Longmont City Council Study Session - March 2, 2021

5:16PM Mar 4, 2021

Speakers:

Keywords:

sro

sorrows

longmont

school resource officers

opt

issue

students

staff

program

restorative justice

next slide

year

council

data

ami

school

councilmember

mayor

community

youth

Welcome welcome I'd like to call this study session to order. Can we place a roll call or actually let's do the pledge. Let's go with Aldo tonight. All right, ready?

I pledge allegiance allegiance to the flag.

The one thing that COVID has taught me is that I will be able to see the pledge no matter how distracted I am. All right. Let's go ahead and do roll call. But in the meantime, before we do that, if you're going to call in to public first call public inbox, the only call public invited to be heard tonight. You're going to call that number and you're going to listen to the live stream and you're going to

be called by your last number, the last three number, your phone number and

Will everybody has three minutes? All right, let's do roll call.

Mayor Bagley, your council members, Christiansen your adacko. fairing. Here. Martin.

Peck?

Here, Rodriguez here, waters here. Mary, you have a quorum. Great. Do you have any motions direct the city manager to do something?

All right, Councilmember Lago fairing? Yes. So a few weeks ago, and you know, I've been in conversation around the North Main Street corridor. And you know, we've gotten our updates. And those are great. You know, I have my, my comp plan. I've been going through that. And that's great. I want to start seeing timelines of work being done in the area.

What, you know, what are some projected dates of when work is going to be done? What's in the budget for this year into next year that specifically for these areas, and then kind of looking at what are some what are some

minimum minimal, like, so I'm thinking of alleyways, because I utilize that area a lot, I go to the shops there, I go to the restaurants around there, going through the back alleys, and just something that we could do at low cost for the city, but could have a large impact for the businesses and residents in that area. So I would really like to bring something in the books to prioritize that work.

So I have a pocket. Okay, thank you. Okay.

So I guess that I'm gonna vote for it. I guess the something that dawned on me is Harold, in the history of my being mayor in three years, how many times have I actually asked you to put something on the agenda?

I don't know. Probably not. Can you? Can you remember one time his Mayor that I've said, I want this on the agenda?

Well, you sent one email out with some stuff that Yes, that's true. But can you Is it is it is that? Would it be fair to say that it's abnormal for me to Yes. Yes. So that is my charter. That is my power is the mayor. And I don't do it as much as this council does. We do it every week. So I would remind everybody, and I'm going to vote for this Susie, this isn't for you. This is something that I've thought about. Everyone on this council has the ability to go in and ask their questions of city staff before this meeting. And so just because we have questions individually, it doesn't mean that we need to have a public forum and draw all of this in in order to have that discussion. So I'm gonna I'm gonna vote for this because this is this was not a statement about you. I was gonna say it no matter what happened tonight, Susie.

I've been in conversations with staff. And that's what prompted me to Yeah, this is not this is. My point is that if somebody wants timelines, or if somebody wants

to have an update on something, it doesn't always need to be in public at the expense of everybody on council or even the public. Because, again,

we just bog staff down. And I know that everybody's exhausted. So does anyone have any opposition to council members? Dog offerings? motion?

All right. All in favor side was motion by was moved by Mayor Bagley. Yeah, I've got my hands. Sorry. I was holding my hand was blocking you. Sorry, Tim, not for you. Okay, go ahead. Dr. Water. Sorry. So I'm not opposition. I'm just not certain what the motion is. I heard a lot of interest. I'm not certain what the motion is. Exactly. So the motion the chair heard the motion as Councilmember memory the offering made the motion. Councilmember Christian seconded, the motion is to instruct staff to bring back timelines regarding the the the restoration and advancement of the North main corridor.

So I heard references to budgets, this year and next in priorities. Is it so is that what we're voting on? No, we're voting on looking at timelines, those are things to be considered, as we look through, or as they're prioritizing, but I really want to see a timeline of what activity they're going to be doing for improvement on the North Main Street corridor, and primarily north of 17th.

So from 17th to 66, does that make sense? So and I just I had I mean, we we always have to consider what what's in our budget, what's,

you know, what are the what are the priorities, but you know, as I look at our comp plan, I see these, you know, there are some issues, some things that they have on there, but really what does that mean as far as

In the sense of creating a timestamp on what we want to have done first, next, and so forth, in the months ahead. Could I ask one more question, Dr. Waters?

Just Just my observation I, we just passed a budget not too long ago. So yes, I think we all know what's in the budget. Yeah, I'm just unclear and you made reference to alleyways. And I know, north of 17th to 66. I'm not certain that I understand what the what the Allawi alleyways are on that part of North Main Street. When you drive behind the shops, and you're trying to get back like, maybe, I don't know, I'm thinking when I go to some of the restaurants and some of the overwhelmed by taco star Michoacana, there's little shops that I like to frequent. And I'm going back behind the alley to get on 23rd or to get on 21st. There's a there there are alleyways

utilize them. Yeah, I just I My mind goes to what we do what we've seen in downtown. Yeah. And and I think those alleyways as opposed to, you know, the alleys on North Main Street. All right, thank you. Yeah.

I'm gonna vote for it. Because I told myself, I'm gonna vote for whatever. So I said, what I said, and I was gonna vote for no matter what, so you don't feel that I was personally against you. But I do know that I sat in the museum and heard a presentation on this issue. And we had that same presentation, again, at Council, talking about downtown Midtown and uptown, so to speak, with a list of projects, and budgets and priorities, etc. And so I would ask, you know, Harold, once this passes, because I'm sure it will, I mean, we can we can get this in our packet. And, and, and if somebody wants to make a motion, I would encourage them to bring that information back and make a motion, if that makes sense. So there's a motion on the table. Is everybody clear on the motion to the attorney to restate it? Okay, all in favor, say aye. Aye.

Opposed say nay. All right, the motion passes unanimously. Thank you. All right. Anyone else?

All right, great. Let's move on to public invited to be heard. Let's take a three minute break. And then we're going to leave it open for two more minutes, and close it out. So be back in three. Thank you.

All right. If you're joining us this evening, now is the time to call in for public invited to be heard, please dial the 800 number on your screen and enter the meeting ID when prompted. Please do remember to mute the live stream while you listen to the instructions on the telephone. And then we will call you by order of the last three digits of your telephone number and ask you at that point to unmute yourself. State your name and address for the record and then you have three minutes

All right, we will resume here in just a few moments, folks, just a reminder to mute your live stream and listen to instructions on your telephone.

Once we resume I will call you by the last three digits of your telephone number. And you will be able to state your name and address for the record and then you will have three minutes.

All right, we got the queue.

It looks like about seven folks there. All right, cool. Let's get this party started

in just a moment here.

All right. So caller ending in 271271 you should be able to unmute yourself, state your name and address for the record and you have three minutes.

Good evening council members. Thank you for taking my call.

My name is Diana Chavez. And I live on princess drive in Longmont, Colorado. And I noticed on the agenda for this evening that a portion of this discussion is regarding

smart meters and the technology involved there.

And although I've commented on this before I felt that I needed to comment again. I feel strongly

About the excess use of technology in our

life in general. And although I do use technology, and I, I certainly think that it has valid use,

I think that there becomes a point when there is too much technology.

And I think that citizens should have the option of being able to

decide what they want to participate in. And I disagree with making it mandatory.

There's a lot of things I'm concerned about right now, smart meter, meters,

5g, just the increasing amount of the radio waves, microwaves, all the various kinds of electronic waves that are surrounding us on a daily basis. And there's multiple studies and researching, indicating that these definitely have a negative, there comes a point when there is a definite negative impact on our health and well being. And as we continue to consume more and more of these technologies.

It has a negative impact on our well being and our population in general. And so I

just wanted to speak out against

the ongoing issue of rolling out this smart meter technology. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

All right. Caller ending in 499499. You should be able to unmute yourself and state your name and address for the record and you have three minutes.

Okay, can you hear me?

We can go ahead. Okay. This is Joe Kelly of barberry Drive. Good evening to all. First of all, I'd like to dedicate these words to the highest good of all sentient beings without a single exception.

In the past week, my neighbor a young woman in her 50s passed away of cancer. In spite of my attempts to educate her at very least to turn off her two Wi Fi routers at night the warning went on heated did she die from this 24 seven continuous microwave exposure? We will never know but one thing I do know is that cannot have helped. I spoke to you guys in the recent past about Amelia, a 12 year old girl from Pittsfield Massachusetts, who brought her plight to her city council about a cell tower being turned on in her neighborhood. It made both she and her sister very ill so ill that she had to have a bucket next to her bed for when she vomited from the exposure. Did her council listen? Well? Yeah. Interestingly, a month old breaking news report from Americans for Responsible technology demonstrates the city council's can indeed be responsive to their residents. I quote, Pittsfield Massachusetts City Council unanimously voted to require investigation of cell tower health effects after residents developed debilitating illness following installation.

A man in the middle of nowhere Kansas, in a house given him by relatives reports that he is made deathly ill with the most horrendous of symptoms, nausea, vomiting, sweats and shaking by the cell tower a mere 700 feet from his dwelling, and yet the hospital can find nothing wrong with him. These and many, many more accounts are to be seen liberally sprinkled on the pages of Facebook and elsewhere if one dares to look, electro sensitivity is now acknowledged as a disability by the courts in California. 11,000 pages of scientific evidence is now being reviewed by the DC Court of Appeals. In the case of children's health defense versus the FCC over FCC failure to update its radio frequency emissions since 1996. What will it take to wake up our own city council and staff to the ever present dangers of placing microwave broadcasting miniature cell towers aka wireless smart meters on the sides of people's dwellings were humans animals.

bees and other insects will be incessantly exposed to this radiation where I live even if I opt out, which would be the path path I would choose. I am surrounded by conjoined townhomes, such as exposure by others wireless usage including smart meters, wireless routers and cell phones is a given. You can run but you can't hide. Must we hand deliver 11,000 pages of the 400 scientific studies to the door of city council in the Longmont power company to be heard. Microwave illness is increasingly being acknowledged. Will you still insist on irradiating us in our homes, knowing the overwhelming evidence that exists of this harm?

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

All right. Caller ending in 876876. You should be able to unmute yourself and state your name and address for the record. You have three minutes.

Caller 876

All right. Let's try caller 000 caller Ed minion 000. You should be able to unmute yourself and state your name and address for the record.

Good morning City Council. This is Dina Henderson. I am the Program Manager of the Longmont community justice partnership located in downtown Longmont on 15 Main Street. I want to take the time tonight to speak an advocate and share the power of a school resource officer in our community.

We know through many venues of research and learning and lived experience that one caring, consistent adult can change the life of a young person in our school communities officers who have badges and guns. They also carry tools and resources that provide this safe, life changing touch point for many of the youth that they serve in schools. The school resource officers in the long run community are champions of restorative justice. It has been my honor to spend the last two and a half years working alongside these police liaisons of our program, who are people who demonstrate to me on a daily basis time and time again, how much they care for the well being of the community, the health and growth of young people and supporting the voice and autonomy of these children developing into the future of our community.

When the school resource officer refers the youth to restorative justice they are offering that use the opportunity to develop essential life skills like responsibility, repair, communication, follow through and self reflection. In this process, the school resource officer stands alongside the youth as they verbalize accountability. They share their life experience and they listen carefully to find opportunities for that young person to become connected into a larger network. The work of restorative justice through the Longmont community justice partnership furthers our community's vision to build a more just and equitable long month by bringing people together to speak and listen to one another. In each restorative justice practice. That school resource officer comes to the conference to listen to the youth to find out what the needs are to hear the skills and gifts and talents of that youth to then reintegrate and build their strengths back into community.

This work not only humanizes one another school resource officer in case in a vest to young person, not knowing who that officer is or information about their background or where they come from. This listening and learning together is what helps to confront and challenge the biases and it helps to hold one another accountable for LC JP I'm gonna have to cut you off because that was a little over three minutes but thank you very much, Mayor Mayor I'm sorry I'm gonna interrupt I got some messages from people who are trying to get in what right so hold on so there's a bigger issue and that is we don't have sound going out and that was the other thing is I got messages channel eight doesn't have sound so if we could if we could ask channel eight I don't know if channel eights around I don't know how we reach out to them but if Sandy cedars around if she could maybe make a call or worker magic that would be great. And I will work on it there. And I guess that Yeah, there are people trying to get in public invited

Heard except that I guess that I guess that it was. Yeah, we'll get that we'll give everybody the benefit of the doubt given that it's COVID and the zoom call, but theoretically, we if we were in person, we would have closed the list. So if you can hear me and you tried calling in before we came back online,

try calling in again and did on the honor system. You didn't, please don't. All right. So let's keep going. And Sandy worked on that sound in the meantime. Okay. Next caller.

All right. Let's try caller 395 caller 395 you should be able to unmute yourself.

You can state your name and address for the record and you have three minutes.

Hello, Longmont City Council. My name is Emily Lauterbach and I live on Terry Street. I am also calling to discuss the role of school resource officers and how they are imperative to continuing relations between law schools and Longmont community justice partnership. I grew up in Longmont. And actually, as a high school student, I was an active participant in the school restorative justice process that was available when I was in high school. It is unfortunately, not as it's not available in the same way that it was when I was in high school because a year after I graduated, they were not given their grant to continue having

a long NLC JP coordinator in the school site. So because of the losing of this grant, the school resource officers are the people who mostly refer students from schools to LC JP rather than having students go through suspensions or expulsions or be sent through the court system as students. And my relationship with school resource officers was incredibly positive and helpful in continuing restorative justice practices in schools. They showed up to our trainings, they connected with us as students, they made sure that we knew what their role was, and that they weren't just there to be somebody to get people in trouble or to have punitive actions done to students. They were there to listen to us. They were there to help us. And they, again, are really important in the process of keeping restorative justice available to long months students. Without their role, it wouldn't be possible for them to continue to have as many students referred to LC JP as there are right now. I understand because of the culture. And a lot of the conversations happening around the country. A lot of other school districts are considering the option of removing school resource officers. But I don't think that those school districts have the training that our school resource officers do. Thank you so much.

