you you you you I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. I'm going to go to the next floor. Welcome everyone to this city council study session for this Tuesday. February 23, 2021. I'd like to ask councilmember today. To lead us please in the pledge of allegiance. The pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States and to the Republic of the United States and to the Republic of the United States and to the Republic of the United States and to the Republic of the United States and to the Republic of the United States and to the Republic of the United States and to the Republic of the We're good. Individuals with liberty. We'll be in the next room. Can't remember today. All right, first item on the agenda to this evening is the community survey discussion. So city manager, vice-decessor, who do we have to present on this tonight? Thank you, Your Honor, and good evening, Mayor and City Council. Thank you for joining us. And also to our residents who are watching this meeting, please welcome. With that, I'd like to inform everyone that our senior communication specialists Linda, and the Meena, man man and one more person and Becky Paul Kuss from Polko will be discussing this, but I believe Ms. Ag will begin the presentation and she'll give a description and a background information on each of these individuals are going to present. So with that I'll turn it over to Linda so she can start. Thank you Linda. There she is. Right. I think I just shared my PowerPoint here. Thank you. Thank you, City Manager, Vice Dissosa. All right, Mayor Mills, members of City Council. My name is Linda Ong. And as Jane had mentioned, I'm the Senior Communication Specialist with Communications and Engagement Department. And I'm here to introduce the presentation for the 2021 Community Survey. I'll have a brief overview and then I'll hand it off to Dememma Man, our representative from Polkow NRC, the survey firm that we have selected, here to provide details and answer any questions that you may have. So the goal is to conduct a scientific citywide survey to gather the opinions of residents on a wide range of community issues. Now, this includes topics from the local economy, employment and crime and safety to the local government services and more. At the end of this process, this survey will help to provide a comprehensive, accurate picture of the overall quality of life in Brighton. Now, how the survey results will be applied is threefold. One, it'll help to identify what is working and what needs improvement in the city. Two, it'll help departments prioritize specific projects for their budgets. And three, it can serve as a guide for future decision-making, make sure that strategies align with the community's needs and their desires. For background, last fall in the strategic planning session, City Council, you had requested a community survey. And by the way, the last time the city of Brighton did a community survey was back in 2014. And then before that, it was in 2007. So basically, the survey is a good way to get the post of the community every couple of years. I'll now explain the process leading to this point. So back in December, finance issued a request for quote for proposals from qualified and experienced survey firms. The goal was to design, develop and conduct a community wide survey for Brighton and then analyze all that data into a report. So in total, the city received 11 proposals ranging in price from $16,587 to $63,200. City staff then evaluated all the proposed proposals and narrowed it down and then interviewed two firms and then decided to select PolkowNRC, the National Research Center. Now there are four main reasons why we chose Polko-NRC. The first is survey methods. Polko-NRC scientific survey method will best reflect the characteristics of the community. Also, their methodology for this survey, both online and by mail, best fits the needs of the community in terms of how we've seen them most commonly engaged with the city. Number two is cost. At $18,335, it was among the lowest price points of all the proposals. And I do wanna make note that only two other firms were at a lower price point, but were lacking in either survey experience and or only offered limited survey methods online or foe, no mailing option. Number three, familiarity. NRC may sound familiar and that's because it's the same company that the city used to conduct the 2014 survey. Polgoin NRC have since merged. So there is that familiarity in their team, working with their team, and also with their process. And also we had a very positive experience working with NRC the last time around, no issues. Finally, the benchmark from 2014 and other cities. We can compare our survey results this time around to that of the results from 2014 to see trends and gaps for improvement. We can also compare our results to the benchmarks from 500 plus communities nationwide. And here in Colorado alone, some of those benchmarks, there's a very long list of communities includes Aurora, Commerce City, Westminster, Brunefield, Greeley, the list basically goes on and on. So we can also compare our results to Adams County as a whole and even the entire front range. And aside from these reasons, NRC Polko is highly qualified. They have 25 plus years of experience conducting 1,000 plus surveys in 500 plus local governments across the country. Also, NRC is the only strategic partner of the International City County Management Association, which you know is the leading organization of local government professionals to offer survey research to local government. So the credibility factor is there. Lastly, working with NRC Polgoth means that we also get access to their online community engagement platform to basically produce other surveys. This opens up the opportunity to use their library of survey templates and we can also customize our own. So in this case, if there are specific questions that counsel you would like to ask in this community survey that can't fit, we can use this as an alternative to still get those questions asked. And the great part is this is all included in the package. Now, I'll hand things over to Polko and our C and Justice second, but I do want to mention that as part of the communications and engagement department, our plan is to put out several press releases and also social media posts on the survey during the various stages of this process to help keep the public informed and in addition we can create tailored emails and social posts for council members who would like to reach out to their constituents directly to increase engagement with the survey. And now without further ado, I'd like to introduce the memo man, Director of National Engagement at Google NRC. Thanks so much, Linda. My colleague Becky Havkees, who's going to be the project manager in Primary Contact for the 2021 survey is going to help me out here and share her screen. Great, she's just loading that up. That was a terrific introduction. We're really excited to be working with Brighton again and really appreciate that summary. So I have a few slides to start out that are kind of an overview of Polkone and RC. I'll try and go through them pretty quickly because I think Linda just did a great job of doing that for us. So next slide please. As, yeah, you can go you can skip it the next one. Thank you. As Linda said, we are a Polkow National Research Center. National Research Center is a firm we're located here in Colorado in Boulder, although I've been working from my house in Lyons mostly since last March. But we are based here in Colorado. We have been around for over 25 years conducting surveys for local governments across the country. So we have a very large client base here in Colorado and particularly on the front range. But we have conducted surveys for local governments in hundreds of different cities and counties across the US. And as Linda mentioned, we have an exclusive partnership with ICMA that our National City and County Management Association and have been partnered with them on our initiatives for a very long time. And in 2019, we merged with Polko, which is an online civic engagement platform, also endorsed and partnered with the National League of Cities as well. Next slide, please. with the National League of Cities as well. Next slide, please. So Polkho is, it gives us the opportunity to still provide our high quality benchmark surveys to our clients, but also to expand those offerings, as mentioned. So we're able to offer an online engagement platform that will host the online versions of the NCS, the National Community Survey, that will be conducting for Brighton this year. But also, you have the ability to post unlimited content on the platform. We have a library of content you can pick from, you can pick your own, you can put up pictures or maps or other kinds of aids. There's really a wealth of tools there. And one of the features that's unique to Polko is that it was developed specifically with local governments in mind. And residents will have the option when they go to complete either the NCS or other content that the city puts out. If they have the option to either have it be required or optional to create an account. And if they create an account, we ask them for their name and email and zip code. And with that information, we can let you know how many of your respondents are verified voters within city limits. So there's some great tools and resources there. Next slide, please. And so just a little bit more about Polko. It is, it's very user friendly, both for the resident interface and for city staff and elected, whoever ends up having administrative accounts. We can do demos, we've got tutorials, it's compatible, you know, on desktop computers, but also very mobile friendly and interfect tool. Next slide please. So now I'll get into a little more detail about the program that we'll be conducting for Brighton. Next slide please. Essentially what we proposed in our response to the RFP that the city issued is our Polico performance plan. It's designed as the subscription model. It's a 12 month plan. During that time, you'll be getting the NCS in 2021 and you'll have unlimited access to post content on the Polico platform with all of its premium features. At the end of that 12 month period, the city will have the option of renewing or discontinuing whichever works best for the city and there's no penalty, of course, to discontinue at that point if the city wants to press pause on that. What you do get in every 12-month period is one of our benchmark surveys, as long as this disruption goes on. So this year it will be the National Community Survey, or the NCS, as we tend to refer to it. But we also have other benchmark surveys the city can choose from, or if the city wanted to do more than one benchmark survey in a 12 month period, we have discounts available for that. So just wanted to briefly mention we have an employee survey, a business survey, a police services survey, economic development surveys, and more. Next slide, please. So specifically for Brighton, we will be conducting the national community survey, which is a general omnibus resident survey, meant to measure the overall quality of community livability. It's very similar to the survey we conducted for Brighton in 2014. We do periodically refresh and update the survey template to make sure that the content is staying fresh and relevant. So there have been some updates made since 2014, but overall, almost all of your trends will be preserved. It will be seamless for us to be able to give you your trends over time. Most of the questions on the survey are fixed as is the wording and that allows us to provide you with a really tried and true and tested survey instrument that's extremely high quality and it also allows us to provide you with benchmark comparisons. So we have the largest benchmarking database of its kind for resident surveys. We've really been pioneers in this and over time we have built the largest and highest quality benchmarking database that exists. So that allows us to give you help put your results into context. So in addition to giving you your trends from 2014 to 2021, we can also let you know if the ratings are higher, similar or lower than the benchmark or the average rating for each item on the survey. Certain services are always going to get higher ratings than others. People tend to give public library services, fire services, very high ratings, street repair, maybe not so much. But that doesn't necessarily mean that one department's doing a much better job than the other. It may be a level of perception. So the benchmarks really help put that into context. In addition to giving you the national benchmarks, and we'll continue to work with city staff to determine exactly which set of custom comparisons will be best for the city. There's also a half a page worth of questions completely specific to Brighton, and we're gonna go into more depth into those in a second, but that's included with the quote. So while most of the survey is fixed and standardized, there is that half page of customization available for the city. And we've been talking to city staff already about what questions to potentially include. So we're gonna go over those. Further, we have expanded the reach of the mailings. I'll get into a little more detail about the methodology on some following slides and we'll be presenting the results at the end of the process as well. Next slide please. So for the custom questions, Becky has been working with city staff on some question specific to Brighton. This one came from city staff and we worked a little bit on refining some of the language. So here's some proposed wording for a potential custom question on the survey. And this has to do with some potential city priorities and special projects, asking residents how important if at all they think it is to pursue these options. The question is worded neutrally and in a straightforward manner, we think this format will yield actionable data to find out more about resident priorities for these specific topics. Next slide, please. This is a version of a question city staff selected that's from our library content or library of content on the Polkoplat form having to do with homelessness. So this is a question that has been thoroughly vetted by NRC survey experts that we published in our library and the city highlighted as a potential question to include. Next slide please. As was this question, we've developed several questions in the past year about the COVID-19 pandemic response and impacts of it. And in fact, we have full length surveys about it even. And but this was, this is one that the city chose to potentially include. Next slide please. And then to get a little more into the methodology and some of the other features in the timeline, we will jump into that now. Next slide please. So, broadly, the way that we sample for the NCS is we want to make sure that we are addressing for non-response bias immediately in the sampling process and then also when we are analyzing the data. Our goal is to make the survey data as representative of the community as a whole as possible. In a perfect world, if budget and time you know had no bearing, it would be wonderful if we could survey every single resident in the community. Luckily we don't need to do that in order to get a representative sample. Broadly, in this kind of survey research, what's acceptable is to have a margin of error of plus or minus 5% around the data, and with a 95% confident interval. And so what that means is that we are 95% certain that if we surveyed every resident in Brighton, the results would come out to be about plus or minus 5% of every percentage that you see on the surveyed every resident in Brighton, the results would come out to be about plus or minus 5% of every percentage that you see on the survey, every percent positive. So it's a best practice in survey research. It's similar methodology to what we employed for the 2014 survey. This sample size is actually larger than on the 2014 survey. We purchased lists from the USPS that are updated on a quarterly basis, and we geocode those lists to ensure that all of the addresses on the lists fall within Brighton City limits. And then we further geocode those to make sure so that we're tracking response by at the four awards of the city. Next slide please. We use a multi-contact mailed strategy. This year it's a hybrid approach which is what we're recommending to all of our past NCS clients that are conducting surveys in 2021 and also those that surveyed in 2020. So essentially we're going to be mailing to 27 total, 2700 total households and two groups. One group will receive postcards in Spanish and in English inviting them to take the survey online. 