City Council Regular Meeting — November 3, 2025

Good evening Fort Collins and welcome to the proclamation portion of tonight's meeting. The time is now 5 p.m. and we have four proclamations this evening. The first is declaring the day of November 8th, 2025 as the 30th anniversary of Art in Public Places. If you would like to support this proclamation please come on up.

hello welcome great and who's gonna be receiving the proclamation you are okay great all right so here we go whereas in April 1995 the city of Fort Collins council in recognition that art transforms ordinary spaces into meaningful places thereby enhancing the quality of life of fort collins citizens and to fulfill its wishes to expand the opportunity for public art to be accessible for all to enjoy enacted the city code that formed the art in public places program and whereas the program has created and maintained 186 capital and donated art projects 450 transformer cabinet murals 191 piano murals and 431 pedestrian pavers within city limits, adding a total of 1,258 pieces of art to Fort Collins. And whereas the program's mission is to encourage and enhance artistic expression and appreciation and add value to the Fort Collins community through acquiring, exhibiting, and maintaining public art. And whereas the art in public places has been recognized for its many successes and innovations, including graffiti abatement through transformer cabinet murals, community building through pianos about town, beautification of city properties through integrated art projects, and many other accomplishments. And whereas a celebration is planned on November 8th to mark Art in Public Places anniversary that will highlight public art successes, bring awareness to the importance of public art, show appreciation to those who celebrate art within our community, recognize board and council members past and present, show gratitude to artists and city capital project teams, and encourage residents to enjoy the public art that is everywhere. and whereas the city of fort collins seeks to celebrate with its residents the many ways that aren't in public places makes this a world-class community now therefore i am lee francis mayor potem of the city of fort collins do hereby proclaim november 8th 2025 as the 30th anniversary of our in public places in fort collins to celebrate that public art is a dynamic part of the fort collins identity it is an economic engine celebrates local history enhances the visual environment and promotes community for the city of Fort Collins and its

residents so thank you I just want to thank everyone for celebrating with us now and then hopefully come join us on November 8th to celebrate again it takes the village board members staff and the whole community so thank you very much the celebration is at the Center for creativity on November 8th which is a Saturday 6 to 8 30 p.m. and we will be having all kinds of activities so please come join us

so thank you so much thank you for all your work It's one of the best programs you have.

All right.

Next, we have declaring the day of November 10, 2025 as the United States Marine Corps 250th anniversary.

Come on up.

All right. Are you going to be accepting? Yes. Great. Okay.

All right.

So, whereas on November 10, 2025, the United States of America commemorates the historic anniversary of the United States Marine Corps, founding in Philadelphia's Tun Tavern in 1775 and plays tribute to the generations of Marines who have faithfully defended her ideals. And whereas for 250 years, the Marine Corps has stood as a symbol of honor, courage, and commitment, answering our nation's call to service in every clime and place.

And whereas Marine Corps history is etched with storied battles and remarkable bravery from the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, through the brutal campaigns of Belua, Wood, and Iwo Jima, and in recent conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, Marines have earned their reputation as America's elite force.

And whereas the Marine Corps motto, Semper Fidelis, always faithful, a promise of eternal and collective commitment to victory in battle, the progress of our nation and unwavering loyalty to the fellow Marines and the story of the Marine Corps is a story of America, an enduring struggle for liberty, justice, and security.

We honor the few and the proud who embody the very best of the American spirit. And whereas on this 250th birthday, we not only celebrate the past, but also recognize the vibrant, resilient, and forward-looking core of today, ready to meet the challenges of tomorrow and illuminating the path for those who will follow. And whereas many members of the Military Community Resource Group from the City of Fort Collins, Poodle Fire Authority, and the Library District employees are Marines, And the Military Community Employee Resource Group supports active duty reservists and veterans of the Marine Corps and their family.

Now therefore, I am Lee Francis, Mayor Pro Tem of the City of Fort Collins, to hereby proclaim November 10, 2025 as the United States Marine Corps' 250th anniversary.

My name is Kyle Benza. I'm with Police Services. I'm in my 24th year. and I am a Marine. Tonight we adopt this proclamation, when we adopt this proclamation, we do more than mark a historic milestone. We honor those Marines standing among us and those representing the city's military community employee resource group. 250 years ago the United States Marine Corps was born in Tun Tavern in Philadelphia forging a nation, forged for a nation that we needed warriors of courage and character. At the same time, the same spirit lives in our Marines that serve the city every day. To the Marines in this city, our police officers, firefighters, public works crews and veterans, you now protect and maintain our community. Thank you. With this proclamation, our city proudly salutes your sacrifice, your service and your steadfast devotion. Happy 250th birthday, United States Marines Semper Fi. steadfast devotion. Happy 250th birthday United States Marine Semper Fi.

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All right.

Are we ready? Are you accepting this one? Yes. Okay, great. Whereas the City of Fort Collins has numerous residents who have answered the call of freedom, who have fought to defend our country and its interest, whether during peacetime or war. And whereas the City of Fort Collins, Poudre Library District, and the Poudre Fire Authority have staff that include active duty, reservists, veterans, and their family members, and whereas the City of Fort Collins is an employee resource group to support the military community in these organizations, and which help advocate for the City of Fort Collins and Allied Agency veterans, active duty, reservists, and military family members. And whereas our veterans have defended the values that make our nation strong, their love of country and dedication to duty have endured adversity, loneliness, and loss. Our veterans have put their lives on the line to protect our Republican freedom around the world and at home. Our veterans fully understand liberty's high and precious cost. And whereas we cannot forget that we enjoy the privileges of peace, prosperity, and freedom because of our veterans and are forever indebted to them. And whereas we honor our wounded warriors, we remember those who are still missing in action or prisoners of war. We who answer the call to serve. Now therefore, I, Emily Francis, Mayor Pro Tem of the City of Fort Collins, do hereby proclaim November 11, 2025 as Veteran Day. On that day, let us pause to pay tribute to all who have proudly worn our nation's uniform and recognize their valor, courage, sacrifice, and dedication to service of our community and our greater nation. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. My name is Eric Kluver, United States Army veteran and Army National Guard veteran. November 11th, Veterans Day is and has been a special day set aside to honor Americans' veterans for their patriotism,

love of country, and willingness to serve and sacrifice for the freedom we enjoy. It is fitting that this date should be commended or commemorated, excuse me, with Thanksgiving and prayer. We honor the bravery and commitment to those who valiantly held a weapon and stood a post in service because, and we must never forget, the cost of freedom is not free. We will always remember those who lost and appreciate the continuing impact so many veterans and their families have in our community. We honor you, appreciate you, and are deeply indebted to you. Now may the Lord God bless you and keep you, make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord God turn his face towards you and give you peace. Thank you.

All right. And our last proclamation is declaring the week of November 2 through 8 2025 as law enforcement records personnel week

Come on down. Oh, you're staying up here

No, no, right are you accepting okay great? All right whereas the dedicated law enforcement records personnel for Collins play a vital role in serving our community by providing essential information, support, and services to residents, public safety professionals, and judicial partners. And whereas these professionals are integral to the success of law enforcement operations, supporting every phase from the initial phone call to investigation to legal proceedings. And whereas the management of records and information is essential for ensuring accountability, transparency, and operational continuity. And whereas law enforcement records personnel are trusted stewards of sensitive information, ensuring that vital information is well organized, secure, accessible, and compliant with all applicable laws and regulations. And whereas records personnel serve a pivotal role as a public facing representatives of the police department, providing excellent customer service to our community, agency members, and criminal justice partners. And whereas records personnel serving the city of Fort Collins demonstrate professionalism, efficiency, and compassion in the performance of their essential duties, and it is both fitting and important to acknowledge the hard, detail-oriented, and often behind-the-scenes work they perform each day. Now, therefore, I am Lee Francis, Mayor of the City of Fort Collins, to hereby proclaim November 2nd through 8th, 2025, as Law Enforcement Records Personnel Week. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yes, yes.

All right, my name is Justin Aller.

I have the honor of serving as the Director of Information Services over records. We have 24 amazing personnel.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak about their professionalism and really the formation of the formation of police services and the exceptional services they provide to the community, including these exceptional leaders here to my left.

Again, appreciate them and their hard work. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you all for your work. Yes, of course.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah.

All right.

That is all the proclamations for this evening.

Thank you, everyone, for coming and everyone for tuning in. Stay tuned for our regular City Council meeting beginning at 6 p.m.

Good evening, Fort Collins. The time is now 6 p.m., and I call the regular meeting of the Fort Collins City Council to order.

Tonight, we have Spanish interpretation available online, so I'm going to turn it over to our interpreters, Lydia and Eric, on Zoom to explain how to listen online.

good evening if you want to select the spanish channel just go to the lower bottom of your screen select the the globe and channel is spanish for the simultaneous and if you are in a computer

it's at the top with the three dots you have to select the spanish channel in order to hear it

Spanish. If you want to follow the session in Spanish, go to the bottom of your team, select the globe that says interpretation, channel in Spanish, and you can follow the session in Spanish. If you have a computer, in the top of the top there are three points. Select the screen there and it will be interpretation, channel in Spanish. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Will you all please join me for the Pledge of Allegiance?

Will the clerk please call the roll.

Arndt. Francis. Here. Olsen. Here. Pat Yandy here Canonico here Pina

Carol, Gutowski? Here. All right. We have five of us here for quorum. So we appreciate all who have joined us tonight, either in person or virtually. I want to remind everyone that we are here for the same purpose, which is the future of our community. I ask that we be respectful and listen to others' viewpoints, be thoughtful about others as they are speaking and afterwards, and tonight everyone will have a chance to be heard. Will the city manager please provide a review of today's agenda? Yes. Thank you, Mayor Portem. We do not have any changes to our published agenda.

And the consent calendar includes 15 items. I will say for the night before election we were planning a brief meeting But we now have six discussion items. So we're all settled in with our caffeine up here Updating capital expansion and transportation expansion fees tree policy code amendments the annual appropriation for the 2026 budget A public hearing to amend the service plan for Montauva metro districts number one through seven and then finally the southeast community center funding

great thank you there are no community reports tonight so will the staff play the public

participation video there are three ways to participate in city council meetings in person in council chambers online via zoom or by phone

anyone who wants to speak during general comment or for any particular agenda item

should sign up in advance at fcgov.com slash council comments.

You can comment on any topic, including other agenda items, during the public comment period.

Or you can comment on specific items when they are brought for consideration later in the meeting.

However, you may only speak on an agenda item once, either during general public comment or during that item-specific discussion.

The mayor will call by name those who have signed up to speak in the order they signed up.

Connect to the internet on your computer or mobile device and join the Zoom meeting.

The link and instructions are on the meeting agenda and at fcgov.com.

