City Council Work Session — February 10, 2026

the work session to order. Will the city manager please provide a review of tonight's work session

agenda? Yes, thank you, Mayor. Good evening, everyone. We have just one item on tonight's agenda, but it has multiple parts and it's quite a substantive item. So we are going to review the draft city council priorities for 26 and 27. And this is really the follow-up work from your retreat over the past couple of weekends. And then also a review of the 26 to 2030 strategic plan so we will just for people to know have multiple staff at the table so we'll pause after each priority to give a

council an opportunity to provide feedback and again you'll see kind of a rotating slate of staff to kick things off I am going to turn it over to Rupa Venkatesh our assistant city manager Thank You Kelly and good evening Marin

in council. So we wanted to kick this off with a fun little timeline. So it's only February and you all have done so much already since you got elected in November. So you've had onboarding, which will continue all year. You've had a swearing in, you've had a swearing in, and you've had two council retreat sessions. And we're here now tonight to talk more about your council priorities and discuss the strategic plan. And to end this part of the journey on March 3rd, Council will consider adopting a resolution and the resolution will just have the title and the description of the council priorities You'll also see work plans for each of the priorities in this in this presentation But we can further iterate on those work plans as staff shares progress with council And then also on March 3rd will council will consider adopting the strategic plan So what we're looking for tonight from council is your feedback on the council priorities and if you have any other feedback as well. And then we would love to hear from you all about the success metrics and if you would offer any other recommendations for those success metrics. So here's a quick snapshot of the council priorities and the work plan items that you all discussed during the January 31st council retreat. The ones that are italicized are the work plan items, and we'll get to those at the end of this section of the presentation. And they're categorized by the strategic outcome areas. So to kick things off, I will turn it over to Bonnie and Victoria with our finance department for our first priority.

Good evening. Victoria Shaw, Interim Director in Finance. Joined by Bonnie Dennis, our Deputy CFO and Controller. And on behalf of Caleb Whites, our CFO and really all of financial services, I'd like to share that we're really excited about this priority. So financial sustainability is about long-term stewardship and resilience. It ensures that the services and the infrastructure that our residents and our community members rely on continues to be available now and into the future. We know and have discussed at our January 20th work session that there are many structural pressures to expenses and revenues. A lot of those are not unique to our community, including escalating prices, aging infrastructure, and economic uncertainty. Locally, another factor that we see is as the surrounding community retail has developed and matured, there is more shopping happening in those places and less in Fort Collins. and there's a shift towards more online sales and retail overall and where that sales tax is assessed and collected based off of where the the goods are delivered so that has led to softening sales tax revenues alongside some of those expense pressures so as we look ahead we know kind of making these decisions on a single budget cycle or a biennial basis won't continue to support the vision that we have. The revision work for the 2026 budget is already complete and absent further significant economic shifts, we're not expecting to need to reopen that. So this is not about any immediate cuts or reductions or reducing services by default. It's really about improving the decisions that we can make by providing clearer and more transparent information so community and the council understands what we're providing, what it costs, what funding source it has, and how sustainable that is. A key part of this work is modernizing our financial systems and processes. So that includes delivering the ERP project upgrade responsibly. ERP software is enterprise resource software. If we could go back one real quick. Thank you. That really is the system of record, the backbone for our financial and HR data. Updating this system can also allow for some processes to be modernized and improved in a way that could allow us to redeploy staff time and resources to focus on some of this more strategic analysis work. The priority also includes building a complete program inventory so we can link those dollars and staffing to the different outcomes and services being delivered. Those tools along with the process changes can help move the budget conversations from incremental adjustments where we're really focusing on what's changing in the budget and have more strategic conversations instead about priorities and trade-offs. So the success metrics on this slide reflect that shift. We're tracking the delivery of that ERP system, accountability and progress towards that program inventory, how our recurring expenses align with our recurring revenues so that we're not funding ongoing programs from one-time revenue new sources and it looks ahead at that asset management funding need over time and how we're chipping away at asset management and future capital needs.

Looking at the timeline, this is plotting some of those efforts across 2026 and 2027. You can see much of this work is already underway and has been prioritized in our existing work plans. The ERP software transition is really in very early stages. So I think it's important to note that a schedule for that has not yet been fully set, nor has the budget. So you may recall from the January 20th work session, we had a significant portion of some of the general fund reserves that were marked as assigned. There are some reserves assigned that we have been planning and saving, knowing that this was a cost that was coming. Our current system, we've been on for 25 years. we expect will reach some end of life and won't really have the ongoing support for it far into the future. So we've known this is coming and appropriation will likely be coming forward for your consideration in late Q1 or early Q2 to set that. The budget methodology transition, I think we began this work the day after the current budget was adopted. So we have been working at transitioning that methodology. Our last checkpoint with council on that was in August of last year where we got great direction. And you'll see a lot of that product coming up soon, including at the council finance committee meetings where we've been doing service area budget overviews and deep dives. That's also providing us insightful feedback for the program inventories to make sure we're getting that level of detail right for what you're looking for. And as we move past kind of the budget work sessions and public hearings and into the non-budget year that's when that work on a integrated citywide capital improvement plan could be taken on by staff instead and we will pause here for

questions comments from council great thank you council members have any

questions or comments yeah Melanie yeah thank you guys so much for the hard work on this my only comment is I think just with the name of the priority I would love to have something that just denotes that we're talking about the financial sustainability of the organization just because we have another economic health priority. So I don't know if there's something we could add to talk about this being or denote that this is more internal work versus the financial sustainability of the city as a whole. But otherwise, I really like the

direction we're going. Yeah, I would agree with that. I was having to explain it to someone. I was like, no of the organization. So I think it would help to clarify in some way.

other council members yeah truly yeah thanks um thank you very much i think um i wrote this as part of the strategic plan section but i think it's related um the 1.4.1 in the strategic so this is high performing government it talks about management strategies of city assets and there's something in 1.4.1 called an asset management system is that related to this work or is that something totally different?

Yes, thank you. I would say it is related and we will be looking at it holistically. Different ERP systems sometimes will have modules that can help with that work, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the same system. So we'll be looking to kind of optimize that for our needs. We know we have separate asset management plans that have already been developed in some specific areas. So it's possible a different solution could help us bring those together more effectively

without having to do rework okay thank you that helps my understanding appreciate it

other questions i just have one question on the success metrics when it just says percentage is there one of them has a target of 99 but the other does not are we i guess just for a metric is it are we just reporting a percentage or do we have a something we're going for yes so throughout this

year we would be reporting on the percentage of completeness and that's not just going to be whether or not we've we've included it in the inventory that's going to be completeness for some of the other information that supports it and that may include service delivery metrics for that program and we know that can take time to build out so eventually yes we would have a really high target probably that greater than 99 range that's not something we anticipate that we'll have for this budget cycle but it's something that as we continue to gather feedback and refine and iterate and we would include in future budget

cycles yeah I would say we have not established a target for that yet in the same way that we have the revenues just because of the level of work that's been

done so far I guess I'm just wondering you know I think we're trying to get better at measuring and when we talk about what's feasible in a two-year period and set council expectations I think it would be helpful to have these metrics kind of outline rather than just reporting I think it's be helpful for you know how we're progressing over the two years but I'm curious that's at the end what we can expect this to be a hundred percent done or yeah let us yet

no I appreciate that let us take that back and see if we can start to put some baseline numbers to that again I will say it will not be a hundred percent for

this budget cycle I mean we'll get sick when we talk about priorities it's two years so when you say budget cycle do you mean the two years or I do for this two-year period okay great thank you all right any other questions oh yeah go

ahead how hard would it be to to while you're doing the citywide asset management and looking at the needs there how much would it be to how hard would it be to kind of get a sense of to see how much land value we're we're using in various different kinds of city services. I'm thinking of things like downtown real estate, parking, golf, things like that to get a sense of like how much implicit land subsidy we're providing for different kinds of activities that the city is doing.

I don't think that's something that we currently have scoped. We can certainly look into that and follow up. I am aware that there is the overall real estate strategy work that's happening in op services and certainly that would be included and reflected as we look towards long-term capital needs and asset management needs but specific to land value that's not something that we currently have

yeah Chris if I can just add I did have some conversation with Caleb about this and it this is work that we would need to bring in some outside expertise to support so if this were something that council wanted to do we would put that into this budget process as work that we would want to have identified for funding in 2027.

Yeah, I just wanted to surface it and bring it up for my fellow council people just as

a thought to have in our minds.

I think having a better sense of what kinds of things in the city are being subsidized

through grant of free land or subsidized use of land I think would be just helpful to know

as a city in terms of like where are we putting some of what must be you know our most valuable asset right on some level is our land alongside of our other capital improvements around the city so

that's just something i wanted to surface for lots of folks and put in people's mind so

yeah josh thank you um with the success metric for the citywide asset management funding um thinking about this and what it might look like and I understand it the the

capital improvement plan needs to be completed first so there's probably some

time I would I would like to suggest that it reflect the idea that that funds

are set aside to maintain what we have in a way we know that you know capital

project costs can spiral for whatever reason that we can't always control but

if there's just as we think about what that might look like if there's a way to focus on maintaining our assets I think not sure what language it is but just a suggestion. Thank you.

Other questions or comments? All right. See none. Thank you.

Great. We're trading out. Okay. Yes. We will transition now to our chief communications officer Amanda King for our next priority. to our chief communications officer Amanda King for our next priority

! Good evening mayor and council members nice to see you all again ! This priority is really around connecting our community more holistically to the work that you all are doing daily and so this is about This is about ensuring that the community is really well informed and early on in processes that are related to council priorities, council policy work, and also finding the right tools to meaningfully connect with people, the right strategies, because we know we are also in an environment of information overload in our world right now. So how do we find the way that's most effective in connecting with our community? So there's a variety of things that we'd love to explore with you and some of the tactics and get input from you because we heard a lot of ideas at your retreat. This is also can be kind of difficult to measure just because we're not necessarily having a tangible result like sharing information and making sure people actually are receiving it. And internalizing it can be tough to measure, but we do have a myriad, particularly with digital media, of metrics where we can see reach, we can see engagement. Some of that can be segmented by demographics. So that gives us a little bit more insight about who we're connecting with and who we're missing. And then we also have our annual community survey, which is a perception survey where we explicitly ask people, how is the city doing it, informing you and listening to you and welcoming your feedback. So those are kind of the main areas of metrics, but would love to hear if you have other suggestions. So looking at specific tactics, we have several things underway that we've already kind of put into play to make sure that we're elevating the work that council is doing. We've got our city in 60s video series. we've got lots of digital media already occurring around council agendas and action and then you all do a lot already in the community with listening sessions and events we have kind of regular reporting mechanisms as well so things that we can really use as a foundation to build on some additional opportunities are really kind of tactics that we can support you all and how to tell your own story more and then also explore some new ways that we can tell that story in a different way. Anything that we select or decide to do, I would love to solicit feedback from the community because, again, we want to make sure that it's something that resonates with the community and that they're actually going to want to interact with. And so we have some opportunities coming up with our CityWorks 101 class to solicit some feedback. We have a huge alumni network from that program as well so that we can kind of tap into, like, what do you want to hear and where do you want to hear it to make sure that we're effective in what we're sharing.

