City Council Work Session — February 24, 2026

order. Will the city manager please provide a review of tonight's work session items? Yes. Thank you, Mayor Pro Tem. Good evening, everyone. We have three items scheduled tonight. The first is a staff report on the FLOC safety system and how it is used in Fort Collins. That

was amended to include an updated presentation that you all received. We have a discussion on

the Sound in the City project. And then finally, an update and discussion on the College Avenue

infrastructure improvement project. So if you're ready, Mayor Pro Tem, I will go ahead and turn it over to our Police Chief Jeff Swoboda to kick off this item.

Good evening, Mayor Pro Tem and City Council members. I am Jeff Swoboda, the Police Chief, and I want to start by just saying thank you for you all creating space and allowing time for us to have this important conversation. I also want to pause and just thank our community for having the energy around this conversation as well in pushing us to have these conversations so I just want to make sure that our community members know that we take their input seriously and I want to thank them for being engaged throughout this entire process you know tonight we're discussing flock a license plate reading system and we'll go into the whole system here in a little bit but I'm positive that the overarching discussion on technology and the police use in technology is going to be a conversation

that we have many times in the future as technology continues to evolve quickly. Kind of what are the limits that our community has in regards specifically around policing as far as I'm

concerned, but that'll be conversations that I'm sure we'll have ongoing in the future. I think

it's important to note that I'm a big believer in recognizing that any endeavor inside a police

Department can really only move at the speed of trust and that anything that we

are trying to accomplish needs to have the community support in order for it to be successful and so I just want to make that clear that the community gets a say

in the tools and tactics that a police department utilizes in order to quote unquote keep the community safe that what how we go about that it's not safety

at all costs so I am really looking for the conversation tonight and how we'll have more conversations in the future. I'm now going to be introducing the two people who will

be walking through the presentation, and then the presentation should take about 15 or so minutes,

and then as many questions as you all have. This is Deputy Chief Greg Yeager and Assistant Chief Adam McCambridge, and they have really, you know, spent specifically the last couple weeks, maybe a month, just trying to answer the many questions that have come up. As you all know, there are a lot of questions a lot of concerns people want to know how the system is working how is Fort Collins using it and so I think that they are well versed to

handle probably most of your questions but if the questions get a little too technical we do have other people in the audience that at the council's

discretion can be brought us to answer more technical questions so without

further ado I would turn it over to deputy chief and assistant chief good

evening. I wanted to just real quickly say before I start moving through the slides, I know that the council members have all had a chance to see this slide deck. For our community members, not only within the slides, but at the end there are several that are frequently asked questions. So these are in direct response to communities questions to you, the council members, and then our attempt to make sure that we were covering each of those for them. So we recognize, as the chief said, this is a rather large discussion. There's quite a bit of information. So we'll move through the slides relatively quickly and then just you can ask us questions as you see fit. So let me just start here. The very first thing is the chief said, I mean, our purpose and mission as a police department is to provide safety and service to our community. And so in order to do that, we use a lot of techniques. We use a lot of technology and we're always looking for something that's innovative, something that's new that might increase our efficiency, our efficacy with the community. And so whenever we do that, whether it's a practice or it's a technology that we utilize, we make sure that we vet that so that it is legally sound, that whether it's our local, state, or federal law, that it's in compliance. And then we have to look at that and we take that balance between the privacy and the community service very seriously. And so you will see as we go, we have different ways to audit these tools and programs and to show some accountability with it.

The clicker's not going to keep up with me. There we go. So the very first thing is just building on what the chief said again. So what is FLOC? FLOC is an ALPR, an Automatic License Plate Reader System. It collects facts about the vehicles and the license plates on those vehicles that are associated with a crime or maybe a safety matter in our community and not the people that are within the vehicle. We utilize this as a pointer system. It alerts our investigators, whether that's a patrol officer who's driving around routinely in uniform or maybe it's a detective that's working a more advanced investigation. We use it as a pointer system that points them towards a vehicle that's been flagged by some other law enforcement officer. And you'll hear a little bit more about how these different things come into the system, But all of these are from law enforcement to law enforcement. It is used as an aid to solve those crimes because when we think about some of the speed with which we can locate a vehicle, if it's a suspect or a missing person, FLOC definitely enables us to do that. All of the images that are produced from this are owned by Fort Collins Police Services, the city of Fort Collins.

And by our contract, FLOC cannot share the images and the information with anyone else. They can't sell it to them and they cannot share it with them.

And the other piece of that is just that that data only resides in a secure server for 30 days, and then it's on a rolling basis, so the data just goes away as new data is produced.

The Flock system itself, just real quickly, for imaging, not everybody may have seen it. The top shows you an image of a typical device. The camera is the kind of oblong thing below, and then that's just a solar panel to provide power to it. And it's showing two images of the camera and then just a sample photo of what a vehicle might look like as it points down towards the road. It's really important to note that FLOC is not facial recognition. It is not connected to the identifying information of drivers. In other words, it does not have access to run the name, address, date of birth, anything of any of the occupants of the vehicle. It does not even show in the FLOC system who the vehicle is registered to. It simply identifies law enforcement looking for a vehicle of this description, looking for a license plate with these digits, and that's what it shows. So it doesn't identify the drivers or even the vehicle's owners. It is not used for immigration enforcement, and it cannot be shared with immigration officials in the state of Colorado. It is not used to track individuals who might be going for any kind of medical treatment or any other legal purpose. You'll hear again about how we actually access the data. And it's not standalone. And I think that's a really important point.

Even though this has about a 93% efficiency or effectiveness in identifying a license plate, it then requires human interaction.

A law enforcement official must look at this hit, this image, and say, does that license plate number, does that vehicle description actually match what another law enforcement officer is looking for?

That's the first vetting. And then the officer still has to say, even if it does, they still have to then use separate law enforcement databases and their investigative techniques to develop either reasonable suspicion or probable cause, which are legal standards for us to take action with a vehicle. they have to establish those things on their own, just like they do in any other investigation. So a hit alone does not enable an officer to just pull a vehicle over and take action.

How does it work? Well, as I mentioned, there's a couple of ways that the information goes into the system. If a law enforcement officer is investigating a crime, they can enter vehicle information, license plate information, vehicle description into our national and our Colorado

crime computers. And then those systems share with the license plate reader only the vehicle

description and the license plate number. Again, none of the registered owner or any potential driver's information, just that those vehicles are there. And it could be a criminal act. It

could be somebody that's missing and endangered. I think everybody knows about amber alerts and silver alerts, the different ways that we look out for endangered people in our community. all of those can come through the crime computers and be loaded into the system to make officers aware of a vehicle. An officer could also enter the information themselves. And this most often might happen from an officer at a scene or a detective later, where they get some information. Maybe they have a partial license plate.

Maybe they had a vehicle description. And they put that into the system, and they say,

I'm looking for a vehicle of this type with these three digits at the beginning, and it was last seen going southbound. And then FLOC has the ability, if it sees something like that, to just produce an alert, and then it goes right back to what I said a minute ago. The officer has to verify, oh, yes, that is, or oh, no, that's not the vehicle I'm looking for at all, before they take any further law enforcement action.

And then just the last piece on that is just kind of a little bit of the imagery.

That does give you a sample of what it does.

It shows an image of the vehicle and a close-up of the license plate so that the officer has a chance to verify, is that, in fact, what they were looking for?

Okay. And again, I used this phrase earlier, and this really comes from one of our detectives as he was talking to me about it. And he was telling me, this is really just a shoulder tap. Often as an officer is driving along, it takes a, you know, if they were driving next to a vehicle,

they wouldn't just inherently know that that vehicle could be stolen or that it was associated with a missing and endangered person. And so they would actually have to run that license plate to determine that. And if there's not something that draws their attention to it, they will never

even do that. And they might miss the opportunity to rescue a child, to recover a stolen vehicle, to stop a suspect in a homicide, something like that. So the flock system operates as a shoulder

tap, just kind of taps on the shoulder and says, officer, you might want to look at this vehicle. The officers then can say, okay, I see that that was associated with this type of activity. And it goes back into this loop I'm talking about, like, is it the right license plate? Is it the right vehicle? And they develop their reasonable suspicion or probable cause to take further action.

And if it's not affiliated, then it just goes on. Nothing happens. It is also important to point out that there are lots of Flock camera devices in our community.

Private businesses own them. Other government organizations own them. While we have 15, there are more in the community than that. And so we know that some people have seen others and we're wondering if they're affiliated with us. And they may not be, depending on which ones they're looking at. But again, another important point here is that if you think about a private organization, Maybe it's a retail store and they have put that in their parking lot because they want to keep an eye out for somebody that's been burglarizing their stores up and down the front range. Their private information is not shared with us because it's their opinion. It's not maybe law enforcement vetted at that point.

And our law enforcement information is not shared with them.

The only thing that happens if those cameras see something, if they've entered a sharing agreement with us,

If you imagine, as I mentioned, we have 15 cameras, and if we're looking for a certain vehicle, and this store provides us access to their camera, and that suspect vehicle that we're looking for pulls into their parking lot, that 16th camera gave us the ability to see it when maybe we didn't see it on the road.

So it does benefit us, but there's no clouding of that where our information is shared with a private organization or theirs is shared with us.

and assistant chief mccambridge will be pointing out some of the different local and regional cases that illustrate how the system has been used a little bit of the timeline our first interaction with flock was back in about june of 2022 we did not enter into any agreement to utilize devices

to have our own devices at that time we were simply getting an awareness of the system we were

able to they gave us access through logins each login is a direct login from an individual so you

if you know if i was to log in it is assigned to me um so that it shows that i'm the one that that logged into the system i ran through the system looking for these things but at that time our individual our officers were able to look at other people's cameras just to kind of see how the system worked and how it might assist us in investigations so it's kind of a vetting process there. After a couple of years, we then, as that MOU expired, we then embarked on looking at having our own devices, entering into an agreement to have our own devices. Some of the information was shared with city leadership and other groups so that we could kind of get an idea of how it might be utilized in our community. And then, as you'll see, early last year, we

had the first devices installed in the community, and the last ones weren't installed until the So we don't quite yet have a year's worth of data, but we're already seeing some successes from our officers and detectives as they tell us, I didn't even know what direction this person might have gone, and this system was able to point me there. So as we get more data, it'll give us an idea of the efficacy of the program.

Very busy slide, but what's important about this is this shows you exactly where these devices are. It shows you the orientation of them. Again, just another image of the device. there's nothing secret about this as the chief mentioned part of this is our openness with the community there's not something that we're trying to hide we're looking for criminals and so this is the exact description and in case you're a little bit more visual this is a little easier to look at you can look at these these green icons those correlate with the exact descriptions that you saw in the prior slide and show you kind of the dispersion of the cameras around the community. So then you might say, well, Greg, why are those in those places? When we first set this up, our investigators started looking for places that were ingress, transit, or egress areas from the city because we are. um ingress transit or egress areas from the city because we are looking for vehicles that are ! involved in criminal activity or safety reasons that might be coming into or leading and other ! high traffic areas and so we chose those locations and then the flock technicians install them for us ! There's a little bit of positioning where they have to find the right suitable you know a suitable ! You know a suitable pole or something like that for safety of the device ! But other than that it's right where we want it to be. The last part about that is that all of those cameras are positioned to see the road to see the vehicles on the road. We're not looking at homes, we're not looking at the businesses, We're not looking at homes. We're not looking at the businesses. These are looking at the road where we believe they have the highest likelihood of success in seeing the vehicles of interest. So what protections are there? All ALPRs have been found to be constitutional in numerous courts around the country. And part of that is based on that the courts have said there is no reasonable expectation of privacy on a public road with a publicly registered vehicle and those license plates. And since that's what this system is focused on, the courts have deemed those to be constitutional. Other protections, there's no access, as I mentioned earlier, FLOC has no access to the personal information of the drivers or registered owners. All the alerts are verified, as we talked about. We do not share with immigration officers. Our FLOC data cannot be shared. The state of Colorado does not allow that, and our policies and procedures don't allow that. So all of the information, once it's gathered from a camera, is stored in a CIGIS certified server, a cloud server. And CIGIS is the criminal justice information services standard from the FBI for digital technology that has a criminal justice purpose. And we use CIGIS certified servers on-prem as well as other cloud servers for the different things that we utilize around our agency. So this is the same standard that you might see if we were talking about a different topic.

Prohibited uses. Again, immigration can't be used, not for harassment or intimidation, no personal use by our employees,

and certainly not any usage based solely on a protected class where you're watching someone. So data owned by us, only kept for 30 days, and by contract cannot be sold or shared with any other organization.

our policy is in in line with both our calia accreditation and the model policy from the international association of chiefs of police and that policy governs the use of our alpr system some documentation can be released for public release but it's governed by the ccjra which is

the colorado criminal justice act there's a five-factor test that our city attorney's office and our record specialists go through to make sure that only the right kind of information is released in the right ways. So there's a very thorough vetting before anything would go out. And any individual that released information improperly, whether that was an officer in the system or someone in this records release,

would be subject to our policy sanctions as well as potentially Colorado state law. I also want to point out here that many of you are familiar that we've had a transparency page for many years. We put many of our police practices there.

It's kind of a one-stop shop for council members or any of your constituents where they can see what the police department does and how we do things.

We did add a FLOC transparency page to the overall transparency page just because people are familiar with going there.

And then, of course, the national organization, the actual company itself, maintains transparency pages for us and other organizations that utilize their technology.

And so now I want to give Assistant Chief McCambridge a chance to talk about some of the successes we've seen recently. All right. Thank you. Obviously, you all have seen the packet.

We put a number of incidents up here that where FLOC has been a benefit to both our local agency and some of our regional partners,

both kind of immediately surrounding and the state. I'm not going to go through every one. Obviously, we don't have time for that tonight.

