City Council Special Meeting and Work Session

Good evening, Fort Collins. The time is now 5.45 and I call this special meeting of the Fort Collins City Council to order. Will you please join me in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Frances? Here. Pina Terro? Here. Nelson? Here. Hovind? Here. Patiandi? Here. Fudge? Here. Conway? Here.

All right. All of us are here tonight. Because this is a special meeting, there will not be general public comment, but individuals are welcome to comment on the specific agenda item. Will the city manager please review tonight's agenda?

Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Good evening, everyone. And we have just one item on tonight's agenda and this is for council to consider resolution 2026 091 which authorizes the city manager me to sign the broadband equity access and deployment commonly known as the bead grant agreement and you have already appropriated the funds but do need to specifically authorize signing of that grant.

Great. Thank you. What is there is that presentation?

We did not plan a presentation, but we do have staff available to answer any questions if council has them great

Would any members of the public like to speak on this item?

Seeing none do council members have any questions or comments I'll just comment that I think this is a great program to extend high-speed internet to underserved area So I'm glad that city is pursuing these great opportunities Is there a motion for resolution?

091. Yeah, I move to adopt Resolution 2026-091 authorizing the city manager to sign the broadband equity access and deployment need grant agreement.

Second. We have a motion by Mayor Pro Tem and a second by Council Member

Nelson. Any further discussion? Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll. Fudge? Yes. Conway? Yes. Francis? Yes. Pina Taro? Yes. Nelson? Yes. Hoven? Yes. Pachandi? Yes.

That passes 7-0. That is the only item during the special meeting, but we will have a work session that will begin properly at 6 p.m. We will adjourn this and see you at 6 p.m. Thank you.

Good evening, Fort Collins. The time is now 6 p.m., and I call the work session to order. Will the city manager please provide a review of tonight's work session agenda? Yes, thank you, Mayor. Good evening and welcome back after a short three-week council meeting break, although I know you all were very busy still with your regular committee meetings and community events. But we're going to ease back in with two work session items this evening. So first we'll have an update on council priorities and the work you all have been doing there. And then our second item will be a discussion on the kind of a preliminary discussion on the 27 and 28 budget. it. So if you're ready to get started, I will go ahead and turn it over to Jenny Sawyer, our assistant to the city manager, to get things started. Excellent. Thank you, Kelly. Good evening,

Council. Welcome back. We are going to jump in and do, this will really be your first Council priority update. And I realized as I was reviewing this today, I didn't really give a lot of preview if anyone's new to this process, that at the beginning of each term, council has the opportunity through retreats and group work to really set a work plan for the two years. So that is what we're going to be talking about here today. I wanted to start by really highlighting your calendar since March. Soon after those priorities were adopted, the amount of time we've spent, mostly in work sessions, really focused on these priorities and advancing the work that is there. And you'll see that that work does continue through the fall and through the end of the year as we get these things in front of you for direction. So we're going to go through each priority. We'll do a little reminder on what they were. So for this first one, make development predictable, efficient, cost-effective to support sustainable growth and affordability. We have some goals identified there, and we have some success indicators. We'll circle back to those success indicators, I think, in future council updates. As of right now, we're really just sort of getting in there. So it's good to keep those front of mind as we go through. you. A lot of the work in this space is happening through the ad hoc committee. You all have a lot going on there. In fact, these materials were actually in prior, before your last meeting last week. So I think you continue to update work in this space and some of these items reflected here are maybe changing but a lot of work has been done to date with really some great community engagement in this space and working to identify those quick wins i do want to take a minute and point out the read before that came today the first bullet in that read before we feel like that can be a quick win if the council if you have a brief discussion after this and say yes please go ahead and bring that forward um it's something that i feel it sounds like the ad hoc committee has landed on the second bullet i think we didn't quite nail that one so that is not exactly what it would be but in talking with um staff there at your august meeting which i think is august 5th we can kind of get all this together and and get it moving forward quickly. So again, focusing on some quick wins and highlights in this space going forward. Next up, we have bolstering economic vitality, focusing on small business, neighborhood centers, and quality job creation. This was a great priority and timely, really aligning with our economic health strategic plan and some of the work streams already identified there. You'll see here some of that work underway and already completed, and then certainly some work planned ahead. If we look in this space, there's a lot here. I think really we're seeing some small business customer focused on business licensing work coming forward that will be impactful. And then we're certainly seeing a lot in the business incentive package, and attraction space, which is newer and also, I would say, timely and exciting there. As we look to accelerating our Vision Zero goals, again, this has been longstanding and will certainly continue far past two years, as will many of these priorities, right? These are really setting foundational changes as we go. But the work here is underway again within these work streams. And some of this again ties into the work of the ad hoc committee and the first priority. We've got some interrelatedness going on in this space. But you'll see here we've got some redeploy work of staff. We're working on some grant activities. And then really I know there was interest in speed and neighborhood speeds and guiding that and that that work is upcoming as we go forward somewhat tangentially but we are looking at these fine increases as part of our parking things which will again tie into this tangentially connecting community to council actions i like to call this one kind of a fun one see what happens but really working on that connection and ensuring that our community is aware of the work that happens here on a regular basis. You had a very recent work session with Amanda King, our communication and engagement director up here, really working to align this work. So some of the Q3 red bars you see, those were waiting for that alignment from the work session. And now that that's happened, And you'll start to see those bars moving to ongoing work going forward.