I think that's kind of the nuts and bolts of the there's a few different tactics in here but would love to hear any kind of feedback or suggestions like I mentioned you all had a lot of great ideas at the priority retreat so I'd love to hear kind of what you're trying to achieve and if there's

any ideas you would recommend great thank you any questions or comments yeah Josh one one idea I

maybe had for success metrics because my recollection of the discussion around this at the retreat was I think we wanted a way to communicate kind of why we're doing the things we are and our values is maybe surveying us on which methods we're using and how successful, because we can't necessarily control how much the community listens or pays attention or maybe responds, but if there's just a way maybe to survey us and see how that's going towards that goal, that might be a useful metric. Thank you.

Other council members? Julie. Thank you. How many people are in your department, Amanda? We have about 25, 27. How many of them actually know everything that council is doing? And I'm wondering, because I know they run the gamut of ages and how long they've been in the city and how much they care. And, you know, just different, not how much they care, but different priorities. I would think it'd be really useful to survey all of them. Okay. So be like, so what, so whoever did that like funny Tuesday, Tuesday, Tuesday video. Right. So I'm assuming that person actually doesn't, I mean, maybe they do totally follow everything that happens at council, but I love that take of like, oh yeah, so this will appeal to a certain kind of person and it will still get the message across of what's happening on Tuesday night. Sure. Um, and so I'm not saying every video has to be funny or hilarious or a joke or anything like that but I feel like what's missing is

just talking to real people and so I it's been a while since I've read the community survey questions front to back but I'm trying to remember if there's a question in there about

how do you or on a scale I mean you know surveys are a science in themselves but just ask people how they how much they care what's happening on city council I don't know that's a great question if they do like where do they find out about it where do they go for

information in general I don't know I just feel like there's a lot of places we may not be reaching

out where we could be even just having at some of the events we have open streets just a table like how do you engage and have people come and discuss how they engage I think so

is there anyone like in your department I know I see you at a lot of meetings but that actually comes to all the meetings or no like a lot of people that watch

online or watch the next day and I will say like our central comms team is very well informed about what council's one thing I love yes and and we call our lovingly call ourselves like governor it's like we we do kind of geek out on

made. No, that's great. And I hope you have bingo cards. So I think, so for the success metrics, I hear what you're saying about like perhaps upping, so, you know, making this an actual smart goal of how much do you want to raise your engagement in social media? Also, hopefully you get some ideas from the community survey of different ways that you could measure things. I think the one thing that stuck out to me, this develop a toolkit to enable council to more proactively share policy work and intended outcomes. I don't think that was my intent. My intent was for CCIP to have to do that, not for us to do that. Like we are doing that in our communities, but we all also are in different types of communities. So there are people we aren't reaching. So I would prefer to see that either in addition to the work plan you have, that you guys have a toolkit in CCIP of how you will share what's happening.

The other tactics that would be informed by the focus group would be kind of city-owned tactics. And then this would be kind of empowering you all if you want to engage on your own, here's some support that the city can offer in terms of how to help you share your story, right? So I don't think it's just leaving it to you all at all. I think it's a coupled approach for sure.

Yeah. So I think, and I also just challenge you and your group, like what to just think differently, right? I mean, two years ago it was make government more fun. And I think in some ways that was done. In some ways it just rebranded things we already do that some people may or may not find fun. Right. And, um, so I am really hoping that there's a lot of out of the box thinking here. Um, a lot of, uh, I don't know. I mean, I would work in marketing if I felt like this is, you know, was my forte. I just, I, I don't, I know you're never going to reach anybody and we know that's not realistic,

but when you, if you see the emails that sometimes come in, like that are just about, how was I supposed to know this is happening? And we're like, Oh, it was posted 24 hours ahead of time. Like, how would you not know? There are things just as we stated, like at the strategic weekend, like why isn't this just being up on social media? Why isn't someone saying, Oh, look like not, I don't know, kind of having our own influencer is maybe a way to think of it. So thank you for letting me bring it. Yeah. Appreciate the feedback.

Yeah. Melanie. Yeah. Thank you so much. Um, I was somebody who at the retreat really lobbied hard for the council meeting recap strategy. And so I would be interested to track, you know, what people are finding once we vet some ideas and roll some things out. If people actually like that, my personal social media, they like all the things about the events. And then anything that I share that the city's doing, that's more nuts and bolts like nobody likes it. But I am not a social media expert or whatever I'm going to do. I just think we do such an excellent job with highlighting all the special programs and the events. You guys do a beautiful job with that. But when I think about the job that we were elected to do, that's what people understand the least. They have no idea. A small group of totally awesome people have a good idea what we are doing on Tuesday nights and in between. But most people don't when you tell them that you're on city council. They have no idea. until it's how did I not know. So that's one that I know was not the top priority necessarily. And I know the video recaps were going to be a very heavy lift. And I just would love to find a way to get people to understand that we're doing really important work. And for those who want to keep up to make it very navigable. I just wanted to speak up for that. And then I would be really interested to just see if anything does hook people in. I don't think we're ever doing sexy work but like sexier would be great we'll see how we can put a spin on all that yeah yeah well i just

want to volunteer to be a guinea pig in any way shape or form because i really firmly believe in this whole um priority a ton and there's a lot of variety a lot of creativity and i sign me up for any experiments. Okay. Great. Thanks Amy. Yeah.

Are there already like gaps in engagement that you know of? I'm just thinking about partnering that with your success metrics and wondering if there are groups or demographics in general that like you know already.

Yeah, I think we know that there are some gaps in certain parts of our community. Some of our older community members who maybe aren't as active in digital media platforms. That's where traditional channels can come into play. A lot of those do require some funding, right, to pay for a postcard mailer or to promote something in different spaces where we're going to intercept people. Our, you know, English language learners could be another area of opportunity as well. And then I would say we have, like, a big group of, like, active community members that, like, aren't active in their government. I think there's a lot of trust that we've cultivated through our elected leadership and kind of city effectiveness. And so they kind of just live their lives and they're happy and it's kind of the status quo, right? So that can be tricky to connect with just kind of the broader population. Folks are busy, they have families, they have all their work. So yeah. I think that's what I would be curious to

hear back from you about is what those people are or who those people are and the progress that we're making to try to reach them.

Yeah. And Julie, we do ask in the community survey where people get their information and where they'd like to get their information. So that is at least one touch point. But I do think like more of a focus group style with some different parts of our community would be helpful to inform kind of a more specific strategy.

And a second vote for a bingo card. I want to know what my phrases are I think so I'll just provide my feedback I

when I think about this I think about I think the city does a really great job and in sharing what the results are from council and like you know things that were work but what the and I appreciate that staff doesn't want to get ahead of a council decision but i think the gap in there is that there's not storytelling along the way about why we're doing something because you know staff is doing a great job of staying neutral and just doing their jobs and i think this is where council can fill in that gap about telling the story about what we're doing and why we're doing it and bringing people along along the way so i think while i think like a meeting recap could help i don't know if it's the best use of this priority of like where I would focus spending my time I would focus spending my time on talking about like why are we what are we doing with the priorities what are we working on along the way right like what are we talking about what what is that kind of like why are we doing these what are we hearing things like that because the meeting recap I do I mean honestly I don't know how you would recap this meeting other than these are the priorities we talked about which is we tell people what we're talking about I think it would be really difficult to constantly recap meetings and have it be meaningful and effective and so I think I would I would say our time should be spent more on that storytelling communicating highlighting what council does rather than what I mean I think the city does a great job in recapping kind of what we did already I think the focus group is fine as long as we're using groups that were already engaged with like City Works and things like that but I think there's a way I think from what I hear from people is that they just want to know more about like what council is doing and they don't understand like how did we get here what are we doing along the way the best example I can think about is the land use code we're like we did a ton of engagement with people who are really engaged but not a lot of people understood how we got there why we were doing it and then when we got to the end and there was pushback there was just a huge information gap right and that was like super hard to fill and so I just think there's a way to include counsel in education and so we're not putting staff in a place of getting ahead of counsel in those decisions yeah I'm

curious if it would be useful for Yeah, I'm curious if it would be useful for CCIP to do kind of lessons learned maybe in those instances ! Looking at the land use code, maybe even garbage redistricting, where the message came out maybe a little ! ! Why? This could happen with paid parking downtown. If that's something we've been talking about moving forward, is the why behind it. And I don't know how you tell that story and how's best. And I also just want to add, I mean, I know I am an older person, but I am also not on social media. That is a choice. to add i mean i know i am an older person but i am also not on social media that is a choice um i mean linkedin but that's it and so where do i you know then where do i see things and i know i've always pushed for those bus thing for um you know the advertising space on buses

and benches and so i hope we're using those wisely so great anyone else do you have what you need

Yeah, maybe can I just I just want to clarify I'm hearing kind of two different spaces. So I think one space is maybe in the policy development space. And that's a slightly different focus than what this was. So I just want to test sort of nods around the room that you're wanting both of these things really more in the policy development space. and in the sort of, I'll say that engagement with council specifically and more awareness of some of the work and how council is connecting with the community. Those two things both. So I think we'll want to maybe update the definition a little bit to reflect that. And I do think in the engagement space, I'll just say I was talking with some of our team there earlier this week, I think things like more time in council work sessions on do you all, do we have a shared understanding of the problem definition? That will be a good starting point for some of this work. So we'll update some of the tactics accordingly. Thank you.

I think this is more for Kelly.

Honestly, I was looking through the high-performing government,

like 1.1, and looking at some of the subheadings. So Strength and Meaningful Community Engagement says

implement a coordinated community engagement strategy that strengthens relationships and builds trust through

two-way communication and proactive outreach. I think that's a great strategic objective.

I'm wondering if there are ways that we think about the demographics of

the people who we end up engaging with and how that informs our practices.

or like how do we know which voices are being missed and then understanding that when we're engaged in this two-way process.

I think some acknowledgement in the high-performing government section about like acknowledging that there are communities that we're not reaching as much would be helpful to me.

or some mention of equity in terms of like how are we serving populations that aren't reaching us in our two-way engagement, I guess.

That's less of a council priority thing and more of a work plan thing. Yeah.

Thank you. Along those lines, though, because I've kind of been just thinking about this, I feel like we're kind of going back to what we were discussing in our second day of the retreat

under the more deliberative engagement section too? Like, are we kind of reworking this priority perhaps,

or are we mainly just changing or updating the definition of sharing council actions? Because that's kind of what I'm wondering, if we're kind of vacillating back to what we kind of discussed the second day of our retreat.

It's a fair question. I think it maybe is a little bit of shifting into that, but I do still, at least the way I'm interpreting it, it really is the overarching is still about connecting the community to council actions. Then it's about where is that occurring? And we need to, in the description, talk a little bit more about the policy development work and connecting the community with that policy space. So I do think this it's not a full reverting to that other area, but it is Honing the focus of this one a little bit

Thank you

Anyone else

Okay, thank you

All right, we'll move on to our next transition

Karen champagne director of planning development and transportation will take this priority

Hello.

