City Council Work Session — September 9, 2025

The time is 6.01 and I call the work session to order. Will the city manager please provide a review of tonight's work session agenda?

Yes, thank you, Mayor. Good evening, everyone. We do not have any changes to our published agenda tonight, so there are going to be just two items. The first is the impact study updates and then the 2024 building code updates. So with your approval, we'll go ahead and jump right in.

And I am going to turn it over to Josh Birx, who is our Sustainability Services Deputy Director, to get things started on our impact fee study update. Thanks, Josh.

Thank you, Kelly. Good evening, Mayor, Council members. Yes, I'm here tonight to talk with you about impact fees. I have Jen Poznanovich with me as well. And then we also have representatives from both of the consulting companies that helped us. I know we've had or not we I know you all have been talking about impact fees for and updates to them for a little while now and Jen and I are super excited about giving you tonight's update about how to potentially better align our impact fees with the land use code.

So we're here tonight to hear from you and see if you support moving this forward for you to ultimately consider and if you need any additional information before we bring it before you. As I've already said, I think the core objective of the work that Jen and I were able to do is to align these impact fees with where you're headed with the land use code, which is ultimately about

encouraging a wider range of housing types. We talked early on in this process about what we would do and kind of how that would work and some of the things that would drive that obviously staying within the bounds of the legally accepted methods for developing fees as well as looking at again ultimately how we can bring this into alignment with the land use code. Just to remind everybody where we are in this past. At the end of last year, you adopted inflation on top

of the current existing impact fees, which are based on a 2017 replacement cost study. Our code does indicate we should be updating that replacement cost study about every five years. And that's an important thing to do when we are using a plan-based approach like we are, because as that replacement cost changes, we want to make sure that we're charging the right amount for folks to buy into the level of service that we're currently offering. I think we can all agree that inflation hasn't kept up with the cost of constructing many of the assets that are covered by these capital expansion fees since 2017. Just a little bit up on the update methodology. One of the primary drivers, if not the primary driver of our fees is household size. And so looking at how that household size factor can be evaluated against aligning with our land use code is a big part of the work that we've done. And so household size directly drives the capital expansion fees. And we are now going to be proposing that we could use some new square foot categories to better align both with Larimer County as well as some of our objectives. The transportation capital expansion fee builds off of that household size factor and ultimately translates that into something called trip ends that is used to really determine the factor. I want to pause for a moment and just remind everyone, we use what's called a buy-in approach to impact fees, where we take the replacement cost of our existing assets and we divide that by the existing population. That creates a fee that we then charge to units as they come on. So, we've got three major adjustments that the proposal that we're bringing before you tonight includes. The first is adjusting the size of units by square foot and to provide greater granularity across the spectrum of square foot sizes than we've had historically. We have some data in a few moments to kind of show you the distribution that I think helps to build the case for why particularly expanding the upper end for single-family detached is warranted. But what we're ending up with is about seven categories as opposed to five which we've had historically. The second major adjustment is we're also proposing bringing forward fees that are tuned to the type of unit. A detached family, a single-family unit, an attached single-family unit, as well as multifamily. And each of those would follow the detached and attached would follow the new seven square foot categories. Multifamily is not distributed quite as widely across the square foot sizes, so we have fewer categories for that one. That's our second major adjustment.

How does that impact things? Again, the household size is what drives our impact fee.

And you can see how on the left, our current impact fees provide a pretty narrow band or provide a band of household size that's only spread across five categories.

And again, there's no differentiation between the type.

But on the right-hand side, you can see that there's enough differentiation to justify really evaluating the impact of units because of the household size differently if it's detached, attached, or multifamily.

And that's an important evolution that this particular approach would bring forward.

And you can see there sort of what the average household size is kind of for each of those.

So why do we think spreading out the square foot is important? I think you can see, particularly on the single-family detached,

You know, we have 50% of units built between 1,800 and 2,400 square feet, 18% over 2,400 to 3,000, and 3% at over 3,000.

Rough math, that means well over half of the detached units right now are being built in that upper category.

But there's no differentiation for the much larger units that we saw on the previous slide actually have the potential for a higher household size.

How does that impact the transportation capital expansion fee? You can see here how those different household size numbers translate into different trip ends. You can see that the number of trip ends for the single family detached go up slightly. It's hard to see here on the screen, but that is actually green text. and then the single family attached actually go down compared to the historic when you're looking at the all housing all the way to the left and then the same thing with the multi-family this basically means that there are fewer trips you know concluding at these units and that's what the impact is based on and the impact fee is therefore based on so that's the second big adjustment the third and final big adjustment of this proposal we're bringing for you to before you tonight is to split our current general government transfer capital expansion fee into two pieces and we probably would actually suggest a title change to the second of the two new fees so we'd be we'd have a new fee called government facilities and then a second new fee probably called government capital equipment which is a little more accurate than maybe fleet because there are other kinds of equipment other than just fleet that being purchased that could be purchased with those so that's the third and final big change with that i'm going to hand it over to jen to walk you through some of the impacts of this new approach well thank you josh and good evening council this first slide is a lot to look at and it is the revised residential fee schedule and got copies of the full revised studies with the material tonight but the big takeaway from this is what josh said earlier is on the far left we go from the five to the 17 different categories and then on the far right you can see the percent change from the current fees to the proposed fees so going up for single

family detached going up but to a lesser degree for single family attached and then going down or staying flat for multifamily ADU and so this next slide

here is showing a revenue comparison for just the capital expansion fees what we

did is the column on the left is the 2024 actual revenue that was received in 2024 we took the unit count from 2024 and applied our current fee and so we would get what the the 2025 fee would be our current fee using the 2024 unit counts the proposed column there is using those same unit counts from 2024 but applying the proposed fees and so then you can see what the change would be from what the current fees are using 2024 unit counts to the proposed fee with those 2024 unit counts.

So more of an apples to apples comparison to just sort of check, you know, what's really happening with the current fees to proposed fees since it's tough to tell with all the different category changes that are being proposed. So for single family detached, the fees would be going up by 29%. For single family attached, would be going up by 14%. And for multifamily adu would be going down by 3% or cumulatively that would be going up by 13% across all the capital expansion fees

For the transportation capital expansion fees this is the revised fee schedule as well You can see on the far right that for single-family attached Those fees would be going up for single our single-family detached Excuse me those would be going up for single-family attached majority of those fees would be going down a few would be going up and for multifamily adu those fees would be going down this slide shows that revenue comparison that same same thing we did with the capital expansion fees using

the unit counts from 2024 so here what we would see for 2025 or here what we would see would be a 13% increase for single-family detached be a 14% decrease for single-family attached. And then for multifamily ADU, that would be a decrease of 41%. So cumulatively across all the transportation fee categories, the fees would be going down 12% compared to what our current fees are using 2024 unit counts, and then proposed fees using 2024 unit counts. And did want to highlight here that future fee revenue depends on development that occurs we just use this as as an example to look at more of an apples to apples comparison between the two fees and when we put that all together across the capital expansion fees and transportation capital expansion see capital expansion fees single-family detached would go up by 22% single-family

attached would go up by 3% and then multifamily ADU would go down by 16% so

So across all of our capital expansion fees and transportation capital expansion fees, from the 2025 current fees using those 2024 unit counts compared to the proposed fees using 2024 unit counts, that revenue would go up by 3%. And this does, all these proposed fees do include inflation as well.

We wanted to provide a couple of examples for council the first here is a 2,000 square foot example So for a single family detached those costs would go up by 23%

That's across the capital expansion fees and transportation capital expansion fees single-family attached would go up by 8%

Multifamily would go down by 23% and then for a 750 square foot adu example using 750 square feet

Because that's the typical adu that is built in the city Fort Collins those fees would would be going down by 16%

The next two slides are going to show a couple examples of the total cost of development

The first one is for a single-family detached and the second one would be is going to be for a multi-family example And here we have the total cost development on the far left in 2019 in the middle 2025 with our current fees And then the far right is 2025 with the proposed fees the gray color. There is

Land costs the blue is hard costs soft costs are in a dark orange Contingency and overhead in yellow the impact fees which we're talking about here today are in green utility fees are red and then the profit is in that kind of dark blue black color the takeaway from this slide is that impact fees really are a small percentage of the overall development costs they were 3.3 percent of the total

in 2019 3.3 percent of our current fees and they would go up to 3.7 percent with

the proposed fees the next slide is a multifamily example the same same slide

here but for multifamily here for the impact fees which are in the green color they go up five they are five were 5.9 percent in 2019 6 percent in 2020 or 2025 our current fees and they would go down to 4.9 percent with the the proposed fees so what you can see here between those two slides is between single-family detached and multifamily a little bit closer alignment to the the total cost of development between the two we wanted to put one slide in here on the non-residential fee updates this is per 1,000 square feet the main change here was in the capital expansion fees there's a new land use category prior to that are actually currently in our current current fees the office and

other services are in the same land use category as commercial but alignment here with the t-ceps and so that's the the main change here for commercial those fees would be going up by 12 percent for office and other services down by 12 percent and industrial and

warehouse would be going up by 49 percent and these fees are proportionate to the infrastructure demand for the type of development and they also include inflation through 2025 this slide shows the 2025

We're here tonight at Council work session back in October for ordinance readings. With the fees, the plan would be to be effective January 1st of 2026. And the last slide before questions for Council. This shows the future cadence. So the next capital expansion detailed fee study would be planned for implementation in 2030 with inflation adjustments in those off years.

And then with the utility fees the plan would be by 2030 to have all those updates aligning at the same time as well

And that brings us to the questions for City Council this evening and does City Council support impact fee study revisions and this council

City Council need any additional information ahead of the proposed first reading on October 7th

Thank you

Council? Any comments on that?

Go ahead, Mel.

