City Council Work Session — April 28, 2026

The time is 6 p.m. And I call the work session to order well the city manager please provide a review of tonight's work session agenda. Yes. Thank you mayor. Good evening everyone. We have three items scheduled for tonight and as you can see they are items that really encompass many of our city departments in a wide array of staff. So first we'll highlight our current capital projects that are going on in the city this season. Next we want to talk about phase two. two of the our climate future strategic funding plan and then our final discussion item this evening will be updating and expanding our business assistance package policy so with that i will go ahead and introduce brad buckman who is our city engineer he's going to get us started and introduce

the rest of the team thanks kelly yeah i'm brad buckman city engineer and i am joined tonight by Dean Klingner, our Community Services Director, Heather McDowell, our Capital Projects Manager at One Water, and Dana Hornkel, our Capital Projects Manager in Engineering. And tonight we'll be given an overview of our major capital projects in the city over the next couple of years. These projects have major impact for the city and encompass several service areas to include PDT, Community Services, and One Water. It's worth noting that this isn't an all-inclusive list of capital projects. For example, Connection represents a large portion of capital project work in the city, but they generally give separate updates to you all periodically. Yeah, questions for Council? Since this presentation is meant to be given annually, as we move into the heart of the construction season, our main questions for you would be, do you have any specific questions about these projects? And what other information would be helpful for these updates? Next slide. So, the projects derived from previously adopted plans that over the years included a lot of extensive outreach to the community and solid alignment with city's strategic objectives and council priorities. Plans such as the active modes plan, the parks and recreation master plan, and the water reclamation and biosolids master plan, for examples, form the foundation for identifying requirements for our various projects across the city. and that leads to prioritization and programming of the projects. So next slide. One example of how the plans lead to a prioritized list of projects is the transportation capital improvement dashboard that we have in PDT. This starts with project need and identification, which derives from the three plans on the top, active modes plan, strategic trails plan, and the, this is a mouthful, transportation capital projects prioritization study. The projects are then scored via six different criteria, covering safety, greenhouse grass reduction, health equity, regional significance, synergy with other planned projects, and community benefit. This then produces a list of projects that are scored and programmed. and two project examples that would come out of this are College and Trailway intersection, the Power Trail, and Harmony Underpass, both of which we'll cover later in the presentation. And so this slide shows what the actual dashboard looks like, which is a GIS-based tool.

Inside the map, you'd be able to click on the main corridors of the city and see what transportation projects are planned in the next 10 years and beyond. We included a link to the tool in the AIS and also descriptions of other methodologies as they relate to the other service

areas. Next slide. So this slide is meant to show all the projects that we're going to be,

that we have covered tonight in the different, covered by the different departments.

and the selected list includes 33 projects 339 million dollars worth of

worth of work mainly executed this year and next year these projects address strategic objectives in the areas of transportation mobility high-performing government culture recreation and environmental health and for for council priorities the transportation projects as you might imagine address division zero goal but a clear case can be made for economic vitality with a lot of these projects

that entail significant capital investments that support the needs of the growing community

and in many cases reduces and removes infrastructure barriers that allow for more community investment

next slide and so this this slide shows the projects that we will present tonight and broken down by the different areas of the city north midtown and south and we have five projects in each of the areas to present this list is the rest of the 33 projects and in the interest of time we will not present these this evening but if you have any questions please let us know and and we will do our best answer next okay so for the next three slides we'll click through and show kind of where in the city these projects are and with the

help of our CPIO department we came up with these really cool icons to depict the type of projects so the warning sign you might guess deals with vision zero or transportation projects the water droplet deals with our one water projects the tree is for our parks and recreation projects and the bridge is basically for our asset management projects and on this

slide the purple uh sorry jumped ahead on this side the purple colored icons are those projects that we'll be presenting for the north.

And Midtown, the green-colored icons are the locations of the projects that we'll be covering.

And I just want to say, you know, one of the cool things about working at capital projects in the city is that it's very collaborative.

On the previous list, when you saw the departments executing them, and in many cases it was multiple departments,

and we work pretty closely across departments and across service areas.

to execute these projects so and then one more i think and this is south and the red

will be the projects that we'll present here so without further ado i'd like to turn over to dana and he'll start to cover the projects

sorry about that we'll start in the north area with a project uh with intersection improvements

at Vine and Timberline. This project began in 2025 and has had some challenges due to the

large number of private utilities within the intersection in order to place the foundations

for the traffic signal poles. All those hurdles have been overcome and we're reaching

agreement with BNSF for the interconnect portion of the project. So the two primary parts of the

project are the traffic signal and then the interconnect with the railroad signal.

And so we're expecting that this project would be finished around September of this year.

Second up in the north area is an asset management project, the Mountain Vista Bridge

replacement, which is at the intersection of Timberline and Mountain Vista.

A full replacement there of an existing pipe that was in very poor condition, the bridge program is the primary driver of replacing this bridge. It was in very poor condition.

Mountain Vista should be reopened to traffic the first week of May or next week.

And again, this is part of the bridge program and you'll see a couple other projects coming up from that.

And then the final sort of Vision Zero related project in the north area is the Shields bike lanes from Mountain to Mulberry.

This is a project that was funded by our Climate Future Tax, or the 2050 tax.

This is taking the existing four lanes and one of the northbound lanes between Mountain and Mulberry and transitioning that to bike lanes.

So it'll be three lanes of traffic, one in each direction, a turn lane,

and then protected bike lanes with delineator posts and buffers.

Thanks, Dana. I'm going to cover the parks projects here. So this project is our neighborhood park off of Sykes Drive.

That is our holding place for a name.

So I'm hearing we are pretty close to a name on this, so you will hear about that soon. Generally, we name them as we get closer to construction.

So if you're not familiar with this location, it's in the Mosaic neighborhood, about, I think it's just over close to an eight-acre site. A couple of things I would just highlight around this is, you know, we're evolving a standard that uses much less irrigated traditional turf in our parks.

So this turf is very carefully designed to fit our program sports fields.

Otherwise, lots of native grasses and plants in this park. Lots of input from our neighbors. We know this neighborhood is very, very excited about this park coming online. and then we hope to start construction in 2027 and have it open that same year.

And I will continue with some discussion about a utility project. So the North Mason project is really a holistic infrastructure improvement project north of the Poudre River and on the west side of College Avenue. This is a collaborative effort to establish a right-of-way corridor for North Mason through an area that needs right-of-way improvement as well as utility infrastructure. And so a stormwater element is certainly an important component of this project. This will provide adequate stormwater capacity as well as an outfall to the river. And then other utilities will be designed in that area as well. Really, it's about trying to create development and or redevelopment opportunities for this part of town. The Urban Renewal Authority is funding a portion of the project for right-of-way acquisition and stormwater design and infrastructure.

Now moving on to the Midtown portion of the projects. We'll begin here with the Taft Hill Corridor Project, which goes between Horsetooth Road in the north and Brixton in the south. We were recently in front of Council Finance Committee to seek the last amount of funding in order to take this project to construction later this summer. And it will be coming before Council at May 5th. That funding or the supplement appropriation was recommended by Council Finance Committee. And so we'll be in front of Council May 5th. This is making improvements to Taft Hill that will meet our Vision Zero goals as well as addressing some capacity issues.

bringing this area or this corridor up to the Larimer County Urban Access Street Standards. I'm messing that up. I apologize. Or Lucas Standards throughout the corridor. The Master Street Plan recommends a four-lane arterial, and currently that's not met in that corridor. It also makes several of the recommended active modes plan improvements in the corridor and sets the stage for other active modes improvements once funding is secured. This project is a partnership with Larimer County, and the final tranche of funding that the city would bring is about 10% of the total project funds, with the majority of the local funding being Larimer County regional road fees. and then about, if I remember correctly, about 59% of the funding for this project is grant funding.

Users of the Mason Trail and Spring Creek Trail may recognize this location. This is just on the west side of the Burlington Northern Railroad tracks.

Yeah, the history here that a lot of folks know is that Spring Creek Trail was there long before the Mason Trail

and just a very constrained place to have visibility or sight distance. So it's a small project, but a very popular piece of trail.

And so nice one to highlight here.

I think it's a fun fact about this one. We're going to do our first bike roundabout in Fort Collins.

So roundabouts work for bikes in a lot of the same way they work for cars. You don't have to come to a complete stop, but it does separate traffic.

It will be efficient for our bike users here. So we're excited about this little project. It should be built this year.

oh two in a row sorry yeah so also spring canyon community park the splash pad i know lots of folks know this is underway because the impact right now is that this is a very beloved feature of

spring canyon park and we have folks uh wishing they could use it this year so like all things these splash pads have a useful life and this one has to be replaced so we highlighted it here just

because we know it's so popular and it's got it's a inconvenience to lots of folks that use it just

really nice little chance to highlight a couple of things when we this is a 2050 tax for park and

recreation so finally having the funds available to replace end-of-life assets will get better

water efficiency with an upgrade to a new facility here it'll be a lot safer for our employees where they had to enter into a confined space before and then we are taking the opportunity to expand

capacity of the bathroom while we're there so nice little highlights on this one

the lame avenue waterline project is currently under construction we are installing approximately

a half a mile of new 20-inch water main down lame that work is happening south of horse tooth

and north of harmony many of you if you drive

Zon mate mate is closed in the Southbound direction. We apologize about that. Maaron mate is ! The northbound lane is currently open. ! It's planned to be closed here in the next couple of weeks as well. ! ! So, We also, ! This project is a follow-up to several emergency repairs on that water main that we were dealing with about a year ago. ! So, you were in this part of town a year ago, you may have also experienced some traffic jams. We responded to seven water main breaks over the course of about a two-month time frame. And so we quickly realized that we had some vulnerable assets in that part of town that needed to be addressed rather quickly. We requested an off-cycle appropriation last summer to get some funding to design and then quickly replace this segment of water main. We will be finished with that work early summer. And then just wanted to highlight the picture there in the middle of this slide basically shows the condition of the pipe that we're pulling out of the ground. That's electrolysis that happens from a pipe that kind of sits adjacent to soil that the interaction there, there's a chemical reaction and it's not good for the pipe. so we are working on replacing that with plastic pipe that has a longer life lifespan okay the next one is work that we are doing at our wastewater treatment facility this project is just beginning the design process but really staff identified the need for this project approximately 20 years ago so this one's been kind of a long time coming this is a high dollar project because of the extensive amount of specialized equipment required there's a lot of electricity and electrical work that needs to happen as well as systems integration with a plant that has to run 24 7 it can never stop running to do this work. Headworks or preliminary treatment at the plant is basically the first stage of treating the water at the plant. It removes trash and inorganics from the waste stream so that the subsequent downstream treatment processes can work efficiently and effectively. So this is a very important kind of component of the plant. The picture that's shown on the right side of this is basically what is coming out of head works and making its way through the downstream parts of the plant and so we don't want it to look

like that it's got way too much trash and grit and inorganics in it to make for an effective kind of process for the plant and then moving to the to the

south area of the city, starting with the College and Trilby intersection project. The first phase of this was completed in 2024 and included a lot of earthwork and walls that were built in order for the later phase of the project that we're currently in that began last year. The total project cost is almost $22 million, with about 63 percent of that being in grant funds secured through the MPO and the Colorado Department of Transportation. This is bringing needed active modes improvements with side paths on either side of college and Trilby, also building in significant vehicular capacity in order to meet some safety needs that are caused by capacity concerns in this area. There are also significant stormwater improvements and stormwater outfalls that are being established here that were not present prior to the project, as well as a lot of major infrastructure for Fort Collins-Loveland Water District that are being improved here. The stormwater improvements are about 1.2 million that represent solely the outfalls, and then there's also another 1.2 million in Fort Collins-Loveland Water District work in this project.

A project that's making great headway at the moment is our Power Trail at Harmony underpass project. This is completing the power trail underneath Harmony and two sections of trail just to the north and south.

Overall, that's an additional 1.1 miles of trail.

A lot of coordination here with the Parks Department and streets as far as resurfacing Harmony Road. And then some significant Fort Collins-Lovin Water District improvements in this area as well.

due to the weather that we've experienced recently. We've made a lot of progress.

So the project is about six weeks ahead of schedule. We're expecting that Harmony Road would be returned to full traffic by the end of September

and that by November the trail would be open.

And then another relatively small trail connection I'll cover quickly here because I know we're getting towards the end. But, yeah, folks are familiar with Fossil Creek Trail here. This gives you access to essentially all of our trails eventually connects to the all the way over to the power trail all the way up to Spring Creek Trail but is a very hard difficult connection to annex neighborhoods to the south here the Skyway neighborhood so it takes a village to make a trail there's a bunch of partners with our development process natural areas and parks putting this

little connection in. And another bridge project in the south this is the Trilby

Bridge replacement. It is also in poor condition, but it's primarily a collaboration with One

Water, who's doing a stream restoration, which will be the next project we'll show. The bridge was in poor condition and actually causing part of the scour problem at the top

end of the stream. This project began earlier this spring, and Trilby Road should be open by July of this year.

The Fossil Creek Stream Rehab Program project is located in the Fossil Creek Basin, which is basically on the very south end of town. This stretch of stream rehab is south of Trilby, north of Carpenter Road. We are currently under construction. Construction for this project started in November. We usually try to do these during over the winter and spring months outside of flood season. We have completed all the work in the stream. This is about a mile worth of work between Trillby and Carpenter Road. We've completed the in-stream work. We are now working on kind of final restoration and vegetation establishment along the banks. This project has been done in conjunction with the Trilby Bridge project as well as we worked with parks on realigning the trail and relocating a bridge over Stanton Creek. Both of those things happened kind of on the south stretch of

of the overall work. And just real quickly, the stream rehab program goals are generally to support the idea of rehabilitating unstable creeks while preserving the natural and beneficial function of floodplains.

It's to promote aquatic and wildlife habitat and also improve water quality.

and back to the questions for council for y'all tonight so are there any questions about these projects and what kind of information would be helpful for these updates going forward

thank you can't stop thinking about that trash photo the water okay as council yeah melanie go

ahead no i have questions thank you so much this it's just always nice to get an update on all the things that are going on because oftentimes, especially when it's not in my part of town, I'm not actually getting to see these in process. And it's really cool to see things moving forward. I wanted to give some really positive feedback about all the staff who've been involved over the last couple of years connecting with neighbors about that Venus Avenue paved trail connection. I know DK has gotten a lot of thank yous because I remember two years ago going out with neighbors walking to the end of Venus Avenue and having them be like, the trail's right there and we can't get to it. They were having to go out on the College Avenue with their bike trailers and things to get onto the paved trail. And it's just really cool to hear how neighbors were brought along on the process and they're so pleased. I was wondering if, Dean, you could speak a little bit to the timeline for the Spring Canyon splash pad because I do know there's frustration there. Could you just let people know that it's not generally our plan to shut down a splash pad in the summer and why this is happening? Yeah, thanks for the opportunity

to talk about that one. So the last I was told, we think we'll have that project back open in August, which obviously is not ideal through the summer, but is still maybe when it'll still be warm. You know, what I would say about that is just that there's a lot of thought that goes into when we can't, you know, how urgent it is to take something offline like that, the difficulty of the construction, the weather that you need to do the work. So I think for anyone missing that splash pad, it's just important to know that that is our first consideration is how we minimize impact. And in this case, it just wasn't avoidable to do through the summer. And good news on the way, it will be brand new as of August for the next 20 years there. Okay, that sounds great. Thank you.