Thank you,

Mayor, if I may just provide an update. We're working on the channel eight issue. But the live YouTube stream is working just fine. So somebody wanted to switch to the live stream on YouTube that is working just fine with sound. They probably live there. But if they're watching generally, they may not have it. They don't hear that. So right. Yeah. So I just wanted you all to know. That's right. next caller. All right, caller 084084 you should be able to unmute yourself, state your name and address for the record and you have three minutes.

Hello, this is David Goldberg. My address 200 East 23rd Street Loveland, Colorado.

We are currently in the middle of a huge wake up call in our society.

People are getting sick.

There is social injustice, there are natural disasters. everywhere you turn. There is one crisis after another there's election stuff going on.

I think if we don't realize that we are in the middle of this wake up call. And we keep pushing the snooze button by thinking that vaccines and putting out fires and all the things that we do to convince ourselves that life is eventually going to go on. As usual. We are really deluding ourselves. I think it's time to wake up that we we need to start making changes if things are really going to change because I think if we all ask ourselves, we know there's something deeper going on. And one of those things that's going on is that technology out of control is bringing us down a road that

if we don't make a change in that it's it could be

A an existential crisis that that does need to be faced. So counsel, the way this is going to turn around is if strong leaders step up and do what they need to do. And that's you guys, you guys are our leaders. And we're counting on you to do the right thing. And yes, I'm referring to smart meters here, which is one of those technologies with the the radio wave frequencies that emits that it's just not good for people on the planet. I also want to say some of my friends are skeptical that city council's No, no, the dangers and still not doing anything about it. I'd like to believe that you need to be educated because you're very busy people like we all are. So I'm going to make this offer from myself and people like dough that any kind of anything that we can provide to you that would help you really understand what is going on. Any materials we can provide, I'm committing to provide those so that you have what you need to make an informed decision about smart meters. I also want to bring up the word that many people people haven't brought up. But this is not a threat. But I just want it's more of a warning that there is going to be liability for what is going on with

with EMF and things like smart meters. If smart meters are installed, they are going to start causing sickness, they are going to cause fires, and there are going to be liability issues. Did you know that there is not one insurance company in the world now as far as I know, that's willing to insure against radio frequency radio radiation, and there is a reason for that.

Sir, I'm gonna have to cut you off. That's three minutes in a little over 315. But we only we only have time for three minutes from everybody. But thank you very much. We appreciate your comments. All right, next caller. All right caller ending in 377377. You should be able to unmute yourself. You can state your name and address for the record. Just a moment Hello.

Caller ending in 377.

Hello,

we can it looks like your number ends in 800.

I'm

go ahead and state your name and address for the record and we'll come back to 377.

This is me no mere I was the 876 that couldn't for some reason get in earlier. So I tried different lines.

My address is on flipper hearing on mod. The reason for my daughter, Colin today is has to do with the SFO issue and

how we are still even though we have now numerous data supporting that SRO hoes are ineffective as it relates not only ineffective, but this proportionately affect brown, black, as well as disabled students within st brain school district at a number that is unquestionably higher, we are still supporting them for some reason.

When I went to ask the n double A CP for some of the data that they had pulled on s sorrows appeared to be the case. The data required by Longmont, cb PD to be reported to the state was missing at a great degree. Looks like erias was pretty solidly there. But some, for some reason the actual interactions were significantly down. We only recorded 11 interactions for sorrows, but there was 135 recorded for all of the st frame. So for some reason, we're looking at it saying 125 or a lot into Erie, so we started doing a little bit more digging. When we looked at the education data

available to other schools and spvs data showed that the students of color are being arrested two times more disciplined nearly three times more even given our smaller size of the population than their white counterparts. anecdotal stories that we've been telling people for months for years are disregarded and now that we have data that showed that the same offenses that were being swept under the rug for white kids are being are to the color being sent to detention, suspension, and even to the DA at a greater proportion. Again, that's for brown and black kids. And so you can see is spending four times more on SRO per student than Denver Public Schools. st brain is spelling spending 2 million on 25 resource officers for 30,000 students, Denver

Has 18 officers for 90,000 students, it's disproportionate. Both Denver Public Schools and Boulder County voted for a reason to vote are zeros for a reason. And I'd like for us to actually do the due diligence, that with an audit with the numbers from our police force and what is supposed to be being reported, there is no data that exists. That shows that s sorrows will protect our youth mass violence incidents brought upon by the area to the increase in sorrows and sbst. Back in 2018, that's associated with Parkland shooting. In fact, the opposite

s AR O is a slower response time than calling it a force that should have an active shooter, an active shooter event arise. Now, I've heard a lot of people and I keep hearing a lot of white students calling in right now and saying how great and and and parents as well, this is what brought us here, how great as our roads, I'm not going to challenge that sorrows are great for white students. The data shows that sorrows are great for white students. At some point, somebody is going to look at this data and show how detrimental it is for brown, black and disabled students and creating the school to prison pipeline here.

And if

if that is okay with our city council that we are basically saying yes, we were all about equality, but not what matters right now. There isn't gonna happen.

Right? I it's been about three and a half minutes, I was hoping you were going to, and we only have three minutes per color. It's no disrespect. And I mean does not mean that what you're saying is not absolutely vital. It's just that we have to treat everybody fairly. So Okay, next caller.

All right, caller ending in 377 caller ending in 377. You should be able to unmute yourself and state your name and address for the record and you have three minutes.

Please remember to mute the live stream when you are on the telephone and listen to the instructions on your phone. Caller 377.

All right, give me just a moment.

Caller 377 I believe it's star six to unmute.

Looks like you. Hi. Hello. Go ahead and say hello. The record you have three minutes. Thank you. My name is Charlene Onyango, I am the Interim Executive Director at Longmont, community justice partnership,

a nonprofit in our community that lives on fifth in Maine, that has been providing Restorative Justice Services in Longmont for the past 25 years. And I wanted to share this evening that we recently undertook a huge strategic planning process in which we

had over 200 members of the Longmont community provide feedback to the organization about the strategic goals for the next three to five years. And this feedback was consistent of surveys, focus groups, individual interviews, and there was an overwhelming response in that feedback that this community values restorative justice, and wants restorative justice in our schools. When we dug into this information, we found that every demographic stated that they wanted to see restorative justice grow. And this is not a surprise to us because Longmont has a long history of incorporating restorative justice practices into our policing, and has a long history of supporting restorative justice practices through school resources, school resource officers in our local community. I know that there has been a call locally for school resource officers to be removed that has happened in bvsd. And those two things those two communities cannot be compared. Because bvsd does not have the same history with restorative justice and school resource officers that we have here in Longmont.

Be fast forward now to 2021. And we have a team of 14 police liaison who are trained in restorative practices who are champions and advocates for restorative justice in Longmont, three of the 14

As on our sorrows in the schools, and all of our school resource officers are trained in restorative practices. They utilize those restorative practices. We are putting those restorative practices in place in order to address the disproportionality issue that people are speaking about. We acknowledge that Black and Brown students and other students and other minority groups are disproportionately impacted. If there is not a component of relationship building. The first, one of the main pillars of restorative justice is building those relationships. And our SRO are committed to that relationship building to building that humanity, building that connection with the students, so they are not disproportionately impacted.

Thank you very much. All right. How many more callers do we have in the queue? That's it right now. Mayor. All right. And Has anyone else tried calling in?

We opened the meeting earlier, and we had a few folks that had joined us after the fact. So I think we're probably good. All right. Yeah. Mayor, I wanted to make sure you all weren't hearing anything on that now. Okay. Yeah, no, I've got like Councilmember Lago fairing. I got some personal personal texts saying let us say and let us in. But I, they've either called in or they've no longer reached out. All right, let's go ahead and move on to first of all, I want to give a big welcome to Don hat. And I know he's here. I know that he's got some of his staff with him, I presume. And just to be clear, this is not a city council opportunity to call Don had that before the council. I believe that one of our one and at least one of us had some questions for the city staff, and also St. Brain staff about the process of selecting and training sorrows. And so let's have that presentation. And then we'll move forward from there.

Yep. Mayor council asked, john.

And will the city staff get going? Eugene, this is a question from you. We currently have this came up because during our our last meeting was a regular session. And we basically were voting to approve the spending of services for sorrows that we've already, you know, contracted mused, but then we then we city council wanted to have this discussion. Is it possible to vote on that tonight, if we move to suspend the rules?

mayor and council?

Eugene may city attorney. You could it's not in the agenda,

the contract itself?

But I do think that it would be permissible if you were to

suspend the rules of procedure at a study session. All right. I just not saying that. I'm going to do that. I just wanted to know what the as we as we launch into this, I just wanted to to know, so alright, Harold, the time is yours.

Mayor Council. JOHN, are you on?

Yes, I'm here. All right. And Christina is going to present with you are you doing at all? Yeah, Christina, and Carol be here as well. All right, Christina, and Tara, if you want to go ahead and join

and go forward. They've worked on the presentation, too. There were a few questions that counsel asked regarding this issue. One, specifically selection training, understanding the data. And then they also included information about the collaboration that they're doing with LC JP and rewind in terms of the broader program. And that's where Christina and Tara will join in. So john, take it away.

All right, thank you, I appreciate the opportunity to to show the work that our SRO is doing and kind of why our program is unique. And it's not. It's not the same program as Denver. It's not the same program as boulder or other programs across the country. A big component of that is because of our partnerships with first and foremost the same brain Valley School District and the support that they have for

and shared values they have for our unit and what we want for our kids in our community. And then second and most are second of all the the partnerships that we have with other organizations throughout the city in the community. So and we'll get into that as we go. Obviously, Christina Pacheco Sims from children, youth families is here, the manager for that. Carrie Johnson, the municipal probation chief and then we are

Have a school resource officer Stacy Stallings, who's a, currently a SRO at Silver Creek High School. And

school resource officer Wayne Rafferty, who is one of our school resource officers at Long's peak Middle School.

So,

as we begin,

just kind of to outline or format, what what I'll be going through tonight, I just give you a quick overview of the unit, what our mission is, what our role is, and then answer hopefully answer some of the specific questions that were raised in the last meeting, as far as our selection process or specialized training, will show you the data. And then, you know, as some of the questions in the community, that we're raises address,

come that school to prison pipeline, and why our program is different, and we don't operate that way. So and then we'll finish kind of where we're going in the future. So you can go to the third slide there, the next one, there you go.

So, school resource officers, a law enforcement officer, who is properly selected and trained to work in the school environment. And we do this in collaboration with the St. vrain. Valley School District, we have a focus on community and school based policing. And the big piece of that is we recognize that

the school is it's a, it's a unique community on its own, and each each school is has kind of their own unique community. And so this, this position isn't for every officer. And so we, we take pride in carefully selecting and then training our officers for this very specialized and unique role. And go, next slide.

So our mission,

first and foremost, is to provide safe learning environments in our schools.

This is, obviously, you know, we want it we want to protect our kids and help them be successful. We want to protect the staff so they can, they can help our kids be successful. And and this is this is our highest priority. The the other mission that we have is we provide valuable resources to to the school, the students, the staff, and the parents,

just by our unique role as police officers, we get to work with a number of different organizations within the city in the community. And so we have, we have the opportunity to connect students and families to the to the right resources, and we'll delve further into that later.

This third one's huge foster positive relationship with our youth.

This this is this is really everything, this is probably the most enjoyable part for the sorrows, and this is where they really spend the majority of their work

in order to to really impact and to help each and every kid succeed. And to provide that safe learning environment, we have to be able to build that rapport and that trust with him. That also helps lower lowers that threshold of silence. You know, if you look at across the country, these major incidents of mass violence, you know, and they do these after action reviews are after, you know, after the fact, there always seems to be somebody who knew who knew something who had some piece of information that for whatever reason, didn't come forward. And, you know, we feel if we can help build that trust, and in that confidence for people to come forward with that information, which has happened time and time again. We can, we can help prevent and intervene before these incidents happen. And that's data that's that's harder, almost impossible to capture. You know, we can't show the the number of incidents that didn't happen, because we were there because we were able to intervene.

And that's our ultimate goal.

And then finally, to develop strategies and resolve problems affecting our youth with the goal of protecting every child so they can reach their fullest potential. And again, this is done in huge part through our partnerships with St. vrain Valley School District and other organizations throughout the community. The next slide.

So how do we accomplish this mission?

For us, you know, really this is this is kind of this triad here illustrates how we do that. And these are the three primary hats that we wear. Obviously we are law enforcement officers still and that is that is a portion of our job. What I hope to show you tonight, especially through the data is

that is

where we spend the least amount of our time. In fact, 1.5% of our time, our SRO is time is actually spent on enforcing laws. The majority of it is spent on counseling and mentoring.

And and that teacher role. And so rather than listening to me when you said we brought SRO, Stallings and SRO Rafferty, and I'll turn it over to SRO Stallings real quick, and she can kind of show you what this looks like on a day to day basis for them.

Hi, everyone, thank you for giving us this opportunity to tell you a little bit about what we do today. I'm just going to go through kind of some of the things that I've been involved with as an SRO at Silver Creek,

which I'm in my seventh year now. So I've, I've been there for a while.

I'm just going to go through a list here.