Thank you for the presentation, and thank you for taking to heart some of our feedback previously. I still have some questions. So just for clarification, I'm wondering if you could talk to us a little bit about the replacement value of some of these assets versus other models that could be utilized. And then I guess I'll ask my second question. I'll do one at a time.

Sure. Thank you. There are two predominant or prevailing methods for calculating impact fees. By far, the most common is what we would call a buy-in method or a method that looks primarily at calculating the replacement value for the assets that you need to increase over time to meet the demand of growth. So you figure out what the replacement value of those are and you divide it by your current population. that basically gives you a value of that level of service and those assets to today's individual resident within the community. The theory is then that as a new resident comes in, they need to be contributing towards that value as well because the existing residents receive that value. So they're buying in to that level of service by paying basically their share of that through that calculation. So the replacement cost is calculated by looking at all the assets that are there today that the demand for goes up over time due to growth, and then figuring out what it would cost to replace them today. So you can imagine there are a lot of assets. We were just having a conversation with our consultant today. fire apparatus in particular, which is a fancy way of saying fire trucks, but I like that fire apparatus, has actually gotten much more costly as we are seeing more demand for that kind of equipment, particularly here in the West with just more firefighting activity going on and, you know, still constrained supply, as well as just the inputs to everything that it takes to make that. So what we're doing every so often, and we've done here with this 2023 study, is looking at all of those assets and saying, what would it take to buy them if we needed to today? And then dividing that by the population. So that's method number one, the buy-in method. Okay. Method number two is to say, what do we need in the future based on the growth we're anticipating? And what is that going to cost? So if we need five more neighborhood parks before build out, and we need one more community park before build out what would it cost to build those and then we divide that cost the cost of the future assets by the anticipated future people you still arrive at a cost to buy into the level of service but now instead of saying you're buying into sort of the historic level of service you're buying into our anticipated new level of service and so that's the other method. It's usually fewer assets that you're calculating the value of, but it's also fewer people that you're dividing by. So those are the two methods, buy-in or plan-based or future.

Okay. Do folks have follow-up on that before I ask my other question? Go ahead. Okay. My other question was just, you know, looking at the chart of where there are marked increases in fees. It seems like police and fire, it's just disproportionate. And

I'm wondering why that is, especially if we are looking, you know, at being close to build out and having a lot of, or a proportion of new development occurring in an infill kind of

scenario. Why, I mean, it was between like 41 and 85% increases depending on type of home for of police services and I very much respect the work our police services do but that was

pretty shocking to see. So if you could explain that, that would be fabulous.

Yeah, I mean I think the underlying driver of that is just how much more expensive some of the equipment that they have to purchase, right, as well as you know in the case of police the cost of the facilities that you know fall within their purview, their main facility there off timberline and those sorts of things. So replacing those kinds of facilities and the necessary equipment that allows them to meet with growth, meet the demands of growth, is just becoming much, much more costly. And what we're seeing when we talk to our consultant is that this is not just unique to us. They do capital expansion fees across the Front Range and elsewhere, and they're seeing, particularly in the mountain towns, that the fire fees are doubling. And because a lot of folks haven't updated their fees since before COVID. And what we've seen since COVID is market increase in costs, as well as, like I said, demand for certain kinds of fire apparatus in particular. And to a similar degree, police. A lot of that is going to be vehicles. And the cost of vehicles gets more expensive. because some capital expansion fees can be used to acquire, you know, basically for the first time, the new vehicles that are required because we're expanding and growing. So we're still projecting what, reaching 250,000 for a build out. So we still have about 70,000 people to add, plus or minus, which is a substantial amount of growth still projected.

Right.

But again, based on replacement costs, that's what's driving those things.

Okay. I guess, and thank you for that. I guess for me, you know, thinking about replacement costs, it almost feels like it's like we're anticipating that everything that we're paying into is going to need to be completely replaced. Whereas I would assume that a lot of these assets are things that you could be doing partial renovations or partial replacement.

And it just seems like you're really going to the other end of the spectrum to assume that we're going to need to completely rebuild. I mean, I would think about like if your house completely burned down, you would need to have a replacement. But if you had smoke damage and had to remediate it, it would be significantly less expensive. Yes. I just some of these fees seem very high. And I'm wondering where where we might be overshooting.

Well, I appreciate that perspective. And I think that it's easy to interpret the concept of replacement costs as suggesting that our future fee collections is going to completely replace our existing assets. And that's actually not what the math is telling us, right? So what the math is doing is it's taking a look at the replacement value of the existing assets as a way to determine what the value of the current level of service is. It then divides that by the number of people being served. So we basically get a cost per person to serve. That cost per person to serve times the household size is what creates our impact fee. If we collect the impact fees that we have now for another 70,000 people, one way of thinking about that is we will not collect sufficient money to fully replace our existing assets because that's not what we're trying to do. We're trying to use that value of assets as a way to determine what the value of the service is so that we can charge individuals as they come to the community and build a new unit to offset their impact. So the replacement value is really just used as a way to get sort of to our, let's see if I can get the math right. The numerator is the one that goes above the line, correct? And the denominator is the thing you divide by? Yes. Sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So the replacement value becomes the numerator. The existing population becomes the denominator. That's the only place the replacement value comes in. It is not implying we will replace all those assets. It's just simply saying what are the value of those assets that we make sure that we can charge a fair impact fee as people come into our community. So hopefully that helps. Because I think that's an easy misconception to fall into.

Yeah, that is helpful. And I'm going to turn it over to my colleagues. I guess my thought is we've talked a lot about with our current financial situation as an organization and with our housing costs, are there places where our current level of service might need to be adjusted?

and I worry about moving forward with a model that's based on an assumption that the way we've

always done it is the way to do it so um that's that's just what I'm thinking but thank you for

obliging me thank you Melanie oh go ahead sure I can go next we talked about this at council

finance so I don't have a ton of questions but um I I don't want to make sure that the ADUs that We 750 square feet is the max adu size that you can build because I know we talked about that at council finance

Yeah, I think we made sure that we corrected that so there's one impact fee for okay great. Thank you

and then I I may be thinking about this incorrect but the replacement to me and this is where I really struggle with the replacement model and Not saying that the plan based model is necessarily going to get us a better number but the way I think about the replacement is like when we were talking about tap fees and we're asking people to buy into the price of a water share today not when we bought it and so is the replacement cost kind of we're asking folks to buy into that replacement value today not when

it was actually built yes and again because if we want to procure the assets necessary to continue to provide the same level of service we have to buy them in today's dollars not in 50 year ago dollars right so that's that's why the replacement cost is set it today yeah andrew yeah i i guess

i you know we talked about a finance committee but i just i don't agree with the way we're approaching it and i understand that if we wanted to move to a plan-based model or some other type of model it requires more work than what you have already done and thank you for your work i know This was an extra project so and I know that within the scope of what we have available These are the updates that we can do I Just don't think it's I think this has served us for a while, but also talking at Finance Committee This is one way to fund things but other communities fund different things with impact fees It's not all communities fund these items and they fund things differently and so to me This is more of a bigger conversation and maybe for the next council to take up about Do we want to change our methodology and if we're doing the replacement or plan or some other Other way of looking at this and then also is this how we should be funding because my I just also curious like once we build out Who how would do police get funded? Well, so again capital expansion fees can be used to offset costs associated with growth So in theory when we build out and we no longer have growth right we won't have anything that we can acquire with capital expansion fees also if we truly are built out and we no longer have growth there will be no new permits being pulled so no revenue now whether that actually plays out or not right i think it'll be we'll have to see when we start to get closer right but there are communities that have begun to look at their impact fees that because they're not growing and they say okay we're going to make some adjustments yeah right uh whether we're there or not i I wouldn't want to speculate.

I don't think we're there. I just think that, especially because capital impact fees, when we talk about this, fund police cars and fire truck apparatuses. Trucking apparatus is the same word. So what happens when we get close and what happens when we get less and less funds from the permit? So I just think that there are some things I like about this. I like the reallocation of fees by square foot. I think that's great to break it down more.

I just don't think we're ready to fully implement this because I think we need to do a study about how we should be approaching this and what works for Fort Collins in the future. And I think that's a bigger project than what we have taken on here. And I think I would also just argue that while it's an overall small piece, it's actually not that small because this is just one part of fees that developers pay. This isn't all the fees that developers pay. And so when you add all that together and everything we stack on, including our next item, those all contribute to the cost of housing. And then also just commercial, we're seeing the property tax going up for commercial and a 49% increase that we're suggesting here for commercial. I just want to be really careful and thoughtful about how do we fund our community and then also being really aware about the additional costs we're passing on. um and so i would be more comfortable with sticking with what we have but i do like breaking out by the square feet and updating that and hopefully the next council taking on a larger project to look at this system as an ecosystem together yeah i um i can appreciate that

perspective and you're right we talked about this at council finance i think that um i think that we are getting desperately far away from our last replacement cost study being 2017 and that there are a lot of reasons for us to think about making some kind of a change, right, that is based on the 2023 replacement cost analysis that you have. And I also think that there's a benefit in taking a step towards a more granular, separated schedule. I also appreciate that... You know, some of these numbers look significant. And so, you know, we could certainly talk about how we might take an intermediary step, right, as opposed to trying to go all the way. Again, I think we said this at finance, I'll say it here for everyone's benefit. What is calculated before you is the maximum allowable fee, right? It's a policy choice as to whether or not you adopt the maximum allowable fee. I will also caution that for parks in particular, all of our neighborhood parks are funded through capital expansion fees exclusively when we build them. So there will be repercussions as we change, to your point, how we pay for things. I guess my perspective would be to take some kind of step to move to a new 2023 based study and also try to maybe make a move towards having greater granularity while also then saying, you know, that as you've suggested, being very clear as the next. well, if the next council's prerogative that, you know, we're not happy with the way we're doing this because it will take time and energy to move to say the plan-based approach or to look at finding alternatives to how we go about funding things that don't use impact fees. Yeah. And

thank you for the reminder that these are the maximum. So I would be curious, you know, to come back and have more of that nuance of what happens because I do like that, you know, looking at the

multifamily and you took that feedback. Well, you know, of like, we don't think this has as much impact as a single family and so that to me made sense and so thank you for reminding that i just you know this is when we talk about how can the city impact housing and the affordability this is like one lever that we can pull and so i think it's worth the due diligence of going through

to see what what we can affect if we were to i'd be curious um if we were to try to bring forward an alternative that's not representing a hundred percent so not the maximum right like what would be what would be a way of like what would be the outcome you'd be looking for to sort of by designing something that would be less than that is it to you know flatten the impact on certain you know reduce the overall rise of fees and we could also bring forward a phased approach if that was better suited where these could come in over time this is a proven mathematical method that shows us what it costs to provide these kinds of services right to new growth and so I would be remiss as a staff person not to say that adopting the full cost right you're having them there will be implications there because you're not going to be able to then fully fund right many things that you've done historically and so obviously we want to bring for forward any kind of trade-offs if that's something you wanted to consider maybe I'll turn it back to you all for questions and comments great