And then last but not least, I was wondering, Dana, if you could speak a little bit to, and it sounds like we'll be getting more information, but with those Taft Hill improvements, can you speak at all to what kinds of active mode improvements will be included on the west side or the active

modes plan if i recall made three recommendations for the corridor they were uh by separated bike facilities uh throughout the entire corridor crossing uh improvements that were not specifically located but were to primarily serve safe routes to school those were later identified at imperial and at Brixton, and then also improving the path that connects Harmony Road to the Fossil Creek Trail to the south. And I may have the trail name wrong there, but I'll look to them.

Was it the front line?

Kathy Fromm, the Kathy Fromm Trail, so I apologize for that. We were able to include the separated bike facilities on the west side. that is in street or in street by lane because that west side's already completed to Lucas standards currently on the east side it will be separated by claims we were not able to secure funding for the crossings at Brixton and at Imperial however we're continuing to look invest or look at grant opportunities in order to install those and then the connection to Kathy from Has been made or will be made as part of the project the the width of that side path isn't Exactly what the active most plan recommended where it is a new side path. It will be

Okay, thank you so much

Other council members questions Yeah, Julie good

Thank you. I'm just a couple comments as well. Thank you for the presentation and some things that are happening in District 2. I wanted to share kudos to the staff that communicated about the LeMay Avenue shutting down. I have not received one email. But I did talk to a constituent who was comparing this to some other construction that the city is not doing in the area. It was like, why wasn't there? Reach out as good as the city. So great job there communicating with neighbors and I also wanted to just say how excited a lot of the community in the area is for the underpass and for the completion well the completion but connection of the power trail is like super exciting for everybody and then I did have one question but I think this may be for the city manager so because these large projects they span years most of the time when we relate them to a priority that is in the two-year time frame, like does anything change for these projects while in flight? So let's say we have a vision zero priority. A lot of these projects are, you know, pointed out that that is part of that priority, but has anything changed because it is a priority?

So I'm going to look to the team to see if there are things that they would add to this as well. I mean, what I would say is I think that the strategic plan, which has a little bit of a longer runway, is also an important guiding document in how we prioritize these. I think it probably comes down to, like the conversation that came to finance, some of the funding, putting the funding together for these projects takes years. And so how we prioritize the timing of how some of that funding falls into place is Impacted a little bit by council priorities potentially Like that's where I see it the most but I'm looking to the team to see if outside of the funding what else you would say

We have to We have to switch occasionally Depending on what grant funding we're going for so the prioritization of the projects may change slightly so some funding is greenhouse gas related so different projects show up prioritized differently for that funding source and it's a similar effort to reprioritize I think sometimes when if safety is moving more to the to the foreground then we increase sort of the score that would then go to our projects for safety so our the methodology that we the council adopted for our at least for vision zero projects allows us to have flexibility in that realm that's helpful thank you I

had a follow-up question on kind of how we prioritize so following along the kind of flow chart you have when they get to evaluation criteria on the plan program do we evaluate them against each other or just still within their program and plan area for how we like make the project list does that make sense

So are we evaluating like a streets versus a parks or is it just and then prioritizing out of all of those or? Yeah, I don't mind taking a crack at that one. Maybe Brad's got an answer to you, but I think maybe in lots of cases we're tracking allowable funding sources. So there may be times where a project is general fund and through our budget process it would compete across all types of projects, but often like in these parks projects were either connected to impact or fees that are restricted to that purpose or conservation trust funding. And I know that's true for a lot of the transportation fund, too. So the answer is kind of like, yes, in the way that the general fund is matching those projects or looks across in our budget process, but not usually holistically every project competing directly. So that'd just be my take on it.

Yeah. And I would add that when we look at the, you know, transportation type projects, There's a lot of overlap with the parks, the trails projects, especially when we're looking at arterial roadways like Power Trail and Harmony. So those are projects where we do score. We do look at the score across those types of projects. But Dean's right. There's a lot of projects that have their own sort of special funding sources. And so those don't exactly get compared to other projects in the same way. So, but in the transportation world, those projects all are scored and compared against each other. Okay.

Yeah, I think that.

And I'll just add a little bit to that for the utility side of things. So, utilities is an enterprise fund, so we're funded differently. And then between water, wastewater, and stormwater, they also have their own kind of funding mechanisms based on rates. to our customer base. And so the projects within stormwater, for example, are weighted against each other, but it's a pretty collaborative process that involves representatives from stormwater as well as representatives from wastewater and water. So you get to provide input. You get input from different groups

to just level that process a little bit. And then we we analyze them based on risk and reward And begin to rank them that way. Okay, that's helpful

I've just been asked a few times why we don't have like a five-year capital improvement plan Unless we do and I don't know about it, but

So we do not holistically across the city yet. I will say I'm looking at Caleb's around here somewhere. That is one of the projects that is on our work plan over the Next I don't want to commit to an exact timeline, but it is on our work plan to develop that citywide look Okay, so I would say not for this budget process obviously But I think it's fair to say by the next budget process. We will have that citywide look in place is the goal

Great. I did have a question about this year's budget. I think last time with the 2050 tax that kind of came up of how parks is prioritizing and then coming to council with their list of projects and and just the timing of that didn't work out with the last budget, if I'm remembering correctly. So this time for the budget, are we having more of like a list of, because I know we have the prioritization, but then it wasn't really clear if we were exactly following that. Are we going to have a list of what we're prioritizing?

Yeah, so thanks for that question. So the previous council, of course, went in-depth on our prioritization for the 2050 tax, but obviously with new members on the council, it may be helpful to revisit that. So yeah, I'm just thinking about, you know, in the best, I think what I would say our process has been is to take that evaluation that was that we got positive feedback from that council in the fall. And that's what would build our budget offers going into this year. But I think that's also something that's easy for us to refresh and get to a council memo. So does that.

Yeah, I just think I think last time it was just kind of a lump sum. And there's some more conversation around the specifics of like what are you was staff prioritizing versus council. mainly because I always want to get soft cold park but but I think it would be helpful going into budget season of like what is that lump sum what you all think the projects are going to be

yeah I think that's that'll be that that has been our our plan and so just for the rest of the council members I'd say what we did in the last budget was really brought forward a single you know using that language of brown budget offer inside of that offer it said here's kind of like our internal process of what we think we'll do we've been pretty flexible about how to get projects prioritize we have a lot more work done about that prioritization that we present to the last council so we do have that list and i think we'll just try to explain what might be flexible in that list how we might want to make sure we can still capture opportunities or be flexible but also what our best guess of the commitment is so we'll refresh that top list in a memo and send that out

okay great thank you um and then dana i just had a question i couldn't tell from the images for the trilby bridge and the vine timberline intersection what active modes improvements were being made

Edvine and Timberline pedestrian improvements primarily. There are no active crossing improvements there now, and so there'll be those pedestrian improvements that'll connect to future development as that happens on those four corners.

What counts as a pedestrian improvement? Like, what is the pedestrian improvement? Like a sidewalk? Like, what is the...

I'm not sure I heard that. What is the actual pedestrian?

When you say pedestrian improvement, what is it?

Oh, ramps. Oh, ramps and crossings.

Ramps and crossings. Okay, great. Thanks, sir. I apologize. Yeah. And then the Trilby Bridge.

Trilby Bridge will accommodate the full cross-section that's mandated or not mandated, but called for or specified in the Master Street Plan. So that's a four-lane arterial. It also includes side paths on the north and south side as well as full bike lanes. It hasn't been determined yet whether those would be separated or not but the the general trend right now is that on arterial roadways that we're doing separate separated and raised bike lanes those aren't going to be built out until The entire trilogy corridors improved but that bridge would accommodate that full cross-section. I see okay. That's super helpful

Thank you. All right other council members questions. Yeah, Amy. Thank you

I just had a quick follow-up because I'm really glad that you brought up the prioritization because this is new to me this is the first time going through this it does it mean that when we start revisiting this for the budget will some of these projects fall off or change

maybe am i understanding that correctly i'll just chime in again too but i think um every project we talked about tonight is fully funded uh and going to be completed so uh there's sort of a rolling cycle of projects that may take four or five six years from design to construction and the new budget will just kind of be in the cycle of what is partially funded what needs its last piece of funding or where the early projects are funded so you'll see a lot of projects come on that may be on

multiple budget cycles thank you that's super helpful and then does how many other projects aren't listed in any of this

for capital transportation improvements there are about 77 that are identified that are at some level or stage of development whether we may have secured some funding for them with say an hzip grant or we may have done some conceptual planning in one of the studies on the particularly important projects and then in others they really just have been identified in the plan

thank you can i add to uh so when we talk about funding and i didn't we didn't address this earlier but um on the transportation side a lot of the you know 50 to 60 percent of the funding comes from grants and then the the local match usually comes from like ccip funding that's that's you know already sort of identified um so uh so some of these projects you know that won't go through the normal budget cycle just because it's already funded through those means if that makes sense so that's very helpful thank you other council members questions yeah chris yeah i'm

wondering um in the in some of the ways you guys prioritize projects how are how is like cycling and pedestrian like comfort taken to consideration like the kinds of things that make it like makes it nice to bike and walk along a certain corridor.

Well, I was looking at Dana. He was looking at me. But I'll say, you know, in terms of thinking about trails, obviously, I think that is the mission of our trail network, which is we use the term low stress, recreational, comfortable for biking, minimizing road crossings, all of those things. But I will let maybe let Dana talk a little bit about how that's done in the street network.

In working with FC Moves, the planning arm of the city, the Active Modes plan is making the recommendations for bicycles and pedestrians.

And their goal has always been to have a layered network so that you have that last sort of the bravest cycler is, you know, in the middle of traffic or in traffic. And then there are low stress bikeways and then there are trails. So there's an entire network system.

So really the active BOSE plan is guiding that. Where there can be the biggest safety improvements, that's where the prioritization comes in. So the most safety improvement or the greatest improvement that can be made, the prioritization will pick that project first. And that includes vulnerable road, it includes all users. So that's vehicular traffic, that's bicycles and pedestrians and micromobility altogether.

together. Okay. I guess part of the reason I ask is some of the capital improvement projects seem like they end up like the Trilby and college end up expanding the roadway and then making it farther that pedestrians need to, to, to travel, or they'll expand the size of the roadway. And now that's going to encourage like faster driving, which makes it like less comfortable to bike along the roadway. And so then sometimes these projects get labeled vision zero and I have questions about how much they actually increase safety for non-car users, I guess, and car users alike because of the speed increases along the street. I mean, do you have a sense, do you have ways of telling whether some of these, like the increase in vehicle miles traveled will tend to cause more acChinatown-International Districtents rather than less, even as some of the like clear signage or like extra bike lanes make it more safe?

That is a great question. So for an example, I'll speak specifically about College and Trilby and then maybe get a little more broad. At College and Trilby, there were no improvements and no for bicycles and pedestrians in the intersection before the project. And after it, there'll be eight-foot side paths on Trilby on both sides as well as 10-foot side paths on college on both sides. The side path is like separated from the road? They are. They're raised separated essentially. So you can have two-way traffic on either side of the road for bicycles and pedestrians that will eventually connect to the corridor improvements that will be made out of the four legs of the intersection. The crossing improvements are significant in that even though we are widening the roadway to provide additional vehicular capacity. There'll be what are called pork chops that will give a landing spot so that you're only having the pedestrian can cross partway and then cross partway again, depending on what their ability is. So we work with our traffic operations group. There are a lot of operational decisions that can be made and how the intersection is operated at the time. once it's installed, to make sure that we're meeting all of our goals for Vision Zero, both for pedestrians and for bikes as well as vehicular traffic as well, or motor vehicles, I should say, because bikes are vehicles too.

Can I add another? One of the criteria in our Transition Capital Improvement Dashboard is community benefit. you know safety obviously gets to you know crash history and that kind of thing but community benefit is also weighted pretty high and that's basically bike ability and walkability of the project and so that gets into sort of the comfort that that I think you were asking about and so that's why projects that have protected bike lanes and and raised bike lanes and that kind of thing score score better because that community benefit comes in there so that if that answers the

question? Yeah, no, I think that helps give me a sense. And it kind of leads into some of my follow-up questions, which are about the updating of the Lucas standards. Or I don't know if we're updating Lucas standards. Are we updating our standards away from Lucas in certain ways? I guess I'm wondering, as we are changing our road standards, so my question is, as we update our road standards, are we looking at narrower lanes that intend to reduce

speeds minimally to help with traffic. I understand that we have 11 or 12 foot in the Lucas standards and then a lot of like urban lanes are recommended to be 9 or 10 feet. And so I'm wondering how we're both how we're updating our streets plan and then how we

plan to like like integrate those two as we continue through this process.

If I can, I'll just take a quick stab at that one. Great question. Yeah, the code audit is looking at things, especially bringing in the active modes plan. There are a lot of recommendations in the active modes plan that just weren't in sort of the Lucas standard. And so some of those things will be updating Lucas standard to reflect, you know, what we have in the active modes plan for, you know, side paths and things like that.

But there's also things we're going to look at, you know, where it makes sense.

you know we could we could have you know lanes that are you know 11 foot lanes instead of 12 foot lanes and that kind of thing you know so I think what you're getting at is a little more a look at safety of the roadways and lane narrowing is one of the ways that we can do that.

Yeah, I guess I would hope that we could change some of these road design standards so that the next build out like in northeast Fort Collins is meeting some of our climate goals, some of our multimodal goals, as well as some of our street safety goals, like Envision Zero that we're looking to. And then I'm hoping that that gets thought about as we go through this capital improvement process. I had a constituent write in talking about the lanes on Taft, talking about, like, do we really need to widen Taft Hill and expand the lanes in the way that we do? Can we not just, like, keep the same amount of car lanes that we have and then make multimodal improvements in different ways? and he points out that right it's it's mentioned as a vision zero plan I think but you know in fact going to a four-lane arterial is unlikely to make the city more safe in terms of or help us reach our vision zero goals yeah I guess I'm wondering like now that we have the vision zero goals that change the way we are allocating this funding or how do we how do we get in the guts of prioritization criteria as a council at some point.