I present restorative practices and restorative justice in schools to staff and administrators and district personnel, I was able to teach restorative practices to campus supervisors. I also lead and coordinate the restorative justice program at Silver Creek High School, which we have a student team, so that entails multiple team meetings, Team Leader meetings, promotion of the program, continued training of the students, because the students sit in the conferences, and I also facilitate the pre conferences and the conferences with the harmed parties and responsible parties, and record all the data from the program.

I attend. Every year, I get the opportunity to go with our leadership academy freshmen to a retreat, usually in Estes Park with about 100 incoming freshmen, and participate in team building activities with the kids, as well as whatever presentation of the year that I'm asked to do. So I've done leadership, restorative practices, connection circles, decision making.

Some of the classes that we taught were always we have a, I think, a really great relationship with our teachers and they, the kids love it when we come in and teach classes. So they're regularly asking us to teach a variety of things. There's the standard things like drug and alcohol awareness

to all the freshmen and health class as well as like vaping and sexting and things like that, that we discuss with them and the laws around that.

Justice and due process and government and community policing, the selection and roles of an SRO. The kids are actually interested in the same things that city council this technology, ethics, computer forensics, team crime and crime reporting, anatomy, believe it or not, marketing, civics and action, do you I and my partner actually just taught a financial planning class.

So they're always asking us to whatever we can relate to the kids with just to give us the opportunity. Every time we get into classrooms, it's an opportunity for us to build relationships with the kids. We serve as community leaders at the annual doing democracy day where students analyze and research a current societal issue.

I have an after swell, when when hope hopefully when COVID is over, have an after school workout club where I open up the weight room and work out with kids.

We have an annual staff and students tennis tournament that I get to play in, I still have not gotten first place in that but I'm going to keep trying.

This year, it will be our first year doing this. We have a new newspaper website, and the talent Tribune and we have a section in the newspaper called the Justice journal. And we'll be answering student submitted questions anonymously. They get to just submit any question they want anonymously and will answer their questions in the Justice journals. And I have found that they and they ask us a lot more

in depth, things that they might not ask us in person. So that's an opportunity for us to get to

speak to those things that they want to know about. But they don't quite have the courage to ask us.

We attend all the special annual events that happen with the school the Raptor run. We have an MLK Day event every year at Silver Creek that we attend and our Chinese New Year celebration. And I also present to parents do parent presentations on vaping marijuana use or whatever they request.

Mediation, I do mediation with the students for conflict resolution. I also mentor students for their leader step leadership capstone projects, and

Sergio Garcia can attest to this one, I saved the best for last week annually. I organize and play in a police versus unified basketball game. And those kids are our special needs kids that are on a they have sports teams, and they play a variety of sports. Basketball is one of them. And we get to play them once a year, which is our favorite thing. They always trash talk us for at least a few weeks before we before we have that game. So hopefully when COVID is over, we'll get to do that again.

Thank you. Thanks, Stacey. I appreciate you sharing that. Wayne, go ahead. Yeah, so Hi, everybody. I'm Wayne Rafferty, and I'm a school resource officer at Long's peak Middle School. And unlike Stacey, who's been there quite a while, I just started

my SRO assignment in January 2020. So I'm kind of on the newer side of that. A lot of the, the goals and the visions that Stacy has mentioned, are the same. At the middle school level, of course, middle school level, you're dealing with

fifth graders all the way up to eighth graders, which is the 11 to 14 year old range. And as the community knows, those ages are different from

a young person in high school, and their mental development is a little different. And that's where our training or specialized training comes into effect. Our goal is basically like Sergio Garcia said is to make a safe environment for all involved in that community. And my role within the lowest lowest peak Middle School isn't just stuck there. Mine expands to the elementary level as well. With Mountain View Elementary, Sanborn Elementary, in Northridge. So it's a community in and of itself, like Sergio Garcia said. And, you know, when I was asked to talk about, you know, my job as an SRO, I wanted to kind of show give Council, a face to the name, you know, you if you can put a face to a uniform, a face to a badge and talk one on one with individuals, you get a little different perspective. And that's kind of what how our SRO program is is building those relationships with the students who can put a face to the uniform who can put a face to the police officer.

And our NGO and I'm pretty unique. I grew up here online, I am a product of the st. Green Valley School District. I attended Mountain View Elementary or Mountain View Elementary, I attended Long's peak Junior High back then, and graduated from Longmont High School, and then went on to the University of Colorado. So it's not only a law enforcement focused program, I share my my life experiences with these young people, good, bad or indifferent. I share my experiences,

through my experiences, middle school, high school at the college level, and bringing those personal experiences and the training do these young minds may give them a perception that may help them out in the future. So that's basically what my goal was tonight to put a face to the name. And really our law enforcement position is really on the back burner as an SRO. We are the resource for staff, we are the resource for the families, the parents, and the students to get if a student is having a bad day are just having a bad month. Our goal is to get that get them through that bad time and help them in the future. That is the bottom line.

And thank you for your time.

Thanks, Wayne. Appreciate it. And as Stacey said, Yeah, I've had the opportunity to participate in that basketball game for quite a few years now. And and one of these years we're going to win it I'm convinced so

you can go the next slide.

So a little bit on the specifics about our unit. We have 12 s sorrows and then the one supervisor myself

to per High School

and one in each middle school and a moment

Majority of that is is funded and supported by the same brain Valley School District. Next slide.

So now we'll get into this selection process as canceled, ask for more information on. So really how it starts is when we have a position that's open, we'll we'll do a position announcement to the entire department.

That's usually posted for about 30 days, we require a letter of interest that has to be approved by that officers, direct supervisor, and then their commander as well. So it's got to go to the chain of command just just to even be able to apply for the position, they have to be able to prove it and say, Yes, they're good fit or not, then we also require a resume. No other internal position in that department requires that. But again, as we've touched on earlier, this is a very unique

position. It really is like a second career, especially when we when we talk about just kind of that counseling and that mentorship. And in that teaching, which, as as Stacey and Wayne stated is is the majority of their job. And so it's important for the schools, to see that resume, and to see just kind of the background and the history that they have.

And not just kind of internally where we get to see them as police officers,

then then I will do supervisory evaluation. So I'll go talk to their direct supervisor and in their previous supervisor the prior year, and get evaluations for them, see if they're a good fit, we'll do always a professional standards unit inquiry to make sure there's nothing

you know, they're not currently under investigation for anything, and that all matches up. And then we share all this information with the school ahead of time before, before we do the next step, which is oral board, so you can go the next slide.

So I'm gonna be running overboard. So part of that oral board is we have some police officer, police department representations. So we'll typically all be there, we'll pull in some some other sorrows. Usually for sure. If it's like a high school position, we'll make sure there's a high school SRO there, or vice versa for middle school. And then a lot of times, we'll pull in, like previous SRO, supervisors to assist in that. And then we allow the school, obviously, they're gonna have representation, but we allow them to invite whoever they want to invite.

So, you know, whether that's counselors, teachers, you know, anybody that they would want to, you know, admin, staff, principals,

anybody that they would want to invite, we would not object to, and so they can, like, say, we have some representation from the school district here tonight. And they can

answer some of the representation that maybe they've had in the past.

And then part of that oral board, obviously, they go through a series of questions from the panel. But also we require them to provide some sort of presentation or where they're actually teaching the class. So if it's a, it's for a high school position, or I should have touched on this, when we post for the position, we we state, which which position it is, whether it's this specific High School is the specific Middle School. And if we have multiple openings, they have to apply for each one. Because again, each each High School is kind of has its own characteristics. And then there is a difference between obviously the high school in the middle school and again, not everybody is a is a right fit

for either one. So we make them apply to each specific one that they're they would be willing to work at. But then again, part of that presentation is we we actually make them provide class instruction, like they're like they're teaching to whichever position they're playing for. So if it's a middle school position, they have to present or teach to the board as they're teaching the middle schoolers, so.

And then. So after that, we convene, we usually give the school a couple days to kind of the school representation on the board to kind of

take some time to think about it, and then touch base back with us. And then ultimately, the final selection falls on me as a supervisor, I leaned heavily on on what what the school wants. They've been doing this for a while now. And, and again, it's important to find that match. But ultimately, again, I knowing these individuals

more, working with them more closely.

I had that ultimate veto power. And then just to ensure we're good there. Once that selection is made, I send my recommendation of my chain of command to the Special Operations commander then goes to the deputy chief and then the Director of Public Safety, and so they will have to sign off on it. And so that's that's what our selection process looks like.

The next slide.

So training, again, there's a ton of specialized training

that we talked about, not only do they have to continue their

normal departmental training that all officers go through, but we, we require additional training. And this is ongoing.

Obviously, there's a basic SRO certification that they have to go through to start, it's a 40 hour class. And then as we go from there, we try to get them in an intermediate in some years following and then then it advanced. Because if the train doesn't stop them, we need to, we need to get them to continue to develop, I won't read all these, but you can see some of they're on the list, obviously, dealing with childhood trauma, and adverse childhood experiences working with students with disability, mental health issues, cultural diversity, implicit bias are huge. And then a lot of the, you know, typical crimes that you would think we would be investigating, especially when it involves involves children, you know, the next slide,

you can see some of the other ones there. And then also, you know, the, the kind of school safety related training courses, that that that fall there.

The

sorry, you can go the next slide.

So that that's, that's the specialized training. Again, that's, that's not all inclusive, there's more to that, and we kind of have it broken down into years.

You know, because it's a it is definitely a progression as I go. So, now to get into the data. So as as one of the callers on the public option mentioned, we are mandated by Colorado State law to provide an annual report to the state.

Along with that, there's there's different requirements for what exactly we have to report to them. Anything that's an arrest or summons that happens on school property, whether that's at a school, other district property of vehicle of the school, or anything that's sanctioned by the school itself. You know, even if it's not on a school property, if it's a sanctioned school event, we have to provide that information to the state regarding summonses and arrests, and there's there's a number of things as far as the name, date of birth, the the offense, and things that go along with that. And you can see the statue that's up there. What I what I would remind you that or or I guess draw attention to is that this is not specific to the sorrows. So for example, if a patrol officer responds to a call, on a Saturday night, in the summer at 1am,

in a contact a juvenile on, you know, let's just say

Longmont High School, for whatever reason, and that's that juvenile has a warrant for their arrest and that patrol officer makes an arrest. That's data that we have to report. So again, it's not specific to the sorrows and so as we go through the specifics on this data, you'll see these numbers of our arrests and summonses and I'll break it down specific to the sorrows but just realize that not all of this is SRO related.

Go ahead.

So these are these are some of the incidents that

the schools are required to notify law enforcement on according to their policy. So anything involved involving a weapon, so whether that's a knife, a simulated firearm, anything, obviously explosive or scenario device,

drugs, drug paraphernalia, sexual misconduct, physical assault, resulting injury, allegations of child abuse, domestic violence, felonies, or anything else. That would be obviously their mandatory reporters. So anything else that would fall under that mandatory mandatory reporting law, they are required to notify us. This is not an all inclusive list.

But the other piece of that is just because they notify us doesn't mean that we're taking over the investigation, I would say most incidents, the school reports to us they handle on their own, or, you know, we may be involved in some way in in some restorative practices at the school there. So just because it's a they report something criminal to us, doesn't mean that work, there's going to be charges or we're going to just even take that case, like I said, I would say more times than not the school handles it, especially with those, you know, those kind of lower level criminal acts. You know, the next one.

So one thing that I think is important to highlight So, when they notify us, we we call these calls for service. So,

again, they don't automatically result in

criminal charges filed. But when I say calls for service, I equate that to just like it would be on the street. If if somebody in the community called to report a crime, right? We are reactive, we are responding to that we're not necessarily proactively

looking for crimes and that sense. So when I refer to calls for service going forward, that's what I'm saying there is is is that something being reported to us, and then we respond to that reactively.

So as to rows received calls from service from school staff, from students from parents, safe to tells other community members in

nearby neighborhoods around the schools, in many other ways we receive calls for service from other outside agencies, and so

on.

Again, this is us responding to something versus proactively looking to enforce laws. And I think this is really important to highlight, especially again, when we're talking to that school to prison pipeline. So 98.5% of the law enforcement activities that are done by the sorrows of last two school years, were reactive. Again, it was a call for service, it wasn't us proactively looking for crimes. So I think that's extremely important to highlight. And as I mentioned before, this is a very minute

portion of of what we do. We go the next slide.

So as we start to kind of get into the data here, oh, and let me go back and address something specifically towards that caller says.

So this is something that we discovered as we were looking for this data, in particular, as we were pulling it up.

So what that the caller, who said that we didn't report information to the state. So they're, they're partially correct, in 2018 19.

So each year after we report that data to the state, they come out with a report statewide showing just the data around, again, anything that's happened on school grounds, arrest or summons related. So we discovered as we were gathering this data, that the state didn't have our data from 2018 2019, even though we reported it.

And so

we, we we pulled the report this the same way we always do. And the way that's entered into the state is through an online portal.

So as you can imagine, there was a little bit of panic when we realized, well, what what happened here because we reported it, and then all of a sudden, we realized as we're looking into this further, that they don't have it, they show us as a non reporter for that one school year 2018 19.

So I contacted the state immediately

to one try to get them that data and to to see what what quite happened. So I was actually able to make contact.