1500 households will receive those postcard invitations. Each household will receive two invitations because a multi-contact mail strategy is a best practice and a way to help ensure that response rates remain high. And we will use Brighton City logo. The mayor signature, our standard language that's pretty tried and true. We want to make sure that the residents that receive the survey understand that it's coming from the city, and that we're appealing to their sense of civic duty and asking them to complete the survey to help contribute, give their thoughts to make the city a better place to live for everybody. The second group, so 1500 will receive those two postcard invites. Second group of 12, an additional 1200 respondents will receive the traditional mailed survey packets, which is what we did for Brighton in 2014. And that's a three-part mailing. They'll also receive a postcard that will look like what you see here on the slide. And then they'll also receive two survey packets that have the full survey with a cover letter, a postage paid return envelope. The cover letter will be in Spanish and in English, also containing the links if they prefer to complete the survey online with detailed instructions, and then there's a follow-up survey packet. And that's kind of the our older methodology that we've been doing for years and years, and now we're moving to this hybrid approach with with the online invites as well. It's a larger sample size than we used for Brighton in 2014, and we expect to, again, achieve a margin of error at least plus or minus 5%. Next slide, please. Then we'll be processing the data. We'll be taking care of all of the data entry for the mailed return surveys, storing the electronic data, reviewing, combining those responses into a single data set, we'll make sure that there weren't, we'll keep a knife for any red flags in the data, typically that doesn't come up at all, but we can check for things like that. And then when we are analyzing the data, we will statistically wait the data back to the most recent census demographic information available for the city of Brighton. So, I mentioned non-response bias a little bit earlier. So, one thing we do in the sampling process when we're making sure that all households within city limits are eligible to be part of the sample is that we look at the multifamily single family split in the community and typically intentionally somewhat over sample multifamily units when we're creating a sample which helps us address some of the non-response bias. In survey research like this, it's common that we hear from more homeowners than renters, that we hear from more older adults than younger adults. We often hear from more women than men. That's kind of across the board in almost any community we work with. And so to make sure that we hear from older adults and younger adults. We often hear from more women than men. That's kind of across the board in almost any community we work with. And so to make sure that we're hearing from a representative sample of all respondents will first slightly over sample multi-family units because that can be a helpful proxy for folks that may be more likely to be renters or younger. And then when we get the raw data back, we compare the demographic questions on the survey to the most recent census data available, one single survey. But it's a great way to make sure that we're getting representative data of your whole community. Next slide please. Once the survey is wrapping up for the random scientific sample, we will give you an identical version of the survey that's also hosted on Polko, and we'll give you a link to share with the community as a whole. And those results are tracked separately, but that way that gives all residents in the community that want to participate a chance to do so. So it's a great community engagement tool, gives everyone a chance to have their voice heard. Again, we'll track those data separately. It's also another way that you can build your panel on Polkow. So often for this open participation survey, cities may choose to require registration for somebody to submit a response. And in that case, that's when the user would provide their name, email, and zip code. And we can start building the panel. You'll have a panel of subscribers and we'll be able to verify. You'll have a panel of subscribers and we'll be able to verify, as I mentioned, if they're voters or not, we'll still keep all of the responses because we understand that not everyone is registered or eligible to be registered to vote. But they may still be residents that want to voice their opinions. But it's a great way to be able to break out the data. Next slide, please. Here's just a broad timeline based on what we've been discussing with city staff. We're already working on the survey development and sampling pieces. So if we stay on track with that as everything is so far, then we should be mailing a little bit a few weeks from now. It's on March 22nd, approximately. Of course, we can be flexible with these dates as if needed. But here's how that would look. If we start mailing on March 22nd, then that open participation survey link could be shared broadly with the community before the end of April. We'd be collecting data through May 10th. then we'll be generating those reports and creating them and sharing them with the city on June 1st with a presentation to council potentially on June 22nd. And again, we're happy to be flexible if needed with these states. Next slide please. of what you can expect the online reports to look like. We create the reports in Tableau and they'll be hosted on Brighton's profile on Polco. That's more kind of for internal use. But the Tableau link is public. It's interactive. You can post it on your website and bet it on your website. Share it as you need. You can also we can download PDFs or you can download PDFs as well from this data so that if you do need hard copies or if you need to put them into council packets or it's easier to share PDFs internally or externally, that option is there as well. Next slide please. And then here's just a screenshot of what you can expect on your Polko dashboard. This is for our C's profile on Polko where we host some national loveable surveys. So the map you see is of the whole US with green dots are in the concentrated areas of where we've gotten responses from your dashboard will be for the city of Brighton. So it'll be a much smaller scale map, probably a little easier to look at. But you can see your subscriber growth over time when you post content on the platform. You can see the results coming in in real time. It's a great tool for your communications team because they can see what's most impactful when promoting a survey or sending communications out about a survey because you can see the responses coming in in real time and that growth is great. Next slide, please. And next slide, please. So as I mentioned earlier, Becky Havkees will be your project manager and primary contact. She'll be the one working directly with city staff to get the survey materials finalized and into the field and she'll be managing one working directly with city staff to get the survey materials finalized into the field and she'll be managing the data collection process as well when it's time to get the data back. She'll be reviewing the data and the analysis. She is an expert when it comes to all of that. So she'll come through it and write up some highlights, some key findings from the data that stand out. And I will be here to check back in. Potentially maybe the one to do the presentation in June could be another colleague depending on availability for that, but I often do those. I'll be checking back in with the city when it's time to renew to see if the city wants to renew or switch down to a free tier or a lower tier for the next 12 month iteration. And then we also have our whole client development team. They are there to be the true experts on the whole Polkopel platform side of everything and can be available for product demos if needed or to answer any really in depth questions about the platform as well. So that's pretty much all. I've we've got prepared to talk to you about tonight but of course we're happy to answer any questions anyone might have. Well thank you very much for your presentation. We'll start with questions from the council. Mayor Potem, go ahead. Thank you Mayor. I'm really appreciate that presentation. I say that. We say that all the time that I really mean at this time because I'm deeply seated in statistics and the variance of those and to hear some of your explanations and how it was explained is you simplified it so well and I really hope everyone understands that getting to those sampling levels is the tough part always just to make sure your MOE is online with that five mark let's always try to get it to the four is the rule as you know but my but my question, I guess, is I'm very nervous about one part. And I know that since 2013, just as you said perfectly about the research in the documents before you presented, I've read through them all and it's 20 in 2013, there was a big, big change in how surveys can take place and it's usually by mail and the reason is is just bones have not been a value and but as you also mentioned it really edges all of our statistics when we do surveys of larger than 1500 people towards females that own a home that are over 60 and our city is split well that are over 60 and our city is split well between sexes when I say well relatively well 50-50-ish but we're talking about I'm very nervous about our median age here is 33 I believe in Brighton and that's not known and my generation is not into mail anyway And anyway, mail is a distraction. It's a hated entity by most people that I know. And I'm just scared about what age difference is gonna come from this without any phones. I know that like you said that it was 9%, I believe it was 9% was the respondent rate on telephones in 19, or in 2012 with the study in 1997. It was at like 25, 30 percent. And I know it's gone down, but is there any way to use a telephone and especially a cell phone exchange through any database to make sure that we can try to get that other age group that represents our city more than they get represented. If that makes sense. No, that's a great question. And you're absolutely correct that the phone response rates have just plummeted and continued to plummet over time. I think they're probably well in the single digits at this point. One of the issues in addition to the low response rate with phone, another issue is the length of this kind of survey being taken on a phone. It's a five page equivalent survey. So it takes about probably 30 minutes for a phone interview. We also find that phone surveys don't elicit the same kind of candid responses that self-administered surveys like mailed or web surveys do. There's an implicit social bias that folks don't even realize they're doing, but we've done research on it and compared the data and responses just tend to overall to be skewed a lot more positive on a phone survey. Somebody is a lot more likely to just say excellent or good instead of maybe saying fair or poor for an item. So, and then the other issue, you mentioned cell phones. With cell phones, it actually makes it much more difficult to create any kind of a phone sample. It adds a lot of cost because cell phones have to be hand dialed. They can't be a random digit dialed. Also, as we know, especially with younger folks, people tend to keep their cell phone number, even as they move across the country. So, we couldn't just say, well, if they have a 970 or a 720 exchange or a 303, then they're Colorado, or even necessarily brightened and then, furthering down to what that exchange would be. So there's a lot of reasons why we don't recommend phone and I don't think it would be a helpful way to to target the younger demographic. It can be helpful for fulfilling a certain kind of quota at different points in time. It would add a lot of expense and I don't think it would really ultimately end up being helpful. Hopefully, you know, we do see younger folks, they do respond to these kinds of surveys in general at lower rates, but we do see younger postcard with the survey link than the traditional mail packets. So hopefully they would be responsive to that. I think there's also ways when it's time for the open participation survey to try and maybe target that demographic more with social media outreach. Yeah, that's probably true. It's just so sad I've been out of the game year in for just a few years and see those statistics. And then I went and looked at them this afternoon, I'm like, oh my gosh, they are dead on. That's bad. So two other quick things is, so there will be demographic crosstabs though, that we can access correctly. Yes, that's a great point. I did not mention that in the online reporting, we automatically will be including socio-demographic cross tabs and also geographic cross tabs by award. And there will be a drop down menu and it'll be interactive so you can pick gender or age or number of years they've lived in Brighton and then break the results out by that, all those different kind of questions. Perfect. I guess I have two more quick ones that I'm sure you can answer quick is the, is there any way that because when we open the survey outward, the my favorite book of all time, I say this often is how to lie with statistics, it was written in 1964 and it's 100 pages and it's sick how true it is. But, is there any way that bots can be created to ruin our survey results on internet bot to be able to do this? Because well well they have to put in their address and then how do we check that once it goes to like citywide here's the survey kind of thing so that there isn't any pushing not that there will be I just always have to ask that question. No it's a great question and it was funny we were having some internal conversations about the platform yesterday and I think I think they said in five years, we've found evidence of bots twice on two different projects. But so it's been rare. But the engineering team can see things like IP addresses and date and time stamps and that sort of thing. So if there was a red flag, if all of a sudden, there was a huge increase in responses in a really short period of time or something like that, that would was a red flag, if all of a sudden, there was like a huge increase in responses in a really short period of time, you know, or something like that, that would be a red flag we could look for. So there's a lot of different ways we can check for that. And then, you know, as far as ballot stuffing goes from non-bots, just if a person was trying to, you know, mess with it, we have just found that that's very rare because it is still fairly time consuming. They have to go through and answer the questions. And we also have algorithms in place where we can check and see if there's identical survey responses. I mean, there's so many individual questions on the survey. Usually it's about 150 or 160 columns of data for each question, you know, when you combine all the questions together, that if there were some identical responses, that would be a red flag to investigate as well. That's funny. You said that I, because male imbalance are so safe that I found that ironic that you But the last piece is, sorry, I had to spill that up. Last piece is, I noticed in, I think it's on page three of the document we had in front of us before the actual proposal, I'm not sure, three or four, anyways. It's discusses, it's going to come from elected officials or the city manager from like a signature. I would highly recommend that it's from the city manager in this case, that it comes from them because so that politics are removed from it during a possible election here. If the council is signing this, we want this to make sure that it comes from the city. So there's no politics involved in the answer. The questions would be my one major concern, but other than that, you've answered my questions better than I thought they could be. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much. And we're happy to do. Well, you know, Becky can follow up a city staff about that. We're happy to have it be the city manager versus the mayor's signature. Different communities have different preferences, so that's that's no issue at all in our end. Okay, great. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. you. Mayor we can't hear you. You can't hear me. There you go. Ten bucks from the mayor. No. You can't hear me. No, we can't hear you. Now we can hear you. No, it was on mute at the whole time online. Okay, whatever. I understand maybe not close to the speaker. I have that same problem sometimes. Next we'll go to councilmember Cushing. Thanks. Just a quick question. Thanks for the presentation. I just had one question and the. So postcard invitation. Is mailed object complete the survey online, but then a week later each household gets the five page survey. Do they still get it in the mail if they completed online? All households will receive all mailings because it's anonymous. We're not tracking the responses back at the address level. We're tracking by ward, but all households will receive all survey mailings. Okay, so there's no way to have a code or something so it doesn't, I'm just thinking of the wasted paper and resources, but if that's the only way I understand. Thanks. Thank you. Next, we'll have to count some number watts. Thank you, Ms. Mayor. You know, incredible presentation. I have just a few questions. I'm sorry. May not be as quick as answers as Mayor Pro Tems last two questions were. But can you pull up a slide again? Can you go back to the slide? There was a part on one of the slide that talked about sample questions and it mentioned the sports complex and what people thought about that. Can you go back to that slide please? Almost, almost there. Now will these be on it as well? I'm looking at the five page survey. I don't see them anywhere on this community survey. Are these questions going to be asked somewhere else? So these are the proposed questions to be included as Brighton's custom questions. Okay. As part of the five page survey. So the five page survey that I'm looking at that's on our agenda for this evening doesn't have these listed anywhere so this could potentially be added for a sixth page is that something possible or some questions on this. That I'm looking at are going to be removed. I'm not I did not see the agenda packets. I'm not sure. Do you see what I have here in front of me is the city of Brighton 2021 Community Survey. So I hate to use the word assume, but I'm assuming that it means this 2021 that we're in now, right? Is there a placeholder for custom questions on page four of that document, or perhaps there's other custom questions. The Polkos Survey template right in 2021. So let me just see if there's a. When we give folks the template, there's often. There is there is a blank spot a pretty big large spot. So that would you add it exactly? Is it on for okay, okay, like between, okay, after question 12, before goes to the main. Okay, that's exactly about that. That's question one. the last two days. I'm going to start with the question 12 before it goes to the main. Okay. That's exactly about that. That's question one. When you said. You had input from the city on this. Who in the city gave you the input? Really not the questions that are on the five-page thing. I'm just really concerned about the custom questions. And I really want to find out. Who were the city players involved that gave you these, these are the particular custom questions we want. Who was, who did you, and let's, let me try to find the right word because I don't want to use this term too many times today, but who did you solicit these responses from? And did, did any member of council have any input on any of these questions? And did any member of council have any input on any of these questions? Can I answer that question, Mr. Mayor? Go ahead. Okay, so we worked very closely at the executive staff. We're very closely with community communications. And the questions came primarily from some of our directors and particularly myself. Because these were the questions that I got a lot from the city council in the past five months. These are some of the issues that the city council has been addressing. So, you know, I hope you don't mind. Those were. That's how I based some of these questions to replace which is fine. I'm just trying to find out where these questions came from. They came from the city council. They came from the city council and my meetings with you all. And they came from myself and some of our executive staff members. Did any member of council outside of a meeting? No. Give any kind of, OK. No, no, now's the time. Now's the time actually today. That's what I'm just going to like to hear. I think I'm just trying to find out where these questions came from. No, no, no. Now's the time. Now's the time actually today. That's one. No, I'm just would like to hear. I think I'm just trying to find out where these questions came from. No, they came. I mean, that's the purpose of this meeting tonight is to find out to get answers. No, there are many questions came from staff and I know Linda's I'm just to to reply as well. But they came from like me and some of our executive directors and these were some of the key questions that we all agreed that council had a lot of interest in. We do so to our residents but I just was curious. With that said what are we going to do with these results? What did we let me back up? What did we do with the last survey results? Obviously I wasn't on council there's a few people I don't know if I don't mean anybody was on council at that time it's