May I take a quick stab? So part of the code audit that Brad mentioned will look at established or establishing standards, such as National Association of City Transportation Officials, which is recognized as being a leader in vulnerable road user protection. And so the code audit is going to look at what recommendations NACTO is making and then trying to incorporate those in a way so that whether development is building the infrastructure or the capital programs are building the infrastructure, that we can adopt those. And I think when we bring the code audit and the code changes to council, hopefully you'll see that we're doing our best to incorporate as much of that as possible. Specifically with Taft Hill, even though some of the grant funding that was awarded to that project back in 2020 is trying to address greenhouse gas reduction. And so providing additional lane miles is where the widening comes. One good change there, I think, is that even though the existing lanes are 12-foot lanes, the new lanes are only going to be 11-foot lanes. So we're trying to reduce that perception and those skinnier or less wide lanes will hopefully promote lower speeds through the area and be more safe for pedestrians where there aren't any facilities provided for them now.

Okay. So you're saying the funding for Taft was a greenhouse gas reduction? Part of it, yeah.

Part of it, even though it was widening the road? Exactly.

The thinking and the calculation around that is that there's idle vehicles at the intersections now, and so having more capacity through those intersections will allow them to pass through without idling.

Yes, to be really clear, that expansion of the lane capacity is what the grant funding was tied to.

No, those aren't my criteria. Y'all, like our criteria, those are federal criteria. So, yeah.

Anyway, I just want to say thank you so much. It's great to hear updates about the park in northeast Fort Collins and some of the traffic Improvements on Timberline vine that I hear from my constituents about all the time. So Thanks for all the great work and Looking forward to seeing some of those updates and stuff. So thank you guys

Any other question for council? All right, seeing none. Thank you very much

And move on to our second item

All right, we will do that

And yes, as we transition out our teams here, I will also just offer a note of thanks to these teams when we talk about kind of a one city approach. I feel like they have really operationalized the coordination and the planning and just do such a great job.

So it's nice to get to highlight some of that work.

All right. Great. As we bring up our climate future team here, I'll give them just a second to get set up, I think.

All right, you ready? Okay.

I am going to turn it over to Jacob Castillo, our Chief Sustainability Officer, to get us started and again he'll introduce colleagues who are here to support the presentation.

Thank you Kelly. Good evening Mayor, Council. Always a pleasure to share Tuesday evening with you. We're here tonight to talk about the strategic funding plan related to a number of different climate related funding streams. While I know that this isn't a formal council priority,

Every single one of you to a member has expressed how important climate action is and environmental stewardship. So we're hoping to dig into an area of your interest while also ensuring that we're aligned with the values of our climate future, the city's predominant climate framework, and making sure that we are meeting your expectations in how we implement strategies that get us closer to our ambitious climate goals. I want to be really clear tonight we are not asking for direction on approving this strategic funding plan, but rather, again, making sure that we're on the same page as we go into budget season. Last Tuesday, you heard a lot of folks in council chambers asking you to ask staff direct questions and expect direct answers. We want nothing more than that tonight. So the more direct you can ask your questions, I think we will do our best to answer those as directly as possible.

And I say this very seriously, we want to be accountable to you and we want to be accountable to the community.

So with that, I'm going to hand it off to my colleague Grant Stump from the Environmental Services Department to get into the strategic funding plan. And then we'll move into questions and answers later. Thank you so much, Jacob. My name is Grant. I get to work as a lead specialist within the Environmental Services Department.

Council Member Fudge has already heard most of this presentation, so he's free to nod off if he needs to.

but we'll really be focusing on the our climate future strategic funding plan here and this really is our staff guide towards how we present and how we recommend funding our climate future goals and outcomes and so our agenda today will first cover a little bit of background on our climate future just to make sure we're all on the same page and then we'll dive into a brief overview of the strategic funding plan and then talk to the areas that staff recommend for prioritization and funding as well as some of the additional areas as well and then we'll wrap up with a discussion but feel free to interrupt me as I go along and I'll check for understanding as we're going through. So for our climate future background our climate future really is our guide and our plan in Fort Collins towards a sustainable carbon neutral future really critically while focusing on the needs of the people in our community and so it was a highly community driven plan with a lot of different rounds of community feedback that directed us to focus on mitigation so making greenhouse gas emissions go down increasing our renewable energy and achieving zero waste but also encouraging us to focus on resilience and equity in our community as well and so in terms of structure we have three council adopted 2030 goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions below 80 percent to achieve 100 renewable electricity and then to achieve zero waste alongside those there are 13 big moves and these are really the community voice through this plan and they're the transformational outcomes that our community wanted to see as a result of our climate work and so this has truly become a organization-wide effort with or with cross-departmental leadership that is supported by the 2050 tax that we heard about in the previous presentation and so we'll be addressing that here.

Just some brief terminology to make sure that I'm not leaving anyone behind. I mentioned big moves again those are those transformational outcomes that our

community would like to see as a result of our climate work and then we've

broken down work under those areas into two separate levels. The first is our

This is really the strategic level and the strategies that we are using to achieve those transformational outcomes.

The second level is our next move level. That's our tactical level. That is sort of the work plan level that builds into the strategies which makes an impact on those big moves.

Those are all identified in the next moves work plan, which is a document that is updated every two years.

We have partially updated it here for the purposes of the strategic funding plan, but we're anticipating a full update by the end of Q3, Q4.

And so moving into an overview of the strategic funding plan, I first want to start out with sort of talking about what are some of the goals at hand. And so here you can see our community greenhouse gas inventory projection on the left hand side of this graph you can see in the solid black line that is our historical inventory since 2005 and

we're currently our most recent inventory year was 2024 where we have

seen a 28% reduction in community greenhouse gas emissions to the right

hand side with those different colored wedges those are the different projected reductions in emissions that we might expect to see as a result of both identified trends as well as some of the strategies that we're deploying and

funding through this plan. You can also see it's very hard to see on this graphic you might be able to see it better on your computer screens. We have

goals in 2026, 2030, and 2050 for a 50% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in

2026 and 80% by 2030 and then carbon neutrality by 2050 and you can see that

based on our currently identified trends and strategies that we are not projecting to be able to hit those goals. Another couple critical takeaways from this graph the first is that the majority of our emissions reductions that we would expect to see are result of electricity generation becoming cleaner this really is Platte River Power Authority joining the Southwest power pool as well as the continued adoption of utility-scale renewables. Within that movement, it's really important to note that the city can inform those decisions but we don't necessarily have direct control over that and that's really the second key takeaway from this from this slide is that the city has the ability to inform a lot of these trends but doesn't necessarily have direct control. So when we're talking about the strategies that we're recommending funding, we're really talking about a 10 percent reduction by 2040 in terms of what the city, we feel has the city has direct control over. Before I move away from this slide, it's also important to note that this is one of our three council adopted goals within our climate future, the others being 100 percent renewable electricity and achieving zero waste. So we could go into similar depths on all of our other goals but for the interest of time we've just presented the greenhouse gas goal here and I think that interplay of those different goals and the complexity of that narrative that I just spoke to you about really goes to speak to the necessity for strategically deploying funds not just in any one space and not just a towards any one goal but to really provide impact on all of our goals within our climate future as well as helping to meet the transformational outcomes that our community requested through our climate future as well. And so that's the purpose of strategic funding plan is to provide a guidance document for staff to be able to use to help build budget requests and communicate to council about outcomes that staff recommend to fund over time. Key elements of this the first key element really is our revenue projections what is the identified amount of funding that we have available to spend on our climate future in the next 14 years is our timeframe that we identified that seven budget cycles and then the second key element is once we've identified our potential revenue what are the allocations and recommended allocations that staff would make to strategically use those funds and so I'll talk more

in depth about each of those pieces next so in terms of revenue forecasts like I mentioned a 14-year time frame, we identified four key revenue sources to

be able to fund our climate future work. There are other revenue sources that do fund our climate future work but these are really the primary sources that drive this. The first is the climate portion of the 2050 tax. This is the 25% of the 2050 tax that can be devoted towards greenhouse gas reduction, air pollution reduction, achieving our community goal of carbon neutrality, as well as achieving our goal of 100% renewable electricity. That's about $5.5 million per year that we're looking at there. We also have identified the disposable bag ordinance remittance fees, or DBO. These are the fees that we receive as a result of folks purchasing disposable paper bags. That's about $300,000 per year that can be used towards zero waste and single-use plastic reduction. We also have our utilities electric ratepayer funding, specifically the funds that are devoted towards building efficiency and 100% achieving the goal of 100% renewable electricity. That's about $5.5 million per year. And we finally have our, this says Community Capital Improvement Program, we've been referring to it as capital tax. This is specifically $7 million from capital tax that is devoted towards a future.

over time with inflation. Our utilities ratepayer funding at about the same level, slowly decreasing as opportunities for that fund to be deployed decrease. And then you can really see the scale of the DBO remittance fees at $300,000. And then finally you have the CCIP funding of $7 million in early 2030s. That is movable funding to be determined by council as that time comes. And so with that funding in mind the team set out to develop a process to make recommendations for allocating those funds and so really the purpose here is to strategically align our investments with the goals and big moves of our climate future as well as council priorities our city strategic plan and the allowable use of funds within each of these funding streams and so our process here was to first identify the strategies or the pathways that align most highly with each of those areas and we allocated funding then using an iterative process to each of those areas. We took that funding amount then to those teams who work in those areas to identify next moves that would make the most impact and when we asked them to identify those next moves we asked them to focus on four key criteria and those are listed on the right of that slide. So the first being mitigation what is the impact going to be on those goals and outcomes of OCF. We also asked them though to focus on what potential next moves would have an impact on community resilience community equity and affordability and so this is the result of that plan or that effort at a high level you can see across the top we have our time frame of 2 5 10 and 15 years and then in the rows we have the different areas that we are recommending for funding you can see in the cells themselves each individual dollar sign represents an amount of funding with the darker blue representing an increased amount of funding and so through this process we identified three key priority areas that have a high impact on our goals and that can be fine-tuned for resilience and equity and that's building performance and electrification organics diversion and transportation and land use we also identified areas that make moderate increases to or make moderate progress towards our goals and also have a high impact on our community members through healthy affordable housing and healthy natural spaces and then finally we've identified funding that helps provide foundational support for the OCF program itself so before I jump into the specifics of the prioritized areas does anyone have any questions or comments on

that first portion of background yeah thank you I just have a question about the disposable bag fees. So, and I know you talked about it in the AIS, but isn't the point of the fee because you want people to change their behavior? Are we just not seeing that trend? How long has it been? Four years, five years, or even that long? Off the top of my head, I'm not

sure. Three years. Three years now. So we are, we don't currently have enough information from those three years to be able to predict a full trend the idea is to eventually influence behavior change away from purchasing disposable bags and that projection for funding is the best estimate

we have at the moment okay yeah i mean i'm not it's great that we can use that for funding but it also seems counterintuitive to what we're hoping i think totally and yeah i don't think we're

relying on it to make significant change.

We are hoping through behavior change that we see people utilizing their own bags, not having to purchase disposable bags, and that is part of the behavior change campaign that some of that funding supports. So that's some education and outreach that we do

with the community on a regular basis. Yeah, that funding does go to support that behavior change

that we are looking for. Okay, and what was the, you said it was $300,000 per year. Thank you.

Yeah, thanks for the first half of the presentation. I had a question about the read before memo that was about our historical use of the kind

of first round of 2050 climate tax. Thank you for that memo. It still wasn't super clear to me, and I think one of the questions we had had was, why did

we prioritize some or fund some projects that maybe were easier wins but lower impact with

regard to emissions. And I thought at the time there was something about the truncated amount of time that we had to expend it or something. I just, I think that taxpayers probably want to know why we selected some of those projects that maybe didn't impact emissions as much. And I cannot remember when we talked about it, what the logic was. So.

Yeah. Thank you for the question. We did set criteria for 2024, 2050 tax. And what we said, projects need to be shovel ready. They need to be implementable within a year's timeframe, and they shouldn't displace other work or ongoing effort. So that limited the universe of choice. But again, it needed to be ready to go, not displace work, and completed by the end of the year.

okay that's exactly what i kind of remembered so i appreciate you jogging my memory yeah it also

came mid-cycle so this wasn't part of the regular budget process it was a bit of a build it as we as we implement sort of process and this round we have the opportunity to be a

little bit use a little bit more discernment with regard to that bang for your buck approach

Absolutely. And that's what we're going to dive into next. And this is fully part of the budget process this go around.

Perfect. Okay. Thanks for clarifying.

Yeah, I'm just trying to get some kind of like high level understanding of the OCF plan in general.

So like in the agenda summary, it says it's OCF addresses the environmental, economic and public health impacts of climate change.

And then in other parts of the document, I have a sense that it's like directly about reducing emissions.

Tim, can you just talk about like how you understand our climate future?

Like is it in general about addressing these different aspects of like what climate change is going to impact in Fort Collins?

Or is it truly about emissions reduction? Or how do you think about that?

Yes, it really is both. So what I'd say is, as we engage with the community and kind of helped or supported in the co-creation of a vision, when we asked what they'd like to see, what the community would like to see in climate action, it was not limited to just mitigation efforts. So reducing greenhouse gas emissions. They wanted to see thriving natural spaces, local food, climate friendly jobs, land use that allows people to live, work and play nearby. So all of that comes out in the Our Climate Future framework. The interesting thing is when we set the goals. So there's the big moves which Grant talked about, which we're using to get closer to the goals. but the goals are predominantly around mitigation. What the community wants to see is more than just reduction. They want to see a benefit to their everyday life, or at least that's how the plan came out and evolved. So it really is about a mitigation strategy, but not just a mitigation strategy. I think if we were approaching this as just a math problem to solve, you'd probably see a different solution set presented to you this evening if it was just about maximal effort for ghg reduction but what we've heard from from our our neighbors and the community is they they want to see more than that they want to see tangible benefit in their everyday life in our climate action did that answer your question

council member i i think so i guess it's it sounds like it's hard to quite unwrap or hard to express exactly what people mean when they talk about climate when they're talking about it i guess I'm asking because to me, cut greenhouse gas emissions 80% below 2005 levels and achieve 100% renewable electricity seem very climate focused. And then the reach zero waste seems less climate focused in a way. Like it's not clear the connection to climate in general to me. I understand there's some impacts on climate in terms of organic waste diversion and things like that but it seemed like less less than building electrification land use and transportation etc etc so i think maybe this question could be better answered after further when we get a little bit more into the specifics i just want to give you a little background for where i'm coming from and trying to understand like the the the broad strokes of this strategic framework so there is a history

of why waste diversion is in OCF now. It didn't used to be. And then when we adopted it, we combined them. So there is some history there that I'm sure Jacob can articulate better than I can in a follow-up. But Jacob, I'm wondering if you can just give an example of that I want to see in an everyday versus best bang for your buck, like what those two things look like. Because I think I know what you're saying, but just so everyone's on the same page, like what is the difference between, like just an example, if you could give an example of what funding might cover?