But what I but I the goal here is for you to get a sense of how we kind of utilize this technology on a regular basis And then maybe offer another perspective Just to add to the conversation that I could be missing a little bit that I really want to highlight here in this last couple minutes that we have

You'll see on the on this next slide that pops up

The variety of incidents that we use flock on a lot of people believe flock is mainly used for stolen cars or stolen license plates. That's a very kind of stereotypical use for it, and it works well for that purpose. But we use it in all these types of incidents. So this is a good example of, it's illustrative of how frequently and well thought of this technology is to investigations. I want to go into a couple specific examples here just to try and showcase the recent examples. So as recently as last week, and this one's not on the slide,

but as recently as last week, an example of how this technology was used, we got a patrol call

of an elderly lady who missed an appointment in the morning. She was due to go to coffee with someone and didn't show up. And many hours went by and hadn't been heard from. She left her phone at home unfortunately so her family friends caregivers had no idea where she was obviously they ultimately called us very concerned as you can imagine you put yourself in that position wondering where your loved one is and you have nowhere to go and so they called us we had nowhere to go and we don't have any more information than they have what we did have was we had her license plate we knew that she had a vehicle registered to her and we were able to put that that license

plate into the system found out that she had passed a license plate reader in boulder and

we had her family you know nobody had any reason to believe why she was in boulder nobody knew understood that so that was a piece of the puzzle that that got us over the hump to get a silver

alert for her and ultimately she was located in jefferson county by deputies and and and safely

you know cared for from that point on another example that i want to highlight is a little more dramatic example this one is in the slide a month or so ago we received a 911 call of an active kidnapping that was happening at a big-box store here a woman was kidnapped at gunpoint by by a male and and the two drove off in a

vehicle obviously the family called us in a panic as you can imagine I mean put yourself in that position in that shoe in their shoes and again they had no

idea where they were headed. We didn't have any idea where they're headed. Obviously, we put bolos out for the be on the lookouts out. We kind of broadcasted as wide as possible. Officers started searching around. But the family believed that the woman was in imminent danger for her life. They believed that she was likely going to perish that night. And we were able to get the suspect's license plate. We got it. We put it in the system

and saw that it had passed to LPR in Windsor. so that helped focus our investigation so that's that's the benefit of that of

that tool is it takes us from kind of just looking at everything to narrowing down the focus into one specific area ultimately kind of the end of that story law enforcement in Weld County located the vehicle they ended up getting into a pursuit and and ultimately the vehicle crashed and the victim was saved so thank goodness for that. But a great example, again, put yourself in the shoes of the family who's like, help us, please help us. And this is a tool that can help, again, focus the information or focus the efforts of law enforcement. The final one I'll give you is a more maybe less dramatic but very impactful one, and that is a driver exiting I-25 at Harmony one day after work and gets sideswiped by a vehicle that just takes off. Her vehicle is significantly damaged. She was able to provide police with a general description of the vehicle and a partial license plate. And we were able to put that information into the system and locate the vehicle and ultimately hold the person accountable. So the perspective I'm asking you to consider also on this is the other side of that, is the benefits to the community and the victims, the families of the victims that we're able to serve using some of this technology so not to take away from any of the other discussion but it's just an added perspective I think that is valuable here in this discussion so with that I'll just close with with I think we've I've hopefully explained a little bit of how what a significant significant public safety tool this is for us to use. We gather all this information from public spaces, right, and use. It's one piece of a puzzle that we use. The data, again, belongs to us. It's housed securely, and it's only used in documented investigative, for documented investigative purposes. And like everything that we do here, you know, we expect our officers to follow law, policy, and ethics and everything they do, including using these systems.

We use all kinds of technologies. We have to access the Colorado Information Crime Center and the National Crime Center, and there's guidelines for which we can access that that are very similar here.

So we hold everybody to that high account. That being said, as the chief started with, we really appreciate the discussion, and we welcome the questions. And again, without the community support, we aren't the police department that we need to be so we appreciate the

opportunity thank you okay thank you very much appreciate all the work you guys have put in the last few weeks answering questions and meeting I know

with council members as we've dug deeper as well so who'd like to start go ahead

Amy I just I have one question for right now as the conversation involves I'll have more and I do really appreciate all of the information that everybody has provided us. We have a very knowledgeable and informed community and they are really speaking their voices about this. So thank you for this is really helpful. My first question, well right now just to kind of set a stage maybe, is within your first year of getting familiar with hands-on usage of this, what What shortcomings are you finding? I think it's great that it's so successful in the stories that you're sharing. And as you're learning, what shortcomings have you identified within the system?

Well, I think one of the first things I'd say is, and I don't know if I would describe

it as a shortcoming, but in any new system, there's a learning process for us and maybe even for the vendor. So one of the things in talking to our officers and detectives that we learned is that, you know, you do have incomplete information.

Sometimes the assistant chief talked about some of the things where maybe we have a partial license plate.

And so when we enter those into the system, this is not a absolute catch.

I mean, you cannot count on say, well, if we have information, we put it in there, it's absolutely going to find that vehicle or it's absolutely going to find the correct vehicle.

And that's why it's so important to have the human involvement in this.

So, you know, if we put a license plate in there, one of the examples that I gave had an O in the license plate. Well, is that an O or is that a zero?

The technology has to learn well enough.

Am I looking at an Oregon license plate, a Colorado license plate, you know, New York State? What am I looking at? Most of those, the digits are kind of standardized across the United States.

but with all the different graphics on license plates. The technology has to learn to do a better job. We have to do a good job of looking at that picture. You saw some of the picture and making sure that we're absolutely identifying the right thing. But then the next safety in that is that

once we see it, we say, yes, I believe that's the right plate. We're then using our traditional law enforcement databases to look at that and see if it even is stolen, missing, suspect,

something like that. So I don't know that I would say necessarily it's a shortcoming. It's a part of learning any new system. We're learning its capabilities and where we can really maximize it and where maybe it doesn't excel as well. And certainly I think the company, like any company,

learns as they go along about how they might make that a little bit better for us.

May I ask just a quick follow-up? Any vulnerabilities that you might be

like seeing or even foreshadowing perhaps? Well, again, what I tell you is that we have not seen

a vulnerability. We've not experienced a vulnerability. We certainly are aware of the things that the community has brought up. I think as they've shared their different thoughts with

you and then you've shared those with us, we've seen those and gone through them. We've spent time

with the vendor asking questions like, well, what is the safety for this or what's the assurance of this. And also, we've had our technology folks looking at that to vet it from the city's side.

You know, early on, when you go through any of these things, as you'd imagine, you know,

we have legal reviews. I mentioned earlier, you know, that we're making sure that we're in line with law, policy, and ethics. So we have different personnel with different levels of experience looking. So we have not seen something right now where, like, that was a problem for us. We better fix that right away. But as each one of these concerns has come up, we've gone into the research to see if we think that's affecting us, and we have not seen one at this point.

And if I could just add just a little bit more, too, I think part of the community concerns that I heard, and you all as well, we've only been doing this for a little bit, so we haven't, and we think we have really good safeguards. But we've seen examples of lazy policing. We've seen examples of police departments jumping to conclusions based solely on a license plate or a partial license plate. And so I think that is something that, not being on the leading edge of this, we have learned from others to make sure that we have strong policy, that we have strong oversight. Because if we get lazy with AI, for instance, right, and we use that for helping us with

police reports, that was a big discussion. So I think it's with any of this technology, there are vulnerabilities. but if we go into with eyes wide open that this is not a perfect system this is not a perfect solution it's a shoulder tap that that car take a look but if you jump to conclusions based on a computer that car take a look but if you jump to conclusions based on a computer that pops up and gives you an alert ! you're not doing good police work

! thank you ! you're welcome ! yeah, Melanie, go ahead. ! yeah, thank you for the presentation and I know that you have been feeling feeling lots of ! questions from us and from residents and having meetings with us so thank you for all the time ! I know and I'm going to have other questions too but I want to make sure that ! I think we probably have some similarities and want to keep the discussion organic but we did have some residents raise some concerns about maybe the contractual language or the expectations of the company are changing over time, so terms and conditions. They had raised maybe some concerns about changes to the agreements about sharing images and information or automatic deletion of data after the 30 days. How are we tracking any changes to those terms and responding to them?

So the first thing is that we are under a contract, and we have not changed that contract in our time in this relationship. While other organizations might experience that because they came on at a later time, and if the company has changed their standard contracts or their desires in their contractual language, maybe another organization is facing that. I do know I saw at least one comment where someone said, you know, even if we're not facing that yet, what will happen at the next contract negotiation? And I think this goes back to what the chief just said. Awareness. Like, we would approach any of this with awareness. And this is not different than any other contract negotiation that I would say goes on in the city. We all have an obligation to our community to thoroughly look at those, use trained and practiced eyes from our city attorney's office or purchasing authorities, whoever might be called for.

So while we haven't experienced those changes that negatively affect us, if, in fact, those are something that the company was seeking and we didn't find that desirous, We could not enter into a contract in the future or we could say the only way that we will enter into a contract Is if you meet these obligations for our community because we do it differently than the three communities down the road

Thank you

Yeah, and and then Josh, okay, thank you first of all to echo what other council members have said we have gotten such a tremendous outpouring of questions and suggestions and really thoughtful correspondence and public comment on this topic. And I think it's worth just noting that everyone is concerned about the same issue, right? How do we keep at our core, how do we keep our city safe? And I just so appreciate the level of dialogue that we've had with constituents on this matter, because it's just, I think especially someone new, navigating this specific topic has been very enlightening, I guess. And I appreciate everyone who has been reaching out. So I have a lot of questions, and I'll sort of sprinkle them throughout the conversation. But the first one, just a clarifying question on your presentation. So when we say ALPR or automatic license plate reader, right? does that instantly equal FLOC or are there other ALPRs?

So it's an excellent question.

There are many ALPR vendors around the United States, many even in our state. And so FLOC just happens to be one. FLOC Safety is one company, and they are one company that's in operation in our jurisdiction.

So over the years, there have been others. There will likely be others in our community. but around the United States, I don't have a count for you, Council Member, but certainly there are many other companies.

So, oh, go ahead.

I would just add, too, maybe going a little bit further with your question, we have other systems inside the city as well. So we have speed cameras that also, we've heard, you know, I saw Flock get flashed. Well, Flock doesn't flash, right? But we do have other cameras that are looking at speed. We have other cameras that are tied to driver's license information, Also take a picture of the driver and we send you a ticket. So there are other systems that are out there that are connected to various systems. Flock is just one. The speed cameras are another. The speed that are inside the camera at the intersections and the red light cameras. All of those we can send a ticket for as well. So those are reading license plates as well. But they're not Flock.

So some of the successes that you mentioned sort of depend on this multi-jurisdictional network of cameras. Are those specific successes dependent on participation in the FLOC system or what about other jurisdictions that don't participate or have contracts with FLOC? Are they just out of luck? We can't find the woman who wound up in Boulder?

Well, certainly. I mean, I think any time you think about a network, a network increases that ability to find what you're looking for, right? And so there are benefits to being in a large network where multiple jurisdictions are utilizing the same system. There are other systems. One of them is called Leonardo, and Leonardo is utilized by the state and has been used by the state for many years to look for stolen vehicles. And so our agencies participated in those activities over time. But Leonardo and Flock don't talk to each other. And so if you weren't part of FLOC, which in this case has a very large percentage of the market, you would not be able to see everything because if we were using a Leonardo system or Windsor was using that, they wouldn't be able to see what's in FLOC. So yes, of course, being part of that network expands your reach and your ability to find the missing person that went down to the metro or wherever it may be. Thank you.

Josh?

Thank you and thanks for the presentation.

It's been very helpful and I'll just echo we received a lot of questions from our constituents.

I'm curious, do you know how many external searches of Fort Collins data take place on

average by other law enforcement agencies?

Well, you can tell by the pause we don't have a number for you right off the top of our head, but one of the things that happens is we do have a supervisor that runs an audit on our systems every month. So technically, the first part of one month, they're looking at the entire last month, and they look for two things. One is they're looking to make sure that only our authorized users are using our system, and they're only using it for authorized purposes. But they also have a separate search that allows them to see the other Colorado organizations

that have seen our cameras. So we only share with Colorado law enforcement. We don't share with anyone else. And so on the transparency page that I mentioned earlier, if anybody wanted to see it, you could see an entire list of the organizations that we have alLod to see those. And so I apologize. I don't have a number for you as I sit here. We certainly could provide that. But you also could see some of that on our transparency page. It shows the number of searches that have come across our organization's devices.

We've gotten a lot of comments, too, on Flock security, whether they can be hacked easily and things like that.

Do you know, does Flock use a third party for their security audits?

And maybe this is too technical, so I apologize if that's the case.

And maybe what that firm is?

I do not know. We do have a representative here that may be able to answer that for us if the council wished. Okay.

We can maybe come back to that in a little bit.

The storage of the data, too, has been a big question. You know, which servers is the data on?

Are the pictures on?

Are those servers owned or licensed by Flock, or are they city-owned licensed servers? Who owns the connection, I guess?

So those are Amazon Web Service servers that Flock utilizes.

And so as part of our contract, the data goes from those devices straight to those servers under that CIGES protection that I talked about.

Thank you.

All right. Melanie, go ahead. Yeah. I'm sorry we're hopping around. This will keep you guys nimble. So when another, and we did have residents raise concerns that it's a lot of different requests for our data or other communities making those requests and some concerns about the ability for a thorough audit to be completed. So I would love more information about those numbers at some point. But my other question is when those things when our data are accessed by another municipality for instance How do we ensure? That folks are using that data in the manner that we have determined is appropriate Because I think I think the concern is even if our Fort Collins Police Services staff are using flock data ethically legally Equitably once that data moves on to another user, how are we ensuring that they're held to the same standards?

So part of that would be that, again, the benefit of us only sharing with Colorado organizations is that Colorado law enforcement organizations, to be specific, they are subject to the same state law that we are. And so if, and I know because we've heard from the community members that there have been examples from around the state where somebody didn't use it appropriately. And so for us, when each one of those organizations has to ask us for permission and they are manually selected, in other words, we have supervisors that look at that and say, okay, this is a Colorado law enforcement agency that has not, you know, to our knowledge to this point, has not violated state law or the standards that we uphold. And so then we can say, El Paso County, yes, you can have access to it. But we are then, you know, our chief talks about that we can't always protect from a bad actor. I mean, if somebody is determined to violate law policy or ethics, we won't have a defense maybe on the front end of that. But, again, that's why we do have statutes and other provisions to take care of that situation when it happens. And so the reassurance that we have right now is that we're only participating with law enforcement organizations in a state that's subject to the same laws that we are, and that if we ever learned that they had misused it, we would immediately revoke their access and then trust the law enforcement officials in that jurisdiction to hold them accountable through criminal prosecution or otherwise as may be appropriate.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, Chris, go ahead. Yeah. So I just have a few questions about the cybersecurity as well. Other residents, you know, had asked about physical security of these devices, like whether they're able to be hacked in various ways physically. Do you guys have information on that or does anyone?

So, again, I can tell you that we brought each of those concerns to our flock representatives and asked for their information. If someone said, and I do not have the technical expertise to speak clearly right in this moment, but I can tell you that if someone said it should have this kind of protection and it doesn't, we then asked our flock representatives, explain to us what you do and how you protect that. And then we've asked our technology professionals, our city technology professionals, to then look over that and make sure that that is a good and honorable standard for that protection.