here. What did we do with those results in that last survey? I can't tell you but I know I think Linda's anxious to get to get some answers but when when this when Linda gave the presentation you know we can use this or anything obviously this is to help this is a guide This will help us to determine what we want to go to in the future. And obviously, if we get a lot of responses and many folks are not interested in some of the things we asked, and we may have to go back to our goal session and change that. So, we'll ask Miss. So, sorry Linda, just real quick on that, clarification on that. Yeah. I am very glad that that was actually just said. Cause I feel it's very important that we get as many residents to give their interpretation of what the way things should be and give their input and those natures. And I'm glad to hear that based on that input from residents, we could actually not do a project in the city because a majority of the residents don't want it. So I'm glad to hear that the city is open to hearing that discussion. As Linda had said earlier that we should as city council members solicit the residents to complete these surveys. So we should go out and really let the residents know that this is important and then we really want to get all of the involvement we can. So we should go on our social media, our anything we have, any residents we speak to, we should tell them, we're asked them, not tell them, ask them, please participate in this when this comes to your house. We want to get as many responses. So I'm glad that's being said that we want to get more public input because that to me, and I'm sure every member of council, it's important to hear that. I'm just really happy to hear that if the majority of residents say one thing that we as a council probably should not do it that way, if the majority wants it that way, so I think you're going to answer the question of what we do with that last survey and really what are we going to do with the results of this. I don't know if Linda can do this or Kristen is here too. I didn't see her so she's our director. So Linda or Kristen. Yeah, I can give a little bit background since I was here in 2014. So she's our director, Solinda or Kristen, which you put into the cast. I can give a little bit background since I was here in 2014. The information was presented back to council. There were some customized questions that council was interested in that the information was brought back to you all or to the council at the time. And the directors were provided the information so they could study it and see the areas that affected their departments and what the community pulse was at the time. So it was really a tool to help the individual departments as well as the council make decisions, especially with the budget coming up. I'm going to know that was part of the priority with trying to get it done in the summertime. So as we're moving into budget season, you have that information at your hand. So we would really love for this information to be valuable to you all in your planning sessions. Which is incredible. And I think we should have vision sessions, vision sessions that include these things. And I don't know if it's been communicated to us or not, that last survey and those questions on that survey. And if it hasn't and can that be sent to council I don't remember seeing it I may have seen it I'm sorry but I may have seen it but if it has them and said we see a list of those questions that were asked back in 2014 and yeah I um I'm sure you remember if those were in the in the packet I was looking and I couldn't really I didn't see much of it but I, I can make sure you have those. And then Linda, Linda could address the customized questions too and the work that was done on that if you had more questions specifically about the questions. that we came up with in brainstorming. Obviously there's a wealth of topics that we can create customized questions for Brighton. But again, this is based on our conversation with the city manager who obviously took a lot of those ideas from her conversations with you council and also just kind of talking to departments, what needs, and just also kind of keeping a post on, our communications with press releases and the feedback we get from people and the questions that we get. But this is no way set in stone. We are, you know, open to feedback. Well, I want to be clear that I'm not asking to change anything. I'm just trying to get the clarification work. Yeah, just to give you a bit more context of how we came up with those for sure. Well, I mean, for instance, the question about Founders Plaza, we're a little late in the game and asking where, what people think about finishing it. I mean, if we're going to, if, as a city manager, you just said that if the majority of people don't want something, we're probably, we're not like, they're not going to do something. So we get a survey back and we get X amount of surveys returned and the majority percentage of that is we want to see founders' plans are not completed. Then what do we do? Do we now just all the money that we spend on the last couple of spend on the first phase? Do we destroy what's there now and just make it a parking lot like you should have been beginning with? How are we? That's all I'm trying to get to and this is a conversation in a later time. We don't have to have the great people that are doing this survey for us. Listen to this, it's a discussion we can have at another time. It's just I'm trying to run my head around what we're gonna do with the results because I don't want us to become a municipality that, let me speak from my industry, from the restaurant side, for a moment. You have some industry out there that will get these guest surveys, but they never do anything to fix the issue. They just will dog and pony show it until those people either stop coming in or they just business picks up another aspect. I don't wanna be a municipality that that gets this engagement survey completed and our residents feel a certain way and we don't act on. I think surveys are incredible. I think that getting the pulse of the city is exactly what we need in all aspects of our governance. So this is a great tool for that. I'm just trying to find out if we're going to use it the right way. In 2014, this last survey was done and hey, be a new to government. I don't know, maybe they're done every six years. I don't know or seven years, but it seems to me that a lot has changed since 2014 to 2021 with the amount of residents that are in here. So when it comes to the comparison of the two surveys, the one in 2014, is that going to, and I know everybody's looking like you don't you have a time lot and how long you can speak for, but, you know, you're looking at the comparisons and that graph's going to be different. We just had this discussion on another topic, how a council loaded something down before and the pulse is different now. So we're trying to, you know, we're comparing seven years later. And this is not an off on the ages. He's doing these surveys. I think they do a phenomenal job. It's just that why are we, why are they so late? Why can't we do them sooner? Is it a, is it a costing? Is it something like that? Or is it just too redundant when you start doing things too often? And that's kind of an answer for the professionals that handle these things. And I have, honestly, I promise I only got one more after that. So with that, are we going to compare the two surveys, the two time frames, kind of do a graph of where we're at, you know, both ways? Can we get a list of the questions and what are we going to do with the results? And my last question, and I'm sorry, this is my last question, unless there's a follow up. Is there a purpose or a reasoning behind why we do one as the highest score versus the five, whereas you do surveys, if you go out to eat or you go somewhere else, it's always give me a five. You know, it's, I just didn't know if it's a certain reason that you do that metrics where one is better than a five. And that guys, sorry, I'm going to take my hand down. I'm going to remove my little hand thing there. I'm lowering that. I'm going to go on you. You guys can answer if you need me. I'm right here. Well, can I just before I be part of it over to the professionals. Council, please know that, you know, cities all over the United States. They do surveys. And some cities will do it once a year. Other cities will do it every five years. So it just varies, you know, speaking from experience. But it's a good thing. It is an excellent tool. And you're absolutely right, Councilman. If you don't use these, the recommendations or the direction that the residents give us, then they're not, they not gonna stop answering these surveys. They're not going to, you know, to say, they'll say, why do I even respond? You don't even do anything with whatever. Now, I will caution you on that too, because sometimes our residents may ask us for some things that we just can't accomplish within a one year period. So these are things that we may have to plan ahead of time. So for example, let's say we need a new city hall in one case and in some cities that I've worked in. That's an excellent idea, but it would cost in the millions. And so therefore we'd have to plan. And it's not to say that we're not going to respond. But again, you know, when we give the presentation to our residents and we do, we start doing the, these are our annual meetings with the City Council. We talk about the status of the city. We'll give reports. I will, again, with all due respect, I've only been here five months, but I will make sure that we include this and we incorporate this as part of our visioning statements to see where we're at. And sometimes we may or may not accomplish all the residents want, but we'll do our best, obviously. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Ms. Mann so she can answer the question about 1 to 5. I think I know the answer, but I think it's the answer. Sure. Thank you, city manager. And I will say we would love to work with Brighton sooner than another seven years from now. But we definitely understand that priorities and budgets and time all are come into play. As far as the questions, the way we order the response options, excellent good fair pour, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, we put the most positive response first because most responses you'll see in these kinds of studies, most responses do tend to be positive. And I believe the reason for the numeric is just kind of a linear, you know, counting up kind of thing. I don't think most respondents pay much attention to the numbers. And in fact, on the online version of the survey, I believe it's just boxes to check under each response so you don't see the numbers online. Thank you. I just, I'm always used to putting a five if you thought it was good for you. I was just curious. Sure. There was a statistical thing behind it or something. No, did you want to add anything to that Becky? No, I think you covered it. Yep, I agree. I think I'm so used to seeing these surveys. I don't even see the numbers anymore. It's a good point. Sure. Good. Good point. Most surveys I take five is the good and the one is the low school. All right. Next we'll go to council member Jordan Ellie. is the most important thing. All right, next we'll go to council member, Jordan Nellie. All right. You might have covered this. Sorry if I'm redundant. How many people, what's the percentage of returns you actually get? That's a great question. I talked about margin of error and the number we were mailing out to and I did not talk about response rate, which I normally do. So typically right now, margin of error and the number we were mailing out to and I did not talk about response rate, which I normally do. So typically right now the average response rates we tend to see are around 20 percent for this kind of survey with this methodology that we're proposing. So that's how we've arrived. At those 2700 households we think we should be safe to get to that threshold of that plus or minus 5 percent. The way margin of error is calculated is it's based on the number of completed surveys returned. So we need about 350 to 400 responses to get to that plus or minus 5% margin of error. So we're looking at average response rates and sample sizes and putting all of those into play to try and achieve that margin of error for you. So it's possible we could even see a slightly lower margin of error. In many communities, we get to a plus or minus 4% margin of error with a sample size. So that would give a higher level of precision around the data. I believe the 2014 survey we did for Brighton, I don't have a right in front of me, but I think it was about 28 percent. We have seen response rates slightly decline over time. So 20 percent should be a conservative, fairly conservative estimate for Brighton survey. And on the survey, I saw a total of like 265 on a lot of categories. And then there were other numbers. Is the 265 include the other numbers? Or do you add the 265 plus the other numbers is the 265 include the other numbers or do you add the 265 plus the other numbers. Of respondents. Is this the 2014 survey data? No, this one we just read. I just received. I could say there's 265. Respondents, then it would say. Like 40 and 50 and you know is it is the 265 include the 40 and the 50 or does it you add them together like okay what's let me ask it this way what's the average amount of respondents you had per category 265 or is that how many people you got to respond period 265? So we don't have respondents for the 2021 data yet. So I'm sorry, I'm not quite sure what document you're looking at, but. I'm not looking at it right now either, so. But we would hope to get about 350 to 400 responses back overall. And then responses would vary somewhat by question. Sometimes folks could skip a question. And we break the vary somewhat by question. Sometimes folks could skip a question. And we break the results out by frequency. So you can see the number of respondents for each question overall and for each of the frequencies. So how many said excellent? How many said good? How many said fair? How many said poor? How many said don't know that kind of thing? So if you're seeing a fluctuation that could have to do with that. And you might might have been looking at the 2014 data. So basically we're getting a 1% response because we got 40,000, we got 4,400, we're in a 0.01% response. Right? Yeah. There's kids in there. I know that. Sorry. Well, sir, the great thing about surveys, that's a nice thing, and it's a fair point, and it's a question that certainly comes up a lot. With margin of error and the way it's calculated, it can be for any population size. So it could actually even be for a national poll. If the survey has sound scientific methodology, the margin of error calculation to get to that 5% threshold to get 350 to 400 responses can be for any population size. And of course, more data is always better. We want as many folks to participate as possible. The analogy I often try to use for folks that sometimes resonates is if you have a whole pot of stew on the stove. And you stir it up well. You know what it tastes like after taking a few bites, you don't have to eat the whole pot. So it's kind of how it's an art and a science, but that's kind of how this is how it works. Okay, I'm gonna take the carrots and potatoes and the meat and separator. Because we have to purate. And we have to purate. Now what Iator. Because we have many. Many have to purify it. Now what I'm curious is we have wards that are definitely personality wards. And I don't know how many cities you have like this, but are you able to look at what each ward did? Or do you just lump them in the whole pod as two, as you say? So the overall results will be for all w awards, you know, in all different demographics, but then you'll also be able to split the results out by award. So you'll be able to go and look and see, did people in, you know, award one, two, three, or four answered differently about how safe they feel during the day or their overall quality of life or street conditions, that kind of thing, or even the custom questions, where there are more folks in Ward 2 that supported this project versus those in Ward 4. So yes, you'll be able to see that data. It's a really great way to dig deeper into the results. Because I know two and three are just another world from one and four. Two totally different sets of people. Yeah, I can often happen in communities, especially if faster growing communities, if there's an older part versus a newer part, or some kind of meaningful geographical split, if there's a highway that goes through a city or a railroad or something along those lines, certainly. And then my last one, do you have any great example of where this really does work? You know, because I have trouble with surveys in general, because a lot of the people that respond are the same people, just like the same people come to council meeting every time. So we get a certain amount of feedback from the same people every time. The rest of them could give it it just like your survey said, probably 1% or 5% or don't even watch meetings or go to council or nothing. Right? Take care of that. As long as things are going okay, forget about it. So do you have any concrete evidence that these surveys are really effective? It doesn't have to be specific but just in your experience because you have a lot of years of experience I guess. Is it really paying off for the cities? Absolutely. I'm sorry, City Manager, did you want to chime in? No, no. I mean you can go ahead and answer but I would say oh definitely. I mean I you know my experience in cities where we have surveys it shows to our residents that we care that we're open that we're transparent and that we want input from them so no surveys have been excellent and they've done a lot of good for communities very good so and I can give I can name a few better. I don't know if that you could I know but I can assure you I Did a survey in the city of Berkeley and they came up very very well and we actually got 5% response we were surprised and We did very well and the residents were interested in In roads and they wanted to make sure that we we that. And so no, it's very positive, very, very good. It's unfortunate for those cities who don't listen to what the survey comes out. Now that's when you get some problems, when you don't listen to them. You know, just to put a cap on it, we've been really pushing for that soccer complex in the survey, said, have people, yeah, yeah, no, maybe not, whatever. So it's like we aren't getting the kind of demand from the survey, to me, that would justify going out and building a multi-million dollar soccer complex, right? So Councilman, you know, the reason I put that question in there is I said, because this is a topic that some of the council members have asked, and this is an important project to our sake. So I thought it'd be good idea to get some insight from our residents, but you know what did they think of this. I mean I can tell you I spoke a lot of residents already and they're interested in it and I've even positive responses from them. But of course, the