Yeah. So, again, we heard from a lot of community members and neighbors last week about solar energy. And when we look at maybe putting solar on municipal buildings, that does have high rate of return for mitigation and efficiency for city facilities. And yet, when people are asking, you know, how does climate action benefit me, they may not see or feel that. So one of the strategies that we've identified is going out into neighborhoods, especially some of our lower income neighborhoods and mobile home parks, and doing efficiency upgrades for people's homes. So climate action directly impacts their day-to-day and their utility bills. So we look at their cost of living, reducing emissions, and creating safer, more habitable spaces for them. So that's what climate action impacting people's day-to-day lives looks like. That was perfect. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else have questions before we move on? Yes, Melody.

Yeah, I just wanted to. So my assumption with some of the focus on the day-to-day, even though it might be a lower bank for your buck, is it's building that investment among folks in making bigger climate changes or bigger environmental investments or just a good thing to do.

Some of it is so people see and feel the benefit of climate action, kind of like the housing example. there are other things that we want to do that are foundational for their stepping stones for the future so I mean the old adage when's the best time to plant a tree you know 20 years ago we are we're making some investments now so that in 20 years saying thank goodness we looked at those things and started that process years ago and while that may not be the we may not have the highest mitigation from some of those investments this is a strategic funding plan that helps us march deliberately down the road to greater investments at another time horizon does that make sense it does yeah thank you all right

anyone else all right we can carry on thank you get into the meat of it so I mentioned those prioritized areas previously and so we'll start walking through each of them in more detail. So the first area that we recommend for priority funding is building performance and electrification. And the reason why here is pretty simple. It's our largest identified opportunity for greenhouse gas impacts. Buildings, both through their use of electricity and through their use of natural gas, make up 68% of our emissions as a community. And so if we make an impact in this space, we can help to reduce that significantly. And so primarily what we're recommending for funding in this space is economic incentives for building performance and electrification, as well as funding an efficiency navigator to help make navigating the incentive process easier and to play towards that council priority of making building easier. The key theme here is early investment in building performance will then allow our later investments in building electrification to be more efficient. So what we would expect to see as a result of this incentive funding is an approximate 5% reduction by 2040. If a regulatory approach were to be taken here, we would expect a higher impact on our greenhouse gas goal. Since this is also recommended for an incentive space approach, we would see an impact on affordability as this would fund upfront costs of building upgrades and building performance. And so over time, here are the investments that are directed in this area. You can see in the blue, we have our base of utilities electric ratepayer funding that is primarily devoted towards building performance, so helping buildings become more efficient. Over time, that trend slowly reduces as building electrification, so moving buildings away from natural gas and towards electricity, increases. That trend is even more pronounced in our 2050 tax climate funding that we would recommend, where we're investing a significant amount up front in building performance, followed by a transition to building electrification. And so, through those two efforts, we hope to make that impact on our greenhouse gas goal specifically, while also having some add-on effects to affordability. our greenhouse gas goal specifically, while also having some add-on effects to affordability. ! Our next priority area is transportation and land use. This was prioritized because it's a significant ! opportunity to reduce both greenhouse gas and air pollution. ! Transportation alone is our second largest emitter of greenhouse gas and air pollution in ! our community and a lot of the projects as you sort of saw hinted at with the capital tax presentation really have an ability as you sort of saw hinted at with the capital tax presentation, really have an ability to be fine-tuned with an equity and affordability focus, depending on where they're placed. So specifically, what's being recommended for funding here is active modes plan infrastructure, specifically focused on sidewalks and bikeways, as well as selected maintenance for the projects that this fund would help to build. With any form of infrastructure, we're also trying to increase folks using it and so that's why we would recommend funding the shift your ride program and continuing funding for that program which is fundamentally a behavior change program getting people to shift away from single occupancy vehicles into more active modes there are also some funding for land use code updates really continuing some of the requested actions by council here and so we would expect to see about 4% reduction by 2040 as a result of this funding with a really high ability to be able to fine-tune these projects to focus infrastructure in low-income and cost-burdened areas to then provide access to low and no-cost transportation.

Across the 14 identified years you can see that the funding in this space is a

lot more consistent between the funding sources where we want to be making sure

we're funding infrastructure and behavior change consistently over time

to ensure that there is a consistent impact and we're able to achieve those goals.

I'll go now to our final recommended prioritized area which is organics diversion. And to Council Member Conway's point, this is really where greenhouse gas and zero waste connect is through diverting food waste and yard waste away from our landfill. And so the idea here is to conduct development and pilot efforts to learn about how composting works in our community as we are building towards the infrastructure investment in creating a community composting facility. So we'll use those lessons from those efforts to then build into that development and then be able to use all of those lessons and that infrastructure to make a decision on the regulatory, behavioral, and economic efforts that we use to drive the usage of that facility. So, learn lessons first while we're developing the infrastructure so that we can drive usage later. We would expect to see about a 1.5 percent reduction in greenhouse gas by 2040 with a compost facility and infrastructure in place. And then, depending on how we are driving usage of that facility would really drive how we potentially see an impact on our zero waste goal. It should be noted yard waste and food waste make up 22% of our overall waste stream based on a 2016 waste study so it could be a significant impact there. I do have a slide for the funding on that it's a little bit more complex and in the interest of time I've skipped over it but I can pull it back and it's in your packets as well. So I want to talk a little bit about some of those additional investments that we identified. And the first is the investments that we identified that have an impact on our greenhouse gas and our air quality and our goals of OCF, but also have an ability to really make an impact for local residents. And so these are our areas of healthy affordable housing and healthy natural spaces. Specifically we would be funding recommending for funding what Jacob just mentioned, home efficiency upgrades for disproportionately impacted communities, our indoor air quality program, healthy homes, as well as urban canopy in disproportionately impacted communities as well, which has really shown to sequester carbon and increase building efficiency in the local area for local residents. So we would expect to see direct affordability impacts as well as greenhouse gas and air quality improvements as a result of these investments. but since it's not as impactful on our greenhouse gas goal we do recommend a lesser amount of funding in these spaces the other two key areas of funding are more foundational to how we ensure that our climate future is able to continue to make an impact on our goals so the first is our strategic reserve we would recommend setting aside $250,000 annually for reserves that would build to approximately three and a half million by 2040 and the idea here is to reserve a small amount of money each year to build a fund that can then be deployed to respond to emerging needs and opportunities as they come along so to really allow us to be nimble in our climate work these are funds that would need to be appropriated by council when they were to be deployed and so there would be a say in that as well and then we have our administer our climate future funds these are really to support and help us have an effective our climate future program as well as provide accountability to our city and council members. So recommended for funding here, we're looking at our Climate Future staff, grants to both city members and, sorry, city organization and community members, as well as programs within our Climate Future, such as some of our more business-focused programs, NOCO BizConnect, and our Air Quality Fund. We'd really expect to see a more high-performing our Climate Future structure as a result of this, resulting in innovation in city and community, as well as accountability outwardly towards our community. And so taken as a whole, this is the total investment by our Climate Future big move across the four different funding areas. So I'm not going to go in depth into each of these areas. You can see on the bottom we have a large amount of funding being devoted to our largest amount of greenhouse gas reduction opportunity. in efficient emissions-free buildings. A couple of other trends you can see in early 2031 we have our zero waste and neighborhoods and economy investment that is that capital tax investment in a community composting facility the timing of that can be flexible and moved around depending on how that develops. So rather than talk more in depth about that I want to move on to the next steps and then field any questions that you all might have. So we are working to operationalize certain parts of this plan to make sure that it's a useful guide for staff and for you all and we'll be providing that support guidance and communication throughout the budget process so throughout until November we will also be working to finalize the next moves work plan ideally delivered October November as well and so I meant to put these up up front but the missed that so apologies there but the discussion questions we have for you today in addition to any end questions that you might have really focus on do the prioritized areas that we just spoke about really align with how you see our climate future progress being made is there anything else we should be considering as staff and how would you like to be engaged in our climate future

moving forward great thank you do council members have any questions

comments Amy I first just have a quick clarifying question thank you for this could you repeat please with the healthy affordable housing and natural spaces why what was that last part that you mentioned about why less funding you expect to have less funding towards that yeah so the the the challenge with this

effort has really been optimizing the funds to make sure that we are having an impact on our goals and having an impact on residents and so in through our iterative process we felt that directing funding primarily towards areas that have a high impact on our goals as well as have some impact sort of on that affordability resilience and equity piece was where we would devote the highest amount of recommended funding with a smaller amount in those other

areas thanks for clarifying okay Melanie thanks for the presentation part two. So I have two questions about building efficiency. So one, I see that we're already planning to use a pretty large proportion of the dollars that are coming in to apply to that, which makes sense since it's the biggest lever that we can utilize. So I guess my question around the money that we were expecting is how do we prioritize which um incentivates projects we would be pursuing or funding and then my other question was regarding the impact accelerator grant i know that we received a read before memo we also got a letter from our energy board my understanding initially when i heard about that grant was that it was going to be related to us having a regulatory component however reading the most recent information it seems like maybe we might be able to shift our approach a little bit and still take advantage of some of those or put those grant dollars to to use so i guess i would love to hear prioritization around building efficiency for the money that we have and then also how do we move

forward with that grant thank you and brian thal our energy services department director has joined us i think you're able to address both of those right brian yeah thanks for the question and

Thanks for letting me cozy up with you here.

So thanks for those questions. Building efficiency not only represents a great opportunity for emissions reductions in the

community, but again, often through utilities programs, we can achieve a lot. We've done a lot there over the years. Over time though, however, we've seen some, call it diminishing returns on

the side of energy savings and increased costs associated with achieving those savings, mostly through incentives and paying these cash incentives to contractors and community members to improve buildings.

So utilities funds, which are intended to be used,

again, in the best interest of the enterprise fund and the best interest of the ratepayers,

can only go so far when paying for building efficiency upgrades.

Generally, we use some metrics called the cost of conserved energy to essentially say,

hey, is it more cost-effective for us to save energy or buy more energy?

Often, it is more cost-effective to save energy that way. However, when it isn't,

it puts upward rate pressure on our utility's funds,

so our utility rates so what we're doing with this plan is first of all new and different so it's kind of a two-stage approach we plan to with the support of council and city leadership use 2050 tax dollars to essentially stack on or layer on to existing utilities program incentives to fund things such as natural gas incentives,

for example, or things that save natural gas, which again is an electric utility we typically haven't invested in. So that's an easy example of things that we could leverage the 2050 tax dollars

that we couldn't have otherwise used electric utility enterprise funds for. So that's kind of

like an optimization lens that we'll be exploring over the next couple of years. In the short term, we plan to in 2027,

have essentially what we call bonus incentives or a bonus incentive framework,

essentially multiplies by two or three X,

the quantity of incentives that are available for businesses. we also through the 2050 tax in 2024 developed a criteria for under-resourced buildings that we could also consider for an additive bonus, if you will. So that's kind of the short-term plan. And then in the city strategic plan, we also have a evaluation of commercial and homes conservation programs where we intend to do a gap analysis, benchmarking, and some other activities that would inform kind of a longer term plan around how that mix of enterprise funds and 2050 tax funds works.

Navigator-wise, Grant identified that I believe a $60,000 investment for a third-party pilot efficiency navigator,

So not an FTE, but really going out looking for, again, a financial navigator to equip business owners with,

to go through the rigor that it takes to seek grants,

seek incentives, seek other things that can help these projects pay for one another.

Last, you referenced the Impact Accelerator Grant. So, there is a read before memo for Council today. I don't intend to go through the whole thing, but I'll add a little color to it. This was a grant that staff worked hard to submit and partner with FC moves on to submit a grant package in 2025 during our previous engagement with

Council on the building performance standards policy that was proposed. Long story short, ultimately, council didn't support the proposed policy. In a few weeks, I believe after the council direction, we were awarded the Colorado Energy Office grant.

So, I'd like to say that none of our assumptions and feedback from council have changed at this point. We still recognize the feedback that we heard, high investment for the community a preference toward an incentive-based approach to name a few of the key pieces of feedback this grant

two things that were aligned with the Colorado Energy Office on the outcome, but not necessarily the how to get there. So I think we'll be using the phase one of the grant to be exploring those policy options. And with CO and with council and the community, and essentially go back to Colorado Energy Office after meeting some milestones in phase one and essentially renegotiate what that second phase two package might look like. Right now, that $2.2 million is based on the assumption that was included in the original application, which was, again, a full regulatory policy adoption, which again at this time unless directed by council staff do not plan to pursue

how's that for a long-winded answer it was a great answer um it sounds to me like that 2.2 million dollars could be something that the colorado energy office deChinatown-International Districtes that they will continue to grant to us if we have a good enough alternative plan or they could say no you're no longer

meeting the terms of the grant you applied for is that accurate like we

could lose the money that's accurate I think if I can just add here we had conversations with the Colorado Energy Office because we wanted to ensure that we could in good faith accept the grant given where we were in the process and those conversations indicated that again considering a regulatory framework is what that first phase is tied upon actual adoption was not a requirement of the grant. So I think that's important to know. And we were able to say to them, again, council did express interest in some sort of framework that would be more of an incentive-based framework. And so we believe that there's work to do and that the need for that phase two dollars is still going to be there. And so I think that's just a little bit of additional context on some of the

conversations we had with them. Okay, that's helpful. And I just appreciate, I know this has been years of work by staff and this is going to be additional work but I'm very hopeful that we can come up with a plan that helps us move towards our goal and helps us be able to utilize the

over two million dollars that have potentially been offered to us so I I'm grateful that you guys are willing to go back to the table and try to figure something out with our assistance hopefully

Thank you. I have one more question. That's very quick, though, and it's not for you, Brian.

So I appreciate you, Brian. Thank you.

My second question was just about shift your ride. I think I asked this a couple of years ago when I was a new council member, and I don't remember what the answer was. But I had a resident talk to me about how it can be daunting to use non-car transportation and to shift between the various options, because I know buses are free now, but you have to pay per ride, pay per device. And they had asked if there are cities that are utilizing like where you pay on your utilities or something where you could have unlimited use of the bike share and the scooter share and all the different things that are out there without having every time to have to use your car and hook it up. I know there are cities that have subways and buses and this and that and you just use the same card for everything. So that was just a suggestion because she was like, I would be much more likely to not drive if it didn't take me 14 different methods every time I switched devices in the community. So I just wanted to throw that out there because she was like, I would certainly pay a surcharge on my utility bill every month to just be able to jump on the bike and use it.