That was a great discussion. I just have a comment on that. You know, I think part of the hard thing or what I struggle with as well, I remember my first council meeting, I was like, what's the total impact to the end user, right? So when we have our departments bringing us different things, like the next thing, it all sounds so great, and then it just keeps adding, right? So then we have water, we're going to have electric, you know. And I think what you were suggesting may be taking a step toward the 2023, those sorts of things. I think Melanie has brought up a few times, if I might quote you, but you can also say I didn't say that. You know, looking at some of our service levels, right? I mean, you know, we have these massive fire trucks going for an emergency EMT call, right? Which I don't know. I'm not on PFFT or anything. But the level of service we provide is remarkable and it's commendable. And it might just be too expensive because we're expecting 70,000 more people or homes. I don't know. People.

A population, the homes would obviously be.

But the last two years, we've had zero new people. And I'm afraid that if we adopt this and we adopt that and we adopt that and we adopt that, we may never see 70,000 more people.

So when we think systematically and holistically, I think that's where the concerns come in. every single item seems logic and logically presented and you have done good work and you did you know and it's not like there's a solution immediately but I think if it and I won't be on the next council but I think what helps make better decisions or trade-offs is when you could say okay if we adopt the building codes next what is the impact on a house and can can someone bring those accumulating costs to us and then that's where the trade-offs start right those are my comments but I'm gonna have a few more but I'll stop now somebody

else it's like Trisha's going for it yeah thanks for all the great work I too was on council finance so I've seen this before looked at a lot and I think what we're hearing the cumulative impacts and all of this adding up I do understand

the need to move forward with the 2023 study but i agree with melanie like what are the levels of

service that we want to continue to offer i serve on our metropolitan planning organization our

two county regional transportation planning board and recently someone brought up should we look at

becoming a COG, a council of governments. And some of the sharing that could happen there, one of the things that we really talked about was fire apparatus. Does every community need a ladder truck that's only, is that the big tall one? Okay. So how many buildings are really in each community that would be serviced by that? And so looking at those cost savings. So I do wonder like where there is value in re-examining what is the level of service that is appropriate for

our city moving forward um i do agree some decision has to be made here um but i do like

it feels like there still needs to be a little fine-tuning here but i will say i think that

um it seems to me the best way to facilitate an alternative level of service conversation is really to shift to more of a plan-based approach. I think that it, which again will require, you know, extra effort and things like that, which I think that may be the right way for us to move forward as a community. I think where we are today, it's difficult to look at a buy-in method and talk about future level of service and what that would mean for the buy-in method. So I think what I would recommend is making some sort of policy choice about adopting less than the full for some kind of rational reason, because we want to mitigate the level of rise of cost or whatever, or we want to spread it out over time, as opposed to making it an argument about level of service, because I don't think we can actually connect that as well in this particular method of calculation. right but then it would be incumbent upon you know the next council to sort of say okay we're going to move but i think that um if this council wants to be able to act but also mitigate the impact right i think again i think there's two ways forward adopt something less than 100 percent or adopt a phased-in approach in my mind um and again i would sort of ask well what what would you be wanting to accomplish by going down that particular direction right is there some acceptable level of fee rise that you'd be comfortable with, those sorts of things. I mean, we could run a couple of different numbers and say, here's what the implications are, but having some sense of where you might want to come in could be helpful if that's the direction we're receiving tonight. Again, I just want to be clear as a staff person, there are cost increases that are reflected in these values that I think are very legitimate. And so doing anything less than the full is basically accepting that we're going to be recovering less than what we've historically been able to recover to meet our needs as we go forward. And that is certainly a legitimate policy choice. It's just one that we have to go into with eyes wide open.

And is that something staff could bring us if we adopted this percentage of the max, like what we would, what the tradeoffs would be? What?

Yeah, I mean, I think we could certainly, it would be our best guess at what tradeoffs are right because we'd be we'd have to make some assumptions but we can certainly give you an appraisal of an order of magnitude of what the trade offs would be right if not moving forward with the full 100% and I think

that would be helpful in decision-making thank you I just have a clarifying

question isn't there a third option of just not doing anything I mean there is

a third option of not doing anything I just want to make sure that like I understood well our code does say that every five years we will update our replacement cost so we are already beyond what our code says right so I

want to be clear about that we've just been doing the inflation adjustments okay

the reason we started this in 2023 because that was the year that would have set it up set us up to be able to have made the changes in 24 that are on the code the code stated five-year cadence right we're now well beyond that code stated five-year cadence and so if we were to do nothing right I think that we would be we'd continue to be out of compliance with our own code I also think that there are other considerations to the do nothing that I think I think we would want to have more conversation about right I think that that it's important for us to increase our transparency with our customers as well as manage our impact fees in a more judicious manner by splitting our general government into two pieces. I think that's an important change to make. And I do think that, you know, inflation is a good measure for some of our fees, but it's not a good measure for all of them. Right. And so we'd also want to look at that to determine, you know, are we are we hitting a reasonable number by continuing to go with inflation? if that was because that's another option right another option one less than 100 option two phased option three do nothing option four stay with the current schedule but apply inflation i mean those are kind of the four options in front of me i personally would not recommend three or four but i'm not the one that makes the decision so you all can tell me what you want done thank you thanks

kelly go ahead

I always look forward to these discussions so much every couple of years, the fee discussions. So I think in the future when you bring things back to us, and by the way, it's a very good presentation. You guys really moved through it, very good information, and you did bring us back, but so far we've requested at council work sessions and finance, and I think it's very well done. And now there's policy decisions to be made in the future.

I think it would be helpful because we're not the only ones that see this. So you talk about why do we have fees and what do we get from the fees? And talk about the fairness issue, which is true that historically, and again, I don't know what the sweet spot is,

but historically it's due to growth and development. It's supposed to pay its fair share, whatever that is, and it's an imperfect science. But the fairness issue, because otherwise, if it's not, then current and future taxpayers are paying either having less in parks or slower parks and other things or paying making up for it in higher taxes.

Those things, I think, in simple language for people to understand, explain why we do these things.

Because it is very complicated because the parks thing is almost a subset on its own.

Okay, I'm moving into a new area, say, and I pay my parks fee, my neighborhood parks fee, and I'm making up these numbers now. But now it's going to be delayed eight years because there's less fees coming in. I'm not going to be real happy because the council made that policy change.

And so I don't know how that breaks out different, but I think it is different. It's not apples to apples to compare that to transportation and then say the same things.

What are we going to give up in those kinds of things?

So it is a very complicated issue, but it shouldn't be. And, again, I'm not going to spend a lot of time getting in cost versus price, but I'm going to reiterate it for those that, not anybody around this table,

but if we magically limit fees, reduce fees by, say, $30,000, there's no evidence that the price of housing will go down $1. That's just the reality. You know, I was five days from signing the thing that this is what I was going to do. I know something about it. and you're going to sell for what the market will bear.

If we've reduced magically $25,000 in fees, no guarantee they go down $1.

I would sell it and they would sell it for what the market would bear.

But I have a couple questions. Pretend we just do the inflation, which I wouldn't recommend, but the good work that council has done and you have all done

for the 17 categories versus three or four or whatever it was, if we just do inflation, we're not doing any of these new changes? I need a clarification. It's not a leading thing. I don't know. Are we stuck if we don't do the phase-in,

which I'd probably recommend to get to this system and do it over two years and why it's being studied in the next year? Because then we don't give up the changes, none of which I recommended, but we're good by people around this table about the different categories and the size of housing and all of that, that will be lost, will it not?

I think that it will be, I would have to think through this completely, but I think it will certainly be difficult to create a system that would charge, would basically be only inflation because there's really no way to separate into the unit type without changing the underlying housing household size, right? Again, if it's cost to serve a... And it's the number of people in a house that basically figures out what the fee is. Right. What we've done, what we've really done is we've changed how much each kind of housing is contributing based on its impact. And so if we were only going to increase by inflation, you'd still have adjustments because we're taking what used to be a very narrow band of options and we're opening it up. Right. And so I think, yes, you would be stuck if you went down inflation only with having to keep the current existing categories because you can't move to this new system without there being a reapportioning of the impact to the different unit types. I mean, what the study tells us is that detached units have a greater impact than attached or multifamily, and therefore they should be paying more. So if we go forward with that assumption and we only apply inflation, single family detached units will still end up paying more than inflation, right, in terms of the cost of the new fee because they will be making the adjustment for how many people live within them. So part of what's going on in the increases in fees is because we're now apportioning it with greater granularity to different unit types. So that's a long-witted way of saying you're right, Kelly. I don't think we could use this system if we went inflation only. Thank you. I always love hearing that.