Thank you. So we played around with the title quite a bit, so we welcome any and all feedback. As you can see, it was a big one to unpack. But we did focus in on predictable, efficient, and cost-effective.

That was important. And really thinking through the other outcomes that Council wanted to achieve as part of that. captured in the description. So this, the description is capturing, you know, the council conversation reflecting that we have a bold vision for our community, for our green fields, for our centers and our corridors, as well as in our existing neighborhoods. And there is a significant amount of regulatory barriers and other processes, systems, costs, fees that make all of that very challenging. So this council priority attempts to capture a holistic look at all the types of development in our community and the experience of that type of development and identifying with council the top priorities to solve that. We won't be able to solve all of the problems by the end of 2027, but we'll certainly be able to tackle a pretty big list of high-priority aspects. Success metrics can range. Once we have more clarity on the scope, we can probably dial in success metrics a little bit better, but there's a lot to play with given the outcomes you've all expressed and lots of different ways that we can measure progress. Now, it'll probably be more focused in on inputs in this short period of time the output of a lot of this work probably will take a couple years to start to see but the sooner we start looking and tracking the better we'll know and then I'll just hit the next slide here to capture a brief summary of the work plan components to this we do have time at a work session at the end of March to unpack this in far more detail, get more feedback on prioritization of the scope, and adjust the timelines. We just took a first swing at timelines. So we'll talk about all of that at the end of March. But of course, anything you want to flag tonight is absolutely welcome so that we're prepared at the end of March. But a lot of different components to it. There's multiple horizons to the work because there's short-term work we can do, things that we can correct right away, things that we're already doing right now that we want to continue to finish up this year. And then we can get into the longer term strategies, the more technical, analytical aspects of the work, and then begin to engage customers and others in that prioritization. So just trying to represent is most kind of most transparent way possible everything that we're thinking is part of this work. I'm happy to answer any questions. Great. Thank you. Council.

Yeah, Julie. Thank you. Is there, there's like a healthy housing vacancy rate, right? Isn't there like a percentage? Healthy housing? A vacancy rate that's like show for a healthy community. Yes. Is that, I mean, again, I mean, I'm probably stuck on these SMART goals because I live them daily, but in the success metrics, like instead of total housing units, wouldn't it be closer to

a healthy vacancy rate? Yes. That's, that's a great example. Okay. So we can look at,

so they're like, if they're the same, then my bad, but I just, no, this is more what we were

suggesting there was tracking the process of how many, how many projects are in review, how many are going, getting permits, how many are getting COs. So looking at housing vacancy is a great addition to the Patrick's.

Thank you. And then this title is where I'm going to make my plug for the Oxford comma. So here it goes, everybody.

So I wish that was one of our priorities to adopt that because it helps with clarity,

comma, intentionality, comma, and respect for your reader.

so I I don't know why it's always this time of year when we start talking about strategic plan and these priorities that I just get so frustrated not seeing that

extra comma in their city decision but I would put a plug for at least putting one in here because it predictable efficient and cost-effective three

different ideas so thank you do we do we need a head nod from council

I actually think this is a moment where I think we could workshop the name a little bit.

I think we need to lead with why we're doing this.

There is not a clear connection in the community always between housing supply and the cost of housing,

but we need to make it very clear why we're doing this in my opinion.

So I would lead with affordability, right? Like promote affordability and

sustainable growth by increasing housing supply and making it easier to build.

Like I think we need to lead with why we're doing this. And then because the building is only a means to that end, right?

Like if building a lot more didn't make things more affordable, maybe we wouldn't do it, right?

So that is at least my plug for thinking about this.

I would lead with affordability and I know this goal,

this priority includes, you know, small business and all kinds of development,

but I would lead with affordability and then some kind of, yeah, sustainable growth is a good one.

I was like thinking about economic vitality, but then we already have another one. So

that at least where I would start. In terms of metrics, I had a few metrics that I think we should shoot for. I'm really inspired by our climate goals, which I think are really clear

and ambitious, and I think we should shoot for equally ambitious goals in this priority, even if they're not on the short-term horizon of two years, but at least then we'll have a North

Star. Like, are we getting closer or not? So I'm thinking about, yes, I think residential vacancy

rate is a really important metric. Getting to 6%, 7% would be, is I think typically a very healthy

rate. I think median price to income ratio is really an important one. Again, I think like a

healthy, like an ambitious goal would be to get to three to one median household income to housing

cost to median household, like housing cost would be a good goal. I think something like 90% of

permits in under 90 days is another, like for all but the biggest kinds of projects we can get

through the process quickly. I think these kinds of metrics could be really important. I also think

in terms of a success metric, like housing completions per thousand residents, especially

looking at it across relevant comparison communities, but in general, a housing market with, or a city with a housing market as tight as ours should be able to generate a certain amount

of housing completions per thousand units. I'm going to go on a little bit longer because I've

got lots of thoughts, but I think thinking more holistically about how much of our development

is going to be infill versus greenfield would be another metric that I would start to look at.

The environmental benefits of this priority, which I think are really important to the whole

council, come if we're able to direct development towards where we already have infrastructure

and where people can have like an easier time having a low carbon lifestyle.

So those are some of my thoughts in terms of just metrics. And the last thing I will just say about to try to be really clear about where I hope that this will take us is that right now,

there was a report by the National Zoning Atlas that pointed out that Fort Collins has no multifamily by right in the city.

Now that's changing with our TOC updates.

But I think what I would like to see is moving from

a discretionary process to a buy-write process.

I just want to be really clear about that.

I think the biggest projects obviously are going to need more input. But for most projects,

especially smaller infill projects, I think we should see a largely discretionary process.

I think we can express our environmental values by making,

like right now single-family homes are often discretionary and receive no public input and

then multifamily receives any level of multifamily receives high degree of scrutiny and that's exactly

backwards from the environmental values and the some of the social goals that we have for the city so those are just my comments that I think maybe can help direct staff into where at least I would

hope that we're seeing.

I have a few questions too about

the scoping and the prioritization of this kind of stuff.

When we're talking about something

like the infill business package,

are we talking about stuff like accessory commercial units?

Are we talking about neighborhood centers?

What are you imagining when you're imagining that particular?

That particular package was to capture, number one, work we're already doing in our commercial

community. So, and that also, what right now we're including starting a business in that category

because a lot of the, a lot of the challenges we see in starting a business is really just even

opening up into an existing commercial space. So we thought there was a logic to grouping all that work together. And then the neighborhood infill is more of what you would envision. Some of your suggestions and topics around accessory commercial uses, more missing middle, continuing to do work to make it easier for accessory dwelling units. That's in the neighborhood infill category. So

that's how we grouped them together. It seemed to make sense based on our customer experiences and how the regulations kind of all work together. But as we get into it, if we see there's more nuance there that we need to unpack, we have the flexibility to do that. But that's initially what we're thinking.

And some of that, is some of that going to be addressed in council sessions about fees and impact fees that have been on the table? Yes.

So what we're going to do is, as we look at infill development, starting a business, neighborhood infill, greenfield neighborhoods, will look at fees associated with those project

types. Because the fees of a new neighborhood is very different than an infill project. So those conversations really are hard to do together. So that's how we would unpack fees

at each of those levels. Okay. I just wanted to ask too, so when you say customer ratings and net promoter score? Like what exactly, what does that mean as a metric? Yeah. So it's again,

something we're playing with because we've been doing a lot of work internally around improving customer experience, setting better metrics, doing more consistent surveying, using industry

standard surveying. So net promoter score is a term that I just learned that relates to, you know would you recommend the city for you know coming back and getting and doing business there

again so it's just a way to say yeah was your experience overall really good would you recommend

the city for your next permit experience whatever that would look like but that's something that

we're learning that's a good um benchmark for other communities okay and then i noticed that

the building code adoption is just tbd i know there's like normally a three-year cycle but I guess I had thought that part the building codes fire codes other stormwater maybe all these kinds of things are going to be integral into

promoting the kinds of things we're talking about like are those are you

thinking of building code tweaks and changes to make different kinds of

housing types possible as wrapped into these like 2a 2b 2c etc or are you

thinking of that as totally separate and we're not touching that until 2020 I I don't know, in the next, like, 20, 28? Yeah.

Yeah. Excellent question. I'm happy to clarify. We weren't sure. We wanted to talk with council a little bit more about what scope of building code updates might you anticipate as part of this. Because then once we learn more about that, we could suggest a path forward. um i you know what i know is true is that we are we do want to get back on the three-year cycle and we're a year behind so what we would actually want to do is begin in 2027 preparing for building code updates to get back on the cycle but that's a question for council first if that's work you want to bring forward um that could be an opportunity to include some of these changes in that work in 2027, but if council was more eager or wanted it to kind of be peeled off as a separate effort, we could talk about that at that time. So there's a few dynamics there that we wanted to talk to you about. That's the TBD. Okay. Does that help? It does. I kind of think

it needs to be part of the conversation from the beginning. I think making possible the kinds of

infill that at least I'm hoping to make possible in Fort Collins requires changing, like right sizing building codes for certain kinds of development. I would also just make a pitch in general to like move up the neighborhood infill package. I do think like I think Melanie's point about environmentalism not being on this priority list is a really strong point given how central that is to our community. And so to me, that work, elevating that work to me is of high value. And I'm just one of seven, but that's at least where I would start. So I think I've probably spoken enough, but I appreciate your putting this together. I know we're asking a lot of You guys in particular, but I appreciate you answering the questions. Yeah

so I have a question just on what staffs understanding when we talk about the metrics because a lot of the metrics about like vacancy rates are I Don't in my mind. This is updating our our processes at the city and Updating these kind of regulatory systems. We wouldn't see an outcome of that Like having an impact on our housing for years Right is that because she would have to go through it like it's not the like what's in the pipeline right now would not be affected Those are the things that are opening within our two years being built within the two years So this priority to me is like really focusing on our internal systems so I I'm wondering I mean if we said I think the Metrics that Chris outlined are great as like a five-year ten-year metric But when I think about a two-year metric, we're not going to see the impact on vacancy rates from this priority. So is that correct? I just want to make sure that I'm like tracking with staff what you all are thinking. That's how we would view it. And that was a bit

why I mentioned that some of our proposed metrics feel more like inputs, because it's sort of the best thing we can track in the next two years. So we can track processing times, we can track

rounds of review. Those are things that we can get real-time progress on and measure and report back an outcome in two years. Vacancy rates, overall affordability, which is exactly the goal we want to have. Measuring or showing movement in those spaces over two years is not as reasonable an expectation, but absolutely should be longer horizon data tracking for us as a community.

And I do think as we look at some of our strategic plan metrics, there we have some things like commercial vacancy rate or local unemployment. So I think some of those metrics that Chris shared could be very appropriate in a five-year strategic plan. But maybe, you know, when we do our quarterly check-ins, those aren't going to be kind of the success metrics that we would be on a quarterly basis saying, are we making progress toward?