Yeah. Kelly, I think it might be useful to have some of that information coming from our technology team as well. I know that some movement has gone on in this avenue.

Yeah. And we do if actually Kevin Wilkins is here tonight if he wants to come forward

And can maybe answer some of this more directly chief you're welcome to stay if you want

I'll just take the empty seat So good evening council. Thank you for the time so I'm going to take a step back and talk about this at a broader perspective and then we can hone in on more specific questions because I think when we look at cybersecurity, we look at risk management in totality. We look at it from a physical perspective, from a digital perspective, and in the case of a community like us, we adhere to both federal standards, state standards, and local standards. We adhere to, in this case, as the chief mentioned in the team, we adhere to FBI, criminal justice information systems, And we also mandate that all of our vendors adhere to those regulatory standards. So in the case of mentioning like AWS, GovCloud, we use a specific and FLOC is required to as a government provider to use a specific version of Amazon Web Services that adheres to all of those higher standards. So from a cybersecurity perspective, when we evaluate technology, we have a mandatory process here in the city. Everyone goes through every piece of technology, whether it's hardware, software, or service, has to go through both a legal review as well as a technology review to ensure that when we outsource or we contract with some of these providers, that they are adhering to those standards and we hold them accountable contractually to those standards.

So have you or your team gone and inspected the Flock cameras yourselves? Or you read the contracts that Flock provided?

Yeah, so when we talk about reviewing or auditing the cameras, we do not do penetration testing against the cameras themselves. We rely on those third parties. So in your judgment, do you feel confident that these systems are secure? Yes, but I'm going to give you two perspectives on that. All the vendors, and I'll use Flock as a good example too, all of them are dealing with All the vendors, and I'll use Flock as a good example too, all of them are dealing with the same threats that we are. Cybersecurity is becoming more and more prominent. The threats are growing, and the sophistication around those threats to actually infiltrate, whether it's a city system, it's a third-party system, are a growing threat that we focus on every day. It's our number one priority. So when we contract out and we sign master services agreements, as in this case, we ensure that they have put forth all the best faith as well as the controls and mechanisms that adhere to both our standards as well as the federal and

state standards okay I think that's my questions most of my technical questions off the bat I guess I have some other questions about for the officers about

their use of flock so can you talk about the difference between a hot list and a

historical search and how you guys put together those two different kinds of of how you guys treat those two different kinds of uses of FLOC?

So a hot list is a, for instance, if you have an investigation and you're looking for a certain group of vehicles, you can put those in to be a hot list. And they will then come up. So, for instance, let's say you have stolen vehicles or you have a, I don't know, pick a crime that you enter into CCI, into the Colorado crime information system, you put that plate in there, and then that will generate into the hot list there for you. If you want to do a specific search, and kind of like the couple examples I used where we have a plate that we're looking for for a specific incident, you can put those in there for those typical incidents. So, was that clear as mud for you?

And so I'm just trying to get a sense of, like, how big is our hot list at any given time? are when how much of our hot list is built out of other agencies or how many of like like when a car drives by and it flags right and there's a hit I'm trying to get a sense of how

many of those hot list hits are ours versus other agencies well that's a really good question I

don't know that answer I can tell you that that CC we get Colorado crime information CCIC hits fairly regularly, and that's a collection of information that agencies from all over the state

put in. And so what the proportion is between how many, say, stolen cars Fort Collins has versus Aurora has, you know, is I don't have that information for you. But all of the, for instance, stolen information, stolen plates, stolen cars that go into CCIC will populate that hot list.

And the other point is you can have, as I mentioned, investigators can have their own hot list that is unique to them and their particular investigation. So if they're looking for certain suspect vehicles, they can create their own list to put in there.

It sounds like the hot lists are a variety of lists that are drawing from a variety of different places across the state.

Yes, sir.

Okay. And when you're talking about the successes that are listed here, like how often are those successes based off a real-time alert?

And how often are they coming from like the historical searches that are pulling from data, you know, more than a day ago or more than a week ago? Well, I think it's a combination of both. So we just, I just picked some, a few kind of some more dramatic than other successes.

but it's a real combination. There is, you know, as I highlighted, a couple of them were,

well, actually all three I highlighted were real-time successes. So those happened, you know, pretty close to the incident.

Very frequently we are able to, say, recover stolen cars that may have been in the system for, you know, months if not years.

Stolen plates, the same thing. So it's a real mix of that proportion.

Yeah, and just help me with understanding. So if a stolen car, would a stolen car be on a hot list,

or would it be something you enter a search, like have we seen it in the last 30 days in Fort Collins or indeed other communities?

So, excuse me, a little too close.

The vehicles, as they're entered, go into different hot lists for different organizations. So as you mentioned just a moment ago, there could be numerous hot lists, but part of that is terminology. I guess what I'd say to you is that any of these vehicles that are entered, they can time out. You could have a timed out entry or you could have one that just persists. It's a stolen vehicle. Therefore, it's going to remain until the vehicle is recovered. And so that's the point the assistant chief's making is that it might persist if it had been there for a year. But an investigator might say, I'm on a short-term investigation. I'm just looking for some suspect vehicles that might have been associated, and they could have a timed-out list, and they can choose to renew that and extend it or not. Part of the question that you asked a moment ago was the difference between real-time and something where the investigator gets in there. the detective that I was talking to that I mentioned that referred to this as a shoulder tap gave me a good example of we had a vehicle that was a large dark colored pickup truck

that had been seen at numerous crime scenes where it was pulling a trailer so it was the license plate was obscured by the trailer that it was pulling and they were utilizing that vehicle and that trailer to steal other motorized things you know motorcycles or four-wheelers or something

to that effect. And so they kept seeing this vehicle at scenes, not able to get a license plate. He was able as an investigator to go in there just on this, basically a short-term search and say, okay, I'm looking for a dark vehicle of this body style that would be pulling a trailer and would have been in these areas. Um, he then got a hit on that vehicle and that general description, I believe in Windsor and, uh, was able to get a license plate from the imagery that was over there and then run that license plate and find out, oh, that's a stolen truck. So these

thieves actually were utilizing a previously stolen truck and trailer to then continue their

theft ring. So I wanted to maybe add that as an example of some of these things are very fresh, as we talk about. Every week, our shift supervisors provide what's called a TDR or tour of duty report. So multiple times a day, as a shift ends, the supervisor says, here are the really important things that happened during this shift. And when they do that, we are seeing multiple times a week a flock hit that pointed them to the stolen vehicle, the missing person,

the suspect vehicle for a case? Does that answer the questions you're asking?

It helps. I guess part of what I'm thinking through is like how long, how important keeping

the data for a certain length of time is to get the benefits of these rather than utilizing the

hot search system, right? I've seen, I guess looking into it, it seems like people have

different lengths of time that they hold the data and to me some of the resident

concerns around surveillance and you know being watched comes down to should

should we have access to something to all of the movements around Fort

Collins for the past 30 days versus and so I'm just trying to get a sense of if we want the benefits of these cameras without the vulnerabilities can we keep

mostly just the real-time stuff and save the and maybe not have the historical data for a longer amount of time and that's to me an open question.

So I'm trying to get it.

I guess if you guys had more information about how often are the important

successes coming from real-time data versus historical searches would be

really valuable to me thinking through these issues.

I don't want to take up, I have a few more but do you guys utilize something called convoy analysis? Is this something I was looking at where you use AI systems to help put together patterns of associations? No. Okay. And is that, do you know if that's part of the FLOC, that's an option in FLOC or no?

I remember reading something about that in this last month, but I don't remember if I read about that being in the FLOC system. It's not something that we're utilizing.

Okay. But do you have any way to know if other jurisdictions would be able to use this kind of convoy analysis to link like where vehicles are in order to put together like who associates with who? do you have do you have ways in your auditing system to see how other police departments are

using our flat cameras not in the respect that you're talking about what we see when we run that audit is we see that you know officer jaeger from this this city you know ran this vehicle you know

ran this license plate or this vehicle description and it would and it hit on this device at this date in this time. They also enter things, parameters like maybe it's a case number or it's an incident number that they're related to. But if part of this will be my unfamiliarity, because since we don't utilize it,

I don't know how they entered that, but our audit doesn't say something like, this was a convoy analysis.

Okay. Another question I had was just,

How many private

Flock cameras do we have access to around the city?

I don't know. That's something we'd have to come back to you on. I don't think that we have.

I know that I don't have that information in front of me right now.

Do you know if private Flock cameras in Fort Collins, this might be a legal question, but just

are they able to share data with other law enforcement agencies or are they

required to follow by our list of trusted agencies, for lack of a better term.

The private camera systems and their agreements with the company are a different type than law enforcement. So they do not share their information with law enforcement, and law enforcement doesn't share our information with them. So for example, if you had a store and they said, well, we've had this red pickup truck that's been stealing and grabbing tools and then fleeing, they might have that in their system for their awareness. A loss prevention officer in Colorado Springs says, yep, they keep working the front range. And so if that vehicle then comes into Denver and then it then comes into Fort Collins, their loss prevention might be aware of that. We would not see that information. They don't share their private information with us because it doesn't meet the legal standard of what we're looking for. And they couldn't see if we had a stolen vehicle that pulled in their parking lot. They would not get a hit saying, oh, Fort Collins is looking for that stolen vehicle. But we would see if we'd been granted access to their cameras, it would tell us, hey, that stolen vehicle that you're looking for just rolled into this parking lot, and then an officer could go to that area and verify if it was there.

That would be an example of the hot list you were talking about where you have a list that you're running through.

Yeah, something that's been entered by a law enforcement officer in some jurisdiction that then another law enforcement officer would follow up on.

Well, I'd love to get information about how many cameras we have access to around the city. I know that, you know, especially because people are concerned about being watched, right?

And, you know, I know that we only have 14 cameras, but when you expand that to the number of private cameras, then you're starting to put together the kind of data that can really you know collect information on people in a way we're not that is different than just our 15 which I know is a different concern you know I might I guess I'll just have one more question then I'll pass it off to you guys I'm sorry Chris can I ask a follow-up on your previous question so for private

companies that have flock cameras do they have any ethical codes as to who they can or cannot share their data with? I'm hearing that you guys wouldn't request it from them unless you had a specific reason, but could they voluntarily, for instance, share with Immigrations and Customs Enforcement data that they had collected on in their parking lot?

I don't believe that any of us could answer that question. We don't have any insight as to what their agreements are with other organizations. Okay. Sorry. I guess later up a question I would

have for not y'all but the city is like do we have any jurisdiction over private flock cameras and in terms of zoning or other kinds of things like that. So I saw that on the last dashboard that there were you know almost 6,000 hits from

hot lists in the last 30 days so like more than 150 a day can you talk about

like that seems like I was more than I was thinking what what accounts for that many hits in a 30-day period?

Yeah, good question. It could be anything. Remember, this information is getting pulled from CCIC and NCIC, as well as some maybe investigative hot lists. So it could be anything from stolen license plates that have been reported, stolen cars, warrants. So sometimes you can enter a, an investigator can enter a arrest warrant on a person. They can also attach a license plate to that arrest warrant in CCIC or NCIC. And so that license plate, not the, not the, not anything else, just the license plate would populate a hit. And it would, it would say misdemeanor or felony. That's what you learn. And so then you have to delve in with our other systems taking that little piece of information you delve into our other systems to investigate what is that all about and so yeah there's a number of hits that happened all day long with all kinds of you know that all of the stuff that we've talked about silver alerts amber alerts misdemeanor crimes stolen license plates are a big one and stolen vehicles so thank you guys you know I

may have questions later but I want to give other people's face sorry yeah

Thanks. So I'll just add some comments, actually. I don't really have any questions. And that's because, well, you guys are awesome.

trust. And I have so much trust in Fort Collins police. I do not have quite as much trust in our

federal government at this point in time. And I, because of the way Flock chose to respond last fall to some of the questions about their security, I have zero trust in them. Well, not zero, but very

little. And I don't know exactly what that means for us. I did see, I knew Denver was looking into changing vendors and they announced today that they have changed to, I believe it's the same vendor our body cams use. So I don't want to get too like into the technical pieces of it because for me, it isn't going to matter at this point. There is also no question in my mind that this has helped you solve crimes and possibly save lives. And so both these things can be true. And what we can do with that information, I'm not sure.

So we can still ask questions. I didn't mean that as a closing statement. I just wanted to let you guys know where I'm sitting in this conversation. And yeah, open that up. Yeah, go ahead, Melanie and then Amy.

Yeah, thank you for making those observations. And something that I was curious about with regard to trust, assuming, you know, that we do move forward with this particular technology, I'm wondering kind of what guardrails our organization could put in place. I was reading that there are municipalities that have put in place more structured expectations for how this kind of technology is used. I'm trying to look I think there was an example of like Oakland and Seattle both have you know more frequent auditing and you know council gets to look at some of the data on how things are used and how things are audited and I think just revisiting more frequently and having some different structures I think that's something worthy of looking at depending what direction we we determine that we want to go as a city and I guess I would just love to ask you guys around trust right now with this being a Fort Collins Police Services resource and decisions being made internally what kinds of expectations can we have of predictability around if this would expand or if the usage was going to change as a counsel on the organization yeah you know we had some ideas

as ourselves, you know, based on these concerns that people have expressed. And like I said, we hear all of those. And so we want to be receptive to that. We also didn't want to make any changes heading into tonight. So we wanted to hear what you all had to say and to see if there were expectations being set. And then in conversations with the city manager, you know, how do we want to, if we wanted to go from 15 to 20, what does that look like? What if we do something different with our body cameras, which also captures a lot of data it is stored in a similar you know sieges compliance server in the cloud you know what do we do with that so um if it's okay with you i'd love for our team to take what we hear tonight go back and talk about some of those things with the audit talk about those things with the expansion i think the conversation about um if other cities are doing multiple searches in our in our community like start asking questions why why did officer swoboda in this other town you know look for 30 different license plates um councilman conway brought it up you know this idea of if if we're trying to link people so then not being afraid to pick up the phone and saying hey what's going on over there this who's this officer that's running all of these plates in our town do you have an open case what's happening with that i think that's all um what i would expect for us to do but again we didn't want to make any moves beforehand and and just for so you all here and the community hears as well. If we get an inkling that the federal government is starting to demand our information or Flock is opening up who they can share the information with, nobody will sound the alarm bells louder than myself or my team letting you all know and our community know that that is starting to occur. And I think it would be a race to unplug the machine as quick as we could if that starts happening. So I want you to hear from us. There's no blind trust with us with Flock. They are a vendor that we utilize for a specific purpose. But if we sense, because hearing how responses were made or how people who are asking questions about the system are referred to at times, we will be having conversations with Flock about the expectations for us if they want to continue with our business. So we hear you loud and clear. We have concerns with this. And if I can bore you with a very short story, I was at CSU recently in a classroom, and people were not happy with Flock, that we're using Flock. And at the end, I just said, here's the thing. If you walked out here today and your car is gone, do you want to just hope that a police officer at some point runs that license plate somewhere, that they see it and they run a license plate? Or would you love for us to be able to flip on a, turn on this, put it into our system and let you know it just went southbound and now it's getting on I-25? And do we have an idea of how to get that person's car back? And people grimaced and said, yes. And the majority then were in favor of it. And the professor made, I thought, a very profound statement. that if you're not wrestling with this decision, you're not asking yourself the right questions. So we are not going through this with blind trust. We're not going through this thinking this is the end-all, be-all. At this moment in time, it's a tool that we're using and we're having some success with. But we'll be watching very closely as we see with the federal government and decisions being made daily that change terms and conditions of maybe contracts or what the law is. So we will be watching, and if we hear or see anything, we will be reporting back to the community and all of you very quickly.