Never gets old.

So none of these suggestions were mine. There were other council members around here. I don't want to lose all that. And so I think we have to vote on something in October, I would think, or November for the first of the year. So one of the suggestions, it doesn't mean everybody's going to go, oh, I agree with Kelly on that one. But one of the suggestions I'd like prepared, and then if staff says it really sucks and is a bad idea to tell us when it comes to us for a vote, is a two-thirds implementation, which lops one-third, and I guess it would be okay to get us there because I think these changes are really good. I'm not talking about the numbers. I'm talking about the changes are really good. than half at 2026 and half at 2027 with council having a work plan in 2026 to see if they want to do that other model for what's developed you know what what we want you know do we have the parks right do we have the fire right do we have the police right um and those kinds of things so it moves this process forward which these changes i'm not hearing many objections to the way we're doing it it's about the dollar figure and and to do two-thirds or 50 percent now and if people don't want to do the 50 percent um later um the second time then we they could have developed a new process by then so i just like to see that as one of the options um if it comes back to us in october unless right now you go i want to hear it that's not a good idea um again i think i've

made my perspective clear. I think adopting was- Very well, by the way, and I mean that. Yeah. Great, both of you. Yeah, I think what's before you is what we are prepared to recommend because it's an accurate reflection of the changes in cost and it stays consistent with our past approach, which is charging 100% of the cost of servicing new growth based on our adopted methodology that we've used since the fees have been in place, right? So my recommendation is always going to be what we're presenting. I understand the desire to have other options to consider. Happy to prepare those. I want to make sure that I'm preparing them correctly so I have a clarification. When you say two-thirds, what you would basically be saying is the incremental cost between the current fees and the new fees, we'd only bring forward 66% of that incremental cost. Yes. So let's say if it was, see if I can use good numbers here, $6,000 increase, you would say bring forward four as option one and then two the next year or not. But to basically bring forward something less than 100%, two-thirds, and then another approach that says half now, half in 27, to basically get ourselves all the way there by 27 as a second approach or option. Right.

And I just want to be clear in case I was misunderstood. I don't know how a staff member could present better what you did with what you believe in and listening to us. So I appreciate that you just didn't fold your tent. Yeah. And you did it well with the right tone. No, I appreciate that. Thank you. You stuck the landing. The other thing is why I don't want the inflation those two years because I don't want all of this other work tossed out. So it might be a real bad idea when you guys even work. Pretend you work it up. pretend there's enough support that you at least work that out for presentation. In that, if it comes out that it's a disaster, inflation would be better, then I guess you'd want to tell us that. But we'd lose the other things.

Yeah.

Okay. Yep. And I just had a couple clarifications of my own, and it's going to embarrass me, I'm sure. But I haven't yet tonight, so I'm going to go ahead with this. On the one page, maybe your slide was updated,

But on the slide where it says 92% of units are in the 1,800 to 3,000, I have that at 68%, and I have the 92 from 1,300 to 3,000.

Yes, you're referring to the slide where we have the – I'm noticing we don't have slide numbers. Yep. Yes, you're right. It would be – well, it would be 68 plus 3, 72.

it's the three categories not the two I'm not doing that to point something out it's in the future yeah I think that was and then this one I so I didn't embarrass myself there so I will hear eight fee types I get two parks police fire that's for general governments to and TCEF is one is seven yep okay I'm just and I'm checking I'm not doing this to call you I'm not what am I

I appreciate what am I missing I appreciate that you're making sure there's so that we're not

there's yeah the seven fee types and then um does it fire district itself the outlying areas do they have a fee comparable to this and if not why not that's a good question that I'm not sure I can

answer tonight it's not a gotcha somebody's got me but yeah I'm happy to follow up it's a fairness

question if it's good enough for us it's good enough for them I feel like we answered that

at one point, but I do not remember the answer, so we'll get it to you. I don't need it tonight.

Oh, and by the way, I didn't make it clear. I support the proposal before us tonight. I'm just working with where we're probably heading, so I support what you brought us tonight. If it was up to me, I would vote yes. And then under police and government, like the police building, I know that was, no pun intended, it was COPS, which is certificates of participation. I think that was a COPS project, which is kind of funny in and of itself but if we needed a new police station building does that come out of police or the government category at least it does yep comes out of police okay

and that that's all folks thanks a lot okay um i just had one clarification on julie yeah um I did have a clarification on what's being brought to council from Kelly's points It sounds like those two options are to get us to 100 the recommendation over two years But isn't there another option where we're not adopting the full fee so we could just do 20% of what we're recommended for two years

Yes, I I think what I heard was option one was bring forward the fee at two-thirds of the current incremental value Option two was a phased approach 50% this year 50% the next year

Certainly option one could be for less than two-thirds. Yeah, I think for option one having a gradient a gradient Yeah, like more more options along. Okay. Yeah, that'd be good. Okay. Thank you

Yeah, thank you and thanks to Everyone else on council for doing excellent questions so Just a few things kind of more reacting from what everyone else has said And so three of us will definitely be here. When I hear, sorry, we'll definitely be here next year. So we could almost get there, you know, and saying like, yeah, let's look at how this is done. So when I hear you say, Josh, like, this is accurately reflecting the way we've consistently done it in the past. And I'm not trying to throw words at you. I'm just trying to like pick it apart a little bit. so with that the ways we've consistently done things in the past but you know this council has asked to re-change focus on the housing shortage so I do see that one of the ways that we're addressing that is with all the different types which is awesome you guys yeah I will add amazing work thank you what else do you feel was done if anything to either you know we had the priority of um

operationalizing housing with everything we're doing um so i'm asking that question and i do want to say i think we maybe we look at it differently is one thing in that saying oh this is just a small piece of it what the mayor was saying yeah it's all just a small piece of it

it all adds up to expensive house. So yeah. A few things to pick apart there. So if I miss anything,

just feel free to nudge me. So what else have we done right in this approach to try to address

housing affordability, I think was the first part of the question. We are also going to bring forward on October 7th some code changes to the code that guides impact fees because there are parts of that that haven't been addressed for a while and some of those changes will be definitional as well as when will fees be charged based on you know additions and things like that and and some of those will have to do with helping us to better clarify what's considered an ADU and what's not And so I do think that while not a major move in terms of helping with housing affordability, it is an important move that we'll be able to clean up that will allow these fees and that code to be able to be better sort of aligned. One of the challenges I think that we have with impact fees is because they must be based on adopted methodologies that have been tested legally over time, right, that there's not a lot of levers that you can pull when you're talking about setting fees. A lot of the other levers are policies that are really outside of but kind of wrap around fees, right? Like, do we want to do credits for affordable housing? Do we want to do offsets for certain kinds of construction? Those are complementary policies, but they're not necessarily things that we can do when we're setting the fees because of the nature of how we have to calculate the fees in order for them to be, you know, sort of supportable legally. So there are, I think, other conversations to be had that could be complementary to the fact that we're moving to a direction where we have greater granularity. But those are things that I think are part of other conversations, if I'm making sense.

Yeah, no, you are.

So I have this question in my mind of like, are setting these fees a science or an art? And it sounds like both.

Yeah, I mean, all good data analysis is a little A and a little B, right? It's a little art and it's a little science and it's figuring out, which is why we hire consultants that have been doing it for a long time because they've got that professional experience and judgment to really help kind of cover the art side of things to make it feel, you know, solid and legitimate. But again, we're using very well adopted approaches and we're using consultants that have done this time and time again for, you know, in cases, hundreds if not thousands of different studies over the last decade.

So to Tricia's question about, you know, if you bring forward something less than the hundred, could you let us know what the tradeoffs are? And you said that would be speculative in some ways. But isn't all this speculative in many ways?

That depends on how.

I'm going back to my consulting days because we used to have these conversations quite a bit. Right.

No, I'm making you go into some weird philosophical place and I apologize. It is.

It is.

Listen, you have to be careful because I like that space and we could be there for a long time. And I know everybody's got other things to talk about.

Yes, I mean, yes, but I think that what I would want to say is that science is a growing art, right? Like we get better at science every year as we test out new ideas and new things, right? So is this kind of data analysis. And we are standing on decades and decades of plan-based approach analysis, right? So just as our current understanding of science today stands on so much work, so does this kind of analytical analysis. And so it is the best we have before us.

It's the best way for us to calculate fees from a plan-based perspective. We're using all of the best approaches, all of the latest thinking.

So in that regard, while there is a component of art to any data analysis, we've driven as much of that art out of it as we can, given the knowledge we have. and the experience that we have collectively, right, in doing these kinds of fee calculations. So, you know, it's the best thing that we have before us for this kind of calculation. And we have to make these decisions. Yeah, we do.

So, and maybe this is more for Kelly, D.

So we are coming in, you know, it's no secret, we are going to have some budget shortfalls.

Budgets are bad everywhere.

I like to see this as an opportunity.

I was having a turnover in parks, also a great opportunity to look at those service levels

and see if there are operational changes.

That could maybe streamline, make things cheaper. I don't know. I mean, how do you feel like that fits into this conversation?

Well, I think there are a lot of, there are going to be a lot of synergies in the conversation as we're talking about level of service. I do want to be clear, especially in things like police services, you know, again, it's not the like daily operating costs of those departments. So, again, I think that in this interim period, we need to be able to do a little bit more work of analyzing for you all what the level of service tradeoffs will be. I think in some of the areas like parks and transportation, again, because we know what the buildout looks like in those areas, what the delay will be based on how long it will take to construct things to some extent, I think we can give you that information But yeah, I do think that there's going to be some synergies as we go into the 27 budget process about level of service

And then thinking too about I mean so we make assumptions about when that build-out is going to happen, but if we do the fees wrong It could either happen way more quickly or way may not happen at all. So how do we take that into account?