Yeah. Okay. I just wanted to make sure I was understanding this the same So, you know and are we updating our housing strategic plan anytime soon? I Do not know the answer to that Jacob

A lot of shuffling for a quick answer. Yes, we will be updating housing strategic plan. So we just yes

We recently completed kind of the five-year plan. So what you'll be seeing on March 10th is the regional housing needs assessment, and that's going to be a significant input to how we're thinking about the housing strategic plan. So that conversation, again, March 10, is going to be really important for how we move forward with housing strategic plan.

Okay, great. I think you know we can get a little more sophisticated about our metrics and bring in some of these things So I'm glad that that's in the works So I guess when I was reading about the description I would think of things of metrics I think the processing times there rounds of reviews the cost the customer rating the customer experience Those were all be good metrics for me. I also am just curious and this may not be within the two year But are we seeing more development on difficult properties is how I would and that is a lot of the infill stuff so that may be outside the two-year window and for the description I did want to just add in we have this includes considering programs incentives and increasing cost and fees I think we need to add increasing D slash decreasing cost and fees as well not just increasing cost

of fees the outcome wasn't intended to be increasing looking at the trend of

yes yes yes and so that may have been an I don't know that just sounds like we're only considering increasing fees so I think that would be good and then what is on the timeline what is citywide planning focus number three that that

includes two two scope components that we presented at the retreat we didn't

spend a lot of time on. So it had a 3A and a 3B. So 3A was a low to medium level of effort to do some better work internally, to consolidate plans, to make it more clear for customers, clean up what we can at a low medium level effort, just to sort of remove some of the complexity

that citywide plans or sub-area plans have brought as part of this.

And then it's also a placeholder. If we get into some bigger topics that require more time, more focus,

it just creates a work stream for that.

So, I mean, I'm a huge fan of cleaning up the plans because they are competing sometimes. But I'm wondering if you think about our priority in the description, how much of an impact does that have on achieving our goal compared to the other ones it is not as

impactful so when we talk about prioritization of time and resourcing you should definitely factor

that in okay then i would be and even though i want to clean the plant i would be in favor like moving back uh number three and moving up some of those other work items yeah yeah okay okay

Melanie. Yeah, and I'll be quick, Anne. I just, some of mine was piggybacking on what Emily just said around the description. And I guess my question was, is this description what we are planning to present to the public or is this kind of our working description?

So the title and the description will go into the resolution, but it'll also be on that one pager that will be out in the public.

Okay. I appreciate how much staff tried to fit everything that we threw at you into a description. I mean, I love that it includes environmental outcomes. And I feel like this description is a little hard to navigate for a resident. And some of the things I had written down, the increasing costs and fees, even though it says that it's considering those, it makes it look like we're increasing costs and fees. and then cleaner air is something that we're obviously invested in, but where it's located in the description didn't make sense to me. So I guess this description, I just would love to see it be a little bit, I don't know, reworked a little bit, and add some Oxford commas. There's several opportunities therein. But again, I love that you guys put everything in there. It just, I think because it's so detailed, it's very hard to wade through, I would say, as a consumer. And then my other one was just around if there are success metrics that are on the environmental sustainability end. And I think that similar to what the mayor just said, those are going to be longer term when we're looking at reduced emissions, reduced vehicle miles. That's going to be five, 10 years down the road. And we'll also be getting updates on that in under other umbrellas. Correct. Like the climate goals and whatnot. OK. And I wasn't trying to dunk on the description. It's just like it's a lot.

I do agree. It could be tightened up a little because I was like, oh, I just kept going. And I mean, it's all true and it kept going. We're going to go to Ann and then Amy.

There's a lovely book about punctuation called Eat, Shoots, and Leaves, which is like a really good argument for the Oxford comma. And just so glad to be here with all of you. Other people who appreciate the Oxford comma. I would agree with Chris's take on the description as well as everyone else's, or rather on the title. I feel like we are very heard, thank you for capturing what we talked about. I think from a marketability standpoint and also just to clear communication, it might be good to first of all, emphasize affordability and then secondly, reduce it just a little bit to make it easier to communicate. I was wondering, and this may be something that we cover, is it the 24th of March? When is the work session again?

March 23rd.

Well, there's the regional housing, but then there was another one.

March 23rd, we're coming to dive into the work plan a little bit more. So off by a day.

I was curious if there were like,

interdepartmental is not really the right word, but what interdepartmental opportunities exist, like thinking specifically about PFA, for example,

like when you're thinking about infill development and the challenges, obviously we want to always value health,

safety, and welfare of the public, and fire protection is a big part of that.

But many of our vehicles, for example,

are designed for greenfield development, not as much like tight city corners.

So those sort of conversations probably need to be had in tandem with...

If I'm getting too far in the weeds, let me know.

But let's see. And on greenfield development, I think kind of circling back to what Josh was saying earlier in the economic section that we had at the very beginning. really if there's any way to think about the long-term maintenance costs of building and infrastructure like compare you know comparing Greenfield to infill and what we value that would be another good metric or just something to to consider as as we're thinking about this priority with fees I wonder if that considering the the fees that we're charging for building is important but I think I mentioned maybe even in my interview, like it costs $65 to tear down a single family home. So those are the counterpart to not only building, but what other fees that impact the development as a whole.

And if those fees that aren't just for building itself, but part of the built environment, if those reflect our values or have, that sort of thing would be helpful to have as a conversation.

If I'm wrong about that statistic, let me know because it just like rolls off the tongue. $65. But is that about right? I'm not sure of fees. Okay. I don't want to. You don't have all of the fees memorized?

I know. I'm so sorry.

But I hear. That's just how highly I think of you. I love it. Yeah. She has all of it in your head.

Yeah. And it resonates.

it's yeah, the fees reflecting the values is part of, yeah, would absolutely be part of that conversation.

Okay, great.

I think as maybe one of the only people on the council who have like, had to navigate building codes on a daily basis,

they often are iterative and so keeping to that cycle is important. But in the meantime, because often they improve,

But I think they need to be evaluated against our goals as

a community and making sure that they meet those. So in the meantime, if there are building code updates or

amendments that would better support our goals, then we should consider that because that's probably a much

easier lift than passing an entire set of I-codes in three years but amending what we have.

Regarding the success metric with customer ratings and the net promoter score. I was wondering, and you might have said this already, and I apologize, but when I was reviewing this before, how is this gathered again? And if this is a work session topic, like for another work session, let me know. I can give a quick answer, but happy to dive in

in more detail. We are in the process of updating a customer survey so that it can be more aligned with industry standards of customer experience questions

and to get us to something we could track to a net promoter score. We've done surveys in the past, but they've been less industry standard. Certainly useful inputs, but not to get us to this net promoter score level data.

Is there a way to more efficiently gather feedback throughout the process? because I feel like there are plenty of people who are participating and interacting with everyone who's under your supervision um who won't necessarily take the time to like fill out the survey or won't click on the email link but have already said like this is not working for me or this is really great um so is there a way to gather that in the moment and pass that on i mean that That sort of feedback I feel like is often the most valuable because it's responsive and in the moment and at the same time, I don't know what levels exist for that informal feedback and the capacity to capture that.

Are you thinking about it in terms of while we're doing the work and getting input while we're doing work and testing ideas and talking about code changes, making sure we've got

a good line of communication with customers. I hear that and it sounds like it's also just really around a customer in the process wanting to provide immediate feedback on their experience. So we really need to tackle both. I hear that too. Yeah. And I think there's ways for us to do a

better job there. Yeah. And there might be something we can even do temporarily while

we're doing the work that's like here's a special place where you can centralized spot where anybody can send comments that way it's coming into the team um yeah there's a couple different things we

can try okay it's a good idea um i just want to float an idea um that i learned about from the mayor of bellingham washington where they actually have monthly meetings with builders in the

community it's like a monthly breakfast just to gather feedback that way and so if that's the kind of communication that we want to have with the industry that might be helpful.

Yeah, I love that idea.

We did that during the commercial corridor work in partnership with the chamber, and that was really effective. So I think it'd be great to think about that approach with all the different stakeholders that will be part of this process.

can I are you just to piggyback on what Julie said I wholly agree that that those stakeholders have to be part of the conversation so I trust that some level of engagement would be essential to this process and I mean I love breakfast breakfast is a great idea but however whatever

it is I several of us were at the chamber last Friday and I think my table was an informal like focus group on that and lots of good ideas right there in

30 minutes so there are a lot of resources and people that the care in

the community and would love to share just quickly just as a matter of feedback regarding the title from I'll share with you with some constituents they were concerned about making it easier to build the title. And I think this title, the predictability part, and the, well, I think the title alLod me to lead with the environment first in the approach that we are intending to take with our goals. So I personally had very positive feedback regarding the title and the predictability and the sustainable growth really resonated with residents a few that i spoke with just in the community just that you should know yeah julie okay sorry one more thing and

this is more it's actually kind of for the mayor and also kind of for staff uh at the end in other business of our meeting a week ago we're going to have this ad hoc housing committee how is that How did you were you thinking it would fit with this party and how was staff thinking it would fit with this priority?

You want to go first mayor?

Yeah, I mean yes, the idea was that this would help with staff to walk through this priority be really focused on this priority Like would it help you faster? I think it would be provide more like quick council feedback and direction being able to check in faster, get more like updates about what is going on to make sure that like we're in alignment before we get too far down the path. Great. Yeah. Was that your

understanding as well? Yeah. And I see the benefit as well in terms of just offsetting your work session time because otherwise you'd be seeing us like at every work session. So this is a great way to at least get some, yeah, get immediate feedback. Great. Anyone else? Okay. Thank

you. All right. And now we will welcome Jacob Castillo, Chief Sustainability Officer and Sonne Kendall, Director of Economic Health, for our next priority.

Thank you, Rupa. Good evening, Mayor, members of Council. Our pleasure to be here tonight talking about the priority that was originally named Economic Vitality. So after some workshopping, you can see on the top of the slide how the name has evolved. Certainly welcome some feedback on that. But before we jump in, I think it's important to note that this priority around economic vitality is inextricably linked to the priority immediately prior around predictability, cost-effectiveness, and efficiency of building, and also related very closely to the first one you heard about this evening around fiscal sustainability. So the more predictable and efficient we can be in building both both housing and businesses, the more vital our economy will be, the more vital our economy is, the more financially or fiscally sustainable our organization. So I know you all understand that, but I think it's really important that we connect the dots that these priorities are all related. And a lot of this work is sort of team sport. So I think there's a lot of colleagues in the room tonight and watching online, the way we think about economic development and some of the previous priorities absolutely require multiple departments and interdisciplinary and holistic approach. So for economic vitality specifically, we work very closely with planning, development, transportation, utilities, sales tax, community services, and others. And you'll hear more about that this evening. In addition to collaboration within the organization, we get to a thriving economy through partnerships with external partners. So that's the university, the school district, community colleges, and the education sector, the chamber and private businesses, representing kind of private sector interests, and many others. So team sport, economic vitality. We heard you at the retreat that this needs to be focused on affordability, upward mobility, job creation, and like high quality jobs. and that is done through supporting main street businesses and primary employers. So we tried to capture that in the language, in the description, where there is a nod to thriving residents. So not just business, but we know that this is important because it helps on the affordability, in the affordability conversation. And when companies grow, they create opportunities for folks who live here. So we wanted to capture that and also make sure that we captured that this is not just about supporting firm growth, that this is also about re-energizing, reinvigorating, and redeveloping some of our neighborhood centers and commercial corridors. So you see that in the language and also making sure that we captured points around the creative and nighttime economy.