Yeah, and I appreciate that. I think, you know, my biggest concern, and I'm with Julie, in that I trust Fort Collins Police Services. I think you hold your officers to really high standards. And I think the more powerful a tool is, the bigger the consequences are if it's misused or if mistakes are made.

And I think, you know, with the proliferation of so much technology, we've got these amazing opportunities. and also if things go wrong the the uh consequences can be so much bigger and so i i just think that

constant dialogue i think third party oversight um just really making sure that we've got things

as rock solid as we can with the expectations um that would go a long way because i understand the level of trust has been damaged uh amongst residents i think i hope less so with our local decision makers then maybe further up the chain but I think this is a good opportunity for us to build trust so thank you for that

Amy I just have a couple of clarifying questions could you describe to me again the retail information I thought I wrote down that retailers can enter a sharing agreement with Fort Collins PD did I hear that correctly I not exactly what

sure what words I use, but what I'm trying to articulate is that they can give us access to their camera so that if a vehicle that a law enforcement official has entered, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, doesn't matter, but if a law enforcement officer has entered it under one of our criteria and it pulls into their private parking lot, we would receive that alert. I mean, I guess the way to articulate it is it is another set of eyes. If we have 15 sets of eyes around our community looking for that. I'll just say it's a stolen vehicle. And somebody said, you know what, I'll stand over here in this parking lot and tell you if it pulls in here, that's what they would be sharing. They can't see that stolen vehicle pulled in there, but their camera would

tell us. Do those sharing agreements, do they happen when the private business or retailer first purchases their camera? Or when do those sharing agreements take place generally?

or does it vary? Well, I would say it probably varies because you can go into or out of those relationships. For example, if things were different in our state or with our city, we could choose to allow other states and other organizations to utilize our system. We choose not to. We only do Colorado organizations. And as I mentioned, if we ever found that one of the organizations that we've given access to currently violated our trust in that respect, we could remove them. So I don't know for certain because I haven't been a part of those discussions, but I believe that the capability is there to add to or take away at any point in the life of their

agreement with the organization. Okay. Another clarifying question is, is there a difference between customer data and footage? I think we've heard that our contract says customer data or footage, I can't remember, but then the terms and conditions generally from the FLOC website, I don't know, but is there a difference between footage and customer data?

I'm wondering if one of our friends from the city attorney's office has a read on that.

And I could be stating this correct. For some reason, I feel like in our contract or master agreement,

and it was like 5.3. I'm going to suggest that Deputy City Attorney Don Downs come up to the

vacant seat. Good evening. I'm Dawn Downs from the City Attorney's Office. And per our agreement, the customer data does include data, media, and so would include those images. It is incorporated in the definition of customer data. Okay, so it's not footage and or customer data. That would be incorporated within the same meaning. Okay, thank you.

Well, and then just the last thing. Oh, with the location of the cameras, are you finding a correlation between your hits and the locations? Is there like a map overlay to kind of reinforce the locations of the cameras?

So, yes. When the detectives first said these locations would be good and then had them placed there, several things happen. Whenever we get a hit and it ends up leading to an outcome, I mean, if it's a validated hit and then we take action, The officers document that in the report. It's part of our policy that they are required to document that that was generated from an initial flock hit and that they then develop those other legal standards to take action. And so our team looks at that. And, again, the system has not been in place even for a year, and it's been a walk-in. So the last ones were just put in in the latter part of last year. But they look at that and they'll be like, okay, well, we felt like over here on East Harmony was going to be a really good place to see people coming into or out of the city in stolen vehicles or, you know, whatever they might be, a theft suspect. And if for some reason that wasn't working, then we can work with the vendor to have those replaced. But at this time, we haven't started saying, well, that one is not quite as good. They're making assessments as we go along.

Okay. Thank you. My last question is for you, Kelly. Does council need to approve any renewal or any just based on what we've understood so far about the contract the first time?

Yeah. So typically this would be an operational standard purchasing process that we would go through. You know again, I think just to reiterate what chief said Obviously as we have this conversation and based on what we hear from council, you know We'll talk about if there are any other adjustments we would make but at this point I would say there would not be Requirement for council to take any formal action

And does that have to do with a dollar amount of a purchase or is that just in general because of the nature of the agreement?

So a little bit of both, right? I mean, the dollar amount would be much higher before something would come to council for approval. Yeah.

Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate all of your help and all of your information. This has been great. Thank you.

All right. So I think Anne and then Melanie and then Josh, unless you all would like a different order. Good with it? Okay. Okay.

I'll go. um just to piggyback off of what council member hoven had asked um is there a timeline if if we're hearing from our constituents and we decide as a council that we would like to direct the city not to pursue a you know renegotiating with flock first of all is that an option do we have that

option okay we have that option of course council always has that just making sure sorry go ahead

Just for clarification, and this is actually for the audience as well, because I think we have a lot of work session guests that aren't normally at a work session. We actually don't make any decisions at work sessions. Those all happen in council meetings. These are what it's called, work session, informed to ask questions, to kind of work as a council towards a solution that would then come at a council meeting. So hopefully that's helpful.

Thank you for clarifying. Yes. So knowing of course that we're not making a decision tonight, but should we want to make that decision? What would be the timeline for deciding if we were to either continue or not continue like if we wanted to pursue other options?

So I would we haven't talked about specific timeline, but I would suggest that just from a council perspective,

that would be the type of item that you under another business item could bring forward us to bring forward.

again

Some sort of options for what if that fits within our um again some sort of options for what if that fits within our kind of standard renewal timeline ! Um or if there's additional assessment

! Um and evaluation of options you want us to bring to council

! But under another business item is where you would do that. ! Okay. ! Thank you.

I'm not sure that that's a legal question.

I'm not sure that that's a legal question.

Okay. Well, it was going to ask legal questions about them, but do you know, do we know?

I will defer to the police on that.

Actually, council member, I can answer that for you. So they are the same. So when it takes this image, as each license plate passes, it's taking the image that you've seen a couple of samples from. And that is what is stored. And so it gives an image of the vehicle, a close-up of the license plate, and a location. It went past this camera, wherever that camera is. And so one of the things that we've talked about is that all of us have passed these cameras numerous times. And every 30 days, if you drove past that location every 30 days, that went away. No one will ever look at that unless a law enforcement officer enters it and says, I'm looking for that plate. And so at that point, then they'd say, oh, we see that. But that raw data that where it takes the image, that's what's stored on the server so that if a detective or an officer said, oh, now I'm looking for the suspect vehicle. These people came back from their vacation and their ring camera showed that thing out, that vehicle out on the street. They could see that same imagery that was taken back then. Does that answer what you're asking?

I think it's a series of still images. There's no video associated with it.

We do not utilize the live cameras. The organization, not our organization, the FLOC organization does have basically like a closed circuit continuous streaming camera. We do not utilize those. We utilize a different system that takes images of the vehicle license plate.

Okay. That is helpful. Do we own the hardware that we don't own the cameras themselves? We do not.

They're all part of the contract, but the possession is the company's.

Okay. And am I correct? I think I heard this before that there's no way that we could test the cameras for security issues without violating our contract or federal law?

Okay. I believe that's what our Chief Information Officer was referring to.

Okay. I'm getting a nod. Yes. Yes, and a thumbs up. Okay. So I think my biggest concerns are with what is being captured and what is being retained. And given that we don't actually own the hardware, and we own the information, but not the servers that it's stored on, right? Correct. So if we were to cease our contract, will the cameras be electronically deactivated the moment that the contract lapses to ensure that no further data? I mean, Chief Swoboda, you mentioned, you know, we find out that the federal government is starting to, what would they do, subpoena us for that footage? What is the technical way of actually accessing, like, overriding our, yeah, yeah. So if you're overriding state law, I mean, the federal government can come in and.

Yeah, you know, I'm looking at our city attorney. I don't know why I grabbed the microphone when you asked that question. But I will say as far as turning off each one of the cameras, we can get that answer. But, yeah, at some point, if we decided to stop using them, it's not as if they would just keep running without us wanting them to be used. I'll look at my deputy chief. Is that a correct statement? I believe that to be true, chief. But we will confirm, because we've got a few follow-up items for all of you. But if you told us cut it off tonight at midnight, like what would we do? And would we really be able to do that? That's what we'll be able to, we'll ask that question to see how quickly we, if we wanted to turn it off, could we turn it off? I mean, I'm assuming we could, but I don't want to give that as an answer.

Yeah. And to follow in with the, and these are questions that came directly from a constituent. And I think they're excellent. Would the city require Flock to hard delete all of Fort Collins data upon termination? Would FLOC retain the rights to that? More follow-up would be... Now you finally get to answer. Thank you.

I'm happy to jump in. So in the termination agreement in the contract, is that FLOC would, upon termination, be required to remove all hardware within a reasonable time? So the answer to your question about would they stop that moment of getting the images, we would need to talk with them about, but they are required to actually remove the hardware. So we would not be able to leave it up indefinitely so that they could access it. Okay. And continue accessing that data from our cameras. And you asked the last question you just asked,

and I just, which one? I'm sorry. I think there was a question about federal agencies accessing or how they would get access to the data.

And again, with our data, the federal government would not have access to our data pursuant to the state law. And that's also in the contract that all both parties have to follow the applicable state laws.

Okay. Thank you for explaining that ad nauseam. It helps to hear over and over because it's a real concern. Once our contract ends, would other law enforcement agencies still be able to look up the historical data collected by our local cameras?

I apologize. I, again, don't think that we know that exactly. And I can say we do have a representative here if we want to ask that question to him. But I'm not certain of that.

Okay. Well, I think the other question, and gosh, I have quite a few. I want to make sure that I'm covering all of them. But one question that I have for Kevin,

sorry, you're all the way back there. But I can start asking the question. We got some feedback and suggestions from other community members about the possibility of doing this locally, like in-house essentially. What would that look like? And again, knowing that this is an awful cut answer, we're not expecting like an exact cost comparison, but is that feasible, first of all?

It's a great question, and you can apply that same response to all the different contracts we have, both in police services as well as other areas, whether it's related to health, legal, litigation or anything. But in this case, in order for us to really build that infrastructure, it would require a tremendous amount of capital investments for both not only the purchase and procurement, but the maintenance as well as the continued upgrades. And what we talked about earlier was the securing of those environments and really safeguarding that data. So it would be exponentially more expensive for us to consider doing that in-house. I mean, magnitudes are probably 20 to 30 more times expensive.

Okay. Thank you.

Okay, I'm going to bounce back. I love the structure of these, and also I'm like, ugh. So going back to Anne, I would love maybe some written follow-up just about not only the physical devices,

if we determine that we want to terminate our contract and stop using Flock at any point, but also the data.

I want assurance that there would not be a lag where there's data continuing to be collected and or lingering to be accessed for nefarious purposes.

So I think that's just something I would feel better having in writing. This is a question for Don, who just left.

Musical chairs.

Yeah, Dawn, from a legal perspective, I'm curious if any terms of our specific contract with the company were violated by Flock.

What are the, how does that proceed legally? What are consequences? What would the city do?

That was a great, sorry, that's a great question. So there is a contract term regarding breach of contract, and so we could potentially under that pursue any type of claim against them. It is limited to the one-year contract agreement price unless the breach was due to negligence, gross negligence, willful misconduct, fraud. If it's due to those instances, then the the contract limitation is not set. So it's not set at that one-year contract limitation

Okay Okay, that was my question for you dawn. Thank you

Absolutely, um last but not least going back to location selection I know we've had specific questions about I mean I have questions about equity. I'm hearing that strategically most of these cameras are placed at entrances and exits from the city.

Do we have some folks who are vetting it through the lens of equity? Do we have potentially more of a concentration of cameras near vulnerable populations or not? Then I know there were specific questions about the location of a camera near Planned Parenthood. So if you could speak to equity and Planned Parenthood, that would be helpful.

Certainly. I would tell you that When I spoke to the detectives about why they chose those locations originally, literally the structure for that was where we most likely to see vehicles, high volume traffic, where somebody's fleeing a scene or just trying to transit our city with a stolen person or a stolen vehicle. So I do not believe that at that time they were looking at anything saying, Is this in a particular segment of our population where it might overly scrutinize vehicles in that area? It was literally about what's the highest probably when you consider this is looking at vehicles and license plates. Where are most of the vehicles and license plates? Specifically, the one that's over near the campus was about the volume of traffic that's in that area. When you think about the volume of traffic on that west side of the university, as well as Elizabeth going east and west, The detectives looked at it at that time. The officers and detectives looked at it and just said, hey, this is an area where a lot of people are moving throughout the year. And so we have heard that. One of the things we talked about is we certainly don't want anyone to think that it has to do with any kind of a facility, individuals in a certain area or facility in a certain area. It is more about the traffic volume and where they would be most effective. And so if the council and the city leadership decided that we were going to continue with this process, these are movable. I mean, contractually, we cannot move the ones that are considered permanent. We have two flexible devices, the actual, they call them a flex camera, where our detectives can move them without a technician or an employee of the company. The other ones that we established by contract, we cannot move those unless we go back to the company and make an agreement. But that's easily done if we felt like that was the best thing for our community and the placement of the device.

Okay, thank you.

So whether we continued with Flock or used another vendor, I just wanted to clarify. When another officer, Officer Smith from Grand Junction, says, I want data from your system, do we get information like a case number or kind of what they're working on? Or are we just saying, yeah, you're a police officer with Grand Junction, go ahead?

So another good question. And yes, they're specific.

So I mentioned this earlier that any user of the system has an individual login. So if Officer Smith from Grand Junction goes in there and they enter that, it logs. It was Officer Smith that was logged in, what day. and then they fill out these different fields, a case number or an incident number.