So we would be happy to bring that suggestion to FCMoves. that could also be a component part of some of our affordability program evaluation. As you know, we have programs supporting the use of spin scooters and, as you mentioned, transport. So I think there's a number of different places we can bring that into the conversation. Awesome.

And it may not be workable, but sometimes residents have awesome ideas. So thank you. Josh?

Thank you. Just to go into a little more detail with my colleague's question, when we talk about

improving building performance what are some specific things that that includes like I think about new windows or weather stripping or I mean it's kind of anything that makes a building more energy efficient or is there a

particular piece of that yeah so you councilmember fudge mentioned two great examples efficient windows see lighting is usually a high return investment but It could be something as big as your electrical, your systems, your systems control and your HVAC system. Those tend to be larger, more costly investments. And as we we learned from some of our friends in the business community, it's also not just as easy to say, oh, I'll put a new HVAC, get up there. It's like, oh, I need a new roof. And then you need a new upgrade your electrical system. So sometimes that comes with hidden costs, but examples, yes. Efficiency around the building and envelope itself, the mechanical systems, including lighting. So just a few examples.

Thank you. And then thinking about the incentives and the building performance standards, the likelihood that there's enough funding to cover all of the work that may be done, you know, to make these buildings higher performance.

Is there any particular piece of that that's like the most cost effective or the most, I don't want to say like low hanging fruit? Or if you, let's say we said we're going to put it all into replacing windows because that is the big saver. Is there something like that that we've identified or is it kind of just all of the above?

I'm going to give you a bit of a generic answer that it depends on the building and the building use case. And I don't know if, you know, colleagues with more expertise would want to weigh in. But I do think every individual building is unique. What it's used for and who uses it and when all go into that equation. And I don't know, Brian, if you'd have some additional insight to share there.

Yeah, thanks. And, you know, we've seen a lot of experience and participation in our Efficiency Works Business Program. And through our assessments, we identify a lot of even behavioral savings opportunities, right? So low-cost, no-cost type investments where you're, again, evaluating your own operations to save. So some of those behavioral savings are certainly, again, some of the opportunities that we see. And just to follow up on the comment on budget to support building performance standard or building performance in general.

I think in our previous discussions, we estimated around 700 buildings requiring around, again, this ballpark, $180 million of investments over a number of years to essentially have 100 percent compliance.

I don't think there was ever the intent that the city would be supporting you know a certain percentage of that let alone the full amount right utilities incentives at the time were estimated to account for about 10% so hopefully that's helpful for context on budget to support sorry the last part

utilities around 10% that means reducing utility use I missed that sorry

percent of project cost on average we've seen utilities incentives account for around 10% of the total project cost and again to Jacob's point but varying pretty dramatically building to building and then we've received a lot of

feedback on a particular solution I think solar projects things like that and I'm just curious, you know, I've kind of heard what that entails, but what would that mean the city would do to implement those types of things that we're getting these comments about, if that makes sense? Is that a regulatory change that the city makes or is that investing climate tax in this one particular solution around solar projects and distributed electricity?

yeah i like to think of uh the city as as both a uh consumer of electricity and the utility itself right so in utilities uh and it was highlighted in the uh the deck um for renewable electricity generation and uh energy storage so batteries we have about a hundred or i'm sorry uh one million dollars annually budget out of utilities ratepayer funds to support incentives and community members

and businesses to self-generate at their homes and that's through incentives typically again 10 percent of project cost to help them get over the you know initial cost the city as a consumer

looks a lot different right that's working with our own operation services department to you know find the balance and identify the trade-offs of installing you know self-generation on the roof versus you know in improving and you know an indoor component for staff and and

community member enjoyment. So I think we see a lot of the trade-offs discussed when talking about more of the city as a consumer in our operation services group.

Thank you. Then just one more. This has been answered for me, but I'm still just a little curious about the details. Can you explain the role of our advisory boards, like the Energy Board, the Natural Resources Advisory Board, in helping us pick some of these options, especially maybe at budget time i think do they it was talked about a little earlier maybe they go through it over the summer early fall when the proposed budget is being put together do they kind of weigh in on which items might be included historically boards and commissions do get um

you know the budget proposals they weigh in on some of the items that are most important to them we have had building performance standards in front of a number of our our advisory boards and I think they will be part of this budget process but I can't speak to exactly how since we're tweaking that some I will say some of our we will continue to use advisory boards and the policy discussions and you know stuff that comes to council so you make sure that you have that expert opinion and advice thank you council member I just want to follow up your question on solar I want to make sure that that we answered that I know that there's a lot of folks talking about local and household generation. And I think it could be helpful, Brian, if you talk about Black Hollow and kind of the scale of some of that versus individual rooftop solar. I think that helps clarify because while solar is still great to have on your own house and your distributed generation, there are some municipal scale solar that makes sense at a far different scale.

Yeah, I think the third leg of the stool, and thanks for the prompt, is our ownership chair with Platte River Power Authority, right? Where they recently put out a press release in their partnership with Contour Global around their severance-based Black Hollow solar project, which is a 324 megawatt generation facility. And for context, the Riverside Solar Project at Riverside in Mulberry is half a megawatt. So the size of the array in severance is 650 times the size of what we have at the corner of that intersection. So we're able to do things at scale with our partners and our ownership stake with Platte River. The economics are far different, right, of utility scale versus self-generation and rooftop solar. And we recognize that we want to support both, and I think we have a strategic plan that advances both.

Thank you. That's helpful, and thanks for the time. I do really appreciate my personal interest is in the cost-effectiveness, but what I really appreciate in this presentation is that there are other factors like equity and making sure that our residents, you know, see some of the actual impact. I think that A, helps them, and B, helps, you know, drive and generate support for these types of things when they see it, so it's definitely helpful to give me those types of other things to think about as opposed to just, you know, straight ROI. So thank you for this presentation. It was really helpful.

Thank you. Other council members? Yeah, Amy.

Thank you. I do want to echo Council Member Fudge. The access that you're creating. What am I doing? I'm so sorry. Thank you. Sorry. Just to echo Council Member Fudge's sentiment. I appreciate very much the focus on access and equity for many of our residents and businesses with the participation of NOCO BizConnect. I think that's a very vital piece to really making the behavior and also the changes that many people want to make just very, very within reach. So I just want to appreciate that effort.

I'm wondering if we're changing the incentive program at all because what I heard from people and is that it wasn't covering enough it was too difficult it was uncertain the risk was too high so are we also changing the way the

incentive program operates yeah I think maybe I didn't get to the punchline very quick actually I know I didn't get to the punchline very quick essentially So phase one is bonus incentives and essentially this under-resourced building bonus for 2027. The strategic plan identifies this evaluation of programs to really advance what you're talking about. How can we cover more using the appropriate funding sources and distribute incentives where possible to make significant progress using an incentive-based framework? So I'd imagine that, you know, more changes and more of an overhaul might be more like a 2028 timeframe.

I would just add, so yes, we are going through program evaluation to understand efficacy of that, because we've heard some of the same feedback that it's, you know, we were leaving some money on the table and we asked why the incentives are hard to use or hard to unlock. So that is something that we're actively working on. I should also mention that this dovetails to the council priority around economic vitality. What we said is we want to support businesses in reducing their costs through these efficiency programs. So as a cost reduction strategy for local businesses, this is one of the tools that we have in that toolbox.

Okay. I'm glad to hear that we're rethinking that. And I think it just goes along with that. like how can we be more predictable and effective with our money and with people's time and I'm also

wondering are we also working with the planning department on this because if I remember correctly if you want to upgrade your HVAC that does trigger a micro amendment which causes like a whole bunch of other concerns so are we checking in with our planning folks about what are how are or your requirements may trigger other things that they don't know are coming through the development review?

Is it our requirements?

Brian, I don't know if I have a good answer to that. And if you don't want to put you on the spot, we'd happily follow up.

Yeah, it could be a follow-up. In short, certainly the new construction element of it, we want to do as much as we can with the permitting side of things, understanding we still have kind of that cost recovery mechanism associated with permits and working with planning and building services and the like. So maybe a follow-up is warranted that way.

That would be great. Thank you. And then the bump in the 2030 one for the climate for the waste diversion,

Is that bump all from OCF funding or is that also including the new the new CC IP?

Which I can never remember the acronym for so that that bump in funding is entirely from the seven million dollars from Capital tax from the capital tax. Okay, but that could be spread over a couple of years That could be shifted in terms of time frame up or down That's really a conversation for the staffing council. Okay, so no OCF funding is going into that there is OCF funding It does bump up slightly, which I can pull up that.

I don't need specific numbers. I was just curious.

The predominance of it is that $7 million from CCIC. Yeah, that's the best way to put it.

And I know we had some folks call in about wanting to extend the pilot program for the composting. I can understand why they want that. I would just say, in my opinion, I would be in favor of expanding it for new people coming in. But I think it's like a good way to get people in the door.

But I don't know about expanding. I don't know if you're planning on expanding the incentives for people to stay in the compost program pilot,

but whether I would rather it be based on income and affordability or getting new people in to see if they like it before just continuing to offer incentives.

Yeah, I think before we make any moves on either expansion in terms of, you know, breadth or, you know, populations we're trying to reach or duration, we'd want to see what we learned from this pilot experience, because I will say our partner in this compost queen is exceptional in collecting data and information. So we want to learn from that before we jump into a phase two. I also say our conversations with Larimer County are going very well in terms of how we might be able to broaden reach or scale facilities. So there's more to come and there's more to learn.

so we want to lean into the learning okay that's great news thank you and then I think I heard you mentioned something about evaluating the effectiveness of some of these so I'm just curious with the home efficiency programs specifically focused on like mobile home parks and updating these homes are we tracking how effective or how able we are to actually get in and make upgrades and is that part of our review?

Yeah, largely that work is completed through a partnership with Energy Outreach Colorado and our single family care program. We do collect those data and it is part of our planned evaluation approach. I can't speak specifically to the actual data collected or customer satisfaction associated with it. I do know that we have seen some program growth in those areas on the order of upgrading about 125 homes per year through that. And that's up from on the order of a dozen, eight or six or eight years ago. So it's a growing program and we recognize that it's a good time for evaluation.

Okay. I just remember a while ago we had a program where you could replace your window and door in your mobile home. And that was like so difficult to get people to buy into the program.

So I'm just curious how it's going.

I don't know if you can, in a follow-up, share just some data about how many homes are we doing, what's the average cost of those upgrades that we're making.

Similarly for the shift your ride, just curious, how effective is it? These small behavior change programs, just curious how we're measuring effectiveness and what we're seeing over time. And then I'm also wondering if we're thinking about expanding the home efficiency to pair

with our housing strategic plan of small landlord incentives, and if it's just focused on mobile homes or if we're also now going to move into the small landlord area.

So no guarantees on how these programs are meshing together, but we are having those conversations. So we're looking at how we both from like an operational efficiency standpoint, like do we have the right staff and the right managers? And also, are we reaching people in a way that makes sense for them? So we're not knocking on the same door multiple times with different programs, but streamlining that for the customer.

Okay. Yeah, I just think with more our city moving towards more renters, you know, I like targeting those who really need the upgrades.

But now we're seeing more and more people who need to be living in a rental instead of their own home that they own. And they would also like to have those upgrades. And so working with landlords, I think, would be beneficial.

We have had some positive feedback from landlords that these efficiency programs are helping them deliver to the market a higher quality product. And that helps for a number of things, including renter retention.

I think that's good. My concern is that then the rent is going to go up because now they're higher efficiency homes.

So I know it's a Difficult needle to thread so I'm just curious how we're going to move forward in that space, but I'm glad you're having the conversations And then similarly with the healthy natural spaces with the tree funding I guess I'm a little confused and are we focusing where we're doing that tree planting Specific I think mobile homes again were called out And based on our tree canopy assessment or is it just how it kind of read was just tree replacement across the city in general

So it's funding that's directed towards the urban forestry strategic plan, and that plan and their prioritization of how they looked at where to plant trees and where to focus their efforts is very highly aligned with the resilience and equity criteria that are identified within our climate future. So I can't guarantee the funding is going directly there, but there's a high level of alignment between that strategic plan and our climate future requirements.

Yes. I want to make sure that we're getting to the heart of the matter. I mean, we know that trees are important on a number of different levels, and also tree maintenance comes with the cost. We are thinking about the cost of our tree assets, our canopy assets in the community. So that's if this was asked because we're trying to get to trees are expensive to maintain over time. We are thinking about that.

Yeah, I guess my and thank you for kind of calling me on what my specific question is. But my specific like it's more about I have hesitancy about using the 2050 tax to fill in the forestry budget because we know that there's a shortfall.

And so are we just like kind of adding in where they need it? Or are we focusing where our climate future said we really want to focus on equity? And so if there's an option to push forward or accelerate trees where we know we need them based on our mapping, based on equity, which one are we doing?

So historically we have funded urban forestry through 2050 tax to the tune of about $185,000 per year and then also for staffing within that area. within the strategic funding plan as it's laid out right now there is some small additional funding devoted to above and beyond that at about $85,000 that would be more the way that you were talking about it with helping support urban forestry resilience and equity and I just

because I'm not sure we can fully answer the question I'd like to work with Kendra or the forestry department to get a more comprehensive follow-up that's fine and just to be clear my

My personal preference is to really direct it in those equity higher needs rather than just when things come up through the forestry plan.

I think I can say confidently we are not just backfilling the forestry budget, but I want to get you a better answer.

That was a crude way of putting it, but thank you. Yes. Okay, my last question is I'm curious why the big moves number five wasn't prioritized in the strategic funding, and that's the live, work, and play nearby,

which I feel like directly is in alignment with council's priorities of like 15-minute city. it it's easier to reduce transportation costs especially with since we're limiting our bus routes now so I just felt like reading through those the number five it was like oh these are the things council's really trying to push forward with neighborhood center of redevelopment with economic vitality and with our kind of housing goals can you speak to why we're not having that be

part of the conversation so when we worked with that planning development and transportation team they really identified the high level of interconnect between big move for convenient transportation and big move five live work and play nearby and so they really thought of those as two efforts combined together and so the funding that we've identified is directed towards both of those spaces specifically some of the land use code funding is plays in that live work and play nearby space I understand that to a

certain level but there are some things in number five which really are specific to neighborhood centers and and when we're talking about trans like how you get around as the number two cause like contributor I would I would just like to

see in the strategic funding more of a connection between we're really trying to not shift your ride like that's our only focus but our goal is also to reduce how much you need to ride and so I would just like to see some some funding elevated in that number five of supporting especially council's priorities around these things because we know it's going to take funds to kind of move in this direction.