survey isn't the only way the city council makes decisions. It's just a guide, it's just a guide. It's not meant to say that this is how you're going to administer the city. It's just like a guide. We like to think of it as one tool in your toolkit, right, bringing in the voice of your residents. And one of the great things about a scientific example is that we are bringing in the voice of your average resident and not just those folks that have the time to show up to meetings or reach out to their elected officials or are the most engaged. It's designed to be able to give the voice of all your community as a whole and your average residents. And that's why so many communities have been able to give the voice of all your community as a whole and your average residents. And that's why so many communities have been able to use it as a tool for goal setting and budgeting and strategic planning. A lot of the larger cities and counties we work with survey on an annual basis. And you know, it's really built into their into their performance programs and budgeting and planning processes. And the amount of stability we see over time in the ratings is something I think that resonates. It's hard to move the needle. And if we were hearing from just small groups or wildly different groups every time, there would be wild fluctuations in the data. And a lot of the communities we've worked with have used, especially the custom question section, to make decisions about whether to put a ballot initiative on the ballot. And if they think it has a good chance of passing and they've made decisions like that based on the survey data that are really paid off for them. And we've got a number of case studies. I'd be happy to share links with staff if they want to pass that along. I appreciate I don't want to sound like the skeptic, but I appreciate the survey, and there were some very great niche things that I saw that I didn't know about. So yeah, there's a lot of uncovered stuff in that, and I appreciate all the work. I know it's a lot of work, and you guys did a great job, so thanks a lot. Just to go one thing. Okay, go ahead, go ahead. I know some of you council members had asked about how the 2014 survey results were put into action. You know, one of the big takeaways, I think from the 2014 survey, one of the question was of city council priorities. There was a very high desire, increased biking and walking trail connectivity 85% and as you guys know back in June of last year we opened, Ken Mitchell open space, the Colorado Front Range Trail, and overwhelmingly positive response. So if anything, it helps, like City Manager, by St. Cessna said, it may not be the deciding factor, but it can really help to just make sure that our strategies align with what community wants, but that was one of the big kind of action items from the community. Yeah, exactly, exactly. And Councilman Jornelli just kind of hone in on what Ms. Mann was saying. We did use it as a matter of fact, as I mentioned, roads. We used it specifically to see if the residents would be willing to support a bond that we were considering. And while their numbers range in terms of how much that we're willing to pay, you know, we used it as a gauge. I mean, we actually went a little bit higher than what they recommended and and I'm very, very pleased to say that they passed it by 70%. Very, very, that's a good thing. Anyway. Thanks. Hi. All right. Thanks. Hi. Thank you. Next we'll go to Councilmember Humbert. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. This man I was impressed by your presentation. I have read this, the information in the packet and had some questions. All but one have been answered. And I probably answered a beaven before they were asked. But the last question I have is, and this one I probably can answer too, but I know that in some polling and surveying and I learned it's a long time ago, and it stuck with me in my job and my avocation as a political scientist. But pollsters back in the 70s are saying that the ideal question in a poll is an open-ended one. And when I saw the downtown question, I thought, well, that would be an ideal open-ended question to say, OK, once you pick one of these, why? But I think probably what that means is that the downtown question should be answered with a public meeting. Once, I think that some of those things that we talked about, probably, especially with downtown, might need to be addressed in a public session or forum. So, but I'm just impressed with your survey. And is that probably the right answer for that? I think it's a great way to handle something like that. You know, if you're wanting to do kind of a community visioning process or, you know, hearing kind of, you know, in an ideal world, what would you like to see or what features are, you know, missing or what would make you want to spend more time in downtown Brighton or, you know, something along those lines. We can have open-ended questions on the survey. It does add cost because as you can imagine it adds quite a bit of analysis time on our end because we read through each response and then categorize them and summarize them. But it would be a great use of the poll code tool. So you know once you get the survey results back if there's anything you want to dig deeper into or you think it would benefit from hearing from residents you know what once you get the survey results back, if there's anything you want to dig deeper into or you think it would benefit from hearing from residents, you know, what kinds of features specifically would you like to see? That's the kind of question that you can put on the Polkow platform. And you can see a word cloud of the results, you can see all of the different, you know, so you can see what kind of, you know, jump down as the top items. you can see the full set of responses. We also just rolled out our Polco Live feature, which is a live interactive polling thing like that. So if you were having a community meeting on Zoom or even in person, but people can go on their phones and just kind of type in their answers that way. So there's a lot of different ways you could use the Polco platform to get that kind of data to. And that way. So there's a lot of different ways you could use the Polkopot form to get that kind of data too. And that would be no additional cost. Okay, thank you. Thank you. We'll put a council member to bail. Thank you, Mayor. Awesome presentation. I'm not a statistician, but so some of it's a little over my habit, but I get the big picture. But I had a couple of comments and some questions. I heard you say something about that we would be happy to expect a 20% return. What can we do? I know council member Watts touched on it is that, you know, what can, you know, yes, put it up to the social media platforms But what can we do to I hear that as a challenge To try to get more than 20% and so yeah, what can we do as a council or as a community? City everyone to really rally together and and really get the more bang for our buck and get as much Results and responses as we can possibly get. My other question is, this is kind of my new anyway. Is there a discount for a renewal fee you mentioned that we would be able to renew the next year if we decided to? Do we? Is there some sort of discount involved in that to be able to move on? And I absolutely love this, surveying the people. That's what I'm passionate about is to get the residents to participate. And I think it makes it just a much better, stronger, happier community when that happens. So I'm really excited about this. And I think it's a great way to, you know, huge corporations started using this instead of marketing to people the way they thought that they should be marketed to. They asked the public, what do you want, right? And so it's very exciting for me. Anyway, last thing is I think we should, I think it's a good idea to have some sort of community meeting about founders positive because it is so far into it and maybe we take that question off and put one on about the dispensaries and the marijuana going on. I mean, that's been on our minds, right? This would be a perfect way in my mind to put it on that platform and get some more information and some input from the residents. We have a question on marijuana, but there was one on there? Yes. Okay, because it was up and I read it and it was gone. So, okay, I apologize. So. No, no, no, that's okay. There is there's a question on that. Okay, thank you. I would like to ask, we can get that. Thank you. And those are great questions asking about how you can improve response rate and wanting to target a higher response rate is what we love to hear from our clients because we want to see higher response rates as well and we have been talking to city staff about that. They also had questions about that early on and so we do have tools available. We have a knowledge base on the platform that has social media templates so we do have tools available. We have a knowledge base on the platform that has social media templates and we have press release templates and the more the word can get out about, you know, why it's important and, you know, why you want folks to participate. And then kind of building on some of the conversations that we had earlier that, you know, showing residents how you're using the results and, you know, kind and giving them a plan with how that data is actionable after the fact can help build public trust around that and make them want to participate more the next time around as well. So those are great questions. And then as far as discounts go, so I think it was mentioned early on when Linda was presenting that we had one of the very lowest bids and essentially we we slashed our prices in 2020 due to COVID and what was going on with local governments and understanding that and also our mergers pretty new and so we were kind of testing out new pricing models and structures and we gave Brighton the 2020 pricing in this. The price would be more if I was putting together a quote today for the city. So the city did lock in that rate. And so I'd say that in general, it's already pretty heavily discounted. I think I'd greatly appreciate that. It's just in my nature. Sure. I'm trying to go say it better deal. I mean, it's just, I got to try. So I appreciate it. Absolutely. All I got a track so I appreciate you. Absolutely. All right. Thank you. Next, looks like Mayor Putem is a follow up. Yeah, thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I want to clean up a few items that just came out. One is the council barely if at all listened to what the survey in 2014. Barely listened is a nicely putting it. Let's be very clear, for instance, on the survey and figure four from 2014, the one with the least priority for city council priorities, least priority, the one that was either the highest not a priority or the lowest with a high priority was historic preservation. That was in 2014 when the good boys were the only ones responding to these surveys. You're really clear. Council did not listen on that. They didn't listen on any of the items other than the trails, which was a mediocre response if you really look into the data. So, Councilor Watts, you bring up a great point that we have to read this, make sure the data is correct and actually listen to it or it is a worthless document as council made it in 2014. Last time I checked their highest priorities that the city said in 2014 were expand the rec center, expand Oasis. Instead we dumped money in a historic preservation. I only know one council member that was on council during that time that I think it's so here, so he can answer to the resident that. But reality is, is that that's the problem. The also, the soccer complex that was pitched to Councillor Jordan Nellie mentioned, that was the question was, do you want a soccer complex? Towards complex is the totally different idea and entity compared to that. So let's just be really clear about that. Yeah, I wouldn't be in favor of a thing known as a soccer complex. And so yeah, definitely agree with Councillor Tadeo that we should remove the and Councillor Watts. The plaza is a dead issue. I mean, putting more money into the plaza is following following bad money with more bad money. I'm not going to do that. The citizens didn't want that concrete park, but former council members and the former mayor want to damn plaque up next to the bar so they could walk by it at night with their friends and show their name. And so, I mean, I am going to not support this in any way if those are the questions. I thought that that was a sample of the questions we do. We need to be heavily involved as a council with the question. I don't want it coming from staff members. It needs to come from the council because we have a much better pulse on the community than these staff members, obviously, for the questions that were raised there. Plus, I want to make sure the questions are done without any push one way or the other and with the correct information. So I wanna see the questions and go over them further, but I definitely see the value in doing this. So I'd like to go forward, but I'm not gonna do it with those questions, and I hope the rest of council will want to go inside and really look at those questions a little bit more and create those. I'd be happy to share that information. I'll share what I'd say. But I'm happy to share the questions and things of that nature. But I don't know how, again, some of the questions that I mentioned, I did not ask soliciting input directly from the City Council. These were just questions that I came about based on the information and the meetings that I have with the City Council. These were just questions that I came about based on the information and the meetings that I have with the City Council. Now the one on the regarding the downtown pavilion, that's up, that was something that the Parks Department had wanted some insight on that. We can definitely remove that item. That's not an issue here. No, and I respect. If the Council wants to respect if the council wants to if the council wants to have a town media on that matter of course you know that's something that that we can raise. Yeah no I respect I respect all the questions sorry I can barely hear you there okay no I was just to say again councilman pleads again this is just a guy it does not mean that you have to follow every single little recommendation because sometimes the council may disagree with what the residents are saying. It is just a guy. Right and no I respect you getting us to this point with staff to make sure that we can see what we're talking about but now that we're here I want the council to come up with those questions and some more. The custom questions definitely council Council, you can add more or whatever you like. That's why we're here. That's why I'm bringing them to you. So they can add some more questions. I place those questions as and you can remove them if you'd like. But again, these were some of the questions that I've heard in my meetings with the city council and also in discussions that I've had with some of our residents. No, I totally understand that and you had no idea that I would feel this way and I had no idea that these would be the questions presented. So here we sit right now, but you can add more. You can add more. These are just a sample ones and you can definitely add more. Yeah, definitely. I want to add some more and I want to make sure that we deviate from the past and we follow what is said a little bit more hopefully but um and also we need to add something up we need to add something with water. So that's my only something with water. Water is our main issue has been about water too but I'll go back and check. I'm almost certain but I'll go back and check. We don't have those questions just to be really clear. We only had the questions that we saw on the slide and they're not anywhere else. So if we could see those and then we could move the in my opinion we could move this forward to a to a meeting for approval. No doubt about it, but I just want to have more say as a council over the question. Definitely. And other than that. Yeah. Linda, if I could add one thing. So yeah, absolutely. This, this, the questions that we provided just, so we have some kind of starting base, but we of course want counsel, you're input on this. The other thing is I know there's a lot of topics that are near and dear to all of your hearts, you know? So if they can't fit in this particular survey, because I know we're limited to only half of paid through public platform, we can, of course, put out additional surveys as an alternative, you know, if they can't all fit in that half page that we are allotted as customized questions. Yeah, there are limits to it, so we can't put a tremendous number and those are, there's just some of the questions, again, as I mentioned, you know, that I'd heard from council and so again, yeah, we'll be more than happy to share. And if you want to come up with some different questions, then when I put in their examples, I'd be happy to change that. Yes, I do want to do that, but I don't want to do it on a separate survey. That just to be really clear, it has to be on this survey. So we don't need to go. We've only fed so many questions on that. But did we customized, but some of the others. I mean, there's some others that we don't. I'm saying what? On that, I'll have to go back and ask the surveyors because the survey is designed to help us determine, you know, how our residents feel about the services we provide. You know, if you're looking for a specific topic, that's why they're saying we could develop another survey that addresses that one specific issue. The this survey is designed to help us understand how well we're doing the provision of services to our city. It has nothing to do with any specific topic or concern or anything like that is overall. How do the residents feel? How are we doing, are there areas that we think we need improvement out? And they're specific to this to answer those questions. So now if you're going to change the whole survey and come up with totally different answer or questions that then this survey, we have to start all over again because it's not the purpose of the survey. So that's why there's only a limit to the number of customized questions that you can ask. But it doesn't mean that we couldn't do some other smaller surveys as they've explained that perhaps a little bit. You can do a smaller survey that's not part of the process. You have to do the survey of the same sample group or it's not a real survey. So I'm saying, okay, I will, I want to, next, when we actually go to approve this at a council meeting, I want to revise the questions that are on the custom sheet and figure out where we go. You can do that. It doesn't have to be at a special council meeting or anything like that. Unless you want me to, then I'd be happy to do that. But again, you know, I- At the meeting where we approve this is what I'm saying. At the meeting where we approve this, I'd like to have more questions. Different questions. On the custom, just on the custom questions. Surely. Yes. That's fine. I will do my best to put this very quickly because as you can see the timeline, it's very short. Well, the timeline's open because there is no timeline when to get this right. So, I mean, we don't need it by June or July. We need it as soon as it's right. So, I mean, well, we do have a timeline that we presented for you, Councilman. We saw the presentation and there is a specific timeline that we'd like to be able to get this done. Otherwise, you know, this survey will be useless. So, I will be useless if it's asking the questions that we already know the answers due to. Okay, so next meeting, but when this goes up for approval, I'd like to counsel, not staff, but counsel to surround ourselves with the actual questions themselves of like counselor today, I thought of and make sure they're not pushing one way or the other, make sure the citizens are educated and then get those questions out. That should be the goal. That's all I want to do. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Next. I would like to count on the majority. Nellie has a follow up to. Yeah, I just wanted to follow up on the percentage. Your year's experience. Okay, what's the high? What's the low? What's the median? And are we falsely expecting that we can change these percentages? Of response of response? No, I'll miss man to answer the question. response rates overall they have declined over time. So I'd say you know they they certainly can vary depending on the community level of engagement they often tend to be higher and small communities and lower in larger cities. Some communities where we've been surveying regularly you know every year or every two years for you know almost 20 years and it's just kind of a more expected thing in part of the culture. They may have built a steady response rate over time. It can vary based on what we saw in the past for Brighton and what we expect to see. We try and be conservative in the estimates so that we're airing a little bit on the side of caution. So we would expect probably around 20% overall for the city. It is hard to move the needle. On the scientific sample for the overall response rate percentage, but it's definitely often worth at least a few percentage points if you can get a boost. If you can get a lot of word out and do a lot of communication about it. So residents know it's coming. They understand that it's important that they respond, that it really is valid and that it's from the city and that city leaders are going to take their opinions into account when making decisions. Certainly, for the open participation survey, we have seen responses vary from in the few hundreds to several thousand depending on the community and that kind of outreach. So that's that's a place where the city has a lot more control in getting, you know, getting the word out to the whole community and really trying to, you know, widely publicize that on social media. And, you know, if there's a news story about it, you know, that that can certainly help if you, you know, get get it on the local news or in the local paper, next door groups, whatever popular and bright and if you have, sometimes cities have city email lists or newsletters or e-blasts, they put out. So all those kinds of ways can really help with that open participation piece. So in terms of moving the needle on the participation, the overall response rate for the scientific survey, that can be a little more tricky, but certainly we always recommend the more communication about it overall, the better. Thank you. Hey, next, it looks like Councilmember Watts also has a follow-up. Thank you. I will be a lot quicker because I know you guys probably don't want to be up any longer than that. I want to say thank you first off for sitting through this. I'm sure you thought it was just going to be a quick presentation and it would get pushed on through for the vote. I just want to make a comment in regard to the downtown plaza. Now, I did not come into this thinking we could change questions, which is great. But, and thinking about the downtown Plaza, for instance, the words have been thrown out here a few times that we, about the community input and all that, which is great and all these things, and maybe having a community gathering to get their input. You know, I can go back to my notes, and I'll do is I'm going to go home tonight. I'm going to pull that notes out and I'm going to email you and then you can forward those onto all of council since we're not allowed to communicate with each other by law. And well, that's a different topic. I believe we've had several community gatherings about downtown Plaza. So I'm not sure why we have a need to ask that question again to, I just don't know why we have to ask it. I think I asked them what my notes say is last year I had brought up the thing, why don't we have a town hall type of a meeting or some to that effect at downtown plaza and get input from residents. We had pizza there. There was a big choice of supply to some pizza there which was really good. Thank you councilman for fishing for telling me about pizza ahead of time because they're very, they have very good pizza there and we had pizza there. We were upset up out there. They had some nice stand set up. There was a poster boards with different layouts and we were soliciting that and let me use that word again. Soliciting that input from our residents for like the fourth time. But now Parks and Rec wants to add it again to another survey. Look, I know we're not, this is a little bit off topic, but I'm done with it. We either going to vote on it or we're not going to vote on it and let's get it done. Last council voted phase one. Now we've been, we've been pushing off phase two. We don't need to ask the question again, because I can probably tell you that majority of the people are going to say we don't want you to do any more money spent there. So I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I again. But my question here is, and first of all, let me just say that I love these types of surveys. I think they should have been done more often. I think waiting seven years to do this one is choose my language, but Asinine, and we should have done it about three years ago, and then done another one this year, is how it should have been done. And just my opinion, and from a financial standpoint, three years ago, we probably had more money in our budget than we do now because of COVID. But let me ask this question for the presenters. At any time, were you told that we would be, when we would be voting on this topic? I didn't ask you, city manager, I asked the presenters. So you're nodding your head. No, is. No, everything is in draft. Everything is in draft form. I was a person there is going to be a vote on finalizing any because the comments I got was, well, we're on a deadline to get this done. We're not on like mayor pro temps said, we're not on any deadline. So we approve this. So let me ask you, what is our deadline for you, for us to get the numbers by 622, as you stated, hopefully by 622, to change any questions, and what is our deadline to have this approved to lock in that 2020 pricing as you'd brought up? The pricing's been locked in. So that's that's that's not a problem. If you wanted to stay on track to mail by March 22nd, which would then you know get you the data in June and my understanding as responding to the RFP was that it was important for the city to have the data by the end of June for the budgeting process. Of course. So to you know to was that it was important for the city to have the data by the end of June for the budgeting process. So to achieve that, that's when we need to start mailing and merge. So really, we would need everything wrapped up in the next week or two in order to make that time. So it's coming to council today, and you're in need in a week. There should probably be a little bit of flexibility with that, but typically, I would have been- Well, but from a calendar standpoint, I mean, I try to get something added to the agenda and it's like, well, we're all tied up, we can't do anything, you know, but you're saying that we're getting, council is getting presented this study session item tonight. And next week would be our first scheduled meeting of March, and then we wouldn't have a meeting again till the 16th. And what's we call the special one to vote on this? But the 16th would be too far past your deadline of the one to two weeks you just said. So council's getting it today, kind of like, hey, here it is, just go ahead and quick. Yeah, yeah, that's fine. Go ahead and push it through. We'll vote on it next week. I don't like the term timeline being thrown out when timeline is dependent on when we as a council approve this item not when city staff says we have to approve it. If I could chime in it's it's your timeline this is your survey. Yeah this the timeline that was presented was just if we wanted to try and get the feedback by June for the budget season. But it doesn't have to be the last time we did it. I think we got the feedback back in October and it was used for a visioning session. So it's totally up to you of when when you want to do it and we could spend more time. And then the custom questions, those were just to get the ball rolling with you all. We had a whole bunch and we tried to narrow it down to what would fit on the page. The downtown plaza, it was just thrown in there, but none of those are set in stone. We just wanna get the conversation going with you all. So we can keep circulating custom questions and see what the nine of you want. I think that's kind of what we're trying to get at. It's, look, we're trying to get at. It's, look, we trust city staff. Hey, we're trusted city staff, you know, they'll look for a city attorney. I get that. We trust the city staff. I have all the confidence in the world in our city staff. It's not that. My question when I initially asked, when I first talked a while ago and I apologized and said it was gonna be be brief, I'm not, I'm sorry. Was, did any council have any input on this? And the city manager had stated just a little bit ago that we did not solicit the city council for any input. We use what city council has mentioned in meetings. I just think, and I know I'm sitting here right now hearing it for tonight, I have the ability to have hindsight in this because I can think about those questions while I'm letting every let's talk and I think in hindsight we probably should have solicited the council for some of this input and not just got it a week before we we want to get both and that's and that's hey look we get it city council from my understanding is we really don't have much say in this city. It's all grand by the city, city manager's office and the city offices and we kind of are the legislative branch of it in a sense and we vote on things and and a lot of times not all of council is made aware of things, especially during pre meetings and, until we find out about it. So there are things that go on behind the scenes that some of us don't get the ability to see or afforded the ability to see. So I just am a little upset that we got this tonight and you're expecting a vote next week. And I just think that, and at that point, I'm done talking, I just think that we need to kind of dial back a little bit and make sure the residents are getting the right information before they even make a decision. And we're putting the right information out there and not beating that debt of horse that we are doing on some of these projects. And nothing against people to put this together, I think they all do a phenomenal job. I just think that some of our input would have been very helpful in this situation. And I'm very disappointed to hear tonight that none of our input really was solicited. Again, the word solicit. So just that's all I had to say on that. And again, I think the presenters were coming on and doing this. You know, your company is incredible and glad you two you guys add that merger. I think it's awesome. I think. You know, VNLC has all the faith in the world and you I have all the faith in the world and you but I just think that we. Need to kind of do a little different things and I do have one final question and I'm sorry but why did we pick this year? Because the City Council asked us to take a look at this. Ask me during our one of our study sessions that we had. This is a topic that you asked us to take a look at. To look into right? Yes. Yes. I initiated this. Yes. Good deal. Cool. All right. Thank you. So can I just before we move on, Mr. Mayor? Yes. Please. And then Councilmember Park, there's more comment after you. Yes, thank you. Besides, besides, and I don't want the council to be misinformed. This is not something that we're going to pass or passing through. This is part of the purpose of this meeting is not only to explain to you how we got to this point and why we made this election and the purpose of this survey. We're also asking you for your input on the kinds of questions you want for the custom side. You do have the right. Now the timeline, I'm trying to get it so decent, reasonable timeline so that we can use it as quickly as possible. But if you don't like the timeline and you want to extend it by all means, you can do that. And that's fine. I'm just trying to be able to get this survey done quickly and early enough so that we can utilize it. But if the council wants to take a little bit more time and that's understandable, please believe me when I say that that's fine. Now's the time. If you all the sample questions were just that, these were questions that we thought we could initiate to that just to give you an idea of some of the things that you could place. You can change all of those. You can add different ones. Again, this is just something again that we spoke with the with the Monks of Staff to give you an idea. But definitely you can remove those and I will again take a look at that one question from from from from from parks regarding the downtown area and we can change that and there's no problem. Okay that's all I have to answer I do have a couple of other questions but I'm going to I'm going to trade over to Mr. Blankhurst first. Thank you council member blockers go ahead. Thank you interesting discussion. I think there's been some really good points made first of all I think the presentation was actually I'm looking forward to the survey for all the reasons everyone is dispoused. Let me make a suggestion or two to kind of speed things along and to make it a little smoother. It's really difficult when we have these meetings to hear everybody's, again, I wish we were meeting in person. I think it would be much better, but we don't have a choice about that. I just hope we meeting in person. I think it would be much better. But we don't have a choice about that. I just hope we move in that direction soon. Maybe each of us could submit. First of all, if the city manager could or our communications director could forward us the tentative list of optional questions. And then each one of us a little homework where we could see which one of those questions we didn't think were appropriate and add our own question or two. So we'd have a list to start with. We wouldn't have to try to start from ground zero but already have a group of questions we could start whittling through. I'm sure some of us have the same. Just for my two cents, I agree completely that the question about the downtown Plaza, as Councilman Watt has pointed out, has been asking, re-ask, and re-ask. It's never been a favorite project of mine personally, but that's another matter. I always thought it would be a better place for a parking lot, but it's not a parking lot. It is a plaza that we have to finish off, so it looks decent, and so it doesn't look like the concrete park. Not put much more money money but somebody into it. Anyway, that's my suggestion is maybe we get a list of optional questions. And then each of us can put together and suggest in a timeline what we would like to see. And then we can staff and compile, compile that list and we come back and start discussing and whittling it down to a manageable number. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Vikers will definitely do that. Again, this is just the list that I put together or the questions that I put together. We're just that just to get started and I was hoping that today the City Council would be able to come up with some more questions but we'll get that together and get that together. Good together and give us the homework of we got our deadline to submit a question or two to add to that list and I'm sure between the nine of us we can come up with. Definitely, definitely. Thank you sir. I will do that. Thank you. I really agree. I think that's a great compromise to count from my blockers, put together, come together with a homework list and maybe we'll be able to come together on our, I don't know if it's going to be the next study session or what, but whatever is appropriate to bring this back. Okay, yeah, if it's the next study session in two weeks, and if that's the appropriate time to finalize these questions, come to an agreement and then vote the following session. I think that's the best solution to this. So. I think so too, Your Honor. I think this way it'll give council more than enough time to do this. I don't want to rush. I don't want any misunderstanding that I'm rushing this. Just trying to, I thought that this timeline made sense for us to get something quickly too well. Because you asked me to do this, but I've no problem. I'd be happy to, you know, go for two weeks talk, talk, talk it over with the city council on the questions. And then at the next meeting of approved them. I'll leave it if we're not talking about our results till July. That still gives us time to go on the budget season and really dissect the results. So thank you. Anything else? Thank you. Is that it? I have one question. One question because I like it's on the survey. I promised not to so miss man. I know that we're going to be sending the postcards to individuals. Let's say the city council when they go out there and promote this. So Ms. Man, I know that we're going to be sending the postcards to individuals. Let's say the city council when they go out there and promote this. They get an inquiry from a resident that says, I didn't get the little postcard invitation. Can I participate? I would like to do this. Can this be done? So that's where the open participant patient survey will come into play. So that's where the open purchase of the patient's army will come into play. So that's a great question. So in the messaging we would recommend is that yes, we will be giving everyone a chance that wants to have their voice heard and a chance to do so. But first we want to work on promoting the scientific sample because we want to make sure that, you know, as many folks that do get those random invitations, do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do do to our serving company and helping put this together and put your presentation together and taking really going into overtime tonight and presenting. So we really appreciate that. We're glad to be working with Brighton again. So good to see you all. Hopefully next time it can be in person when it's time to present the results. Oh my goodness, I'm ready for that right now. So trust me. Next on the