So I want to make sure, are you suggesting that based on how we do the fees, you think that will impact how quickly things build out?

Well, fees is one part of all these decisions we have to make. I mean, again, maybe more of a philosophical question, but it's, this is not like black and white.

Yeah, what I'm sitting here thinking about is how do we have, how do we just build more scenarios for you all? Because there are also very real impacts. people in our community want to be in neighborhoods where close by there are parks or so they depend on those things as well. And so, you know, how do you how do you accurately calculate how that impacts how that impacts timing of things? So I just want to think think through that a little bit more, Julie. Yeah, but I think we can talk about some of the levers and what we see as some of the tradeoffs and do a few scenarios for you.

Yeah, I think, I mean, where I'm landing tonight is more, I think, maybe a phased approach, but more than two phases. But I would lean towards because I feel like there's a lot more that we can do, a lot more we can find out, a lot more inputs, I guess.

I Think what we also need to do and I'm looking at the team here is think about again I'm giving this level of conversation I want to be realistic about the level of resource that it will take both staff resource and consulting resource to do this analysis work because I think That's actually a very tangible thing that will come to council when we think about our limited resources and how we're prioritizing in them in the budget is this project an area where you're going to want to prioritize those resources so we need to do some due diligence there for you all as well to have a little bit

more information well yes i guess because that's assuming the next council would want that study right yes so you would be providing that information to this council to or no i'm sorry

I was I apologize I was thinking in as your question of how does it fit with sort of the ongoing budget conversations and limited resources I was still in that I apologize in that realm okay okay I think what we'll do to prepare

scenarios just to confirm is we can prepare a couple of different phased options as well as a couple less than 100% options and we'll show you what those will create in the way of new fees and then I think the best thing to do would basically be to show you sort of the revenue change that happens in terms of collection. That's probably the easiest and most expeditious way to be able to evaluate the impacts. And we could compare that revenue collection to sort of historic trends and let you know, is it equal to greater than or less than sort of what we've historically brought in to the extent that that would be helpful in making decisions. But that's sort of the order of analysis that I'm kind of thinking that we would bring forward on October 7th with a couple of options. And then the idea would be you could all talk and ask us questions about which option you might want to move forward with and then maybe adopt something that evening that would be one of those options. Is that what we're kind of hearing is the ask? And I don't mean to cut conversation or comment short. I just...

No, you're doing great. Okay. Just... Digest. You're giving us a vision if we wanted to do one of the two of them. Yeah. Okay. Are there further comments or questions from council? I mean, I had some more, but after you just gave that. Yeah.

I just have one question, and I'm wondering if October 7th is still a realistic schedule, given this additional work that will be needed.

That's a great question. Thank you for asking that, Carrie.

Probably not is the realistic answer. So let us contemplate how much time we think we'll need based on that kind of a vision.

and then maybe at a future LPT or something,

we can tell you kind of what we're thinking and make sure that fits with everybody's timing.

But it'll need to be something probably before the end of November is my thinking.

So it's probably only one, maybe two meetings later than what we're planning tops.

Yeah, and before we sort of settle on that, let's just make sure everybody said what they want to say. Susan, did you have anything or no? Anybody else?

I'm perfectly comfortable with the scenarios that you presented sort of the but if you want to give an overall synopsis or are you good would you like me to try to summarize yeah I think Josh has

been right right we appreciate all the feedback we've heard tonight we appreciate the challenge that it is to balance impact fees with the other objectives you all are trying to achieve we appreciate that you feel like we've been responsive to trying to get this aligned with land use code and provide some greater granularity. I also appreciate that you want to consider how we can move towards that system. So to that end, we're going to bring forward some options for your consideration when you will adopt. That will be a couple of different options, less than 100%, as well as a couple of different approaches to how we might phase it in, maybe a two-year and a three-year option, something like that. We'll figure them out and see if there's enough difference between all the options to warrant bringing however many we bring. And we'll be showing you what the trade-offs of that are by evaluating what the revenue collection is under those options compared to what it would be under the 100% as well as what would be compared to what our current fees are as baselines for you. And then we'll see where we go from there.

Is everyone happy with that? Great. You did a great job, and it was very thorough. We appreciate it. It's always fun.

Does anyone want a little break before the next thing?

Yes? Five-minute break? Okay. Switch out. Five minutes?

Okay.

Thanks for your patience with this, Fort Collins. We are back and ready to go to our second item tonight, which is the 2024 building codes.

All right. Thanks, Mayor. I'm going to turn it over to Karen Champagne, who is our Director of Planning, Development, and Transportation, to get us kicked off here.

Thank you. Good evening. Also with me is Marcus Coldiron, our Chief Building Official. He'll be leading our presentation today.

But we also have in the audience our leaders from Light and Power.

if there are questions around the energy code-related items. So we have Travis Walker, Brian Thole, and Brad Smith available too.

I'll just highlight very briefly what we're bringing tonight and our purpose, and then I'll hand it over to Marcus to go through the presentation. But what we're bringing forward is our regularly scheduled package of code updates. This happens every three years, but we also have to fold in some state requirements and some state things that have occurred. And then we also have to have a conversation around local amendments. And so Marcus will highlight all of those changes. And it's a lot of content. So if you're okay with this, we were thinking we would pause along the way to seek feedback and input at different segments. So we'll start with the larger batch of code updates, and then we'll go to a discussion around the state requirements and then conclude and probably spend more of our time on the local amendments. And so that's a little bit of how we can break that down for us today. And so I'll hand it off. And the only thing I will just emphasize, too, and what we hope you'll see in the presentation, it was a really careful and intentional approach to balance a lot of goals and some competing goals. So really trying to hold our community priorities, our council priorities, the importance around what we're learning around safety and making sure our buildings are safe, but also climate goals as well. So a lot of different things that we had to hold. So we're really eager for your feedback to see if we got that balance right before we would bring these forward for first reading. So that's ultimately our big takeaway for this evening. So hand it over to Marcus.

Thank you, Karen, and good evening, Council. Looking forward to walking through the 2024 Building Code adoption update with you all.

so we're here to seek some feedback from from all of you and have some good conversation around the 2024 building codes specifically we're looking to see if council has any questions related to the building code package and does council have any feedback or suggestions ahead of that building code adoption some initial background the international code council generates new international building codes every three years the 2024 codes were delayed slightly due to some appeals at the national and international levels so we are target we are running about a year behind our normally targeted review of the building codes historically the city's reviewed and amended adopted the the latest building codes every three years since 2006 and we've had building codes in city fort collins since 1924 adopting the building codes every three years is is critically important and ensures that we stay current on building techniques emerging technologies and materials and critical life safety requirements it also allows us for to address incremental incremental change in a phased approach to building code and meeting community goals resulting in incremental impacts and costs as well. Typically there's nine codes, but due to some recent changes at the state and some change in climatic concern, we'll also be presenting the Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code that was adopted by the state this year.

Timeline, so the steps of building code adoption, As I mentioned, due to some appeals at the national level, we are running about a year behind than our typical three-year turnaround time for building code adoption. So they released the ICC code package at the end of last year. Staff began their review January through March.

We convened a code adoption review committee, which consists of developers, builders, engineers.

and we also included CBOs from several jurisdictions in the region as part of that code review committee.

Tonight we're here with all of you seeking some additional feedback as we can roll it into the project before we bring the regular session. And over the next few months we'll be visiting with several boards and commissions and several stakeholder groups prior to bring it to a regular council meeting, and we're targeting end of quarter four for those regular sessions with you all.

The approach we took, building codes are really a critical piece of accomplishing community goals

and vision closely aligning with many city plans, such as our climate future, the housing strategic plan and city plan.

We took a hard look at all of our amendments in an effort to simplify and clarify, and

we were able to rework many of those local amendments that may not have resulted as intended,

and we saw different outcomes than what we thought we would see from those amendments, and deleted some that the building codes caught up to us on. And this results in a cleaner, easier-to-understand code adoption.

Additionally, collaboration, as I've mentioned, we had met with several other surrounding jurisdictions in the region to try and align to the best of our ability.

Also recognizing that every jurisdiction has its own goals and vision that we also need to build into this adoption.

Considering the impact to affordability is another part of the process as we walk through it.

And as mentioned in the previous slide, it's really important to consider incremental change in supporting the incremental impact and cost that building codes bring.

And I will pause there because we're going to start rolling into some of the state requirements.

Any thoughts, feedback on approach, timeline?

Yeah, if we're about a year behind because of stuff that happened, I think you said appeals or at the federal level, does that mean we can expect to see this again in two years instead of on the three-year cadence?

That's something we're having more conversation about. I think initially it would be good to get back on track on that regularly scheduled adoption schedule. Like I said, we've been on that schedule since 2006, and the community builders, developers are used to that adoption schedule. This is a little blip, but I think that, and we'll walk through later on where we've built in some additional transparency and foresight into the 27 code and 2030 code that can help bring builders, developers, and anyone else impacted by building codes along and kind of setting targets now that won't be effective. but they'll be able to target kind of where we're proposing to land within those future codes. So we're hoping by taking that approach, it won't be as impactful by having that shortened time period.

Okay. And then do you think we can expect future delays and future codes? Is this like a trend? Yeah, I hope not.

This was the first time that this has happened that I'm aware of. So I don't think that we're anticipating this to be a regular thing. I think it was something that came up that was highly unusual and not something that we should expect to continue to see moving forward.