And then again, some work to date is really aligning expectations, clarification, and then identifying that strategy going forward for being more real time and more accessible, I would say, to folks going forward.

um ensuring long-term financial sustainability you're going to talk about that a bunch here after this item um and beyond so not only right does this include the budget but you've had your work session as well on um helping get the erp program going that enterprise resource planning we know that's going to be a huge um technology and transformational shift so being able to get that out of the ground is going to be big. And then later you'll see working on that citywide capital improvement program going forward. And in the interim, a lot around budget, which is, again, timely and exciting. And you're going to hear more about that tonight. So I'm going to move through. Not necessarily priorities, but we did identify three additional work plan items that are represented here. The marijuana laws, updating those, we did target those for 2027, mostly because that team is currently working on a tobacco licensing framework and even an age-restricted, I would say. And I believe you're going to hear that on July 28th. So that's upcoming. In the AI leadership space, these things are coming forward. I will say on that S Fort Collins search agent, there's an owl there. It's going to be a goose. It's going to be named Gander. So you can take a Gander at all of our things.

So again, making a lot of progress there. I believe that SharePoint site is going to go live this week even. And then the nighttime economy, again, this work is embedded in different work plans that were already existing. But we did participate in this trip. I believe it was in Nashville. A bunch of our folks went and are talking about there. We are updating and working on our community arts master plan and getting that going. And then, as I'm sure you know, right, we need to sort of reset around the sound and the noise based on the legislative session. So all that work is going on and happening there. And then I would say for council, one, if you have questions on the priority work, and I'll also say as these questions come, I might refer a lot of them to a follow-up memo and follow-up work rather than really digging into specifics here tonight. If we do have quick answers, we'll do them. And then also would love to know if you'd like to see something different in these updates as we go We've done numerous different things over the years and there there's no perfect perfect way

But I'm always interested in what works. So thank you. Great. Thank you for that update. Do council members have any questions or comments?

Thank you, Jenny

I just had three points of clarification and these may come in a memo, but you might have the answer so

So regarding the vision zero priority, I know this is already in the works, but can you remind me when we'll be talking more in depth about e-motos, e-bikes, age restrictions, those kinds of things?

That's upcoming. About which? I'm sorry. I believe I had heard that Fort Collins Police Services was working on some language around e-motos.

So we do have a team that's looking at that. And I have heard fall, probably fall, Melanie, but I don't have a specific date yet on that. So we can do some additional work on getting that scheduled.

I just love that that's being included.

I think it's kind of a developing issue in our Vision Zero conversation that maybe when we initially talked about it was not even on the radar.

And then with the long-term financial sustainability priority, level of service kinds of conversations or reworking levels of service. I'm assuming that's just going to be interwoven as we're discussing various budget items?

It will be. That will be as we bring forward the choices, both in what's in the recommended budget, that will be incorporated into those ongoing dialogues.

Perfect. And then my last one is regarding nighttime economy. You kind of alluded to this, Jenny, but are there plans for us to work with our local legislators to possibly revisit a state-level noise ordinance bill?

because I imagine we're not the only community that's struggling with how things landed at the end of the last legislative session.

We can talk with them. CML ran that bill that failed, and it was pretty strong and organized opposition out of Colorado Springs. And so I think we can talk to them. Coming back exactly the next year isn't always as effective. but I do think other communities, not just us, will be impacted and interested in how we can

get more flexibility going forward. Okay, and my understanding, I didn't follow it that as closely as I probably should have, but it sounds like probably most communities who have any sort of events going on, music venues, that they've been violating the state noise ordinance for a very long time. Is that accurate? Well, and I think communities had an exemption

process. So you would issue a permit that would then allow, so it wasn't a constant thing, but you had the ability to permit to that. And now we don't. Okay.

Okay. So more to come, it sounds like. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Other council members? Amy? Thank you. I think this is great. And I'm curious, when we are talking about our development and everything that we talked about with our transit-oriented development, is there a way that we can kind of just tie in our climate achievements and the work that we're doing from the environmental perspective, too, and how this is all so much centered on our

climate goals could we add that somehow yeah don't have that now but yes yes and do that appreciate it and in our future updates for sure perfect thank you others

i'll just um when are we going to put numbers to the metrics when are we going to see that metrics yeah like right now they're just listed but when are we actually going to see

like numbers tied to them um again i think this first update was too soon and now we need to go back and as we hone in on october is the next council update um see if we have the things in place to measure those and report back on them and then incorporate those as we do great i think that