And just the difference for clarity, sometimes, you know, we have police incidents all the time. We get called to many things and then it doesn't pan out to need to be a criminal case. So sometimes it's just logged under an incident number, but it's all tracked because it's important to know where our people were and what they were doing.

If it develops into a case where an actual case number is assigned, then certainly the incident number is replaced by a case number. but that individual the login logs some of it who they are when they logged in it logs how many

devices they looked at but they enter some of the information like again if they're looking for a license plate partial license plate so it does show those things and then there's a a purpose

for the search and they can enter that in there that this is a this is a warrant subject this is a criminal case, whatever it may be. And so those things are tracked and it gives us a level of assurance that we were asked earlier about how would we know if other people uphold our standards.

It gives us a level of assurance that this officer in another city was doing things appropriately the way you might see from one of ours. Cool. Thank you. That's all the questions

I have. I agree with the mayor pro tem about the trust and the different levels of trust. It's It's funny when asked, you know, can we, will the equipment be removed immediately if a contract were to be ended? I was doing some research last night and Verona was. I was doing some research last night in Verona, Wisconsin outside of Madison. ! They ended their contract in November and as of this month the cameras had still not been removed. ! And their police chief was pretty convinced that they were still collecting data. ! So, just reading something like that, and that's again from a police chief, it's not from a member ! It definitely gives me some concern. So, thank you for answering the questions. It's been really helpful.

There is one more piece of information about removal that I'll add, and that is all of these cameras that we're discussing are on city-owned All of these cameras that we're discussing are on city-owned poles under an encroachment permit issued by the city's transportation engineering, I think it is. And those permits are revocable, so they are there with the city's permission on those poles, and that permission can be revoked if it's time for them to be removed. Thank you.

Okay. Anything else? Yeah, Chris.

I hope they're super technical questions, Chris.

We'll see. So my question is, do we need to have cameras in Fort Collins to have access to the Flock network?

Yes, we do.

From the timeline, at one point, I mentioned that originally we had no devices.

We're not under contract for devices. We just had an MOU to view other people's.

At some point, as Flux, we talked earlier about how organizations mature and change things,

they decided that in order to access things, their business model was going to be that you had to buy into the system.

And so they do require, I believe, a minimum of 12 devices in order for an organization to be able to see any of their devices.

um and then for the city attorney i was wondering what what um like what options do we have as council if we decided we wanted to try to regulate private

flock cameras as well i think the the first thing that i'll say about that is that we would not be were able to regulate flock cameras we would need to regulate a class of types of cameras of our activities that are going on in Fort Collins when you think of it that way it becomes pretty daunting to imagine how we would articulate what we're prohibiting so for example are we prohibiting ring cameras because those do a lot of the same things that these cameras that we're talking about tonight do. The private cameras that are on private property. I won't say I don't think

we could come up with a way to do it, but I do think it's a little bit tricky because it's a pretty broad prohibition and we'd have to be pretty careful and think carefully about what

we're prohibiting. Thank you. I'll just say that I feel the same way as many of the other council people, which is that, you know, I think we need to have a larger conversation about these kinds of technologies in general over a longer time frame. And I have the same issues as the other council people with like Flock itself as a vendor. I think I'm worried we're going to lose the trust of the community that we built over a long time and that maybe you know flock itself is is just too far gone at this point in terms of their trustworthiness but I do think I I'm hoping that we as a council can can think together about what kinds of what kinds of uses and and our limitations we want to put on this technology more broadly whether if we go to a different vendor or something like

that, especially strict limitations on the kinds of things this is used for data, like how long we use historical data. So the more information we can have about

hot lists versus historical data, other agencies using this kind of

stuff seems really valuable to us as a policymaking body to me. And I also just

want to think about as a body you know if the surveillance is happening in a

private way all the time and then we ban it just for crime then I'm not sure I'm

not sure we've gained privacy and we've and so yeah I just have conflicted feelings about it and I think but I think I'm with everybody else that I

think flock itself is isn't is not a group that I would necessarily trust so

I just want to thank the officers for emphasizing the trust in the community as the first and foremost value here, because I think that is really true, and to thank the community as well for taking the time to look deeply into these things and let us know, start the conversation around this kind of technology,

because I am sure there's only going to be more and different kinds of it that are options, at least in the future.

Okay, Ann. Yeah, I would agree with Council Member Conway that a larger, more philosophical conversation is probably warranted just about the level of surveillance that we are comfortable with as a community. And that is not to, again, as Mayor Pro Tem mentioned, two things can be true at once, right? I hear the value that it has to the organization and I hear the real legitimate concerns that are coming from the community. I think Flock as a company has demonstrated enough vulnerabilities that fortunately have not seemed to have impacted us specifically as a community, but have impacted other communities to the level that I'm just not comfortable putting our own citizens at risk from that. So I would be open to exploring other options and what those look like, and something that is perhaps a little bit more tested and also can respond to some of these very legitimate questions that we're getting from

our community. Thanks. Anybody else? Do you have any follow-up questions? Does anyone want to

summarize? No. Kelly, you want to talk? No, I mean, I think I'll just say for the summary again, I want to express appreciation to the team who responded. Again, Reinforce the appreciation for the community and I do think we have some follow-up requests for additional information to bring forward We can talk in leadership planning team perhaps about the best way to do that whether that's another work session a memo So we'll group on the best way to get the follow-up information to you all

Thank you and Kelly if that could include maybe some details about folks who communities that have continued to use flock but have put additional

legal guardrails. Like I said, I think I saw that Seattle and Oakland are ones that have maintained usage of flock and have very strict expectations for usage. I think that would just

be helpful. Yeah, I think as Chief stated again, we've already started to think about a few different options here and didn't want to go too far down exploration until we had the opportunity to have this conversation with you all. And I think we have some good, again, just really good insight into how you all are thinking about this that will help us shape what that next step might be

great thank you so much um thanks to everyone again that came if you want to stay for the next one uh but we will take a 15 minute break and come back to talk about sound in the city around let's just say 750 ish

All right. Welcome back, Fort Collins. We're ready to move to our second item. Yes, thank you. So our second item, again, is a conversation that we've done in a couple parts regarding sound in the city. And I am pleased to turn it over to Lori Schwartz, who's our Director of Planning and Development Services. she's also joined this evening by Jay Hernandez who's our senior code compliance officer or supervisor who is available for any questions so Lori we'll let you take it away great thank

you so much good evening Mayor Pro Tem City Council members City Manager we are coming back I know a lot of you were not on council when this was last before City Council so we're going to provide a little bit of background for you so that you have information about the sound in the City project. So we do have some questions for you tonight. We have done some fairly extensive community outreach since we were last before Council and so we've got two sets of questions for you tonight. One is about ambient sound. We have spent the last several months doing noise readings through three seasons and And question for you is, do you wish to make adjustments to the ambient noise limits that would actually more closely reflect existing conditions? And then the second part of it is regarding amplified sound. So as part of council's creative and nighttime economy priorities, what level of flexibility is council willing to consider for entertainment areas and venues? Some of these could include higher allowable levels, extended quiet hours, and also geographically defined entertainment districts.

So just as a recap of what has gone before, we are under existing noise ordinance. The majority of it was adopted in 2008. We did not touch any of those areas on the left side of your slide last year. But during February through May of last year, we did look at some coded options that were more immediate. These included agricultural operation exemptions, fireworks, and also traffic and vehicle sounds. This was a multi-department effort. So the Fort Collins Police Services are the ones that primarily do the enforcement for fireworks and traffic vehicle sounds. Code compliance within the Planning and Development Services does agricultural operations and other nuisance noise complaints. So since that time in May, we were looking at doing two different types of paths. And one of the major things that we wanted to be able to do is to actually get the community feedback. Since this has been so many years, almost 20 years since we last did a major update to the noise ordinance, we wanted to just touch base with our community and understand how they saw things and what what willingness there was to consider changes to our existing ordinance. So just as a just an overview of the difference between ambient versus amplified sound. Ambient is really sort of background noise. It's everything that is in the background that makes sound. Leaves in the tree, weather, people having conversations, etc. Amplified usually is a it require some sort of electronic, electrical, mechanical, or motor-powered equipment, speakers, amplifiers, megaphones, any instruments that are attached to PA systems, all of those things are what we would be talking about when we talk about amplified sound. So the first part that we were interested in getting your feedback on is regarding ambient sound levels. One of the things that we are doing through the ordinance is to set acceptable sound levels in different areas, which right now is split between zoning categories, but broadly considered

under residential or commercial uses, also industrial and employment. And the goal really is balancing vibrancy and livability and also to protect public health and safety.

So current noise ordinance has quiet hours, and all zone districts must be at a Lor decibel level or remain quiet from 8 p.m. to 7 a.m. all week. So this is seven days a week. We use decibel levels right now, and that is not being proposed to change. But this chart right here gives you a kind of a general idea of like what different decibel levels would be. But most of the limits that we currently have right now are set between 50 and 60 decibels, which is basically the sound of a normal conversation at home or background music. we will share with you what our actual sound readings were when we took them in the community. So our community outreach and research started in July. When we initially started looking at this, we realized that we needed this to be a fairly large community outreach, and we worked with our CPIO to help us create the Sound in the City survey. That ran from July through September of last year. And then what we did is invited people that had participated in that survey to come to a community roundtable event, which was held in October at the Lincoln Center. Other research that we did, Jay and his team went out and did sound readings across the city from April through November of last year. We did an analysis of our survey responses and other data gathered and also looked at some peer city and benchmark cities noise ordinances just for reference. so we had a great response to sound in the city survey we had 2 600 responses over that three month period it was very geographically dispersed which we were thrilled to see because you don't always get that so that to us meant that we had done a fairly good job at working with our partners and with our sister departments to get this information out we also have an our city page for Sound in the City. So if anybody is wanting to know more about the survey and the survey responses and our community outreach event, that is all on that page.

So just... So just high-level survey results, ! and we're focused on just what we're talking about tonight, ! which is around the ambient and amplified sound. ! Residents are divided on changing the quiet hours. ! About 50% want us to stay where we are, ! which is the 8 p.m. ! To 7 a.m. If there are changes, what we're seeing is that potentially having quiet hours start later. And very few people said that they wanted quiet hours to end earlier. earlier. So that really wasn't part of the responses that we saw. General support for amplified sound at public events, that was very high at 60%. But a lot of them said that they would support it only if it was on, depending on the time, location, or event type. So there was also strong support for area-based flexibility. So 61% favored more flexible noise in certain areas. 90% downtown parks and outdoor venues and festival and holiday zones were the highest levels supported for flexibility. And then just another sort of high-level question was about the overall noise management, which they did consider to be adequate but not strong. So there are multiple departments that actually enforce the noise ordinance, primarily, however, between police services and code compliance and PDS. So generally, if there are changes that they want us to make, it seems to be more targeted improvement rather than a systematic overhaul. So this is just kind of some big survey themes that we saw. There was support for flexibility as mentioned. There are some volume concerns still. And how do we talk about that when you're either in a mixed-use area or you're having adjacency to residential? Party noise is continuing to be an issue. And I would say that I feel like we did a fair amount of work in the last noise update just to make sure that it was clear that we were able to actually enforce that well. Looking at a concern potentially about unequal enforcement and how could we do better with communications and thinking about, like, if we're going to have events, how do we make sure we're talking to people about them in advance. So our community roundtable, as mentioned, was anybody that took the survey was invited to participate. We did end up having 55 people come to our community roundtable at the Lincoln Center. And we focused on essentially those big topics about quiet hours, amplified sound, and really the continuing conversation just supported what we saw on the survey. And then biggest question, I feel like there was a lot of conversation around this was flexibility by location. I think there was cautious openness. If people, if we looked at location or maybe time-based flexibility, biggest things that you saw kind of trade-offs was like

that growth-related noise versus quality of life, wanting to have the social benefits of events,

but also still enjoying the quiet character of our community, but also seeing that this could be a really good economic support for our local businesses.

There we go. So as I mentioned, Jay's team took sound readings across the city.

And this is not the easiest slide to read, but the larger the dots, the louder it was.

And so hopefully you'll be able to get a little bit of context there.

But what we did see is that we saw that ambient sound rings were most closely tied to traffic and vehicle speed.

I don't think that's probably a surprise to anyone, but that is essentially what we saw as the connection point.

But overall, we saw ambient sound across the city has increased between 5 to 10 decibels from what our current ordinance limits are. So that was one of the reasons why we started doing this is because when we would go out to do noise readings, we would get complaints.

The ambient sound was louder than what our ordinance actually has as the limit. So that made it very hard for us to enforce things that were beyond that noise limit.

So some proposed options for council to consider. there is currently right now no recommended change for the day or nighttime quiet hours but what we are proposing is is to increase for residential and mixed use districts as well as downtown and commercial districts to go up five decibels from our current limits you will also see that there is a flexibility variance there as well and so what that is intended to do is say that we have a residential district that for some reason is at 50 decibels so it's pretty quiet what we would do is that if it was it would it would or let's let's say Lor it because that actually would be better if it was like 45 it was a very very quiet neighborhood um what we would look at is is that if we went to that location and they the ambient sound was actually really low then what we would be able to do is to say that we would take 10 decibels higher,

so say 55 decibels instead of 60, so it's whichever is Lor. So if we have an unusually quiet area, this would preserve that unusually quiet area even if we are increasing the overall ambient sound across the city. We are not making any recommendations for the employment districts or for the industrial districts right now because those are turning out to be pretty stable as far as the noise readings that we see there. So we don't believe that that is needed.