Click the raise hand button and leave it raised until called on.

dial the number shown on the meeting agenda and enter the meeting id

press star 9 to raise your hand please note that public comment is not permitted about any items that could be appealed to city council like certain kinds of development projects information and resources about how to participate in the development review process are available on the City's website. Finally, please remember that public comment is not a question and answer session and all comments should be addressed to City Council, not to individuals. All speakers and audience members should treat everyone with respect and dignity, maintain a welcoming environment, and avoid actions that could be distracting. Please enter and exit Council Chambers quietly if the

meeting is still in progress all right now we will hear public comment to ensure we have accurate information of all up speakers are required or required to register prior to 530 for public comment if you registered online prior to 530 your name will be displayed on the screen and if you are currently a member of the city border Commission we ask that you please identify yourself and indicate if you're speaking on behalf of yourself or the board and Commission at this point we have 17 people signed up before 530 and as we said we do have a very full agenda tonight so we are going to do two and a half minutes for everyone this evening for those in chambers we just ask that you come up when you see your name when you see the green light you can start speaking 30 when you see the yellow light you have 30 seconds and then red light we kindly ask you to stop your comments so we will move on so the first person we have is Chloe this Chloe here okay I'm not seeing Chloe we'll go to Garrett so okay just reminder to say your name and your general address and

then you can start good evening my name is Garrett Putman and I'm 14 years old I'm a member of the Fort Collins Youth Advisory Board the Fort Collins area swim team fast Fort Collins High School boys swimming and diving and scouts with troop 83 tonight I'm speaking as a 14 year old that has used a lot of city facilities in a multitude of ways having been born here I would first like to

thank you for your support of what and I hope will be the full funding of the southeast community center I swim competitively with fast and with Fort Collins high school I've seen firsthand how important it is to have enough space in the pool. When there are lots of groups using the pool spaces like Norco

Diving, Swim Teams, PFA, Scuba, Dive Rescue, CSU, Kayaks, CSU, ROTC, and Swim Lessons, it becomes hard for the public and scouts to use it also. That makes it

harder for all of us to practice, learn, compete, or enjoy the pool. I liked seeing at our Youth Advisory Board meeting, the SECC plans, and the chance to include 10 swim lanes and a diving board, plus the gyms, meeting rooms, the outdoor pool, park, and the library. We need the planned facilities to accommodate our town that keeps growing. That's why tonight, I hope y'all keep all 10 swim lanes and diving board in the final plan. Our city is growing, and we will need this whole facility. We need the pool that can keep up, not just now, but also in the future. Thank you again for listening and the continued support of the things that make Fort Collins a great place to live.

Thank you. Next we have Sam.

Go ahead. Sam Marsh, District 2. As we sit in our warm, comfortable homes, a horrific genocide is being perpetrated against the Palestinian people using our tax dollars, over $11.5 million from this city alone. The recently published UN commissioned article using more than 16,000 pieces of evidence collected from over two years has found that Israel has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide against Palestinians, and that there is genocidal intent. The ceasefire has been broken by Israel countless times, same as with all previous ceasefires. All it did was have Hamas return all of their hostages and Israel return some of their hostages and some of the bodies of those brutally murdered by Israel with their organs removed, a horrific violation of international law and basic unalienable human rights and dignity. Under the Genocide Convention of 1948, all governments are legally required to one, not be complicit in genocide, and two, actively make an effort to stop and prevent genocide, both of which apply to local governments in the United States as well. However, within our own community and with the support of our governments, local, state, and federal, companies like Woodward and Lockheed Martin make weapons used in the slaughter of innocent Palestinians. Our complicity must be stopped. Fort Collins must divest from all Israeli companies as well as those supporting the Zionist project. We must stop weapons manufacturing in our city. I know there is a way to make that happen. You just have to push for what is right instead of for what's easy. Additionally, the city government must publicly oppose genocide and the Israelis stopping desperately needed humanitarian aid from reaching Palestine. We can set the example for other cities to follow. Around 61% of Americans want an arms embargo. If you truly serve the public, you will support the majority's attempts to end Fort Cullen's complicity and genocide instead of ignoring us. We must take action to stop our support of Zionist settler colonialism and genocide. In refusing to take action and end all support of Israel, both militarily and economically, until the genocide is fully over, this council is in violation of international law. any official who doesn't uphold their basic duties to no thank you next we have ann and then

we'll have sandra good evening city council i have four things i'd love to review with you tonight i'm ann hutchison president ceo of the fort collins area chamber i'm also a resident of district one first is to say happy small business month um the fort collins area chamber alongside our partners at Visit Fort Collins, the city, the DDA, and others are taking advantage of this month to remind our community about how important small business is to the success of our community. We had one of our first events of the season today at Visit Fort Collins where we rolled out an early preview of the shop local icon that we're bringing back with a very specific campaign around reminding our community how important shopping local is and how easy it is for you to activate and actually help small business continue to thrive in fort collins but one off to that is to do a note of thanks and celebration to the city staff today they hosted alongside others a bioscience pitch competition at the tmi campus at csu and so we had over 25 small growing bioscience companies that were pitching to local local VCs as well as national VCs with their ideas and their opportunity it was incredibly well done and I just want to salute your economic health staff for the good work there very quickly in my last minute I do want to invite you to vote no on capital expansion fees this council has made it a priority to affect the cost of housing in Fort Collins, passing these fees does nothing but add to the cost of a home. I'm also going to encourage you to delay approving your tree mitigation program. I think that the comments from our business community clearly showed that this is not ready for prime time, that you've got conflict between the ideas and the execution. We encourage you to send that back to staff to do a little bit more work. And then finally, just want to comment on your building performance conversation that you had last Tuesday and encourage you to lean in heavily on incentives not on regulation again there's a theme all the way through and that is affordability in our community whether it's from a business perspective or a housing perspective each decision you make does impact the ability for cost of living to be moderate or to be very expensive at

Collins thank you Sandra and that's we have Rebecca hi my name is Sandy hooks

I'm at three zero zero eight Shore Road I'm here to express my and many swimmers views on continuing to fund the design and plan for the new SECC ten lane pool and not reduce the number of lanes this is a bit of a deja vu experience for me about I was here probably 20 years ago talking about expanding pool lanes because my boys were both swimmers, both for FAST and for Poudre High School. So kind of back again, hopefully a little more successful this time. At that time, Fort Collins was about 130,000 people, and now we're about 170,000 people, and we still have no more lane space. So I wanted to express my opinion about this. This recently became really apparent to me because I accepted a role as the girls' head swim coach at Poudre High School. And what I found out is out of six high schools which practice in the city's pools, We're one of the smaller teams. We have about 25 swimmers. And the only practice time that we have available is either 515 in the morning or 645 in the morning at the Mulberry Pool. And then typically we share those lanes with both the Wellington Timnath team as well as the Rocky Mountain team. So a lot of times we'll have anywhere between 10 and 15 swimmers per lane. So pretty early time for the girls and me as the coach to get up. And it gets to be really difficult to have a good workout. Just so if you don't know, Fossil, Collins, and Liberty Common all practice alternating early mornings and also afternoons at Epic, and they share the pool both with recreational swimmers and the FAST swim team. And FAST has over 500 members right now. They're so full that they can't even recruit any more swimmers because they don't have the pool space. The Vortex swim team also has about 130 members, and they use the Mulberry pool, so again, they share that with us as well. so for those of you who don't want to add it all up it amounts to about a thousand swimmers regularly using the swim lanes and that's in addition to the recreational swimmers and also kids and families that use those pools and I know that you know as council it's a juggling act to figure out which facilities and sports to fund but I want to emphasize the following about swimmers and swimming I know swimming is a lifetime sport I mean I see swimmers from five to nine years old I've been swimming a long time I said a lot of my cohorts swimming is a life saving skill I was really surprised when I moved to Colorado from Wisconsin 40 years ago that we don't teach swimming in school You know, I think it's really important for people to know how to swim and I think it's a life-changing sport again I've seen people swimming up and into their 90s and you know I think fitness and health are really an important part of our community. It's also good stress release You can't bring your phone in. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Next we have Rebecca and then we'll have as Raya

Good evening My name is Rebecca Schultz. I live in the southeast side of town near Fossil Ridge High School with my husband, two daughters, and foreign exchange student from Spain. I'd like to express my sincere gratitude for the city council for supporting the Southeast Community Center. It's very exciting to see a project that we, the citizens, voted for come to fruition.

The SECC will make a huge impact on the community and especially my two girls. My oldest is a voracious reader, so she'll love to have more books right at her fingertips. My youngest loves to swim, and between both of them, I foresee many hours at the indoor and outdoor pools, enjoying the time with all their neighborhood friends.

Having a facility like this will be a game changer for our community, as we won't have to drive across town to the city park pool or the northern rec center to play basketball.

It will be a safe place for kids to...

We have a lot of experience in our youth. I would also like to emphasize the importance of adding additional indoor pool space. In an active city like Fort Collins, the competitive swim teams, high schools, dive teams, and community programs are all vying for limited pool time. The SECC will greatly help meet this growing demand. Thank you for caring about the social, emotional, and physical wellness of the Southeast Fort Collins residents. I truly appreciate your commitment to our community's quality of life. Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Azraya.

Then we'll have Emily.

Good evening, Mayor and Council.

Azraya Steyer, District 3. So this weekend, I was busy violating Section 17-42 of City Code, and I managed to rack up about $15,000 worth of potential fines in just a few hours. For those of you who don't know, Section 17-42 of City Code prohibits affixing posters or handbills to public property such as light poles, traffic poles, etc.

What I did was use a bit of scotch tape to affix this sign to subtract the poles while carbonate.

I'm sure you can put that $15,000 to good use, but unfortunately I don't have that kind of cash fly around, so I'm really relying on you guys to have the common sense to see that that is very

disproportionate to the offense of attaching this to a light pole. What I want to highlight also is

number of technically illegal signs advertising garage sales. It was suggested to me last meeting that the reason the disordinance has not been enforced for a decade is there was no way for you to track down who put the signs up. Well, most people, when they're having a garage sale, put their home address on the sign. And if you have their home address on the sign, it should be rather easy for you to track down who put it up. Now, obviously, it would be rather

ridiculous to start giving fines to every family that holds a yard sale, every kid who's looking for the lost dog, every teenager who's advertising their summer job, and I'm glad you have the common sense to not do that. So what I'm saying is, this ordinance has not been enforced for years, not because it's unenforceable, but because it's ridiculous. And if you did enforce it consistently, there would be a lot more angry constituents in here than just me. So having this law that's unenforceable consistently on the books is just a recipe for it to be enforced arbitrarily and inconsistently. So what I'm asking you to do is strike this ordinance from city code, make it so that posting handbills is only prohibited when it actually interferes with city-sided or is distracting to drivers. Thank you. Thank you.

Emily, and the next we'll have Aaron. Hi, my name is Emily Petty. I'm a student at Fossil Ridge High School and also a swimmer for FAST or Fort Collins Area Swim Team. I've been swimming for my high school team. this will be my third year and I can't help but notice the overwhelming amount like lack of pool space we have um people from my friends from other teams are practicing at 5 30 in the morning 45 minutes away from where they live and recreational space is being taken up from the swim teams on fast there will be nights where I see all but two lanes taken up and the deep end taken up by like fast pretty much every single day. I think even if we need, I would appreciate if the like original plans went to code, but I also understand budget cuts are big. But I want to thank you for your time and listening to all of our needs. Thank you.

Thank you. Next we have Aaron. And then we'll have Rich.

Aaron Millian, 1436 West Oak. I'm the CEO chairman of Waterhorse Resources, a new water supply project out of the Green River Basin. We're getting ready to initiate construction on that project. The intent of the project is to bring in a new water supply for agriculture, environmental and stream flows, some municipal use, reservoir storage, and hydropower. We've been on hiatus for a while while we would advance the engineering. the current project will bring water into the North Fork of the Poudre and then the Poudre River system, which we believe will help some in-stream flows. From a policy perspective, Fort Collins and the region has always been in front of the nexus between water, agriculture, and energy. We've been evaluating with CSU and their leadership team a conceptual opportunity for the Fort Collins community, City Council, to perhaps support a new 10,000 to 12,000 acre irrigation district research park north of town on the Meadow Springs Ranch. That's a 26,000 acre ranch the city bought a few decades ago for biosolids. They run some mother cows on it during the winter. we've been working with CSU Civil to develop a large sprinkler irrigated irrigation district. We believe it would be a catalyst to work with Colorado State University, expand the RDEC facility, which currently is landlocked. The Meadow Springs Ranch is about four or five miles north and primarily west of the RDEC CSU research facility. As a former student there several times and doing master's there the the ability for the students to work hands-on with the eggs is diminished significantly and so even over the last 10 years so this would be a new opportunity to work from a regional perspective to enhance the agricultural base new water supply perhaps help in stream flows with the Poudre River system and and meet some of the needs of the overall region and community. So thank you. Thank you, Rich. And then we have Kristen.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, counselors. Rich Stave, average citizen of Fort Collins,

80525. I was talking about number seven, and we, on the bigger potential is climate change,

to me is kind of an oxymoron. And I think we sometimes would benefit from a change in climate.