would be super helpful to see um and then my other feedback is i we've talked about this before with our priorities is clarifying what work would have not happened if it wasn't a priority rather than listing all work and getting more clear about what did making it a priority actually do instead of just anything that falls under that topic um i think that's just helpful to understand what does a priority mean um rather than just like this is all the things that we do under for example example

like vision zero. And I can lead with that next time. Kelly, you might have a thought on that

as well. Yeah, I think we can work on continuing to try and be more clear about that. And I also want to be just upfront that some of it is going to be hard because once it's a priority, we really structure so much work around these things that it's a little hard to articulate this would have happened anyway. So let us see if we can differentiate that any more clearly, because I hear what you're asking for, and I just don't know that we're going to be able to fully do that. I think particularly in places that are the work plan items, those really are work that was going to be happening for the most part anyway. There's not a lot of new work there. The priorities, it really has been a complete refocus of much of that work.

Yeah, I don't expect it to be perfect and it'll be iterative. I think it's just helpful to tell the story around Why what makes us a priority and how are we prioritizing it because sometimes it just looks like a Any bike lane ratting is vision zero now, right? And that's not really what council is saying So just I think it's just helpful to message to the community What a priority is to get clarity on that. Okay, and I think looking at your

your work session calendar, I mean, really reflects like these are the things we are talking about all the time.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great point. Yeah. All right. Any other questions, comments? Okay. See none. Thank you, Jenny. Yeah. We'll move on to our second item.

All right. We will bring up, we have a team of folks for this item. So Caleb Weitz, our Chief Financial Officer, is going to kick us off. And I believe he's going to be joined by Joe Wimmer, who is our Utilities Finance Director,

Victoria Shaw, our Budget Director, and then Jenny Sawyer is also participating and available to answer any questions. So come on up. We've got spots for all of you.

And Caleb, we'll let you get us started.

Good evening, Council. It's a pleasure to be here tonight as we continue work on the FY27-28 budget. This is our last significant work session milestone prior to City Manager delivering the recommended budget. So there are a couple key things that we wanted to update Council on tonight and obtain some feedback. So we're going to cover three things tonight. The first is just a status update with where we are on budget development, some of the emerging strategies and approaches that the city's executive team is working through as we prepare the recommended budget for council's consideration in early September. And then finally, we have a little bit more of a tactical item on bringing council in on staff's current thinking about the first or about the two-year budget and how we are thinking about programming the quarter cent capital tax and would really appreciate council's feedback on that as we work to refine that proposal for the recommended budget and then finally we'll end with an overview of the upcoming schedule for budget deliberations through this fall so with that the key once again the key feedback we're looking for tonight tactically is on the quarter cent capital tax and then obviously more broadly we're interested in other feedback council has um and particularly around what would be helpful for you as you um prepare to deliberate on the budget this fall so with that i'll turn it over to budget director victoria shaw to walk us through the first portion of our presentation

Good evening, Council. So as we look towards this 2027-2028 budget process, a question that I'm frequently getting is, is this a growth budget? Is this a cut budget? What are we looking at? And the answer is, it's really a realignment budget. So I know we've used this chart before, but it is one of the most effective ways to show what we've been seeing with our financial capacity over time. So on this chart, the more stable lower orange line represents the share of Larimer County population that resides in Fort Collins. Meanwhile, that blue bar that's been changing a little bit more on top is the share of taxable sales across the county that are occurring within Fort Collins. So what we see is that prior to 2010, we were kind of significantly overperforming in our sales tax generation relative to our population. So effectively, we were really kind of being subsidized by a lot of the retail activity from our neighbors or neighboring communities happening within our boundaries. That's also when we built many of our facilities and our current service levels. So we had kind of that benefit of that little extra boost before we saw that trend start to change between 2010 and 2020. And really what was happening there is a lot of surrounding communities were maturing, developing their own retail, so people could stay in their community as they shop. And retail trends were significantly changing with more and more retail activity occurring online. And with online retail, the sales tax is collected where the goods are delivered. So that would also mean our surrounding communities would be able to capture more of that activity Starting in 2020 we do begin to see that trend stabilize pretty significantly And we have updated this chart for 2025 data where we continue to see that stabilization But it also means we need to rebalance a lot of our ongoing financial commitments Now that we're seeing this trend kind of continue and that it's here to stay some of this was deferred through use of one-time funding so the question of why now would be that we have been using some reserves to stabilize things in the meantime and then of course there was significant one-time funding and relief money kind of coming out of 2020 that is now now been fully expended that said i do want to be very very clear that even though the share of net taxable sales that are occurring in Fort Collins has declined, we are still seeing revenue growth. So there is still growth in sales tax as people either purchase more or the cost of goods that they're purchasing have increased. So we do see increase overall. We're just not seeing that the revenue growth is keeping pace with the level of expense growth for our ongoing expenditures. We did look back even further than this horizon. So we looked back across the past 30 years. and we only saw three years where the actual revenue declined year over year. So that was early 2000, 2001 for kind of dot-com bust. It was around the 2008 Great Recession timing, and then you see one on this chart for 2020 with a quick dip and then rebound around the COVID timing.

