you you you you I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you I'm sorry. you I'm sorry. you you I'm sorry. you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you you you I'm sorry. you you I'm sorry. you I'm sorry. you you I'm sorry. you I'm sorry. you you I'm sorry. you I'm sorry. you In the organization that, again, people can cover for each other. But if your attention is ever diverted away from governance, who then becomes the person or group that covers for the governing body? Right? There is no redundancy at your level of the organization. And so that's another reason why it's so important to keep your focus on governance because if you're diverted away from a governance then there's nobody else who can step in and say well they're diverted we'll just do the job for them for a little while. Speaking with one voice. So obviously there are eight, soon to be nine voices on the City Council. And certainly each of those voices should weigh in on issues when they're being discussed. But I would say there comes a time when it is necessary to speak with one voice, if at all possible. Is that a discipline that you feel is though the Brighton City Council can adhere to? So once you make a decision, then that decision is really what should be respected by everybody, the majority and the minority. Again, am I saying anything controversial or crazy here, or does that sound pretty reasonable? I hope so, you know, because there can be dissent or disagreement, but this is a system where the majority vote carries the day, right? And so that idea of a majority vote really does have to be honored. And you may say, well, you know, I'm constantly on the minority. And so why should I honor the will of the majority? Well, someday you're going to be in the majority and then you would want the minority to honor the will of the majority. And so it always comes back to, you know, haunt you one way or the other. And so for everybody to say, okay, we will deliberate, we will sometimes disagree, but we will always honor the decision, the will of the majority. I think works out in the end for everybody. So, hope I'm not saying anything too crazy. The other thing is, you know, you're a, and I've kind of begun to appreciate this myself. You know, I was previously in your city attorney's position, and so I could kind of sit back as my governing body made decisions. But, you know, now that I'm in the manager's seat, I see how important it is to understand the direction of the body as a whole. And sometimes that is hard to ascertain. So you might take a vote one night and your manager will say, okay, my marching orders are clear. And then he might start hearing variations or shades of difference or he might hear a dissenting voice and then suddenly that direction is not so clear and that can become very much of a problem organizationally. I do think again, apropos of your question about communication. You know, it's one thing to have communications but it is another to give orders or to be perceived as giving orders. And so it is, I think, important to make sure that if you're saying anything that could be interpreted that way, that that voice be aimed at your CEO, your manager. So is this a liability issue? We build this as being a liability presentation, and I think it very much is because your charter sets out job descriptions for you as elected officials. It sets out job descriptions for the manager and others in the organization. And those job descriptions are key to maintaining your liability protection. And so once you fall outside of the parameters of your responsibilities as they're set out in the charter, then you do expose yourself potentially to greater liability because your best protections happen when you're operating within the lanes that are established for the respective players in the organization by the charter and other laws. Also, your liability coverage is due hinge upon you being outside the scope of your authorized responsibilities, then a question could be cast as to whether you are entitled to coverage through search that or not. It doesn't happen very often, but from time to time we have had a few, you know, just crazy outlier claims where the allegation was made that an elected official was acting outside the parameters of his or her authority and we had to say sorry you're on your own. Certainly something we do not want to say if at all possible. Personal conduct is the other issue that I want to quickly touch upon and would you agree with me that the way you as elected officials conduct yourselves in relationship to one another on the manager and staff and the community can greatly impact your effectiveness as elected officials? I don't think there's any dispute there that you know if all you were doing was you know internal fighting amongst one another, then it would be difficult to be effective or to get your priorities met. The other thing that I would observe is that maybe I'm crazy, but maybe there's a little bit of instability and divisiveness happening at other levels of government right now. I don't know just the thought and how's that working for them, right? I really truly believe that municipal government elected officials in municipal government, you are now the grownups in the room. So thank you very much for being the grownups in the room. And I really think it makes a huge difference both in terms of effectiveness and community perception. And all of the concerns we have when our elected leaders cannot get along together and move forward as a group. So again, thank you very much for being the grown-ups in the room. So is there a place for partisanship in municipal government. I would say there is not. Number one, from a formal standpoint, municipal government, I think, is one of the few levels of local government that is proudly and avowably nonpartisan. So in the political sense, certainly non you know, nonpartisanship rules in municipal government. But I also feel as though there are maybe other kinds of partisanship that can begin to affect a governing body. And so maybe it's not quite the right term, but I would say if there are divisions in a governing body on the basis of things like, you know, the in-crowd versus the out-crowd or the old timers versus the newbies or the new part of town versus the established part of town, younger versus older is a thing that I have been on to see in some governing bodies, elected versus staff. These are types of partisanship, I think, that can infect a governing body and become problematic. So, you know, there are many different kinds of partisanship, I think, to watch out for. With respect to one another. So I don't know if any of you have memorized this cover to cover, but it's got some new and some returning articles. And one of the returning chapters is a chapter on the outlier syndrome. And so my hope is that this is a syndrome that you will never have to experience on your governing body. I've certainly witnessed it in action from time to time on governing bodies. And this is not simply a situation where one or two or more members are, you know, constantly under the non-winning side of a vote. But it is maybe one or two individuals who kind of proudly refuse to be a member of the team, that is the City Council, who kind of make it their job description to say, I'm the only ethical one and you're not, right? I'm the only one who is making decisions in the interests of the citizens and you're not. I'm the only smart one and you're not. And so they sort of make it their job description, their mission to kind of separate themselves out from the rest of the governing body with almost an intent to try to point fingers at or to try to humiliate the rest of the governing body. If you've ever seen this in action, then you will know this is not simply a matter of disagreement on a body. Because disagreement is okay, it's gonna happen. And in fact, I would say discussion, disagreement, dissension, these are really the engines of good decision making. So I'm not suggesting that, you know, disagreeing is ever a problem. But I am saying that if somebody ever kind of stakes out that position to be the outlier, then it can become a real problem for the rest of the governing body as well as the outlier. This happened some years ago in my own city, which shall go unnamed. And I was kind of shocked that this elected official had made being an outlier his mission, but in the meantime, there was not a single issue that he raised to the rest of the governing body where his views carried the day. And so, in fact, it was a very ineffective place to be. And meanwhile, the rest of the council was kind of circling around him, you know, first trying to integrate him into the fold, and then circling around him kind of trying to cast him out when, you know, the first efforts didn't work. So it is a real problem. You know, not as problematic as that, but certainly a problem is this idea of I versus we. There is nothing in your charter. I would wager where anyone elected official saved the mayor, except for the mayor who does have some individual duties. There is nothing in the charter that says A, Council member may or A, Council member must, when it comes to the exercise of any powers on behalf of the city. It really is a collective endeavor. And so it's complicated to balance the idea of I versus we. Really the only time that you have power is when you're gathered together as we the council and you discuss and you vote upon the matters that come before you. Other than that there aren't any individual powers. And so this can become problematic with issues like constituent service. Is that a thing in Brighton, where an individual citizen might come to you and say, hey, council member, I voted for you by the way. Thank you very much for your service. And now I've got a problem with the city that I need your help on. Does that ever happen? I can imagine that it does. And when that happens, does that put you in sometimes an awkward position? Because invariably is the issue an administrative issue, right? 99.9% of the time when a citizen needs constituent service, it's about an administrative issue, right? They're not here saying, uh, Council member, I'd like to talk to you about, um, the, the land use, uh, chapter of your municipal code, right? That doesn't really happen. And so things at your level, you know, don't necessarily come to you that way, but things at the level of the staff often do come to you that way. And so I do think you have to be prepared to make sure that you're not acting as I in a way that takes you outside your lane and kind of puts you into the staff's lane and potentially gets you crosswise with what the staff should be doing. So that is definitely a thing. The open meetings law and executive sessions. I don't think I need to say a whole lot about these issues. I'm sure your city attorney has talked to you many, many times about the requirements of the open meetings law and the requirements that pertain to executive sessions. But really the one thing that I do want to mention is the importance of confidentiality for matters that are discussed in executive session. Executive sessions are permitted only when confidentiality, the need for confidentiality, outweighs the case and you all voted to go into executive session, then it is critical to maintain that confidentiality once you get out of the executive session. With respect to one another, does the concept of equality of information resonate with the members of the council? That is that all of you in so far as possible should receive equal information that no one of you should be kept out of the information loop and no one of you should say to the rest of your colleagues, I am in possession of more information than the rest of you and therefore I should have a greater say in the decisions that you make. And so this is up to the quality of information kind of cuts in various different directions. One is of of course, that if staff gives information to one member of the council, then all members of the council should be getting that information so that no one of you is saying, where'd you hear that? I didn't hear that. Was I, you know, what happened here? But the other side of that is the idea that no one of you should go out and, you know, do your own risk to be a subject matter expert in the hope of saying that, you know, your views should carry more weight than those of another. You all really are the ultimate generalists in that regard. And so you should be seeking information from the staff and your consultants and you should be asking whatever questions you need so that as a body you feel you have the information you need. But when individuals start becoming information gathers on your own that can certainly become very problematic. The mayor's role. So I do want to spend just a minute on the role of the mayor because it's kind of complicated. And congratulations, by the way, on your mayorship. But it is a complicated position, I think, because there are sort of the formal responsibilities. And then there are the informal expectations. And so you have to make sure that those are married up properly and that those formal roles and informal expectations are really kind of held in common by all of you and not just one of you. So the charter says basically that the mayor is a member of the council and has the responsibility of presiding over meetings of the council and then has the same powers, rights and responsibilities as other members of the council. And then there are some, you know, head of the government for ceremonial purposes, kinds of responsibilities. But you know, those are the formal responsibilities. Are there informal roles and expectations that go far beyond what the charter articulates as the formal responsibility? Most certainly, right? I feel as though if you all are sort of the parental authority figures of the municipal government, then the mayor is kind of like the face of the municipal government in many ways. And so you're certainly looked upon that way. Is the mayor often called upon to become the consensus builder? Most certainly, right? You preside over meetings and so the process of discussion and then trying to gather a bunch of cats right into one place and achieving consensus, that does often fall to the mayor, right? And I think properly, so certainly there is an informal role for the mayor, but I think that it is really important to make sure that all of you are on the same page in terms of what that informal role should be. Because if you're not on the same page, then you may have a mayor who's kind of out ahead of the rest of you, or you may have expectations for the mayor that you feel as though the mayor just hasn't stepped up to. And so I think it's important to discuss, you know, what you think are the informal responsibilities of a mayor above and beyond those that are in the charter. In a sort of worst case scenario, I have seen this happen, and this happened in a city that happened to be a statutory mayor council city. Its next door neighbor was one of the very few statutory council manager cities in Colorado. And so my mayor in the mayor council city looked over at the city next door and adopted all of their rules of procedure, rules of conduct, which gave him a council mayor form of government. And so, you know, it wasn't long before the rest of the council kind of rose up in protest and said, henceforth, the only job you shall exercise is you shall pick up the gavill at the beginning of the meeting and you shall put it down at the end of the meeting. And beyond that, you have nothing that you can do because they kind of got sick of the fact that he had very informally begun exercising a whole bunch of responsibilities than that sort of unique geographical situation, but it can happen. The other thing that's worth mentioning about your charter is the no interference clause. And this kind of, again, harkens back to the earlier question about communication versus the appearance of, you know, giving orders or directions. And so it is important for purposes of compliance with your charter to make sure that you comply with this idea that when you're dealing with the administrative side of the organization, that really the only person who should be receiving orders from the council is your city manager and any other direct report. This is the case in Brighton. I witnessed a very nice, very warm introduction of a new staff member. I thought, well, all is good here in Brighton in terms of elected official staff relationships. But certainly