And again, we report that to the Division of Criminal Justice for the state of Colorado. I was able to make contact with the research director there Kim English, and she sent me the following information. letter says dear Sergeant Garcia, thank you so much for your inquiry regarding the Longmont Police Department data submission for the 2018 2019 school year. I apologize for this confusion This has caused we do not have a record of this data from Longmont police department. However, we know that your department has consistently reported each of the other years that we've been collecting and reporting this data per House Bill 15 1273. technology may have failed us as we automatically log all data sets submitted by law enforcement agencies. We cannot accept the data at this time. But thank you for offering. We cannot reanalyze the data and republish last year's report. Thank you so much for reaching out, your department does outstanding work and we look forward to continuing to work with you in the future Best regards. So again, we're not exactly sure the state did a bunch of research to figure out what went wrong. We've done some research for what went wrong. And really, we don't know, we don't know if it's a technological issue or what but somehow, when we set that data in, they didn't get it. So in again, we tried to send that data forward and you'll see it in here tonight. I have it for you. But they've already come out with the report and there's really nothing they can they can do at this point. So

so there is some truth to that,

that the state didn't get our data that year. But we we did do our best to report that to them. So um, so I just I just wanted to give that that that update there. So as you can see here 2018 to

2019 school year, we had 2200 calls for service at the on school properties. Point 04 percent of these contacts resulted in a summons being issued a ticket being issued. Point 00 7% of these resulted in arrest being made in 2019 2020. These are the numbers that we have reported to the state. They haven't released their their report yet. But they assured us that they did receive this prior school year's

data. And it'll be published there. But we had 1935 calls for service on school properties, point 04 percent resulted in a summons been issued point 00 5% resulted in interest. Now, again, these numbers are actually going to be much less because these numbers include anything that happened on these numbers will be much less for the sorrows because this includes the entire department.

You can go the next slide.

So, one, one thing to really highlight here is out of the last two school years, zero arrests were initiated by the SRO, meaning again, we were responding to a call for service, just like patrol does every day, somebody reported a crime. That's how we got involved in it. So zero of all the arrests that were made. were initiated by an SRO. Out of the 183 summonses that were issued at the last two school years, only three of them were initiated by an SRO. So out of all the arrests that all the summons is we, we initiated three of those incidents, three of those cases. And again, they're all they're all tickets been issued. And even some of that is, you know, you know, one example of that is an SRO that was showing up to school and saw a bus that was vandalized. And so instead of ignoring it, he went to see what happened and pulled some school footage and security camera footage and, and dug into it and they ended up developing charges from that. So again, not actively hunting, these things are trying to get kids in trouble. I'm just kind of stumbled upon it.

So I think right now there's 33,000 plus students in the same vein, Valley School District. So if you look at our numbers 2018 to 2019 that means we arrested point 000 5% of the students in the district and cited point 00 2% 2019 2020 you can see the numbers arrested point 000 3% and issued citations to 0.002%.

So again, extremely low numbers there. You and again, that's that's including any the numbers are much lower for the zeros that's including any crime that happened on school property, whether it was a patrol or or SRO. You go the next slide.

So, this is the data

for the 2018 19 school year. There were 17 arrests and 105 summonses issued on school property. You can see the demographics broken down there. Of those 17 arrests for those arrest came from the same incident. Eight were initiated by the St. vrain Valley School District. So again, me they reported to us those crimes included domestic narcotics violation, protection, orders, assault, sex assault, burglary, so again, things that they were they were mandated to report.

One was an issue by initiated by a parent, one by an outside agency, one through a safe to tell and one came via our patrol. five of those arrests. Were patrol officer calls the service they didn't even involve an SRO whatsoever. You go the next slide.

So really for that school year, for our Longmont sorrows, we made 12 arrests and we issued 89 summonses.

You can go the next slide

for the 2019 20 school year, again on school property 11 or, oh, sorry, 11 arrests 100 summonses. Again, you can see the demographics broken down there. Of those 11 arrests for came from the same incident. It was an aggravated robbery case.

Again, that was a patrol case it didn't even involve escrows and actually demon happened on school grounds. It just so happened that the original report had it The call came in through Longmont through through one of our Longmont schools, but it actually didn't even happen but the originating patrol officer never changed the address. And so it just happened to show up as a school it is so when it really wasn't

to involve the same suspect. Five came from patrol investigations and again five are initiated by the same family school district and you can see the crimes broken down there. Again, all mandatory reports that they have to

Call the police for you go the next slide. So really our sorrows for the 2019 2020 school year, made seven arrests in road 92 summonses,

you go the next slide.

Um, here's some just kind of safe to tell data,

the reports that this school district has had received. So a lot of those will handle a lot of those a school district will handle, but you can kind of see the numbers there a little bit. Again, that's a way that we get involved in some of these things. It's a it's a call for service, we have to respond to these. Good.

So what does this mean?

This data overwhelmingly shows that the Longmont police department in the St. vrain Valley School District SRO program does not operate as a school to prison pipeline.

If we did not have SRO in the schools, the school district would still have to report these incidents. So they would still be calling the police department to report these crimes, probably the same of the students, probably the same with the parents, community members. And so we would, as a police department, we would still respond to these. And so instead of getting that

carefully selected that specialized,

specialized trained officer, you're going to get a patrol officer who doesn't necessarily understand the school dynamics under halftime to really dive into maybe the root of the issue there.

And so, again, you know, we we hear this term a lot in the school to prison pipeline, which may be true for some programs across the nation. But it's not true for our program. And in a huge part of that is, is our partnership with the school district, like I said, we showed you the numbers of the things that we're involved in. But most issues don't even generate a call for service, the school handles these things. And so a lot of these, we we do through,

you know, restorative practices within the school, you know, and that's a huge part of our specialized training is restorative justice. And I'll get into more of that, what that's looking like for us in the future. But I'm excited about what that looks like for us. So

let's even go ahead and go the next slide.

So, this kind of leads into the next piece, because a lot of times what we see is always when we look at the data, all we see is the officer wrote a ticket or the officer made an arrest. Again, Longmont, as a community is different. It doesn't just stop there, it doesn't automatically mean we're throwing this this juvenile into the criminal justice system like it would and maybe other agencies or other other places across the country. And this really goes into just kind of the collaboration with with other organizations within our within our city government and and within the community. And so with that, I will turn it over to Christina Pacheco Sims.

And actually, john, I think I'm going to start on slide 23.

Okay, thank you. Hello, mayor and city council members. I want to thank you for having us here tonight

to speak about this program in the collaboration between the SRO unit and our program rewind.

The slide tells you a little bit about the program itself, I want to go into kind of what happens in those rare instances when a youth is summoned into our court rewind as a program to divert them out of the traditional court process.

So basically, when when a youth and their caregivers shows up to court, they're immediately diverted into a different area out of the traditional courtroom, and they sit in meet with team members from the rewind program.

Their questions are answered we explain the program to them. And then they make a decision if they want to participate in the program or not. It's an opt in program. And so it's it's their decision if they'd like to participate.

One of our goals after that orientation is to really get the ball rolling quickly so we can get services delivered to the families. And so within one to 10 days after that orientation, and assessment is being completed for the family.

This assessment helps us help guide us into interventions that are appropriate for what's going on, you know, with the youth and their caregivers.

After that assessment, there's a stuffings. They're held after it and they're conducted with the team of professionals with different backgrounds.

Including the assessors themselves. The rewind case manager, program specialists, and a mental health professional. These stuffings are conducted with clinical oversight, and each youth is staffed intentionally to meet their needs, while addressing their strengths. This is definitely a client driven process. So we take the information provided by the families, along with the assessment scores, to decide upon what interventions we feel would best benefit the youth and their caregivers.

And then at that point, after we've made those decisions, every every effort is made to engage the youth and the caregivers into the interventions within 10 to 14 days after that assessment, we just really understand the importance of making sure that we're delivering services just as soon as possible to address what's going on. If we could go to the next slide.

So as you've heard, our team works really closely with the SRO team and our patrol officers as well. And we regularly discuss situations that youth find themselves in that result in police contact. And many times those conversations result in referring families to resources, other than the rewind program, just no summonses issued, but we're just getting them connected with the resources. However, when it's evident that a summons will be issued, we want to assure that the officers have information readily available to give to the youth and their caregivers during the contact, we wanted to make sure that it was easy for the officer to carry, you know, they got a lot of equipment on them. And so this Pocket Card was developed in both English and Spanish, that the officers can carry a few in their pocket. Once they have that contact with the youth and families, they can give them that card.

And then they can kind of start the conversation of what the next steps are to help alleviate some of that stress and anxiety that families feel after receiving a summons. Information is on there that they can contact us directly and talk to us directly before their orientation. It also has the rewind website that gives more information as well as shows the orientation video. And so one of the things moving forward that we're really excited about to be working with with Sergeant Garcia is to develop this program further by implementing preventive measures. We'll talk about a little bit more about that.

And with that next slide and Christina Pacheco Sims will be presenting that Thank you.

Thank you, Tara. I'm Christina Pacheco, Sims, children, youth and families division manager.

One of the data points that we have consistently tracked since we rolled out rewind, as Sergeant Garcia noted, is the school Nexus. It doesn't necessarily tell us all of the tickets that were or all of the summons that were issued, specifically by school resource officer, but definitely anything that could even have happened on school property. So you'll see

total number of cases 2018 to 2021.

We had a total of 224 cases about 53% had a school Nexus. And for the same time period that Sergeant Garcia reported on in his data review about 66 of the 121 or about 55% had a school Nexus. Next slide, please.

So

in developing and researching and developing an intervention program, one of the areas that we examine was minority over representation. We've talked a little bit about definitely the national trend trends that we see of over representation of youth of color youth with mental health conditions and dual diagnoses, which often stem from grief loss and abandonment issues and finding themselves in the court system. And so we believe that it really gave us another chance to address that school to prison pipeline, and really keep kids you from propelling from the municipal court system into the county court system.

And we have

close to

an 80, I would say about an 88% success rate at this point with the youth that are completing their case plans in getting their their cases dismissed and records sealed at the municipal level. As Tara talked about, we really do take that municipal that multidisciplinary approach

Utilizing,

utilizing that that clinical aspect, really looking at how we can best intervene with kids at the right time, in in, in the point of their development, what we did is we really took different systems and looked at

lean way of implementing them, police system, municipal courts and intervention so that we could create a process flow that would get a young person from point A officer contact to point z in the in the quickest way possible, so that we could meet their needs, as Tara talked about. And we do assess the youth parent within seven to 10 days after orientation and youth are engaged

within at least 10 to 14 days after that assessment. And I also would note that the assessment that was chosen when we develop this program is an assessment that the

school district use has used in the past, it's the child and adolescent

needs and strengths assessment. And it's the same assessment that the county uses. And the intent behind that is that when an if a youth would cycle out of out of our system out of the municipal court system, and they needed a higher level of intervention and had to go into the county court system, they're really going with some of that background information. And we're better able to to help coordinate those services for them, if and when that happens. Next slide, please.

This speaks to

the

just the foundation of our program, and how we how we develop it, it's a very important aspect of program development. And what we looked at in terms of equity, we utilize a cultural broker model.

In developing this program, we have the capacity to take a cohort of individuals really look at their needs. And if we need to, we can run that intervention all in Spanish, we can run it all in English, I think officer Rafferty talked about

being born and raised in have got have gone through St. vrain. Valley schools, that is representative of the population that service providers that we have in our program, many have been born and raised in in Longmont and are bilingual as well. I'm going to now turn it over to sergeant Garcia to talk about restorative justice, and then we'll all talk about the future and where we're going.

Okay.

All right. Thank you, Christina. Thank you, Tara.

So a little bit about the restorative justice data. So a school related referral means incidents that occurred on school property. So a lot of times this data, just kind of shows school related referrals, but many times escrows make referrals that are not necessarily considered school related. So in 2008, you can see the numbers there 2018 12 cases 19 to 1914 cases. And then 2020, it was a little bit obviously unique with COVID, it definitely had a significant impact. Now, again, these are these are cases being referred, as I talked about before.

One

a lot of these are handled at the school level. And and

we we do the restorative practices there. The school has training in that our Astros have training in that. So a lot of those just get handled at the school under those same principles.

And then the other piece, again, as we as we dig deeper into the data,

is, you know, a lot of times we may try to refer a student to restorative justice. And there's there's certain cases that we can't there's certain reasons that we can't, or, you know, like if they don't take responsibility or at least ownership admitting to to their partner, that's something that can't be referred. And so a lot of times the other option is okay to write them a citation and then get them to help through through we rewind that way. So, again, the dad only tells a portion of the story, it's important to understand what happens after the arrest or after a citation is made. And then again, there's a lot of things that kind of go and see you know, the next slide

So where do we go from here the future, you know, we're trying to always be in a constant state of improvement, we're we are not perfect by any means. I'll be the first to admit that our esteros would be the first to admit that. I think you've probably seen some of that display tonight. But we are striving to to improve constantly.

Through our through our relationships and our partnerships with the school district, we're in, we're in constant I'm in constant contact with,

with Superintendent Don head ad, and Deputy Superintendent Jackie cushion and director of safety at the school district. Richard Peebles, and then we even meet as a group, the principals and the sorrows, to all make sure that we're, we're on the same page, and we're working towards the same thing. And again, that's that, that success for the for the students. And then also, obviously, our partnerships in Christina and Tara kind of touched on it.

Just improving those partnerships, and and where we need to go in the future, the same conversations are happening with restorative justice. In the future, we're trying to bring them in and actually provide training for Rs arose to handle again, more of these situations within the school themselves.

Continue to foster and create communication opportunities. So to make sure that we are

opening those avenues of communication or the ability for students, parents, people in the community to kind of come forward with their concerns,

you know, and then we're looking, we're evaluating our data and our systems, and making sure that we're providing equitable services for all, and so we have some things kind of on the horizon that we're working towards there, to make sure that every student gets the same opportunities to succeed.

And so I'm excited about the direction we're headed and where we're going.