I mentioned briefly there was some one-time funding that had been offsetting some of the need to realign some of these service levels and expenses. Here you see how our reserve balances for the general fund has changed over the past several years. This will be able to update this with 2025 data after the audit is presented next month at the Council Finance Committee. But that blue, dark blue bar at the top of these, that's the freely available for any purpose on a signed portion of our general fund. And you can see how that use of one-time funding

has depleted that over time and that's something that we can't continue to count on to pencil out our budget. I don't know where I'm supposed to be missing. There we go. As we look towards the 2027-2028 budget, I also want to note that this is not the first set of work that we've undertaken

to realign our budget with our ongoing financial capacity. So last year, substantial work, revision work was done to our budget, as we saw an anticipated shortfall of about $15.5 million that we worked to close.

So here are some of the areas that were leveraged to reduce that gap,

and we did see that work out. So all of those revisions have been very effective so far this year, and we are on track for this year. however about a third of these savings were one time in nature things like a hiring freeze where once we do refill those positions the costs will come back

in to our actual expenses and that was intentional at the time to allow more

time for more strategic deliberation as we complete this work through this

budget cycle we are very close to kind of finalizing deliberations and for our

recommended budget and so it's too soon to say exactly kind of what we're seeing within that budget but there are some high-level themes and strategies that have emerged so far so as Jenny discussed we are keeping a close eye on advancing the council priority for long-term financial sustainability one of the ways that we're doing this is making sure that we are appropriately budgeting to continue the support for core municipal obligations things like public safety and also support for vulnerable populations while tweaking our processes to enhance the transparency to our financial decision making. Some of the ways that's happening is the revised budget methodology that we're taking on. So more priority based budgeting approach versus the prior budgeting for outcomes approach, which got a little bit convoluted sometimes and hard to see total investment levels.

We also published our first draft program inventory. So providing kind of insights, indexing a lot of the information into what's in our current budget, keeping a close eye on maintaining our asset management strategies and investments, and evaluating different opportunities to ensure that we're always aligning costs with our expenses. So an example of that is our natural areas program and department. They actually have not been taking on the cost of maintaining the trails, the paved trails in the natural areas.

That's been as part of the paved trail system maintenance, but they can absorb the share of the costs for the trails that are in the natural areas. And we can use that dedicated tax stream instead of other more freely available resources.

We're also trying to balance some conservatism in our forecasting with still wanting to have a maximal allocation of resources for our community.

So how do we kind of dance around this evolving economic indicator situation?

So far, we are seeing some pretty favorable trends in our sales tax generation this year.

And we know how very small percentage changes in that trajectory can lead to big budget impacts.

So we're trying to balance that a little bit through having a more robust contingency strategy,

understanding where we have different one-time funding needs,

and where we can be more nimble and kind of pause and evaluate things. An example of that is our fleet strategy.

So fleet, we do a lease purchase,

which means those costs once we've locked them in are kind of five years fixed.

So unwinding that or significant change to those expenses takes a lot of time. and so we have an opportunity where we can use some of the reserves that are accrued in that area to kind of buffer transition as we steer towards maybe a new policy on what vehicles get replaced and on what cadence and then of course

scrutiny into all of our ongoing expenditures to make sure that these are the right level of investments the right investments and we're delivering them as efficiently as possible. A key way that we scrutinized all of

the ongoing budgets was we did require all departments to submit reduction proposals that would represent 8 percent of their ongoing budgets. So that illuminated very, very quickly where those trade-offs are.

Where can we find efficiencies and just implement those in the budget?

Where can we adjust service levels, maybe pull back on corners of things that we do, or actually toggle things on and off.

We have benefited from that hiring freeze that was implemented last year. So that's created a large number of vacancies, a much higher number of vacant positions than we would typically have. And that's also forced people to kind of prioritize how the work gets done and kind of test if there's a more effective way to deliver services.

although I've seen a lot of Good kind of tension in what's being requested for this budget cycle. There are some new areas of investment that are coming forward as really significant needs in this process.

So one which I know council has talked about before is the ERP or Enterprise Resource Planning System replacement as the one that we have.

That's kind of our core financial and HR system reaches its end of life. So there'll be new ongoing investments needed for that.

We're also seeing emerging needs for cybersecurity, data, AI. Very exciting, we did break ground on the Southeast Community Center, which will also add ongoing operational costs.

Bear with me on this chart just a little bit. This is an attempt to put together all of those different competing trends and forces. So on this chart, the orange bars would represent totals, so a total annual budget. Blue would represent kind of reduction in budget, and gray would represent increases. So you can see how we had to realign from the original 2026 budget through those reductions to our ability for 2026 in the revised budget. Following that, we do see that significant expense pressure increase for inflation, for maintaining an investment in talent, to be competitive to the market. Those are the costs that it would, and restoring the kind of one-third of those 2026 cuts that wouldn't have been ongoing in nature. So that's what it would cost to kind of maintain our current service levels. We also have a category of things that we are just kind of updating our budget to reflect that were historically unbudgeted.