I've seen instances where an elected official perhaps a newly elected official will come in and view the staff as the enemy. I have been a city attorney and so I have been in the position where a slate of newly elected officials came in and looked at me, looked at the manager, looked at other staff members and said, we're going to have to clean house now because you all are the enemy. And that brought me to the core because I served the previous council loyally and effectively. And so, didn't I prove that I can serve you the next council loyally and effectively, too? We're nonpartisan here. And so this idea of cleaning house after the election really should not apply in municipal government. With respect to the community, I will ask how are public comment periods going? Pretty smoothly? No? Good. I've certainly seen instances where public comment period degenerated into public inquisition period or public cross examination period or public argument period. And I feel as though each of you has such an important role to play in making sure that public comment period serves is its intended purpose of giving the community an opportunity to express themselves to you and allow public comment to turn into public and position or public argument. Personal conduct, is this a liability issue? I think very much that it is. My observation over many many years of looking at municipal government claims is this that how a governing body interacts with one another is a good predictor of sort of whether the entire organization is functional or dysfunctional. And so if things are going well at the very top levels of the municipal government, then I feel like things are going to be good throughout the organization. On the other hand, if things are dysfunctional at the very top, then I would expect to see that that dysfunction will be reflected throughout the organization. And so very much, I feel, as though, you know, how you all work with and interact with one another is going to turn into a reflection of how the rest of the organization interacts with one another. So, again, you're the ultimate parental authority figures of the organization in so many ways, including that particular example. So with that, I will stop and see if there are any questions or any pushback. If I said anything crazy, I would certainly like the opportunity to correct myself. So questions and comments for Tammy. I think. No, I don't think so. Yeah, so let's go back to the charter. And I'm sorry, I probably did not spend enough time but you know if you look at the charter the charter basically says the mayor is a member of the council right has the same powers and responsibilities as the rest of the council but it also says the mayor is the head of the city government for ceremonial purposes right authenticates legal documents and so right? Authenticates legal documents, and so the signature of the mayor on legal documents, and then the mayor of course presides over meetings of the governing body. So those are the formal responsibilities that the mayor- I guess I just didn't get that clear. But yeah, thank you. Yeah. Okay, very good, thank you. Anybody else? Well, thank you. Yeah. Okay. Very good, thank you. Anybody else? Well, thank you, Tammy. I just wanna make just some follow up comments here. I think it's important that, as you said, we're provided with all the information as a body here as a council and not just a couple of us or you of us or whatever. I think that's very important that we do that, especially as we promote a better transparency this new year. Also as council member Jornelia talked about, he was asking about, you know, speaking with maybe the, you know, the supervisors. I know here in this council, Mr. Falcimberg has that, you know, we're welcome to talk to our, you know, the certain supervisors, but we should pay his, pay the respect to the city manager and give him the respect that he deserves to know what we're talking about. That's very important as we're discussing certain items, but we don't set the policy with the with the supervisors or the directors. We go through the city manager first and that's important to note that. And then I was wondering, is it possible to send an electronic copy of this presentation to our city manager and you can distribute that to us? It's great to have paper, but I'm trying to be as paperless as possible and put things on here. Because there's only so much paper I can have and I appreciate this for note taking. But is that possible? Oh, absolutely. Yes. Yes, I'll be happy to make sure that you have an electronic version of these PowerPoint. Yes. Thank you. Well, thank you for your taking your time to come over here and we appreciate your efforts to come to not only Brighton but all the communities throughout the state. Well, thank you. Thank you, Mike. Okay. the state. So thank you. Thank you, my pleasure. So next, next on the agenda is department overview and community development. Mr. Falconberg, what do we have today? Is it Holly? Yes, Mayor. I'd invite up our community development director, Holly Prather. Yes, Mayor, I'd invite up our community development director, Holly Prather. And I think you'll find, especially to the three new members, that hopefully you'll appreciate this, not just as kind of a high level philosophical overview. It's actually very, very practical. We prep today for your council meeting next Tuesday, and the things Holly will be sharing with you are going to be coming at you live during that meeting pretty hot and heavy and so we want to make sure you're prepared which is why we queued her up first. Public hearings are a little bit different than a lot of the things you'll see. Very specific roles and responsibilities. So she'll kind of describe to you the overview and we can do question and answer at the end, but you will have on your agenda next Tuesday. Several of the things she'll be kind of talking about tonight. Good evening, you're Honorable Mayor, ladies and gentlemen, the Council congrats to our newest council members. Mark, David, great intro. We have some agenda items at the next council meeting and we want to make sure that everybody has a little bit of a prep session so that they are ready to listen to the testimony and make their determination regarding those applications. So I'm kind of want to give a department overview a little bit of what we do and why we do it and then I'll also get into those manual use development applications that are becoming before you. So what we do, we play a key role in shaping the future of development while preserving our heritage and historic buildings. We administer regulations in accordance with the city's comprehensive plan and review construction through zoning, building permits, subdivision regulations, and community design guidelines. The department serves Brighton residents directly at the one stop counter, the permit counter, and indirectly by guiding the city's urban form from concept to construction. So community development is primarily made up of the building division, the permit counter, the one stop center, historic preservation and planning. So what does the building division do? They're responsible for enforcing the building codes, performing plan review and building inspections for all construction in the city. The permit counter is responsible for processing construction permits for residential, commercial, industrial, public infrastructure, and releasing right-of-way permits. And they also handle all licensing in the city, at least they did in 2019. As you know, some of you were on council when we recently approved an amendment to the municipal code, where in sales tax and business licenses will be consolidated into one. And finance will be taking that over. They will have a person's station downstairs, near the one stop. So we used to handle all of the licensing. But in 2020, a majority of that licensing, not a majority, but a portion of that licensing will now be handled by finance department. And then the permit counter will handle all of the contract related licensing. So the permit counter, we have four permit technicians down there at the counter. In 2019, we processed 3,915 total permits. 1,322 of those permits were commercial and residential roof permits. The hailstorm that hit Brighton and kind of the region in June of 2018 caused a phenomenal, obviously, insertions of permits, roof permits primarily. So a lot of those permits, about 33% of the permits we processed in 2019 were still roof permits. So we're still trying to get all caught up from that. We processed a total of 488 licenses of those licenses 400 are construction related. So we have different contractors license, we have electrical contractors licenses. So about 400 of those licenses that were processed were those, so that will stay with the permit counter in 2020. Planning division. So we have kind of two breakout areas in the planning division. What we have first is what we call current planning. Current planning is responsible for processing of all land use applications. They also are the facilitators who are taking those projects through the development review process. And of course, they're in charge of code compliance. And that is just for the land use development code. The land use development code, the old version looks like this. Very big, thick document. The new code, which I'll generally talk about here in a little bit, is this is not the official version from Unicode. They're still getting that codified for us and we'll get us binders, but it's much thinner. We've actually done a good job of trying to purge unnecessary regulations or things that don't make sense and then kind of consolidate the code a little bit. So it's much more user friendly and much less paper. So the planning division is made up of two senior planners and two assistant planners and a planning technician and then the manager who oversees the division. In 2019 we processed 84 different land use projects. So between those five employees, we processed each employee had about 17 different applications last year. Keep in mind land use applications can take anywhere from four months to two to half, three years. When I say two and a half to three years, I don't want to frighten you, but a lot of times we have applicants who will submit their plans, we have a two-week turnaround, and then they don't submit for months at a time or even years at a time. So that's kind of, it doesn't happen all the time, but it does happen. A good example of that is the riverfront project that's been in process for about four and a half years now. One thing I do want to mention on this is thank you to the City Council in last year's budget approval for this fiscal year. You did give us a new position of a zoning code enforcement officer. So we will now have that function here in 2020. Obviously, it's a brand new year. We're getting the job description together. We're getting the work program together. We're trying to get their office space together and then we will be posting that position. But we'll be able to have someone dedicated to going out and enforcing elements of the land use and development code. So thank you very much for that. We appreciate it. Okay, so this is the other facet of the planning division. The second prong, the long-range planning function. They're responsible for those municipal code amendments. Asiatives is our long-range planner. She did all not all. We had a consultant, but did the primary work on the land use and development code, the new code coming before you? And she also will be bringing a proposal for a potential municipal code through the next study session meeting. I think on the 28th regarding goats. A citizen came to a council meeting in the fall and wanted to be allowed to have goats in her neighborhood. And so that was a topic that was kind of tabled until we had the new council seated. So we'll be bringing that topic to you, but she would handle those minor amendments to the code as well. She also handles our population projections. She looks at all the building permits that have come in, determines how many people on average per unit type and then projects out in five years, 10 years, 25 years, what our potential population could look like. Later this year, she will be bringing that information to you. She also handles the comprehensive plan. She does our annual review and she does any amendments to that. So the comprehensive plan is this document here. The City Council approved it back in April of 2016. It's all of these documents are online, so I would encourage you, we'd like a little bedtime reading to get out there and read them. We also handle sub area plans for minor, smaller plans of smaller regions within the city. One of those is the district plan, and I know for a fact that one of our newest council members was spending time this weekend reading this document because he told me he was doing that, which is great. I think it's phenomenal that you guys are trying to get up to speed. This district plan was a collaborative effort between Adams County and the city of Brighton, kind of the first of its kind. And we're very excited about it. We also were able to work with the county to fund a position that position started at the county and then we transferred it over here. Analy Barabee works on everything ag. And so, and I should point out, I'm giving a very high level overview tonight. But what I'd like to do as the months wear on is bring in some of my select staff members to talk about certain elements. I'd like to bring in Analy and have her talk about the district plant or historic splendid valley. I'd like to bring in Kim Bauer to talk about historic preservation in their efforts. Like to bring in Jason Bradford, the planning manager to kind of talk more about the development review process. I'd like to bring in Chief Building Official Matt Rowlin to talk to you about permits and inspections and their importance. So we'll kind of be lumping those into some of these study session meetings, so you'll get a more in-depth overview of those specific divisions. Okay. Moving on. Oh and Asia also does coordination for the census 2020, which is a lot more right now. Okay historic preservation. What do we do in historic preservation? We designate historic buildings and districts. The portion of the downtown is a historic district. We make determinations on alterations or demolitions of historic properties. We assist property owners of historic properties on physical or financial aspects of historic preservation, and we develop and assist in public education programs. We also operate a small museum at Historic City Hall, which includes a research library and is a repository for historic documents and artifacts. The museum has regular rotating exhibits and is open to the public. I have just a little plug here. Our current exhibit is Brighton 1859 to 1977 in American story. Our hours currently to the public are Tuesday through Friday, 10 to 5. So please drop in and say hi to the staff down there and learn something about our history. Okay, so that's high level overview of the department. Now I'm going to try to get not too into the weeds, but a little bit into the weeds in regards to some of the applications you'll be seeing at the next City Council meeting. Now, it would not be appropriate for me to talk about those actual applications, so I'm not going to do that, but I'm just going to give you a brief overview of each application type, what kind of the process is and then what those review criteria are for you. So everything is outlined. Well, almost everything is outlined in the Land Use and Development Code. This monster document here. And the Land Use and Development Code was enacted pursuant to the purposes and authority granted by the Colorado Revised Statutes, which is this document here. This is only one volume of, I can't, 20, Jack, it's how many? Okay. So this is just one volume, but this here gives us the authority as a home rule to establish our own zoning and subdivision regulations to form planning commissions, et cetera. So that gives us the authority to plan and zone along with the home rule authority granted by Article 20 of the Colorado Constitution. The New Land Use Development Code, this guy here, was adopted by the City Council on December 3rd, 2019, and it became effective on January 1st. This year, this presentation that I'm about to give is going to discuss the provisions of what I will call the old code, this big blue binder. to discuss the provisions of what I will call the old code, this