And I'll let Christina and Tara talk about that a little bit more. But I guess I'll leave you with this. You know, as a Latino male,

you know, I, I have seen what a good SRO program can do and what the impact of what a good SRO can can make. I'm here today because of my high school SRO that I still talk to, to this day. He's a firefighter. Now, I'll try not to hold that against them. But he's made a huge impact in my life, because he took the time to invest in me. And, and when I was messing up in high school, he he looked at the root of the issue versus just treating me differently. And he was he was a white male. And he looked past that, and really worked with me and took the time to invest in me as an individual. So I personally understand the impact that the esteros can make in the school. So

and yeah, I would second what Sergeant Garcia talked about in terms of where we're headed. With continuing to improve upon how we can do things in rewind, continue to you know, we're really excited to continue to work with

Sergeant and and the SRO team. And continue continue to develop those partnerships and opportunities to to see what see what more we can do see what what prevention work we might be able to get into.

And I'll third all of that. We are just continue to work together. And I just wanted to point out one thing that Christina and officer Rafferty brought up is that so many members of our team have grown up here, gone to school here, graduated from high school here, went on to college and come back. And that's what I did as well. And I've raised a child here who went through the St. vrain Valley School District who had an amazing experience with a school resource officer, and they can really can make a huge impact in a kid's life. And so we're just excited that we partner with them. And we're really proud of the SRO program in this community. Thank you.

All right. I'm gonna I'm gonna give the opportunity to Don had to chime in chime in at this point, if you would like to add anything.

Yes, thank you, Mayor. I appreciate that and appreciate the time that everybody's taking to share really important information about our SRO program in the same brain Valley schools and with the Longmont police department. And, you know, I know that we meet regularly with our law enforcement

representatives and we talk a lot about what our objectives

Are and on both. On both accounts, what we talked about is we want every single student in the same brain Valley School District, to be happy to be healthy. their well being is paramount. We want every one of them to graduate from our school system and be able to go on in life and achieve all of their their goals and objectives and their and their dreams. And, you know, every so often, on a regular basis, we meet as a group, with all of the sorrows and with all of the supervisors of the sorrows and our district leadership team and our principals. And there's very, very clear communication that we do not want our children

being arrested, we do not want our children being ticketed or receiving summons, we know that there are certain laws that we have to abide by that where it might be required. But that is always the last resort. It's all about teaching. It's all about coaching. It's all about helping our children make the best decisions that they can make. The other thing that I know, and we you, you heard, all of the wonderful things that our sorrows do, whether it's teaching, or going to graduation events, or attending the football games, and the basketball games, or the dances,

or being in the hallways, and in the lunch rooms, and all of those things just interacting with our kids. That's that's the overwhelming majority of what they do. And I attend graduations. I'll tell you, I was at the Longmont graduation, this past year. It was later in July. And I saw the SRO and watched you know, just about every single student that walked by, you know, wave, say thank you high five, a hug, it was just one of those things where you realize that those relationships are really, really important. The other thing that I know, that's, that's always really important.

You know, we've been fortunate in Satan brain not to have what some districts around the country have experienced a catastrophic event. And I pray that that never happens. And it's something that keeps us all up at night. And that's the reality of it. And we just want to always make sure that we've done everything we can in our power to prevent that. So that our children come to school safe, and they go home safe. And our teachers and staff come to school safe and they go home safe. And having our sorrows there, I believe decreases significantly the likelihood of something like that happening.

And if it were, it increases the likelihood significantly, that we would be able to respond quickly. So I'm appreciative of the SRO program. It's something that I've worked closely with Mike Butler long before before he retired four years, and several others and remained committed to supporting the srls in our schools, and committed to supporting and making sure that every one of our children is treated with the utmost respect, and their safety and well being is paramount. So I appreciate the opportunity to comment in Dr. hat on I just want to say thank you for coming.

And I would hope that if you're if you and your your board were ever to need us to come, we would we would do the same courtesy. So thank you very much for for being here.

I'm actually going to take it upon myself to move that we suspend the rules of procedure so that we might take a vote tonight during a study session rather than a regular Council.

All right, all in favor of suspending the Rules of Procedure say aye.

Aye. Opposed say nay.

All right. I'm also going to move that we actually approve the budget request to fund the SRO officers. Mayor Bagley Yep, it was a resolution 2021 17

you want to make a motion. I'll move we move we approve. Resolution 2021 72. Quick document waters moved that we approve the resolution and who seconded it first.

I'll say council member pack. All right. So there's a motion on the floor. Is there anybody who does wants to speak out against the motion?

Okay, all right. All in favor of passing the resolution say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, perfect.

Councilmember Lago fairing.

Thank you, Mayor. I wanted to clarify because, um, last when this was brought forward to us, I was the one who had a lot of questions that were addressed tonight in the PowerPoint. And the reason

Why it wasn't my intent to disband the SRO contract? These were questions that that I've had. And these were questions that were

brought to me by other constituents, residents who also have kids in the district. And I didn't have answers for them. So when this resolution came up, I asked, I asked this of our city staff, and nobody had answers for me.

And or they couldn't answer with all certainty. So it was really imperative that I mean, for me as a representative of my community, that I'm doing my due diligence, in not just moving something forward without having questions answered first. I think this this presentation was phenomenal. I think it's important that we have these public public forums, these public conversations around what our programs look like, in our city, in our schools, in our community in general. So I think I don't think this was time wasted. Absolutely not. I think this was this was a great and very informative presentation. And I, I really appreciate it. One of the things that I did not see was in regard to evaluation. So if in a case that a certain SRO is not working out in a building, what is the procedure for having the person either removed, exchanged, or remediated or offered some kind of additional training to that if someone can answer that

wants to speak up and answer that one?

Harold, your de facto

parallel answer the question

why don't you repeat the question again, counsel? Sorry, I'm having tight, I couldn't find the buttons. Good. Can you do that again? Yeah. In the event that a,

you know, the evaluation process. So essentially, if an SRO is not a good fit, it's not having good interactions with students, how is that determined? How is that evaluated? And then what's done to,

to replace that that officer or offer some kind of training or assistance to to make it work? It's actually john. So the way that this process is gonna work is if we have an issue?

Well, it depends what it is. So let me back up a little bit.

If it is an issue that really

results in something that goes into our PSU department, or PSU sergeant, that is something that is more of an issue that needs to be investigated, it'll go in there, and then they run the process, as outlined in our in our personnel policies and procedures. If it's something that's not really in that world, but it's just a fit conversation, then that goes to john as the sergeant of the group. And so john, do you wanna jump in?

Yeah,

exactly. Right. I mean, there's there's certain incidences where it's automatically going to go through our our internal, professional standards unit. But for those that aren't, again, hopefully, you know, those, those conversations are happening early on. And again, like I talked about before, we're in constant communication with the school district.

You know, I'm in I'm in contact with, with the principals myself. And so, obviously, they see the SRO is much more on a daily basis than I do. And so I lean heavily on their evaluation as well. And so if if issues start to arise, we're having that communication well beforehand, so that I can address it with the SRO directly. And if for whatever reason, things aren't being fixed from that point on, and it's becoming,

it's getting to the point where the relationship is toxic, or it's just not working out, then then you know, I would have that conversation with my superiors and we have the ability to remove the SRO from from the unit at that time. It's not a promotion. It's an assignment. So it is a little bit different there. Got it. Okay. Thank you. And then a couple of other questions. I know you had talked about building trust, and really, how do we capture that in data? And so I'm offering to you, Don Sargent Garcia to work with you. I would like to be able to just have some conversations to around what that looks like. A couple of weekends ago, I attended a conference on racial and social justice with the National Education Association, and those were some of the topics of several sessions that I attended. And I know it's just a session, but I've been doing this work ongoing for the last three decades. So I you know, I would love to sit down and have conversations on how we can capture that piece

to really

So that, you know, the the pro if the program is successful, how do we capture that? How do we how do we show that? And the other one is looking at the training, the specialized training.

So how long has that criteria been been in effect? So I'm thinking, like around the area, the time of 2013, and two through 2016?

Did you have this extensive training for SRO officers before they were with children?

Yeah, we've had a, we've had a training matrix.

For for a long time, well, before I was in this position, I don't know the exact date. But I but I can assure you, the training matrix has been around for over 10 years.

So we are constantly updating that. And in fact, before, before our previous meeting, I was already in the process of updating that

as it was, and so we work, you know, we have, we're very fortunate right now with our core unit to have them in house. And so I meet with them regularly to see hey, what what kind of training, can we get our sorrows? Obviously, we're not going to be experts in this stuff. So a lot of times, we'll bring them in, and we have monthly meetings, and we'll bring them in for some just quick training for us arose. And so or we're getting advice, okay, you know, these are some issues that we're dealing with what kind of training Do we need to be able to move forward here? So those conversations are constantly happening, we're always updating and changing this as as time goes on. So.

Okay, thank you. And I just I wanted to tell you, I appreciate your due diligence in reaching out to the state, and making sure that data was captured. So I know that was, you know, they, they rejected it, because it was too late. But I do appreciate you making that extra effort. So thanks.

helzberg pack.

Bentley, I think that Harold had a comment that he wanted to make first. Harold, did you want to say something? Yeah, just real quick on the evolution of the training, I think john, really what he said is really important is because there's a we're constantly looking and so when we talk about things, you know, training that we're talking about where we want to go as an organization, so things like social equity, and, and those those pieces and bringing it out. john was actually one of them that on the call that I did in the introduction to this was on there, and we start those conversations. The piece that I wanted to talk about was what was interesting is when you all had these questions, and that we put the team together to go Okay, so what are we going to present? One of the things that was important, and this is really the heart of the evolution and how we continue to work. You know, john proactively was already working with Tara and Christina and others in terms of saying, What's the next step in what we're going to do and how we're going to improve this. And so that's what we want to see is that constant evolution, we're not perfect, we're not great. We're going to make mistakes. But we're going to constantly strive to try to continually to do better. And I just wanted you to know, a lot some of the stuff here is that has actually been initiated by john recently to go, how do we now take the next step? When I thought it was important to let you all know that?

Hillsborough chm. Helps Rebecca it's your turn. And you're muted. Not anymore, though. Thank you, Mary Bagley. I have a couple of questions. And Sergeant Garcia, I want to thank you as well for answering our residents question about that missing data. I think that was a very thoughtful of you. This was a great presentation. I learned a lot. But I do have a couple of questions. You may have mentioned that there were 33,000 students in the St. vrain. Valley School District. Some of those schools are outside of our city. Is our program. Do we put our sorrows into schools in Frederick and Firestone and mead etc?

Good question. No, we do not. But the other thing to kind of remember is that is when we have sporting events in in students from other schools and other communities are coming to our schools. Sometimes incidents arrive there. So we do have contact with others students outside our jurisdiction, but it would be on in our school property, but no, we do not know the St. vrain. Valley district does contract with those agencies to put us rows in but RS rows from the Longmont police department are not in those other schools. Okay, thank you. And the other question is, how many of the SRO

sorrows are bilingual.

And and if if there is not a bilingual SRO in a school in an incident with an ethnicity, they don't know the language. How do you handle that?

Right now we have two that that are bilingual. And again, the biggest thing is is working directly with our partners in the school district. So they have bilingual members in there, and we would bring them in for assistance. And the other piece of that is just like we would do, just like a patrol officer who's not bilingual would do on the street as we have tools as far as language line that we can use an interpreter to, to help with those situations. So okay, thank you.

All right, is we agree with that issue we've passed.

Dr. Haddad we've approved that that funding source, I believe it's it's a touchy subject has been addressed. contention avoided. And I think we're all very appreciative of the SRO program, Longmont police department, and the manner in which St. vrain Valley School District participates in partners with us. But Harold, why don't you go ahead and say something and screwed it all up. Go ahead. No, I'm gonna tell you just a quick just to clarify something. They're funding in paying us to do it. You all didn't approve the funding source just to make sure that it gets reported correctly. So

all right. Yeah. Harold just just declared, I know that the city of longline does pay 50% for a number of the sorrows as well. And so just it's a joint funding thing.

Cool. All right, let's go ahead and dismiss the way you can stick around Dr. Had ad as long as well as all the local police officers. Or you could do what I would do if I was not directing this meeting or part of counsel, I would go home. So

Harold, is there anything else on this topic? Or can we move on?

Alright, we're gonna we're gonna move on. So let's go ahead and take a five minute break. And let those people who want to get off, get off and we'll come back and continue with our discussion. All right. Thank you.

All right, we ready?

Okay, I think we're all back. Alright, so as we now we're going to go on to the advanced metering infrastructure and customer information system project update. So the key here is, as we listen to this at the end, city, city staff will need direction on two pieces. That's it. Question number one, do we want to allow people to opt out of ami? And number two, do we want them to?

Do we want to charge them the CDs costs in order to make that accommodation? Those are the issues before us. I know we've had a lot of information and on am eyes, but that is what we're to decide. And then staff will recommend what we should do. And then we can discuss whether or not we agree. So all right, let's have that presentation. Harold.

Mayor David Hornbacher is gonna do the presentation. Great. So I can't. Rick is going to do the presentation. He David's going to introduce it.

Alright, thank you, Harold. Mayor Begley, members of city council, I'm Dave Hornbacher. I'm the executive director of law, my power and communications and tonight, staff will provide an update on the AMI and the CIA s project. And so with me in the background, our other staff members, including Kate Medina, who is our Longman power communications, internal services director, Mike Villa pondo, who's our ami project manager. We have Ian Rollins, who is our utility billing manager, also Michael valenta, who's our senior cis technical functional analyst. And we'll have Rick Smith presenting tonight, Rick is our Director of project of project deployment. And Rick is actually a newer member to the city of Longmont staff, he joined us right at the end of the year, and you may recall him previously in an October meeting. At that time, he was a consultant for black and Veatch, you know, working exclusively in the areas of ami and cis, throughout the nation. So without further ado, I will have Rick Come on the line and they just through the presentation and the update.

