an entire study session towards affordable housing policy, but I think we'll have a lot of opportunities in the next few months to discuss it. I do think that as a part of your strategic planning session that there will absolutely be an opportunity, but I do think that will probably warrant additional opportunities to discuss it, especially when it comes to affordable housing policy when we set code, right? For example, right now we have things in our code that give an incentive to affordable housing, but whether or not that's effective in today's market is, it remains to be seen. And maybe it's not because we haven't seen the amount of affordable housing that we've wanted to see as a community. So lots to discuss there. We'll bring that back and we'll talk about how we can potentially change some of our things in our code or other policies related to affordable housing. Right. So we, instead of eyes, but we don't require a certain percentage of housing within a certain development to be affordable. And so that's something that we could take into account and establish code around. We have, we made an exception for a specific development, not having to bring raw water rights, but instead paying fee and lieu and we discussed at that time that that was something we might want to put into code for affordable housing given that we know that's an explicit getting those things in front of us quickly, but those things that may take multiple study sessions may take some discussion, may take looking at multiple options and deciding between them before we start the draft code, especially because there are so many things that this legislative calendar will take on in May and force upon us if we don't act sooner or even if we do act sooner. If we have something in place, maybe there will be a home rule defense that we already had that we already are taking action. Whereas if it's written and we don't have anything else we may not have any choices. Thanks. Councilmember today you had your hand? Yes, thank you. Not exactly a policy item, but I wanted to bring up this chair's help for homes. I volunteered to be a team captain again, so I wanted to talk about that. So the residents can put in their applications and know about that. And if you want to be on my team, let me know. Do you have a date? Oh, yeah, sorry. Saturday, May 4th. They just announced the date. So I wanted to bring that up. Star Wars Day. May the 4th. Yeah. Oh. Is that coming up? OK. All right. Council member Polowski and the old group. Thank you. Oh, is that coming up? Okay. All right. Councilmember Poloski and the good. Thank you, Mayor. Last week at the parks and meeting, I presented to the members the thought that and this originated with mayor the name of Memorial Parkway. And what I ended up suggesting to them, everyone is in agreement and has no issues with it. But since I made the presentation, I had suggested legacy pathway. And I spoke into a few people since then. And the people that I've spoken to kind of like legacy lane. So I just wanted to ask, if anybody here has any preference over lane or pathway for legacy. That's why we can play and tell them it's a road you can drive there. Oh, okay. Yes. I don't love overuse of alliteration, but really I'm just happy enough with legacy that I wouldn't stand inuse of a iteration, but really I'm just happy enough with legacy that I wouldn't stand in the way of either one. Either one, instead of a memorial when they're all live or not all of the somewhere alive. I hate using a memorial. He hates some memorial. Yeah. Well, and just so you know, the Parks and Recreation Board are the ones that will present that to City Council. But I didn't know if anyone here had any Preferences or I don't have a preference. I mean another one that could be used as like a sea trail to Anybody else nobody else take that to them if you like okay, all right. We'll throw in pathway Trail yeah, okay. All right, we'll throw in pathway trail online, huh? Okay, all right. Thanks guys. Anybody else have anything to bring up? Yeah. Oh yeah, Council member Green. We are one week away from the tree trimming ordinance going to affect where we add on the communication piece in this and where we add on having our secured contractors so that you can basically as part of that communication piece, and we're going to be in the next presentation piece in this and where we add on having our secured contractors so that you can basically as part of that communication piece give them a telephone name or a number so somebody to contact for this tree trimming that we've passed. That's a great question, Councilmember Green. I have communicated with our police department and our community services department to start enforcing that immediately. So week one there there's gonna be fines and everybody's gonna get tickets. Sorry. We're still working on the nuances of the program. Of course, I jokingly say that, but we have communicated with our community services division with the chief, with everybody involved, that we won't be enforcing that until a much later date when we've had time to allow the residents to participate in the program that we're setting up. So we're still a few weeks out from completing all the documents we need for the program. But again, I think that we have some time, we will make sure that we're not enforcing this until we've had the proper amount of time for all the residents who will be affected by this to participate in the program. I remember a lot of them are also in compliant with the eight-foot rule that's been in existence, so that could be enforced today. So Council Member. But that's citywide too. Council Member Snider. I don't know if this is an appropriate time to bring this up or not because I'm new if it's not tell me and we'll talk about it later. I've had Three I think even maybe four residents come to me and say why Is the city allowing the contractor doing the widening on bird street? To do that much construction without flagman the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco and the city of San Francisco I'm not sure if you're going to have a meeting with the mayor. Do you have an answer to that city manager? I personally don't. But we do not have public works in the audience tonight, but I'll get you that answer. Probably a good email. Send it all of us with a follow-up on where that goes. Yep. There are adjustments they they have had to make since starting their construction and will likely continue to have to make throughout the year. Anybody else? Okay. We are adjourned. See you next week.