big blue binder. The reason for that is most of the applications that you're going to be seeing over the next couple of months. Obviously, we're in process several months ago, possibly even a year or two ago. So those applications fall under the old code. They will be, they've been processed through the old code. We're not going to pull the rug out from an applicant and say, oh, you were in process. We're going to make you now follow a new code that's not fair. So I'm going to go over the old code processes. In the future, as we start getting applications that will come before you that are under the new code, we'll do kind of a primer on that as well. OK, generally, this outlines the land use and development process. So applications that are under the city council's purview, generally, again this is very general, are in orange and that's annexation, which is the first step and I'll get into more detail, but essentially annexation is bringing a county property into the municipal city limits and providing them services. Zoning is the next step in the process. Zoning basically says this property is going to be allowed to have these land uses, or it may not have these land uses. Here's what the dimensional standards, the setbacks, the minimum lot size will be for the properties. So that's your zoning. The next step in the process is subdivision, subdividing or plating the property, breaking out the property into future rights of way for streets, public land dedications for parks, schools, and then of course creating actual residential lots or commercial lots. So that's kind of in and not show what that process looks like. Each of these steps in the process are separate and distinct. They have separate and distinct review and approval criteria. So it's difficult for sometimes for like the Planning Commission or even the City Council. When you have constituents who say, I want them to address this at this stage. Well, legally sometimes they're not allowed to really put that burden on the property owner or the developer. And that's why staff and the City Attorney are here to make sure that you're reviewing those documents within that purview, within that review criteria. Because you certainly don't want to be legally challenged and have to end up in court over making a decision that was not legally proper or legally based. So with that, after all those steps when city councils gone through the annexation and the zoning and the subdivision of the property, then it's pretty amidst administrative staff review and approval. At that point, you've said this property should be of the property. Then it's pretty amidst administrative staff review and approval. At that point, you've said this property should be in the city. This is what we think it should be zoned based on the comprehensive plan and the code, of course. And then here's how we will lay out the land. And then after that, again, kind of going back to the previous presentation, you guys don't want to get too into the weeds over what the building looks like or what the landscaping looks like. You just want to make sure that it has good landscaping. It has the branding incorporated in it and that's the policy that you set and then at that point the staff ensures that through the code and during that development review process the site planning that that gets done. Okay. So the first step in the process is annexation. This is the process by which municipalities incorporate territory into their boundaries. It actually is not addressed in the old land use and development code. We defer to the state statutes. The new code does talk about annexation. The process is the same. It just outlines a little bit more detail in the new code of kind of your policy issues on when is it appropriate to annex and what types of annexation are we looking for. It's also annexation is extension of municipal government and services and facilities to those eligible areas to form a part of the whole community. Okay, so what does the state statute say about annexation? It sets forth that at least one six of the perimeter of the property should be contiguous with city limits. Okay, so you can't just go two miles out from Brighton and Annex property and it has to be physically adjacent to existing city limits and per state statutes by one six. There has to be an interest between the property owner and the city in regards to bringing that property into the city. Now there are some, there's always a caveat, right? So the caveat to that is what we call an enclave annexation. And an enclave annexation basically means that if a property has been completely surrounded by city limits for a period, there's certain statutory requirements for a period of three years, you as a city could go in and forcibly annex that property. That can be done. So, but generally in terms of annexation, there should be an interest between the two parties to bring this property into the city. But there are some exceptions to that rule. And I think it might be important as a council at some point to determine what your policy is in terms of annexations. Do you want to pursue forcibly annexation of properties that are enclaves? The reason you don't really like to have enclaves out there is it's very difficult for emergency services, things like ambulance providers, police departments to know whether this property is in the city or not. Also, if you ever wanna build a street in front of the property, it's a lot easier to do so when it's in the city. There's no issues with, you know, is this a resident, can they use the recs? I mean, even little things like that that come up that are problematic with enclaves. So we'll get into that another time, but that should probably be a policy discussion of, do we want to force these enclaves and get them in the city or not? So another time. The territory proposed to be annexed is urban or will be urbanized in the near future, and the territory proposed to be annexed is integrated or is capable of being integrated with annexing municipality. Again, it's not wise to go three, four miles out and bring in a bunch of properties. If you really don't think you're going to at some point integrate them into your community and develop them and provide water and sewer services, right? Provide police services to them. There's statutes regarding flagpole annexations, but we might have to just do a whole thing on annexation one night. Okay, and I'm trying to be contentious of the time because I know we have other presentations, and I know you guys have big picture items to discuss as well. So, I'll try to speed it up. So there are basically four steps for Councilor Review and approval. The first is you would consider a resolution accepting the petition for annexation. The property owner would petition to become part of the city. Then at that point, you would establish a future public hearing. And during that timeframe, the staff provides notice to a local paper for a minimum of a four consecutive week period. Regarding that upcoming public hearing, if the property is over 10 acres, we have to create an annexation impact report, send that out to all of the special districts, 27J, we have to send it to the county commissioners, the county attorney, lots of different people. And then the next step is kind of the night of the public hearing, we also do a resolution called the findings of fact resolution regarding whether or not the annexation is eligible. Does it meet those previous requirements? The one-sixth contiguity? Is there an interest between the two parties and so on? So then you have the public hearing, where, of course, with public hearings, people for the project or against it can come and say their piece about it. And then you have the first reading of the annexation ordinance. If you wish to pursue bringing it into the city limits. And then the last step is the second or also known as the final reading of the annexation ordinance. And at that time, the staff would bring an annexation agreement to the city council for your review. An annexation agreement is a contractual agreement between the city and the property owner in regards to the city will provide you with water, sewer, storm drainage services, police services, and then you as the property owner are responsible to improve roadways adjacent to your property, install water and sewer lines, install the storm drainage facilities, pay impact fees, and then donate land. So it's kind of a quid pro quo. We're going to give you this if you give us that. So that's an inundational annexation agreements. Okay, so here is an example of what you might see. Yes. I'm sorry. Oh, staff. Staff in the city, staff in the city attorney's office do all of that. They do the analysis of that and then they provide you with that analysis through a staff report and then that's usually also outlined in detail in the resolution. Ultimately, you guys are approving that as they find it. You are finding those as fact, but the staff is doing the legwork for you. Good question. All right. So here's the annexation plot just an example of what you might see before you. They're not real sexy. You know, it's got a scale on it. A north arrow, a legal description of the property, a map showing the actual property boundaries where it's located by a vicinity map. It shows you how it's contiguous going on the west wall over here. This here is the property outline on this annexation flat. Generally shows you what's happening in the surroundings. This is the Union Pacific Railroad here. This is the property to the south where the contiguity is coming from, that one-sixth contiguity. And then we have, of course, the signature blocks down here for the City Council, the mayor to sign off on. And also the recording information when we take it to Adams or Wells County for recording purposes. So they're not very fun documents to look at, but this is what you'll be seeing. Okay, zoning. The purpose of zoning is to regulate uses of land and the physical improvements to the land without imposing an undue burden on the landowner. Planning is a tool used by local governments to balance the interests of the public welfare with the private land owners' rights to use their land. So again, going back to the old code, the Land Justice Development Code, section 17-8-80s, zoning is administered in two ways in the city. So you either follow the city's adopted zone districts, which I'll get into further, or you establish you as the property owner, establish a planned unit development of PUD as your zoning. Okay, so this is again the city's standard zone districts, what we call straight zoning. And here I'm starting to abbreviate LU and DCs, the land use development code. It gets very lengthy, so I tried to shorten it up for you. Land use development code outlines various types of zoning districts within the city, which are as follows. We have seven different types of residential zone districts. We have four different types of mixed use districts, four types of commercial districts, three industrial, two agricultural, and four what I would call miscellaneous. Under the miscellaneous category would be things like public land. This building is on land that's owned as public land. Then we have separate zoning district for parks and open space. So those are kind of the miscellaneous category. So here's an example of the zoning map. I'm going to go towards Eastwall with a pointer just because I don't want to be pointing at Marv's head. So here's US85 and here's Bridge Street, kind of this darker black line and and Bromley and and then baseline or World County Road 2 or 160 a.t.t. whatever you call it wherever you're at. So everything that you're seeing on this little snippet of our zoning map, everything in blue is public land. Everything that you see in kind of the brighter yellow or the darker orange colors are residential zone districts. Everything you see in like a red or a dark red ish brown is a commercial zone district. And then there's these kind of tan colors here, large tan colors. These are those areas on the zoning map that are planned unit developments. Again, I'll get into those a little bit later. So that's what the zoning map looks like. And again, this is also online. So in terms of the approval steps for zoning, there are essentially two steps for Council's review and approval. You have the public hearing, again, an opportunity for the public to be engaged and have their point of view represented. And then you have the first reading of the zoning ordinance. And then the second reading of the zoning ordinance. And then the second step in the process is the second also known as final reading of the ordinance. I should note here that you as the policy makers are one council, but you have many boards and commissions that kind of report to you. One of those is the planning commission. The planning commission actually sees some of these land use applications before you do and there are recommending body on them. And one of them is zoning. So they will actually have a separate public hearing before you see it. They will make their recommendation to the council. And in that recommendation, they will kind of have their findings effective. Hey, we believe this meets the intent of the land use code. We believe this meets the comprehensive plans, future desire. And then sometimes they don't recommend approval of it. And then they would, you would, you would still bring that to you with their recommendation of denial. Okay. So the review and approval criteria for zoning is that it complies with the comprehensive plan and other master plans of the city complies with the requirements of the Land Use Development Code and with the zone district provides consistency with the purpose and intent of the Land Use Development Code provides compatibility with surrounding areas as harmonies with the character of the neighborhood. It is not detrimental to the immediate area, usage development of the area or the health safety or welfare of the character of the neighborhood. It is not detrimental to the immediate area, use your development of the area or the health safety or welfare of the inhabitants of the city. Those are the zoning criteria. So you'll see that coming before you next week. Okay, EUDs, again, it's type of zoning. Similar process to zoning, which I just went over, however, there is a kind of a step after that that council does not see. And that's final development plans. That's a little bit more of a step after that that Council does not see. And that's final development plans. That's a little bit more of a site-specific plan with those PUDs. Those are reviewed again by staff administrative. PUD is different from straight zoning or the city's zone districts. In that, the owner for applicant establishes their own standards for that land. So they determine what land uses there are and where they're located. They determine what's allowed, what's not allowed, what's a conditional use. They determine the dimensional standards for each of those allowed uses. So dimensional standards, again, where are the front, rear side, setbacks? What are the minimum lot sizes? What's the maximum building height? Those, when I say dimensional standards, that's really what that encompasses. And then design standards. When you're doing a PUD, that is a true quid pro quo. If you're not going to follow the city standards, then you are doing a PUD. You need to go above and beyond our standards in some way. So a lot of times they'll do that through additional design standards. They'll do you know better architecture, better landscaping, those types of things to kind of raise the bar for their development. I would like to note that nearly 75% of the land zoned in the city of Brighton is within a PUD. It's a lot of land. Now that was, of course, mostly under the old code, which we've had in place since the 70s. I mean, it's been amended over the years, but it's really pretty outdated. It was a pretty outdated code. Now we have the new code. And in the new code, we're trying to not have people do PUDs. And the reason for that is you want some level of consistency in your community, right? You want to know what's going to go in next store. It's a lot easier to tell a resident, hey, that property is zoned this and the code says, this, this, and this can go there. With the PUD, because there is that flexibility for that property owner, you could have a resident on one side of the street who has a PUD property across it that might have different dimensional standards and land uses than the property next door to