I'll pause there because we can get into metrics. There's already been some good discussion on metrics.

Did you want to walk through the timeline? Or do you want to talk about this first?

Well, I'd kind of like to talk about this first and then we can get into the timeline. Just make sure, you know, feedback on title and description. And then you're going to, we will have likely a very similar conversation about metrics.

There's a lot of input and process metrics that we measure around success. But, you know, the ultimate outcomes, the outcome measures are, as Karen mentioned, longer time horizons.

But I do want to make sure we have that conversation. Sure. But did we capture in the naming and the description the intent of the priority?

Well, I'll start off with the name. I am not a fan of economic vitality in general because I think it's ambiguous to everyone.

I would just say bolster a thriving economy with a focus on neighborhood centers. But that's just my own beef with the phrase economic vitality.

I'll agree. I think it sounds like kind of jargony. I also think neighborhood centers is, as somebody who recently wasn't on council or in government at all, I'm like, I don't know what that is. I know now that we've gone through some presentations. I'm just thinking about as a member of the public, like I think small business captures this in a certain way. I don't want to change it too much from where the spirit of what we were talking about, but I do think like, yeah, some small business captures what I'm interested in. I think quality job creation was good. But I would agree with Emily's comment and then also just adding like small business in.

Well, I'm gonna oh no, I have something about the neighborhood center thing

Well, I was gonna say I would fight for neighborhood centers because yeah, it has been a long standing like small business there is but neighborhood centers and Revitalizing those are it's very important to me and I think has been you know, but and I think that was put in

Intentionally because we're wanting to continue the 15-minute city I think it captures our small business good jobs, but it is also about that kind of connectivity so I I, yeah. Sorry, Chris. That's a hard no. It hasn't been in government too long.

It's an opportunity for communications to, like, broadcast what we're doing and why. Some education. Yeah, I mean, yeah.

Like, to explain what a neighborhood center is?

I think so. To do, yeah, what it is and what it's not and doing some work around it.

Because I absolutely understand people not knowing what neighborhood centers are.

But in my experience, having priorities with specific language is helpful later on when, like, we're going back to what the priority is.

they've pushed really hard the neighborhood center message. Not everybody's probably gotten it, but

that language has been used consistently across a variety of events, research, data. I mean,

neighborhood centers, if they, if people have been engaged, they do know that term. So it might be

getting it out more broadly, but it's, it's, it's been hit pretty hard in my opinion.

Anyone else have feedback?

Yeah, I'll just say I third

I third your first and second about neighborhood centers

Thank you all right and then description just before we get there

But I am just also wanting to see that I think we did hear support for moving away from economic vitality To thriving economy so that kind of resonated with everyone

Or okay great

Can I just ask a quick question? What do you see the difference in the two as far as economic, the words, economic vitality versus thriving economy? Do you see a difference in the meaning?

I would say in the meaning no but if it's not accessible like if it does feel like city speak or jargony or you know we're glossing over some some important topics then I would say what's simpler clear more understandable and digestible from the public is really what we're going for here so clear is good great all right the description just want to check in we're All right. I see a thumbs up from Council Member Fudge. Again, just making sure we captured the intent of this. All right. Heads nodding. So moving on to metrics. The metrics that we put in here are connected to the economic health strategic plan. And there are SMART goals in there, which we can kind of bring forth in additional conversations. But we are looking at job growth. And we were keenly interested in some key industry sectors, bio and life sciences, clean tech, software, hardware manufacturing, beverage manufacturing, and others. They're really core to sustaining our economy. So that is one of the things that we are tracking. Worth saying, the city doesn't create jobs. We create conditions in which jobs can be created. So there are tons of macro factors that go into what happens in our local economy. So, you know, if we were to take credit for, you know, jobs and boom times, we'd also have to take fault for not delivering in bus times. And I don't think that's fair to us. We can create the conditions, we can do the work, and there's a lot of macro factors. So that is one measure. And we see some other kind of dynamics at play like that when we look at, you know, net business openings, closures and expansions. It's really important for us to understand how the economy is working, but there's just a lot that's outside of our control there. As a connection back to the previously discussed council priority, sales and use tax revenue. So we want to see more dynamism in the market, but that's also really important that we capture some of that dynamism in terms of sales tax revenue. We played with some of the idea around looking at geography. So Councilmember Conway to some of your question about fiscal productivity. Where are we seeing economic activity? Where might we see opportunities for enhanced economic vitality? See what I did there? So we're really looking at ways that we can slice and dice the information that helps us to build more meaningful strategies and then execute on those. We wanted to make sure we didn't lose items related to creative and nighttime economy. This probably needs a little bit more work. You know, number of activations and activity center is something that we can track. But I think, you know, we want to see more than just activations or actual outputs from that work. So we'll spend some more headspace on that. And then as you see, we have the very same metrics that Karen presented on a reduced processing time, rounds of review and cost. So we're trying to stitch some of these together and have the same performance metrics or metrics for success in multiple areas of the council priorities. Any feedback on these?

Cool. Next. Thank you, Rupa.

So some of the work that we have underway you're going to see at the top of this slide. And this is kind of the nuts and bolts, the blocking and tackling of economic development. That's our business retention and expansion, jargony way of saying keep our businesses here, help them grow. That is work that we're doing, I say we, Sana and her team, day in and day out, meeting with small businesses, main street businesses, again, in the interest of keeping them here, helping them grow, understanding their issues or where the city may be a barrier to their growth. There's also the primary employer recruitment. So we're actively responding to inquiries about Fort Collins as a location solution for primary employers. Probably worth just a quick note, primary employers can vary in size. I think a lot of times we say primary employers versus small business. But in Fort Collins, 90% of our businesses are small businesses, and a good portion of those are primary businesses, which means they export their good or service outside of the region and import net new capital. So that's really important for us to distinguish. Sometimes when we're talking about primary employers, that is inclusive of some small businesses. The definition of a primary employer then? It is. One that exports a majority of their good or service outside of the area importing net new capital. So you want to bring in new money and then circulate that around as many times as you can. And that's where having a strong primary employer base, coupled with thriving Main Street businesses, really creates the economic vitality we want to see in our community.

All right. I'm going to keep going.

you've already had a work session on the business assistance package talking about incentives how we can support Fort Collins in being more competitive in a very competitive economic environment that couples with work that we're doing around site readiness so where where might there be opportunity for primary employer commercial retail so looking that that is part of the retail or excuse me the real estate strategy that you heard mentioned earlier this evening. We'll be diving into not just the real estate strategy, but the retail strategy this next quarter. And then you see some of our work around the creative and nighttime economy. Dean Klinger is going to be speaking about that in just a little bit. Sana, do you want to talk about the barriers to business analysis and implementation? Yes. So the work with barriers to business,

It is actually done in conjunction and partnership with many in our organization. So planning and development services has been a key partner in that, but also looking at it from outside of the city organization. So who are all the other partners? The early reviews of this have shown, like for restaurants specifically, we've looked at it. it takes a restaurant 40 steps to go through the process, eight different fees, 10 different forms, and 12 different agencies before they can start a restaurant in Fort Collins. So really looking at first, what is those conditions? And then talking with our partners, not just within the city, but externally outside of the city as well, of what are the challenges and where there's opportunities to streamline that as. And then looking at that from a comparable to other community. So we were one of the first mid-sized cities to start this project with the company that is doing this. And we are now seeing more mid-sized cities coming online to do the same work. So we'll be a comparable as well. So we'll be able to compare apples to apples versus us compared to a Minneapolis, St. Paul or something too large. So the team has been really working on this. The business engagement executive team is also very involved. So it is a great report that

we're working on but then also saying here is our path forward here's what we do have in control and here's some long-range plans and ideation that we

would like forward thanks Anna and then you can see you know kind of wrapping up the rest of the slides some work around energy efficiency so how do we make our building stock more efficient Lor operating costs and hopefully support you know more business growth and then there's work around you know marketing the Northern Colorado region and how we support talent and workforce development across Northern Colorado.

Great.

Welcome, thoughts, comments, feedback.

Questions, comments?

All right. Sounds like you're getting off easy, so thank you.

You just didn't want to hear Vitality again.

Okay, and then finally we will welcome back Karen Champagne, Director of Planning, Transportation

and Development for our last priority.

All right, thank you. This priority started as Vision Zero and we just bolstered it a little with Accelerate Progress toward Vision Zero. And we know the conversation with council members really focused on vulnerable road users, so we captured that emphasis in the description. This is a continuation of work that has been going on for several years as part of a multi-year Vision Zero program, but we did refresh and update a new plan in 2022.

So this is just continuing on with several years of work in this space.

and success metrics a lot of data that we're already tracking to support this

existing program but welcome other inputs we did add in here some things

that were more input driven like number of projects because kind of the same dynamic of sometimes the safety improvements we make in the roadways

you don't see the outcomes or results for a little while. So we can measure initial projects

and areas improved and things like that and then we'll look back and see how it helps impact the crashes and fatal crashes,

serious and fatal crashes, excuse me. And then, so yeah, I'll just hit the work plan items real quick. So we included a work plan item that focused on updating speed limits that we've captured here. We also wanted to highlight that as part of preparation for the 27-28 budget process,

we'd be thinking about how can we redeploy existing resources towards this priority to be more strategic with the operations and maintenance dollars we already have

and other program dollars. So we'll have that conversation and deliver that as part of the budget process for council consideration Another proposal we have here as part of the work plan list would be to

Accelerate work. We're already doing to do safety assessments at all the schools right now We're on pace to do five to seven a year in partnership with PSD But we could come up with a proposal that would

Look at accelerating that so we could do more assessments faster and then the last one we have here is the link between the making it easier to build priority and the update to street design standards happy to answer any questions thank you or take feedback I have one question about the

success metrics or something perhaps to consider which is is there a way to or

a reason to perhaps measure the number of vulnerable road users because I think at this point sometimes things can feel unsafe enough that you don't actually have full participation in those alternatives to vehicular transportation so on one hand we may have zero injuries but also you would have zero injuries if nobody was biking and that's not what we want so how do we measure like participation in in the things that we're trying to protect or make safer we

could look at mode shift and yep other questions or comments I have some

comments um I think in the description we don't need the current enforcement sentence in there and then I think and then the success semester I think again the last priority you are up here for Karen the what is that to me some of these are long-term outcomes of updating things like street design but I'm not sure in a two-year period what we would expect to see and and so in my opinion is it can I expect to see that we're gonna update our street design standards it looks like it by 2027 so I think I would put something in that in the metrics about like whether or not we did that um or you know um and then so I guess I'm just trying to better link the metrics to what I can expect in a two-year period and then I think some of these are really great long-term metrics um but I'm really trying to make sure that I we're on the same page for expectations um just and I think just across um all of the priorities I think

them have like this scope of this priority includes this and others don't but it I don't know if they were written by different people but it kind of seems like they have different language and there's no there's not like a lot of consistency or one voice to it so I think we need to edit for that and then I think for the metrics I I'm just really gonna push for seeing some kind of number or met actual metrics so if we say number of total serious injuries if we go from like 82 to 81 is that success or is it 82 to 50 I mean I think we just need some some better numbers overall for the metrics and then that kind of description getting on but sorry I know this isn't all you but I just wanted to give that feedback before we end this portion but otherwise I think the work plan sounds good where we're heading sounds good I think just those few

things thank you yeah yeah thank you for the work on this I agree with the standardization of the description styles across the priorities. I think that would be great. I was curious about if a success metric, and I would need some baseline data, but something around compliance with distracted driving laws, I don't, or even, I don't, I don't know, somewhere in there, I think something around distracted driving and education around around why speed limits are important for vulnerable populations, bolstering some of those educational efforts. But I would be interested from Fort Collins Police Services how many folks they think are aware of being cited and complying with the no cell phone in your hands law that is currently in place because I have not seen a lot of behavioral change as a driver and I can't imagine that that's helping with the success of Vision Zero. But I don't know that.