So these are some additional discussions that we would like to have is potentially some higher allowable sound levels. There is support for downtown being considered separately from other commercial areas. They are measuring louder than other commercial districts. across the city and also potentially talking about their quiet hours for downtown. So you'll note on the next slide that we have said 10 p.m. potentially for extended weekend or entertainment related areas or districts. I think you could make the argument that especially for the downtown area with some of their programming that they have through DDA that the 10 p.m. may be better considered through all days or possibly Wednesday through Sunday because of some of the events that they have in the downtown area. Generally, there is willingness to consider flexibility on weekends, so it doesn't necessarily even have to be related to entertainment areas or districts, but you certainly could make those choices if that was what council would like us to look at. And then this does not exist right now, but it would be geographically defined entertainment districts. So, this could be, do we have a mixed use area that we are interested in trying to program? Do we have something that we would want to maybe identify? Our parks are certainly one that has come up a lot. And do we want to try and think about that a little bit differently than we have currently? Because there is nothing within our ordinance at this point that provides for that kind of entertainment district. But it is a very normal type of tool that is used in other cities. So as I mentioned, some provisions for amplified sound. We could make an adjustment to sound levels based on decibel readings for downtown if we want to consider that separately from other commercial and neighborhood-based commercial areas. and then also we could look at the adjustments to quiet hours for weekends or potentially throughout the week the other part that we if council is interested in trying to look at the entertainment districts it would be for us to align it with the commercial center work plan that we've got going on and we believe that that could be aligned with our land use code specifically for the noise regulation categories as mentioned the way that this is is set up in current noise ordinance it actually aligns with our zoning districts and there may be some need to consider shifts in the way that that some of those sound levels are assigned but we also could look at more specific standards for music venues which we do not have right now and so those are those are things that we believe that we could get done within this calendar year if council so directs. And so we'll go back to the questions again that I have for council and then open it

up for any questions that you might have of staff. Okay, thank you so much. If I could just start with one question. Was all of your suggestions, did they come only from the data collected as a results of the surveys and the roundtables or did you also consider like tickets tickets we i will

tell you that we did not consider tickets so um what we were primarily because it is rare that we actually issue citations for noise ordinance and i would say that primarily what we do is warnings and i would say that we we do have data that um is more directed from the the police side but that That is not the information that we're talking about. Usually we're able to gain compliance through education and conversation, not necessarily citations. Okay.

Thank you. All right. Melanie, go ahead.

Thank you. And thank you. And thanks for the presentation. Sure. And thanks, Jay, to you and your team for going out and collecting some data. I wish I would have gotten to see that. That sounds interesting. So I just had a couple of specific questions about the slides and then I'll share my thoughts. So on slide five, there was a statement about exceptions to quiet hours. And I was just wondering if you could talk to me a little bit more about that. I'd need to look at the wording again.

Sure. So exceptions to quiet hours, that is typically things like related to construction, lawn care. And probably the easiest way for me to pull it up is through actually looking at it on our webpage. So, but what we have right now is that you are able to start construction. So, sorry, pulling it up. So, the following sounds are alLod even if they exceed noise limits. So, it's more around the actual decibel levels because they typically are reduced time periods. So, lawn tools and domestic power tools are alLod 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. Those are typically going to be louder uses. Construction would be the same thing. Demolition work. So those are the types of exceptions that are built into our existing ordinance and we're not proposing to to ship that

Okay, but the hours It's still expected that you're not mowing your lawn at 10 30 p.m. Right. That's correct. Okay

And on slide 15 that I just wanted to clarify And it sounds like this might be covered by the exception, but it was talking about ambient noise In different areas okay yeah so I had said do lawn mowing vehicles etc count as ambient noise so that would be those

exceptions okay um with regard to the I am in support of us um shifting things upward a little bit for ambient noise it just seems like realistically with the size of our city it

doesn't make sense to keep standards that are already being exceeded with people's daily lives Yes. We're a bigger city now, so I do support that. For the baseline data that we're going to be utilizing to determine if people are exceeding

potentially our adjusted levels, would we be collecting more data? Because I heard you say, like, if it's traditionally a very quiet area, are we going to have multiple data points for each area? Is it a one-time measurement? How often is that going to be updated? it just seems like that could be pretty difficult.

So I'm going to let Jay actually respond to that because his team is actually is the one that goes out with our noise reader. But what I will say and then I'm going to let Jay respond on the way that they actually would take those readings. But we don't expect to have like baseline data that we're going to keep for a very quiet neighborhood. It would be more on a complaint basis. So I'll let Jay explain that. OK, thank you. Yeah.

Yeah, like Laurie said, we're on a complaint base when it comes to the noise ordinance. And so we'll go out there and we will identify the source. We'll stand out there. We'll take a couple different measurements from different areas. And from that, we gather our data and then we'll speak with whoever is making the noise worse. We'll also speak with the community member who submitted the complaint. And we'll collect the data from there. But as far as like a a stretched out data base there probably would not be only because we we

Generally do this on a complaint base. Okay. I guess I was just curious and thank you Jay, you know when we're looking at shifting five decibels up are there Certain you know kinds of neighborhoods that are lumped together where there's that expected decibel level

I think as you it just depends as we all know City for Colms is It's starting to get enclosed. The infrastructures, we're not able to build out too much anymore. And so this is what we were seeing in the downtown areas. And some in the midtown area, too, is where we go out to a concern of a community member. We'll go out there and collect some data. What we're seeing is as we're not building out no more, we're building up. And so we're seeing a lot of bouncing. seeing the noise travels different ways as we go up, right? And so we're getting, and it stretches out even further because of the infrastructure is going higher. So that's what we're seeing when we're doing that. And so that's where I believe that by going up a little bit, that'll help adjust when we're out in the field, being able to capture. That'll help adjust when we're out in the field being able to capture the data and pinpoint ! And hold somebody responsible or hold somebody accountable for going above the decibel ! Right now, I think as Lori stated, when we collect data in the downtown area, the ambient noise around is so high that we can't really go and talk to a band that is playing or anything like that, because the ambient noise is just so much higher out there. So it makes it really difficult. So I believe by shifting it just five decibels, that'll give us the access that we need to to be able to five decibels that'll give us the access that we need to to build a whole

I mean it sounds like it's not an exact science that there's a lot of you guys

expertise and I asked Jenny to bring this up for council to review as I mentioned before the way that the zoning categories are are listed this is kind

of how it is it is split between what we consider residential mixed-use zones downtown and commercial zones, plus employment and industrial, which are different zoning

categories. So, you know, as Jay mentioned, there may be a few, like say the low density residential that might be unusually quiet. But, you know, the way that it's currently grouped right now as part of the noise ordinance, these are large swaths of zoning categories. So I just thought this might

be helpful for you to see. That's very helpful. That's kind of what I was wondering. And then And I guess for me, I think, like I said, that the shift in the decibels, keeping the quiet hours in residential areas, for the most point, that makes a lot of sense. I also wanted to voice my support for identifying those entertainment districts. I wish the mayor was here because she was excited about the nighttime economy. And I think that is a place I was looking into noise ordinances in comparable cities, Loveland, Longmont, Windsor. I mean, every city around us has later hours where you can have amplified noise. And I know that we've got to be careful about that and we've got to be sensitive. And I know at least for one example, the gardens at Spring Creek, we've got this great music venue. It's become really difficult even for artists to be able to get a show on at the time that it's required. It's not always the best temperature because we're having the show start at five. So I think, you know, again, with us wanting to have a vibrant city, it's that balance.

I would love to bring us more into scope with surrounding communities, with being able to have amplified music in specific areas. I think we'd need to look at the lagoons, the gardens. I think considering some parks makes a lot of sense. And something that works for Fort Collins. But I think people in this town really value live music.

and right now we are constraining those opportunities so thank you guys for your

suggestions I would I would say 10 10 seems to be where other communities are finding the sweet

spot with live music in specific areas of town and I don't know if folks would want that to be

certain nights of the week I would be supportive of that if that's a better fit for our community but those are my thoughts yeah I don't have to ask anyone I will ask follow-up question

when the when the 10 p.m was suggested was that part of a was it an open-ended question was it a

multiple choice that had options of nine and ten or what did it we we did have all of those so um

and I actually have that slide so I I came prepared so I let me see if I can find it real

quick and then I'll ask Jenny to bring that up.

Okay, so slide 54, Jenny.

Okay, so it was by hour.

Yep.

Okay, great.

So we were doing our best to try and, you know, get as much information as we could out of the survey. I think it's, it is, we did not get it so specific so that it was like, okay, if you're in the northeast quadrant, you're saying X, Y, Z. I mean, we probably could get that if that was a question for y'all. But I do think that this is helpful to see what people were considering. We did not go past 10 p.m. I do know other cities near us are 11 p.m., Boulder, for example. So, you know, they're, but they're also just 11 p.m. across the board. And so that is, you have a lot of flexibility in this space to decide if you want to change quiet hours across the city within certain districts. That is really your decision. And we're happy to work with whatever council would like us to do. Okay. Thank you so much. Great. Josh and then Ann.

Thank you. Yeah, I agree with Council Member Patiandi's comments about changing the ambient noise and also just on having the change for entertainment districts as well, I think is a really good idea. As far as downtown goes, extending the hours on weekends to 10 p.m. I wonder if there's room to expand that too because there are concerts in the square on Thursday nights.

Right. And that was one of the things I was suggesting is that while we did not see that specifically from the community engagement, we obviously work very closely with DDA on a lot of things and understand that their schedule is going to be pretty full for the rest of the year. And we would like to be able to have them be in compliance with whatever noise ordinance that we adopt.

COOL. AND THEN I'M SORRY IF I MISSED IT, BUT IT SOUNDS LIKE CURRENTLY IN THE CODE THERE ARE NOT NOISE STANDARDS FOR ENTERTAINMENT VENUES.

THERE'S NOT A SEPARATE ONE. SO A LOT OF OTHER COMMUNITIES DO THAT. THEY'LL IDENTIFY AREAS THAT THEY HAVE ESTABLISHED AS MAYBE A CULTURAL DISTRICT OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT WHERE THEY DO HAVE ADDITIONAL FLEXIBILITY. THERE ALSO IS POSSIBLE. MY COMMUNITY THAT I worked for before also had built in ways to do sound assessments when something might come before a land use requirement, say PNZ, so that we're looking at sound plans. So I don't know what the future of Fort Collins is at this point. So I think, you know, for us being as flexible as possible, especially if this is a driver for us in a council work plan item, you know, I think being able to explore some options with you over the course of this next year would be something that we could absolutely bring back and talk to you about more specifically.

That sounds good, but I was curious about an individual building. For instance, if you wanted to build the Aggie Theater along Harmony somewhere, are there

special considerations for just that building, or is it more in the district?

Not to my knowledge. I don't believe that they have anything in the noise ordinance right now.

Is that typical to go by facility or just more in the area?

I think it's more by the zone. Okay. Gotcha.

Thank you.

Microphone. So one tiny question on page 10 of the presentation. There was something about better sound management with schools and downtown. What's going on with schools?

um so we um have a surprising number of complaints coming from amplified sound at football games so um like high school football games yes i i used to live really close to rocky mountain high school and i could hear everything so um you know and i i will say that i'm not sure that that's a direction that council wants us to go into um especially with school districts um but it is it is something that that occurs right now um and usually we we have conversations but i mean typically most people are willing to accept that kind of sound in their community got it thank you

for clarifying i was truly baffled by like this picture and like that it shows the age of child that i have because i was like what the little the little voices um so uh mr hernandez if i'm right You're saying that basically the increase past our current code required ambient sound levels is due to infill and traffic noise? Were those the two primary drivers? Yeah, correct.

It's been 20 years since this has been updated. And since then, the city has grown so much that it's not only traffic. I mean, it's the population, right? The community. It's also a bunch of variables that come into it. Okay.

Great, thank you. So to answer the first question, I think, yes, absolutely, we should make adjustments to the ambient noise limits to reflect existing conditions. That's just fair. And it is interesting, an interesting side effect of growth. I was wondering about the impact on the surrounding neighborhoods, like how far noise travels. So for example, I think, and there really wasn't like a huge range, like the dot size is big, but the range between like the highest decibel level and the Lost decibel level really isn't that significant, right? It ranged from like 60 to 76, which...

Well, yeah. And I think we have 80 in our industrial areas as our highest decimal event during the day. So was the question around? Yes.

I'm not sure I actually got to the question. Oh, okay. Yes. Sorry. It was my lead up. um so how far does like for example if college and laporte i think um registered at like a 71 maybe on on the dot map um how what would that register as an ambient like what would the impact of the ambient noise be on like two blocks away what what's the fall off of of sound so if we're

So I will say that I have learned a lot over this last year in looking at this and talking to some of our partners who are a little bit more technologically minded than maybe I have been trained in. But one of the things that I think we've learned both by experience and from others is that actually it depends. So it's going to depend on the weather. It's going to depend on the kind of noise. It's going to depend on vibrations. So, I mean, the reality is, is that, you know, what you might hear one day from this one noise might be completely different the next. We had some very odd experiences this past year as Jay was working on and his team was working on taking these noise levels where we had an event that happened. and we anticipated that we would have levels fairly high close to that particular event. And what ended up happening was that the noise was actually heard two miles away because of the weather that day. So it's not, for us, we're not going to be able to get quite that specific. We just don't have the technology and the training to be able to do that. So we're going to try and hit best standards for, you know, normal weather conditions. But, you know, this is always based off of like property lines, what people can hear from certain distances. And so our goal is to try and create a noise ordinance that's going to be generally work well in normal conditions. but understanding that there is a possibility that we could have some unusual circumstances based off of weather or other types of atmospheric conditions that could make it travel further. So we were surprised this past year. So we had a few things that were very interesting.

Science is so cool.

It is.

What is the decibel sound of the train?

I think it's 90. Okay. Yeah. So I did not include this as part of this conversation for this evening, but we had an entire conversation about trains. So if you ever want to get to that conversation, we have information.

No, I think really my point in asking, besides the humor of it, is that it serves as a useful benchmark, right? I mean, we're talking about levels that are substantially Lor even to increasing quiet hours. So I think all of that information helps me understand enough to be able to answer your second question. And so given all of the information that you're giving me, absolutely, I think we can and should consider more flexibility in other areas of the town to make sure that we're staying competitive and also encouraging the types of activities that

the people in our community enjoy. Yeah, Melanie. Thank you. And this is just a quick follow-up since Anne brought up schools. Obviously, Frenchfield and I think there are some other loud sporting things in schools, but I'm thinking about what are the current standards for schools who are doing occasional outdoor events. I live near Olander and Blevins. They both have like an annual party that does have amphiboid noise. Sometimes they're doing the jog-a-thon. How do we manage those kinds of events that are more intermittent than in football season?

Yeah, typically when we get a concern about a school, we'll reach out to the athletic director or the school director and kind of chat with them a little bit and educate them on what concerns we're getting. If the event is taking place and it's within the time frame that we are working, we'll go out and do some measurements and then call and let them know that they need to come down a little bit. But generally, it's really just... But generally, it's really just through education when we're speaking with the athletic director or something like that when they're having some kind of event.

I was just wondering, I might be in the minority, but I do wonder if that's worthy of us having something in code. I would hate to have our school communities not be able to have any amplified sound, because that is going to exceed. They're all nestled in neighborhoods. So they're not going to be entertainment districts. But I would hate to hamper the school spirit. school spirit and I think certain neighbors probably enjoy being right next to an elementary or middle school so um I would hate for them to get noise complaints like they're a college party when it's a very different situation so I don't know if there's any flexibility around those kinds like church or school maybe I'm opening the door to things getting wacky but But I would love to not be penalizing our schools for having spirit-building community events with amplified music at 6 p.m. But otherwise, I support all the stuff you guys brought up.