them. It's also an administrative nightmare for staff to keep track of and to do research on. If we get a pod call for one of those 75% of the zoned areas, we got to go in the files and look that up and find out, oh, what is the setback here? Because it's not consistent across the board. So it can lead to a lot of frustration for the citizens and of course the staff. And I feel like we're not getting as good a customer service out there because it takes us a while to do that research. And sometimes it's not clear in that document, so then we have to make an interpretation. Then we get to bring in the city attorney. It's just, it's a nice thing to have, but it can be problematic over time. Now I should say that there's a lot of land zone this way, and they're already entitled to do that. So if they want to develop under that zoning, they have the right to do so. So you're going to see a lot of land use applications come before you where they're under a PUD zoning and they are allowed in accordance with that zoning. I think over time what you'll see is some of those PUDs are outdated and those landowners will want to be keeping up with whatever the market bears and will probably be emitting those PUDs anyhow. But that's again we can get into that. Yes. I'm thinking a lot of Ward 3 is PUD then right? Not around here. All these older houses. No, this is the city course and most of this is straight zone district, but yes, Platt River Ranch is a PUD near Ken Mitchell Lakes. King Super is a PUD. Walmart is a PUD. So yeah, we have the old Kmart shopping center is a PUD. So we do have those in Ward 3 for sure. Great question. Okay. This is not the greatest example of a PUD document, but again, it is a PUD document. What you're seeing here is the trans-West facility off of I-76 and Bromley Lane. So this is kind of the PUD here. You have to go on the East Wall again, sorry. So this is the I-76 Bruntage Road on the PUD document. There's kind of built-in site plan. They're showing their access point, they're outlining where all of the parking stalls will be for the tractor trailers, where the location of the buildings will be, drainage, they're listing here, they're land uses, they're dimensional standards. So I'm just giving you this as a frame of reference for what a PUD document will look like when it comes before you. Okay, the last step in the process, subdivision. Subdivision is a process by which land is divided or combined into parcels appropriate for development. A subdivision plat is a map showing how a given piece, a property is to be divided into lots and blocks, and identifying streets, easements, and other lands intended to be dedicated for public use. This is all under the old code, land use development code section 17-40. There's essentially one step for Councilor review and approval of a subdivision flat. You hold the public hearing and you consider a resolution either approving the platter, you can say no to it as well, along with the development agreement, also known as a subdivision improvement agreement. Development agreement, again, very similar to the annexation agreement, sets is a contractual agreement between the city and the property owner. And basically says, you agree to install these waters through our lines and construct these roads from this point to that point as a, and then it calls out the classifications in accordance with the transportation master plan, either a collector street or a minor arterial or a major arterial, talks about the timing of perhaps construction of the parks when those parks will be constructed. We tie it to phases. So that's generally what a subdivision or development agreement is. Development agreement sets forth a developer's responsibility to construct all necessary water, sewer, storm range, and so on. I'll road to the base in two of them within the subdivision. Also addresses the dedication and construction of parks, open space, school sites, various other items related to development property. This is an example of a final subdivision plan. Again, not real sexy, lots of wording. We got on here the North Arrow, the scale, the title of the subdivision flat, the legal description, notes about the provision of any easements who's allowed within those easements, the purpose of those easements, outlines. Here's the boundaries of the lot, these areas in the dash line are where their easements along the boundaries of the lot, these areas in the dash line, or where their easements along the edges of the property for the installation of dry and wet utilities, has a signature block that's stamped by the engineer. This is essentially what they look like. Okay. I know it's a lot, and I do apologize, but again, believe it or not, this is a general overview, but I want to come back and with my staff and break these out and give you more detail, but I definitely wanted to make sure that you had the basic information before you walk into next week's meeting and have public hearings on these matters. So questions? Questions before Council Member Cushing. Thank you for that presentation. That was really helpful. And I definitely appreciate the efforts to consolidate the codes and simplify the process. I was just curious if an applicant you said had applied before now, they're under the old development code. If the new code is favorable, can they reapply? Great question. Yeah, we actually contemplated that and we have left it flexible enough that if they would like to convert their existing application to the new code, we're amenable to that. We're actually, we don't wanna, we're, we, we're amenable to that. We're actually, we don't want to do that, but like we don't want to look like we're biased towards it one way or the other, and I don't want to kind of force someone into doing something they need to do an analysis for themselves of whether it's appropriate for them to be under the old code or the new code. Because there's going to be certain elements where maybe it's a little bit more flexible, like for example, the new code does not have as stringent of parking required. It's a little bit more flexible. So maybe they like that aspect of it, but it has a bit higher design standards. We, you know, a lot of these structures can last over 100 years. So we want them to be designed and look well that, you know, helps property values. So they might not like that aspect of it. So we tell them that they are absolutely able to transfer over their application. They still have to meet all of those submittal requirements and they kind of have to go back through a new review of it. But they are welcome to do so. But I don't want to force or encourage one where the other. They need to do that analysis for themselves. Is there any cut off? Like if, if, say a year goes by and we really want them to be under the new code because it's better and when we say look, you've waited too long, we're going to put you under the new code. Yes. So there is a provision in the code in which we have to provide notice to the applicant or the property owner and say, you haven't submitted something in a certain time period. From this, stay forth. You have 180 days to provide a resubmital. If you do not do so, we are going to consider your application withdrawn. And then that would start the new clock with a new code. Great question. Thank you so much. Yeah. More questions for Holly. Council member Watts. Well, thank you very much for it. And I'm very thankful that you didn't have to bring all the volumes with you. My workout, I know. That's kind of comforting on that. And I appreciate everything your department does and everything that everyone does for this. Question is kind of trivial. I just wanted to like it a miss speaker and I think but when you'd mention on annexation Part about where the public hearings are posted You'd mention they're going in the local paper. We're not doing that now, right? We're going into the website. Is that correct? So So that's a different question. Okay. The website has to do with public meetings Not necessarily public hearings. The public hearings are driven by state law and there's specific requirements for those posting. Also a quasi-judicial action, there's all that there's additional requirements of posting. Okay, that's fine. There's a lot of different noticing. Copy that. Understood. Thank you. Any more questions? Councilmember Jornelli. In the spirit of governance, how deep into the weeds, are we getting on these proposals, zoning, are we expected to know everything to staff? Those are should we trust the staff to the point where we say, okay, this sounds good. You know, how deep in the weeds are we supposed to get on this? Well, I want to tell you how to do your job, right? So what I will tell you is this. I have a phenomenal staff. They're very thorough. Now, they're human, sometimes as humans we make mistakes, right? For the most part, they're spot on. So, what you see one night and go through a public hearing for 45 minutes an hour and a half, they have literally spent months on this project. In meetings with the property owner, the developer, the landscape architect, the architect, the land use planner, the engineer, we've gone through numerous in-house development review meetings with the engineering team, with the parks and rec team. They've probably taken this and denied it saying this doesn't need the code. Here's, we give them a comment letter of why this doesn't need the code. Here's, we give them a comment letter of why this doesn't meet the code. I mean, we've had 60 page comment letters go out of this is all the issues we have with this thing. We do not provide those in the staff report. We give you a short synopsis of here's what the application is. Here's how it is or isn't meeting the code. Here's how it is or isn't adhering to the comprehensive plan. And then we give you our recommendation. And if it's an item that also went to the planning commission, we give you their recommendation as well. But we are more than happy to provide you any materials that you want. Anything you want. You want to see all those DRC comment letters? We're happy to give them to you. If you want to see the plans through all of the different iterations, we're happy to give you that as well. But essentially what you're seeing before you is months and sometimes years of work by the planning staff, the engineering staff, and they've vetted all that out. Now they do try to summarize it in like a four-page memo, but they will attach certain documents for you as backup support. But we're happy to provide you with whatever you want. That's exactly what I'm gonna hear. Hey. Because I was a stock broker one time and they didn't expect me to do the research on the stocks, they expect me to go out and sell the stock. So I have to trust my research. Yeah. Trust. It's a big component of what we all do here. So yeah. All right, more questions? Anyone? Councilmember Blockers. Thank you, Mayor. How many really random questions for you? The first one on the museum? Are you keeping track of the number of visitors that actually come to the museum. Can you see if this report at the end of the year? Yeah, oh, yeah. The number. The second one is I know that the details of development agreement has always been a very difficult thing for staff to keep track of. Make sure that our developers are living up to the various agreement points. Do we have a better handle on that now? Do we have a way of kind of tracking to see whether the agreements are being lived up to on the part of the developers? Yeah, so yeah, the reality is, you know, every time we approve one of these subdivisions, there's a development agreement out there. And anytime they come in and amend it, we get to amend the development agreement. And there's a lot of development agreements out there with a lot of obligations, responsibilities. And then you have things where you have the great recession happen, where the market plummets, builders go bankrupt, developers disappear. So stuff happens, right? So it is difficult to keep track of that. And frankly, we don't have a good software system to keep track of that. I'll probably be talking to you come budget time about that. But we do have a designated person, a development coordinator, and that is her primary responsibility is to be when a project comes in and wants to start moving forward with installing their infrastructure for subdivision, let's say, she reviews that development agreement and starts putting together a kind of development agreement comes in and wants to start moving forward with installing their infrastructure for subdivision, let's say she reviews that development agreement and starts putting together kind of an outline of what needs to be done at when. Same with the building permit. We don't release the building permit until they've met their obligations. Again, as human error happened, absolutely. It happens. But we think we've got a better hold on it now. One of the things I will say about the new code, again, I'm not going to go too much into this code because you're not going to see any applications in the near future on this. But we've actually kind of tried to do away with development agreements. So you're not going to be in the future. You're not going to be seen too many of those. The reason for that is one of the, I wouldn't call it a complaint, but one of the frustrations for, especially the Planning Commission, and I think Mayor Pro Tem, Johnson, can speak to this as well. One of the frustrations for the Planning Commission was they were getting to review the preliminary plats, and they were the actual approving body and a preliminary platt. And that's conceptually laying out a subdivision, the lot lines in the future streets. And during's conceptually laying out a subdivision, the lot lines in the future streets. And during those public hearings, people would come to the public hearing and say, well, when is this road going to get constructed? Is there going to be a traffic signal here? Those types of things weren't really determined at that stage. And so, again, it wasn't under the Planning Commission's purview. And so it left them frustrated because they couldn't answer their constituents concerns. And it correct me if I'm wrong, Mayor Pratton. So what we've done in the new code is we've essentially kind of up fronted a lot of those requirements. What used to be our preliminary plat and only went to Planning Commission is now what we call a subdivision plan. And a subdivision plan is kind of a master plan for the entire subdivision and it will go to both planning commission and city council. And at that time, it will set forth right in the plan. When is the adjacent perimeter roadway, let's say baseline, going to get constructed? When is 50? It's going to get constructed. And so you will have a say in that, right? I mean, you'll still need to rely on staff to tell you when it's warranted to put a signal in there, of course, because you don't want to put a signal in when it's not ready to go, because you could cause accidents. But besides that, you will have more of a say in it earlier in the process, and then that will be outlined in that subjection plan. And then at that point, they would come in and submit for their final plaque document. And that would be administrative review and approval because you guys have already said this is when the stuff has to be built. And it's built into the plan and not a separate agreement. So, you know, we haven't processed one of those yet, so I don't know exactly how that's going to work and how that's going to look. So that'll be a collaborative effort for us, but we're pretty excited about that. I think it's a good change. I'm seeing a nod of a head from a pro-temps. So I'm... Yeah, not too nervous. A dead-on. All of what you just said. Right. Thanks. Well, I for one, you know, we're... we're likely to see a lot of growth in the next 20 years. And I know up till now we have a really difficult time keeping track of developers' responsibilities through the development agreement. So it seems rational to me that there must be a software out there to keep track of that. It's great to have an individual assigned to that. But then Murphy's Laws is that person leaves. Yep. And somebody else has to come in and try to relearn all that stuff and inevitably important obligations seem to fall off the table. And then we're all behind the A-Ball. So I would, for one, strongly encourage you to pursue some sort of the automated system going forward and then maybe we can re-enter some of the previous obligations into