I have one question about the street design standards.

How much of the street design standards are designed to reduce

pedestrian and bike deaths per se?

How many of them are trying to make possible neighborhoods that

promote walkability and bikeability from the start?

I would say that inherently the regulations accomplish both of what you're describing.

And we have projects that come in at different stages of that journey. So we also have to respond case by case to what is the current condition or characteristics of that project. But generally speaking, yes, the intention is to make sure that any initial design of streets, it has to hold a lot. And we'll get into this when we bring the work forward. There's a lot of trade-offs with street design standards because it's about everything in the right-of-way. So we have to fit in utilities. We have to fit in streets. We have to fit in sidewalks. We have to fit in trees, bike lanes, all of the things. And so it's always a trade-off of how to make all of that work. so we'll bring those we'll bring those trade-offs forward and and and you'll you'll see it we can talk through those into far more detail over the next two

years thanks I guess given that we might finish these in 20 midway through 2027 I would love to see some kind of success metric at as some kind of like some kind of development that is really innovative in terms of its orientation towards transit, walking, biking, just in the pipeline by the end of 2027, something like that. I know that that's not something that's totally in our control, but to me, successful street design standards would encourage a fundamentally different type of development that is less car-oriented in some sense. Maybe that's two pie in the sky.

Any other questions or comments? Alright, seeing none.

So I think we'll take a break before we go

to our additional work plan items. So it is 7.34, we'll come back at 7.45.

Alright everyone, welcome back. And we are on to our next phase. So I will turn it back over to Rupa. Yes, welcome back, Council. So this next part is gonna be a discussion on the additional work plan items. So as a reminder, during the retreats, these are the three items that staff felt like we could add.

We had additional capacity to add a couple of work plan items. So these are the ones that council selected as part of that process.

They did not make the council priority cut, so they won't be on the council priorities communication one pager or in the resolution. But we will report on progress during the quarterly updates that we will provide for you. so Joining me is Kevin Wilkins our chief information officer who will be briefly discussing the first work plan item

Great. Thank you Rupa and good evening council It's fun to go after break But it's also really exciting to go after the first five items that we walked through this evening because We're entering a new era in our community technology is going to enable a lot of new capabilities, but also really shifting from being very transactional focused the way we interact to being really more engagement and more experiential focused. I wanted to paint the picture and really talk about the why first. Just imagine as members of our community get help from government, whether that's a resident, a business, or a visitor. They're going to start to look at ways to interact with us to bring down those barriers, whether they've actually engaged with local government before, it's their first time or it's a business small business starting how do we reduce the friction and improve the ability for them to interact with us starting with a conversation in the language that they prefer to really understand and navigate city services so we as staff can start to free up our time away from administrative manual repetitive work to actually improve those experiences and to improve the engagement from those members of our community regardless of who they are and how long they've been a member of this community. So when we think about how this is going to improve that, we can respond quicker, we can reduce cost, become more efficient, and redeploy all of those resources more efficiently. AI is becoming a part of everything. Every vendor, every solution, as you see in your personal lives, it's going to become a part of our community. We need to lead AI and not let AI lead us. We've got some core tenants we need to adhere to starting with our ethics, transparency, and responsibility to ensure that we are engaging the community and letting them know that we are using these tools and these capabilities in a very responsible and very sustainable manner. Lastly, we've got to also think about when we lead AI for the community, we're doing this for everyone. We're not doing this for select members of the community. So as we think about how we're going to ready ourselves from a leadership perspective, and when we think about this title, leadership is not a specific job title. It's a role we play across this community. How do we ensure that all of us are ready to lead in this space? This means that we've really got to identify some key areas that we want to focus on. We've got to establish what that baseline looks like. and we've got to operationalize those in a very effective way. This is not just about training and certifying our staff or council or members of our community to lead. It's really about operationalizing even what you talked about earlier this evening so that we can really improve those interactions. So before we go through metrics and the timeline, I just wanted to pause there. Any questions or comments?

Yeah, I thank you for this presentation. I think it's really important. I think the language around this is going to be really critical because I was just frantically looking on Reddit. But there was a post where folks, I think, are making assumptions about what the purpose of this work stream is around AI. And my understanding as you're talking about it is it's us figuring out how we move forward in this AI kind of world in an ethical, safe, productive way. And I think folks, some folks out there hear AI and they assume maybe some more nefarious directions. So I just think the messaging is going to be important.

I agree. And I think the term AI is so nebulous and so abstract in so many ways. You can apply that to public safety. You can apply it to law enforcement. You can apply it to health. You can apply it to economics. we have to make sure that we are well equipped to your point to ensure that our our we act responsibly and we act in an ethical way so because otherwise third-party providers and even commercial partners might play that role in a way that we don't intend it to

right yeah for sure and then i think just also reinforcing and you did a nice job of elucidating this but the purpose of us looking at this is not to fire staff it's to allow them to work more efficiently and offload some of the more manual rote tasks again i think it's just there's a lot of fear out there and i appreciate you being up front about that agree other questions or comments

yeah josh this is about the the time frame i guess so i'm not jumping the gun on that am i Okay, sure. Is there or is there going to be and I'm sorry if I missed it is there going to be a policy for the use of AI envisioning this I think it's it's hinted at a little bit by governance. But is there going to be policies that city employees will follow that there will be a human making the ultimate decision and things like that envisioned in this. Okay, I forget what the term is but human in the room or something like that. So okay.

Yeah, absolutely. And I love that question. We established a citywide AI policy in 2025. We're going to continue to refine that. But one of that is where humans play the role in decision making. When we think of where we want to start with AI, it's having AI be an assistant, having AI support staff, support the community, help navigate whether it's internal or external facing, not to be an autonomous decision maker, taking that decision making authority or even decision making implicitness around what we're trying to accomplish. because we have to be very careful here that when we design these capabilities that we do it in a way that it's always there to provide information and insights but not to determine outcomes.

Sorry, one more. Is there a particular AI product or suite that's going to kind of be the norm that's maybe embedded with Outlook, for instance, I know you know employees use chat GPT or whichever is available it is there kind of one that maybe we'll try to steer people to

I'm glad you asked that question and with I'll ask for your grace this evening I don't want to disclose specific vendors But I will tell you that we're evaluating five key leaders in the space It's changing and evolving rapidly We need to also not just the capability but how that company or solution ethically establishes and supports those capabilities. We've got to ensure data privacy. We've got to ensure the right usage of that information and how we are training their models, not just what we intend for it to be. That's an area that's one of my greatest concerns because when we start to outsource that to a third party, we have to be careful that there's unintended consequences.

Thank you. That's really good to hear. Appreciate it.

Other questions? In that evaluation and having not done that evaluation, I'm not sure if this is even possible, but are there ways to evaluate the environmental impacts of each company? Do some of them have their data centers like in colder locations with their closer to water? And that is like a very uninformed statement. But again, you get what I'm saying, I think.

I absolutely do. And it's like you were having a meeting with me last Friday. I was meeting with a national vendor to discuss data centers and to discuss computing. And one of the things that we're seeing change rapidly is right now, these are early, early capabilities. What we're seeing is the waste associated with experimentation and to build these capabilities, generation of electrical power, water, they're high demand. That's not sustainable model. And what we see is projections. A lot of companies are actually learning from that very quickly, and they're learning how to build very efficient models that have a very low carbon impact. So we also have to take that into consideration as we evaluate and we select a partner to work with us. We don't want to look back in 24 months and go, wow, these 100,000 conversations that occurred in the last 24 months have this carbon impact on our environment, whether it's local, regional, or international. So, yes, that is one of our key elements in our criteria. And we're still designing that, and we'll talk through that when we talk about the actual framework.

Great. Any other questions or comments?

Okay.

Seeing none.

Good. Thank you.

Thank you.

And up next we have Cecilia.

discussion of updating marijuana laws what we heard is that there's interest in increasing the license types that we have available so we can increase opportunities for new businesses such as hospitality licenses and also in

addressing some of the restrictive code sections that create distance

restrictions which impact a business's ability to change location if necessary so hearing that what we've outlined in the timeline and the description is just addressing really stakeholder engagement primarily because we we have a lot of frameworks we can use to evaluate the the updates and really what we want to pull in is the needs and desires of the community and understand potential impacts as we work across departments as well so that would be reaching out to industry industry stakeholders departments that impact that you know are that play a part in license evaluation as well so we work with police services and the city attorney's office of course and that is the group that will be working on these code changes so additionally we're going to be working on the tobacco licensing so we're looking at how stakeholder engagement can tie into this work as well in our timeline we anticipate 2027 for the majority of the work and if we can integrate some of these processes into the tobacco licensing as well then we can potentially look at fast tracking some of this work

Great. Any questions?

I just have a comment. I was curious why this work wouldn't be started until 2027.

That's due to the capacity of staff. As I stated, the same staff that's working on tobacco licensing would also be doing the work with the marijuana code revisions. So again, if we can collaborate with You know CPIO and work on community engagement strategies that encompass both the marijuana and the tobacco licensing And and get some input from in both areas then I think that it would There's a possibility that we could up that time frame But that's being very conservative just based off of team capacity. Okay, and you did that say that I'm apologies

I guess my concern is that bringing something forward to adoption in Q4 of 2027 is my concern because that's the end of this two-year priority period.

And, you know, if anything was delayed, then it would go to the next council. So I think I just get hesitant any time we're thinking about outlining that timeline to be something adopted in Q4 of the end of that year, end of an election year?

Yeah, I would say I think that's a good flag, and we can continue to iterate on the timeline with Council as we update you all during the quarterly work session updates.

Okay, great. Thank you. Any other questions?