agenda is the update on the municipal judge and deputy municipal judge. So city manager, by st. Sessa, I believe we are bringing on Karen for this. Yes, Ron, we're having, we're bringing in our assistant city manager, Ms. Karen, Saree, so again, we would like, on this presentation, we would like some direction from the city council regarding this matter and I'll turn it over to her so she can give the presentation. Thank you. So if you're still bringing her in, make some moments sometimes. There we go. Oh, we saw her for a brief moment. Yes, city council nice to see you all tonight. What I'd like to discuss with you is the presiding municipal judge and deputy judge positions. They are their terms are coming to an end and I want to explain the process to you that previous councils have put in place and since we have new council I think it's time for us to to review this and and follow your direction council, I think it's time for us to review this and follow your direction. So I'm going to share my screen with you. Can you all see that? Not yet. Huh, I can see it. It's the Brady Bunch folks boxes are still showing. So for Hollywood squares, you know. Huh. Huh. Oh, okay. We're still working there. Yeah. No. Still not seeing it? Nope. Huh. I have my in-house IT person. Huh. Huh. I have my in-house IT person. I'll just fix it and... Man, to unshare and then share again. Okay. Have you tried turning it off and back on again? That's what I'm going to say share sound. Oh, we're getting something now. How's that? Oh, much better. We see your presentation. Okay. How's that? Even better. Okay. Thank you. Thank you to my in-house IT expert. So this strategic focus area is financially responsible as well as safe, active, and engaged community. To just give you some background. The presiding leaders civil judge and a deputy judge were appointed by council for a two-year term. The term for both of them and 331 2021, however, we know things happen and actually in the resolution it says or as soon as practical thereafter. So it's not a strict deadline. Currently, both positions are benefited positions, and the home rule charter requires an affirmative vote, two-thirds vote to approve them and appoint them and to set compensation. The council process and one of the reasons that we wanted to really look at this, it was established in 2003. That's a long time of go and we have not done an RFP since 2009. Typically the process has been that council reviews each judge in a session in person and completes the questionnaire. Obviously, COVID has caused a reduction in the amount of people allowed in court. And we've kind of had to change up our process as you know, we have Q list now. So what we would like to offer you is the ability to have a Zoom appearance and look at that. And sessions, by the way, there are two on Tuesdays, generally. And one session is considered the morning and then one at the afternoon. So it can be however long it takes to get through that session, could be two hours, could be three hours. But that's considered a session. The staff and the judges that have appeared, judges and also attorneys that have appeared before council, each have a questionnaire based on the experience of what they've experienced during their sessions. And then overall, a positive evaluation does not guarantee reappointment just to let you know that. Options for council consideration. So as I said currently, they expire both have benefits. So what you can do is have a contract employee for two years as set by the charter and request an RFP and that can be A with benefits and B without benefits or it can be as an independent contractor with no benefits. Next I wanted to show you and again I apologize this is a lot of information on a small screen but basically we obviously tried to get more communities to respond but these were the communities that responded to the staff members that asked them. So for instance, in our Vata, the municipal judge is a full-time employee with full benefits and the annual salary is $150,000. The associate judge is $90 an hour with no benefits. Say in Brookfield the municipal judge is part time with an hourly rate and is a lot of a certain amount of hours per year and they do not have full time to have zero full time judges and the deputy municipal judges earn a $75 per hour and they're allocated a certain amount of hours. Golden a certain amount per month, no benefits for the presiding judge, and then the relief judge $70 per hour. Lafayette, again, a set monthly amount, no benefits. And court is held twice a month, and it's just the presiding municipal judge there. In Lewisville, contracted per month, and they meet approximately two times each month, no benefits. And an associate judge is 140 dollars per hour with no benefits. North Glenn. They meet five times per month. There is a set amount by resolution and it's that they're also allowed some training's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it obviously a larger city. The associate judge is considered temporary without benefits $82 per hour. In Westminster, it's a full-time court and the presiding judge gets 175,000 per year with full benefits. And the associate judge, there is a range there with no benefits and they have several of them. The city of Brighton judges, the presiding municipal judge is currently makes $50,744.14 per year. And what we require is 84 court sessions and bonded visors as needed included in that salary. And again, as I mentioned, sessions are morning and afternoon. And the deputy judge is currently at $92.75 per hour with full benefits. Additionally, I did want to let you know that last year, council did a point three on- call deputy judges for a period of two for a period of two years and the compensation is $80 per hour and they have been filling in for us and doing a fine job. So at this point I just wanted to have discussion, questions, what kind of information do you need to know what input do you have for me moving forward? Thank you, Ed. Questions from the council. Unchair your stream for a moment. There you go. What's that with Councilmember Watts. Thank you, Mr. Karen. Karen, thank you. So good to see you on here as well. Nice to see you. I want to be positive. Yeah, well, hey, we'll start the next week. If that's up, that's up to everybody else though. But, you know, just a couple real real quick and I may have missed it. When can we start the process? I mean is that something like you would have to share a link with us for Zoom in order us to press the watch report session? I mean I'm okay if I'm okay with one person if they're okay. It's just do they know we're in the courtroom? How does that really work? And then obviously the first time doing this. And a question, just a second question on that is, can they work anywhere else? I mean, are they, I know they're perfect with us. Yes, we are not. Cause 84 sessions is roughly, you know, like 42 weeks because they can do two in one day, right? Two sessions, like once a because they can do two in one day. Two sessions. Once a week they can do two sessions. I just was curious. When I looked at golden, for instance, I believe it was four times a month at that 3750 a month. So can a judge that's appointed there working bright and also? Or can they work in the future? Yes, our court session. Yes, good question. Our courts, our court meets on Tuesdays and Fridays. And if there's a trial as needed, so they would have to be available. When if we were when we do the RFP, we would put what what the dates are that they would have to be available most of the time. And obviously things can happen and that's why we have on call judges. So they're they're just required. So if they did, let's go outside of COVID for instance now and says it's a year not with COVID and they did two days a week, two sessions a day, and so really four sessions a week they did. And then 2021, weeks, 22 weeks, they knocked out the 84 court sessions that we require them to have in the first, say, five and a half months of the year. The rest of the year, they can either work somewhere else that they want to, and they don't have to work for Brighton. They can work somewhere else on any, yes, they can. So really they only work six months in that year, they don't have to work for us for the rest of the six months. Yeah, but generally there's holidays that fall, fall, and they cancel court. They need to catch up, It gets a little crowded. So it's not like there's a session all the time. Generally, there is a session, but it's flexibility. Okay, fair enough. All right, well, good. Well, just, you know, let us know when I can do it because I'll be more happy to log in or go there in person. It doesn't matter to me. Thank you. Okay. I will. I will go with the court administrator if that's what council wants. Well, that's my opinion. That's not I'm not speaker council but and then I think at the end of another part was um do they know where there is it how's that how's that word? Well, they would they would know you were there yes. Okay. Well, they would they would know you were there. Yes. Okay. Thank you. And again, it have to do is get caught speeding and then you can plead on guilty and then you can actually get a bird's-eye view of the court process. I mean that's that's what I do regularly so well that's why I asked if they knew I was going to be there. I'm not sure that to current alignment of the associate judge being an employee of city Council is really a very workable situation because we have no clue. It's hard enough to keep track of the municipal judge, but the municipal judge should, in my opinion, keep track of the associate judge. And if they're having a problem, personnel problem, the presiding judge should handle that, rather than waiting for months for council for this to become aware. That's one thing, and the second thing I think that, as I recall, council and purchasing brought up, it just doesn't seem right that the associate judge should be a fully benefited position when they only work as needed. That's a heck of an expense and a heck of a benefit that we don't offer anybody else in the city. So those are two things I would like to see, at least take a look at. It seems really clunky to have the Associate Judge reporting to council when it's a position like we have, do you say Karen three now? Associate Judges, filling in. Three on, we call them on coal. Right, but we could have those all the time, but we have no clue. They are not benefited by the way. Right. And that maybe that's the way we should be. Just an hourly rate. And that'd be the responsibility of the presiding judge. Because we don't need, we don't know who they are now. Right? Well, if you were on council when it was voted on April 7, 2020 and you remember, yeah, you, that's all. That's all you need. You actually have to sit. We may know the name, but we didn't interview them. We don't know how they, we don't know any of it. The resume, we don't know how they're performing. We may see the name when we vote. And the municipal judge, I think, at least back in the day, they really, by the way, the municipal judge in Brighton does have at least one, maybe two other cities that she also provides that same service too. We're one of like three municipalities, I believe. Thank you. Thank you. I think you threat the council member blockers. I believe last time you. Thank you. I think you're correct. Councilmember Blackhurst. I believe last time I talked to her. She worked for a couple of reasons too. Next councilmember Pollock. Thank you, mayor. Hard care. Just a couple things. So we have three on call judges. Do they get paid because they're on call or just if they have to come in? No, good question. They're just paid per hour that they work. And it's $80 per hour. So only if they actually work. Okay. Correct. And that's no benefits also. Right. So we're aware that this last year, the courts have been a total chaos. I mean, I've gotten calls from people that have gone to the court. No one's there. They can't get in. They say you're supposed to call. No one is informed that they should be calling because the court's not open. Have we taken care of that little mess? Because it has been a nightmare. Yes, having QLIS has required some training both of the public and the staff. I believe that we've worked it out. And we also have suggestion boxes there for people to put a suggestion in. Again, but people not coming in person. There doesn't look like there's anything in there. And occasionally I will get a call. I think I've gotten four. And we resolve that, you know, within 24 hours. Yeah, and some people are told they could get online. Some of the older people don't even have computers. So they can't get online. They can't get through. It's going to be when this is all said and then and not only knows when that's going to be that the courts will ever catch up. I don't even believe that warrants are being issued in a timely manner. I know they're not being picked up because they're told not to. I know our county jail has a takes and taken in prisoners because of COVID. The court system is crumbling quickly and I'm hoping that at least our municipal court can get on track somehow because people don't know if they can't get it, if they go to court and they can't get in and they can't get a call through and they can't get on the computer, all they know is there's probably a warrant for their arrest and they're living in terror, they're scared and I personally tell them there's probably no dam warrant anyway, just wait. It's got to work itself out. That's nobody's fault. It's not the court's fault. They didn't cause epidemic, and it is what it is. But I think that because we're still going through the pandemic, that we do need the three on-call judges. And it's good that they get no other benefits because we don't know that I'd hate not to have them. And then we can start to catch up and we may need him. We may be able to hold court more than two days a week to just get caught up is what I keep thinking is because there is no doubt there behind. There's absolutely no doubt. You know, I can't personally even get a felony on NCIC. The guy's running a muck and I can't even get him on NCIC. That's how bad it is. So being that closely related to the courts is very sad because the ones that know that nothing can be done because of this pandemic are all running a muck. You can ask our officers. I mean it's it's it's nothing you know the normal resident or citizen doesn't see it but here it is a nightmare and so I don't know like I say we can hope for the best and and hopefully we'll be able to to catch up all the people that haven't been able to go to court by having these extra deputies and they may cost us a few dollars but we'll get caught up and we need to get caught up. You can't just they just can't be up in the air. It's not the ones that really you know trap, trap, make, or something minor. They don't like thinking that there's a warrant hanging over their head when there was nothing they can do about it and can't reach anybody. It's a scary situation for them as well. So anyway, all right, just heads up on what I hear on my end going on. I guess because of the position I'm in, I'm a bondsman. So of course they would call me. Like I could solve everything. I did want to point out and perhaps get the opinion of the acting city attorney. The Brighton City Char charter is charged with appointing a by affirmative vote of two thirds, the such deputy minister to judges and presiding municipal judges as the council deems necessary. So I'm not sure if that can be waived. And I would like to ask the city attorney's opinion. Yeah, so I think I would, I don't know specifically what, how's my black's hearse? If he was saying the appointment of those judges, of those on-call judges or deputy judges, or the management of those judges, of those on-call judges are deputy judges or the management of them. But in terms of appointment, that appointment power rests in the council alone for the city's purpose. But how do you first, if you can clarify? What I was recommending or to look at, I don't know, but what I'm recommending to look at is that we don't fill the, quote, deputy city judge position that we have as we do right now, two or three on call attorneys that fill in as needed. And they're under the direction of the municipal court judge, because she lets them know when they're going to be needed and so on. That's what I'm suggesting. Okay. That would be, would that be allowable? So I would have to look into that, but I would say the charter itself, some cities charter say that the on call and deputy assistant judges are under the control of the municipal judge. ours is silent on that. And so we may be able to do it that way. We're doing it right now that way, right? I believe this point, Karen correct me if I'm wrong, the municipal judge is the one that manages their schedule in terms of providing them with that. And I can read that, that, that, that, where asked for resolution 2035, whereas the city solicited applications for qualified candidates to be considered for the on call deputy mental civil judge positions applications were received and reviewed by a city committee consisting of the presiding judge court administrator assistant director for general services and after careful review of the candidates and qualifications the committee recommended three candidates and then city council ratified that and they are to serve as on an as needed basis as determined by the presiding municipal judge So that was that wasn't action that council approved Good So Let's get some clarification from our city attorney. Can we, as a possibility, as an option, just not have a deputy judge and just have these on-call judges? I mean, would that be a viable option to consider? Or do we have to appoint a deputy judge? I don't know that you do. It's those, this is deputement misled judges as the council deems necessary. I think it's it's kind of a I would say probably more of a vocabulary choice rather than a requirement. I don't know that you're required to have a deputant means, well, Judge, if you don't deem it necessary. Yeah, I would consider just having only the oncology judges and have our presiding judge schedule with between herself and those three. So I'm that's where I would. And Karen understands. Anyway, wrong. I thought our deputy judge is on call. He he generally does 20 hours per month. Okay. Yeah. But he's not been available for a while. But thank you. Is the presiding judge and the deputy judge and the court administrator look at the calendar for the year and they try to map out the whole year. So that the presiding judge gets the required sessions and any time off as needed based on other duties or personal issues. And anyway, that's how they try to do it. Obviously things come up and the on-call deputy judges would need to be used. I think you could organize those deputy judges, however, council deems works best, whether they're all on-call or not. So you manage your base necessity, you have something? So you manage your base necessity, have something. Yes, Your Honor, the only other question in action, it's a, it comes out of your questions. Is the, is the deputy municipal judge. When the municipal judge isn't available, does he or she take over their duties? Is in other words, is he there to assist the municipal judge? No, only one judge is present at a time. No, no, but if the municipal judge needs to take time off, obviously, does he or she work together with the deputy? Again, I'm just thinking, and then also, but the deputy besides just being on call, that he or she may need to be in tune with whatever the municipal judge is doing. Do you see what I mean? I'm just looking at succession or whatever or emergencies or things that that nature if it doesn't, and that's fine. I'm't, and that's fine. I was just wondering if that was- It's generally the court administrator, the court administrator Michelle Ramos that tries to find the on-call deputy judges. They are trained and obviously receive you know the charter and the municipal code to refer to and certainly can talk to each other. the charter and the municipal code to refer to and certainly can talk to each other. Obviously not, while court is in session. Yeah, no, I'm just saying that usually Mr. Mayor, you know, we have assistant directors, you know, they're there to assist the director when he or she is not available, but perhaps not in this case. I was just trying to inquire. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Blocker, you have a follow up. Your hands up. I just didn't lower. No, I don't have follow up. So, Karen, you're looking for some direction here. I mean, we haven't heard from everyone obviously. Yeah, I would like to know how how moving forward did you want to keep the same format, which I explained to you what it is? Do you want it to be a contract position and request RFP? Do you want it to be, you know, those are kind of the questions that I need to know how, how you want it to look like. Do you still want it to be, you know, those are kind of the questions that I need to know how you want it to look like. Do you still want it to be benefited? It sounds like I'm hearing maybe presiding judges benefited but other judges not. That's what I'm doing. That's what I'm doing. that once the deputy judges term ends, you prefer to just use the on-call deputy judges that are already in place and they would be in place for two years from April 2020. That's another one I would read you. I don't know if anybody else in there. Council member, today, yeah. Thank you, Mayor. I have a question. So when you're talking about the position that's benefited and and Councilman Blackhurst talked about taking away those benefits. What I would like to know is that the salary that they're being paid is that taking the consideration that they are benefited or would they be able to get a higher salary or a higher dollar per hour somewhere else without benefits? As I shared with you on one of my screens, most places do not benefit a deputy judge or judge however they call it. We do. Okay, I did that. Thank you. Go ahead. We do currently. I want to know if you want to continue with that because what the questions that came up and again, COVID, you know, kind of made some of these things come to light. We had said that they were entitled the presiding judge and the deputy municipal judge was entitled to the same benefits as regular employees, but really they're not because some of the benefits require a certain amount of hours, for instance, to be eligible for short term disability or long term disability. If they're not getting, if they're not getting a salary that month, we have to get them to write a check to cover the benefits. And they've been doing that, and that's not been a problem, but I just want you to understand that that's how it works. Well, thank you, Karen. I can't get worth bringing that to a future meeting. Oh, consider those things that we're just talking about. Okay? Oh, we got one more person raising him. We're considering those things that were just talked about. Okay. Oh, we got one more person raising hand. They're putting. Sorry, am I okay. There we go. Thank you, Mayor. The one thing I want to really be clear with is to agree with council of Blackhurst and make sure that that's what we come to take a vote on is to make sure that we remove ourselves from being in the way of actual supervision inside of that building from the judge. That is a must. And I hope the residents understand that a lot of us, my first seven months on council, I was not made aware and did not do the due diligence to know that they were an employee of city council at all. I mean, that's how bad it has been to this point. So I want to make sure that we do that other than that. I'm willing willing to listen to council and move forward with other recommendations because this is quite a hectic process and I going to get the right answer. I'm not sure if we're going to get the right answer. I'm not sure if we're going to get the right answer. I'm not sure if we're going to get the right answer. I'm not sure if we're going to get the right answer. I'm not sure if we're going to get the right answer. I'm not sure if we're going to get the right answer. I are going down that path other than that, I don't have much of an opinion at this point. Point, I'm happy to have that considered. Okay, anybody else? All right, well thank you, Karen. Is that it? Thank you, I appreciate your time. I know there's one more agenda item, but we do also have a special meeting coming up for executive session, so I'm gonna confer a 10 minute break because we've been going over to ours. Come back at 8.25. So, next item on the agenda is the drought update. So, city manager, vice to CESA. We have to present on this. Mr. Merritt, as you know, this issue is a topic that has been discussed by many organizations right now. I'm sure you can just go outside and check the weather yourself and you can see how we're normally not snowing as we do here. And it's happening all over the United States. So climate change is occurring. And Texas, as you know, they had a record to know. Usually they had one day of snow that I'm familiar with, but things are changing. But this next presentation, City Council, is going to be given by Mr. Austin Presswell. He's our water resource engineer. And the purpose of this presentation, City Council, is just to give you our residents some information about draft, about some potential policies that we may want to consider in the future. And with that, and please know also that our utility director, Mr. Brett Sherman is here, and also to help address any any questions that the City Council may have. Again, this is just an update information heads up to our residents and towards the council that this is an issue that's being based by cities all over our state with that. I'll turn it over to Mr. Cresswell Austin. Well, hang on. Jane, we're I'm. I'm going to run this presentation tonight, but thank you. Austin is here to help answer the questions. He did help prepare this. You know, good evening, council members. Honorable Mayor, seat manager by a stessah. It's my pleasure to be here tonight. And as my mom always told me, if you're not sure what to say, talk about the weather. So that's what we're here about tonight. I think you'll find this presentation informative and at a minimum, it's a worthwhile to wrap our minds around the fact that we do live in a desert. It's a beautiful desert, but it's a desert nonetheless. And after last year, somewhat underwhelming winter and the dryness we've experienced so far this winter, we've been able to do a lot of work and it's a desert nonetheless. And after last year, somewhat underwhelming winter and the dryness we've experienced so far this winter, I felt it was important to provide a heads up to the potential of a drought in 2021. I want to emphasize that it's a potential drought. It hasn't been called yet. As you know, we get a lot of moisture around here in the month of March, typically, but at the moment we're quite a bit behind as you'll see in the following presentation. I would also like to acknowledge that the Director of Parks and Recreation and say I don't see Travis on here, but nonetheless, Travis Haynes, they have a separate drought plan plan but it's adopted from our drought plan so it's very similar and I don't know if he's out there maybe Chris can could bring him in just in case they have some questions about parks and rex variations. Let's see I I also, like I said, Austin Cresswell is here and he will be available to answer questions and to help with this presentation as needed. With that, I'm going to share my about the drought a little bit. So calling this the drought update, this is a Director's Update for all of you, all of the City Council, and we're excited to be able to have a discussion. Here's the latest Colorado drought map. As you can see here in Brighton area, these colors, the dark brown color is a D4 and it's a extreme drought. The red is a, the red is an extreme drought and we are right here in this exceptional drought, extreme drought, severe drought area. drought, severe drought area. And this was mapped on February 16th, so it may not include the most recent moisture we had, but I don't typically see those change very much from one small storm. As you can see over here in the west of Colorado, where our snow melt comes from, and a lot of all runoff hits the plat, South Platten comes our way. They're experiencing extreme drought and exceptional drought conditions at the moment. So that's a little alarming. This is the snow water equivalent in the South Platte. It's a hydrograph. All these lines are varying years showing the drought conditions or the water conditions in the South Platte Basin. As you can see, typically they peak in an average year, where at this green line represents is an average year. It peak around May 1st. We are currently this little black line down here. And let me switch to the next slide. You can see the 2012 drought year is this red line represented by this red line. That was a little bit of the most recent severe drought we had. Prior to that was a very severe drought in 2002. This bottom line down here in 2021 to date, you can see we're training upwards, which is a good thing, but we are slightly below the 2012 drought year on average. And with March coming on, we're not sure how that's going to look in the next few weeks. We're quite a bit behind in the mountains and our snowpack and I want everybody to be aware that that potential is there. So the front range we mentioned, see, manager mentioned that our neighboring cities are considering drought declarations. Probably Thornton has intimated that they're looking at that in the very near future. Probably about mid-March, they'd like to declare stage one drought conditions. Others considering drought declarations are all the communities you see on here are Vata, Aurora, Boulder, Brumfield. So we're not the only ones thinking about it and it's good to get out ahead of it if we can. What is our current drought plan? We have pretty much a four stage drought plan. We have stage zero. There's no drought conditions, everything's fine. Water in in in the lakes and the reservoirs and the river voluntary watering schedule applies. Stage one drought and minor drought conditions. We typically will go to a conditions. We typically will go to a scenario where the watering allowed twice a week, maybe, you know, Monday's and Tuesday's and Thursday's and Fridays, and we will typically go to odd numbered houses on one day, even numbered houses on another day in order to track that. They'll post an updated watering calendar to the website. And the goal is to get a 20% reduction of our average outdoor usage. Our goal is to improve water efficiency to help sustain our water supply and to discourage use beyond household core use. That's always our goal. Stage two is a significant drought condition based again on the snowpack and allowable water in the reservoirs, et cetera, for use. And our goal there is a 50% reduction of average water usage. We would typically go to a one day a week watering schedule and not very popular, but it would help us make it through the season. And then finally, the final emergency drought stage would be limited to indoor use pretty much exclusively. So, drought plant implementation. The drought index, the drought stage is determined through the use of a couple of different models. We have the potable water supply model. As I talked about, the water available to be treated and delivered to homes and the augmentation supply model on the other side, how much water do we have to augment what we deliver? Both of these models are currently being updated in our water plan. It is anticipated that Brighton will likely need to implement drought response strategies this year. Again, it's a potential scenario. And we're not in that drought scenario just yet, but we're anticipating that it could be coming if there is a snowstorm coming tomorrow night, but I don't think that's gonna be enough to get us out of the problem here. Droughtons plan, Parks and Recreation, as I mentioned, has a separate plan, separate drought management plan. It is however based on our plan and is geared to following our reduction goals of 20% and 50% for stage one and two drought levels and they are on board with their program as well. Customer impacts. Some of the things we have in our drought plan calls for special billing rates during the drought. We're reviewing this to see where those would get triggered and what they would be. We're looking at probably in our tier three level is where those would kick in. We have the ability to monitor the usage. If we go to that two-day-a-week program, we can use our AMIs, our automatic meter reads in order to tell when customers are watering, if they're watering on even days or every day and we can send out a courtesy notice at first and continued violations may end up in a citation or some such measure also considering what kind of positive incentives we can do to encourage people to conserve water and reduce water use during the drought. And so short and sweet, I know you guys have been busy talking about all kinds of things tonight. So I'll open it up for questions. And if you'd like to revisit any of my slides, let me know if not I'll stop sharing. And if you'd like to revisit any of my slides, let me know if not, I'll stop sharing. Thank you, Brett, for your presentation. I'll look like there are questions to start with. Thank you, Mayor. And just to let you know, there's something wrong with your mic tonight for the first time ever. I don't know what's going on, but it's very hard to hear you. Just to let you know. But the, so thanks a lot, thanks a lot, Dr. Sherman. I just need to be very clear about a few things. One is we've got, especially in East Brain, especially in East Farms once again, but also in Brighton Crossing, we've now found water tower park, these huge areas of residents in Ward 1, Ward 4, when the developer developed these lands, they used the wrong grass. Were you aware of that? I was not aware of the wrong grass. Thank you. I know. And not only is it wrong, but it's for a different climate. So what happens is if you don't water your grass three days a week in the heat of summer in East Brighton, you're, you're unable to, you're like really, I'll not be, not exaggerating here. You're unable to maintain your grass at a green level that is above the HOA levels that we face. So what ends up happening is anyone that tries to conserve water gets a fine from the HOA. So I just want to make sure that was made very clear. And this isn't this isn't hyperbole. This is real that they have admitted that they planted the wrong grass. Sorry about that. They even planted it wrong in Donaldson Park to where I believe our Parks and Recs Department actually re-planted some grass with receding, but it's a major issue out, wherever there's an HOA, not just East Brighton, because what happens when we go into this mode and the HOA says, no, you have to keep this good. And then if we relax those laws and people are trying to sell their home next to Brown grass because we've made this route thing a reality, the arduro plan a reality. So that needs to be more than considered. It has to be the overwhelming consideration. There's one point I'd like to make. I guess there's not much of a question in there. The second is the reality of Colorado is anyone that's lived here for in Brighton or Colorado for 10 years or more knows that our major snowstorms are yet to come. And that is just historically where it's at. So I would like to look at this again in May after the March and April storms really, really collide onto Brighton, because that's when they happen. And we end up almost always getting out of our drought mode where we're at in February, but we should definitely maintain and be scared that we could stay there. But in reality, we usually don't end up anywhere near that drought stage where we thought we would be. So I think that should make clear. And the third is there's a sentence on there that really hurts me. I can't believe it's being brought up tonight. I I the residents were engaged as they have been in the past which I'm going to try to get them to reengage any of residents listening right now. Please reengage with city council. A lot of things that are happening, including with water, are going down a path that we never thought would come this fast, is the word special billing. That's not an option. Billing customers more money to our residents for a while is not an option. If it does become an option from our city staff, any city council member that does the sides to all of a sudden make special billing or raising our rates, I feel the residents will recall them. That is not an option. We need to cut that out of the mix. I keep starting to hear little rumors of, oh, we don't have enough water. One, the plant is the water plant that we want is too expensive to. We have to raise water price, not an option. Immediately, if council members or city staff comes with raises and water, their positions in my opinion, my personal opinion, their positions, not on city staff, excuse me, I have no purview over that, but on city council, the residents will come and I'm proud that they will because we're not going to allow after what's happened in the past to hurt us today and hurt those residents again. So let's remove that from the mix and then let's talk but until then and until May I don't know how valid or valuable it is to discuss drought conditions because we cannot move in the direction that I just saw. I can't believe that that was actually discussed. So let's make sure we know where we're at before we move forward. But I appreciate the thoughts of looking at a drought before we know if it is one. I appreciate the thoughts of us conserving water and giving positive incentives. I'm cool with carrots. The residents and I are not cool with sticks. You're given a 70 million sticks in the past and we're not gonna accept it this time. So I want to be really clear about that. Thanks. No, let's go to councilmember Blackhurst. Your muted Clint. That can't be true. I never I'm not muted. No, sorry about that. I agree that March and April are traditionally the months that we depend on for snowfall. They always make the difference. I've seen it. I think all of us have seen times where at this time of the year, we could be 110% of snowpack. And if we get really dry marches in April, and we did last year too, we got pretty dry. Then we're going to wind up water short. The hard thing for us, and I'm not disagreeing with our mayor, Pro Tem. I mean, I really understand where he's coming from. But the reality of it is if we don't have water to put on grass, I mean, I can remember, I think it was 2014 is at the year of the when we had the last really major drought. 