that system because that's really critical. Okay, great. Finally, this is a very personal, I wouldn't call it pet peeve, but I think we've missed the boat a great deal. One of the biggest challenges for council, and I'm sure for the entire city, is communication with our constituents, with our citizens. One of the most effective ways of communicating with our citizens, we have, I don't believe we've taken full advantage of, and that's our H.O. waves. And I don't know what it's going to take. We've talked about it, we've talked about it, we've talked about it, but you know, like the weather, we talk about it, but we don't do anything. We really need someone, some process. Again, this should be automated. Keep track of all the H.O.A.s and the current list of officers of each of those H.O.A.s so that we can communicate with these people around our city. If we want to say, Holly, I want you to give me a list of all of the Ward 3 Haways and the current list of those officers that are in those so that we can contact them directly to communicate with them about what's going on in Ward 3. I suspect that would be difficult for you to do at this point, Ty. Well, it's difficult because, as I'm sure you're aware, because it sounds like you live in an H.O.A. as do I. They change over management companies and officers quite frequently. So just to keep track of that alone. Some do, some don't. Yeah, agreed. But there are lots of H.O.A.'s in the community. Yes, there are. But again, it seems to me that we should have some automated capability to keep track of that information because that's critical for the city as we go forward trying to communicate with the citizens that we can get those in each of those different wars to find out who they are and how we can... So just some of the think about it. can... So just some to think about. I don't expect you to come back, but I would like to make that a priority at some point for staff to look at that. I'm sort of David probably has a software package and his backpack back there in the contender of this tomorrow. Well, we'll certainly look into it and then maybe what we can do is come up with a system, like work with the I.O. Public Information Office to see if maybe we can put a blast out there having H.O.A.'s contact us and regularly update us about your H.O.A. officers changing over who is your newest management company? And we can, my department be happy to keep a master list of that. And but it would be easier to put the burden on them to update us because to have to call all these different Haways. I do with you, but you're already thinking down the road of how this actually could be implemented. Yeah. And how we could make it more effective because it's one of a really, really important tool for communications. I don't think we're utilizing this full extent right now. Okay, point we'll take in, we will look into it, sir. Thanks. You're welcome. More questions? Before we get to Councilmember Jordan, now that we try to do one round at a time, does anybody else that hasn't spoken have anything else they'd like to ask before we go to round two here? If none, then I'm just following him up. Do we know how many H.O.A.s there are? We did the research several years ago, our admin assistant who's no longer here, I'm pretty sure it's at least 40. At least 40. But that's probably increased since then. We'll track that down. Okay. Anybody else? Well, Holly, you obviously have passion for this subject line, this whole thing that you've presented. I thank you for taking the time and your willingness to even follow up in the future in the other areas that you'd like to cover. You know, Council Member Blackhurst did ask about the museum and how many people come in. That was one of my questions. Okay, great. And I loved to really, the building that they're in is very difficult to promote the public to come in given the security issues going on there. And I love to find a way to make that more open to the public, because there's a lot of really cool stories to share about our community and it's at the museum. So I mean, I like the really looking to ways we can fix that. So it's a more publicly open building. The historical aspect of that building is quite unique for our community. So that's really something I'd like to have us really find a solution to this year if we could. Okay, thank you, Holly. Thank you. The time is 829. Let's take a 10 minute break. We will reconvene at 839. Would you have quite a bit of a agenda to go even beyond that nine o'clock part, so please be ready. you you you you I'm on the agenda. City Council discussion of process for filling the city manager position. I just want to say, you know, Marv is doing a great job in taking this role on since it was brought on to him over the summer. Having this item on the agenda is nothing against Marv. Marv needs more support in that office and we do need to discuss really what's been the elephant in the room over the last few months. And so I will hand it over to Mar for the introducing this next item. Karen is here. She does have a handout for you. It's in front of you with an overall tentative time frame. This is based on the last time we went through this process. And I believe most of you were not at the dias at the time. We are here prepared to move forward at your pleasure. We put this on at your request and we're ready to move forward as quickly as you give us direction to. So Karen, I would ask her to go over this and take your input. There may be some ways that we can cut some of these time frames, but what we found is for this type of position is quite important to do it right. Holy vetted out, take the time, get the input from the community, and really at the end, fully vet, whoever does you're going to hire to make sure you've got the right person. It's all that. Karen, go through the detail and we'll take your input. Right, and this is a tentative time frame. It is based on what happened last time. I don't know if the few of you that were here, we actually thought we would have a hiring in May. And this is what actually happened was July. So this more closely imitates what really happens because holidays happen. You're guys as scheduled. You can't make different meetings. There were focus groups. There were lots of other things that you had decided to add to that. And it's also based on the third party recruiter that you select also may have suggestions for you and may have a different time, a little different time frame. So you're also going to be looking at the job description and updating that, compensation, relative compensation. Anyway, I just to let you know, the last time we did this, the cost was $23,500. Anything that's over $25,000, requests a formal bid process. So hopefully we can keep it under that. I'll ask as many recruiters as possible, if they're available, can they give us a bid? And then you would select which group you would like. What we did last time is we had a small committee of the Acting City Manager, myself, the mayor and the mayor pro-time, to actually do the interviews with those that gave a proposal, and then that group made a presentation to City Council, and from that they selected the third party recruiter. What we had discussed, and then after Council selects the third party, what we had discussed last time was doing a survey for the community, ultimately we did not do the community survey, but it's still out there if you want to do it, and we did a staff survey, and I can show you the results of the staff survey, either via email or hard copy. Then we finalize, we'll get the recruitment firm, we'll finalize a letter of agreement with them. And then if you decide on doing the questionnaires, we send that out like what type of a city manager are you looking for, update the job description and the recruitment flyer, you would also have input on that. And then we start like do a whole month for the actual recruitment once you're ready and done all the have done all the background work. Then you review and select semi-finalists if you wish. You can select, you can Skype interview some of them and then just from that group select a finalist to come and do in-person interviews. We have it last time we had a community reception one day and you've got their input and then the second day was actually the council meeting to select. And then we start the contract negotiations and then we finally do announce it publicly and get it approved by city council. So what would you like to know? Wow, so far, as I look over this, I'm surprised about the timeline. When we hired the city attorney a couple years ago, it didn't seem like the timeline was this lengthy, but I do appreciate surveying the community and getting the community involved. So, any questions and comments from Councilmember Blackhurst? I would just ask that you reorganize where you have city manager contract negotiations and background checks. Background checks should be done much much much before while we're still making the final decision. And I know they do a preliminary background, but then there was another. I would say this should be a thorough background. Prior to the final selection process, I think City Council does a more surprise. No. So I would say that needs to be moved up into maybe right after the interview finalist category. Okay. And then we'll do our due diligence before the final selection takes place. Okay. That's my suggestion. Okay. What did you think, how did you want to select the actual third party? Did you want to go with the mayor, the mayor, Pro Tem? Because of course you know if you have more than two it's a meeting. So to do the actual interviews what we had done last time is we had a set number of questions. We interviewed four different ones I believe and I'll send out even more. I'll send out as much as you know whoever's available And then we review that. We come up with a set of questions, and then we add, we call the various recruiters and ask them questions. And from that, you select which one you would like to use. You know, concerning the set of questions, I think it's a council, and I wanna hear from everyone if we can, but as a council, I think we need to set the questions first and then have the two people be part of the two council members may or may or may pretend whatever it is be part of the interview process. Anybody else have any comment related to that? No? Anybody else? Council members member. Olick. Thank you, Mayor. I'm fine with the. I'll bring together some questions. I also am okay with the mayor and the mayor pro-tem during the initial interviews. I trust them enough. I always believe that too many cooks boil the stew, so we don't want to fill in everyone. Okay, all right? So anyway, I think that's great with what you have here. Okay. And simultaneously while I'm asking for the RFPs, we can be passing around via email. You know, you're suggested questions, something to start with maybe. And then you could, you know, you're suggested questions, something to start with maybe, and then you could, you know, I can go out and collate all of that. My question is we do email that we don't do it as calling a meeting, make sure it can go to our city manager city attorney and then be distributed from there. Council member Watson, did you have anything to add? Yes, I did, thank you, Mayor. With the recruit, once the recruiting firm is selected and picked. So any internal applicants will go through that same recruiting firm as well. Is it the same process? Yes. As they were on outside. Yes. Applicant. Yes. Okay. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? Member Kuching. Thank you, Mayor. I guess I have two questions. One is I understand the process for choosing the firm. What about interviewing the actual candidates? Well, what normally happens is that they share with you the candidates they send it out via an email and then you can look at a preliminary information and decide from there what your top six are or your top seven and then from there they're we try to whittle it down to something that's a little more doable for the in-person, which is like four, maybe five. Okay. And it depends. We actually had a tier one and a tier two list before. They're quite a number. And then all of you voted, all of you that were on council of time, voted on your top choices. And from there, we were able to get a group to do the preliminary interview. Let's say we would look down to the top four. Do we counsel have an opportunity to interview those top four? Yes, you interview them face by face. What we did last time, we had a staff team to do interviews and we had a council team you ask perhaps you'll have an outside city manager from another community come and sit on it and give your opinion as well. Okay and then the other question is it seems like what happens in these kind of situations is that people present a list of references references and of course they're going to be amazing because why would you put a reference it's going to be terrible and it seems like it would be a good idea if we had either someone travel to the city they managed or had some way to actually interview with staff members that reported to them if they were willing to talk to us. And I have asked some of the recruiters that question. And if we're going to do something like that, we have to let the candidates know up front. And the fear was that they probably wouldn't have a lot of candidates. But that's something that we can actually ask the firms. That's a very good question that we could ask each of the recruitment firms as well. Okay, thank you. Anybody else have anything to add? Before we get to Councilmember Watts, did. Which one? Councilmember Humbert? Did you? Okay. Mayor Perotown? Yeah, thanks, Mayor. A couple of a comment and then a question. I was said by Councillor Baca and I think of you because Mayor Mills and myself, we weren't on council when leave you a city manager was selected, but we heard, um, death councilor Bocca is the one that springs about, was she was saying how she did not like certain things that happened during the last process, and I think it would be really valuable to reach out to the past members, including the past mayor and say, what was wrong with the process? What did you not like? Like concerns and suggestions? Yeah, I think Council Blackhurst just said one of them was when background check was done or could be done, but I think those are important, really important just to know that institutional memory from them because it won't be just went through as a city. Sure. Then if you know my Mr. Mayor, other other other me question is expediting the process. I see a few things here. I'm not big into surveys out into the community because of the ability that I have now figured out and others have in the tech world where there was a survey taken just during a recent elections, like where I think there was 50,000 votes and 7,000 of them were happening a minute. And I'm saying it's just easy to manipulate that system. And I also don't want to get into a pattern of going into the same rooms with the same people what we should do, but it's the same people again and again. So I don't know how to do that, but I really want to look into what we do about getting the community involved, but doing it correctly. I don't know the answer. I may be differently. And again, that's something maybe we could ask the recruiting firms for their suggestions. And I can share with you what we did last time. And it was only a couple of years ago, would it have changed that much? But you can read those. How about if I just send that out? And it's still pretty fresh. I'm sure. I can't imagine it would be that much different. Read. But that's up to you. Yeah, I think it's great all the information. And yeah, I think that's it. Thank you very much. All right. Anybody else have anything to have before we go to councilmember Watts? Okay. Councilmember Watts, round two. Sorry, just a quick question on that. Roughly how many applicants do we have on the last? I believe that 16 were sent to you, I believe. And I can look to see, I'm like Holly Holly, I bring all my stuff just in case. We never know if it's going to come from Blackfield. I'm just thinking about it. And I know this is asking for you to speculate. And I don't like doing that. I believe it was 16. But with this process, are you anticipating the same amount or more or what do you think you're anticipating? You know, I'm getting your speculating, and I understand that. And it's my understanding that we may be competing with two, with some other communities that they might be having some change over two. So, might have a similar pool. Or at the same time frame. Approximately, that's what I'm hearing. Okay, all right, thank you very much. Anybody else? Council Member Kuschini. Thanks, Mayor. I'm sorry, one more. I just wanted to ask, at what point in this process do we set the qualifications? You mean to invite the community? No qualifications for the city manager. Oh, like a job description. What experience were looking for? Have they been a city manager? What are the actual qualifications that we want them to have? what experience we're looking for. Like have they been a city manager? Have they been just like, what are we, what are the actual qualifications that we want them to have? Yeah, and that's something that we will do with the recruiter actually right in the beginning. So we have a community brochure that we send out that and in that brochure, it has what the qualifications are that we're looking for. We've updated the job description, given a general salary. Okay. And that's still negotiating. Trust me. I think it'd be good as a council. We could review. Yeah, you guys are approving everything every step of the way. Because it's it's very important decision, obviously. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Pollock. Thank you, Mayor. So just my opinion is that we're going to put out the RFPs. And I don't think that the company, the firm that we used last time, if we consider. Okay, because it wasn't we, of course, we all know. Not how you think a lot of anything. A lot of questions. A lot of questions. When an answer began, I kind of caught us all broadside. Sure. So if, you know, I understand. I think they understood. We're done. Yep. Thank you. Is everyone good with that suggestion? That council member Paul put out. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem, do you have anything else? Yes, thanks. I, briefed everything that's been said. Great points, great. I just, I, the other piece of this and no disrespect to anyone in this room or anyone else that is considering actually in the city manager. If you are, I just want to make sure that we don't make them a part of the committee at any point. Absolutely. I know it seems obvious, but I know no one would ethical do it. I just want to make that very clear. The public and everyone is if you are considering to be the city manager, that it's now is about the time that we need to know so that we can put them on the committee to hire the city manager. Yes. Yes. And I wouldn't share the questions. Right. Right. I wouldn't practice with them. You bet. But we wanted to have many applications in them. Sure staff members that definitely need to be considered. Thank you very much. Excellent. Anybody else? As we move along. So it looks like we have head nods to move forward with the RFP, I guess. I'll do that tomorrow or tonight in the back. Okay. Thank you very much. And I'll send you the questionnaire from the employees for the last time. We appreciate that. We appreciate all the time and effort you put into this and so much. Thank you. Okay, next item on the agenda is to discuss the process for filling the Ward 2 City Council vacancy. Marv, do you have anything to add before I put my two cents into this? It's all you, Mayor. There's a lot of discussion in the community as to how we should be moving forward with this process. We're really down to, and the city attorney can confirm this. We're down to two options. We either appoint or we do a special election. There's pros and cons to both, special election. Obviously you're gonna get the desire of the community. You're gonna know exactly what they want. But that does delay the process. It looks like if we were to have a special election, it's gonna take quite some time given that there is a, what is it, a primary coming up here in Colorado, and that really delays the process. If we appoint, we could interview soon and likely get a seat filled in a much faster time frame. get a seat billed in a much faster timeframe. So I'd like to just open this up for discussion. We'd like to start. I'm gonna go with council member Watts first and we can just go down the line or whoever raises their hand. So. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Sorry, Matt. Mayor Pro Tem. So thank you, Mr. Mayor. Sorry, Matt. Any of them is in a pro-temp? Yes, time is of the essence in both factors in this. And as we discussed, a couple study sessions ago, when Councilman Krushyden and I were there, and we were talking about a little bit. And appointing someone is the quickest and the easiest way to do things and um... but not always the best way to do uh... feel a special election is warranted in this case because the people need to choose who they want to represent them in that ward yes it will take some time we're looking at i think roughly may possibly somewhere on that time frame may or June We talked about we're gonna run the risk of having multiple people run we're gonna have a runoff election. We're gonna have Those different things there's a lot of negatives with it But the best case scenario for this is the election to choose it if we go with somebody being appointed What's the process involved with that we're gonna have to Place pointed what's the process involved with that? We're going to have to place ultimately a hiring ad for someone that wants to be a council member for Brighton and then that lives in ward two. They're going to go through a process of interviewing for, applying for it and then we're going to interview them as a council. That's going to be through February and then it's going to be March before we decide on someone and then it's going to be April 1st before we appoint them. So we're only talking a month difference in time frame from an appointee to an election in my basic math opinion right now. I'm not exactly sure of the dates involved with it but that's my estimation of it. And I think we need to give the residents what they're asking for and they want to be able to choose it. Now, with that said, we haven't heard from a lot of ward two residents. We've heard from other residents of other wars, which is great, because they're all residents of Brighton, but I'm not seeing a lot of feedback from residents of ward two. I've seen a couple of them, but I think what they would say is, and I don't want to speak for them, but I think they would say that they would want a golden election for it. Again, there are some negatives. There's some cost involved. There's time involved by our staff. There's a lot of different things to go with this, but best case scenario for us is to have a special election. In my opinion, with all the positivity that comes from it, downside for the candidate is they're going to essentially have to run three to four times because they're going to run for the first part of the election. If there's a runoff, they're going to have to run again if they're in the top two, then in 18 months they have to run again if they want to go for a re-election. And then if there's a runoff in that one, they're going to have to run for the fourth time. So there's a lot of cost for that person involved, but again, with that said, and I had to keep saying that, but the best thing for us to move forward and to do right for the residents of Brighton is to hold a special election versus an appointment. Appointment is just picking our buddy. And I want the citizens to pick everybody. I want them to vote on who they want. That's just my choosing. Thank you, Council member Watts. Just to also clarify, I've had four people reach out to me in interest to, like if we choose to appoint, they would like to be considered. So there is interest in the community that's already reached out to me. And also just to clarify about the timeline and I can only compare to some of our neighboring communities. They've had to appoint given some vacancies due to elections when someone ran for another office and they had a vacate that seat due to that election. And the process has been usually about a month, so at best we could have someone fill that seat by probably even the end of February. So just a little clarification there, I just wanted to point out, like Thornton, Commerce City and Westminster all have appointed and from what I've been told the process has gone fairly well. So did you want to add it real quick before we go down the dice? Okay. I'd like to add with what you said and just to point it out if we only have one candidate that's running and I don't think we will but if we and I've mentioned it before if we only have one candidate running I think we should forego an election after the time has passed when the petition has turned in and we've waited the correct amount of time from a legal standpoint we should forego any election because they would be running on a post just to point that person. Instead of having ballots go out and people vote for one person. I mean, it'd be great to have another on a post candidate because I wouldn't feel so bad at that point. But I think that if one candidate does run, we have one candidate turns into a petition which is just to point that person after the process has gone its time. Okay, Thank you. Council Member Blockhurst. Yes. Thank you, Mayor. I agree with most things that Council Member Wat has brought up here. I definitely think in this particular situation, it is imperative that we go out to a vote. And I don't think it's just impacting floor two, although that's where the person's coming from. I have had a lot of people in other words, this is a unique time for us. We never recall a mayor. We've never had the kind of turmoil and public kind of questioning our trust that we have in the last six, eight months. And I really think this is a unique time and that we need to go out to a vote. Let the people speak. It takes a little longer, but I really think this credibility issue with me. I think it's a credibility issue with a lot of people in the community. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Blocker. Councilmember Humbert. I absolutely agree with both Councilmember Watts and Councilmember Blackburn. I think that based on what we've heard from people in the community and they're all of our constituents. This is not just words. I think that you need to go out. It's people. And yeah, it'll take a little more time, but kind of feel like I know that it's the right. Thank you, Council Member Humbert. Mayor Pro Tem. Mr. Mayor. I'm going to have to agree. I think just the other day, randomly on social media, someone said that the entirety of what just happened in the city was based on a power move made from a few of us here at the Tais in order to have a not to not have a special election to appoint two members to take it over. It not only is it not true but the credibility that we have just we've laughed for the last two years on. This is one way in my opinion that we can start to get that credibility back. And it's always better. No matter what the issue, no matter what it is, is to take it to the boss. The boss is our residents. And the residents should have a say. And I think that it should be solely up to them. Especially since we, because of charter, we were forced to appoint whoever we needed to as mayor. I'm very happy with the choice. However, now that we have an option to not have to appoint, I think it's of the essence that we go forward with. But happy to hear everyone else. Thanks. Thank you. Councilmember Pollock. Thank you, Mayor. I agree with the rest of council, I think, because of what city has been through for the last six months or so. We need to show our residents that it's not what they think or why they thought that this went on. It seriously was to make things better for them. And so, although I've gotten calls both ways, find with an election and know with an election. So as I told the people it's up to this council and I agree that we should have an election out, Tim, stated that if only one person is running, then there's no reason to put an election out there and spend that money. But that you find out shortly because you're given a certain amount of time to turn in a package. If they're turned in, then you know you have people on that ballot. Of course they can trick you because me, somebody went and got a package and didn't turn it in, send it a gun. And here I was ready for my vacation and getting ready. I'm not going to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have to have Yeah, I mean with this recall thing, you know, it was by City Charter we had to appoint a mayor and but in those conversations I really people said they wanted to have a voice. It was no question. So I feel that based on that it's important we have an election and the other reason I think it's important we have an election is that If the majority of the council picks the ward to council member, you know, we're picking a council member for a ward. We don't represent You know, if I was in war too, I wouldn't really appreciate that and I would you know, I know it's been mentioned But I wouldn't mind hearing the city attorneys Feedback in terms of in terms of if we only get one candidate or even no candidate, can we cancel the election at that point? It would depend on the timing. Ideally, we would know in advance there would be a benefit to just paying out the contract for the ballot going out, not going through that process. The charter allows either calling an election or appointment. However, from illegal, there would be a legal path to doing that. Basically, what we would be revoking the resolution that called the election because it becomes a moody issue once we appoint. So if we have a single person pulls a petition and we say okay we're not going to go through with the election, I'm guessing there's a point that it's too late that we've ordered ballots or we've there's cost involved. But there are two things to think of. One is the cost and that's a side thing and the other is the timing. If there's only one, I think there's a, I think and this is an initial thought. I've done some preliminary analysis on this. If you selected that person, then the election becomes mood at that point. And you've just, you've speeded up the process. Thank you. Yeah, like I said, I would favor a special election regardless of cost. I was just going to have some implications. Thank you. Councilmember Jornelli. I'm always for elections, but my thought is It's a it's a two-year term, right? It would it would finish off the term of the right So the year and a half if we do an election every year and eight and nine months if we don't do an election So it seems almost pointless to go through all the process of election for a body year and a half. When we're just feeling someone vacancy just until we put, they could run again after two and get in, right? Can you clarify that city attorney? So, yes, somebody that would be appointed or elected would qualify for two full terms because they aren't willing to. So they could validate their appointment by getting elected. And if they don't get elected, they're invalidated on their appointment. Yes. That's one way of looking. But I'm willing to go along, of course, with the team. I'm just saying for a year and a half, this seems kind of pointless to spend all that money and time. And I'm not saying it, I don't, I want the people to have to say I do. So Jack, help me just, you know, reclareify if, if someone was elected for this remainder of the term. That is one term they're finishing. No. No. Okay. So they're allowed to term limits wise. That's what we're talking about. They're allowed to serve two terms. Now, Councilmember Jordan-Nelley's point is a little bit different than that. What he's saying is, well, if Council were to appoint somebody, then really the validation comes with the election. They would have to run in 18 months anyway. They'd be validated as the accepted candidate from the war to voters at that point. Is that a fair statement on what you were making? Yes. Okay. Any other comment from Council Mayor Pro Tem? Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. A good point made by Councillor Jordan Ellie. The one thing is I just want to be cleared. It also gives them the opportunity to serve ten years. That correct? Almost ten years is the other benefit for them. They have to run, um, that they do have to run three elections, but it's four ten years. And not that we all just want to sit here for ten years. Don't get me wrong. I know one person on my right, um, it feels like, uh, but realistically, that is a heck of a benefit to have to run at this point, totally understood. And then one other thought process is I said this earlier and I want to be really clear how I think it would be very detrimental for us to find this with a coordinated election in Adams County with a primary because of the differences in the two primaries. What would happen was that what can happen from that is if it's the Democrat primary, for instance, and a Republican would lose, and it was on the Democrat primary day, it would make it look as if the reason they lost, and it could be a good valid point. So unless the primaries are coordinated together, both parties at the same time, then I would be very tense coordinating. Sorry Natalie, I know that makes it tougher, but it's my only thought. Thanks. Thank you. Anybody else have anything to add? Okay. It's looking like we are headed towards a special election. So from my understanding, we're supposed to vote on it at our regular meeting next week. Is that correct? That's correct. We'll have this on your agenda for consideration next Tuesday. Okay. All right, folks, that looks like that's where we're headed. Special election. Next item on the agenda says city council discussion items and in our meeting prep today, we actually have several. We're going to start with the boards and commissions and everybody should have got an email for me about individually, of course, about what they're assigned boards and commissions. Does anybody have any discussion or anything they want to add to it before we move forward from that point? Just to clarify, next week at the regular meeting, you will be sworn in to serve on those boards. Does anybody have anything to add? I'll just remember blackers. Just request that someplace in our packet or something for next week that we get a list of the boards and who's representing council hall. Like everybody. Yes. Okay. A match and we get that. I'm not sure if it's a question. I'm not sure if it's a question. I'm not sure if it's a question. I'm not sure if it's a question. I'm not sure if it's a question. I'm not sure if it's a question. I'm not sure if it's a question. I'm not sure if it's a question. I'm not sure if it's a question. I'm not sure if it's a question. I'm not sure if We do represent council on these boards. Sometimes there's confusion if we're going about for that board. And sometimes we kind of are, but we ultimately represent council on the people that put you in this position. So please consider that as you serve on these boards and please attend. And if you can't find someone, if you don't have an alternate, find someone that can go. Is this important? Okay. The next item is we move forward. Background checks in the Mr. Falconberg. Will you help us lead into that part here? Yes, Mayor and Council. There was a discussion about background checks for boards and commissions. I was going to invite Karen up our city attorney and Karen can describe the process that we have now and what we recommend for the future. But we need to resolve this going forward. We have some unresolved issues out there right now and a couple of applicants. And we need a process that we apply. I believe, process the board and tell people up front what the process is so can you describe what we have now? What we do currently for our staff we use choice screening. It costs $16 for an in-state background check and $22 for out of state and $28 with a credit check. That's a really good buy. We were paying a little bit more. Anyway, what we do is we interview all the candidates. We select a finalist and the finalist is the one the one that we call it. It's conditional upon passing a background check. Then they have to sign a release directly with choice screening and then choice screening sends HR the results. We do not share the results with the hiring managers. We just say that is the person, did the person pass the background or not? Period. So, and then we go from there. So, I just want to do to know what our process is. So, I guess it would be up to you if you would like to do that, people do have to know upfront that it's going to happen. They have to give permission and then we do it on the internet confidentially. So in point of clarification if I may, is current boards and commission members are not background checked. That's part of the miscommunication there, that information I had received was incorrect. So Karen's recommendation has sound that if Council collectively wants to institute a background check process for boards and commission members, it needs to be done uniformly. And it needs to be done in a way that those applicants know that they are subject to the background check. And then specific policies would have to be put in place unless you're going to background check all of the candidates, unlike an employment candidate. Because you wouldn't, if you think through this, if councilors to appoint somebody, subject to a background check, and then they fail that background check, well, you've already gone in a public meeting and said that you're appointed subject to a background check, and then suddenly they are on the Board of Commission. Well, you know, I think you're going to, this is just an observation, you're going to scare some applicants away. Now if everyone knows that they are subject to the background check and what the criteria is in advance, it'll self-screen. They won't apply for those positions because they know if they have a problem, then that background check would catch that. A part of that process then needs to be establishing exactly what is a disqualifier for a board's mission. Just run in the check, just gives you information. And generally that information isn't shared with the ultimate decision maker. If you follow the staff process here, the process of the staff would have. Because there may be something on there that's not correct, there could be something somebody wants to challenge. It really shouldn't go to the hiring person. And I think that's the rationale behind the way you've done it. And the candidate is also given the background information. I mean, they should already know, but they're getting it. Right. Yeah. And there's a gray area like we get a decision. It's like, hmm, and this was a long time ago. I would seek a legal opinion on, you know, should we move this person forward or not? So understanding that boards and commission members serve at the will of council, if council wants to institute such a scheme, then it really is council's collective decision as to what would be disqualifying? What wouldn't be disqualifying? And what? When in this process this should happen. And again, this is thinking going forward because in the past, nobody that's done the application, the application hasn't said and you will be subject to a background check. That was the information that I received. It was it. So it's a broader conversation than what I think we're going to solve tonight, but what we'd like, I think Herna and I would like to have some insight is, is this somewhere something that Council wants to pursue? Question before Council Member Pollock? Well, I mean, you've been present at all the meetings. I think that is of the Council wants to do so. So that shouldn't be a question at this point. Should it be for everyone that applies? Absolutely. Otherwise, you're discriminated. Or you're bringing someone up here and then you find out it has a criminal record and you can't have it. It's just ugly all the way around. If you're going to do for one, you're going to do for all of my opinion. So it becomes a little costly, that's just, it's just to do and business sometimes. But it seems to me that we need to be comfortable with our boards, with our commission and our employees, our council. You know, you're on council. You know, Fallon, do I have to worry about you or not yet, you know what I'm saying? I'm just kidding. But anyway, I think that it was made clear at a meeting that we didn't want a background check and I hope that the rest of Council agrees. Just to prevent any problems, we've had so many that we now walk lightly. Not, you know, against anyone person, we just need to walk lightly and get things straight in order for the residents of our city. Thank you. Thank you. Now, from the cushion. Question. I have a question first. Does this decision include City councilman. Well, there when I talked about exactly what would be a disqualifier, what council would establish as a disqualifier for a board or board of commission members. For council, that's set by charter and the only disqualifier is a conviction for felony. So that part of it wouldn't be part of the analysis, but doing a background check to see if that candidate is qualified, or if that elected person would be, depending on when you run the check, would be disqualified as another question. That's something that we, the council, that would be within your produce and to establish a process of policy. Be, now for council, that's the requirement, but that's in the, there is no similar requirement in the charter for a Board of Commission member. So that would be up to council. Is this a felony conviction, or is this a felony conviction or is this a felony, a misdemeanor conviction, is this, you know, exactly what the criteria would be? Now Karen, you may want to speak to what exactly would be a disqualifier for a staff member and see if that's somewhat transferable. Well, obviously if you've had a felony with a child, you know, for not interested. Vehicles, if you, you know, you've had a DUI, a couple DUIs, you know. But my question's more, like, did you run a background check on me? No. No. No. When you run for office, you certify that you're eligible to run and one of them is you can't be a felon. Another call. I mean, it seems to me that being a felon as a disqualifier, we should verify that in for city council. We should, because that seems like an inconsistent standard that we're saying, if you want to serve on this board, you can't be a felon. But one of us up here could be sitting here being a felon and nobody would know because we didn't check. So I think that would seem a little hypocritical. And then the other thing I'm concerned about is I heard that don't do background checks on board members currently, but I'm concerned that a background check apparently was done on a board member, and I just, I don't understand why that would happen if that's not our policy. And that was based on part of that, I will take responsibility for it, because part of that was based on our feedback I had gotten from council that that had been done in the past. And the question was presented and answered immediately. It wasn't something that I could do some research on. So just to say. So, so that background that hasn't been shared. Right. And and so what we've done is said, well, wait a minute. Let's regroup because that was based on incorrect information. Council needs to set a specific policy going forward and treat everybody the same way. So my position just to summarize is that I think we should do background checks or city council candidates to ensure they meet the qualifications for the charter. And I also think we should do background checks for boards and commissions because these people are thinking important decisions for our cities and we need to know their background. But definitely needs to be consistent and just as a tool if there's some certain person we don't really can look that like, look like that. I don't think that's good. So yeah, but I think it's a good idea. Thank you. How would we, if we were to do a background check for council, is that involved in charter change or is there some sort of a policy we need to set? Council could, could, could revise their rules to provide a background check. And, and I would caution that I think that that would have to happen at the time of the election when somebody is elected. Because before that, you don't have authority based on the rules. I'm willing to explore the possibility of doing it beforehand have a yes, I get that I totally get that. And that's why why I think it makes more sense to try to catch that beforehand. As long as the candidate knows that they are going to have when they turn in their petition that their their nomination petition that they would be subject to that background check. I think that's the earliest you could do that. Yeah, and the only thing that would be checked would be a felony. Because that's by chance. When I ran somehow I was on was under the oppression that was done. And I think that's part of the misunderstanding that led to this whole problem is I think certain council members thought it was done and certain council members thought they had signed waivers to have that done when in fact that wasn't. Now before we move on here, let's go ahead to go forward. Councilmember Jornelli, did you have the more? What are the large municipalities doing? Are they background checking? Or does every city council not background check? What's the norm? I don't know the answer to that. Anybody else? Councilmember Watts. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, we're talking about doing the clear checks for the Board and Commission. The same thing we do for the staff is that what's being talked about right now, these clear check backgrounds. Board's commissions and it sounds like even council members in the future. But if we go forward, which is fine, if we go forward with the Board and Commission one, Council agree with City Attorney on the next election, but with the Board's commission, are we talking current people applying now or on the next round next year? Is, I know this is a lot more discussion in these next few moments, but the people that have already applied, a finalist we've already had, are we looking at, we're going that now or just moving forward to the next one as we say moving forward so we can ward it correctly on the proper application or are we looking at starting at right now. That's up to you. We would change the application to say a background is required. And I think the pragmatic answer is that somebody that applies should know that they would be subject to before they did that. And that's what led to this as we thought people had been advised to that and they hadn't been because it hadn't been historically done. So it as a way to implement this should probably be, you know, as you phrase in the next round going forward going forward not who's applied yesterday but going forward okay anybody else how's the member blackers and then we'll go to Mayor Pro Tem we I was one of the ones talking about get this background here and I think we need to get a little pause number one these are non-paid employees. They do make representation as Mary Ellen is pointed out. They do represent the city, but it's not the same, I don't think it's the same weight as we do a city employee, for example, a DUI five years ago, may concern the city. I'm not sure how it applies to us. They don't drive city cars. So there could be a different standard here. And even by saying felony, somebody could have possessed recorder of a pound of marijuana 10 years ago would have been a felony today, it's not even illegal. So there are, somebody's going to have to make this determination and I'm not sure HR should be put in that position since these were council decisions on these boards and commissions. So it's not quite as simple as it may first be here on the face of it, this is what is the eliminator. And I don't think we're getting an overabundance of people applying for boards and conditions now. Are we here? No. We're already having a hard time filling these positions. I don't know in the history of our city that we've had, well, we have one question now, but other than that, and I don't know if that one would even apply that we've had issues. So, could I offer a suggestion? Yes. And based on council member Jordan Elley's question about what other jurisdictions are doing. Perhaps, staff can go back and maybe do a survey of some of the surrounding jurisdictions to see which ones are doing this with the Board's and Commission members and also with whether or not they verify Council eligibility, most charters have that same provision that a felony conviction makes a Council member an eligible. But to see whether or not that is in fact verified somehow. And at what point in what stage that's done? And put this on hold until we have that information and come back. So Council could consider this with either, nobody does it, yes, everybody's doing this except bright and this should have