This is often where we can see like unfunded mandates start to impact our budget.

So for instance, the state did pass a requirement that background checks for volunteers or anybody that worked with children have to be regularly run instead of just when we begin work with that volunteer or employee.

We're obviously going to comply with that regulation and it introduces a new regular ongoing cost that we need a budget for. And then we don't see that the new needs that's actually the tiniest little gray sliver in this chart being very significant in this budget cycle but we do need to find a way to

absorb those as well. And then here's how you can see the different levers start

to close that gap into our ongoing financial capacity so as we work to

align the different costs with ongoing revenues that can close a chunk of what would otherwise be a gap. Different ways that we can deliver services more efficiently also contributes towards closing the gap. So an example there is as different IT systems expand their functionalities, sometimes we find we're engaging with multiple vendors that are duplicating the same service so we can consolidate those. And then finally, looking at different service level adjustments. As we haven't finalized the recommended budget, we haven't decided on any of these, but some of the proposals that we're looking at would include things like, could we do street sweeping one fewer time per year?

And that will get us to a more balanced and in-line budget.

and with that i'll turn it over to joe to talk about another decision making point in this budget which will be the schedule for our quarter cent capital projects thank you victoria i'm going to

volley this over to jenny to give us an overview of the tax before we dive into the numbers

we are thank you um some of this is going to be um very much a reminder in recap

So this first slide is showing what our total package was. So this run was voted and approved in November 2025. Revenue collection started in 2026 and this tax will run from 2035. And these are all the items that were included in that package. so when we look at this so the the package of projects is what is adopted and approved the calendaring and scheduling is more discretionary to to council what we try to do is at least set up some basic guidance and these are things we this has gone to council finance and a few others but we want to do predictable and consistent funding for programs especially in our transportation area those teams use this funding to do local matches grant matches and to work out their capacity and work plans over time we also look to identify quick wins anything that's sort of shovel ready or they might have known dependencies or partner funding and things that we feel like we can go ahead and advance in a pretty timely manner we also consider um efforts that are council priorities things that we know we want to get out and doing um you know we look at what things are going to have a bigger impact and then we also want to um do do all this as part of the budget process so that it is predictable as we go forward and so we did do off cycle because collections started in 2026 so this is money you've already appropriated in 2026, just as a reminder as we look here. And then what we're presenting next is really what we are proposing for the 27-28 budget cycle. And it's easier to

bring it together than have you read through the entire budget and all of that space. So now, I'm so glad we sat all the way apart. So here's a look at that 2026 appropriation of the first

year of the tax as a reminder. Most of it was around those programs that we have consistently funded throughout the 10 years, as Jenny mentioned. And then we had a $2.5 million appropriation out of the $10 million for Affordable Housing Capital Fund, and then a small amount of dollars to get started on the community bike park. So the quarter cent tax will generate a little bit less than $12 million a year. So only $6 million has been appropriated so far. We're going to take that and propose it with the 27 and 28 budget to give us more options around what that next two-year package may look like but before we get to 27 and 28 we're going to look backwards at the last 10 years of the tax that has expired some reserves were generated after finishing or soon to be finishing all of those projects some of this has already been appropriated the 9.5 million was move forward as part of the southeast community center funding stack and then a resolution was passed by council uh late last year to direct all remaining funding towards the affordable housing capital fund so now that the the taxes expired we're done with fiscal year 2025 that 5.7 is the remaining funding that could go towards the affordable housing capital fund under a recent development with our uh southeast community center funding stack we we want to we're bringing forward another option in that with our debt issuance for their certificate of participation has come back more favorable with the interest rate than anticipated, allowing capacity for $3 million more under the current scenario to issue debt for. So what that $3 million could do is then redirect some of these funds in that that 9.5 up there for the Southeast Community Center could be replaced by that $3 million more in debt and could go towards the Affordable Housing Capital Fund. The other option would be the $3 million goes into the funding stack to replace the 2050 tax for $3 million that could then be redirected towards advancing parks projects under the 2050 tax.