All right, thank you, David.

Let's get started and go to the next slide.

The shaping we're gonna you know, quickly kind of walk through the scope of really both of the initiatives to cis and MDM and am I walk through where we're at, you know, at the moment with the schedule and where we're, where we're headed to and the quick update on the budget, and then as stated, the two technology issues related to to ami.

Next slide.

Just a little bit about our customer information system, you know, think of it as a billing system, but it goes you know, much more beyond that.

All the service reps, you know, managing the accounts is there their information system they use day in and day out and programs, you know, any type of order that that the city needs for a service order a change, a move all goes through that cis system. The current system is from a vendor, a vendor, a vendor named banner, it's aged, and there's a lot of opportunities for improvement.

One of the areas is of course, enabling you know, new services and new products that are growing in demand but also have an opportunities to introduce a new web portal.

For, for for customers, as well as at the same time make some really nice internal business process improvements.

Next slide

am I, we're going through really a

step process in the RFP delivery. And the first step is a release of the statement of qualifications. And that really involves the narrowing down process of getting the qualified vendors.

And so we're going to issue the SL q here over the next couple of weeks. And, and then have the qualified vendors been narrowed down in that process. And then from there, get out the RFP, to the to the qualified vendors. As we look at the deployment of an ami system, there has been a lot of lessons learned, you know, the city of Longmont is not an early adopter of of ami. It's been, it's been evolving for more than 20 years now. But we really see a stage one involving the first 500 meters and, and with ami, what we have learned, it's really the you walk before you run. And the stage one will will probably take a good solid year. And it's getting all your processes, right getting all your procedures in place, getting training safety. And then when you actually hit stage two, you very, very quickly jog for about a month, and then you're off running. And we'll talk about that more in a moment capabilities of ami carf that goes well beyond reading meters to all your meter administration opportunities. That is often done with with paper service orders and a lot of dispatching a crews and trucks much much opportunity for improvement. As well as the new products and services that can come with time of use. Billing and in you know, Evie, charging smart thermostats Smart Home Smart City. So a lot of a lot of nice opportunities will be around the corner. Next slide.

When we look at two really large investments, with similar times timeframe, it really needs a coordination of the schedules, especially as relates to areas that overlap, there's overlapping in resources in the IT area, there's overlapping resources and the customer service side side of the houses. So really need to have a more tactical deployment plan. And therefore we're coordinating them in unison, both of these activities at once. They do have different timelines or implementations and different areas where, where time is going to be needed for different groups. But we're going to we're going to manage those resources very, very carefully

across both of those

procurement exercises, as well as get into contracting and then we'll get into the implementation.

Next slide.

Our our schedule, as we stated, we're gonna get to get the statement of qualifications distributed very soon. Thereafter, we're looking at in the the April timeframe to getting the the RFPs out the CIS RFP, the AMI RFP,

most of the time, I know the vendors will have about six weeks to respond.

There's something like this, it takes a couple of months of analysis. And you can see we we have our schedule there you can see and in green, you know, up to three months review and then there's a contract negotiation stage. There's never, you know, two projects that are that are ever identical. You know, sometimes that that review process can take a couple of months, sometimes it can take four months, sometimes the contract process can take six weeks, sometimes it can take four months. So we we we really have some variables in front of us until we go through contracting.

And and then when we get into implementation, it really is going to start at the very really the end of this year. But really get get rolling into 2022 and then even into 2023 this this isn't built overnight. It's a it is a complex these systems are complex. And you're on the CI ci side you're converting your all your records, all your systems. There's a lot of training involved a lot a lot of testing involved for both systems.

It only can be done right? With the right level of effort and right due diligence. And it's, it's gonna be an effort over a couple of years.

Next slide.

The budgets have been set, the CIS budget is at 9.2 million. It was extended earlier this year, from eight to 9.2. And there are some funding is coming from some of the enterprise funds utilizing the CIS. Today, the AMI budget is larger at about 16 million, but really covers everything from the meters to project management to software to cloud services, and really everything that's needed to to implement the the AMI system. And some of the funding for that is coming from some rates set for 2020 and 2021.

Next slide.

We've had a course discussion about concerns of of RF and concerns of, by by the by the community,

the staff did some evaluations of what some of the neighbors are doing in the areas of opt out some of the other utilities around the region, some municipals, like Lublin to some of the neighboring electric cooperatives. And for the most part here and in this kind of part of Colorado as well as other parts of the country that I've worked worked in here in the last 15 or so years, we typically do see an opt out program,

we there's typically a small number of participants, you can see Mountain View electric Association project that I was involved with, they have 40 out of 60,000 meters or accounts that were opted out

Holy Cross at 250 out of 60,000. And Colorado Springs, even ahead a much smaller percent, at 62 out of roughly a quarter million,

we typically see a monthly fee for the opt out because there's an incremental incremental cost to distribute a truck to read the meter, or crews to read the meters. And there's typically a one time fee to set it up. And, and, and what what staff has put, you know, our heads together, and we really think it does make sense to have an opt out policy would like to recommend that the console and, and, and the opt out program, we haven't come up with the details or, or the right the right fees at this point. But we want to review what our options are with a with either a recurring fee or or an upfront or both. And

we would like to have some discussion on on this issue

is as well. And, and but what I like to do is is take that time right now and and have that discussion. And and then get back to the matter of

a few other issues we want to talk about related to technology.

All right, is there So first question, is there anyone that thinks we should not have an opt out policy? And I can I can I have the screen back please? I don't I can't. There we go.

Okay, you can hear me? Can you hear me?

Okay. So is there anyone here that believes that we should not allow people to opt out?

Okay, next question. Is there anyone here ask a question? Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Dr. Waters. I didn't see your hand. Go ahead. I need to start moving more, I guess, digit? I just I don't I'm not opposed to the opt out. I just am curious, in asking that question. Does that limit

our the options for wireless versus wired? Or are we tied into one specific vendor? Or does it limit the number of vendors we could work with as we make this decision?

I can answer that question.

from a technology standpoint, the opt out policy would not have a a factor really on the technology that's going to be actually ultimately selected. We're not going to narrow ourselves down or limit our options. In the end of the day, it's going to be the best balance of technology functionality and price references and several several factors. But it will not limit our our flexibility in one could develop an opt out strategy before even selecting the technology. So the yes to the opt out doesn't doesn't constrain subsequent decisions.

Correct. Thank you. Correct.

Councilmember Martin.

Thank you, Mayor Begley. Um,

well, I think we should have an opt out program. I do think that we need to have some discussion here and counsel, and

some careful design, about how the opt out program is message and presented to the public.

List less about the purported dangers of the meters themselves, which after extensive research, I cannot

find it in my heart to believe in, frankly.

But that people need to understand that they're making the decision to opt out, may in fact,

exclude them from subsequent programs that as we the city become more tuned in to

energy management, you know, greenhouse gas reduction, as we will over the probable 15 year lifetime of this system.

People need to understand that they may regret that decision at some time in the future. And we need to think about whether

people change their mind what that means. Do we are we going to swap in a smart meter for free? Are we going to swap in a smart meter? For

a good deal? You know, are we going to have a monthly charge for meter reading for people who do opt out, and I think we probably should even at least recover our recover our costs for doing that. But all of those are our design factors in the outreach outreach program that I want to make sure that we have a clear and

well considered

planned for before we roll it out before we start rolling out meters, because people are going to need a little bit of time to think about it.

Those are all very good points. Okay. All right. Councillor pack? Then Councilmember Christiansen um, my question is, thank you very badly. My question is, if someone opts out of this, can they opt in later? Or is it once you're out, you're out it most, most policies and programs allow the opt in. And sometimes the opt in price is lower than the opt out price. Because longer term, you are having efficiency. So that'll be part of the policy and the rate structure is how you would opt back in. And it actually is common to start out with a higher number of OPT outs. And then over time, over the first several months, it starts actually declining. Okay, in that case, I would I would agree to the opt out.

option. Do you want to do you want to make you want to make a motion, Joan? That's the closest thing to a motion we've had. Okay, I move that we direct staff to consider to

to allow people to opt out. There you go. Did we

opt out of the AMI? All right. Well, we'll second. Yeah, but I would like to amend it to say

to say direct staff to

produce a plan for an opt out

program

that we can review

at an appropriate time. No soon time. Is that okay with you, Joe?

Right. I just, I assumed they would do that anyway. Right. Yeah. The other thing is the only thing I'm thing is I don't I mean, me personally, we can do whatever we want. I don't want to spend a lot of time micromanaging staff on this meaning I have no idea what to do with an EMI. I have no idea about this. And so directing them to do Am I do it well and allow for an opt out. You know, I'd love an update. But I don't want to have I don't want to get in the weeds of technology so to speak, because unfortunately, I'm not as smart or as experienced in this area as you.

So there is a motion in a second motion, directing staff to prepare an opt out provision and that assumes that there

Going to plant it and then give it back to us so that we can understand what's going on. Moved by Councillor pack. It was seconded by Councillor Martin. We have a comment or a question from Councilmember Christiansen.

Yeah, I think Councilwoman Martin brought up a lot of good points and I so

not included in this, but included in our next decision, I guess, is the fact that these should be as cost effective as possible. And when you look at the grid of what other cities are doing, they're making it a 10 or $15 thing for the most part and for

opting out per month. And I would suggest rather than having a, an a fee to opt out a one time participation fee to opt out. I don't know what that what the point of that would be. But there should be a fee to opt back in instead of opting back out so that people do understand that there are consequences to not

opting in right now. They're going to have to pay

upfront. I mean, they're going to have to pay more later if they change their mind as Councilwoman Martin said, thanks. Okay, thank you. Alright, see now let's go ahead and take a vote. And then we're going to go on to the next issue, which is do we charge people to opt out? So all in favor of the motion of permitting people to opt out and directing staff to come up with a plan and report back to us on what that plan is? Briefly? All in favor, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, the Motion carries unanimously. Now the next issue is, are we going to charge people to opt out? Is there anyone who thinks that we should not charge them to opt out and then we're going to go on to the question of charging them to hop back in it sounds like Councilmember Christiansen. Councilman Martin,

I am not sure that it wouldn't be

fair not to charge them

for the opt out as in as a lump sum because they already have a meter, but rather charge them a monthly reading fee, which would be small.

So Harold, so doc waters.

I just want to clarify, is this what you want tonight, Rick? I thought I thought we just moved to give you direction to bring back a plan. And now we're talking about the elements of a plane, I would expect that we would see something when you've worked out what the costs are. So we can look at the ranges and the options as opposed to trying to pick numbers out of the air tonight. Why don't

Can you throw up the key throw up the slide again? I'm just going. That's a great question. Harold. I'll be right with you.

All right, I'm just going with the discussion trying to keep us on program to include service fees to provide physical meter reading service. So go back.

To get this know what I mean. It's kind of my screen back. Oh, to see the people because I know hands go up. But I can only see Dr. waters and Marsha and Polly. So I'm gonna call on counselor Christian in just a second. But we're gonna go with Harold and David Hornbacher. And then and then you Councilmember Christiansen, Harold, what do you need from us? So Mayor Council, I think what we need from you all is that you're open to us bringing back a plan that includes a cost if someone opts out. And that then lets us look at the numbers because what people were touching on is, so when you do the AMI piece, you don't have the readers, but then you will have a cost of actually physically going out and reading the meters and performing that activity. And so we just need Are you okay with us bringing a cost if you opt out, and if we get that direction, then we can build the plan.

Okay, so can we do you assume that motion will incorporate that then David and Harold, are you okay, then with this direction? Yes. Yes. I said it. Well. Perfect. Councilmember Christiansen? Is that what you wanted to say?

Yeah, kind of. Yeah, I just wanted to cover cost or monthly meter reading. And I think that would be good. And then to have an opt to pay if people are going to actually join it later. That's when they would pay that. You know, it's it's up to, obviously, city staff to figure that out. The best. The best choice for that.

Okay, great. All right. Thank you, Harold. David, there's nothing else on this issue. We're gonna go on to the next one.

All righty. Baby. Do you have any other slides? Are we good? There's some other information in your slides on a technology update.

I think that the two slides that we need we wanted realistic, but why don't you go ahead and share that information with us because I know that I know that there's at least one counselor

A member that would want to hear this. So let's go ahead and quickly quickly, very quickly go through the remaining slides, what we really wanted to do is do a quick update on the technology, you know, for the for the AMI vendors have something referred to as mesh where meters talk to meters that talked to collectors, and and then the data is gathered through through collectors. So, we don't you know, there we are expecting some bids with mesh technology. Next slide.

We We also are expecting a fiber optic, and one of the one of the vendors will have a fiber solution.

And we know that you know, presently about 60% of the of the of the homes are subscribing to the to the fiber service

40% the fiber is is in the neighborhood on the street, but not subscribing. In even for the vendor, that fiber optic we based, we're going to have some of the of that system served wirelessly, the ones that are not subscribing to fiber optics, as well as the areas in a in a service territory where fiber doesn't exist.

Next slide.

You can see in the blue, as we're getting outside of the city limits on the left side of the screen versus the gray in the middle, which is the city limits is where the fiber is. So if Tana was should be the winning bidder

homes that are not subscribing to fiber, or the areas to the left, and the blue, which is approximately 1000 premises would would be served even with wireless through the fiber optic vendor that has both fiber and wireless part of their solution. So there there isn't a practical or a solution that involves 100% fiber to every premise, just wanted to let everyone understand that.

As much as we all are really, really unlike fiber. We it's not it's not available everywhere.

Less Next slide.