Yeah. Will there be consideration about some kind of marijuana cafe idea, like legalizing something like that as part of this process that that would be

one of the considerations is the hospitality license which would be allowing on-site consumption and there's a potential for retail and on-site

yeah thanks okay thank you okay we made it to our last work plan item and And joining me is Dean Klingner, Director of Community Services.

Good evening, Mayor, Council Members. Yeah, Dean Klingner, Community Services Director. Happy to be here to be the voice for this work plan item. So I'll just say this. You'll hear a lot of themes similar to what Jacob was talking about in a thriving economy. we also are really kind of connecting some dots with making things easier to build here. And then the third kind of leg of this stool is aligning work plan items that we have going on in the art and culture department. So that's how this framed and is framed. We're happy to hear any comments or suggestions you have. I will say this looks a lot like it was presented in the second weekend of the council priority retreat. So we combined the nighttime and creative economy ideas. And then the description here just really acknowledges that this is a sliver of the broader economy and a really important one. And we're really focused on a lot of other great outcomes that come out of the creative sector, like well-being, vitality in the community, and connecting people together. So what we haven't always done, though, is align all of our projects towards a creative economy goal. We picked some metrics here. I'm happy to hear any feedback or reaction you have to these. I will say, similar to what you heard from Jacob, too, we just had some discussions around, hey, this might be hard to measure. How could we do it? So this is a little bit outcome-focused. Obviously, increasing sales tax, property taxes from this sector would be an outcome we're looking for. I know Jacob had increased activations, so the number of things that are happening. And then we've got some of these like removing barriers to building would be things we could try to measure in here too. So the way our work plan looks, these first two top items are housed in our art and culture department. So our art in public places, of course, works with lots of creators and artists in the community. And aligning this towards this priority is something that we can do as we're starting to sort of update, do a significant update of that program. And then Foco Creates is formerly known as Fort Fund, I always try to say, because folks know it that way, but granting to our lots of direct support to creators and artists in the community. And so again, that's a criteria we can use to update here. And then we kind of did this whole list of other things that are going on that have great alignment here. So they'd be like, this would be like secondary outcomes of, if you think about the ways that we support, we use downtown as an example, but really anywhere we've got creative work going on, but how the city supports those through our operations. Obviously, if we're talking about opening a small business or anything in the creative sector, making that easier. I know council's aware that the noise ordinance is being updated and meeting multiple outcomes, but obviously getting that balance right for the community. And then strengthening partnerships and collaboration is really good to emphasize every time we talk about is it really takes a village. So we've got an art and culture department. We've got folks working in economic health, planning, development, and transportation, but then lots of other folks out in the community that actually run the creative center and do this work every day. So I'll stop there and see what questions you all might have.

Any questions or comments? I would just maybe a metric around nighttime.

Nighttime, okay.

There are more events happening at night, like, you know, just something around measuring that.

How to measure it. Okay, thanks for that.

And then how much of this is already kind of in the works or was already kind of something you guys are already doing?

Yeah, so just think some of the framing that we did around a work plan item versus a priority where we might really be trying to move the needle or bring resources was really is organizing a lot of work that is existing. So you see other priorities that may be accelerated or have more emphasis, particularly in the thriving economy and the reduced barriers to build. But in terms of the things that are going on in art and culture, those are existing programs. This would be more about how we do them than how much we do them.

Anything else? Okay. Thank you. All right. So as we're wrapping up this section, so historically we have updated council on their priorities through a Thursday packet memo and then published those updates online. What we're proposing to do this time around is to do work sessions with council every three or four months Which also gives us the opportunity to iterate our work plans with council and then of course there's also Consideration and feedback when staff brings forward any like code changes council will have the opportunity to have discussions with staff there as well And you see a tentative schedule On the screen as well and we'll get that on the six-month planning calendar as we go And so for next steps for the council priorities, we are planning on bringing forward a council resolution to consider for council to consider adopting. And we will, of course, make the changes that council requested tonight and also consider adoption of the strategic plan and the resolution to create that ad hoc committee for the build priority. Maybe we'll call it the affordability priority. And then after council adopts the resolution on March 3rd, we will be producing the council priority one pagers.

And what we heard from council during the retreat is to make sure that there is consideration for those one pagers to include that we still have strong environmental goals, economic goals, the triple bottom line.

And so we want to make sure that we're tying it back to the city plan core values, which really speaks to that. So livability, community, and sustainability. So we'll be workshopping with our communications department of how we can incorporate that into the one-pagers. Any questions before we move on to the next section?

Okay. Okay, so next we have the draft 2026-2030 strategic plan, and it sounds like you all have taken a look, which is very exciting. So some of the questions that we have tonight is if we have appropriately incorporated your council priorities and work plan items into the draft strategic plan, and then what overall feedback you have. So just to ground us a little bit into our leadership system and how this all connects.

So our leadership system is a feedback loop designed for high performance with community and internal and external engagement at the center. The stars that you see denotes where there's a high level of council involvement. So starting from the top right-hand corner, we have long-term strategies like city plan, mid-range strategies such as the strategic plan, and then short-term strategies like the council priorities.

Next, we take those strategies and like the strategic plan. That really gives us the framework for how we resource for budget purposes. And that's really one of council's main jobs is to to pass a budget. And so from there, this moves into the city manager responsibility of hiring talent in order to deliver the services. And then we always want to measure, are we accomplishing the outcomes that we have set out to and report that back to council? And as we report back to council, that's your opportunity to move into the adapt and innovate. So based on what we're reporting back, where do we need to make adjustments? And then those adjustments go into setting the vision and strategy, and the whole cycle starts back over again.

So one way of looking at the purpose of a strategic plan is that it translates these long-range plans, like city plan, into measurable objectives over the course of five years. And the strategic plan is also a communication tool, so folks know what's in our plan.

and can align around shared priorities. And as I mentioned, it also provides a framework for budget and resource allocation.

How our strategic plan is set up starts with mission, vision, and values down to outcome areas. We have seven outcome areas. Down into objectives, we have 18 objectives. And what we have added this cycle is actions. I did not count how many actions we have. but you will see that outlined in the strategic plan. So again here are our mission, vision, and values. So oh did I go too far? I did. Okay so here's our mission, vision, and values. So really the mission for our city is exceptional

service for an exceptional community. So this the mission is really what is our purpose why do we exist as an organization the vision is our picture for the future what do we

aspire to be and then our values are how do we behave with each other and with the public and i'm sure you have all seen this multiple times

okay and then the next layer down is our strategic outcome areas and we have seven

and these are how your council priorities and work plan items fall into our

strategic outcome areas and this actually worked out pretty nicely so the

objectives that you see on the screen they align with your council priorities

so the bigger council priorities are your objectives and then the smaller items

the work plan items are your smaller action items in the strategic plan so

So here are the four objectives in high performing governments. So that first objective aligns.

AI leadership. For this one, I know this one looks sad by itself on the screen,

but there are three action items under this one and the creative nighttime economy action, it could fall under this objective, but we thought we wanted to

align it more closely to the economic health outcome area. And as you can see the economic health objectives very clearly aligned to the economic or I

should say the thriving economy priority and so the so again the nighttime creative economy is included here as action 3.2.2 and then we did add 3.2.3 for updating the marijuana laws

here are two environmental health objectives which really speaks to our climate future and

water so neighborhood and community vitality so for this one the support sustainable growth

and affordability clearly aligns with objective 5.3.

And if I'm going too fast through these, please tell me to pause or slow down.

Safe community has two objectives.

And then last, we have transportation and mobility. So the vision zero priority is reflected

in that first objective.

And so with that, I will take council feedback. So again, the questions are, have we aligned the council priorities and work plan items appropriately into the strategic plan and then your overall feedback. Great. Thank you. Council? Yeah, Josh.

Thank you. I do think all of our priorities and work plan items are really well captured in all these. My question is on neighborhood and community vitality objectives. I almost feel like I want to move 5.3 up to 5.1 because it's so important. But I sort of have a little bit of an issue with 5.1 because it's an aspirational goal. It's certainly a thing we want to accomplish. But it kind of gets into that area of I'm not sure we have a ton of control over this. I feel like if we do 5.3, then 5.1 will follow like we discussed earlier. I mean, I'm not suggesting we get rid of it, but I feel it's a little more aspirational, I think, than some of the specifics and the other objectives. That's just my two cents.

Great. Yeah, Julie.

Yeah, I'll start by, I think 5.1 was legacy is what you're seeing there, right? So, and I hear what you're saying.

Actually, do you have feedback on that one before I go into my?

Yeah, I'll invite Jacob Pestio, our Chief Sustainability Officer, to give his TED Talk on 5.1.

I'm going to try to go fast.

So, Council Member Pignatara, yes, that is legacy. That language comes directly from the Housing Strategic Plan. So we just wanted to make sure that we had congruent language in the Strategic Plan that mirrored Housing Strategic Plan.

Do you want to talk to me about the action items over there?

we do no it's fine no that's thank you I think that that's a good point though too coming from

that plan okay so to answer your questions for me yes are the council priorities and work plan items appropriately incorporated I think so I did have a question of what was the decision

for Vision Zero stuff to go under transit and mobility, transportation and mobility, as opposed to safe?

Go ahead. No, go ahead, Rupo. We went back and forth on this, but ultimately did decide transportation and mobility was the best place for Vision Zero, just based on some of the infrastructure work, I think.

Yeah. I don't know that I'd have much more to add to that. I think generally we just felt it nested nicely in transportation and mobility outcome areas. But we do reflect in the action items a strong tie to police services and safe community as an outcome area.

And some of the metrics that kind of tie back to safe community. So I think we can connect it with metrics, too.

Great. Thank you. And then under that one then, 7.1.4, which is going to take me a minute to find it. But in my notes, I was curious if we might want to change some of those action items. You know what? I need to find it because, thank you. Thanks. Phone a friend. So it says align policy and implementation, audit and update street design standards to balance advancing vision with ability to operate and maintain the system. I would not object to seeing something more around prioritizing active modes in there, prioritizing transit, as opposed to, I mean, balance, yes. But I think that the time may be for us to maybe focus on instead of balance.

Yeah, we can absolutely do that. I think that makes sense.

I think we were driving more at, and I don't think we really skillfully worded it this way, but we were more focused on the make it easier to build side of the conversation with the regulatory piece. So I like where you're headed with that. We don't want to emphasize the operations and maintenance part of it.

We actually want to talk about we do need to balance with the cost to build or the complexity to build.

Okay. So I think that that would be a good update.

Yeah, because I think because it falls under the Vision Zero part. Right. And I see where your head was at for sure. So thanks for explaining. Yeah. Okay, great. That makes sense. As long as everyone agrees, too. But we all have to vote on it eventually so that we can talk about it then, too.

So then I just have some general comments about the way it's set up. So bravo to staff. For those that don't know, this used to be 42 pages long. It is currently 14. I like the connections to other plans piece.

I don't know if that was in the 42 pager because I didn't look at it very often because it was 42 pages long.