Thanks, Melanie. Amy? Thank you. I have questions just kind of around the amplified noise. because if it's tied to quiet hours also, I mean, 50% support keeping the current hours.

And so I'm not going to be able to ask my question very articulately,

but there is definitely a segment of District 5 south of Shields.

I'm sorry, east of Shields, south of Prospect,

that all of this happens at once. It gets college parties. It gets stadium noise. It gets gardens on the Spring Creek. It gets the whole thing. And it has wildlife and the train. That's right. Thank you. How did they show up in the survey, that area?

Because it looks like it's broken up northwest, northeast. But what about, like, that midtown?

So I believe our split, if I remember correctly, was college and prospect. Does that sound right? College and Drake. Okay, thank you. And so we would mostly, I guess that would put them into the northwest. Yeah, so the northwest quadrant. I would have to probably split that up to get that information for you specifically about how that showed up in the survey and how that area responded. but I think we can isolate it down to that for you but I don't have that this evening but one of the things that we do also have and Jay often and his team work special events and we do have special event permits and also the ability to do noise variances in relation to those special events so some of those are also possible when we're talking about changes we probably need to spend some time looking at our special events ordinance and how the noise ordinance fits within that existing set of criteria. But, you know, there are going to be neighborhoods that are going to fill that pressure from multiple sources. And so I think as we start talking about entertainment districts and where we don't have jurisdiction, those are the kinds of things I think would be very helpful for us to kind of work through with

you and council as a whole. That would be super helpful because it is a unique, what they experience is very unique. And I think that's the other part with raising the ambient noise, is that mainly to, and you may have already said this already, so I apologize, but is that mainly to provide

enforcement for vehicles and it's so there was a separate set of ordinance changes that happened in may of last year that was specific to giving police services additional tools to deal with vehicle noise my understanding is that that has been that has made a shift for them and being able to actually address some of the vehicle noise and so those those things were done last year so we're not making any proposals for that but the the shift for the ambient sound is just literally because the city is just louder and we need to be able to more effectively enforce our our noise ordinance than we currently can thank you okay anyone else

so can you just explain when you were um talking with melanie you were saying the ambient noise level in downtown is so high that you can't, you have a hard time issuing tickets in some way. Can you just explain that a little more? I was a little confused by that. I think I...

Yeah, so the ambient noise here in the downtown, I don't know if we have the slide or not, but the ambient noise surpasses what we have written in code. So in the downtown area, I believe it's 60 during the day and 55 during nighttime hours. And with vehicle traffic being enclosed, you've got downtown that is enclosed by Riverside, Mulberry, and College, all in those areas. And so you imagine all that traffic, plus you've got the train that passes by. And so anytime that we do any readings downtown, the ambient noise is really, really louder than anything that's really taking place in that area.

So I brought up the map so that you can see this a little bit. And we have lots of maps at this. So if you need additional maps, we can certainly provide it for you. But if you look at the center of the city, that's basically college that's running north-south there. And you'll see those three larger dots up there. That is essentially the downtown area. So if you look at it, it is, I believe we were looking at it at 71 as the number that I think it was at.

I'm going to look real quick on my map. So, yes. So that one that says B right here. So that one right there is 71 decibels. This M right here is at 74 decibels. And this is the average decibel. So this is not just this is day and night time combined. So that just tells you that this is an area that's busy.

And so we do have, and I can go down, and I just blew it up so that we could see it a little bit better. But I do have a slide that tells you exactly where all of these locations were done. And if you'll give me one second.

My main question was just, so you're saying given how high the noise levels are, we're going to increase that, and then that will give us more enforcement power?

Yeah, so what that does is it gives us the, by increasing it a little bit, especially in certain areas, it gives us more of an enforcement tool to be able to get to it. because right now when we have a, what would you call it, a condo unit right next to a business unit that is playing there or having some kind of outside music,

what's taking place as we go out there, and that ambient noise, not just the vehicle noise, but the folks that are enjoying that downtown, as you can imagine, we're picking up children, having a great time in the downtown area, which I'd love to see, but also their parents you tell them to get back over here but we're also picking up the traffic noise and all that plays a key factor into that so to be able to pinpoint that band or go to that band and say you got to come down a little bit on your decibels is very tough to do okay because

all of the ambient sound is louder than what yeah our current code okay yeah because i was trying to

just motivate what the i was just you know i think i missed the earlier conversations last year but

But, you know, just trying to get a sense, are we trying to make it easier to have music downtown or are we trying to cite people more?

No, I think what I think it's the reverse. We are we're trying to make it so that we are recognizing that we're just louder than we were 20 years ago.

And then to provide flexibility if that is the community desire and the council desire to have that.

Yeah. So I guess I agree with everything that's been said about just the need for increased flexibility. I would love to see Old Town.

I guess I'd like to be, I'd be interested in seeing options for like summer, like differences

in summer versus winter. I think like it's very different to have like some loud noise at like nine o'clock when

the sun's just going down than like nine o'clock in the winter when it's like been dark for hours, in my opinion.

So I'd be interested in seeing options for especially the downtown that go later, 11 or midnight, I think. During the summer, you mean? Yeah, maybe during the summer. Okay. And even 11, maybe year round for downtown. I just think, again, like we were just rated the most peaceful city in the country. And I think that we ought to keep that as much as possible. But I think people also really value live music, especially in Old Town and maybe even at the gardens at Spring Creek, even though I know there are some issues around that. I think increasing that opportunity for more cultural experiences helps a huge, broad swath of people. And the number of people who live really close to these venues has got to be tiny, right? like dozens or something so anyway um but their opinion still very much matters but anyway so thank you very much for the presentation i support you know changing these rules okay thank you um

yeah i'll just add my voice i um support adjusting the baseline standards for the ambient sound and um for the amplified sound i think the entertainment district is where i'm landing as I know you have like an and or in your question at the end. I'm not the right person to ask about quiet hours. Apparently I've adjusted my sleep schedule to those quiet hours. So, and I know in district two where I represent really the main complaint is just traffic. And that has definitely decreased with the changes in our laws. So I hope it's working and that's not just anecdotal. um so until i hear more from and i also saw on the map that district two is kind of it's very it's not necessarily homogenous but it's uh it is a lot of suburbs and small like schools here and there etc so um it wasn't really even on the map except for at those loud traffic points so don't have a super big opinion about how it goes downtown so i'll leave that to you guys that

represented. Okay. Anyone else? Yeah. This is just super quick. I also just wanted to note in making these decisions, if there are any steps we can make to reach out to our community of folks with disabilities. I know that we had a gentleman who lives close to the Spring Creek Gardens on the autism spectrum. Loud noises are a big struggle. So I think if we can just be looking THROUGH THAT LENS, I DO THINK WE STILL NEED TO MAKE ADJUSTMENTS, BUT IF THERE ARE WAYS THAT WE CAN MITIGATE IMPACTS ON SENSITIVE POPULATIONS AND HAVE THAT BALANCE, THAT WOULD BE GREAT. GREAT. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

YEAH, THANKS, MELANIE. AND ACTUALLY THAT DOES BRING UP, I'M CURIOUS WHAT BOARDS THIS MIGHT GO THROUGH, BOARDS AND COMMISSIONS. HAVE YOU GUYS THOUGHT ABOUT THAT?

SO WE CERTAINLY COULD GO TO THE DISABILITY ADVISORY BOARD. IT JUST, THIS WOULD NOT, WELL, at least not the ambient sound would not go through, um, like PNZ or anything like that. It would, it would come straight to you. We are open to going to any boards that you would like us to, to meet with in advance of this coming forward to you. Uh, maybe the economic advisory

board. Uh, what are you thinking? I would say that, yeah, the dab for sure. Um, arts and culture

board. Oh yeah. Okay. And, um, if I could ask a question, um, would you want to do that at the ambient, um, part of it, or would you just want to focus on our changes that we would potentially have before the end of the year with the amplified? Yeah, I think that's a good question.

Good clarification. I think that ambient no is my preference. I've seen head nods. I mean, it's kind of just what it is. This is very true. So, um, yeah, yeah, you got it. Okay, great.

Anything else you need from us? Um, yes, actually one last question. Downtown, we were offering to bring it, um, with the ambient background noise. Do you have a, does council have a desire for us to, to prioritize that coming forward, um, before us bringing maybe additional areas? what would the timeframe be? We were talking April for the first reading and I have, we have gone and spoken to DDA and some of the downtown merchants already. We could always prioritize getting back to them to talk to them about potential changes to that district regarding the ambient sound and or quiet hours. But if you would rather us wait and bring it with the rest of the, noise we could, but that may potentially cause some problems for them this summer.

Especially with that construction we're about to talk about in item three. Yeah. Is there a preference, Amy, than Ann? Yeah. I simply have a question. I don't think I

necessarily have so much of a preference. Your point is well taken about maybe addressing it sooner to ensure their programming. But with the DDA meetings you've been having, was it with all stakeholders, like residents?

We did this early on when we were starting with the community engagement. What we would most likely try and do is see if we couldn't get back before them, before bringing it to you, and see if we could get agreement on that this would be a supportive type of shift for them and their programming downtown. Okay. Thank you.

Council Member

Yeah, I was going to ask if you had a pulse on the general opinion of stakeholders in downtown. Ms. I do. Ms. Okay. Ms. Yes. In fact, I met with the DDA president last week. So we had a good conversation about this coming forward to Council. Ms. So my understanding is that they are interested in having 10 pm. Ms. They don't. Ms. That was the recommendation. Ms. Just coming from Matt Romanow and that they would be interested in having it throughout the week, not just on weekends. So at least that's what I'm hearing from DDA specifically, but we can certainly follow back up with the merchants.

I think probably to the points that have been made already, it would make sense to expedite that particular area, given that summer is like almost here. It feels like it. It does, right? In any case, seeing that in April, if that's possible, would set us up a little bit better for summertime programming.

Great. Thank you so much for that feedback.

Can I just ask one question, too? So we had talked, some of us had talked about maybe a little later, too, could be exciting, you know, for downtown.

But is that like an issue? Is that something the DDA is not looking for at all?

or were they like 10 would be great? We just talked about 10. Okay.

I can certainly see whether or not 11 is something

that is a recommendation and bring it back to y'all. Great. Okay.

Okay. Anything else? All right. Thank you so much. Thanks for all your work on that.

All right. Power through, everyone. You want a break?

I'm always the one asking for breaks before. I'm good. Yeah, let's do it. Let's keep going.

All right. We will switch out our staff team here

So while we're on the theme of downtown, we want to talk about a very large capital project that we have coming forward next year. And so while the team gets set up here, I'll just do some quick introductions for everyone. So Heather McDowell is our civil engineering director.

Beck Anderson is the project manager and civil engineer Bill Wellborn. Is also here to present on the project and then they are joined by several others from their team Teams who are here to answer any questions, but I think I'm turning it over to you Heather to get us started

That's correct. Thank you Thanks for the introduction Kelly Good evening council members and everyone. We're excited to be here to Share out a little bit about the work that we've been doing over the last couple of years for the College Avenue project. So we are calling this an infrastructure project because this is some utility improvement work as well as a street improvement project. So we have representatives from the utility service area as well as the streets department to kind of talk through each of the different components of the work. This project is going through the downtown core. The work will be on College Avenue Basically the extent of the project is on the north end is Laporte and on the south end is Mulberry. So it's right through kind of the downtown core and We understand that This is this is going to be a big deal for the city and potentially impactful. So next slide So really our goals tonight are to bring awareness to council on this work that we anticipate doing in terms of construction next year. We believe that we're aligned with current council priorities, and ultimately our goal is to kind of seek feedback from council members, address any concerns, take any suggestions that you might have for us relative to the project. Beck and Bill are going to be doing the majority of the presentation tonight so hopefully they can address a lot of any questions that you might have but we will open it up

after the presentation. Thank you Heather. So we'll start off with some project background here. So City Port Collins we have over 560 miles of existing water mains within the city limits and over 32 miles focused in the downtown area which is what we'll be talking about tonight. So with our aging infrastructure, we get common theme, we get main breaks, water quality complaints. The big one with our old 4-inch cast iron lines is hydraulic capacity or fire flows. So 2018, the city commissioned the water distribution, wastewater collection master plan. It basically evaluated our systems and then identified projects or areas that were in need of replacement. The area we're going to be talking about with College Avenue tonight was one of those locations that was identified in that master plan or sorry not master plan, but

Yeah, and then There is a pavement need coming up out on College Avenue

The last time that the street was paved was back in 2010 So if this if we take this to construction in In 27 it'll been 17 years since there was a surface treatment on the road through Old Town.

So a little background on the project funding and this is specific to the waterline portion of the project.

Prior to 2024 we were in conversations with the streets department and made aware that there was a potential for a repaving effort coming up in the coming years along College Avenue.

At that point in time in 2024, we reached out to internal and external stakeholders, including the DDA, to determine if there was support in moving forward with the project.

That support was confirmed.

So 2024, preliminary schedule and budget was developed, and then we went ahead and submitted a BFO offer, which is approved in 2025 with a portion of the funding coming in 2025 and then the remaining coming in 2026. And then where we sit right now, we put out the request for proposals for a contractor in January. We did receive proposals back last week and then are currently evaluating those and we hope to issue a work order for construction late this year.

So the project overview for you here. So the project extent is through the heart of Old Town from Mulberry to La Porte. There's numerous crossings throughout the project corridor and then lateral distribution main work at Magnolia, Olive, and Oak Street.

And the target of the project, as we mentioned, is replacing that 100-plus-year-old 4-inch cast iron main along the east side of college.

And then we would be installing a new 12-inch main up the northbound lanes of College Avenue, new hydrants and valves.

And then as part of the project too, we did identify other one water work that we would like to complete related to miners, stormwater and wastewater main improvements.

And then coming behind the utility project will be a paving effort that is, Bill's going

to talk to here in a few slides, but a coordination effort between CDOT and streets.

so kind of an overview of waterline work that we've completed to date there's a lot here I just want to touch on the amount of outreach that we've been doing we started our outreach in early

2025 and have been around numerous groups throughout the city collecting feedback and

and also in informing about the project.

And as far as data collection goes, this past fall we did utility potholing, over 130 potholes to inform our 30% design, which we currently set at,

or set at as of December 1st of last year. So, and then again, the construction RFP, we're hoping to select a contractor here and get them on board in late March.

So just kind of expanding out on that outreach effort.

So we started out in early 2025 at DDA retailer and merchant meetings. And initially we're asking for feedback from the businesses in the downtown community as far as time of year for construction and how they would prefer us to complete the project, whether we break it up over a few different years or whether we come in and do it all at once.