That's great feedback. Thank you. That's just my person. Yeah. Okay. Anyone else?

Yeah, Chris. Yeah, I'll just echo Emily's comments about number five. I think that one is very worthy of more consideration the way that she was talking about. I have a few questions. So when it says greenhouse gas reductions like 5.2 percent is that like percentage points of total

greenhouse gas emissions in the city that would be a reduction from our 2005 baseline

a percentage reduction below that okay so it's like yeah all right so each time that says that it's the total from the 2005 and you just reduce five percent right so currently we're 28 below

by 2040 we would expect to see so for example from building efficiency 28% plus the 5.2%

so it's percentage point okay and it is over time so that is by 20 by 24 right yeah not not annual

not an annual value yeah okay so I'll just ask a few of the questions that some of the community members were asking I think more directly so so have we explored solar on municipal buildings with the Colorado Energy Office? Yeah, I guess I'll start there.

We have explored municipal solar. We've modeled what they might look like on each building, and we've gone to the design phase on each building. But no, we have not worked with the Colorado Energy Office on their energy performance contracting.

What was the preliminary results of looking at those of looking at that design? Like, was the ROI super high or things like that?

There's an estimated cost of about $11 million, very, like, back-of-the-envelope level,

except for the designed ones that were a little more dialed in. And as a result of the sizing, we could essentially add two additional megawatts.

! I think it's 2.2 additional megawatts. ! So that would be essentially, ! and we have 750 kilowatts now. So that would be tripling or adding 300% growth ! on municipal buildings ! as possible, I would say.

! Okay. How do we have like a, are we able to put like a greenhouse gas reduction per dollar on some of these figures? Like to me, that would be helpful information on each of these. Like to me, that would be helpful information on each of these. I know you put like a total percentage and then you'll have like the funding on top, but it would be helpful to me to have like, you know, a certain amount of carbon per dollar spent or whatever, you know, whatever kind of ratio makes sense. You see what I mean? That would be helpful to me just to know like where the highest, where the highest greenhouse gas reduction per dollar is on each one of these projects and just get a scale of like how each one weighs against the others. Do you guys have, do you guys have that kind of stuff?

I think we could produce, we may actually have something like that, but we can certainly produce that in a follow-up. So I want to add, so yes, and there's other considerations. So if there's a way for us to represent why some of these decisions or recommendations are coming forth, we are not looking at this strictly as a dollar per greenhouse gas reduction equation. But I recognize how important that is to some of our community members. And in the interest of transparency and accountability, we can provide that. And I think it's also fair that we provide some other insights as to why these recommendations may make sense vis-a-vis.

those with greater reduction impacts. That makes sense to me, but that makes total sense. But I think having that number readily available would be super helpful, just because then we can say, okay, this one's 10 times more effect than the other, but this other one has these equity benefits, these community benefits, et cetera, et cetera. It would just be nice to have those side by side, not to say that that's the only goal that we have. I guess I'll just say in general, I feel that I'm in favor of kind of picking some metric and trying to shoot for that for at least a portion of the money in some sense. Like, for example, let's say we say we're going to spend half of these dollars trying to maximally reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And then maybe we spend the other half on things that are more like equity concerns or community benefit concerns, these other kinds of ideas. And going about it that way makes more sense to me because it makes each category of spend less mushy in a certain sort of way. And the 50% is just something I made up. It could be 20% is pure greenhouse gas reductions at the highest level that we can. And then 80% is to other kinds of projects. I guess that's something that I'll – I think that's just the way I think is like let's pick some kind of goal that we're going for. and let's try to hit that goal and identify the best projects and invest in those right off the bat. That's just one thing I would add.

One of the, I guess the other question I had was,

how do we model some of the greenhouse gas emission impacts for things that might

push growth into neighboring communities rather than Fort Collins?

And how does that impact our 80% reduction from 2005 levels?

I was taking notes on the latter. Can you start that one again? Yeah, let me ask the question again. This is going to be a really important discussion, I think, for not just this, not just tonight.

Yeah, so I know I'm trying to say this. I'll say this every time we have a climate discussion. But I want to say it clearly and ask you about it.

So part of what I'm thinking about is like the 2005 reduction is like a total reduction in the amount that we used to admit in 2005 to a certain level.

I'm worried that one way we could achieve that is by having fewer people in Fort Collins and having them live in Johnstown and then driving an extra 20 miles into Fort Collins. And then it looks like we're doing great on our goals, but in fact, we've made less progress on climate than we would hope.

So I guess I'm asking how do we model or how are we thinking about those kinds of impacts on our greenhouse gas decisions?

We do calculate our inventory and I may need some help from the team but from in and out commuting.

So that is part of the inventory that we look at. I will say as population has increased since 2005 our per capita numbers have decreased.

So we are a far more efficient community and we've seen fewer emissions with more people. And then I don't know if, Brian, you can help me out here. Yeah, I think a lot of the analysis that has been done in the past has been more scenario-based planning. So I remember our multifamily discussion for building performance and making an assumption around, hey, if rents increased by, you know, a certain percentage, we may see an impact in, you know, this type of, you know, resident potentially moving out and needing to commute. So we've done the balance and the kind of trade-off carbon evaluation of it, which again is only one picture. And it's usually been more on a scenario based, but nothing. It's tough to do a similar analysis, for example, for rooftop solar. So I think it's largely been ad hoc. and you know when we recognize there's potentially big impacts in the case of the multifamily building upgrades for example we'll try to dig into that a little more okay thanks um councilman how would you like to see that information come to you if we're able to produce an output like that I guess for me what I'd

like to see is continuing to think about other metrics that might get at that that line of thinking into the future so that we set our targets correctly. More than changing any individual project, it's more to me the way I'd like to see us approach it is start thinking together about like what is a greenhouse gas reduction metric that gets at some of these concerns going forward so that we're thinking about like

our marginal impact on the total carbon in the world rather than simply trying to reduce our own particular footprint. So, yeah, I know that that's a little confusing.

It's kind of like a big conceptual question, but I want to push the organization to think in that way to avoid certain kinds of thinking, I guess. um okay and the last one is have we looked at changing our rooftop solar permitting process to try to encourage rooftop solar in certain types of ways like i've read about permitting in australia being much easier and taking like a week to take like to go from planning to get on the

roof like have we looked at um redoing our permitting system for either like solar and

batteries I guess yeah that's a great question and we actually did launch in 2022 a new solar application user interface and permit software that we collaborate with building services on it did dramatically reduce during normal times the the review periods and by normal I mean just like we always see like end-of-year investment tax credit application flows coming in but But our performance is certainly less than, I think we're at a 10-day review and turnaround time, which is pretty top-notch for industry comparison. Oftentimes, the delays are either based on data needs associated with the contractor proposal or customer sign-off on something. So we did improve it, and we have seen improvements in administration, and we have a pretty good supportive customer sat from that.

Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. I appreciate the project and love the work you guys are doing. So thank you.

Yeah, thank you. I just, I love this council. You all work so hard and have great questions and it is great. So I crossed up everything I had because they all got asked. I do want to say I just I appreciate the thoughtfulness of the strategic reserve concept. I just think that's such a smart way to move forward

and that we're not just automatically committing when we don't know what could be coming. So I think that's great as well as thank you for putting together that read before memo. I think I was specifically asked for it because it was a while ago and it was such a nuanced

discussion so um really appreciate um all the hard work but as well as i mean i do feel like we're partners in this and we will do what is not you know best for the community as a whole and going back to some original questions just chris i think when uh emily and i first started i think that our climate future was adopted soon after that i mean what a great way to start because it not only like it took away a lot of the the privilege that it has taken to be an environmentalist in America for the last long time and really talked about what is best for the community as a whole and with the input and the way

it was put together just so thoughtful and I'm glad that it has endured and that we're still working off of it so thank you again

I just ask and then you're going to follow up with some of the background on the zero waste

stuff being included in the plan. Yes and the short answer is we had different plans that then merged into one so we didn't have multiple competing plans or different documents we had to go to but we will provide additional in the follow-up. Super helpful background so thank you. I know we've had a lengthy discussion already and this is helpful. I hope you feel like you were able to ask us direct questions and mostly get direct answers. We're working on that. I do want to go back to make sure that there is understanding and alignment as we go forward. We did talk about a specific approach that is looking at optimizing a set of desired outcomes, mitigation, resilience, equity, and affordability. And I just want to check that that is an approach that is, you know, like not only palatable, but endorsed by council because that's how we've been operating. And if there is a more maximal GHG reduction approach that you'd like to see us take, it'd just be helpful for us to calibrate before we go into budget season.

Melanie? Yeah, I like your approach. I think what would make it easier for me is, like Chris said, giving us the numbers with regard to the amount of emissions we might expect. And And then that doesn't mean that we're necessarily just going to make a prioritized list based on number, but it just gives us that opportunity to discuss some of the trade-offs if we do look at foundational or some of the equity projects. But in general, I like the way you guys prioritized it. I like that it's a balanced approach. Yeah.

Thank you. Julie? Councilman. Thumbs up.

Oh!

I mean, you can take it away. My apologies, Mayor. You can do it. I got the thumbs up. I was like, oh, I'm going to take a break.

It was my fault, actually. No, you're fine, Josh. Julie just had a comment. No, I didn't. Yeah. Yes, like the approach. I do. I mean, I know this doesn't fit in it, but it goes off a little bit of what Chris was talking about. Like, what opportunities do we have regionally, right? So if we meet our goals, get close to our goals, whatever it is in our little Fort Collins enclave, what have we really done? for the larger community. And so would love if the opportunities come up regionally, that those are brought to us as well. So thanks.

Thank you. I agree with everyone. Anyone else? Okay, okay. Seeing nods. All right. All right, do you have what you need? I believe so. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. We're gonna take a break and come back at 825. Thank you.

Welcome back Fort Collins and we are on to our third and final item. I'm going to hand it over to City Manager, to Jacob, straight to Jacob, who's going to moderate the rest of the meeting. Thank you, Mayor.

No more place. So, we are now shift, well, I am shifting gears, you are shifting gears and we're moving in to talk about economic vitality. Once again, we are talking about a high priority issue for not just the city council, but for our community at large. We're specifically going to be talking about an update to the business assistance policy package. Really, you know, some of our jargon around business incentives. We have heard loud and clear that there's an expectation that we're more proactive in supporting not just primary employers, but small business and Main Street businesses. We're going to be talking through some of the updates that we believe will help us achieve that. As you know, it's a very challenging time to be a business owner in the United States, in Colorado, in Fort Collins. And we're looking to be more competitive. Our goals are to make it easier to own, operate, and grow businesses here, to support jobs, good high-paying family sustaining jobs in our community to create retail opportunities and sales tax revenue for the city and we think we have some ideas that will assist in achieving some of those outcomes so with no further ado I'm gonna hand it to Sana to get into the presentation great thanks Jacob as a reminder just in terms of the business assistance

centers as well as job growth. So we'll kind of talk through each of those.

We really try to be intentional and integrated in this space.

And also though, not chasing every business that comes and

says we're interested in coming to Fort Collins.

So we're putting some guardrails on here as well. So just wanting to share that as we go through the conversation.

Perfect, thank you. so Again, you know at the January 27th conversation We started talking about what business incentives look like what our actual agreements have looked like in the past and really asking Does this align with council's priorities in this space?

but also At the last conversation council asked us to really address what about small businesses?

How do we support small businesses and so the economic development fund is going to be something that we talked about at the very end and are asking council for feedback on and whether or not that really is addressing what council's concerns were specific to small businesses so we'll be asking a little bit about that as well so one of the big

conversations and I know you've seen this slide often is really around here

the areas of focus when we're talking specifically about the business assistance policy we use business assistance and incentive kind of interchangeably. And so really wanting to address that. One of the big pieces is around primary

employment. I think a lot of people think primary employment is just big businesses. And one of the things that we want to point out is we do have primary employers who are also 50 and under in

terms of employment. And I think about a lot of the life science startup companies in our community,

all of those aspects. So they would also qualify as primary employment, but also small business.

As a reminder primary employers are those that export goods and services out bring new dollars back into the community and invest that through New purchases, but also for good quality jobs in that space We'll be talking about how do we get intentional in terms of retail attraction to help bolster our sales tax? And also again talking about the small business support in this space And we're talking about the policy alignment in here as well. Oh, sorry. I pushed my computer instead of this

So again just for some background the economic conditions are uncertain We know that with the war in Iran gas prices energy prices are really going up It's impacting everyday items such as food The tariffs job stagnation is a big conversation at the last council conversation We had actually on April 14th. We talked about Colorado for the first time has lost jobs So we've lost about 11,000 jobs in Colorado in 2025 So we know that this is something that if not intentional and integrated in our approach We will run into some challenges in those spaces our current policy is outdated and hasn't been utilized since 2015 And then again being intentional in what kind of retail strategy do we want to have in this space? So really thinking about what does that look like as we move forward in terms of background? So why now? Again, we really do need to think about modernizing our policy to really align with what tools we might be able to utilize today and in future and and really talking about how do we retain and attract more primary jobs, high quality jobs in that space. And I think I shared this before, but adding new jobs does not mean adding new people. It is about adding new opportunities for our community members. So just wanting to stress that in that space. And then again, the retail strategy that Michael will be talking about. We haven't had one, and we're really looking for direction and guidance in that space.

Okay.

In terms of our policy goals, we sat down and really talked about what are the five policy goals we're really wanting to put in. Again, not all businesses will qualify. We wanted to put some guardrails around this. We also acknowledge there's a lot of tensions around incentives in the conversations around incentives.

For us, we are talking about net new things that we would not have otherwise.