Stupid little thing. Very cool picture on the cover, but there's that weird broken fence in the Lor corner. I just could not not see it. You're going to be able to not see it. So you might want to Photoshop that out or something. So I noticed there is no table of contents. If you're stuck with the current structure, I would suggest a table of contents. I found myself flipping back and forth. I really don't know if it's necessary, though, to have that first section as the high level overview unless you, you know, so you have the summary. yeah it is um so you start with a summary of strategic objectives in section one and then when you go to section two you're just repeating the exact same thing but with the actions um i think i understand the concept but it was it's very repetitive so we don't need section one is your situation i don't think you need it or if you want to do it in more of an infographic way like what you did I don't know like an infographic might be useful here instead and then definitely this is where I had to flip back and forth a ton tying the performance measures like have them with each section instead of separate they don't need to tie exactly to numbers I don't think but um just a lot easier if they're all in the same section And so with that, thank you very much. Great, thanks.

Other? Yeah, Amy. I'll just provide quick feedback for this being my first time going through all of this. It was, I think you've captured everything.

I think you were able to draw out of me the things that I was hoping to work on. And I think you've captured my thoughts. And I think it's really, I think you've done a fabulous job. So thank you. Thanks to staff too. Great others

I'll go why people are thinking about it. I just had honestly a few little nitpicky things slash questions So in the neighborhood community economic vitality Sorry now I have to like scroll down to it and 5.1.4 It says ensure rental house program achieves registration and compliance. I Don't know is that our five-year goal is that it? it just kind of seems weak. So, like, don't we have some other goals under rental registration that are more impactful than just everyone's registered?

So, I don't know, Jacob, if you have some thoughts.

Yeah, thank you for the question. And the ultimate objective for the rental registration is safe, habitable housing. So we can look at that. So compliance would mean that not only are they registered but that we have ensured that they are safe spaces. So that's something I think we could build into the language. So not just is everyone registered but what does that actually mean? What does that get us?

Yeah if it's not I think it would just be helpful that you know I was just like okay I guess that's it doesn't seem strategic to me. So thank you. I have another one for NCV if you want to stay a purchasing case and 5.3.4 it says

increased clarity and alignment plans and policies between key citywide and sub-area plans and then it specifically calls out city plan and our climate future and I'm just wondering why we gave an example instead of just ending it at sub-area plans period oh sorry

not a very compelling reason why I'm happy to put the period sooner I would

just write yeah I like when we incorporate like from the actual language but I think sometimes calling out plans in specific things like this

somehow elevate it as more of like this is we're gonna now just do it I know you

say such as but yeah I mean that I would why are we choosing these so I would

just remove it if it were okay and then with economic health nice try Jacob

sorry there's just another nitpicky one where it says review and implement recommendation and barriers to business study kit I don't know why we have review when we just say implement recommendations yeah I think that's

just based on where we are in the process right now, it's an incomplete final draft or draft draft. So, we want to review that before moving to implementation. So, I think that's probably implied.

I would assume we would review it before we implemented it. I think it seems nitpicky, but these strategic plans just get like, I want it to be strategic and it just removing some of the excess language. So, unless you had something in there, it's just. Nope.

Okay. Thank you. Sorry. And then I just for the metrics specifically for NZV

Let me go back down to them. I agree with Julie. It's all like a lot of flipping back. I Just I mean I would take some of Chris's suggestions for measurements Especially because this is like the longer broad range because affordable housing inventory is important But we're no longer just talking about capital a affordable housing inventory and some of these other things I don't know if they necessarily measure exactly as long as far as housing I think we could just have a little bit better metrics that we're tracking in this

area I don't know what they are but that's we definitely took notes when Chris was talking

right thank you that's all I will say I agree with Julie that yeah this is this is where yours goes yes I will agree that like this is so much better than what we've been working with and like I I actually feel like, oh, I know what the city is going to work on in the next four to five years. And so thanks to staff for really reducing it down.

Melanie. Yeah, I just wanted to thank staff again. I know this was a lot of work. I do want to second some of Julie's formatting concerns. I do think it is redundant to have the summary. And I do like the idea of moving the performance metrics up into the area. but very well done and very concise and captured our thoughts very well. So thank you.

Anyone else?

Chris?

I was looking at 4.1.4, which is support usage of transit and active modes of transportation to reduce

single occupancy vehicles, mild traveled.

I guess for me,

I would love to see a lot more discussion of land use in the environmental health section of this document.

To me, we have a really great transit line in Fort Collins that could be delivering a lot of vehicle miles traveled reduction as the max line,

but we haven't seen the land use patterns around it to really unlock that potential.

And given that we may be seeing the front range passenger rail coming in in the future,

I'd really like to see more discussion of land use in the environmental health section of this because I think that's going to be, that's like the Lost hanging fruit of environmental stuff that we have, that we can really affect, I guess.

Let's. um let's

one question i had was that i also had a question on 7.11 which is safe choices

! promote a culture of traffic safety through amplified messaging from police services and effective messaging from police services and effective training education programs offered by FC Moves.

One of my questions is how much research is there to back up the idea that education and

messaging can affect traffic deaths rather than street redesign kinds of land use patterns, etc.

If you want a robust response to the question of how much research is there, I would have to do a follow-up. But I think it's fair to say that as part of our Vision Zero strategy, we want to tackle all three areas of education, enforcement, and engineering. So we want to look at all of them. You want to have a holistic strategy. But what we know is always true, and the same is true in other spaces, that your biggest impact is the investment in the infrastructure and enforcement. We've seen a lot of progress in speed compliance, which is the enforcement and educational campaigns that police services has done. So if you're wanting to know which has the most impact, generally speaking, you can assume it's going to be investment in the infrastructure to make it safe.

but you have to do all three. I guess I would love to see the focus turn towards street design and infrastructure so that our focus is less on vulnerable road users behavior and more on the kind of systemic factors that drive traffic violence.

On 7.22, the capital investment, secure remaining funding and complete final design for Foothills Transit Center and the West Elizabeth Street and Overland Trail Roundabout. At least for me,

I would love to see, again, more language around proactive planning around these transit hubs for

the future. What did we learn about from the MAX line and how can we maximize the potential

of the Front Range Passenger Rail and West Elizabeth as we update the TOC, etc., etc.? I guess that's one thing I'm thinking about as I'm reading this plan. I know that we want funding to complete the bus lines.

You know, these kind of the Foothills Transit Center, the West Elizabeth Street, etc.

But I guess I feel like I'm hoping that we can turn our focus from simply thinking about the transit investments towards thinking about, like, what do these transit investments unlock?

Because there's a lot of transit around Colorado that's not well utilized.

light rail in Denver, the max line, etc.

I think we really need to learn the lessons of those transit experiences.

Then I also had questions about the parking system ones, which is 7.3.

So 7.32 says implement a phased approach to update pricing and parking zones that includes

ongoing calibration to respond to changing parking conditions. Did we already make the decision to implement a phased approach or is that still something we're going to talk about?

Oh, the last council already chose that.

And what is exactly, I guess what if we can talk about, I guess we're going to have discussions about this.

So is all this 7.3 like decisions that the last council made basically?

Or is there, how much of this is still up for discussion in terms of the parking?

I couldn't hear your whole question there. Oh, sorry. I couldn't hear very well. Oh, sorry. It sounded like you're asking how much has already been decided on 7.3? Yeah. Okay. Yes. So what we did when we developed the action items was we did make some assumptions about things that would be approved. So if things aren't approved, we would have to come back and update. But we were basing it on direction given by the previous council, which included, number one, work around just more immediate actions to improve customer experience and permitting systems and things like that related to parking. So that's something that's work underway now after direction from council. The phased approach was what we had proposed to council at the last work session on this topic. We didn't get final direction.

We haven't yet approved the ordinance that allows for us to collect a fee for a paid on street. So that is an action that you still would have to take.

So, of course, because that's an action you haven't taken yet, you know, we're not going to presume an outcome, but we're ready if it's a yes.

I guess my preference would be not to include the assumed outcome of the parking decision that's going to be before us, given that there was some kind of direction from the last council, but we've got a really new gang of people here up front, would be my request.

That is up to you all.

Yeah.

I just have a few more things, I promise.

In terms of metrics, you know, I think I mentioned I jumped the gun and told you all my metrics for housing earlier, which sounds like you guys got, which I appreciate.

In terms of the environmental health metrics, the percent decrease in community and municipal greenhouse gas emissions from the 2005 baselines.

I'm wondering how we avoid issues with this metric where we could take actions that would increase Fort Collins' greenhouse gas emissions, yet Lor global emissions.

I'm thinking of something like if we build a house in Fort Collins and we draw somebody who has a higher than average greenhouse gas emissions for Fort Collins,

but they now don't live in severance, they live in Fort Collins, and so they have Lor greenhouse gas emissions than they would have otherwise.

So this metric would make it look like that's a bad outcome when, in fact, we've reduced greenhouse gas emissions.

So how do we prevent the metrics like this from counting against us things that move, that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, but just move them across the city line or the county line?

Yeah, thank you. That's a great question. And I think some of the land use discussion that's already occurred tonight kind of gets at some of that.

It's why for our climate future, some of those ambitious big picture goals like the GHG reduction and our 2030 target are important, but they're not the only thing that we measure. And we've said for a long time, we try to approach this so it's not just a math problem. So we're not just trying to maximize GHG reduction without consideration for equity, some other human-focused systems, and have maybe detrimental or deleterious effects on other parts of our systems. So I guess that's a long kind of mealy-mouthed way of saying we know that is an important measure because it's something that we said we were trying to achieve in one of our guiding documents, our climate future. but it is certainly not the only measure that we take seriously and we balance that against a number of other factors.

I guess I'd like us to think about ways we could make sure that our metrics are accounting for the total reduction in greenhouse gases from our actions, rather than just like how much does Fort Collins emit, right? because it does no good to just clean ourselves of greenhouse gas emissions and push them into

the county because the planet doesn't really care. So I don't know. That's probably a longer

like term thought process. But to me, I guess that is a really important

consideration because when we set these metrics, sometimes we chase them and then

And then we can go astray in certain ways, I guess I worry about.

Good.

So if I can just add, just in general, as a whole, our organization, we are trying to get better at the metrics piece.

And that's a conversation that we're having constantly of what are the metrics that can be most useful to us.

So it's an iterative process.

So it's helpful to hear discussion tonight from council.

And we're not going to have all the answers for metrics right now.

One metric I'm interested in, too, is I'd be interested in the get FOCO enrollment as a percentage of total households that are eligible, just to see how well we're doing. I know that there's been an increase, and that's actually caused some budget issues.

But I do think it's important that if we provide a service for low-income people, we know how many of them are taking it up.

Are they able to take advantage of it, even though it might hurt our budget? in some way, like hopefully people are taking advantage of our services. And then in safe

community, do the number of injury and fatal crashes, is that just bike and ped or is that also car crashes? Is that all the numbers together? Yes. Yes, that is all. And again, I will say,

motorcycle fatalities.

Okay. I think that is all of mine. So thank you.

Great. Anyone else? Okay. Seeing none.

Do you have what you need?

Yes. See you on March 3rd. All right.

Thank you.

All right. I think that is the end. So do council members have any announcements?

All right. Seeing none, this work session is adjourned. Thank you. Good night for a council.

Thank you.