And so we've got some good feedback and the feedback that we've gotten has driven how we're planning on approaching the project to date. That would kind of specifically, you know, we asked what time of year should we do it? And they said January start because that's the sLost month of the year. And so and then the phasing of construction, the feedback was we prefer you come in, get it done and then be done out of here. And so that stuff's informed the way that we're approaching the project. We did face-to-face interaction with all the businesses numerous times, and we heard common themes about concerns related to the project. And so, those are things that we're taking.

We're listening, and we're actively working through those problems. And then ELT, there was feedback related to coordination around special events, which is something that we're taking into account. You know, taking a creative approach to this construction project because it is a challenging

area. So that's all stuff that we've heard and all stuff that's driving the project and how we're

going to do it. And I'll turn it over to Bill for this slide here.

Thanks, Beck. Again, my name is Bill Welborn. I work for the City of Port Collins Streets Department, specifically in the street maintenance program area. Thank you again for having us this evening.

So, like Beck had mentioned, quite a bit of outreach has been done.

Specifically, we've been talking a lot with CDOT Region 4. A little background information, this particular roadway is 287, which is CDOT right-of-way. So, we're going to have to work with them heavily. One of the things, the history, so in 2010, there was a collaborative effort between CDOT and streets where we went in during a nighttime operation and got things done, a mill and overlay in this particular portion of road. And just kind of something to point out, particular roadways, arterials, they only last about 15 to 20 years before they need to be resurfaced. So that is kind of a driving factor of this. We have been monitoring the pavement health of this portion of road. So in 21 as well as in 24, we did pavement condition assessments out there. And this road does lie, or this particular area does lie in kind of the bottom 10% of all arterials throughout town. So there are some maintenance needs out there. um with that um we have also gone out there to kind of look at some of the concrete uh curb gutter sidewalk needs more in line with the safety concerns out there and so we are uh suggesting that that be included as part of this effort as well uh as far as workflow goes um the timing we are proposing to do the concrete effort right alongside address those safety concerns with the water line as that progresses that work progresses down the corridor and as far as the asphalt goes we are going to have to kind of rely on ambient temperatures especially since we're trying to pave at night there are certain things that you know temperature wise that we need to meet so we go ahead and lay a quality mat down there funding for the the the streets i guess portion of this collaborative effort we would like to model kind of what was done in 2010 in 2010 there was that collaborative effort between cdot and ourselves where they went ahead and paid the cost for materials. So we are in current negotiations with them.

And as, again, in the 2010 effort, we did use our city crews.

So labor and equipment was covered by the city.

So in this effort, we would be seeking kind of those local resources to fund that effort.

So that's pretty much kind of the streets aspect of things on it. I'll go ahead and turn it back over to Beck for the rest.

So as we work through planning for this project and work through design and into construction,

we're paying special attention to project impacts and opportunities that we may have. One of those that we've really been focused on, obviously, is the impact to the downtown businesses, residents, and also public safety. So a key thing that we're doing is taking lessons learned from previous projects that we've done. The previous section of College Avenue that was done in 2014 south of Mulberry, the Walnut Street project, the Downtown Development Authority, alley enhancement projects, which I've been involved in in the past, and then also projects that our neighbors are completing. So we had the opportunity to go down to Loveland and do a visit to the hip street project that's going on down there and

We visited with the project team for a few hours and discussed, you know, what's went well What would they change next time we've taken that information?

With us to help us on our approach to this project information with us to help us on our approach to this project.

! So our opportunities here, I think there's quite a few, but we've been working with parking ! ! Identifying supplemental parking parking ! And then kind of working through those issues. We've had economic health on board with the project since early 2025 and have been evaluating ways to support business during construction

and potential for grants, possibly. And then one key thing about this project is the way

that we are approaching the construction. So we are bringing a contractor on early at 30% construction so we are bringing a contractor on early at 30 percent design and that contractor will be with us as we progress through the final design and

it's in a collaborative and team effort for you know that goes into planning a

construction phasing of it identifying any risks that we need to address so

it's really it's really everyone buys into this project to see it through and

be successful and then also the multi-departmental and agency

coordination that we're leveraging. So construction, we don't know everything

right now but what we do know there's going to be some lane closures in Northbound College to install the water main. We don't know exactly what those are going to look like quite yet. We know there's going to be water shutdowns but those will be coordinated to limit impacts to businesses so doing those shutdowns outside of normal business hours parking we know on the blocks with active construction will probably be limited and that's why we're looking at the options for supplemental parking we do know that sidewalk and pedestrian

traffic will remain open in one form or another if there is an area that's closed

then there would be a detour that's ADA compatible provided for the public to

get around and we do know that business access will remain open at all times. Deliveries for the businesses will handle on an individual basis,

make sure everything goes smoothly. So this is just moving through schedule. You can see for design and our pre-construction and construction. So basically, you can see we started that initial outreach and 30 percent design last year. and then we're getting ready to select our contractor and move in to 90% design later this spring, get our final cost estimate this summer, and then get a final price on the project late

summer. Outreach, really it's been ongoing since 2025 and it will continue and it will continue to ramp up as we get closer to construction. We're hoping for that to issue that construction

work order late this year, pre-construction activities towards the end of this year, and then move into construction the beginning of next year.

And with that, questions?

All right. Thank you so much. Thank you. All right. What do you guys got?

Go ahead, Chris.

So can you just talk about when you're doing your engineering, what the trade-offs were

between speed, cost, and level of interruption?

What kind of considerations and trade-offs were made in that process?

Take that one. So I think that those conversations will be had, and that's why getting that contractor on board early

so that we can look at the different scenarios.

Because you look at, well, if we have one crew out here doing work, then there's going to be a certain production rate.

maybe your impact is a little bit smaller versus if you throw multiple crews out there and maybe open up the area that you're working in,

the production can increase. And so I think those are all conversations that we'll have with the project team and the contractor, definitely.

Great.

Yeah, I guess I'd just be interested in learning about maybe just for my own curiosity,

like what kinds of trade-ups come off and like what kinds of decisions are getting made for what reasons.

I was going to say. I think that's it. Thanks.

Great. Yeah, Melanie.

Yeah, I appreciate all the hard work on this. I don't know that I have a lot of questions. I just appreciate all the courtesy to how this is going to be tough. And you have done a lot of outreach and are going to continue to do that. I think it's work that needs to happen. And, you know, it's never going to be easy to close College Avenue. So thanks for all the care.

I guess just an idea for the city or a question is how we could maybe amp up our promotion of using the max during this project. This would be a great opportunity for more people to experience how efficient it is.

So I think if we could let people know where you can park and ride, where the best stops might be, depending on what block we're currently working on.

we've got that resource that goes right parallel with this project so it might be a good opportunity but again thank you and you guys have done a really great job of communicating how this is

going to look moving forward so thank you great and so I will echo the appreciation just for the thoroughness that you've approached this project with and thank you so much for all of the engagement. It sounds like you guys are really on top of it. So much appreciation. I'm curious if what the conversations were about anything else that could be installed at this time, and this is such a disruptive process, right? I mean, necessarily so, but obviously disruptive, thinking about the other infrastructure needs of that area. Is there anything else that could be attacked at the same time. I'm thinking about electrical capacity or anything else that goes in the street while you have it open. What were your conversations about that?

Yeah, so that kind of goes back to one of the things that we heard from the businesses in the downtown community was a coordinated approach to the project. And so if we're going to come in and cause the disturbance, then get everything done that needs to be done that we know about. And so we have put a significant effort on reaching out to stakeholders within the city as well as like outside.

So for instance, Excel Energy, but also like parks, water field operations for stormwater and wastewater work. We've talked with CDOT quite a bit.

So basically that and those items that we've identified, we're working on coordinating and trying to include in the project. light and power, we talked to them about any potential needs that they had out there. And so we are still in conversations with that stuff. But I anticipate if they do have work out there that they need to do, we would try to complete it as part of the project as well. I know there's parks, there was talk with parks and the median improvements or center planner improvements along some locations along College Avenue. So we're currently coordinating with them to see if that work can get wrapped in along with the project.

Awesome. Thank you.

Curious also at Vision Zero is one of our council priorities.

So wanting to understand if there was any conversations about actually improving multimodal transportation in this effort.

I mean, I understand that it's CDOT, and I don't know what guardrails or constraints there are regarding that, but is there an opportunity to make this a more accommodating, multimodal segment of College Avenue?

I will say that there's been some discussion around ADA improvements in specific areas in the downtown area. So we'll be looking at those. I know that there are some areas that don't meet ADA requirements currently. So we'll be looking to improve those. We have not talked about any Changes to lane configurations at this point in time, but we have a 30% design only at this point So there's lots of opportunity to kind of incorporate those things I will also say that you know during construction We work pretty pretty closely with the traffic department in terms of what we're going to be permitted to do the area that we're going to be able to close for construction and the areas that we need to leave open for pedestrian activity and cars to get around so that they are a very conscientious group in terms of moving people around safely and adequately and they're they they put a lot of guardrails on the work that we do which is which is good I think that we you know we end up doing a lot of creative solutions when it comes to work in intersections for instance because we need to try to keep traffic open typically in one direction or another as well as accommodate pedestrian traffic particularly in the downtown area so I can say that those are the things we've

done to date what city organizations have you worked with like I mean active I'm still getting to know all of the the players but I feel like there are people that should be brought to the

table if they aren't already? Yeah, that's a good question. So we have done outreach with the Water Commission and we've spoken with the LT. FC Moves is another one that we do typically do work with during the design and during the planning and design process for projects. So we will engage with FC Moves as well. Okay, but you have not yet? Sorry,

when you say 30% design, I feel like it's like more, you're further along than maybe

you actually are? Yeah, so we have, I did touch base with FC moves a while back and I'll follow up with them again. We sort of progressed along with the design to the point where we kind of paused there for a minute so that we could hit a window that we could put the RFP out for the contractor. And I anticipate, you know, once we get that contractor on board, things are going to start to move like really quick and so it's going to be time to like okay if we need to discuss something like I'll be reaching out to everybody and be like I need to know now like now's the time so I think we'll find opportunities to to meet everybody's needs. Well I mean similarly with

like get it all done at once with infrastructure and utilities this is also a big priority for us in our community to make sure that it's not just cars, but other ways of getting around. And that's part of what makes this particular stretch and the neighborhood that it attaches to so vibrant is that it is more bikeable. But right now, I feel like it is not the most ideal in terms of anything besides car transportation. So I would hate to have that opportunity missed if there was a way to look at that in the design. Thank you. Given especially that it's a council priority. Thanks. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for

those. Yeah, I will add they did start the design in January 2025. And so it was a whole different set of priorities you were working with. So that's not to say that isn't valuable. I think it's always been something that we've pushed towards. So I'm eager to see if anything can happen there. I guess there is a question too, though, if it's 287, like what, how much control

do we really have? Yeah, I mean, I think, again, the value of having the conversation here is to

understand what are the ultimate, like what would be desired, and then we'll have to do that with a reality filter of how much influence can we have there. But I think good question for us to follow up more. Okay, great. Unless you have a clear answer now, Bill, on how much control we have over 287. I really don't right now. We'd have to talk with them a little bit about that. Yeah, I think we can take that as a follow-up item. Okay, great. Thank you. I just have a couple questions. I know

more than I should about downtown holiday lights. So those are supposed to come down after February 14th. How is that? Yeah, you may want to work that into your schedule and especially your

contract with your vendor because I'm not sure how far that goes out. And then I guess for city manager and for all our other departments, this is a great opportunity to carry on with one of our previous council priorities, which was make government more fun.

I think it's one of our meetings.

It was mentioned, you know, because DIA is in a constant state of construction.

And there was a minute there where they were poking fun at themselves and had weird like

alien drawings.

I don't know if anyone ever saw this down there.

I hope that we can really, I mean, acknowledge the inconvenience.

but really promote the privilege we have in being able to do this, as well as like what Melanie brought up. This is a great way to experience a different way to come downtown, somehow promote that, and I don't know,

maybe put Christmas lights on the equipment. Who knows? So that's just my two cents.

Yeah, some good creative license for our comms team. to really get creative.

Okay, so any, yeah, go ahead, Josh.

On the $800,000 cost for the asphalt replacement, does that include the cost of the materials that CDOT may reimburse, or is that just for the staff?

Yeah, good question. That does include that cost as well. Okay. So that's kind of the total estimated in junior high-level cost for the whole asphalt milling and overlaying project.

So then the water main project is funded in the 25-26 budget process, but this $800,000 minus whatever CDOT we would expect to see come up in the next budget cycle.

all right uh anyone else yeah go ahead chris um are we planning on having a single point of contact for businesses to be able to reach out about stuff like this or how are we structuring

that that's a very good question um during it so in during pre-construction and kind of working

through the outreach it's been myself with support from our our staff communication staff and I anticipate during construction that I will delegate out one point of contact for businesses that to make it simple easy consistent

yes sounds great perfect and one other thing I just will add to that is we we kind of make this a standard protocol for all the capital work that we do but But we, in the past, had stood up a web page or website. We don't do that as much anymore because of the reformatting of the fcgov.com website. But we will typically put out newsletters every week or every other week to keep people updated on what's closed, what's coming, what's opening. So that's a good way for us to kind of communicate the ongoing, just the changing nature of construction. um yeah and then we i mean our group is uh very front and center with all the work that we do we're out there every day and um people will get to know back um and they will have his cell phone number so we are we make ourselves very available to the community perfect yeah amy i just want to

ask i wasn't going to ask it but you you you asked it and then but is the funding secure from the state? Like when it says negotiations and CDOT, is that money secure or is there any risk of it not coming through just in the state of the world?

We can get Mallory, our streets director, to answer this one.

That's a great question and it is not secure. So we are in negotiations and I'm very confident that we'll be able to make this happen. We were able to do it in 2010, and so far our communication with CDOT has been very positive. They are also experiencing budget constraints, as we all are, but we've been working through this, and we had notified them of this a while ago, so they were already prepared to do this. So it's not secure, but I'm pretty confident.

Do you have kind of a sense of when it might close?

I think we'll know within the next month or so. So I'm really trying to nail it down so that when we come back with a budget offer, that we know how much we're asking for. Thank you.

And like Mayor Potem, happy to help promote and support in the communications piece, however. So looking forward to it.

All right. Last call. All right. Thank you all so much. Good planning. Thanks.

Thank you.

Okay, so that is our last item. Do we have any announcements?

Okay. Thank you for making my first meeting so successful.

All right, everyone have a great evening.

We'll see you later, Fort Collins.