Nothing else? we'll carry on and talk about a couple of the state bills that were passed and laws that we're required to adhere to. So the first one I'd like to talk to you about is the residential building stair modernization. This was House Bill 1273, which requires any jurisdiction with a population over 100,000 people to adopt a building code that allows up to a five-story multifamily building to only have one exit. Of course, with that is some life safety concerns. So in the bill text and as part of our adoption, we've built in some pretty critical and specific life safety requirements, such as egress width, fire sprinklers, among a few other things. What this does, though, is there is some cool things about this legislation where it will increase some design options and it's especially useful in infill and or plots of land that have certain site conditions that can make it difficult to build on. This will broaden the design ability and maybe be able to build in places that otherwise would have been really challenging to build on and it does encourage a higher density as the footprint of the building would be smaller not having to support two or or more exits what I will also say about this is this isn't new to building codes the height is new but the building code right now does allow for up to three stories with a single exit so this isn't brand new it's just a extension of what building code already allows so I had a

question there so is that changes our code to up to five floors correct okay

Yeah, so you could build up to a five-story multifamily as opposed to right now you can only build up to a three-story multifamily building with a single exit

Yeah

To clarify only in zone districts that will allow you to build five-story this doesn't increase height requirements or allowances Does that is that also what you were asking? I don't want to confuse the covers

Yeah, I just didn't know if this was forcing us to change our code up to five in places where we didn't want that. Correct. No. It's not. Okay, thank you.

Perfect. The next state requirement is the Colorado Wildfire Resiliency Code. So this is a 2023 bill that's impacting us now. The HB 23-166 established a wildfire resiliency code board that was required to define, one, define the WUI, which is the wildland urban interface, and two, adopting rules for jurisdictions regarding adoption and who falls within the WUI. as part of drafting a code package that any structure that's within the WUI will have to conform to. They also set a requirement that any jurisdictions that have WUI inside of that

jurisdiction must adopt a code by April 1st of 2026. The code requirements around this

aren't substantial, although will definitely have an impact for those that fall within the WUI. Most of it deals with exterior hardening and materials. So roofing, some of those won't be impacted because we're kind of ahead of the curve on some of these items. We already require class A roofing, which is a requirement of this code. So there is some, it won't be as impactful to us as some surrounding jurisdictions. It also establishes some landscape buffer requirements and provides some ongoing maintenance requirements. The unique thing about this code specifically is it'll be proposed as part of the larger building code adoption, but as opposed to the other codes, it'll be in order to align with the state requirement, it'll be proposed to be effective not until April 1st of 2026. That'll allow us some additional time for education

and outreach to the community and having those conversations. Yeah.

And this is only for new developments or redevelopments?

This addresses all parcels. So there are some retroactivity clauses in that. So we're not flipping a switch and everyone's in violation. Okay. There are some items regarding maintenance. So like the landscape buffer, for instance, with there's dead foliage or leaves. you have to maintain that within zero to five feet of your home and there's different requirements for five to thirty feet so there will be some ongoing maintenance items that will come into play with existing structures but as far as exterior hardening or fences decks those kind of things that would be impacted by this as you will no longer be able to build them out of combustible construction that only happens with new construction okay thank you for

clarifying I have some constituents who do live in the the WUI how are they being informed about the changes for some retroactive maintenance yeah so

we're we're actively working on developing some educational materials and outreach and and considering what that process will look like so we haven't finalized that yet but there will certainly be additional education

and outreach in many different forms to make sure that we can reach as many

people as possible okay thank you thanks for letting me interrupt and also I I didn't ask permission, so sorry, Mayor.

Continuation of this, just as an example. So this is the state map that is proposed to be adopted. They did establish the WUI.

So what you'll see is there's different hazard areas within the WUI.

There's low, moderate, and high hazard.

City of Fort Collins does not have any high hazards,

so we won't have to deal with the most restrictive requirements of that code.

and most of Fort Collins does not fall within the buoy, as you can see.

Largest impact northwest and southwest, and there is some impact on the east side of town as well.

All right.

What I will also mention is that for this presentation and our code adoption, This will all be the only state bills that we'll be addressing directly. There are several other state laws impacting building codes, such as the Model Electric and Solar Ready Code, the Electric Vehicle Code, and the Model Energy and Carbon Code. These were not mentioned simply because we already meet those with the current adoption with the 2021 codes, and we will be expanding upon those in the 2024 code. so we will still meet and or exceed all of those other state laws. And I'll pause there because that would conclude the state law portion of the presentation. Any questions, feedback there?

Yeah, I just thank you for attending to that. I just thought we would obviously meet or exceed it. I'm always concerned about communities like Julesburg. or I was just in Alamos yesterday and I was like, probably not going to happen. But thanks. Yeah, of course.

All right. So now we'll dive into some of the more significant local amendment changes. The first one, EV charging, this was introduced in the 2021 code. So prior to that, we did not have any EV charging requirements. It is currently one of the stricter EV requirements in the state.

and we've learned a lot over the last four years of having the 2021 code adopted and working with

these developers and they expressed a lot of interest in providing up front more EV installed and EV ready on the front end if there was a trade-off for not installing the EV capable, the conduit in the ground. So after receiving this feedback and having some conversation with the Code Adoption Committee, we did revise a couple of items in here I'd love to get some feedback on, and it increased some design flexibility that was added. In addition to that, we revised the language to align with the newest land use code. The old land use code required a certain amount of parking spaces. Now it's just provided parking spaces. So if a development is providing parking spaces, the percentages would be applied to the provided parking spaces because land use code no longer requires any parking spaces. We also clarified some things. So in the 21 adoption, there was some confusion around additions and how they pertain to the percentages listed into the table in that amendment. So we clarified that, and additions that don't provide any additional parking have to install just one EBSC installed if they're not providing any additional parking spaces. Oh, I apologize. Additions providing new parking must comply with the table, and additions providing new parking must install at least one.

I will go on to an example to kind of demonstrate the flexibility that we added to this.

Percentages in the table that we established in the 2021 codes for EV parking spaces for each occupancy remain unchanged. Most of the occupancies require three options, EVSE installed, EV ready, and EV capable. And those options are weighted generally in a three-to-one ratio from EV capable to EV installed.

So using that same methodology, we applied that to the tradeoffs. allowed here so if you were to take this the standard compliance path in the in the table

for a new residential project that's providing a hundred spaces it would be 10 evsc installed 20 ev

ready and and 40 ev capable ev capable is conduit only in the ground um the majority of the concern

from the developers is there are a lot of emergency emerging technologies in the solar space there are

There is some conversations around clear solar panels that could be embedded in windshields and windows of vehicles. There's also streets that can have built-in solar capabilities. So the concern is that if we're installing up to 40% of parking spaces with conduit in the ground, is that infrastructure that's going to be utilized in the next 10, 15 years or not?

So they would like to provide more of a benefit now by taking some of that conduit out of the ground.

So if you look, if they prioritize EVSE installed as alternative one,

and they install five EVSE installed parking spaces above what code would require,

they could lower their EV capable parking spaces by 30.

And as a second alternative, if they wanted to prioritize EV ready,

and they provided 10 EV-ready parking spaces above what code would require, they could also lower that EV-capable requirement by 30.

Do you want feedback on that or not? No. I don't care.

Yeah, I'm happy to. You want to just keep going? I can either, and really it's up to you. We can keep rolling through the local amendments or I'm happy to stop there.

Okay. If the clicker will work.

Because the slide was there, I thought, does he want feedback?

The next impactful amendment that we're targeting for the 24 adoption is dealing with accessory dwelling units. What this does is it'll provide additional flexibility when adding an ADU to an existing structure.

um in as far as building code is concerned that is the the most difficult part of adding an adu is is when you're dealing with fire rated assemblies so what this appendix would allow

for is it prioritizes an early alert over fire resistant between those units um so it would require you to interconnect the smoke alarms and co alarms so if there was a fire in the unit above or next to you um in that building you would be notified at the same time and be able

to get out it lessens the complexity construction waste financial impacts while maintaining life safety considerations what I will know with this one is that it only applies to existing single-family homes when we're talking

about duplexes and triplexes where ADUs are allowed this appendix won't specifically apply because there is a higher hazard involved with duplexes and

triplexes as compared to a single-family detached home

Yeah. Council Member Olson.

Yeah, what would PFA think of this?

PFA had, like all fire departments, they have concerns whenever we're talking about getting rid of fire radio assembly. I think after we had a conversation and then better understanding the prioritization of early alert over fire resistance. And one of the things with fire resistance is it comes in many different forms, right? You've got fire barriers, which are meant to separate buildings. You've got firewalls that are intended to separate different occupancies. In this instance, with the one-hour fire-rated assembly, there might be a fire in the unit next door, and you may not be notified of that until it burned through or there's smoke coming through. With the interconnected smoke and carbon monoxide alarms, you're notified the second that the alarms go off. And the intent of these rated assemblies aren't to save or protect the structure. It's to protect life safety. So if we're notifying people early and often and allowing them to exit the building appropriately, that would be meeting the intent of that fire rated assembly.

Okay, and thank you. And then I wasn't clear on the slide if it's optional or required because it says requires interconnected smoke and carbon monoxide alarms. Can you do it the old way as long as you're still meeting? Do you have one or two options, or are we moving all to this?

No, it isn't optional. So if somebody can do it in one way.