And I'll just chime in here real quick. Our purpose with making council aware of this tonight, We are planning to actually issue the certificates of participation in early August. I spoke with our financial advisors today. We are still, despite some geopolitical uncertainty, expecting a more favorable rate environment than we had projected. But we do need to issue those in August and see what our final rate is. So this is really just to make council aware, and we have backup material on this if there's questions, that within the council approved funding stack for the Southeast Community Center, there exists an opportunity to stay within all of the debt service ratios that were contemplated for the 2050 tax and really just free up $3 million of additional cash. There does not need to be a decision tonight on whether or not that cash would be freed up from the prior CCIP reserves and potentially used for affordable housing, or if it would be freed up from the 2050 tax cash portion. This is just simply to let council know how staff is proceeding with the COP issuance.

okay so i'm going to move us forward towards the next budget cycle so on here on this slide we have three columns one with the 27 28 budget uh a 29 20 30 that would be a list of projects that we anticipate would be next up or more shovel ready with the next budget cycle and then the last column is five years that's the list of remaining projects that we feel like maybe less prioritize IN THIS NEXT BUDGET OR ARE WAITING ON OTHER FUNDING SOURCES TO COME TOGETHER TO GET THOSE MOVING. SO WITH THE 27-28 BUDGET, I JUST WANT TO MENTION SOME HIGHLIGHTS AND CONNECT US TO WHAT JENNY MENTIONED ON WHY WE WENT ABOUT PRIORITIZING THESE PROJECTS AND RECOMMENDING THEM IN THE NEXT BUDGET. THE TOP ONE IS THE TRANSPORTATION PROGRAMS THAT WE HAVE EVENLY FUNDED THROUGHOUT THE 10 YEARS OF

the tax. The Affordable Housing Capital Fund had $2.5 million of the 10. The remainder of the affordable housing dollars are recommended to split between the next two budget cycles

for this 27-28 and then again in 29-2030. We plan that out with our housing staff that feel like that amount will align with anticipated pipeline and demand through the process and leave enough AVAILABILITY FOR OTHER OPPORTUNITIES THAT ARE UNFORSEEN AT THIS POINT. SO THE STREETSCAPES PROGRAM LISTED HERE AT 6.8 MILLION AS WILLOW STREET IS ACTUALLY TWO DIFFERENT PROJECTS. WITH THAT AMOUNT WE COULD CONTRIBUTE TO THE WILLOW STREET PROJECT IN OLD TOWN. THAT'S PRIORITIZED AS WE HAVE A DDA MATCH CONTRIBUTION IF WE WERE TO MOVE THIS FORWARD the next budget cycle that they would contribute $1 million towards that project. And then in this amount, we could also contribute about $2 million to the Midtown Streetscape project that's around the College Drake to Boardwalk area. Community Bike Park and Pickleball are two projects that have already had some preliminary and conceptual design work with Community Bike Park having some early site planning work at the Foothills multi-use site, and then outdoor pickleball complex, some conceptual design and neighborhood outreach at Fossil Creek Park. And then Nature in the City is another program we've established in the last 10 years of

this capital tax. It had a delayed funding because we had some reserves remaining in the previous program,

so it's anticipated to start in 2028. So that total there, that 29, matches what we would anticipate of two years of revenue and then the additional amount that wasn't appropriated from the 2026 revenue.

So we wanted to apply a council lens of council priorities with this next budget and what may be some options or considerations with the capital tax package. If we look at Vision Zero, those transportation programs were intentionally laid out even over 10 years, but those could be front-loaded to accelerate some of those projects. THAT COULD COME WITH TRADE-OFFS OF HAVING LESS DOLLARS TO PLAN IN FUTURE YEARS AND POTENTIALLY LESS DOLLARS TO LEVERAGE,

AS THOSE PROJECTS ARE REALLY OUR SEED MONEY FOR FEDERAL AND STATE LEVERAGING FOR OUR TRANSPORTATION PROGRAMS.

LIKEWISE, WE COULD ACCELERATE THE START OF OUR RECREATIONAL PAVED TRAILS PROGRAM.

THAT IS A PROGRAM THAT ALREADY HAS FUNDING THROUGH OUR CONSERVATION TRUST AT $2 MILLION A YEAR. this capital tax was going to provide additional funding for it. So we don't have it started right

away in the package and it was going to start later on in the package and we could move that up.

Timing of the affordable housing funds that I've went through and then moving construction and design timing for the downtown park shop. This is a relocation of our site right now that's across

THE STREET RIGHT NORTH OF THE 222 LA PORT UTILITIES CUSTOMER SERVICE BUILDING IS WHERE OUR DOWNTOWN PARK SHOP CURRENTLY IS THROUGH THE LAND SWAP WITH THE COUNTY. WE NOW HAVE A SITE UP THERE ON VINE DRIVE WHERE WE WOULD BE BUILDING THE NEW DOWNTOWN PARK SHOP AND RELOCATING THAT

STAFF. IDEALLY, I THINK STAFF WOULD LIKE DESIGNED TO START IN 2028 AND CONSTRUCTION IN THE NEXT

BUDGET IN THE PROPOSED PACKAGE THAT YOU HAVE IN FRONT OF YOU, IT IS ENTIRELY IN THE 2029-2030

budget and then pickleball there could be an option to split design and construction between the next two budget cycles so we will pause here for questions on any of these projects and we have staff here as this touches many

areas of the cities and departments to answer any individual project questions

great thank you does council have any questions or comments Melanie thanks for

the presentation. I just have a couple of clarifying questions around the it's not the CCIP the quarter cent tax. So first looking at the timeline on slide 16 with the 2027, 29, and 31 can you give a little bit more context as to why composting infrastructure is recommended for that latter phase of funding? I know that was a high priority that we made sure to explicitly add in there when we wrote this ballot language. I'll take a stab, and I know Jacob's behind me, should we need more. If you'll recall, that did come from council, sort of late in the game, and so staff had Hadn't really had an opportunity to look at what that would look like to implement and achieve and likely partner with. So we have put it back for now. I think also we're making pretty good strides in our partnerships around composting and waste. And so giving a bit of a runway to really make sure this goes to something that is lasting and in partnership. Do you want to add anything?

