regular main night's regular council meeting to order at six o'clock Mayor Mark Sukup. Here. Mayor Pro Tem Britt Hansen Here. Councilmember Lisa lake here. Councilmember Robert ox mocker. Present. Councilmember Luke Wagner
here.
Aaron any amendments to the agenda? Melissa public comments.
Yes, we have. And Levitan yes
excuse me, I brought copies but I didn't know how many people were gonna be here so you might have to share some of my comments
okay, good evening. I'll try not to take up too much of your time on an issue that is probably not at the top of your list of concerns. My name is Anne Levitan, I'm 74 years young. I reside at 701 Snow a plane Road in Fort Collins. I officially moved to Colorado from Minnesota in August of 2018. But luckily I purchased my home in September 2014. Anticipate I'm here today before you regarding the town of 10 minutes. Municipal Code Section seven dash nine dash 300. Animals at large prohibited are the record. I've recently received two summons for walking my dogs off leash in March in Wenzel Park area. The first one was in March on March 4, and the second one is was on March 24. In both cases, I was walking my three Australian shepherds, Skeeter age six, weighed almost 66 pounds, Trey age three weighed 73 pounds and Molly age 152 and a half pounds the combined weight is 191 pounds. I weigh 186 They when a photo of my dogs is attached for the record, I am not physically able to walk or control all three dogs on leashes I walk with a cane because my balance is also poor and I don't want to fall and I had two falls back in December of 22 trying to hold on to them give you a little history here I learned about the harmony reservoir back in 2020 from a friend up until then I had been unsuccessful in finding any place where I could let my dogs run free word of mouth back then was that the town of 10 myth was not enforcing its animal at large code because several of the city employee
and and your your comments are limited to three minutes I just want to make sure that you got through it all you still got plenty of time okay. Yeah, no, you still got plenty of time you got 45 seconds but and look Do I don't think you'd get through.
Anyway, I was told back then it wasn't enforced because many of the city employees brought their dogs here to swim and play. So basically, during the winter months, I walk on the concrete trail that goes around the reservoir. During the rest of the year, I enjoy walking on the flip trail with my dogs where I can throw sticks in the water and they confection and swim. And Aussies need a lot exercise. I'm moving forward. I have a lot of medical conditions basically, that make it almost near impossible for me to hold on.
Okay. You're at your time's up. I'll give you another 10 seconds to well, the
tweaks are outlined there, I won't go over them that are quite extensive. So basically, what I'm asking the Council or the staff to consider adding some sort of reasonable accommodation for dog walkers like me with disabilities as an exemption to the tin myth code regarding animals at large. I know I'm probably not the only one that has has limitations like that. And I would certainly, as a past city planner, be willing to work with any staff regarding how that exception might work. I visualize a permit that would be issued following documentation. Thank you for your consideration.
Thank you. All righty.
Anybody else?
Bill Jenkins. Good evening, Bill Jenkins, 5507 Sugarloaf court. I'm directing my comments to resolution 37 series 2023. I strongly support this resolution. And I'd like to congratulate the town staff, and consultants for putting together a really solid economic incentive policy targeting small businesses. It's noteworthy that the emphasis of this policy has the flexibility to support local small business growth and as targeting small businesses that serve the local community. It's also noteworthy that the resolution calls for the possibility that quote preferences may be given to small business owners, who also live in the town of Timnath. Another important consideration that strongly aligns with the town's adopted 2020 comprehensive plan is that this incentive plan targets all towns specifically, as well as the harmony corridor. This aligns well with the expressed desires of the town citizens. The resolution also clearly defines various criteria that will be used to evaluate applications and provides for a transparent process that allows for the protection of competitive privilege information. The incentives themselves are clearly designed to benefit small businesses while providing appropriate protections for the town. The only thing missing from this plan is a clear definition of what constitutes a small business. Hopefully, that can be addressed as part of the implementation plan once this resolution is adopted, thank you for your efforts on this important measure. Thanks.
Thank you, Melissa.
That is all okay.
Consent Agenda. Does anybody have any comments or questions on the Consent Agenda? Could I have a motion to approve the consent agenda?
I move to approve the consent agenda as presented.
Do I have a second? Second? All those in favor say aye. Hi. opposed. Motion carries unanimously. Reports. Council, anybody have a report? Go ahead, Robert.