Okay, that's what I thought. And then you said it I didn't. I just have to ask because it's in there. I'm trying to get my head around how this reduces construction waste.

so it would reduce construction waste in the way of when you're installing or trying to modify so if you think of an over under duplex for instance which i guess it wouldn't be a duplex but if you're considering a single family home where you've got a basement and a main floor and you're wanting to make the basement your adu in order to do that it would require generally mechanical room is down there you've got some unfinished space in the basement where the floor is exposed you don't have any drywall or it's not finished that you would have to find a way to add drywall remove some other drywall because a lot of times most of the drywall that's installed is half inch well if i write a one hour rating would require five eighths inch drywall so you would be removing the majority of that ceiling if there was existing drywall to replace it with a thicker drywall thank you so just so i'm clear and i think you kind of got

to this at the end of your statement before we had questions. So this is only for internal

ADUs? Correct. Yeah, this does not impact detached ADUs at all. Okay, so is that the language

that's being used is to an existing dwelling? Because I think some people might think that you're adding an ADU to an existing dwelling just because it's on the same land. You know what I'm saying? Certainly. So you might want to clarify that it's attached to the existing dwelling yeah yes okay thanks thanks that's what i thought so yeah i'm just curious what are the

potential cost savings with this method so the potential cost savings with an existing single family home establishing a fire rated assembly is is very difficult to do a lot of times you've got ducts and lighting and everything penetrating those fire rated assemblies so then you're talking about adding fire rated dampers into your duct work that that penetrates those fire rated assemblies additional drywall removing old drywall um it's it's cumbersome and and pretty costly to to establish a fire rated assembly in an existing home great i like this option thank you

perfect we will move on

There you go. It's only three times that time. Water demand calculator. This is a pretty exciting and new way of thinking about sizing your water pipe. So the water demand calculator is a method to right-size the piping within your building. Right now, the current method provides a minimum pipe size, but it doesn't necessarily restrict you from upsizing that pipe based off of the usage. So the volume of water that's in the pipes within the building is more significant than it needs to be. And what does that mean? Well, you're heating a lot of that water, right? So you're losing a lot of water in volume as it sits there. Fixtures aren't being used.

In addition to that, you would have to wait a longer time for the water. I don't know how many of you sit, wait outside the shower for your water to come. This partially resolves that or improves the wait time around that. So what it does is it requires designing to modern peak flows.

As we have installed low-flow toilets and low-flow fixtures, we haven't considered the water piping that serves those fixtures.

as part of that holistic design. So this is essentially what that is doing in this case.

And it will be required for multifamily residential projects, and it will be available as an option for single-family residents.

Moving on to temporary emergency uses. Oh, I apologize.

I'm not quite understanding the water demand calculator. So this is a new thing that will be required of multi-unit, right? Correct. And then because most of us no longer, I think, live in a multi-unit. So the decision was made, if it's such a good idea because people are oversizing, why wouldn't we want them to use it if it helps single-family residential projects and builders i'm missing something so i need a little help certainly yeah happy to answer that so as as we

have had conversation with uh builders and developers the the single unit residential projects are already taking advantage of the smallest meter size available from the city of Collins, and they haven't ran the calculation that requires this, but because of the demand of the building, they're already using a pipe size that is as small as available to be used. In addition to that, when we're talking about single-family residences, those that require a fire suppression system, which what we're seeing is the majority of people are using a multi-purpose fire suppression system, which is a sprinkler system that is also part of your domestic water loop in your building. That fire suppression system will take precedence over sizing your water lines 10 out of 10 times when we're looking at fixtures. So it would be a moot point to require a calculation to be performed in such cases,

such as single-family attached or duplexes that would require a fire suppression system.

Okay. And then when you say can result in savings on water development fees, ELCO and FCLWD, or Collins Living Water District, and material costs during construction. Now, since this is just an option for single-family, you're referring to multifamily here? Correct. That will result in some savings there. Do we have any idea how much? And it's not a quiz. It's not a gotcha.

Yeah, don't have any formal numbers, but that's something that we're looking at addressing prior to the regular meeting.

And then how does it improve water quality?

It improves water quality because you don't have as much water or volume of water sitting in the pipe.

So as water sits in pipe, certain bacteria and things can grow if it's not utilized as much.

So the more volume of water that's sitting in the pipe, the more likely it is to have bacteria growth within the pipe. Thanks. Yep.

All right. Temporary emergency uses. We're pretty excited about this. This is taking a few really longstanding programs and codifying them, specifically community-based shelters and seasonal overflow shelters.

For those of you not familiar with those, these are programs that have been allowed to operate as shelters with certain parameters in facilities without performing a change of occupancy.

So, we've utilized the alternative means of compliance provisions in the code rather than the prescriptive requirements of the code.

This is just memorializing that in a way and then also expanding on that as well in the way of emergency events. So, if there's an event declared by local, state, or federal, this would allow us to expand that program. to other facilities than what was previously allowed by community-based shelters and seasonal overflow shelters.

All right. Energy code.

So the track we're taking with energy code this time is we're really targeting moving away from a prescriptive path, which essentially sets up a checklist and is component-based.

So it says if you install Windows, you shall install them with these ratings. If you're installing insulation in these locations, you have to install X amount. And moving to a modeled performance path. And what that does is it increases flexibility in design for builders. It supports innovation and new technologies as they come out. It optimizes energy savings, and it's better alignment with community goals is where you transition into electrification. This is not an unfamiliar approach to energy code and building and construction in the city of Fort Collins.

And, in fact, over 50 percent of permit submittals since 2012 have submitted utilizing this approach already.

So we're just transitioning that remaining percentage that hasn't submitted with that to a performance path methodology.

And a continuation of this, as I mentioned earlier in the presentation, I kind of touched on this a little bit,

is about transparency and adding that transparency years in advance so builders and developers have an idea of where we're setting targets

to meet our 2030 carbon neutral building goals that we've done. So commercial, the EUI is energy use index target.

So we're setting targets that they have to meet based off of the modeling.

And you essentially model a prescriptive home, and you can't be less than that.

So you're not less co-compliant than what prescriptive would require. but you can do things like trade out different windows or different insulation that normally you wouldn't be able to do.

The great news about this, too, is as we walk through this and people familiarize themselves with the targets that we've set,

the 27 code and the 30 code won't be required.

We're just letting people know wherever we set those targets. So it's really for this adoption would be the 2024 code.

targets that we're setting for that. There's already a few examples of

projects in town that are meeting or exceeding these requirements, so it can

be done, it can be built, which is exciting.

And finally there's a the cost impact analysis. We're actively working on a more comprehensive cost impact analysis there has been a few reports that have

been released one by the department of energy and one by the national association of home builders

both of them are look promising and and and that it's less impactful than previous code adoptions

have been from the years prior and preliminary estimates appear to show that the adoption of

the 2024 codes and amendments will increase the cost of construction less than one percent when compared to the 2021 codes and amendments.

And that concludes my presentation.

We'll follow back up.

Yeah, I need to follow up on what you just said before I get three quick questions, and that's it.

So you said to the energy and then the home builders, that wasn't about the cost, but you're saying they're showing that performance doesn't work as well as prescriptive? Did I hear that right?

No, the prescriptive, which is what we are proposing, allows for additional flexibility. And it's...

We're moving to performance, right? Correct. And that's showing better results?

It is. And it allows us to, the thing with prescriptive is we don't, we aren't, we don't explicitly know exactly how those buildings will perform. When we go to a performance path, we're actually modeling the exact building that will be built. And when we do that, we're able to, through the software that's available in modeling buildings, we're able to identify exactly how those buildings will. Operate and perform from a CO2 standpoint and an energy usage standpoint, which helps us as we go into the next code cycles and moving forward on where we need to improve or where we can bring back on codes if we've gone too far.

Could we go back to the chart, the one page back, please, or the slide 15 on the commercial and the residential timing? I just, we are who we are. Back, no, this one.

Yeah, right there. Yeah.

So it says the 2024 code EUI target, and in four months, we're in 2026. So I'm trying to get my handle on that. I don't understand that. And then I'm assuming the 2027 means it's effective 2028 if we're doing it the way we're doing it. And the 2030 means effective 2031. So it's not intentionally. That's not what I'm implying or meaning at all. But it's actually kind of a 2031 target.

It would be so the dates that are listed. The effective date would be 2031. It would be the effective date. So the dates that are included there are the code addition cycles.

I'd probably add something, especially when you're doing the outreach, that that's a whole other year that it's not effective until 2031 and 2028 and all of that.

My other questions are just on the performance versus, and I'm not going to argue that it's going in the wrong direction, and I don't pretend to have all the specifics. But I'll give an example. I lived on the same block 45 years. I don't think there's a house, 30 houses or 40, that haven't redone their windows.

A couple that I know of, I've done them twice in that period because they're really cheap, really horrible to begin with. And you redo your windows and you comply, but you don't know that the, in new homes,

say if you have a home and it's built with very little insulation or not much insulation because you make up for it in windows, and then you replace the windows in the future, and no one has any idea how much insulation is in their house. So I'm a little, I get wrapped around the axles going, how does that work?

Yeah, so luckily with current technology, all permits that are issued for new buildings right now on those plans are retained, and we can reference those when those kind of projects come up. So that's something that they could remodel to show that, or they could show prescriptive compliance with that existing building. the other note I'll put on that is we used to not require permits for window replacement and with the 21 codes we require permits with windows so we will be involved and aware of when those come up so they will have to meet

required building codes. I've got a history with the city on retaining records and we just had an issue where we hadn't retained the records that was quite a while back just two weeks ago or four weeks ago so we're planning on keeping the building building uh records like for a long time yes okay do you do that oh i just had to work in a mother son thing um and then how do we know on the on the my most important one to me anyway is on the new performance things versus the whatever

the other word is do we actually check compliance that's i mean what's the point if we don't check to see that it's actually working the way it's supposed to so could you just give us a one minute

or less on that one yeah absolutely um this is a great opportunity for me to give credit where credit is due we got some of the the most incredible building service building staff um i i would put them up against just about anyone in the state maybe and in the country as far as their knowledge and ability to assess complex plans and building codes and make sure that they're in compliance. And in both the plan review phase, catching on the front end, as well as inspecting,

we have incredible staff that ensures that they are in compliance and they understand how to look at modeling homes and assess building codes as we...