And if there are, we can put more in a follow-up memo.

Okay. No, I think that that gives me enough for right now.

That's just something that I would love as soon as possible for it to be built into the budget, just because I worry about the escalation in construction costs for anything that involves infrastructure.

I also, for the benefit of residents, I would love if you could give a little bit more context about timing for design and construction of pickleball courts.

Yeah, so in this first draft of 27-28, that is all of the pickleball money.

So that means we would get design and construction completed in this next budget cycle.

Okay. I thought I had seen on the next slide it says construction wouldn't be until 29-30.

That slide is optional. we sort of built out so slide 16 is sort of what we're presenting okay and then the rest is up for

conversation okay thank you and then last but not least about the community bike park i know that that is a component of a much larger project can you just speak about the short timeline for the community bike park in the context of the greater former hughes stadium property yeah so um that

that project is is really exciting and staff is excited recognizing this is going to be a legacy project so um a lot of work is happening on that this is one of the few items that actually has funding related to that and so utilizing these dollars now right here i think i would over promise if i said we would have an operational built bike park by the end of this budget cycle because I think that's going to be a very large capital project. And we're initially going to need to do siting of those things, and then we need to do a lot of community outreach with all those groups to ensure we have the amenities that we want. And because that property will likely be done in phases, there's no way we're going to do it all at once. We want to make sure that things will tie in well together overall. So but but getting this money up front will certainly advance something that's important to the community. Yeah that's awesome thanks for providing that

information. Julie? Yeah I just have a follow-up question on what's what is going on with construction well it's a two-parter what's going on with construction costs currently are they still increasing at a crazy rate and how How is that considered in what you have presented to us with totals as well as priority?

Yeah, so I can start on that. You know, obviously in the broader economy, we have seen inflation moderate, but it hasn't completely slowed down. I will say in the last year or so, maybe even six months, we have seen more and more construction projects really come in either on or slightly under budget. So, for example, I think the Southeast Community Center is going to be coming in right on budget. So just to speak a little bit to the philosophy of how we're projecting the capital tax when that was planned, that was planned in 2025 dollars, 2024 dollars. And obviously, the goal with that was we were trying to be fairly conservative in our revenue estimates for the quarter cent tax as well. So as that revenue source grows, ideally, that will cover construction escalation. I know that has not always happened in the past, and we've had some misses with forecasting. but the two-year budget is the point at which we also sharpen our pencils a little bit on the forecast and look at some more current estimates and I'll let Joe fill in anything else on that

no thanks Caleb and so to apply this Councilman Rapatianni to the seven million dollars we're trying to control for inflation yeah well we had a composting seven million dollar question earlier

Both of them.

Both. As we tried to control for it in that $7 million project, if we don't keep up with inflation, we won't be able to fund it in 10 years. So that $7 million, when it's brought forward in a future budget cycle, will be more than $7 million. So we've controlled for that in these costs, and that that far right column is all in $2024, as Caleb mentioned.

Amy? Thank you. I'm just curious, with the transportation programs, how do the federal grants and all of those opportunities, how is that looking right now?

We are facing a challenging grant environment. As Council may know, we're expecting new uniform guidance from the federal government to come this fall. A lot of the transportation and mobility projects that are important to the city are being likely deprioritized by the federal government, whether that's bike lane infrastructure or other alternative modes. That is something myself and the grants team are actively monitoring. I know we had discussions with the previous council about the evolving grant landscape.

It's definitely evolving. There's a lot of things happening, and it's likely as we move to later this summer and early fall

and that new guidance from the administration becomes clearer,

there will be some additional conversations with council.

But it is a very uncertain picture at this point.

I suspect we'll be, I mean, like you said, you'll be having conversations with us, but just can you see anything that's in jeopardy with some of these right now?

I know that's kind of a vague question based on what you just said, but.

um yes i am concerned about um some of the actions the current administration's taking and whether or not that could um threaten the viability of future projects or even some

current projects for the city um it is a possibility um it is also on a project by project basis that we're looking at things and looking at the guidance so um certainly

could be prepared in the coming months to have a more focused conversation with council about that.

But yes, I think it would be naive to think there's going to be no impacts from shifts in

the federal environment. We've already seen a few. Thank you.