Mayor. Thank you. We had the council chat last week and that was well attended, including by several in the room here. So appreciate that. And those are quarterly. Not sure who's who's up next for the next one. But encourage folks to attend those. We got a lot of great questions and appreciate that. And then this weekend we have town cleanup. It's at eight to noon I believe. So always always well attended get there early the dumpsters do fill up. Thank you.
You guys have anything.
I'll just go and reach out. Thankfully the police department and town staff for their involvement in the Bike to School activity that was at Bethke Elementary. I wrote that enrolling that myself with my son and it was a well attended and very exciting event. Kids had a fantastic time and you can ride a bike. I can put some training wheels on it, I can I can really move. And then as well as with the Beth key anniversary that they had, I know that some town staff helped out a little bit with that. So really appreciate the the town's involvement with the community.
Thanks for attending it also, Brett. Anybody there? Okay. Proclamation, Lisa.
Okay, so Maine, Maine, May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and every town within Larimer County is part of the behavioral health policy committee that's run through the county. And so one of the things that they do is really try to encourage different communities to acknowledge Mental Health Awareness things and such as that. So I will just read through this, whereas mental health awareness month has been observed since 1949, to raise awareness of mental health conditions, and the importance of mental health. And whereas nearly 58 million American adults, more than one in five live with a mental illness and whereas nearly one in three youth with major depression do not receive any mental health treatment, even in states with the greatest access, and whereas Colorado ranks 37 out of 51 states with a higher prevalence of mental health issues and lower rates of access to care for adults and youth. And whereas in 2021 42% of high school students experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness, with 18% of students making a suicide plan and 10% attempting suicide. And whereas cost effective and beneficial Mental Health Systems of Care must be expanded to meet the varying levels of care needed by the people being served. And whereas reduction of stigma, broad outreach and effective prevention efforts of mental health conditions and substance use disorders help improve lives, and whereas access to necessary medication, appropriate treatment and responsive peer support helps prevent individuals from ending up in emergency rooms and jails. And whereas people with lived experience of mental illness and or substance use disorders get better live in recovery and provide invaluable knowledge of how to improve and transform systems of care and offer support to others struggling with mental illness and substance use. Therefore, the town of Timnath town council proclaims may 2023 as Mental Health Awareness Month In witness whereof I hear here I have here on to set my hand in the seal of the town of Timnath this ninth day of May 2023.
Thank you, Lisa.
Resolution number 37 series 2023. A resolution approving an economic development incentive policy, small business, Matt Blakely.
Thank you, Mayor. The town staff has been working on this for several months now. And we've actually spent in collaboration with the town manager and town attorney and other staff members, as well as we actually brought in an expert, Mike Shaw with EHRs associates who's actually in past he may give a little bit of this but in his past life, he was economic development director for the city of Loveland. And he has been doing these this kind of contract basis now through EHRs. But this is kind of his expertise, the the area of putting together incentive plans and administering them. So he's given us a lot of good guidance. Here. There's a memo in the in the staff report that goes along with that, and they've got a PowerPoint presentation that I'll have him it's just two slides pretty quick kind of thing. I have him present that. Do you want to say though, that this we focused on the small business type of incentives? There are methodologies and how to apply for that those incentives and what those incentives can be used for. And I'll let Mike do the heavy lifting here. And then we'll as staff are available to answer questions that you guys may have. So turn it over to Mike.
So can you introduce yourself and give us your address? Sorry.