happened years ago. And at least we know where we're at compared to the other municipalities. Does anybody care to wait for a survey? Do we want to tread our own path? I think the part of that survey would be exactly what the disqualifiers are if they are in fact doing those background checks. It's just a thought. Mayor Pro Tem. This has given me a thought. First of all, we need to be really clear about any situation. Could have happened or could happen. We know it would not want someone that was charged and convicted of destroying art, be the head of our cultural arts committee. So let's be clear about what could or could not be happening currently at this exact moment. But beyond the exact moment and anything, should not be a witch hunt and should not be based on one person. I got an idea, and this might be really dumb. Let's hear what you say. But what if the exact same stipulation council is has to do right now, just the signature line saying that now and at any time a background check can be ran on you. And you cannot be this or this and we create that stipulation of what that is. But it's very problematic to look in the newspaper and see someone, a council member or a board and commission member, has committed a crime, one thing, then convicted of that crime, and not be able to act upon it because of how it looks to the city. But just being able to legally do it, I think, is an idea of where we can head. Just like we said, we saw that we are not felons and as council members and that a background check could be ran on it. So this kind of a thought to bear between what did happen ten years ago, like what's been said compared to what's happening now as you're a member of this Council or Board of Commission. I also think that's a big difference. I honestly personally, I don't care what any of you or any council member or Board of Commission member did before they were a boarded commission member or before they were a council member, what matters to me is what they do while they are on councilor aboard and what that makes the city look like in the organization and that's my main concern is what's happening then during that moment and what rules we have but I think it's a good discussion and all of you have some good thoughts that this don't give me wrong. I just don't want to go too far but I also don't want to leave it as it is where we all of a sudden can see that happen and have our community go back back through the ring. Thank you. Anybody else? Before we go to Council Member Cushion, Mark, you yield. Okay. Council Member Cushion. Thank you Mayor, really quick. I just want to clarify, I, if the city is excluding DUIs or misdemeanors or something like that, I think the line should be exactly the same as city council felonies. DU UI 10 years ago, I know there's the one off recorders of a pound of pot and I've never driven around with that so I wouldn't know if that was a felony 10 years ago but it seems like questionable judgment but I think felony seems like a clean line to me since that's a City Council requirement. But just in case that's not what it is with the city. That's where I would draw them. Thank you. Thank you. Any more discussion before? Well, so does it sound like we're headed towards the background check, but maybe going forward? Is that sound? I'm just trying to. We've been going back and forth on some of this so we have a clarification where we want to go. Mr. Falconberg. It would still be good to research other cities just so you know that. We're getting good input in direction tonight. Okay. Is everybody's on the same page with the felony? I think so. Because that that's a huge issue. You know, where you would draw that line. That's the if that's the resolution from tonight, I think that's very clear. Why agreed? You are. Sold on the child armed robbery. you know, little things like that. Oh, that's how the court looks at him, but then that's another subject. Don't get me started. Anyway, yeah, it felonies can be, you know, so. And we're no longer allowed to ask that on applications. That's crazy. It's already such a... Yes, right. All the time and you have to use your judgment, which is why sometimes you ask legal. It's... And that could be a problem because you can't ask. So if it was a driving felony, do we really want to prevent that person? I mean, it happens to be... It's okay how many years? Sometimes we decide years. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know. That's kind of let's check around what's going on whether they're neighbors and then maybe we can go from there. That's kind of, you know, tricky deal. Especially these days, honestly. And even if you do commit a felony, they reduce it down to Mr. Meener, so you'll never know anyway. You know what I'm saying? Oh, it's gets worse, but never mind. You wouldn't know. I wouldn't know. Council member Watts, he has more to add. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So, when you do the staff now, how far back do you go with it? Because we're talking about a lot of time frames here, like 10 years ago with the pot in the car to 20 years ago. We go back. We get a very thorough report and then you just decide if there's a cutoff. Right. I just know in my line of work outside of here, we go back seven years. Yeah. That's generally the practice. But you kind of weigh what it was, how serious it was. Did it involve children? You know, I don't touch that. No, no. Like how come her in public said, I mean, you know, there's a difference. Did you get in trouble when you were 16? And now you're 35, you know, well, if you're up to bank at 16, I think it's still the same as robin and making it. You might still be in jail, but yeah. All right, thank you. Or they hide it. All right. Anyway, so if nothing else, I hear more research. Really? Now what I hear. It sounds like we're headed to research. And then do we have to vote on this at the regular meeting if we're to? I think you would have to do a process right yeah I think so because what you'd be doing is establishing a policy policy the policy I'll just throw something just as a placeholder that you know I feel any conviction would be a disqualifier for any board direction you know. So let's bring this back to another study session and let's have what we're going to do in detail and then we can vote on it does that sound fair? So you have something a little more concrete to hammer out a study session and then go to do it, take a formal action at a regular rate. Meanwhile do you need direction as to the other elephant in the room? I think at this point, I mean the consensus is that this is going forward and that's it. Okay. And so that predates anything going forward. So will the board issue that came up last month, he brought back to us then? There is an appointment next week. Okay. There's expected to be an appointment there. Should be. Okay. We have to vote on that next week. Okay. All right. Good. We're good to move forward. next week. Okay. All right. We're good to move forward. Thank you, Karen. Thank you. All right. So next item is the NLC, the NLC conference coming up in March and the possibility of canceling the study session that week, if enough council members are interested in going to the spring NLC conference, which will be March 8 through 11. So Mr. Falconberg, I'll turn this part over to you for any questions that you might have. Sure. Just a couple of quick scheduling issues. We have three, the three new council members have expressed interest in attending that in LC. And I would also volunteer to go along with the mayor since it's the first time for the three of you. But that would mean we would need to cancel the March 10th study session. It's, I just wanna get a clarification on that if that's okay. I move forward with canceling that and those five going to that in LC. Okay. I'm good with that. What I'd like to start doing, especially as the city is really paying for us to go to these conferences, I'd like us to start giving a little report, a little synopsis as far as what we've learned at these conferences. And this is almost a preview to what Council Member Humbers is gonna be doing in just a few moments. But consider that as we go out to, you know, whether it be NLC, CML, or whatever, and just report back, the constituents really want to know if they're sending us as elected officials out there and if it's really worse sending us out there. While there might be a little sightseeing once in a while, while we're out there, we there might be a little sight seen once in a while, while we're out there, we really need to be focused on learning from the conference. So I would encourage us to do that if everybody's good with that as we move forward with these conferences in the future. That sounds good. Okay. Great. Any other discussion before we move on? Okay. Next part. We want to, there's a spring planning session that was tentatively put on our agenda. This is many months ago before the change in city manager and for the new council members, we try to have a kind of a planning session to see how we want to move forward into this term. And Mr. Falcomberg, what kind of questions do you have regarding that? Yes, just to clarify, five of the existing council people should have March 6th and 7th, blocked out on your calendar for Visionary Treatment. Our request is to limit that to the Friday, March 6th, and use the 7th as a travel day for NLC. We really need to know from the three new council members, does March 6th, which is the Friday, all day from 830 to 5 work as a visioning planning session for you. We have yes, yes? It's Sunday. Friday. It's a Friday. We would leave on Saturday for NLC, so we would not have a schedule retreat that day. No, so there's two separate things going on. a scheduled retreat that day. How do we do it? Nobody. Nobody. No, so there's two separate things going on. The visioning retreat was originally Friday, Saturday, and I'm suggesting we not schedule a retreat on Saturday. And actually those five people leave town on Saturday for DC and that is the eighth through the 11th. Right. Yeah, just to confirm the sixth block that out is a set, it's a Friday. If everybody can go and I really want to consensus because we want to set a set goals and vision moving forward. Then Saturday obviously a travel day if you're going to NLC. And then obviously you're there for the conference for the for the few days and then coming home. Are we good? Are we are we good on our calendars then? Councilmember Kushin. What what day would we be returning from the conference? So the conference goes until the 11th. Probably that evening, I would guess. Cheryl couldn't bring up some suggested times as you would get your schedule booked for that. We can customize that based on your name. It's dependent on what you can do, too. Okay. Anybody else? Sounds like we're good on the sixth. Okay. Let's do it. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Now, this last part we have is a follow-up to our trip to San Antonio. And there's a lot, those that went to San Antonio last November, learn. And I'm going to kind of turn this part over to Councilmember Humbert. We'd like to share a big part of what was learned in San Antonio. And he's got some handouts that he's bringing out. I'm going to turn this over to you, Mark. And I will gladly share the floor with the mayor and Mr. Belkinberg if they want to jump in on this because all three of us work this session. But first of all, a little bit to start with, something that I've learned early on in life is a life as a team. And whether you're a family in education, and of course where I spent a lot of my sports. And writing about them. In business, the small and large in government entities, service clubs, city council, the Congress, the federal government, team sport. Even the executive branch. And actually, I gleaned that from reading that colon ballast, which I'm almost. But one thing in my career that really is the golden And my career that really is the golden exemplar of team work and its rewards is I have two of these. This is a memento of the Pulitzer Prize, one of two, that the Rocky Mountain News one, during my tenure there. Now, what is about this is I always thought that the publisher, it's kind of an ego-maniac, had a huge ego. Not necessarily an ego-maniac, but yet a huge ego. What I learned as I went along was that as years went by I learned that ego was fueled by what happened at that newsbee And what happened among the 300 people who worked there Everybody on the staff had a hand in the coverage of the Hayman fire goes to number two. And I didn't bring the other one. The other one was Columbine, Asker. Everybody on that staff touched that weaker toward those special sections that followed. And we all touch it, we could all say we were a part of it. Everyone of us did something to it. And this is in my living room. I have a few more of these things like that that were individual awards, they're my basement. Not as important as this one that came from the team. Joe Biasc, Busca, you know, who is a Los Angeles City Council member, former police officer, has the same message for cities. Use the properties of teamwork in your day-to-day practice local government and your city will grow in process even at the point of influencing federal program. And some of the examples he used at some point all of us are going to have to face poverty issues, valued jobs, jobs worth value, the housing shortage and homelessness. All cities are going to have to deal with that. The best way to do that is to work. First of all, as a team in our city, to get set goals and First of all, as a team in our city to get set goals and values, then in addition to that, we're going to have to, I think, we need to have participation from the federal government, from the private sector, from nonprofits and other charitable organizations to make all of it work. That will take, well, let's start with the basics. Leaders listen. And again, my career taught me that, taught me a lot about that. I used to ask when I hired a reporter, I would ask them, what would you do if a member of your community, if a reader, Collins said, well, I think the story that you just wrote was all wrong. And then you deal with that. But how do you feel when that phone calls over? You know, do you feel like you were attacked or how do you feel about the person? And I say, and this is what I've said over and over again, that person cared enough to read the story. That person was connected enough to read the story and know who to call and that they were concerned with something in that story, they cared enough to give you a phone call since you wrote it. You have to give that person respect. So the second point is leaders show respect. When you show respect, you earn respect. The papers where I worked at that were respected papers. I think the Rocky Magnus again an exemplar of that. Leaders collaborate with all groups and factions and find the best solutions for all. Leaders form partnerships, they define problems, examine alternatives, and find consensus for the best solutions. And some of the things that I said, Joe Buscaeno said, you know, respect, you, you, you, respect, you give respect. Partnership, again, work together across parties, across ideologies, solve problems. That's our job. And I think we do it best as a team. Inclusion. One of the points I wanted to make is that and bus kind of made the same point. No matter how big your margin of victory is when you won your city council seat, more than half of the people didn't vote for. They didn't vote for you because they may have disagreed. Obviously, the ones who voted against, but there are people who are handicapped. They're elderly. There are people who just can't get to vote. Can't get to the polling place in vote. Then there are people who feel so disenfranchised. They don't want to vote for anybody. I think we've all seen that and felt that too. And of course accountability is another thing that Mr. Buscano said. America's local leaders understand we are accountable for addressing the challenges and opportunities confronting our communities and our residents. And in this case he's saying we asked the president to join us in delivering on promises that we, as local councils have, do our constituents and to work diligently for other reasons. And we have a shared commitment. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the you you you you you you you you you you you you you I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the next room. I'm going to go to the Thank you.