2012. 2012. 2012. 2012, cities like I think it was Lewisville completely banned outside watering for a month or two. If you don't have water, you don't have water. And you have to do something about making sure that residents don't abuse that. I mean, I don't like it either. I love, you know, would break my heart to see not just the grass, but the trees and other things die. But it's something we got to keep on top of and then review again. What's happening with Ken Mitchell? It's almost dry. It's not because there's no water in the South Platt to for us to bring the board. That that is true. The South Platt is relatively low right now. It's not in free river status yet. Austin, there's been calls most of the fallen winter because everybody's been anticipating with the dry weather that we could be facing a drought. So all the reservoirs that have senior call rights have been filling. So that's why Kim Mitchell is down. We've had to continue to augment through the winter. And typically we haven't had to do that in recent years. I can almost start walking across the lake. There are large areas in the middle of the lake that are above the dirt now, so it's interesting. Well, I appreciate us getting prepared. And the mayor pro tem said this is something we need to revisit in probably around May this year. Thank you. Blackhurst, next we'll go to Councilional Pollock. Thank you, Mayor. Very interesting presentation. A little bit of putting the cart before the horse. Those of us that are natives in Colorado, know that's just the way our weather works. We haven't had much snow, that's true. But we still have a couple of months of snow that we will get beginning tomorrow again. And then that's not even mentioning the rain because we do get some some hellacious rains. So I think what I did not like about this presentation is the first thing that I heard was billion changes. Be aware there is no way that I will vote to raise people's water bills. I'm okay if they have to cut down on their watering. Okay. It is what it is. We'll have to survive. But I will not support raising the water bills. That's just insanity and we're talking about it in advance. It just makes me nervous. Is this the plan? It's not City Council's plan. At all, not to my knowledge. And it just it actually makes me angry. it actually makes me angry. We can look at solutions, certain watering days, so many hours of watering, if it has to be, but then talking about the money raising just does something to my very being that is not good. And I think I've made myself and I'm going to be quiet now before I say something really ugly. Thank you. Thank you. Next we'll get a council member of Cushing. Thank you, Mayor. So the, yeah, the H&Way things are real problem because, you know, H&Ways, you know, it's very difficult for them to nod in forced rules. It's not really one of the options afforded to them. It's rules that require a huge chunk of people in the community to approve changes to. And when you try to do stuff like that, relax those rules, you get certain homeowners that like council member Johnson said, you know, they don't want to live next to, you know, they're, they're making their grass green, they don't want to live next to brown grass. That's a real problem. I completely agree that raising water rates is a non-starter. There was a certain city council candidate that brought up some ideas that some council members may still have a fire for. One of them was a rain barrel program. It's legal for homeowners to collect rainwater in Colorado. Kind of helps ease that burden where they can do something to keep their grass green without using the city treated water. And I don't know if there's something we can put together with that to maybe come up with a kit or something that people could get through the city to help encourage that. And then I'd like to see all kinds of conservation ideas. Zero escaping. I mean, you know, grass is popular, but I've seen some really cool zero escape. I know R.H.O.A.s approved some and they look great. They use hardly any water. Some of them have done some, we have one that did some vegetable gardens type really neat, planters and stuff. And so, I mean, if there's anything we can do to encourage or incentivize, zero-scaping and other conservation efforts, that's, we should go through that no matter what, drought or not. I mean water is expensive. We talk about it a lot. We don't have enough. We're never going to have enough. Drouts are going to make it worse. Using less, it's not just the water but it's treating it and you know this isn't just water out of a lake, it goes through a lot of expense and cost to process to just dump it back into the ground. So anything we can do to you know use less of that on landscaping, I think we should do any kind of incentives or even just steering people to resources on the right type of grass to plant. Maybe some kind of workshops that we can do to help people that are doing some landscaping to know that, hey, if you plant this other type of grass, you're gonna use this much less water. I know we've had some stuff where you've got water consultants that can help people optimize their use or optimize their landscaping or sprinkler configuration. I just think that needs to be our focus. I'm gonna totally agree with Council Member Pollock and Johnston that water rate increases. That's just not even bring that up anymore. Thank you very much. Thank you. If I could just real quick touch on a couple of those things. Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to lay out the potential options out there for what can be done. I would I would far prefer to incentivize. Yeah, I'm trying to lay out the potential options out there for what can be done. I would far prefer to incentivize conservation versus anything else. You're right. Rain barrels and Colorado are now allowed. You can have two 55 gallon barrels. You can have up to 110 gallons of water off of your rooftop provided at rains. That's a good thing. And anything beyond that, however, has to go back into the ground and back into the aquifer, etc. And unfortunately, the waiting until May to look at it might be a bit late as a chart showed. We peak at May 1st. And if you haven't conserved in your reservoirs, your kin mitral lakes are dry. There's no more water in them. So it's a good thing. We're gonna want to monitor it every day. We're gonna keep an eye on it. We're gonna keep our fingers crossed open for rain and snow and see what our neighbors are doing. If Thornton institutes a drought plan, it could mean increased cost to us. It could mean restrictions to us. So there's other factors that come into play. But please don't think we're advocating for water rate increases anywhere in Brighton at the moment. All right, thank you Brett for the response. Next, go to council member Jordan Ellie. Yes, Brett, we get our water in March, so you got some Colorado pride coming at you. Don't mess with our water. That's just a joke. But the one thing I do want to say, I'm sure community development is addressed this by now, this grass thing. Where did they truck it from? Washington State? I mean, if you go any sod farm from Nebraska, I had you taught it within a four state radius, you're gonna get bluegrass, where did they get it? So I'm thinking, community development, probably addressed that and said, you know, get the grass around here. If anybody, I don't know if anybody knows, but it's just my guess that it's been addressed already, right? Anyway, I don't know if we're city manager can answer that or maybe that's something We have a whole, our water resources division that Austin heads up. We have a guy in charge of water conservation and he comes around and he advises on sprinkler types and more conservation related ways of watering and grass types. You know, yeah, you're right. If their plant in Kentucky blue grass is gonna use a lot more water than other species and there are some more drought tolerant grass species. I'm not sure and I do believe that our community development department does specify types of grass that are acceptable whether or not they actually get that in the development stage, I don't know. You're, Mayor. If you want. Go ahead and quickly answer that. Okay, yes, we have addressed that over the past few years. And now developers do use the right grass. It's all Kentucky bluegrass mixed with bad seeds. If 22 years ago when they built a bright East forms. So it has been addressed comes with me. two years ago when they built the Bright East Forms. So it has been addressed, Councillor. Thank you. Bravo. Good answer, good question. Is that it, Council Member Jordan? Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot. Thank you, man. Hey, I'll go ahead and address now the topic. It's true, our wetter times tend to come in May, well, March and April, those are our snowiest months here in the state, just due to our topography here. I'm all for water conservation, having, you know, as what was mentioned earlier, maybe have some water consulting available to residents. When I lived in a neighboring state to the west of here, that state was in a program they had called slow the flow. Slow the flow. And one of the universities had a quarter cultural program that came out to the residents that asked for it and they would test out your sprinklers and see which zone and how often you should be watering. And I've been watering based on that here in Brighton, this is the third house I've owned and I've been using that same concept even here in the months of June, July, August, I just water every third day. You got to train maybe if you just obtain a home where someone had watered every day, you got to almost train your grass to grow some deep roots. But eventually, your grass learns how to take root and be green. It might take a couple of years. And I don't live in the H.O.A. I'd never have up to three homes I'd own. But we need some tolerance from our different homeowners associations that help in our residents to be able to get their grass trained to be drought-tolerant if that's impossible. But I love a water consultation option for residents and if there's a way we can do that on those CSU as a program like that or what in the state. I may respond to that. We do have program in-house. Our water conservation program specialist is available upon request for our residents. And he goes out numerous times during the year, does water audits, and looks at the sprinkler systems of our residents and makes recommendations on how they can operate it more efficiently, helps them to set their sprinkler timers, checks their sprinkler heads, and kind of gives their irrigation system an overall health review. And we've had some real positive response for that, but it is available to our residents. Well, that's great to hear. I hope we can promote that soon. Another thing is I find whenever in the spring water bills will give that little sheet that says we should months. I just go made through the end of September and I'm done. It's all just part of training your grass to be drought tolerant and that's how it's worked for me in my grass. Anyway, also the suggestion was to water based on your address. And I've never liked that given sometimes we'll get a storm. And I adjust my sprinklers based on how much rain we've had from a storm. And, you know, if my address number fell on that particular day, but it stormed that the night before I'm not going to water that day. That's just that's just not responsible to me. I think if everybody just trains or grass to water every third day, maybe as we get into September your water and leave the less than that. Because you know, back and often training aggressive, you're ready to be dormant. We all just need that responsibility in doing that. So that's my take on all this. I see some more hands for what's possible around to councilmember Black versus even horns to up. What was that from earlier? That's from earlier. I'll take that down. Sorry about that. Then next, I see Councilmember Pollock. Thank you, Marist. Just an FYI. Kyle Silvester from Parks and Recreation is putting together an audio, which will advise people, especially since we've got people crimping from different parts of the country to live here in Colorado, many in Brighton. What plants, trees, grass, best grows in this environment that we have and might just wanna check with them and see what we as a city can do to recommend different types of grass or flowers or plants or I didn't know until I listened to his presentation. I may not, I may actually have a green thumb. I just don't know how to use it. And so I would buy by looks, but I thought was pretty and it doesn't work in this ground. And so they would die. And so it's just we have we have resources in the city. We have some our parks and recreation people are pretty sharp when it it comes to grass and trees and flowers and so we should use them. I mean, there are resources and just a suggestion. We watered a lot of parks. We'll have to cut back, I guess anyhow that's just just some information that since I wasn't here last week and wasn't able to give a presentation on what parks and recreation was doing. I thought this was a perfect time to at least let you know thank you. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I after hearing from Councillor Cushing and so true, we need to get with our HOAs, and we need to do it now. Let's get all the leaders of our HOAs and say, hey, we're in a drought stage. Let's figure out some kind of way that we can make it to where the fines don't come. And I would love to keep, I think it would be beautiful to have our grass brown across all neighborhoods because of the water issue that we have here and everywhere else until we go into Councillor Cushing said about zero escaping and like making that a thing. But let's change our policies for the future and I want really want to get with the HOAs, we have to do it as a joint meeting with the president of every HOA with council. We've never done that. And that's been talked about with Councillor Baca, actually spoke about that before she left office and it's probably a good idea at this point, especially for this issue. So let's see what we can do. But I would like to make sure that we're contacting the AjoA right now to say, hey, we're headed down this path so that we don't have those fines coming at us. And we can keep our grasses brown as we need to. Thanks. Thank you. I agree. We need to work with our HLAs and I like that idea of having them together. All right. Is that it? Mr. Sherman? Yeah, thank you very much. I do see Travis Haynes on here. Now if Council, Councilwoman Paula Kess further questions for him or if he wants to speak about their drought plan. I really appreciate the wants to speak about their drought plan. I really appreciate the time to speak about this and just to give you a heads up that it's potential. It's out there. It's worse. Our water conditions, our snowpack conditions this year are worse than they've been in several years and you're absolutely right. I am a Colorado native. I know what it's like here. I see it every year and we could get hammered in March and April, but right now we don't have much for that to fall upon and build upon. We don't have the base that we would typically have by this time of the year. So we're all optimists and I'm right there with you, but I want to give you a heads up that it could become it. Jobs, do you have anything to add? I just wanted to thank Council Member Pollock for bringing up our program. Yes, Kyle Sylvester, our Open Space Manager, who used to be our cityforster is working with our city horticulturist and they are going to have a webinar series and do some zoom meetings and make it available to the public as council member of public said to give people an idea of what you know really grows well in Brighton, what doesn't. They're going to cover all different types of topics, trees, shrubs. We're talking about getting our some of our irrigation texts and our parks manager involved as well to talk about grasses and different varieties and things that are out there. So we're going to be starting that up very soon. I don't have an exact date yet. But once we do, I will let you all know and hopefully we can get that out there and get some citizens to take part in these and learn from, you know, as we said, people that have a lot of experience. We have some very highly educated, very experienced people in our department and, you know, people can call in and talk to us about those topics as well. We'd be happy to answer those questions for them too. Thank you, Director Haynes. I also wanted to mention our website. If you go to the Brighton Colorado website and go to the water conservation and efficiency, look that up under the Utilities tab. There's lots of resources there as well and recommendations and a way to get a hold of our project coordinator, the sprinkler expert that Austin was talking about. That whole program is under that website tab. Thank you. All right, well, thank you very much. Would you need to move on, Marilyn? I know we've spoken a couple of times that there's something you have to add really quick before we go on. Yeah, yes. I just want to tell Travis, thank you. And just say I'm so impressed with Parks and Recreation. They really do care and take care of our landscape. And I had suggested when I heard about this program that they're working on for giving advice on what things do and don't grow about maybe putting out a brochure or something that people can pick up. And maybe since it'll benefit the city as a whole, maybe they can help finance it, Travis, just, you know, an idea, but I'm just so impressed with that committee. They really, really work hard. And thank you so much. All right, thank you very much. Thank you, Director Sherman. And I would have to go, Director Haynes. Thank you. All right. So this comes to the end of the study session agenda before we move into the special meeting. I do want to recognize one person real quick. I know she may not like it if I'm a recognized, but our city manager, Jane Bistecesa, would recognize being with a part of the ICMA organizations for about, I think nearly 40 years to where I want to congratulate her or that accomplishment in school. That's great. Thank you. Mr. Man, thank you. Right. It's all right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Right. It's all right. Thank you, everyone. So we will adjourn this part of the meeting. I'll give a quick break for technology to change anything over the day too. And then when they are ready, those signal might are readiness to open the next meeting. We are adjourned for the moment. And we won't be coming back here, right? This is the same link you'll stay on. I'm going to restart my computer since there's some audio problems. And then we'll be going. Okay.