So when we talk about rates, it was in the quote, 85 bucks a month, 6% increase in utilities for someone that gets all their utilities from the city of Fort Collins. SSI was giving a 2.5% raise of 56 a month. And those people have to pay for everything in addition to utilities. So I don't think just jacking up more and more utilities. And I think what goes into that is there's items that are driving pricing. There's construction projects with unproven technologies. There's monopolized delivery and pricing. There's conflicts of interest in that. There's limiting choices, all electric. so what happens if there's a better future choice?

There's kind of a partisan agenda that's buried into that. There's monetizing the income streams by spending at the expense of future technologies and ideas. And I sometimes scratch my head, is Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette living in the current world? On the national level, there's, let's build a ballroom.

I'm going like, yeah, so what? It doesn't do anything for me. It doesn't help me pay my taxes.

On regional, there's choices that are being made with legislation that basically limit the choices that others can make in the best ways possible in their own personal decisions. In the local level, we basically remove choices for expedient politics.

and an example of that is why is the government subsidizing the buying of cars for those who

already can afford one so basically we're giving all this money for electric vehicles but a lot of

people can't even afford a basic car I don't really understand where we're headed with all this program thank you thank you Kristen oh she's online okay go ahead Kristen

Kristen, can you unmute yourself?

Oh, thank you. Can you hear me now? Yes, go ahead. Great. Hi, I'm Kristen Candela, Director of Habitat for Humanity in Fort Collins. when people are able to feel safe and secure in their homes they bloom and I'm fortunate to get to see what that happened in my work so people go from moving every single year to knowing where they're going to be their mental and physical health improves they feel able to go back to school to go for that job promotion when housing costs are stable they can afford child care school supplies, start saving for their kids' college or for their retirement. There's a concern that I have and why I'm here, and it is to just raise the voices of our residents in our community who have said that affordable housing is the number one concern that they have. So home is the cornerstone of our community, not just for an individual or a family, but for the entire thriving community. So I'm here tonight to ask again on behalf of One Voice for Housing that 5 million in the excess tax collections from the CCIP go to affordable housing. This will impact hundreds of families and with over 1,500 students in PSD that are currently homeless this will make a big impact. And to make an additional comment I talk about families blooming because Habitat for Humanity's next single-family cottages will be built in Hartford's Bloom neighborhood, 40 of them. The capital expansion fee increase proposed will mean a 20% fee increase to Habitat for Humanity there. These fees are also to build parks that will not be in the Bloom neighborhood. Our Habitat homebuyers will be paying for parks in Bloom through the metro district and habitat will be paying for parks elsewhere please carve out affordable housing from these increases thank you thank you jamie jamie do you want to talk on the

specific item or under general uh specific items but can i request that something be pulled and have that not count against correct could you please pull item number five from the consent calendar ordinances 169 1 7 0 1 7 1 1 7 3 and 1 7 5 for further discussion okay

anything else under general no thank you okay Stephen mayor council members I'm Stephen your ash I live in council district 3 I attended the council work session last week and I'm concerned that council members seemed surprised by staff's lack of progress on the climate future and the building performance standards and that now Council wants to rush into new ordinances prepared by staff for first reading as soon as possible. Spending the money from the 2050 tax for carbon reduction action and possible building code additions for efficiency that could cost businesses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars are very important decisions that should not be rushed into. I feel sorry for the council members that were expecting more action before their terms are up, but this is not a sufficient reason to shortchange public input on such important matters. I want to see some generous time given between when possible ordinance changes are suggested by staff and posted on the City website and when it first comes up for a vote by Council on first reading. I think citizens should expect that their Council members have important input to staff on these matters because of possible costs involved to the city budget and to own business owners and more options from staff to Council on possible options to choose from. So possible suggestions would be a pilot program of an organic waste collection program from restaurants, not the community as a whole. Council members suggested having a partial building performance standard with some incentives, but no suggestions on what this might look like. Well, how about pick a few efficiency features requirements like programmable thermostats, double pane windows. I'm sure there could be others, but those are right specific suggestions, not a BTU standard. I think that could be dealt with by business owners better. Instead of staff picking six buildings as random examples for the cost of BPS, let's do an inventory of the older buildings to see what exactly we have. So the process of how this gets done is very important for community buy-in. Please carefully consider what the process will look like to include public participation as process is just as important for the legacy that council members leave behind.

Thank you. Thank you. Next we have Christy and then Ella.

Good evening. I'm Christy Coghlan. My husband and I moved to Fort Collins from Illinois three years ago. Swimming is very important to us, so we shopped pools before we chose a location. Colorado and Fort Collins and the FAST Masters team really work for us. Thank you for everything you do to support recreation and wellness in Fort Collins. The Southeast Community Center is such an exciting project, one that will shape our community. As you make your final decision, I urge you to support a 10-lane pool. Anyone who swims in this city knows our pools are packed every day, every hour of every day, with a variety of activities, competitive swim and dive. you've heard from some of those people aqua aerobics adult exercise and recreation learn to swim scuba certification water safety instruction the list goes on there's a real need for more lanes for those of us who swim regularly we all get it there is magic in the water in the locker room after a swim you'll hear women of all ages talking about how much being in the water helps them get stronger and faster, allow for active aging, ease pain, have fun, manage stress, and make real

friends. We all take joy in the excitement of the little toddlers, goggles on, ready for the magic of the water. The pool is our community in Fort Collins. A 10-lane pool means more kids learn

water safety, more adults find ways to stay healthy, more world-class athletes are developed

in Fort Collins and more opportunities for everyone, no matter age or ability, to discover

the magic of water. We only get one chance to build this right. EPIC has served us for almost 40 years. This new facility can do the same for the next generation. Thank you for your leadership

and for helping make Fort Collins a place where everyone can thrive in and out of the water. Thank you. Next we have Ella.

Hello, good evening. My name is Ella Gaysa Thiel. I'm a swimmer at Fort Collins area swim team, and I'm also a swimmer for Fossil Ridge High School. I'm here in support of a fully funded 10-lane instead of an eight-lane pool at the Southeast Community Center. So there's been a overcrowding issue for a while in Fort Collins at pools. I've had multiple friends have to wake up before 5 a.m. to get to practice on time not because

their team wanted them to swim so early but because that was the only time their team could get

um I've seen it in club and high school but mainly in high school we just have so many teams here in Fort Collins and it's really hard to have um lane space for all of them just between the pools we have now so a 10-lane pool would really improve this overcrowding issue my home pool of epic adora pool and ice rink or ice center is it was proposed in 1985 and it's still in use today it's a place where a lot of people gather and to do diving competitive swimming water aerobics scuba diving all of that so I think that a 10-lane pool at the Southeast Community Center would be a really good investment in everyone's future so thank you for your time thank

you it looks like we have Kristen sign up twice so we'll go to Eliza remotely

looks like um we're having a zoom issue eliza you've got a version an old version of zoom that isn't going to work so we're not going to be able to hear the comment tonight okay eliza if

want to email us you can at cityleaders at fcgov.com and we can receive your comments that way

that is everyone we have signed up tonight before 5 30. and so public comment has ended

does anyone on council have any follow-up to public comment councilmember potyandi thank you

i just wanted as always to thank everybody who came out and i always like to give a special shout

out to our youth who came to make public comment um i know you're coming out on a school night to speak about things that are important and City Hall is for you just as much as any other residents so thanks for being here

anyone else

yeah that's my girls I hope I'm not repeating what you just said I was making a note I think the proposal before us tonight making no promises I think the proposal we have before tonight and giving direction on the new community center has 10 lanes in it for the recommended one that kind of came out of our work session from council that is correct okay I was hoping you didn't say that okay so I just just wanted to let you know that that's um what the recommendation is before tonight and that recommendation is based on council direction at the last work session to maintain the 10 lanes we

still have to vote on it though. Council Member Gutowski. Just to share a comment with the folks that have come here to talk about the pool. I'm going back 14 years to when I was on school board and I remember even that far back the request for a pool and multiple requests for a pool and it didn't happen and Loveland High School had a pool at every high school and we didn't. So this coming about is literally a dream come true for our swimmers and just in general it's going to be a wonderful facility for the community but the lap pool is so essential we have so many swimmers in this community and I'm glad that this is going in to benefit you so that you're not having to practice at 4 a.m.

anyone else okay does anyone on council wish to pull any consent calendar items

for individual discussion I will pull item number five as requested I think

that it's gonna be helpful to discuss them all together so if it's okay with

council I'd like to suspend the rules and combine item number five with item

number 17 on discussion so the tree policy code amendments can be considered together instead of separately is that okay Okay, great.

All right, is there a motion to approve the items on the consent calendar minus item number five?

Yes, Mayor Patem. I move to approve the items on consent calendar minus item five.

Great. I have a motion by Patiandi. Is there a second? Second. Second by Councilmember Olsen. Is there any further discussion? See none where the clerk please call the roll

Canonico Yes Gutowski

Yes Francis

Yes Olsen Yes Pat Yandy

Yes Okay, that passes 5-0. Do council members have any other comments on the consent calendar? Yeah, council member Olsen

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Yeah, item number 12 If I can get the clarification, I know two of them are resolutions and one was first reading but I'd still would like to know.

There's a, on the second page of the materials we got, it said the Fort Collins local match will be provided from transportation fund reserves. And the way I mentioned it and the way I remember it and the way I see it in an ordinance or one of the resolutions is it's coming from the 125,000 is coming from the climate portion of the 2050 tax, and those seem to be contradictory to me. So either staff can answer it now, we can get something in follow-up, but I just want to make sure that, you know, it's the making sure we're on the same page here because I think it's from the 2050 tax, but I'm reading it saying the local match will be provided by the Transportation Fund Reserves, and those aren't the same thing.

Yep. We can get a quick answer to that right now from Caleb Weitz, our CFO.

Yes. So any reference to the transportation fund would be a typo. The plan is that it would come from the 2050 climate tax.

Yeah. And keeping it with the theme for this evening, I'm going to be a little grumpy on that one. It's not really a typo. It's stated that it's coming from the transportation.

Yeah, it was incorrect information through, again, not like a letter typo, like a misstatement of the information.

Right. It's important to know because it was somewhat a little bit controversial on the Finance Committee that once again we're rating the 2050 climate change funds for things that we can't find money anywhere else for. That's why the reference to the transportation fund reserves caught my attention.

Yeah, thank you for pointing that out. We will get that fixed for any second reading required

Any other comments Okay, there are no staff reports tonight. Do council members have any reports? Yes, council member

Thank you mayor for time. I have to first of all

I'd like to shout out my colleagues in putter school district to our school psychologists because this week is national school psychology week for those of you who don't know that's my day job so I always like to shout out my my colleagues who do an excellent job and oftentimes don't

get the shout outs they deserve and second I would like to give some serious positive regards to our city clerks and also our county clerks tomorrow is

election day if you haven't voted yet please do so but with the rollout of ranked choice voting and our first ever voter guide through the city.

Our city clerks have been incredibly busy. I know Dillon and her colleagues have been out educating people in person, answering questions and just generally working their tails off. So thank you and I hope it's a super smooth election night tomorrow.

Any other council member reports?

Councilmember Gutowski.

Just a cool event that I attended last Saturday, and it was the Mobile Home Park Resource Fair, put on by the city. And I just wanted to comment on how impressed I was as I went to each one of the booths. First of all, how forthcoming and friendly the staff was, and they're there on a Saturday. And they were just excited about what they were doing and excited about the help that they were providing. And there were so many opportunities for mobile home park residents to take advantage of resources that are available to them. And they would not have otherwise known it had there not been this large gathering. And there was free lunch. So it was a good day all around.

Council Member Olson.