Just in In summary, we are going to the way we have written the RFP and working on the finalization of that is really it's it's up to the vendors to understand the requirements, understand the needs, understand the terrain, and propose what they believe is the best overall solution. And that could be wireless, it could be a wireless hybrid.

could be it could be a variety of technology. So we've we're making this as open as we can. And in the end, the best combination, as we said of technology, price and performance references will be the drivers of who ultimately wins.

Last slide. That was it for the covering tonight's presentation. And there's a few other slides in the material that are more reference material for anyone to read at your leisure.

Thank you. All right. Thank you. Councilmember Christiansen and council Councilmember Martin.

Thank you, Mr. Schmidt. I'm really glad we went over that because I was thinking we were supposed to decide tonight

whether it was going to be wireless, or

or cable or mean fiber fiber. And that makes sense. It makes sense not only just physically though, that is the reality of

how far our network is right now. But also in terms of redundancy. You don't it's better not to have everything reliant upon just one thing.

So I have a lot of faith that you guys will figure it out and between you and the vendors, it'll all be figured out. And I am thank you for this presentation. It's it's very it was very helpful to me.

It first of all, Mr. Mayor, wrong, I've seen it

seen was

not necessarily eager to see the topology pictures. Oh, no, I didn't I I do No, no, no, that's what I meant was you wanted them to share that with the rest of us. Ah, well, that's that's certainly that is certainly close. That's what I was implying nothing. Okay. Okay. So

what I do, what I do think is, is we should acknowledge that around the periphery of Longmont and especially on the on the road to Lions, we're gonna you know that that topology

density, no matter who the vendor is, and whether there is fiber in the solution or not, they're still going to be some hybrid technology, it's, it would be almost impossible to do it with a pure mesh solution which a lot of denser cities or rounder cities can do.

So, you know, we're gonna have to deal with some complexity. I, I do like the idea based on the sentiments of a section of the public

that that we should look at the tantalus solution. They have come a long way since I worked with them. And in terms of feature parity with with some of the bigger vendors. So I think it's worth considering, and it might even be worth paying a small premium for. But you know, that decision is going to be up to the next few months of analysis, and I haven't had a sneak peek at the requirements. am I'm confident that that job will be done. Well.

Thanks.

Next question.

I'm sorry, I was muted, but I called my doctor waters. Thank you, Mayor bag.

Three people, we've been doing this for how many months read the lips.

So I have two questions. And one of them may not be answerable the other certainly as we've had, as we've received a fair amount of input from members of the public. We heard again, tonight, the concern about liability liability and insurability.

Rick, or David or Jim golden, or Eugene or any of the team are held?

Why are you not concerned about this? And why shouldn't we be concerned about liability and interoperability? That's the first question. The second question is we've heard a lot in Councilmember Martin's observation about a fiber solution, I think mitigates the concerns we've heard about radio frequency. But But that said, Rick, why would you or or David, why would you not be concerned about

a wireless smart meter installed outside your home? Which is where these would be installed? As I understand it? Why would you not be concerned about health risks? That's the second question. And if anybody has an answer to both of those, or to the first one, and you guys could respond to the second.

First one about insurability and liability. So I'll start on those questions. So back to your your first question on liability. insurability. I think, Dr. Waters, that might be a better question to get back to you specifically, because that's something I believe, would also come out of our attorney's office, where we have a, you know, really solid answer otherwise, you know, the simple answer is typically the governmental immunity afforded of you know, a municipality. But I'd rather get you a more detailed legal answer to the just just because it's come up a couple of times, David, and it would be Yeah, you know, I'd like to have a response, or at least know what our official response is city. Sure. So David, let me let me jump in, I think part of it is we have to go through the RFP process and make the selection and work with our risk management department, and then really go into that process with our insurance carrier, to really determine if it's an issue,

the thing that we need to look into is what other municipalities are facing, and seeing where they sit on this.

And we just don't have that off the tip of our tongue, but we can definitely get those answers. I thought that might be the case. I'm not sure I want to try, though, Rick, Rick may have it. It just got it's been raised a couple of times. And I just think we ought to address it at some point and in, you know, be working with the same information. Yeah. And we have to address it. I mean, there's just no, no doubt about it. And we have our homework to do and do it. Right. And it's just one of the issues. We need to get our arms around.

And then the second question, yeah, why aren't you guys concerned about about the health risks? You know, I think in everything we do, we're trying to assess risk, and we're trying to effectively manage that. And so, as we had previous presentations, especially at that October meeting, what we brought forward was information and trying to ensure that science is informing us. And so that's why we had the speaker that we had, that's why we had the information in the packet which also included some of that information, this last one, which basically has

Those references

to, to their RF signal. And in particular, that the smart meter is a very, very, very low RF signal. In fact, that's equated to really what you and I give off as, as live human beings is that sort of where it's at. And so I don't think you can ever say never ever. But I think when you look at that body of information that's out there from, you know, renowned and well known science bodies, that that, that leads you to believe that this industry is working within the FCC guidelines, and requirements, and all the meters meet that as well as the underwriter laboratory requirements. So that's back to meter safety. And so with that, that is head one of the points. Sorry, it just it just went away for a second.

So I think those are some of the the main responses, you know, there's certainly a significant amount of meters that are deployed, I believe, Rick, I was going to say that there was well over 60 million, are you aware about how many there are deployed? Well, it's, it's, I think it's, it's approaching 65 60% of the households in the country. So it's, it's over half, it's well over half. And it's been in, in evolution for almost 20 years. Different vintages of RF. So, but I think your points are right on spot, David is our RF is not all the same. And you have different strengths of signals. I completely respect the different opinions of a lot of the individuals that have called in and

But personally, when I've done my whole own homework and research, I felt I feel very comfortable, very, very, very comfortable. When you actually look at the the math aspects of the signal strength. So I'm comfortable. And at the same time, people have different opinions. And that's the right of everyone has an opinion. And but when I do my own math, my own homework, I feel extremely comfortable with my family and my children and their children, and so on. So

thanks.

Councillor Martin?

Um, question for Harold on the insurance issue.

I am guessing that

the

very infrastructure that the city maintains and is responsible for, there are some portions of that, that the city finds it effective to purchase an insurance policy to cover extraordinary damage, as opposed to, you know, normal wear and tear, which is pretty much what the city staff exists to keep to maintain.

And there may be some areas of the city infrastructure that it's that where the city is actually self insured, and money is maintained in a in a fund.

The rest of the electric bution infrastructure, which category does that fall into? Or is it distributed across multiple categories of Insurability? Jim, do you want to jump in on this one?

So

Councilmember Martin does the tail end of your question I didn't catch the last part.

Oh, I was what I was wondering, do we self insure on some things and purchase policies on other things? And if that is the case,

where does the does the rest of the electric distribution network fall into? You know, do we self insure on that? Do we have an insurance policy on it? Is it difficult to get an insurance policy on it? So we insure So basically, we have deductibles very large deductibles. So in a sense, we self insure everything underneath a certain limit. And then we will have all of our property values are are submitted every year in property policy that we secure. So that includes our infrastructure and our utilities as well.

Thank you. That's, that's a very satisfactory answer. Um, and

Oh, I forgot my question. Go ahead. All right, Counselor Christiansen.

May I speak Mayor Bagley, this Councilmember Christiansen Yes, you may was I am you? I'm, the one kind of little nagging question I had is about finances, because it's been brought up a number of times that these are that ami is are out of date, even before we set them up, which I think is probably not true, are we doing this? But I am concerned about their lifespan, because I'm in the process of trying to get some kind of new heating system myself and I, you know, I, it's, we don't want to have to replace this again in 10 years. But as you say, Mr. Smith, the these have been operating more or less for 20 years. So I'm sure that there are many different

generations of these out there. And in general, how long do they last went? How long do you think it would be? After we get them?

moderately, you know, a moderate bunch of them deployed? How long do you think it will be before we have to start replacing them again? I would say about 80% of utilities have in their financial books have depreciated ami over 15 years. And and they pay typically, because there are mechanical parts, you do have you do have some degradation that that will increase with age vary. I mean, we're we're talking starting at 0.3% to 0.4%, a year 14 or 15. So some ami systems, you have kept them in the field for 20 years. So you start migrating to the next generation at year 13 1415. So it's in you're absolutely right. There's been there's almost 10 generations of vintages of technology that has continuously improved, and the vendors make it backward to turn backward and forward compatible. So the new equipment can communicate with the old equipment and vice versa. But I think a realistic expectation in a depreciation schedule is around 15 years. That's that's what majority of utilities are doing. Well, that seems that seems like a good investment to me. Thanks.

Okay. Counselor, Martin, you remember that question? Did you ask him?

Whether you really care or not? Because the other question was, Why do you or do you not believe in the potential harm or expect there to be great harm from

having an ami network in place?

One, one

question is, or one answer is that if you if you drop an Eight Mile network, into the RF ambient that we already live in, right, with Wi Fi in our homes and cell phones in our pockets, and,

you know, all sorts of other emitting devices

from

you know, our televisions and our computers to the to the wires in our walls, we're already in RF radiation and is one of my friends from NASA put it, were made of it.

And, and so, you know, the Delta from introducing, and an ami network is a

reasonably small percent of the ambient that we already have in our life. I'm

and I'm not sure that we live in a society that could function without it honestly. The other reason, the other reason is, having read all the stuff that Miss Kelly and other people

are sending to us is that there is a gap. You know, there are medical up medical observations that say something in our environment is making certain people sick.

But if you go down the level of, of

causality, there's a gap.

Because you can't get from medical observations to a physical transfer at the molecular level that could be causing this, you know, it just it just does not seem to be there. And we're really good at that. If you've been reading the stuff about how

We built the current round of vaccines.

You know, you can explain how that works right down to the molecular level. And if you can't do that if medicine can't go down, go up

gross biology and down to physics and chemistry.

A, it's hard to believe in. For me, it's hard to believe in.

Alright, great, thank you. Okay, let's move on.

To the 2021 legislative bills recommended for city council position.

Hello, Mayor Bagley, members of council Sandy cedar assistant city manager and its legislative time, I have three bills for your consideration today, the legislature dropped 267 in the first day. So they were definitely raring to go once they jumped back into the session. So the first three that I have for you today

are really kind of just the tip of the iceberg. Like I said, that first group of bills, we'll be seeing them come in as we continue to go. So let me go ahead and go through these three. First bill is House Bill 1075. Concerning replacing the term illegal alien, with worker without authorization as it relates to public contracts for service. So you may remember my talking about the special session of 2006, where this bill and several others were put into place. This is similar to what we have done in our public contracts by calling people you know, by using the term undocumented immigrant. And so this changes it on the state side, obviously, we support that we would be happier if it just came out entirely. But this is certainly better than the way that it's listed before. So we are recommending that council support House Bill 1075.

House Bill 1114 concerns the provision of internet services by school districts to enable individuals associated with the district to access the school district network. So obviously, our local government has partnered with St. vrain Valley School Districts on this huge grant that we've gotten to be able to increase internet availability to students. This legislation continues to support that sort of effort. And so staff recommends that council supports House Bill 1114

plus one House Bill 1117, concerning the ability of local governments to promote the development of new affordable housing units pursuant to their existing authority to really land use within their territorial boundaries. So this is really the one that you have talked about with respect to inclusionary housing and the reversal of the telluride decision around rental properties. And so you've expressed in those conversations that you would like to see something like this repealed, this bill would do that. And so count and plus as part of your council work plan, and so staff recommends that council support 1117. I should mention that this is a study session. So if you want to also suspend your rules of procedure so that you can take a position on these bills, that would be much appreciated, and then we will take over the lobbying from there.

All right. We have a motion to suspend the rules of procedure.

Hold on. Oh, Councilmember Donald bearings not said anything tonight. The chair will recognize it. Councilmember Duggal fairing, Councilmember daga fairing. Would you like to make a motion? I'd like to move we suspend the rules in order to adopt these.

Sorry, man. I get it. The chair understands. Then, Councilmember Martin Did you second that? All right, Councilmember Lago fairing is made a motion. It's been seconded by Councilman Martin in the motion is to spend the city council Rules of Procedure allowing us to vote on a non regular session.

Evening. On favor say aye. Aye. Opposed say nay.

All right, Motion carries unanimously. Do we have a motion to

direct staff to proceed with the recommendations on the state legislative bills and the recommendations? Councilmember Christiansen

I would move that we support the that our council supports these three bills recommended by assistant city manager Sandy cedar and staff.

We have a second. I will second that. All right. Anybody want to object to anything? All right. All in favor say aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed say nay. All right, Motion carries unanimously. All right. Well done Councillor Christiansen.

I would like to point out that this is these are raw and unamended bills. I printed out all 45 pages of them.

I would like to

draw your attention to

Senator lundeen, who is trying to pass Senate Bill 2107 improve public confidence in election validity, which would eliminate

voting by ballot or mean voting by mail. All votes would have to be counted by the end of Election Day, which

So anyway, just to be aware that this is something that somebody is

trying to pass, I don't think it would go anywhere, but we hope not. Anyway.

All right. Thank you. All right, then let's go on to the mayor and council comments, who would like to make some comments, Councillor Martin, you don't want to make comments, you want to? I want to unsuspend the rules so that we can the actual council meeting first, I think I mean, we didn't know before, I think we just suspended the rules to take the vote. I don't think we need to redo the rules. Okay. So I think we're we suspended the rules for that moment. And we won't get out of line, I promise. Okay. Well, in that case, I do want to make comment. Go ahead. All right.

I just want to say that I was

quite impressed by the presentation on school resource officers. I heard a lot of passion and creativity in the remarks of not only Sergeant Garcia, but also the several other sorrows that we spoke about. And

you know, apart from a misplaced decimal point, I didn't see any problems with the presentation, nor did I see any.