So my name is factual and with the IRS associates, we're something firm based out of Fort Collins were 3665, JFK. And as Matt mentioned, I'm actually a resident of Loveland, and worked for the city of Loveland for over a decade. And all of the is Matt kind of referred to any of the incentives and incentive types that are referred to in the policy I've kind of managed, reviewed, approved in service over my, my tenure with the city of Loveland here in Northern Colorado, so I have some direct experience kind of working on them. So I, one of the kind of when I was asked to kind of help, assist and provide some kind of perspective and guidance and kind of putting this together, the idea was to be able to put a very clear and transparent process together for how you accept, review and approve and manage incentive requests for the town. And so with a focus on small business, and small and emerging growing businesses and the town, which I think is a good thing, you know, obviously they're big drivers for economic development. And I think to the extent you can support small business, I think it's a really strong, it's a good thing in a community. And I think part of part of, you know, working with the town staff was kind of trying to provide it kind of defined kind of what are those goals and outcomes that you're looking for with that incentive, both from kind of a policy revenue bases, but also from a geography where you're looking for that investment to occur? You know, I think the downtown core area, some of the harmony road was brought up as a priority and I think identified through other planning efforts in the town as well. And I and then I think the other part of is what, how do you apply the incentive? What is it for? And how do you manage it. And so I think the, the direction that I received was 35,000, which is a fairly modest economic incentive, that can be used for things like building permit fees, construction, you use tax, in facade improvements, and we also discussed making investments, I think it buildings, it provides some long term benefit. I think that that was my you don't I think in Timnath, it's, you don't have as much of it. But I know in the downtown core, you have some older buildings, that to try to make sure that they're economically viable if you can provide help businesses, make investments to make them accessible to put in infrastructure, like grease, interceptors for restaurants and things like that, as well as fire suppression systems to which I know are very big with the fire marshal, which I've experienced so, so kind of looking at those ideas, how you use it, how you apply, and if you want to go to the next slide. And so kind of once we define kind of the application process, the the, what it can be used for the kind of types. The other thing we tried to define is those types of incentives. And it's really the enhanced sales tax, which is a rebate. And both the construction use tax and building permit fee reimbursements. And so generally, my experience is when you're dealing with those as you don't want to necessarily waive them, you'd like to see businesses actually pay them and then you rebate them. So you take the revenue, you pay it back, or you rebate it back to those those those applicants. The same with the enhanced sales tax, I mean, you want to make sure that their current they're paying those taxes, then you are able to reap, rebate that back to them over time. And just for some perspective, it three a few thinking about a retail business at 50% of sales tax at three capped at 35,000. As a total incentive, that's about $2 million in sales from a small so that's a pretty small business. And I think if you're talking about, you know, locally owned or come more of a mom and pop, you know, that's to me, and and sales may occur over the course of maybe three to the three or four depending on kind of the type and the nature of the business and the retail so but the idea is to provide some flexibility, so they can be kind of reviewed administratively allow for some efficiency, and to meet the kind of the timeframe and the needs of the applicant and the business as well. And also how you can apply them so even though it's 50% of construction use tax and 50%. I think up to certain thresholds, you could apply one or multiple of those incentives in any single incentive. So if it's a build some building permit fee waiver, if they're eligible, plus some sales tax, reimbursement, anything you have the discretion to kind of how you apply that and, you know, obviously if you know based on the way the policy is written, if it's anything above 35,000, if they come in if there's some extenuating circumstances where the applicant or they believe that they may be there, deserve or their investment is worth or they have kind of a greater consideration. And obviously that becomes a function of the public meeting and the town board. So so that that those are kind of the details I was told, I hope to be that you appreciate brevity. Having worked for 11 years to the city of Loveland. I respect that tremendously. And so with that, I think unless there's anything else, so I'll kind of answer any questions.
Does anybody have any questions?
Michael, appreciate it. It was well written. I think that's why you don't have any any questions. We, it was very clear.
Cool. Thank you. Appreciate that.
Any comments or questions by the council?
You know, I do have a question here, which is, I think this is great work. It looks good. But I don't know. Did we get any input or suggestion from the small number of small businesses we have in town? or might there be a way as we implement this to maybe get some of that, consider that impact input?
We didn't reach out. But based on a lot of Mike's experience, we were using that as kind of our benchmark as to this is a, these are reasonable things. These are things that people look for, and they actually appreciate these opportunities. Meaning some of the anecdotal things we've heard from, from some of the folks it would have helped the camera that some of these to get started having a little bit of chipping away at some of these costs that they had upfront, potentially. I mean, to Mike's point, they'd have to pay and then they get rebated, but it's if they can show that, hey, we can we can stretch a little bit to start, and then we'll get it back to a degree. That would have been a big help for the ones that we've already had experience with.
And, Robert, I don't know if they talk to you. But at our council chat, there were three small business owners there. And all three of them thought that the incentive plan was excellent. They were there more than excited.
Yeah. That's, that's great to have that input. Yeah, I just, you know, to the extent that we can cultivate those relationships and, and partner with them, I, I'd love to do that. So I don't know what you know, further implementation steps. We have to, to realize this, assuming Campbell Council approves it tonight. But I'd been arrested
and trying to partner. Any other I just want to first say thanks for putting all of this together. I know. It's something that we've been talking about for some time. I didn't see anything in here. And I may have maybe missed something. But so if there were a situation where town staff did not approve a business incentive request, are there steps that can be taken for that business, perhaps to come to counsel to requested or, or? And I don't know if that would happen, since this is all brand new for us. But I just kind of want to think about if there is a business that's requested something and it got denied? Yeah, like, can they appeal it? Or? Or can there be things done for that?