Thank you. I don't know if it's a report or not. I guess just a reminder that for those people involved in campaigns, and I hope all the campaigns are organizing it. I don't know how the city has publicized it. I don't know. We have the contacts for all the campaigns. I don't know if we contacted them. But the chloroplast, the lawn sign of choice, because they hold up, the city has arranged in partnership with, I believe, Loveland, maybe it's Boulder, to collect those lawn signs. and hopefully do we have any dates of how long we'll take them because campaigns the Wednesday after a campaign they're not exactly out all of them collecting all of the lawn signs there's kind of a campaign hangover so I don't know if we have any information of how long that'll be but you can take them to our the city recycling site and the hard to recycle yard it's five dollars to get in but it's not five dollars a sign you can take hundreds of signs and and recycle them for the $5 as opposed to going into the landfill. So if there's any more information on that or if I garbled anything or messed it up, please feel free to add. But hopefully we're doing it for a while, and then I don't know how we're getting the information out to the campaign, so maybe some clarity there.

Yeah. So I am looking to see those exact dates. I don't have those right in front of me, but we will get those. I'm trying to get those for you right now. You are accurate, though, that it is a $5 entry fee to get into the hard-to-recycle area, unlimited number of signs with that one entry fee, and we will publicize that on our city website at fcgov.com and under environmental services.

Great. Anyone else? Yeah. Okay.

Councilmember Canonico yeah last week I was able to attend a route to change which was put on by the white line foundation which is organized by the parents of Magnus white who was the USA national cyclist and it was an opportunity for elected officials to meet with the families and victims of bicycle crashes that were preventable and it was a really good opportunity to hear these heartfelt stories and the impact that it's had on these lives so if you don't know about the white line foundation I encourage you to look them

up thanks okay anyone else all right we will take a five-minute break before we get started on our discussion items and we will be right back thank you all

right welcome back Fort Collins and we are on to second reading of ordinance 168 is there a staff presentation for this item there's not a staff presentation is this is the second reading that we do have staff available

to answer any questions great would any members of the public like to speak on this item all right we have one you'll have two and a half minutes

thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight my name is Jamie Thorpe I live in district 5 and I'm vice president of entitlements at Hartford homes as I mentioned at the previous hearing under the city's current CEF policy. The city will collect about $5.6 million in bloom from our residential areas only for neighborhood parks. Bloom residents are also paying for a neighborhood park to be built by the Metropolitan District. This was enshrined in our PUD zoning for the project. Single-family detached units are projected to increase 20% under this proposal with neighborhood parks being by far the largest portion of that. I again ask that you create a meaningful carve-out so the residents of Bloom are not paying for two parks simultaneously. And I just want to point out the same enabling legislation referenced in the EPS report included in your packets also states in the CRS any schedule of impact fees or other similar development charges adopted by a local government pursuant to this section must include provisions to ensure that no individual landowner is required to provide any specific dedication or improvement to meet the same need for capital facilities. For which the impact fee or other similar development charges imposed and I believe that is the situation we're looking at here Thank you for your opportunity to speak And I would ask that since housing is a council priority you consider that as you make your choice this evening. Thank you

Thank you. All right. That is all we have um, I Know that staff sent out an email about this item. Can we just make sure we follow with Jamie with that information as well? Okay, great. Yep. I do Thank you. Any other questions or comments on this? Yeah, Councilmember Olson.

Thank you. A mouthful of cookie. Could you address that issue, please? Happy to. The email, which you all received very late in the day, addresses this, but I'm happy to do that for the public and for everyone here tonight. So, Jamie is correct that Bloom, as part of its planned unit development master plan, is constructing an additional park space. However, I think that it's important to note that just like our metro district policy that requires public benefits be delivered as part of accessing that particular development tool, Our planned unit development master planning process also requires that development achieve exceptional development outcomes in order to be able to access that alternative process. in Hartford homes own application to justify using the PUD process as well as Metro district additional park space was called out in both of those as being part of achieving those standards which we've had which is kind of a requirement in order to be able to use those development tools in our community and has been part of our standard in the case of Metro districts and PUD since both both of those were opened up for more residential development. So I think that what we see in the case of Bloom is the Metro District paying for parks that go beyond the base level of service that is used to calculate our capital expansion fees. And they're doing that in order to be able to access the two development tools, Metro District and PUD, which are not part of the standard development process.

Thank you any other questions Okay, is there a motion for this item?

There is I move to adopt on second reading ordinance number 168 2025 amending chapter 7.5 the code of the city of Fort Collins to update the capital expansion fees and the transportation expansion fees second

motion by Pat yoni and second by Olson any further discussion Seeing none will the clerk please call the roll

Katowski yes Francis no Olsen yes pot Yandy yes Canonico yes okay that passes

for one and we are on to item number 17 items related to tree policy I don't

believe there's a staff presentation for this item so while they're getting changed over I'll see if there's anyone who would like to make public comment Yep, Jamie and then Rich. Hi, Jamie Thorpe, Hartford Homes, District 5. We have many concerns with the specifics within these proposed changes and I've detailed that in separate emails to counsel.

That said, our largest two concerns are the escrow policy and the tree warranty responsibility element of this code.

The proposed code for both of these enshrines a subjective policy that a lot of this is at the discretion of the forester. That is both far too opaque for the developer and puts the city at risk as it cannot easily defend off claims of being arbitrary or capricious. The escrow problem needs to get solved before approval. This code states lots cannot be escrowed lot by lot, but sets forth no other policies for how the city will hold and release escrows. This needs immediate attention. The tree maintenance issue is also well documented. Responsibility for tree health needs to pivot to whoever maintains the surrounding landscape and irrigation systems.

After public comment was completed at the first hearing, staff stated that they are opposed to passing responsibility for tree maintenance to the adjacent landowner because of the potential for the developer to have selected a poor quality tree. I want to stress that this is somewhat inaccurate. The forestry department goes to the nursery, tags the trees it would like us to plant. we then have our landscaping teams go and plant those trees, and the city forestry department confirms that they've been planted correctly. Once the home is sold, the landscaping for that tree is connected to the private homeowner's lot. However, if that homeowner ceases to water it, sprays too much weed killer on it, the city comes to us and makes us replace the tree. What I'm asking is that the responsibility for tree maintenance move to whoever is responsible

for the adjacent landscaping.

At that point, the city can be assured the tree was of good quality because it selected it and that it was installed correctly. So the concern there, I think, can be mitigated

by building that into the policy.

And then I appreciate the late change in the agenda here to comment on fire access.

I just want to point out, we brought some of these things up months ago in the public process and didn't see that show up in the conversation

until this agenda. And then lastly, the details really matter. The details for this got released very late in the process, and I'd request it in the future those things come out earlier so we could read the actual language of the code. Thank you. Thank you. Rich?

Rich Stave, Average Citizen of Fort Collins, 80525.

The question that I have a lot of times is, where I live actually

it has a PUD it was developed

inside the county

trees live, they die we have natural areas I'm a little curious out of how something like that gets applied when you're talking about tree management I think tree management at least as far as I understand the association applies its own management plan it does take some input from Fort Collins natural areas and some other places but I'm not aware of any consideration yes if a tree dies that it needs to be replaced or if it's not the right tree that there's a responsibility of the HOA to go in and remove it I know there's a lot of Russian olive and some other junk trees oh I probably didn't say that right There are some trees that are not desirable on the desirability list, as well as other things. And I just wondered how this particular policy plays out. I know it's kind of aimed at a new development process, but sometimes what happens is developments change over time and management becomes an issue. And in particular, it becomes a fairly expensive issue. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I think that is all we have for public comment. Do council members have any questions or comments? Yeah, council member Olson.

Yes, I'd like to hear staff's response on your viewpoint on the tree replacement policy, the three-year issue, and the escrow policy. The main two pinch points with some folks.

Yeah, thanks, Councilmember Olson. I can maybe get us started and hand it to our more knowledgeable friends here. But yeah, so the ownership, I think, was described correctly by the commenter. We are not changing the ownership in these policies, so that has been true before and would be true after. I think what we've talked about in this policy is that right now it's open-ended when that transfer would happen. can go as far as we have examples of four, five, and six years. So by moving it to three, it's more predictable, but it does not solve that full ask of transferring to the homeowner. The little piece that I would add there is I think there are, although we would love to think that when our forestry team picks out the tree that that ensures survivability, that's just not true. There are too many parts of a living, growing tree that are unpredictable. That's why we have that three-year establishment period in there. So I think we have really heard that issue, acknowledge that it's a challenge. I think the other part we would add is to say that, you know, I think the city's point of view would be that, you know, if there is damage to a tree caused by any entity, that entity should be responsible for replacing a tree. So that doesn't mean that a developer can't work with the homeowner when they sell properties to that homeowner to ensure that that is passed along too so either way that issue has to be figured out if somebody besides the developer or the city is responsible for damaging or not helping a tree survive that has to be navigated so that's again i think we've understood this comment i think it just is not fundamentally changing and what we've proposed would be our answer anything maybe i've missed

there kendra yeah um the one thing i would add kendra boot city forester is that um nothing is changing around the landscape escrow policy and that that code or the language exists in the code today and yeah so none of the changes that we're proposing would impact the landscape escrow it would continue as is and again

although I had a phone call with the two of you trying to understand these things which I greatly appreciate by the way and you helped me a lot can you for those listening though and perhaps for me why do we have that kind of type of escrow policy

what the reasoning is sure i can start with that one so in general um you know just in a very basic way uh developers are required to install infrastructure it has to be accepted and completed before a developer is then allowed to uh start a building permit on in in we're talking that residential in a house. And so an escrow exists in general as a tool to say if there are situations where for good reasons that infrastructure can't be completed, how does that developer go ahead, pull those permits while the city is still protected for that infrastructure? So in general, it's a policy that allows flexibility. Obviously with our landscaping, it's a very commonly used flexibility tool because of the limitations on when you can plant plants, when you can plant trees and so in general an escrow just adds flexibility around our requirements protects the city while allowing developers to move forward that's a very general explanation of why we would have it in our code and why we would allow it.

You're welcome. Any other questions or comments? I just have a few comments. You know I think that you know I went and read the escrow policy in our in our code and I just don't think it's very actually very clear I think there's you can't do it lot by lot it's

unclear when you're reimbursed there's a lot of unpredictability and I think in

the spirit of counsel it's really trying to make the code clear and predictable

and easy to read and understand if we have folks coming to us that are saying this is not clear and easy to read I just think we need to take a little bit more time to make sure that what we're adopting is what people are reading

because I understand the differences in our interpretation of the tree the three-year warranty but I just think it's too subjective and we kind of need

to make sure that we're going through the language and making sure that what we're intending to adopt is what we're communicating to the public so I would

be in favor of postponing this to be able to work on with folks that have expressed concern so that we're get it right the first time instead of having to come back.

I'd like to have a chance to comment before in case Robert's rules

come into play and we don't have any comment after the motion

is made to table the date certain if that's the case. So I guess I'll make my comments now if that's okay.

Yeah, and if we were going to table something, I guess I don't know

if that's the real purpose because if the escrow, like I care if the escrow needs to be made more clear. I like clarity. but we could do it specific to that issue and not delay all of the tree policies before us. We could be very specific in our direction, pass the other things, and those fall under the existing policy, which isn't clear, and bring them back as fast as is reasonable.

But this issue has become real important to me, so I'll make my comments. I had a legal pad full of them and got a phone call as I was leaving and left them at home, So I'm kind of doing this on the fly here,

so it won't exactly be eloquent. But I view this as kind of a, the tree policy is a metaphor for this whole affordable housing discussion that's become just short of an obsession with some in the city. And I've been on the right side, even according to the affordable housing people, except some of the land use code changes that were proposed on all of the funding. And those things, and the reasonable stuff, and was actually there before this latest wave of affordable housing things came in. But this obsession, or borderline obsession, with affordable housing at the expense of everything else has actually grown tiresome to me.

There's a lot of, and in fact, the tree policies will have no discernible impact whatsoever on affordable housing.

It'd just be minuscule, if any.