And just to be clear, it's not on paper.

We go out and then make sure it actually performs the way we think so on the front end that it's on paper and plans as we're reviewing it and Hopefully if if they're not meeting code at that time we catch it on the front end So we're not catching them by surprise on the back end in the field. So that's always our goal But you check on the back end 100% yeah, that's thank you. Yes

Well, I think I'm just gonna say thank you to Greg John I was just taking all the times you met, which was 18 times three hours each time, 54 hours times 24 people is 1,296 person hours. And you included water, fire, regional people, builders, and other experts.

I'm just very impressed. I think that's what gets a good product and all the considerations you put into it. But I did have one question, and Emily and I were wondering, who is this Caleb Zulzin, the code guru.

He's a building code consultant.

We just thought that's cool. Just teasing you. No, I think it's great. And I think that if you give me an option to weigh in on page 137, slide 10, And I think there's a real argument to be made about new technology coming in, different ways to charge, and then having a lot of overbuild in terms of the – so I would choose alternative two. I mean, I have an EV, but I don't – I have a charger at my house, but I don't use it very much. I just charge as a supercharger. So, I mean, there's all sorts of options for charging that we don't have to have every individual have their own. you know charger so if that would be my feeling um yeah millie yeah thank you and thanks for the

presentation this was great and i really appreciated you giving us kind of the legislative update because i know a lot of new developments had occurred um i just wanted to make sure that you all had been filled in on the recommendations for our women and gender equity advisory board just they had some suggestions around kind of a what i would assume is kind of an easy fix around gender-neutral bathroom signage um we can probably get that to you i know the mayor responded but um that was something that i think other communities have built into their building codes

so i can make sure we don't need to discuss it i just wanted to every time a board brings

something from their area of expertise i just want to make sure we're including in the conversation

yeah no i i don't know if i've seen it personally i'd love to take a look at it and respond If able what I will say though is that we've required a general neutral site signage on single user bathroom since

2021 code. Okay. Thank you so much. I think the request is to require for not just new built but existing

So resigning for single actively. Yeah, and just resigning I believe

Yeah, it sounds like the mayor can forward you that communication But it just seemed like something that was a pretty easy thing to consider in the grand scope when you guys are considering things that are much more sweeping. So I just wanted to say nothing. Nothing is easy. I do recognize that. But.

No, I'd love to take a look and consider how we could might be able to implement that. Okay. Perfect.

And yeah, thanks for sharing all your expertise tonight. Really appreciate it.

Thank you. This was really great. Easy to understand. So thank you for that. So I just have a couple follow-up.

And this is kind of coming from experiencing some of the things with the new building code.

So I agree your inspectors are all very, very great.

But is there a possibility to move forward with maybe having the same inspector throughout a process?

Because I know we had some issues where things came up in the end we didn't know about.

Yeah, that's something that we revisit often. I think that it presents some benefits, certainly, with familiarity and consistency on that.

Alternatively, it presents some challenges in the way of if someone's sick or on vacation. Or in addition to that, I think that cross-training is really important

and is one of the bigger reasons why we have such great educated staff as we do today.

And one really important piece of cross-training is for newer inspectors to be able to follow more experienced inspectors on certain jobs

and they're able to see what they failed them for and have conversations on the back end. So it's something that we're working on, trying to figure out what the right balance is there.

And I don't have a definite answer for you. Yeah.

And I will also add my own bias that I'm going through remodel is one of the worst processes in the entire world. And if anyone does it, I would encourage you to not live in your house at the same time. No. Yeah. Sorry. So that is a side note. Just a little PSA for everyone out there. um and then i also had a well also a plug for the um because i know we got our windows maybe four years ago through the um what's the name of the program efficiency works yes thank you um which is a great way if you need to get new windows um i do have a question and i know caleb's back there behind me when people so now that we are tracking because they have to get permits when homes get new windows doesn't that little by little affect our emissions goals it certainly would um it's

a lot easier to track in new construction than kind of bits and pieces so i think that that's certainly part of the conversation and how do we better track those data points and and um And man, that sounds like a terrible spreadsheet. But yeah, we're having more conversations on how we can better track the incremental and independent smaller projects as they're slowly upgrading their homes on how that impacts it. But it certainly impacts it. We just don't have the data to support. It's harder to gain the data on those smaller projects than it is with new construction when we're comparing what's built under the 24 codes to the 21 codes to the 2018 codes.

And then, I'm sorry, I was distracted, but did I hear correctly? So if someone just has to replace one window, do they still have to get a permit? Yes, they do. So what does that add to cost?

Like, let's just say it's a very small window that was broken by a baseball or something like that. Yes. Yeah, I mean, it would be. Just asking for a friend, yeah.

It's valuation-based, so the permit fee wouldn't exceed $65, but the valuation would change potentially the sales tax. So the size of the window, location, the quality of the window, permit prices do vary depending on the scale of the project.

Okay. Thank you for letting me just apply some real-world experience to what this can look like. Thank you. Anyone else?

Yeah, I just have a few questions about the zero carbon new construction. So I understand the modeled performance path is more flexible and easier. My concern is that from what I've heard from builders and developers is who you get reviewing this can determine whether or not you're approved. And so how are we balancing? And I'm not saying this specifically. I mean in our development review in general. So how are we uniformly applying? When we're approving someone if it's because prescriptive is predictable so If it's too flexible and one person may approve it, but another staff person may not approve it

How are we checking for that and and modeling is predictable in a lot of ways to write is that we've got these backdrops Essentially that you have to meet and if you meet or exceed those you're approved So the beautiful thing about building codes is it doesn't have preference on who you are or what you're building It's saying that if you build these things you have to comply with this and the same is with that modeling versus perspective Prescriptive is just done in in different ways to where you're setting a backdrop. You're saying you have to meet These targets and if you meet or exceed those targets you would be approved. So there's less interpretation than in the land use code Very much so. Okay.

That's helpful. Thank you. And then I had a question from the advisory committee who met about the zero carbon. Just at the end, there were some comments about concern about complexity and cost. Can you just maybe elaborate on what they're referring to?

Specifically to the energy code? Is that what it was related to?

Yeah, zero carbon construction code, community advisory group, and stakeholder summary. at the end there's comments from the group and what and some of them are about the concern of adding complexity and cost yeah so I without knowing all

of the context I'll try to answer that question for you so with modeling like I said over 50% of the permits that we see they're already doing this work so there won't be much of an impact there to them granted the the people that are not currently modeling, we'll have to either get familiar with those software systems or generally hire a modeling consultant to help them model that product for them moving forward. There will be additional education on modeling as well, so there will be guiding documents and us helping them understand what modeling looks like and why we're doing it. What I will say too is generally when you model something, you can find creative ways for cost savings. So if you look at it, so... So in a lot of cases, hiring that consultant can pay for itself based off of how you're constructing a house. So if you take a checklist prescriptively and you have to meet all of these requirements, you can't do any kind of tradeoffs based off of what the market's doing with certain materials. So when you're modeling, if windows are really expensive to do super low energy, but insulation is cheap, you can do some tradeoffs in that modeling. So you're not complying less with prescriptive code. You're just doing it in a way that allows you to kind of flex and mold with markets and with how people want to design their buildings.

Okay, so is the cost analysis that you're doing including all of this like the hiring consultants and the extra work and time It takes and adds to a project

If those things will definitely be considered as part of that cost analysis Yes, okay

And then the cost analysis coming from the US Department of Energy and National Associated Home Builders Is that looking at Fort Collins code updates or just the international building code updates?

That is just looking at the prescriptive changes from the 2021 codes to the 2024 codes. So that's not considering local amendments.

Okay. I think, do we have a way to account for that?

We do. And that's something we're currently working on right now is that comparative analysis, the more robust and complete analysis that we'll have prior to the first reading.

That will include the local amendments? Correct. And in that analysis, could you also just note when Fort Collins is going above and beyond the state requirements? We can do that. Okay, great. Thank you.

Great. Those are good comments. Let's go to Tricia then Kelly.

Yeah, I just wanted to echo those concerns with the costs and bringing that all forward. But I want to say thank you too on the EV charging piece. I think this is the beauty at the local level. We passed this after I was originally elected in 2021. And it's great to see that we can look at the data and make changes so quickly. And that's what I love about the local level. So thanks for really taking that into account. I think about phone ports in the wall and when do we get rid of those and the change in technology. So it's great to see you thinking about that. Thank you. Of course.

Okay.

Thanks, Mayor. Just a couple things. The first one's for the city manager. It kind of piggybacks on the issue that we had earlier tonight about why do we even have fees in telling that story. And then tonight, this one leads in one way. It's the implementation of new building standards can impact the construction industry and local economy. That's absolutely true. But I think we should tell the story more because it can also save people money. It can have healthier indoor air quality. It can increase safety. It can address the climate crisis. It can reduce utility costs. So I think in every issue that comes to us, without putting a thumb on the scale, you can have, you know, I think there's usually more than two sides to an issue. But at the very minimum, if you're going to say things like it can impact the construction industry, we should also tell the story of what building codes also do long term. And then in keeping with my editing things for the evening, when it comes to us for first reading, I wish the state had passed the Colorado Wildlife Resiliency Code, but I think we meant wildfire.

But I wish we had the Wildlife Resiliency Code. Maybe I'm going to recommend that through the Legislative Review Committee.

I'm doing push-ups right now.

What's that? Yeah.

They're out working.

Good catch, Kayle. Anybody else?

Gosh. That's it.

Thank you.

That's all we have tonight.

We only had two items for night. You're all looking at me. Sorry. We only have two items this evening.

So now I get to ask who has any announcements.

Any announcements? Okay. Seeing none, we're adjourned. Good night, Fort Collins.

Thank you.