So I think part of the way you drafted is to provide some discretion or some flexibility at the staff level. Part of it, my experience is that, that if it was kind of knowledgeable and proactive staff, you can work with the applicant to make sure that it's something that fits, and they understand what those criteria are. So it doesn't get to that point. You know, but obviously, you can't account for everyone. And so, you know, somebody may, you know, they may have a different perspective, but I think, I think, based on the way it's written and kind of with my being able to share my experience, it provides some flexibility that it's a bit of an iterative process for the applicant, in so they can understand it's like, you know, if you're going to do something like this, this is something aligned with what we're supporting, and we can we can provide that or, you know, or if, you know, if you're not, you know, if it's not going to be sales tax revenue generating if there's other mitigating circumstances, I think that that information can be shared and, and obviously not negotiated, per se, but I think, but you can work through some of those details generally.
Okay, thank you. I actually think that it's good to have some flexibility, like it's written in here because I think we don't know exactly what we're going to be asked. I also don't feel like we're going to have 20 businesses coming knocking on our door at the same time to do this. So hopefully, hopefully, it'll work out and hopefully we'll have some potential business owners take advantage of it.
So you're comfortable with the resolution. Okay. Yes, look. So applications are only effective. If the resolution passes, and there's no historical look back. It's all improvements at this point going forward, is that correct? It would be new new applications. Correct. Thank you.
Just to make sure I understand the point members of staff for this would essentially be, you know, Town Manager, committee, Development Director, town planner, that those those would be the staff members that would be interacting with business owners prospective business owners.
Yeah, that would, we'd start there. And if we needed to actually lean on somebody like Mike or something, we might have to reach out and kind of get some of his perspective on it, but it would be town manager, and probably myself and few other people that we'd bounce like, okay, here are the parameters is a meeting these criteria are not meeting these criteria. And then if we feel like there's some gray area that we need more clarification, we might reach out to Mike and say, Hey, what do you think about this? And so we lean on the resources we have.
Okay. And I think the resolution largely reflects what the council had discussed in past work session. So thank you for that. And I just lay out my expectation that over time, this will evolve. So keep, keep looking at opportunities to refine and tweak and make this more specific to Timnath as we go and go from there.
Okay, do I have a motion to approve resolution number 37? Series 2023. A resolution approving an economic development incentive policy, small business?
I moved to approve a resolution approving an economic development incentive policy small business.
Do I have a second? Second? All those in favor say aye. Aye. Opposed nay. The resolution carries unanimously. This is this is something actually we've been working on as a council since you and I got on here, Brett. And Lisa. And so it's it's nice to see it finally happened. Resolution number 38 series 2023. A resolution approving crossing agreement for Weitzel famp. Park. Notice it's white, so pretty. Scented by Brian Williamson.
Thank you, Mayor. This is a crossing agreement. This will enable us to complete a loop trail around the Weitzel park in the harmony pond that's out there. We generally have a crossing agreement. Anytime we cross one of the waters that are ditch companies waters, we have a great relationship, the same body that that operates. This reservoir operates Timnath reservoir, so we have a great relationship with them. This is the same agreement in the form that we use when we did the T Roc crossing back in 2022. So it's, you know, we've kind of been through the wringer on on editing it. They did reduce the their standard fee of $20,000 to $10,000. Because of our long standing relationship with them. I'm happy to we are also bidding the construction project those bids close tomorrow, and then we'll hopefully have a contract recommendation for you at the next meeting. I'm happy to answer any questions about it.
No questions. No comments.
Okay. Do I have a motion to approve resolution number 38. Series 2023. A resolution approving a crossing agreement for white South Park.
I move to approve a resolution approving a crossing agreement for Weitzel Park.
Do I have a second?
I'll second.
All those in favor say aye. Aye. Pose. Resolution number 38 Serious 2023 A resolution approving crossing agreement for Whitesville farm. Right so Park is approved unanimously. I will put a side note and the reason why I know it's exactly Weitzel is because coach Weitzel was my coach in eighth grade. And he decided because of my great behaviors that I deserved a shot of a paddle about that sick with holes drilled into it. And I don't forget
that paddle be mounted at the reservoir
maybe we can bury it
Um Do I have a motion to adjourn move to adjourn Do I have a second second all those in favor say aye aye opposed motion we are adjourned