And so I think it's more of this continuing race to the bottom of deregulation, de-feeing, de-planning, de-treeing under this misguided notion that somehow this is going to lead to more affordable market-raised housing. It's not. If you want to blame something, blame the geographical location of Fort Collins, blame the climate, blame the location of a major university, blame the natural environment that we're lucky to have around us. But it's not because of tree policies that, frankly, I'm disappointed. So it's interesting that I'm speaking in their favor. I'm disappointed because I find them mediocre at best, and I'm really disappointed in them. But to think that we're somehow, other than the clarity, it's going to diminish those because it's going to have an impact of affordable housing. It's just untrue. It's very disappointing to me. And it's a well-known strategy. It's in books. It's in workshops. I've been to some of them. It's like delay, dilute, defeat. And that's what's going on with the tree policy. delay it, dilute it, defeat it, and then pass something that's meaningless and worse that we already have. And so it's really frustrating to me because it is a metaphor of what's going on under everything. The policies that make Fort Collins, none of them would get through, I guess, councils now. The very policies that have led to such a high quality of life that I see degrading under the deregulate, de-fee, de-plan movement. And it's really finally pushed me to this breaking point that it's just very frustrating in this race to the bottom under the guise of somehow it's magically going to significantly impact affordable housing. It's not. If we want affordable housing, then the specific projects through catalysts, through habitat and all those, if we need to work on fees there, I'm all for that. And we need to walk the talk and we need to subsidize the fees. But you don't de-fee all of the market rate housing either. And I just want to go back, and I know we're not on fees now, but the fact that we ask for the regional comparison of fees, and in most cases, ours are lowest, and by the way, in some cases, significantly lower than any in the region. So that's my thing. I guess I'm pro-tree. I'm disappointed in what's before us, but I think if we delay it, which I would actually support delaying it if it was for specific topics and the other things move forward, because if we need to clarify, not dilute, I think it's a great idea then if we need to do that. And maybe when staff comes back, we go, you make a good case, we're not changing anything. Or if there's clarifying language, which is different than diluting it. So that's my rant off the cuff which would have been better if if I had the whole thing written out in front of me So because I can't read my notes that I made thanks for listening council

Yes, and I thought it was an excellent rant even off the cuff. So just for what it's worth I I will support a postponement not because I think that this was bad work These are good policies that I don't think trees are a lot of what makes for Collins special I'm okay with the delay because I think it's really important that Council members feel good about the level of clarity and I'm hearing that there are some pieces that we didn't quite get there yet I agree with councilmember Olson in that the intention should not be to dilute This policy that I think a lot of really valuable work has gone into It really is I want to make sure that folks on council City staff and the folks who are going to be navigating this code feel like the clarity is there to do it right So that is why I will be supporting a delay Is there a date that you were proposing?

I'm sorry. I didn't hear the question. We have a date for postponement recommended date I'm gonna look to the team and see if we have talked about what we think would be a realistic date

Yeah. Kelly, I appreciate asking that. I'll ask Kendra's opinion, too. I guess what I would say, if we're talking primarily about the escrow, escrow policy is not in the tree policies. It's separately in the code. It's a little bit bigger policy. So I would just say it would not be realistic for us to rethink an entire escrow policy, to do outreach on that policy and bring it back, you know, in the next, like by the end of this year. I think if what we're talking about is a little bit more conversation around where we may not be communicating in the code or some chances to clear some things up or talk about how the escrow can work, then I think, you know, we can be back in two weeks or a month in that. So I just want to be clear of whether we're talking about developing a full new policy with all of the work that goes into that or just a little more time to make sure we have a little better communication.

Yeah, Councilmember Olson.

Yeah, I'd support a delay, reasonable delay of a month as the escrow as it relates to tree policy.

And then I won't be here, but I would support a complete look at the escrow policy because that doesn't have to conflict with the timetable of the tree policy if we have some tweaks or clarifications in the escrow policy as it relates to trees.

I would support that motion if it's in a timely manner.

I just want to add a little bit of information about the ordinances in front of you. There are seven of them. The only two that are dependent on each other are 169 and 170, which are the tree removal permit ordinances, one in the code, one in the land use code. all of these are otherwise written so that they are severable meaning you could pick and choose ones that you want or don't want to proceed with and i just wanted to mention that ordinance 172

is the ordinance that has the three-year establishment period provisions in it in case

that was a particular concern and i also just wanted to note that's the thing that i've heard

the most specific comments about, but I'm not sure if there are other things, too, that

we should be going back and looking more closely at if other ordinances will be postponed.

So, Kelly, did you have something?

Well, I was just going to suggest that we postpone to either, and I'm going to run this by the team because we're doing real life, either December 2nd or December 16th, I believe it is to come back and at that time we could also bring forward a more fully vetted scope of what it would take to look at the broader change regarding the escrow policy. MR.

Yeah, I think we'd be fine with that.

Okay, I'm going to suggest December 16th. And you know, we talked about this at LPT about the specific concerns, so it's a little

difficult to do this up here of just guessing which ordinances we're talking about, which just frustrating so I had 172 and 174 because that's what was a split vote last time due to these concerns which was the guidance and now we have all seven so are we post is the recommendation for the staff to work on the items that we've heard multiple people have comments about 172 and 174

yeah maybe if I can just clarify there I think just thinking back to the first reading here, you know, we were actually not talking about the escrow at that time. That was a new comment. The questions we had were about specifically about whether the city follows our own mitigation policies. And the second question was about code conflicts, particularly with PFA. So I will just maybe for anyone following along, we did send those responses back in a read before

memo. So, and just to clarify quickly here, the city in the shortest way possible to say this, we do follow our own tree mitigation for all land use code projects.

And then the second part is, you know, I think the code conflict around double tree planting was the question.

And that is an option for developers. So there's not a code conflict that would require a developer to do something that is then a conflict in our code in that particular case.

So I don't know if that's clarifying or more confusing, but those were the issues that were around the split vote last time, not as much the escrow, which just came up tonight.

okay that's not so I think we just postpone 172 and 174 because those are the ones that had a split vote okay yeah councilmember Gretzky I thought I heard

maybe that there were other things that that were confusing or not up to par or something was there anything else that council was concerned about other than

escrow okay okay so just that okay thanks for the clarification all right

so mayor pro tem are we ready to make a motion or no I think um from what I've

heard only moving to postpone 172 and 174 to December 16th okay and the rest

I'm not moving to postpone would you like me to proceed with the ordinances in Numerical order or do the postponements first let's do numerical order. Okay. All right, so I

Move to adopt on second reading of ordinance number 169 2025 amending article 5 section

10 of the land use code of the city of Fort Collins for the purpose of requiring a commercial tree removal permit

second so much on by pot yandy and a second by councilmember Olson any other comments all right well the clerk please call the roll Francis yes Olson yes

pot yandy yes Canonico yes good house key yes all right that passes 5-0 on to

number 170 okay I move on second reading to adopt ordinance number 170 2025 amending chapter 27 article 32 of the code of the city of Fort Collins for the purpose of requiring a commercial tree removal permit second that's a motion by

councilmember pot yandy and a second by Olson is there any other common all

right well the clerk please call the roll Olson yes but yandy yes Canonico yes

good house key yes Francis yes on to 171 I move to adopt on second reading of

ordinance number 171 2025 amending article 5 section 10 of the land use code of the city of Fort Collins for the purpose of requiring additional enhanced tree protection measures during construction second motion by

councilmember pot yandy and a second by Olson any other comments all right will the clerk please call the roll pat yandy yes Canonico yes

katowski yes Francis yes Olson yes okay on to number 172 I move to postpone the

second reading of ordinance number 172 2025 amending article 5 section 10 of the land use code of the city of Fort Collins for the purpose of establishing a three-year establishment period of street trees until December 16th, 2025.

Second. Motion by Payone and a second by Canonico. Any other discussion? Yeah, Councilmember Olson.

Yeah, in the spirit of team play, I'll support this. These did pass. My recollection, we might have been down a person, but I think they passed 4-2 for the first reading, so hopefully we'll even have more information to maybe even do better than that but at least pass them when they come forward and I said I'd support this if we had a date certain so I will great

please call the roll Canonico yes getowski yes Francis yes Olson yes

pot yandy yes great that passes 5-0 on to number 173 okay I move to adopt on

second reading ordinance number 173 2025 amending article 5 section 10 of the land use code of the city of Fort Collins for the purpose of updating

tree mitigation exemptions. Second. Motion by Patyani and second by Olsen. Any other discussion?

Okay. Will the clerk please call the roll? Gutowski? Yes. Francis? Yes. Olsen? Yes. Patyani? Yes.

Canonico? Yes. That passes 5-0. On to number 174. Okay. I move to postpone second reading of

ordinance number 174-2025 amending article 5 section 10 of the land use code of the city of for the purpose of enhancing tree mitigation until December 16th, 2025.

Second. Motion by Patjani, second by Canonico. Any other discussion? Yes. Council Member Olson. Same comments. Okay. Any others? All right. Will the clerk please call the roll? Francis? Yes.

Olson? Yes. Patjani? Yes. Canonico? Yes. Katowski?

Yes.

All right. That passes 5-0. Second reading of ordinance number 175.

I move to adopt on second reading ordinance number 175 2025 amending article 5 section 10 of the land use code of the city of Fort Collins amending tree planting spacing requirements and tree maintenance second

motion by Pat Yanni a second by Gutowski any other

see none where the clerk please call the roll Olson yes Pat Yandy yes Canonico yes Gutowski yes Francis yes

that passes 5-0. And we are done with item number 17. And we will move on to item number 18, which is amending our budget.

All right, thank you. We will quickly switch out our staff team here and pull up. We do have just a brief presentation on this item, Mayor Pro Tem, so we'll get that pulled up here.

Again, as Council knows, our mid-year, mid-cycle adjustment process turned out to be considerably different than processes in the past.

So you have had multiple conversations about this, so we'll be brief.

But I want to do just a quick overview for the public to understand what we are bringing forward for a 2026 recommendation.

Caleb?

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and Council. It's a pleasure to be here tonight. As we're in the process of pulling up the presentation, I'll just give a few reminders as we get started. The 2026 budget revisions were initially discussed with the Council Finance Committee in early September and then discussed at full Council work session on September 23rd and October 14th. In addition to that, there was one memo that was included in the read before packet last week following up on a question at the October 14th work session about the environmental services budget. So the purpose of this item tonight is to adopt the 2026 appropriation ordinance, which is a required to be adopted per city charter by the end of November.

What this ordinance does is combines the already planned second year of the 2025-2026 two-year budget with adjustments that are needed to balance the budget for this year. As the Council is well aware through the earlier work sessions, there are a number of economic challenges and financial challenges that have occurred over the last year that were not known when the two-year plan was initially adopted in November of last year. Overall, between increased expenditure pressures and revenue forecast decreases, there was an approximately $15.4 million deficit to address in the general fund. Next slide. So as we go through a summary of changes, just a little bit of high-level information on revenue, sales and use tax, which is the city's largest tax revenue source, the forecast for that has decreased next year based on what we are currently seeing in terms of underperformance for taxable sales growth here in the current year in 2024. We are taking a more conservative approach on photo traffic enforcement revenue, and there are a number of other revenue items that are lower based on

our updated projections for next year. In terms of expenses, the most notable expenditure pressure is that due to lower staff turnover than planned, there are increased personnel expenses that need

to be covered. And because at the end of 2024, there was no generation of general fund reserves that are available for nearly any purpose, items such as contingency for snow are included in this appropriation as well, as well as a few other corrections to personnel budgets to address the collective bargaining agreement that was in place as of 2025 that was funded through one-time funding just to make sure that our expenditure budgets are in line with the latest information. Next slide. In terms of the high-level overview of the revisions to address that $15.4 million

general fund deficit, there is a reduction in the merit increase for staff from 3% to 2%,

a number of mechanisms to be able to gain some savings out of some strong performance that we've seen in the benefits fund. And then to create some additional one-time savings, a hiring freeze will be in effect through the beginning of next year as the city then will pursue a phased release of that to ensure orderly hiring activity as that freeze gets unfrozen. Finally, in terms of service area reductions, as part of our budget process this summer, every service area submitted operational reductions. The city manager's final proposal does not have any involuntary layoffs or reductions in force of classified staff. There are a number of vacant positions that are being eliminated in this budget. But once again, there are no reductions in force. Finally, as directed by counsel at the October 14th work session, the digital equity reserve is being used in lieu of any impacts to the eviction and immigration legal defense funds. In terms of enhancements to the 26 budget, there are a few small enhancements in the general fund, a new sales tax auditor that will generate more revenue than the direct cost of the position is being added, as well as addressing the cost pressures that we are seeing in the grocery tax rebate program. In the transportation fund, significant operational expenditures for transport are addressed. And then in the enterprise funds, there are two significant enhancements, including the Halligan Project mitigation credits. These are environmental mitigation credits that will allow us to proceed forward with that project. and then for the utilities customer information system or cis project with the may 2026 planned go live of the new system there are additional funds needed to operate the legacy systems through that date the final thing i'll note is there is an exhibit to tonight's ordinance that provides detail on all of the proposed reductions that the city manager has put forward to council We'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Do any members of the comment like to speak on this item? Yeah, Rich, go ahead.