If it wasn't for these type of incentives, they would also be performance based Which means that they would actually have to perform and then we would verify and then we would give them a rebate

So they would have already paid their taxes on those things

And we've talked about the other four but just wanted to share that with you in terms of what we're really wanting to focus on is the performance based incentives

Specifically in terms of our operating principles when we talk about public benefit here We're really talking about net new so with primary employment What is the net new in terms of net new jobs net new sales and use tax being brought into the community as well as on the retail side in those Conversations those things that we would not have otherwise I went into a little bit about the performance space

we would be looking at doing economic impact or sales tax cannibalization studies for each of these larger incentive packages so you would have a third-party verification in validation of what is that economic impact going to look like as well as what are the impacts to sales tax in our community we are talking about what does that cap look like in terms of how do we make

sure there's guardrails in terms of the amount of dollars and rebates that would go out and as well as a time limit on those to really keep that aligned in terms of the compliance with this but also just to really validate and make

sure that we're protecting city assets in this space so we're going to talk two

tracks I'm going to talk to the primary employers and then Michael is going to go over the retail businesses in this space in terms of the primary

incentives again when we look at the primary employers incentives what we're looking at is specifically in specific industries identified in the economic health strategic plan so again life sciences clean tech semiconductor

advanced manufacturing are the ones we're focused in on and being really proactive in those spaces you know I think with our current tools again this is just grounding. Currently, we have manufacturing use tax rebates for our current tools. But with

the Wayfair Act and the Colorado Nexus, we are seeing a lot of those become sales tax. And what

is the conversation around sales tax in those spaces as well? In addition, the manufacturing use tax definition was very specific on what could and could not qualify for manufacturing

equipment so research and development was actually excluded from that and we know Fort Collins is really a knowledge-based economy we see a lot of innovation happening here and so including research and development

equipment in that space as well so the proposals of the incentives that we are

looking at specifically would be on construction use and sales tax rebates

so again the company would pay for those and then we would be validating them

And then really looking at what does that payout look like in terms of that project? And it will be only for, and this is very important, the unencumbered general fund. So none of the dedicated funds. So it would be 50% of the 2.85% collected in the sales tax specifically. And then manufacturing and use tax, manufacturing and research and development, similar in terms of it would be on the unencumbered general fund. So none of the dedicated tax portions would be a part of the conversation in these.

One thing I would also state is any of these incentives, when that be done administratively, we would still be coming to council for council adoption.

So you'll be able to really evaluate each of these in those conversations. So these are current tools that we have used before.

And we've gotten compliance really, I think, locked down in the way we do it and the processes we do that.

We are going to talk about two new ones that we are exploring.

These are still conceptual in ideation and in evaluation.

One is around utility fee rebates and amortization.

The upfront cost of getting utilities to sites can be pretty astronomical,

and being able to amortize that over a certain time will actually be a benefit to companies in those spaces.

And then we've been exploring with planning and development around expedited reviews and what would that look like? And again, one of the pieces we caution on the expedited review piece is it would be a navigation system.

The company has to also provide the information at the same timelines, right? So really having both sides committed to the management of the timeline of this.

So some of the guard wells. In past, our business assistants actually didn't have a minimum. So what is the minimum in terms of net new jobs? What is the minimum in terms of net investments into capital expenditures? So those long-term assets and investments. And so when we were looking at best practices in what we're seeing in other communities elsewhere, we really looked at it for business attraction, a little bit of a higher threshold. So 20 net new jobs created at least 110% of the AMI. And I was looking at the Larimer County average weekly wage. And so I just want to share that with you because that equates to the AMI. So that would be at just 100%, $74,000 annually. So for a salary of that. And then on the retention and expansion side, we're still looking at a $50 million in initial expenditures for the equipment, construction, all those aspects. But we've lowered the employment net new jobs components to 10 net new jobs at 100% of the AMI. So really trying to lower that threshold for the expansion and retention of jobs in our community in those spaces.

I'm going to hand it over to Michael to talk about the retail incentives. Good evening, everybody. It's nice to see you again. Appreciate the time to talk this through. So the portion of the presentation here is to talk through a proposed retail incentive strategy and a small business support system, both designed to make our approach more proactive, consistent, and aligned with city priorities. At a high level, this effort is about supporting reinvestment, strengthening regional competitiveness, reducing leakage, revitalizing neighborhoods serving retail, supporting small business, and ultimately generating durable sales tax growth. Right now, our approach, if anything, is reactive. This framework introduces a structured tiered system that allows us to be more strategic about where and how we use incentives to further continued investment in our community. It's again built around tiers of support, each designed for a different type of project. And so I got the clicker, sorry.

So jumping right into tier one, it really is focused on large retail attraction. And so again, large format regionally competitive retail projects, often greenfield in nature. these are the types of projects that can expand our trade area as well as bring new spending into the city from the outside the community the primary tool here that we're talking about is a structured shareback model on sales tax called an s-dip or an enhanced sales tax tax incentive program and just as a reminder we covered this last time but as a just as a definition an s-dip

is really performance-based incentive where the city would share specific or a portion of net new sales tax back to the business that generates it to help offset specific project costs. And so

generally speaking, what we're sharing back in total amount and duration is really relevant to some line item on the project itself. So the key parameters for what we're talking about qualification again 50 percent of net new sales tax to be rebated back the agreements are capped time limited and structured generally over a five to ten year period the thresholds for these sharebacks are pretty high one it fits within our leakage categories

And two, we're looking at either a $25 million capital investment or an anticipated annual net new sales tax generation of $350,000 or higher to qualify.

This is a tool that we would use selectively and really for projects that have meaningful regional impacts.

And so really a lot of leakage concerns addressed as well as gaining sales tax capture.

Tier 2 focuses really on retenanting and adaptive reuse of vacant commercial spaces. This is again addressing vacancy and underutilized properties within our existing retail centers. The structure here is simpler, but it's still performance-based with share-backed incentives tied to verified net new sales tax. These sharebacks work to encourage reinvestment and are generally not tied to specific project needs, but work to support the overall financial picture of the project. Again, like Tier 1, incentives can be up to 50% of net new sales tax. Again, like Tier 1, incentives can be up to 50% of net new sales tax and are capped in time limited, ! But the entry threshold is much lower at $500,000 capital of capex spending. ! The goal here is to strengthen what we already have, to reduce vacancy and capture activity that might otherwise leave the community. Tier 3 focuses on what we would consider comprehensive. Tier 3 focuses on what we would consider sort of comprehensive neighborhood center redevelopment. A sales tax shareback alone is often not sufficient to address the scale of the needs on a, again, comprehensive redevelopment. And so projects here would be referred to the Urban Renewal Authority to be evaluated for their tax increment financing tools to help close the infrastructure and site feasibility gaps. And so when we're talking about individual storefronts within neighborhood centers, that tier two approach is really the right approach. But if we're talking about a comprehensive redevelopment of the entire center, the sales tax shareback will not be enough to close that financing gap. And so we would then need URA support. on that. And so we're going to transition real quick. The first part of tonight's discussion, again, is establishing the business assistance package policy to support strategic investment, regional competitiveness, promote economic vitality, and advance community goals through target performance-based incentives. We do want to take a moment to pivot to small business support. And so we have what we're calling the Economic Development Fund, or EDF, for the sake of this conversation to talk about next. And again, not necessarily within that policy update of incentives, but really a program meant to help with the smaller businesses in our communities. And so the Economic Development Fund is designed to support small business on smaller scale projects that are not going to generate significant net new sales tax, but they provide a clear community benefit. This ensures that the strategy is not only focused on large businesses but supports local and neighborhood serving businesses as well. It works alongside the tiered incentive structure really as a complementary tool because we know that employees of big businesses spend money at little businesses and it all kind of works in a cycle. right? And so what we're talking about here is a fund supporting locally owned businesses that are ready to invest, whether it's opening a location, expanding, or making improvements to help them stay strong in the long term. The idea would be that this money could be used for a range of practical uses, facade upgrades, tenant finishes, signage equipment, even technical assistance. At its core, the program is talking about forgivable loans up to $50,000 to help small businesses grow and reinvest in our community. In return, we ask for some basic operating commitments to make sure these investments lead to lasting community benefit. And importantly, we're proposing an administrative approval process so we can move more quickly and keep the program efficient and responsive.

The funding structure here is pretty important as well. The fund is currently ideated, is supported through a combination of dedicated city appropriations and contributions from associated larger incentive agreements. In some cases, a portion of net new revenue generated from larger projects can be reinvested into the EDF. contributions the economic development fund would be structured as a percentage of the total share back amount and will generally range somewhere between 0.5 and 5 percent of the remitted sales tax provided by the recipient to the city these contributions will be held in the economic development fund to support long-term growth of vdf as well as program continuity as well as administration it creates a sustainable long-term funding model and really we want to jump into the conversation more than anything else right we are looking for you know feedback and ideas to make this program as strong as possible and so come back to the questions from the from the top of the presentation and we can jump right in to the conversation great thank you do council members have any questions or comments?

Chris and then Melanie.

Can you talk a little bit about how we pick the industries that we will choose to engage with on the primary employer side?

So we have done a cluster study actually as Northern Colorado as a whole and then identified where is that differentiator in each of the communities we've identified specifically around life sciences bio and life science medical devices all of those we're seeing growth in that space specifically and when you look at the job salaries of those right quality jobs the benefits all of those attached to it and then in terms of tech we identified clean tech as it aligns with our climate future as well as the city plan goals in that space. And then semiconductor and chips manufacturing, that's where we've grown up, I would say, in those spaces. And so those were kind of the identified spaces and industry clusters that were selected, that were proposed in the economic health strategic plan that was adopted in December of 2023.

Okay. So if somebody, if like a business from a different sector came and was like, can we use this primary employer tool? You'd be like, no. Or how would it?

Well, we would provide great customer service, right? And then we would have a discussion of does it align with the goals that council is really intending in those spaces? Typically, I would say many of the requests that we have had has been in, like, clean energy or in the technology spaces specifically in the past. And so this is one where we're exploring bio life sciences specifically is more of a earlier stage. Right. We're seeing a lot of that come out of Colorado State University and others in terms of the other industries. We have said no before. Right. To call centers and others where we're like, we appreciate it and we want to have you here. We'll help you through and connect you to resources. But we do not have any dollars to give in this space.

Okay. And then can you explain a little bit where the $50 million investment and the number of jobs, like what's the idea behind that? Where are the numbers coming from?

So specifically in the job attraction, we picked 20 net new jobs because that's the minimum threshold for actually the state incentives in terms of job growth and tax incentives. So we wanted to make sure it aligned with them as well. And then the $50 million, when you talk about what is that threshold in terms of the compliance components of these, that is where we were saying, what does that look like? And if they don't qualify for this, could they qualify for the EDF fund? rate. So really trying to put that kind of, here's the minimum investment we would need so that we're not writing $1,000, $2,000 checks as these processes and projects come forward.

Okay. So it's just got to be big enough to be worth the staff time investment.

And the compliance from both the staff and the company side.

And then can you say a little bit more? Tell me about the Colorado Nexus laws and what that means

and why that limits the tools in just that section.

Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

I'm happy to talk about it, and if Caleb wants to also talk about it. So in terms of the Wayfair Act, what they really looked at was what is that minimum threshold to where municipalities who can collect their own sales tax or others, what is that nexus? When do they create presence in a community? and it's $150,000, if I recall correctly, is that nexus. When you look at equipment, the equipment we're talking with manufacturers, those are $50 pieces of equipment alone. So then it goes out of use tax and they have to file with the city as a sales tax license and pay sales tax on those from that company.

Okay. Okay, I'm not quite sure I'm understanding what the incentives that are being offered and then what constrains us in terms of nexus laws.

I'm going to have Caleb, our CEO, come up because I'm not doing a great job on that. In terms of what we were asking for the expansion is it used to be only on use tax because many of the purchases would actually not qualify for use tax because of the dollar value of the equipment. they would have to file a sales tax license and then pay sales tax on that. So in essence, that's why we're asking for the expansion of adding sales tax and 50% rebate.

Council Member Conway, if I'm understanding the question correctly, the Colorado Nexus Law is just the threshold that an out-of-state business has to do $100,000 worth of gross retail sales into Colorado to then be subject to Colorado and local municipality sales taxes within Colorado.

Okay, and so then we wouldn't be able to rebate those sales taxes because they're not collecting sales tax?

Like, we're not collecting sales taxes, so we can't rebate it to them?

We have to collect sales and use tax to be able to rebate it, yes.

Okay, I think I'm understanding, perhaps. Is there some, I see somebody in the back of their hand raised. want to see if diane criswell from my office can come up and do a little clarification on that i think these numbers relate to internet sales but diane maybe you can clarify

um previously if somebody brought an item in they would be paying use tax now that we have the way for decision and I'm sorry my voice is all screwy we can collect the sales tax so people are just having items that they previously would have brought in and how to use tax obligation now they're having it delivered and the sales tax obligation is triggered and that's why the use tax incentives are

less efficacious now. Okay. I think maybe this is maybe going to get at my confusion. What is the

use tax? Oh, it's fair enough. Yeah. It's when kind of a retail sale may have, it's a proxy for a retail sale. So if you sell me your business with a bunch of taxable items that aren't subject to other kinds of taxes may have a used tax obligation. So if I buy something from another jurisdiction that doesn't collect the sales tax, so if I brought something in from Oregon, or if I brought it in from another jurisdiction where the amount of sales tax is less than this jurisdiction, I may have an obligation to pay the difference.

Okay, thanks.

Yeah, so let's see. So I want to understand better the idea of the new proposed tool around development fee rebates and waivers. What kind of exposure does that put, when we're talking about development fees, are we talking about utility and all these different kinds of development fees for these kinds of projects?

So again, I think this is a conceptual in ideation at this point. We are talking about the utility one specifically.

We're also talking about the pilot rebate funding some of those fees. So the payment in lieu of taxes, the pilot, that's the enterprise fund to the general fund. So conversations have been about do we look at that as an incentive, right, that reduces

the price of reduces the obligation of the enterprise fund giving to the general fund. And I might be saying that wrong. I would like to maybe do a follow up on that. Would that be

helpful? Well, okay. So let me just ask you this. What risk are rate payers bearing if we waive fees up front for businesses? If that business doesn't work out in some way, if we waive the

fee up front? So some of the guardrails that we've been discussing is specifically not giving the full rebates up front. We would actually hold some back until the infrastructure is paid for, and then those funds would actually be given out to the company. So it would not happen until

after the performance of the actual infrastructure was built.

As Sano is explaining, one of the general principles, obviously, behind the enterprise funds is the fees that are being charged there are ultimately a mechanism to be able to equitably capture the incremental new costs of adding a business so that is not passed along to ratepayers. So we are in that, I would say, fairly advanced ideation stage. I think one of the things that we've looked at is being able to have a longer time horizon to pay those very large fees, a five-year payback, instead of having to pay that all at once. And as Sana explained, part of how we may structure other incentives then would be to ensure there would be no – or there would be a backup plan if there was a negative impact to an enterprise fund. And then the other incentive we're exploring is all of our utility enterprises pay a payment in lieu of taxes or pilot to the general fund. So there is potentially some ability to use that revenue that would.

be hopefully involved in the development of these policies and would be advising staff

and also providing information to counsel about any legal issues related to these.