Well, let's just say there's less evidence of systematic discrimination than there is in most of the data that we gather, you know, we're doing better with this than we are with, with vaccinations and

access to wireless and, and, you know, by the time we correct all those other inequities, I would suspect that any inequity in this program would have gone away by itself. So, I just want to say, you know, great job, and I hope that the public is informed by this, and to the extent that our officers feel that their effort in putting it together was justified, because it certainly was justified to me.

Okay, great. Thank you. Anyone else?

Okay, Harold, do you have anything to say?

Yeah, I've got a few things to say, actually. Remember, you moved up? Yeah. Why are you upset? You sound like you're gonna give us attitude. You're really what the hell you have to say, I've got the COVID issue. And I don't have a lot on that. So the first thing I want to actually talk about is, so you all directed staff to bring a letter regarding the compost facility. But the county commissioners have scheduled a meeting on Thursday, to consider the staff recommendation to to retract that location and look at other options. And so what we were wanting to do is to see if council wanted us to delay bringing that letter next Tuesday pending what we see and learn from the county the meeting that the county commissioners are going to have on Thursday.

Councilmember Christiansen

I believe that

please correct me as mayor Pro Tem if I'm wrong. I believe when Mayor Pro Tem brought this forth, it was didn't specifically advocate for that location, it just advocated for a composting facility that we really do need in Boulder County. So I don't know that we need to do that. But I do intend to try to attend that meeting on Thursday and see what's going on.

Anyway, I would vote not to delay it because I don't really want them to delay the composting facility.

Maybe they can find a different place for it. But I happen to think that that's actually a good location. Anyway. So So uh, just just to follow up just this is by way of information only. So Dr. Waters, and I did coffee with counsel and chime in Dr. Waters. The only topic that was mentioned was an hour of people who live around this location saying don't do it, don't do it. And there it was pointed out that this is a decision by the county, right, we would be a contracted client or a customer, but we don't get to decide where this thing goes.

And so they were under the impression that Boulder County Commissioners wouldn't listen. Now, whether that's true or not, I don't know. So they came to us. So just heads up. If we start meddling in county business, you're going to have people here screaming at us to do something when we have no authority or ability to do it. So just heads up, as you're engaging in these meetings, just know what the consequences might be. If this becomes a council issue, when

it's not our business, if that makes sense. So right now, it's in its infancy, city staff doesn't have a lot of information, but a county doesn't have a lot of information. And so my opinion is we don't vote or talk about it, just let city staff work with the county. And whatever the county decides, let them deal with the headache, because we have enough problems. To we don't need to go borrow in the counties. At least that's my opinion, Dr. Waters. You know, the only thing I might add to that is, we did hear a lot, not just about the frustrations of residents, but their frustration, their perception that members of the county commissioners weren't listening to them.

And what we should have commented on on Saturday, we should have thought of I should have thought of is that once the lawsuit was filed, they were they had been filed, they had been subjected to multiple lawsuits, they were in a position where they couldn't interact, not unlike when we're, you know, in a role to sit as a quazy judicial board. And we're told, do not talk with people about this issue. That's exactly where the city or the county commissioners had been. And I, depending on what they decide on Thursday, and I if you know, we're all we're all interested in, in that meeting, if they do what the staff is recommending that they withdraw the proposal. It frees them up to interact in ways that they've been constrained. Because I know how much they would like to be interacting. And so

for those who who might be watching this, and they're probably not this being who called in on Saturday or anybody else was listening. Your county commissioners would like to engage. I know that because I've heard from county commissioners following that meeting, and it would be more at at liberty to engage. Once that proposal is off the table and there's not they're not subject to defending a lawsuit or defendants in a lawsuit.

That's my comment. Mayor Bagley. All right, great. Let's go with Councilmember crit is I think Councilmember krischer Let's go with customer Martin and Councillor Christiansen because I think Marshall went and yeah, that's fine. Because we're Martin in the customer. Christiansen. Yeah. And if you could please stop talking. I'm really getting upset with you tonight. With the amount of chatter that's coming out of you.

Um, that was a joke. It was a joke. If the if the county commissioners leave a matter unsettled?

Well, if they if they withdraw their proposal.

In fact,

it's hard to there there are at least as many circumstances in which we should keep our mouth shut, as whether we you know, we should

make a resolution of direction aimed at the the the county commissioners,

I would really prefer not to vote on any resolution, because it's almost guaranteed if it's drafted before that commissioners meeting to to be a miss or, or or to be a red herring. I would just much rather wait until some of the the many questions are answered.

Especially about neonicotinoids. And, and about land use policy. And some of those questions are pretty heavy and I don't want to support or oppose a composting facility unless I know some of the attributes of that facility.

Okay. Mayor Pro Tem.

Thank you very badly as the person who made that motion about the the letter. I think that the impetus behind it was more about fall following up on the the waste diversion presentation we got a few weeks ago in the fact that we're paying a lot of money to haul compost out to Keansburg. And so it would be fiscally in the best interest of the city to support a composting facility in close proximity or in closer proximity. And like I said the point was not to weigh in on the

controversy surrounding the project.

sight, rather, is just a way to say that the city of lahrman would like a composting facility in the region. And it makes fiscal sense for us, or better fiscal sense for us to support that, versus continuing to haul compost 50 miles each way. And that was the point of the letter not so much to get embroiled in a controversy that is not ours. So

Councilmember Christiansen

Yes, exactly what

Mayor Pro Tem Rodriguez said,

and, but perhaps, you know, Thursday is two days away, or whatever, and then there's no need to There's no rush on this. Because any composting facility is going to take some time. So until they have sorted themselves out a little bit more, perhaps, we can wait before we weigh in on the composting matter, since a lot of it will be confused in the minds of a lot of people. However, I do think we really do need to be supportive of the composting facility we have, unlike many, most of the other places in the county, we do our own composting, or pick up our own composting as well as our own trash. And so we really do need to be working together as a county to solve some of these problems which are rapidly coming to

the a lot worse because

we're filling up our landfills. We're hauling our compost 50 miles or 100 miles roundtrip. Anyway, so

I appreciate Nampo Tim's clarification.

All right, great. Seeing no other comments, Harold, anytime you.

So I'm not sure what you all want to do? Well, this was there was no direction or no motions, we can't make motions at this point. So there's no direction being given at this point. None. We cannot give direction.

that violates council Rules of Procedure. And as we talked about, they're back in play. They were suspended for a moment. That's it. So we're just talking making comments. That's it. Okay, so to be clear, I have then a direction to put this on the next meeting. And so this will go on because Hold on, hold on. Timeout. Yeah, it wasn't the direction. There's no direction is the mayor, I'm pulling it. No, we're not talking about this conversation. Having heard is what's going to happen is we're going to get thrown into a mess. No one is saying to put it on the agenda. None of us know.

What I'm saying is that came last week. And there was a motion in a direction to staff last week to do this. Right. Right. why don't why we asked the question this week, based on where they're doing to say, do you all want us to put it on there as the previous motion? Or do you want us to wait until they have the conversation? There was a pre there. So you there a bit? There's no we cannot take a motion to put anything on the agenda now. To Mayor Pro Tem made a motion? That's direction. That's what you got right now. Okay. Okay. Nothing else. Okay, dark waters. So just so I'm clear, that is going to come back for a vote of the Council on an agenda, correct to vote it up or down?

To vote What up or down? A letter to the county commissioners? Correct. But that's it. Mayor Pro Tem.

I don't believe that I made a specific date certain in the motions. So that doesn't necessarily mean that it has to be included in next week's agenda based on the motion that I made.

You You heard the trouble that was coming. So yeah, I was on the call. That's why I wanted to throw it on next week. Let's just let's just block our our email.

That's what I wanted ask a question based on the conversations. The other thing on the COVID issue is

basically I'm just gonna tell you all the numbers are getting better.

The the piece in the conversation.

Part of the reason why I was coming in late on to the executive session is we have a vaccine meeting that we're going over in terms of really looking at the deployment of vaccine is more becomes available.

So generally, we're in level blue. We're at 93.5 per 100,000, which is down from 110. The previous week.

In terms of our percentage were 2.9%. Or were 2.4%, which is down from 2.9%.

And we're now at 10 days of decreasing or stable admissions on the hospital side. I will say that there's some conversations on that

Simply because the numbers are so low now that if we shift by four, for example, if we shift by four hospitalizations, it can push us the other direction. So the the

public health departments are having that conversation with the state right now.

Because the time I just want to see or is there anything in particular tonight that you all have questions about related to COVID? That you all want me to answer? Or are you okay, doing more the full presentation at the next council meeting?

We're okay with the full presentation. Okay. And then if Mayor we do based on some questions that council had last week, I do have Dale here that wanted to provide some clarification information regarding the water rates that we just need to we need to to, to clarify tonight, prior to next week, so Okay, Dale,

Mayor Bagley, members of council. Erica, if you could pull up that I've got a couple slides, I promise this will only take about five minutes.

Last week, when you were having your discussion about the first reading of the bond issuance, we had a resident call in with regards to some of the previous decisions and comments being made both by staff and city council on a number of topics. And the mistake I made, which I want to own and own up to is in my rush to answer your questions. I relied on my memory from six and a half to seven years ago. And I guess I need to learn the memory is not as good as it maybe used to be. So I wanted to take just a couple of minutes to go over some of the issues with regards to the water rates that have led us to the

issuance of the bonds that you will be considering next week on second reading.

So the just real quickly that, you know, everything that we are doing and have been doing is all tied back to the master plan that we completed back in 2013 was that document that identified over $200 million of necessary improvements to the to the water utility to maintain its integrity. In 2014. We did a rate study, that rate study recommended increases from 2015 through 2019 of about 9% per year.

In December of 2014, which is when you made the council at the time made the decision to adopt those rates. I did make the statement that it was anticipated in 2014, that by 2018, we would likely be issuing debt for the Nelson Flanders treatment plant to the tune of about $30.8 million.

So that that was a statement that the resident said that I made. And I did make it I went back and looked at the tape from December 9 of 2014. And that was that was actually said.

So what happened between then and now? Well, in 2016, there were a number of changes to the windy gap project. Everything from the participation level. In 2014, when we did the rate study, the staff recommendation was 6000 acre feet.

In 2016, there were changes made by by council

with new recommendations from the water board to increase that up to 10,000 acre feet.

That all ended with a election an actual bond election in 2017.

That was identified it's necessary to pay for those additional

4000 acre feet of capacity. That bond election happened in 2017. It was for about $35 million,

and the voters did approve it.

So now in 2018, we also completed the water demand study. That was a study that that was necessary in order for us to evaluate any changes in water demand going forward, in particular as a result of changes coming out of envision long line so that that water demand evaluation helps to inform what we would need that also informed us that we had additional time to launch the Nelson Flanders project. In other words, the city's demands were not growing so quickly that we needed to be building that project on the timeline that we thought we did back in 20.

14.

So in 2019, another eight study was done again looking forward. And and those are on the chart in front of you, that's 9%, last year 9% this year, and then it drops down to seven, six, and four, going forward out to 24. And then lastly, in 2020, we identified an $80 million bond election, for the improvements to the water system, with the primary or the largest projects being the Nelson Flanders treatment plant, as well as the price Park storage facilities as well as some transmission lines. Next slide.

And so all of that said, this table sort of gives a sense of what the world looked like to us in 2014, what it looks like to us in 2021. And so starting with windy gap, back in 2014, your ci P and the staff recommendation was 6000 acre feet. As I mentioned earlier, it went up to as high as 10,000. And then it went to 8000 acre feet for about a year or so. And then most recently, last year, we lowered down to about 7500 acre feet,

the cost of windy gap per acre foot has increased significantly from 2014 of about 30 $100 an acre foot to about 70 $500 an acre foot, changing the cost of windy gap from about 18 point 8 million up to 56. Point 3 million. And counselor 56 point 3 million is the number that we addressed and talked with you back in October of last year of 2020. So that number hasn't changed the price part tank project. Again back in 2014, we were relying on the conceptual level of information from a master plan. Now that we are into the the design effort, and far greater understanding of that project, it has increased significantly in cost. And then lastly, on Nelson Flanders, again, the start date for the project has been pushed out a couple of years. Again, mainly because the city's demands have allowed us to have that additional time.

Nonetheless, that project has also increased in cost. And so you know, the moral of the story is we're doing everything we can when we have the council codified rates to live within those rates. Our financing plan has always anticipated that we would need to issue debt in order to accomplish the

the improvements needed for the water utility. And then finally, again back in 2014, we thought the the cash balance in the funds would be about 13.7. We're now sitting at about 78 million. So why is that? That's a huge number, right? Well, we haven't done windy gap. We haven't we haven't paid the windy gap bill. We haven't done the Nelson Flanders treatment plan. So again, I want to set the community and the council to be assured those dollars are being retained in the water utility fund. And that we are continuing to make decisions. And again, I want to apologize. I need to refrain from relying on my memory and instead rely on our staff to to give us the better information. So with that, that's what I wanted to share with Council.

All right, great. Thanks, Dale. Okay, all right, Harold. Anything else?

All right, Eugene.

No comments, Mayor. All right, perfect. We have motion to adjourn.

So moved.

Okay. All right. Motion to adjourn by Councillor water seconded by Councillor Christiansen. All in favor say aye. Hi. Opposed. All right. The eyes have unanimously and as always, we'll see you next week. And we have a meeting next week. Do we know you're right. We don't we do not? Why don't we? Why don't we have one next week? It was NLC and you cancelled it

the other way? And then I'll see is virtual right? Yes. Yes. That you still have no see. It's just virtual Just checking. Nope, no counsel. No. See in two weeks then or then and I'll see whatever you guys want. So all right. Cool. See you. We'll see you later. How's that? All right later, guys.