Rich Stave, Average State Center for Collins, 80525. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Thank you, counselors. I listen to these and I go like, well, there's a city as an organization. There's a company as an organization. There's an individual. If the money doesn't come in, you've got to make some adjustments to the money that goes out. I noticed that one of the things that came up here was the Halligan Reservoir Project, which is a fairly expensive project. And I know the city has a plan in that. But the reason why I bring that up is because basically there are water districts within the city of Fort Collins that, you know, the citizens are part of that water district. But Halligan only services the water district customers in that specific area. So if we're looking at an encompassing budget with everything in the city, the question is, what is it that's going to make the most sense when we start trimming and adapting to an environment that may not be as conducive to spending excessive amounts of funds? I would think that I would not want to sit in your position because that's the worst position to be in, the one that has to make hard decisions. But I thank you very much.

Thank you. Seeing no one else, do Councilmembers have any questions or comments? Councilmember Olson?

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. On the memo dated October 30th dealing with the environmental services budget, one question and then one comment and hope for the future council will clarify.

But on the bullets, and it's hard if you don't have it in front of you, it says the impact to environmental services capacity comes from the reassignment of a lead specialist.

I don't know if that should say reduction or reassignment because the next bullet says the reduction of a general fund 1.0 full-time employee will reduce the department's overall capacity for project management by approximately 25%. So are those two bullets related or separate? And I studied it, and I'm not going to own it. It's just not clear to me if the reassignment of a lead specialist, which meant reduction, is the next bullet, or if those two are unrelated. And then I'll need a phone call, but I won't take the council's time tonight.

Yeah, happy to provide some clarity. And if I miss the mark, please continue to ask questions. So what we're doing is we have a position that was originally funded with general fund dollars. that position the individual within that position was retasked to take on the work of the anticipated position that's now funded by 2050 tax and it's going to be scoped in order to comply with the focus of that new of the new tax and focus on new work so as a result the positions that were funded through general fund and available for things not complying with the 2050 tax in a non-supplanting rule set and therefore not focused on our climate future is going to be reduced. So it's a transfer of a position from one funding source to the next, which has implications on how that individual can be used to meet the needs of the work.

but then was there a reduction of another FTE that talks about the project management by 25%? Because there were three or four, I don't have it in front of me now, we talked about it, finance, work sessions.

There's several moving bodies here. Yes, there are several moving bodies that result in only one chair being left empty. and so the chair that is left empty is a lead specialist position that was funded by general fund that is a position that does project management for things that are general fund focused so those two bullets are related they are related that's the simple that's the same person

that because it said correct well and i'm not picking that's the night's going better than expected but the um it says reassignment that's different than reduction right there are two

positions one person they moved from position a to position b position a went away so it is a

reassignment and a reinduction a reassignment and a reduction correct okay i'd like the future council to address though you established like the transportation people had the transit people had the base number the general fund level of support when we voted in 2023 for the 2050 tax which will run 26 27 years approximately of 428 000 but i would hope the future council would address the fact that that should include every year a reasonable inflation factor or we're disavowing what we all agreed to 7-0 on council whether it's in the ordinance or not that it wouldn't be fungible, that you don't touch the existing monies. And I know we're making exception because it's extraordinary circumstances right now. Why we didn't see 5 million coming in the transits, a little problematic for me. But we're making some exceptions there. But they admitted what the base was then. And I think an inflation, I know an inflation factor should be added, or we're just going to eat away and disavow what we voted on, what we said we were going to do, what the organization was going to do. So I think we should have an inflation factor, whatever is appropriate, so that at 10 years, we're not eating into that base number that we had in transit and in climate. I'd kind of like an answer now, but of what you're thinking in that area.

Yeah, that is something that we've talked about. So Caleb, can you address that, please? Yes.

Yes, Council Member Olson. And so certainly, you know, we as staff are looking at what is in the ordinance. And as, you know, transit's a great example of where we have a very clear base number. Certainly, it is very simple for staff to include in future budget processes what the inflationary factor would be, you know, from that 2023 base year to whatever year we are considering. and certainly we as staff are committed to ensuring that that information is transparent and available in future budget processes.

Okay. And just a clarification there because, and again, I think we're all, including me, very happy that you're here, but you weren't here then and we made it. It's not what's in the ordinance. It was very clear from every council member that those numbers were not fungible. We didn't take away from it every year. from the lower the number that was the base in the general fund and then replace it with 2050 tax the 2050 tax was additional monies I know even myself had a I even had a vote Violating that but it was because of an emergency and national trends in the transit area Although I wish the number was way lower than it was and I should have spoken up more about how did we not see a five million dollar deficit coming but I am now I guess but I think it's a little more than what's in the ordinance it's got to be what the intent was as well so madam city

manager can you add anything yeah I mean councilmember Olson again I think that we have heard that message clearly staff is interpreted the same way and beyond being very transparent with including those numbers so that that's what comes forward in recommendations. I do believe that that is consistent with not only the ordinance, but also the intent of what we've heard from Council.

Okay, so what I'm going to say is that I'm going to be talking to the next Council, and I hope they clarify that. But because that is your intent that I would like to see solidified by the next Council, I was not going to support this for a variety of reasons, but I am now because that's a big one. If we make sure we have reasonable inflation to not eat away at that base number. So I'll support what's before us tonight

Any other questions or comments? Just want to say thank you. I think between council finance and our work sessions. This was hard but good work And it's not anything we want to do but just thank you for your thoughtfulness and what you brought to council. So thank you Do we have a motion for ordinance number 186?

We do and I realized after all those motions before that I had a superfluous of in there So I'm going to take that out moving forward. All right. I move to adopt on first reading ordinance number 186, 2025, being the annual appropriations ordinance relating to the annual appropriations and amending the budget for the fiscal year beginning January 1st, 2026 and ending December 31st, 2026 and fixing the mill levy for property taxes payable in 2026. Is there a second?

Second.

Motion by Potjani and seconded by Canonico. Any other comments? Seeing none where the clerk please call the roll

Potiondi yes, Canonico. Yes good tasky. Yes, Francis. Yes, Olson. Yes

All right, that passes 5-0 next we have a public hearing So we are going to take a 10-minute break to get set up for that and we'll be back at 7 50. Thank you

All right, and welcome back we are on to item number 19 which is a public hearing and resolution approving a first amendment to the Consolidated Service Plan for Montauva Metropolitan District number one through seven this is a hearing so we have a

little bit of procedure to go through hold on one sec okay all right so we will now move to the public hearing in consideration of resolution 2025 100 Approving a first amendment to the consolidated service plan for Montauva metropolitan district number one through seven Section 3k of the policy for reviewing service plans for metropolitan districts sets out the hearing process The order of the hearing process is as follows first. We have announcement of the item Then consideration of any procedural issues followed by explanation of the application by city staff Presentation by the applicant and or by the affected property owner public testimony

rebuttal testimony by the applicant property owner councilmember questions of city staff and then a motion discussion and vote on the resolution before council it is eight steps tonight before city staff can provide council before city craft provides council information on proposed first amendment to the consolidated service plan I would like to address any procedural matters will the applicant or their representative who will be speaking on the items please identify themselves.

Hi, my name is Zachary White. I am General Counsel to the Montauva Metro Districts, Numbers 1-7 based out of Centennial.

Great. Are you the only one speaking?

The Board President is here. His name is Max Moss.

He's also a representative of the developer.

Okay. Thank you. Are there any other members, the public who would like to speak on this item?

Is that a yes rich? Okay, we have one I don't we have one person all right, so tonight I'm proposing the following time allocations for the hearing The applicant testimony will be 10 minutes each member of the public law two and a half minutes applicant rebuttal will be five Five minutes do any parties have any procedural issues or concerns? Is that good? Okay? At this time city staff will provide a background regarding the application. Do we have a staff presentation?

We do. Josh Burks, our Deputy Director for Sustainability Services, will provide an overview.

Yeah, good evening, Council members. This is the First Amendment to the Montauva Metro District, and I'll walk you through the application. So tonight you're considering a resolution that if you vote in favor of the resolution, we'll approve this First Amendment. It's going to do two things. It's going to increase the maximum debt authorization as well as authorized creation of special improvement districts. I'll say more about both of those in a minute. Staff does recommend adoption of the resolution as it is consistent with our city policy as well as state statutes. It does enhance financing flexibility and it maintains the consistent public improvements to be financed. montava is a just under a thousand acre uh planned development in the northeast corner of our community roughly 2 000 single family and 2 400 multifamily residential units are planned just under a half million square feet of retail space excuse me office space as well as some retail space. 15% of the housing is anticipated to be affordable up to 120% of area median income. Again, I'll have more to say on that in a moment. The history on this particular project is that the consolidated service plan was adopted back in 2018. That was the original service plan. Council took a unique action that evening and requested that the public benefits that were identified during the conversations with the applicant and as part of that hearing actually be codified in a development agreement that is designed to secure those public benefits. It was the first time that we did that as a community and that was adopted on January of 2020 and executed later that year after a few minor amendments.

I want to note that the public benefits agreement further stipulates how that 15% of affordable housing is to be allocated. Half is to be allocated at between 30 and 80% AMI, and the other half

is for up to 120% AMI. Again, two changes proposed by this amendment tonight. Maximum

debt authorization would increase from $163 million to $297 million, primarily to offset

increase in construction costs since 2018 when the service plan was originally adopted, and then grant the authority to establish special improvement districts.

A quick overview. The application in this proposed amendment does not impact in any way the underlying public benefits and the rationale for the amendment seems sound as well as is consistent with adopted policy. And I will go into those greater details now. So the maximum debt authorization, which is a aspect of our model service plan. So all metro districts that come before council have the amount of debt they can issue capped. And in 2018, that amount was $134 million. Well, it was the previously stated number, and it will be increased by this amendment by $134 million to $297 million, or roughly three quarters of the estimate of public improvements costs. Our policy requires that that debt cap be no more than 100% of what as supportable and that this particular request is within that policy cap. Other considerations, the public improvements do not change at all. They're the same public improvements and on a

subsequent slide here you'll see how the cost of those have changed over time. It's about a 22% increase over the seven-year period or roughly 3%, so kind of keeping pace with inflation, which is actually kind of amazing given the cost of construction and other materials and how they have changed.

So it's staff's conclusion that this aspect of the amendment is consistent with our policy

and it further funds the same improvements that were proposed in the original service plan.

This slide just shows what the revised estimate is compared to the 2018 estimate and therefore what is the difference. Again, that almost $400 million in public improvements, only just under $300 million will be able to be funded by debt. The second component of the amendment focuses on the authority to establish special improvement districts, or SIDs. An SID is a legal subarea where property owners can be assessed for specific public improvements they benefit from.