Okay. So can I just try to summarize what the policy is going to be just to make sure that I understand it and then you guys can tell me if I'm right or wrong. So the proposed policy around fee rate amortization and fee rebates and waivers would be something like a business comes to us. it's usually expensive to put wires in the ground to connect to this business from our current system, right? And so then that's going to be a big upfront cost for the business. So we say, all right, we're going to amortize that payment over five years. That's one thing, right? That's the amortization thing or 10 years or whatever it is, right? So then if that business goes under before the end of the amortization process, we might lose out and that's the risk in that

timeframe? So, yeah, we have thought about that. And so, again, this is where in the construction use and sales tax rebates, we are saying we would hold a portion of that back of their 50% to really make sure that the infrastructure was fully paid for. And then once that is done, then we would give them the last large sum of that payment. So, we typically what we do is we We take a five, seven-year period, and we just break up what of the rebates you're going to get within that five, seven-year period. And then we do compliance checks of verification of the new jobs, all of those aspects, and then we write a check. Instead, we would hold one of those payments back until the infrastructure is fully paid off. So enterprise fund would always stay whole, if that makes sense.

Okay. Okay. And is there risk to the general fund in that case until that time period is up or no?

This is going to be the net new components, right? So if we didn't do this project, there would be no sales tax to give. But we are doing this as performance-based, so they're going to have already paid all of it to us. So there would not be risk on the general fund side, except for, again, we're trying to make sure enterprise fund stays whole so the rate payers are not having to pay for that infrastructure.

Okay. And then a waiver would be a totally, like, we're going to not charge them for hooking up to our system. And so that must be some kind of risk either to the general fund or to the rate payer. Is that right? you you know if if the business is great and flourishes then it's going to work out for us

great if they don't then maybe not and um you know this this may be a question that carrie wants to weigh in on as well i am not um uh for specifically for enterprise fund costs i am not um aware of any possible avenue where those fees could be waived which is why we've looked at the amortization proposal as an alternative way to be able to offset some of that or at least spread out some

of that large upfront cost. Okay. So that's the pilot. We would say, we don't need your pilot for a little while because we're going to help this company amortize their utility connection.

Or it could potentially be both, right? That the amortization of the upfront fees would be an incentive because you're providing them the ability to pay that over a fixed period of years, as well as potential additional incentives with the net new pilot revenue that is flowing to the general fund. And, you know, as Sana said at the beginning of this presentation, you know, one of the guiding principles here is all of the, you know, revenue we're talking about when we talk about the general fund side of the equation is net new revenue that we wouldn't otherwise be receiving in the city. So how do we strategically then use that net new revenue that's being generated to actually secure our business to come in and provide that revenue to the city?

Oh, sorry. I was just going to say it might be helpful to add to that these kinds of, I'll say transactions

generally are pretty highly structured and require a pretty elaborate Agreement or set of agreements and so a lot of these issues get addressed or worked through as part of the Structured deal that ends up being put in place that would be I think under this proposal coming to council for approval

And that's why we wanted to make sure we had cap on like minimums in terms of the 50 million We're also, remember, these are going to be projects that we would say, what's the initial investment in? We would cap how much rebates we would give in those spaces. Same thing for the fee waivers. I think that's where we are saying these are still conceptual because how would we then pay that back through the net new general fund taxes that have been generated to make sure the enterprise fund is still whole? So we're exploring ways to make sure that the enterprise fund still stays whole in this space and with the net new that we would be creating. So that's where an economic impact analysis would really look at all of those items. Even, again, the amortization, we've been kind of toying with this on projects. The amount of money it saves them to not have to have all that upfront cash is substantial in those spaces. So being really able to quantify that for us, but also make sure that we're securing the asset and making sure that that is fully funded.

Okay.

One thing I might just suggest to the team, I think as we do the summary of this in the council follow-up, we can do a couple scenarios that would show, like, here's how the money would flow if certain things happened.

because it is a lot of moving pieces and parts, and I think scenarios might be an easier way to help bring some of this to light.

Yeah, that'd be great. And just as clear as you can be about, like, where is their risk, on what, in what situations are we giving some kind of implicit loan that is, you know, and so we're helping them with, you know, interest costs, things like that. I think our financing costs would be helpful, too, just to be really clear about that would be really helpful. I will say in general, I think the primary employer part of this, I'm very positive about in general, I think, just because I think attracting primary employers is extremely vital to keeping Fort Collins a place where people can find really good paying jobs and has so many downstream effects on other types of employment, you know, in secondary services and things like that. But I do want to make sure I understand it well before we vote on any of this kind of stuff. In terms of the tier two, sorry, the commercial side, I want to understand why, I want to understand very clearly how we can be sure that we're not incentivizing big box stores and greenfield development, incurring higher infrastructure costs, and then ultimately cannibalizing some smaller businesses in the city rather than attracting new sales tax revenue?

Yeah, that's a great question. And I think that when we talk about large greenfield attraction, I think in some ways we are talking about big box, right? And I think that we're talking about a few, hopefully a few large deals, right? And I think one of the key features of the program is that we're trying to address something that we see through economic impact analysis that is a leakage. So people leaving our community to go buy these things in another community, right? And then also the flip side of that is capture. So bringing people in from other zip codes into ours basically to spend their money. And so when we talk about the way that we want to attract these businesses, we want to look at all of that stuff and then in regards to leakage and capture and then require from them a third party cannibalization site to understand what it's doing to our local economy. And so, again, there's not many deals left to be had in this space, right? But I think that there's a few, and I think that they're potentially good ones. And I think that there would be enough front-end look as well as negotiation within developing any sort of share-back agreement to say, this is what we think the economic impact to our community is going to be based on leakage and capture, and this is what we think the cannibalization study says about what it does to our local business. Is this worth it or not in regards to net new sales tax? And then at that point, we would come to you with that information to deChinatown-International Districte if that's worth it or not.

Okay, so each time there would be an economic impact study that would look both at small business cannibalization inside Fort Collins and then like a but-for analysis of some kind.

Yeah, yes. And I think that when you say small business cannibalization, we'll just say cannibalization.

What I mean is like people from Fort Collins now shop on East Mulberry instead of in Old Town and we simply shifted the sales tax revenue rather than creating net new in some way. I guess that's what I mean.

Yeah, for sure. We would be really focused on that net new number, right? And so what we really want to do is not just take consumers at one store and then pay off some other store to build up something similar and then just ship that sales tax dollars over there, right? And so, again, I don't think that there are, when we look at the leakage categories and things like that, it's not a list of hundreds, right? And so I think that as we go through and as we try to have these discussions with retailers, we understand what those impacts could be and whether that deal is worth it or not on a case-by-case basis.

And Council Member Conway, I can actually, in our follow-up memo, attach a sales tax leakage study we have done before so you can see what they take into account in terms of what are those challenges and how are you quantifying net new versus taking from one store to the next.

Yeah, that would be great. And then also some kind of example of the kind of analysis that you're talking about. Yeah.

You know, about, you know, where the sales are coming from. I guess I'm worried about a situation in which we, you know, incentivize some new development.

They have lower taxes in some sense than other places. And then we have empty, the Foothills Fashion Mall gets more empty. and now we haven't really solved a problem.

In terms of how much money do you expect to have in the EDF fund to help with small business development in different ways?

So currently, we have been holding back. So we receive annually from Platte River Power Authority, specifically funds for economic development activities. In the past, they used to go directly to Inosphere for startup entrepreneurship. We had done them for, we had been collecting dollars for that specifically for our revolving loan fund for small businesses pre-COVID. Obviously, after COVID, we had been looking at, is there an opportunity for that? So we've actually been holding on to that money. We have about $230,000 currently in that fund. When it was Mayor Arntz, she specifically had written that it was to go to small business support, and we feel this qualifies for that.

Okay, great. I guess I would say in general, just to try to answer some of the questions in the thing is, like I said, I'm very supportive of the primary employer. I feel that I would like to see the council prioritize small business, mixed use types of shops, rather than focusing on big box greenfield and field development. I see why we want to try to compete with other communities along I-25 and make sure that we're not losing out sales stocks, tax dollar opportunities, right, in those areas.

but I kind of feel like the competitive advantage of Fort Collins is to be able to deliver on you know a richer more textured small business environment and make Fort Collins like a really desirable place to live alongside making ourselves more competitive on affordability terms with our other

council priorities so yeah so I would like to see the focus shift to small business support in a variety of different ways, including like regulatory relief, like some of the work we're doing in the ad hoc committee. So that's where I'm at.

I'll be super quick. Chris asked most of my big questions. My only follow-up question was on slide 18 about the Economic Development Fund. You had the minimum years of operation as defined and negotiated agreements. What do you foresee happening if a small business took advantage of the EDF and didn't make it? Do they have to pay back? Like what happens?

I think I'll answer this in sort of two ways. One, I think what we're trying to do with putting

sort of operational requirements behind EDF forgivable loans would be so someone can't take the loan and then flip the space, right? And so what we're looking to do here would be to support an actual business in their thriving, right? As opposed to, say, supporting a landlord to then... in their thriving, right? As opposed to say, supporting a landlord to then retenant a space, right? ! And so in that sense, that's why we're tying that operational requirement to it. Now, would there be provisions for sort of clawback on that? Sure. ! But in all reality, right? I mean, if that business goes under and they owe us $12,000 or something like that, we can go ask them for it. But are we're going to go about that, I think the main goal of that operational requirement for longevity is really to support the actual business. that operational requirement for longevity is really to support the actual business in the location, not to make an improvement, flip it, raise the rent. To deter people abusing it versus

be punitive to people who struggled. Okay. Correct. That's the idea. Yep. Thank you.

I'm generally supportive of all of this. I wonder, though, if there really needs to be kind of hard and fast rules on some of these tiers especially with the retail incentive and what i'm thinking is i might prioritize you know the the re-tenanting and adaptive reuse of vacant commercial space and so on a case-by-case basis um are there fee waivers or um fee amortizations that we could do if that's you know making use of vacant space in midtown or wherever so i i kind of i like kind of the all of the above and case-by-case basis nature of it. I'd hate to say, sorry, you're reusing this space, you're spending a million dollars on CapEx, all we can do is 50% of net,

whereas a fee waiver may have gotten it done. So that's kind of what I would suggest doing. I don't know if my colleagues feel the same, but thank you.

Other questions, comments?

Yeah, Amy. Thank you very much. This is super helpful. I'm probably not going to articulate this really well because I, too, am generally supportive of all of this. I'm curious.

So I want to make sure I first heard correctly that the EDF now is that funding used to go to Innisfere.

Is that what I heard?

Back in like 2012 and before, yes.

But we actually do a contribution for Innisfere in our budget process. And so we felt like with the opportunity specifically to support small businesses and council's priorities specifically in Main Street small businesses that we had an opportunity to really explore that, which is where the revolving loan fund came. And then from there is the proposal for the EDF, which I totally appreciate.

Thank you. Because I think what I'm thinking is many of those businesses that come out of the Innisfere that maybe have a $35 million, but they fit the life sciences, they fit the biotech so well. I mean, it's so cool what some of those businesses that have come out of there. How can they, like, how can they take advantage of some of these incentives? and I'm also kind of thinking of it from the retail. This is kind of, bear with me, but I'm equating it to like ski passes in Colorado. They benefit out of state people all the time and it's the local residents that still have to pay this exorbitant amount for a ski pass instead of like rewarding people who've lived here and who have really put the time in here and who have really just invested a lot of time and energy in this community, how will they be able to participate in some of these incentives when it almost, and this is just maybe how I'm interpreting it, that it almost seems like it's more out of the region and out of the state type of attraction instead of those who have just been here and who've been really just sticking in the community for a long time from either of those two perspectives. Sorry, I'm not articulating it well.

I think I understand. One thing I should clarify is the Economic Development Fund is not just for Main Street small businesses. So primary small businesses would qualify for the Economic Development Fund as well. So just wanting to clarify the eligibility in that space. One of the pieces is around business retention and expansion and actually almost every project that we have done since 2012 have been Expansion projects in those spaces. So for us, it's really how do we help the local community and When we are talking about attraction specifically I think that's the component of we need to Continue to have conversations with council about that and coming in talking to you all before negotiations start, I think, is a component that we've been talking about of really does this align with what we're trying to accomplish before that happens. So if a company said we only have 35 million and we've been here forever, we would still bring that to you to have a conversation. But again, we believe that the Economic Development Fund could help those folks instead, lowering the fees or being able to have technical assistance in that space.

I think that's great because I am really, I appreciate the focus specifically on that entrepreneurial clean tech. Like there's some really cool stuff going on and that's very helpful.

Thank you.

Julie? Yeah, thank you. I think I'll just go straight to answer your question. So I do, number one, I do feel like they align with our current priorities. As far as number two, I don't know if it's necessarily a gap, but I will be curious to see, and I know Chris referenced the ad hoc committee specifically around some of these things like adaptive reuse in the EDF fund being compliant with city regulations. I'm curious how much funding is actually because of some other problem within the city we may have created ourselves with something possibly being overly regulated or too expensive. so I'm hoping you'll keep an eye on that and adjust as needed maybe and then

for the third question does economic the EDF go far enough to support small business I think with all of these things I would I feel like you're this is not stated but probably implied like hopefully this is an iterative process and learning as you go what works what doesn't

what we may, I mean, there may be some painful lessons learned, hopefully some more wonderful lessons learned. So thank you for your work on this. Thank you. I'll just add my comments. I,

I understand the concern of, you know, are we going to swallow up small businesses with large retailers coming in? And, you know, we used to have the Foothills Fashion Mall, now the Foothills mall but that's why we were laughing over here because he said that and you know we still have a good balance and I think that we actually do need some of those core essential retail like you know it is very difficult to get basic necessities in Fort Collins sometimes and I find myself driving or ordering and I would much rather just go get it here and so I think there is a space where we actually do need the real retail incentives. And I like that we're looking at kind of all three, the primary, retail, and small business. I would agree with Josh that, you know, some flexibility between the tiers would be preferred. It's not hard, you know, because I think as Julie said, like kind of learning as we're going and seeing what people need to move into spaces and trying to support them in various ways. And then with the EDF, The concern I have is kind of similar to how we're focusing on the housing with the infill, green fill, and kind of redevelopment or neighborhood space. In my mind, those require different things. Like if you want to redevelop a property, how much money that goes into that, especially if there's like utility concerns or having to back pay for coming up to code with certain things. That can just add up so much. and I don't know if $50,000 is sufficient. And so if we really want to facilitate local people redeveloping key properties in Fort Collins, I would rather see more money or flexibility or sharing of costs for these things for small businesses because unless you have a large amount of capital behind you, it is really difficult to move forward with these things versus somebody who's just moving into something that's already up to code and up to date and they can just open their doors. wildly different so I would just like more of a nuanced approach to like how much is someone investing how much are they coming up to code how much are they putting in to make something happen I think in my mind should determine like how much assistance they're getting that's my thoughts anyone else see none do you all have what you need

Okay, great. Thank you. All right. Does council have any announcements?

Seeing none we will adjourn. Good night, Fort Collins.