The statute that forms the ability for Metro districts to be created does allow for SIDs to be included and used by Metro districts. They have to be limited to a strict benefit nexus, requires 100% consent of property owners or the majority of the eligible electors. Again, the intent here is to use this likely before any, well, before any residents are on site. so the electors will likely be the developer and landowner. They can only be used to finance the improvements that are listed in the service plan. They can't be used to do anything that's outside of normal Metro District powers. They require notice, hearing, and et cetera in terms of open records and public activities just like the rest of the Metro District.

This amendment further limits how SIDs can be used, and it clearly states that any assessment done through an SID has to be satisfied and cleared prior to the issuance of a certificate of occupancy.

So that's going to be an activity and coordination between developer and builders and the Metro District. So staff concludes that this is consistent with state statutes and also provides some reasonable flexibility and then has this self-imposed further limitation that goes beyond statute requirements. I'll skip that slide because we're in the process of doing that. The policy amendments most recently made to the Metro District would require residential development to go through a scoring system. Staff concluded and discussed this with the Finance Committee that because the Public Benefits Agreement had already been adopted and is not changed by this amendment, by counsel, there was no reason to kind of go back and revisit that residential scoring as a result. So, staff would recommend approval of this particular amendment because it's consistent with our policy, state statutes, provides flexibility, and continues to fund the same improvements that were originally anticipated as part of the 2018 service plan.

Thank you. um I should have said at the beginning of this item that councilmember Canonico has left the meeting just for the record so

All right. We will now move on to the applicant to make their presentation. You will have 10 minutes

Thank you once again, my name is Zachary white

I am general counsel to the districts is there access to the presentation on the screen and I click through that with this mouse

Okay. I'm not overly concerned with seeing the presentation on the screen. It's in your packet, and I think you guys have had the opportunity to review it. And Josh has done a fantastic job describing what we're asking for here. These districts were approved in 2018. It's taken some time to get ready for development to actually occur. And as the districts work with the development team to schedule the issuance of debt, schedule the delivery of public improvements, in order to do that in the most efficient and effective way we're seeking approval of an increase in the overall debt cap which is the amount of debt that the district can issue to pay for public improvements as noted your your policy caps that at 100% of the estimated public improvement costs we are only seeking about 70 percent of those previously uh the cap was about 50 percent of the of the estimated public improvement costs so that's why you see maybe a greater jump in the overall debt cap compared to the increase in the actual costs previously we'd only been covering about half of those with the debt now we can cover a little bit more and special improvement districts are authorized under Title 32 of the Colorado revised statutes if you have written consent of the authority that approved your service plan so that is the City Council so rather than coming back to you at the time that we intend to create an SID we're seeking that approval in the service plan now both are tools that allow us to more efficiently plan for the financing and delivery of public infrastructure to bring about a really great development and project for the city so with that said I don't want to waste your time I think Josh did a great great job here are there any questions that you guys have for us that we can answer will those come later in the those will come later during council

questions great thank you yeah okay we'll move on to public comment mr. Stave you will have two and a half minutes

Rich Stave, average citizen of Fort Collins, 80525. I listened to this presentation. I kind of read through a little bit.

I have listened to the Montauva presentation over the years. I think I read that and I says First Amendment. I thought there was another amendment in the past that was the First Amendment. So I'm a little surprised at that. But as I look at that and I kind of run the numbers, It seems like tens of thousands of dollars per unit are being added at this point. And it's not really clear to me how that is. The expectation is, well, there was a mill levy that was passed, and the purpose of the mill levy was to allow the developers to basically provide all the infrastructure. And then the owners, when they buy it, are going to get tagged with that mill levy in addition to their regular property taxes. And that was the tool with which the development was going to be done. What I listen to today seems to be a special improvement district, which I think the city has had a lot of those in the past, and some of the people were not too satisfied with them.

And it creates extra work from the city and the city's council for each one of those special improvement districts.

So the question would be is you're going to allow basically it looked like a doubling of the amount of the total debt for this particular development.

And then you're going to also allow the special improvement district. Now, I could see from the development point of view, perhaps, if you were going to take the special improvement district and take some of that debt obligation away from the mill levy.

but it's not clear to me with the owners in mind, all this money is spent on their expense,

and eventually they're going to have to pay for it in the end.

I think that's something of consideration. Thank you.

Thank you. You have five minutes for rebuttal if you choose. Okay.

good evening max moss windsor developer montava so the increase in the debt cap is simply to keep up with costs eight years later it's really pretty straightforward the sid is very simply a pre homeowner financing tool it allows the developer to have some flexibility to use the metro district as a financing mechanism as opposed to a bank. And it's a lesser expensive process for financing, which is good for homeowners because it lowers the cost for us, which lowers the cost for homeowners. It has to be gotten rid of. The liens have to be eliminated before the homeowner buys the house, period. And so it's strictly for us to be able to allow us to have a more flexible, lower cost financing mechanism prior to the development passing to the homeowners. If there's any questions, I'm happy to answer them.

Great. Thank you. All right. I will now close the hearing, and council will move into the discussion. Do council members have any questions or comments? Yeah, council member Patiandi.

Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. My question, I think, has been answered by both staff and the applicant, and I just want to be abundantly confident in this, but it sounds like the special improvement district will not pass additional costs or encumbrances onto homeowners that will all be resolved pre-sale of the home to a homeowner

correct the sid any lien on that property will have to be cleared before a homeowner takes possession meaning before a certificate of occupancy is issued the cost of constructing a home which will include whatever is financed with that sid could be passed on in the cost of the house, right? But it will not be an additional burden or assessment that they will have to worry about. The only thing they will pay is property taxes and they'll have slightly higher property taxes. Not slightly higher, they will have higher property taxes due to the mill levy.

Upon purchase of the home, though it sounds like homeowners will be aware of exactly how much they will be paying for all of the different funding mechanisms?

So our model service plan does require that there be notice and disclosure of the fact that the property is within a metro district as well as an estimate of what the potential property taxes and property tax liability could be from that particular metro district. Again, you know, I think the disclosure makes it very clear that the actual assessed value of a home is something that the metro district doesn't set and therefore you know the actual cost of annual property taxes will ultimately be based on the homes assessment which is determined by the

county assessment okay thank you any other council questions or comments council member katowski

Probably a simple one, and there's not going to be any cost encumbered by the homeowner for the special interest, the debt from the special interest. I was just wondering, as somebody who kind of deals with a home budget anyway, how is it that you pay off all of that debt so that it doesn't fall to the homeowner? How will that be paid off prior to?

So it's going to be debt from a bank or it's going to be debt from this SID. So it's debt no matter what, because you can't.

We have so far funded $50 million on this project, basically all equity without debt.

But when you move into development, you have to have debt.

So that debt at bank rates right now is 8.5%. This SID would allow us to have money at 5.5%. So it lowers the cost of financing.

and that gets relieved by what the builders pay for lots. I mean, that's the revenue that we receive is what builders pay for lots.

And so those liens will go away before it even gets close to a homeowner buying the house.

And it's just exchanging one debt structure for another.

It's not an additional debt. It's not an additional tax.

It's allowing us to borrow money through that mechanism at a lower cost than a bank.

other questions comments councilmember Olson thanks mayor pro-cham yeah mine's

a comment this will make sense to me it'll be my perhaps my first yes vote on a metropolitan district issue dealing with them residential properties and I know for a fact it'll be my last vote dealing with the metro district so I'm a makes sense to me and so there we have it great this came to council finance

committee which at that time it answered all my questions so I don't have any tonight thank you for the presentations any other questions or comments all

right do I have a motion you do I move to approve resolution resolution 2025 100 approving a first amendment of the consolidated service plan for Montauvo metropolitan districts number one through seven second there's a motion by

Pajani and a second by Gutowski any other further discussion see none with a clerk please call the roll

Gutowski yes Francis yes Olson yes but Yandy yes all right that passes 4-0 and

we are on to our next item which is Southeast Community Center Finance and construction we'll just take a minute to get switched over I believe there's a

staff presentation we do have a staff presentation and mayor pro tem what we would like to do is have a presentation that covers collectively items 20 and 21 together because of their in a relationship and then obviously have you all consider them individually if that's all right that sounds great all right so I will turn it over to Dean Klinger our community services director to get

us started. Thank you, Kelly. Yeah, Dean Klingner, Community Services Director. I'm joined by Leanne Williams, our Deputy Director in Community Services. So yeah, we're going to try to run through this pretty quick. But again, with the Southeast Community Center, it's a very large project. We really appreciate the opportunity to celebrate a few of the proposed benefits and how we got to this point. Council has seen this before, but I would just say really nice to start with the recognition of our partnerships. This project is a partnership between Poudre School District, Poudre Libraries, and the City of Fort Collins. Love these words that are on this slide, community destination for a generation of residents. And really the takeaway here is just the power of partnerships. We're all doing more together by the partnership that we have on the project.

really quickly just a quick comment about who benefits that really is the community in in general but especially the southeast part of our community a couple of notes here about how public recreation centers a free library really benefits lots of folks in our community that are lower income or really in need of these services in lots of ways great to emphasize that when we can. And then quickly, I'll just pause here and say, like Kelly said, we put these two together because the two items we have are a resolution that defines the scope of the budget, the scope of the project and the budget, and then an initial appropriation, actually one of a series of appropriations. So I'm going to hand it over to Leanne here just to walk us through the actual scope that we have in this budget. So thanks, Leanne.

Good evening, Council Leanne Williams, Deputy Director of Community Services. You all have seen this before, so for the public, we're building the outdoor leisure pool per that 2015 ballot language. We're also, we all have included per our work session with you all a few weeks ago, the 10 indoor lap lanes to honor that IGA partnership with Poudre School District. we're recommending the gymnasium with two middle school size courts it'll have that indoor elevated track over those courts it will have the weights and fitness on two different levels we we did add in the drop-in child watch at the request of the community per that outreach that we heard then of course with any recreation aquatic or community center we have staff offices locker rooms family locker rooms commons the commons the innovation and community rooms that is your partnership with our Poudre library and then this facility will be a lead gold certification I just also want to add that you know we really see this facility is helping to advance our 15-minute city goals you heard a

little bit of that tonight how excited some of the folks that live in that area are to just bike over use that and of course you know there's many other benefits besides what we have on this but this is really just kind of a high level scope of what is

in the facility and then a full service library that'll be owned and operated by pooter libraries

thanks leanne so i'm just going to spend a little bit of time here because there are some moving pieces and this council has seen different versions the community seems different versions of this so So try to be as clear as we can here, but we're lumping the 2050 funding for this project into two categories. What would be bonded?

We would go ahead based on approval of the resolution tonight. We would start the steps for bonding against 2050 and then cash on hand that's already been collected in the 2050.

The Community Capital Improvement Program already has $18 million appropriated in the current budget.

And then really the action tonight that we've proposed is an appropriation of nine and a half million dollars of additional revenue in that community capital improvement program. Always nice to note that we've got a state grant here, too.

So the piece that's not on here that I just want to clarify, because these numbers have been hard to track, is that this allows five million dollars of additional revenue from the community capital improvement program to be appropriated for another purpose. And that has been talked about by this council for affordable housing. So I just want to make sure that nine and a half and five add up to 14 and a half million, which is our total projected additional collection. So I want to make sure that's clear as we do this here.

And then just, again, total budget of 76.5. Just, again, council has heard this through a few conversations. Just a lot of work for the team to bring this project back into budget and still deliver a great project. So with that, we'll just tee up just the summary of the questions. Again, we're happy to elaborate in any way we can or answer questions, but we did just put it into one presentation for the two items. So with that, I'll turn it back to you all. MS.

Great. Thank you. Are there any members of the public that like to speak on this item? Yeah, Rich, Dave, go ahead.

rich Dave average public thank you mayor pro tem thank you counselors questions have been asked in the past regarding something like this in fact there's a lot of push from the public to get something like this done but the major issue that comes up consistently is when one looks at property taxes there are capital there are capital monies that are going to the school system and the question is what is the school system paying for this so it's not just the responsibility of the Fort Collins taxpayers because they're going to end up paying both. So is this mainly for the school or is this purpose for the taxpayers? Because the taxpayers are getting kind of shafted twice if the school is pushing this responsibility on the taxpayers with the intent because of its location that they're going to get the best benefit from it. I don't know that that's the best interest I feel as a taxpayer. I don't think I'm getting a big benefit out of that. And furthermore, it's kind of located in southeast of Fort Collins. And if you look at existing pool systems, we've got Epic, we've got Mulberry, which I hear is not in that good of a shape, but it's still open. And we have an open system over at City Park, but we really don't have anything on the west side or the southwest side. So I don't know how that's supposed to work out.

And I think some of those taxes that are that are being pledged for this Should be available for something that is a little closer to home. Thank you

Thank you to council members have any questions or comments Comes from Wilson

Thank you mayor pro tem

could you refresh my memory and I'm supportive of what's before us tonight

unless I hear reasons otherwise from council that resonate

reducing the size and the number of lanes

what were proposed and then what is it now

and especially the size I don't remember that I mean I remember talking about it but I don't remember the specifics

uh yeah thanks for that question council member olson the overall size of the facility is that

part of your question it's the running track the elevated track yeah yep it said we reduced the size

and number of lanes oh yeah i think originally we had drawn up the running track at a three-lane track and of course it went around two bigger gyms so as part of the value engineering the getting into budget went to a two-lane track and it goes around a smaller two gyms that are smaller so the distance is smaller and the width there is a you know a really important american with disabilities act standard that we are still meeting so it will still be wide enough for that

okay thank you and then again you've only done what we've directed on these things but we eliminated one innovation and one community room and how many innovation and community rooms

do we now have four yeah looking at leanne but yeah we went from six to four and a lot of i think there's just a lot of um a lot of flexibility uh all all of that conversation has been around how to maximize the value of those rooms so they all kind of open into each other can be combined in

different ways still serve the need one that was a i like the that we were working on cost savings and going from 10 to 8 lanes was part of that, and that was part of staff following our recommendation to reduce the cost. I can live with the 10 lanes, but I just want the city not to be, even if we had done 8, would have complicated the negotiations. We would have had to reopen it. But I don't want the city to be seen, if we had done 8, as somehow the bad player in all of this, when the school district forever has not built any of their own pools and I could be wrong. I could be off by one pool with the city of Loveland, the Thompson School District, which I taught in, was a tenured school teacher there, has three, I believe, three high school pools that the school district built. So the city's not the bad player or anything in this. We're a real good player with the school district. And more, to Mr. Stave's point, more has fallen on the city of Fort Collins historically as it relates to pools than was actually fair in my opinion. So the comments were valid. It is what it is now. 10 lanes, I'll support that. But the city has been a wonderful player as it relates. This goes back to the early 80s of big fallout between the school district and the city council and city government about fair share payment and the school district not building any of their own pools and then making us out as the bad people because we had to have some time for the people that weren't part of the high school swim operation so I just need that clarification my big question is the interest on the bonding I'm assuming that interest those interest payments also come out of the 20

percent of the 80 20 split yes we've we've assumed interest rate there that

is in the calculation for out of the 20 percent yes I'm happy that's the answer

any other questions I just have one question about the remaining CCIP funds and how were earmarking those for affordable housing and if we need to or I do just what happens with that how do we keep track of that so we don't come

back to this discussion again yeah that's a good question I don't know that we have we haven't taken any formal action obviously as that's something that will be available once this project is complete I will look to the attorney to think if we need formal action here I will say from a staff perspective it has been very clear to us that that is the intent of counsel and we will obviously take formal action by council to appropriate those funds as they're available.

And I know this sounds like a fine point, but I want to make sure council's aware of the fact that the CCIP ballot language allows for two different ways to look at what we might call excess funding. One is we can use that funding to spend more on the projects that are listed in the measure. The other is we can use what you would call excess after those projects are paid for to do projects that aren't on that list at all. So a lot of what we're talking about is not using excess for other projects, but rather just applying more money toward the projects that are listed. I mention that only because there are different sections in the ballot language. and there's probably a little bit more latitude to use money to sort of build up projects that are on the list so long as they're not we're not by doing that taking away from other projects on the list and I think the actions council would take for the appropriations of those funds to be used for this project would be the documentation of the council's action that would be needed under that measure so you'll be taking actions as you appropriate those funds that will meet the test and the ordinance excuse that

was adopted the tax measure and mayor pretend what I would just say again is reiterate that the staff has heard very clearly through these conversations the councils the current councils intent for those funds and so certainly from a staff planning perspective we're not looking at alternative uses and would again have to come to council for formal appropriation of those funds yeah and

I'm gonna own the with our city attorney and who's very competent I'm gonna own that I didn't completely follow that but I'm guessing that this council and I'm not presuming, I'm guessing, I said, would like some kind of resolution, even though it might not be binding for a future council, that as part of this whole package that we're all kinds of give and takes with the school district and among and between council members, that there's a resolution that at least as part of this whole complicated package, that our intent is, I think we already did two and a half million for affordable housing, or am I mixing things up?

4 million I believe. 4 million I think.

4 and a half million. 4. So another 5 and a half? 5. Okay. So we did the 4 and a half. Is that correct? 4. 4. Okay. Thank you. God, I love this crew. Okay. I think we'd like to see something in writing, unless I hear different up here, on this council, even if it's not legally binding for the future ones, because future ones, one, I don't anticipate they'd undo that. And two, they would put a lot of weight into this was part of a lot of moving parts, and this was an important part of that, that we intend for $5.5 million to go to affordable housing. The other part of that is because I was enlightened at one of the recent meetings that I thought the place had to be built before those monies were available. It doesn't have to be built. Basically, we have to have enough money that we've had the bid and the contingency, and then those monies can be freed up much earlier than when construction is completed. That's what I heard people say. So I guess I'd like to hear from other people up here, but I think this council would like it on the record, whether it be legally binding or not, that our full intent is $5.5 million or whatever the number is, on top of the other number, whatever that number was, goes to affordable housing.

Yeah, thank you. I would feel more comfortable with a formal action, And if that could, if possible to come with our second reading of this. So we have that together. Okay. We will. Remaining fund. I know we don't have an exact number, but some remaining fund. You're marked for housing.

Yes, we will work on a resolution. I'm looking at our finance team. We should be able to get a resolution pulled together to bring forward at that point.

Okay, great. I'll just say overall, I'll support this tonight. And you know, I know that we've done a lot of work I appreciate the both of you coming back to both council finance and council work sessions multiple times I I still do have worries about how This is going to compare with our other facilities and if there's inequities between The center and the other centers, so I'll be curious to see how it goes But I know that you all have heard that and spent time on this and I appreciate your work Any other questions or comments? All right. With that, is there a motion?

There is a motion. I move to approve Resolution 2025-101, directing staff to take such efforts and actions which may be required for the funding, financing, and construction at the Southeast Community Center.

Second. It's a motion by Patjani and a second by Gutowski. Any further discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll?

Gutowski? Yes. Francis? Yes. Olson? Yes, Pat Yandy. Yes

All right, that passes for zero and we are on to item number 21. Is there a motion for it? Well first we'll do is we need to do separate public comment

We'll do public comment any public comment all right seeing none we is there a motion for this item?

There is I move to adopt on first reading ordinance number 187 2025 making a supplemental appropriation and appropriating prior year reserves for the construction of the South community center and related art in public places there a second right

motion by pot yandy and a second by Duke house Gutowski any further discussion seeing none where the clerk please call roll Francis yes Olson yes Pat Yandy yes Gutowski yes all right that passes for zero is there any other business to come before council tonight all right seeing none this meeting of a small but mighty council is adjoined at 8 30 p.m. and we will now move to the general improvement district number one meeting where council acts ex officio as the board of directors so the time is now 8 30 p.m. and I call the meeting of the general improvement district number one board to order will the secretary please

call the roll aren't Francis here Olson here put Yandy here Canonico Pina Kataro, Gutowski?

Here. All right, with four of us, we do have quorum, and we will go on to the first item. Do we have a presentation for this item?

We do have a very brief presentation, I believe.

Yes. I somehow got knocked off the meeting, so let me just rejoin so I can share my presentation.

I am covering tonight for Sana Kendall,

who is not feeling well. So I will have to ask if there are any real deep questions. We may have to

get those on second reading just because while I've worked on this in the past I may not have every answer tonight okay almost there

apologize okay here we go

two buttons you take your time all right so general improvement district number

one basically covers the old town area and has been in existence for quite some time and uses

its mill levy primarily to support maintenance of improvements in the downtown area

was established by the then council in 1976 and was initiated by a petition of the downtown leaders

who recognized the need for continued investment in improving both the area's

identity and appearance as well as maintaining facilities like sidewalks.

It primarily funds parking, pedestrian, and street beautification improvements and is governed by state statute.

next year's budget which is what you will be acting on with this ordinance is a total of $381,000 broken down as you see there the GID has historically contributed to holiday lights flower program as well as investments by forestry and parks and sidewalk and curb repair next year's budget will continue to fund those actions and operations as well as building up some reserves for larger capital projects. Which is the other activity that the GID often participates in. So with that, your staff would recommend that you adopt this ordinance on first reading.

Thank you. Any members of the public like to speak? Seeing none, do board members have any questions or comments? Councilmember Olson.

I had a question on the downtown flower program. No, I'm just kidding.

I was going to say Mike's not here to answer the question. I wouldn't know what to do. All right. Any questions or comments? Seeing none, is there a motion?

Yeah, there is a motion. Yes. Yes, Commissioner or President. I move to adopt on first reading ordinance number 79, acting ex officio as the board of directors of general improvement district number one, approving the fiscal year 2026 budget determining and fixing the mill levy for fiscal year 2026 directing the secretary of the district to certify such levy to the board of commissioners of larimer county and making the fiscal year 2026 annual appropriation for general improvement

district number one second motion by piani and a second by kutowski any further discussion Seeing none will the secretary please call the roll

Katowski yes, Francis Olsen yes, but yandy yes

That passes for zero Do board members have any other business to come before the general improvement district number one? Seeing none this meeting is now adjourned at 835 and now council will be moved to the skyview south GID number 15 board meeting

All right, the time is now 835 and I call the meeting of the Skyview South General Improvement District number 15th board to order. Will the secretary please call the roll.

Arndt. Francis. Here. Olson. Here. Patyandi. Here. Canonico. Pinatero. Gutowski.

Here. All right, we have four. That's quorum. Is there a presentation on this item?

We do not have a presentation on this item, but staff is available to answer any questions.

Anyone of the public like to speak on this item? Seeing none, because there is no one. Do board members have any questions or comments? Yes.

I do. I just wanted to thank, and I don't know that any of the staff who responded to a resident question are in the room. I can't remember who wrote a really great memo or a really great response to a resident question about the GID and the continuance of the GID and what those funds go towards. But thank you to staff for really explaining that clearly. It was very helpful. Okay. Is there a motion? There is a motion. I move to adopt on first reading ordinance number 19 acting ex officio as the board of directors of Skyview South General Improvement District number 15 approving fiscal year 2026 budget determining and fixing the mill levy for fiscal year 2026 directing the secretary of the district to certify such levy to the board of commissioners of Larimer County and making the fiscal year 2026 annual appropriation for Skyview South General Improvement.

District number 15 second motion by Pat Yanni and a second by Olson any further discussion seeing none where the secretary please call the roll Francis yes Olson yes but Yandy yes getowski yes that passes for zero any other business come before the Skyview South general improvement district seeing none that is all the meeting is now adjourned goodnight for calls

Okay.