Anyone else? I have just a couple. I know that, you know, previous councils, while they may have direction now we have a new council but i remember us talking about streetscapes and the desire to move the focus of streetscapes either not we talked about not including it but then we decided to add it but really that downtown had seen a lot of improvements with street streetscapes and kind of expanding that to the rest of the city and i know we have one project that you're proposing in midtown i just you know with the willow street and i understand with the DDA putting in funds but I just have continual concerns about heavily funding the streetscapes in downtown because they have the DDA to be able to provide those matches and other areas of our town don't and the streetscapes are not equal across the city so I would just like to see perhaps a list of the other streetscapes that we had lined up for funding and where those would be as well to make sure that we're thinking about the entire city and then I would agree with Melanie about the composting I understand that you know we didn't it came in late into the game but council really wanted it in there I guess I'm having trouble understanding why it would take five years to get us even talking or you know in five years we would plan for five years what's the problem what's what's holding us back from pushing more and really getting it more closer to like the 2030, 2031 implementation.

Yeah, thank you. I'm Jacob Castillo, Assistant City Manager. Always a pleasure joining you on Tuesday evenings. I think there's two issues, and the first I'd probably look to Caleb to address.

One is the availability of revenue, so availability of funding. You have to accrue that money, and I think we've looked at priorities,

So spending more money on priorities like housing sooner rather than later. So I think there's just a cash flow component to this. I don't know if, Caleb, there's anything you'd want to add to that.

All I would say is, you know, when Jenny discussed kind of staff's approach with how we were looking at prioritizing the first couple of years of the program, It is a cash constrained exercise, but that's also why we're here to get council's feedback on the package tonight.

Okay. Thank you for that.

And then the other part is we are still in the process with a pilot project with Compost Queen. We're in active conversations with Larimer County. We've done a study to understand what the city could potentially buy for its own needs and then for regional needs around composting. And just to put some broad numbers to it, if we were to do this for just the composting needs in our own community, a facility, even without land acquisition, would be around $15 million. And then if we were to do this at a more regional scale, we'd be looking, you know, 20 plus million, again, not including land acquisition. So even the $7 million is inadequate to kind of go it alone, build a facility. So we need to build a coalition, make sure that if we are investing in real estate, machinery, and operations, that we're doing that as effectively as possible. Because the $7 million, while that's certainly real money to make real progress, is not enough to kind of go it alone. So we're building the coalition. We're working with partners like Larimer County and others to make sure that we have the maximal sort of impact with this limited investment

That's helpful. I do remember that the seven million wasn't going to get us a facility, but it was like a start to it So I guess I would just be in favor at least I'm not saying that we would have everything by 2030 but I would like to see a part of the composting infrastructure to at least be earlier in the budget Whether it's 28 or 20 29 mainly because I think we do have good momentum with the pilot program talks with Lamar County. And I would hate that because we don't have it scheduled out earlier and that we're giving direction, you know, with what's to come, then we would not have the money available. So I would like to have at least access to some of it in case something comes up.

Yeah. And I think just to add to that, really where we need to get the current clarity is for the 27-28 budget. And then everything beyond that is still anticipated. And so it is really helpful to hear if they're, you know, we need to know what you want in this budget, but then for sure we can shuffle in the next two cycles. Okay, great. Yeah.

Then with the 27-28, I guess I may be alone, but I would really be in favor of more front loading that transportation and the arterial for the Vision Zero. I think we just, you know, it's a council priority. There are things we can do that would make an impact now rather than wait. So I'd be in favor of front loading that more into the 27-28. I know that transportation does a great job of kind of laying out that budget and over the years and what's to come. But if there is a way that we can accelerate some of these improvements while it's a council priority and while we're focused on it, I just I would rather have that than some of the other things budgeted in the 2728. So I guess maybe in favor of the suggestion of moving the pickleball one year, if that allows more funding to be freed up for those those improvements. for Vision Zero. Josh.

Those are all really good questions. I'm curious if we get into 28, 29, it looks like maybe a partnership will come together for the composting, but we've already maybe allocated a lot of this funding to the park shop and transportation. Is there a way to borrow from other funds to kickstart that to keep those partnerships and momentum going and then replenish them as the sales tax comes in?

Yeah, if we had a specific opportunity in front of us, we could certainly bring some ideas to council on how that could be funded. Obviously, that would be situational depending on how the city's financial performance is at the time and where there may be funding opportunities available.

But certainly there could be some opportunity to get creative if there is a partnership in hand.

You know, if I can add to that, one of the bright spots that I'm seeing in our partnership with Larimer County, I don't think this council decided on, was deciding body on an allocation from the 2050 climate tax around construction and demolition waste. So there's about one and a half million dollars that we set aside in 2025, I think, to support the county in investing in construction, demolition, waste infrastructure. That project is, you know, lagging by around 18 months of the. So, there is still like a sequencing of tiered projects with construction demolition, being higher tier than composting.

Thank you. Yeah, yeah.

I feel like we've been very specific and I have kind of broader questions. So going way back to like 30 minutes ago, talking about the 8% reduction proposals, Victoria, you touched on that briefly, but I'm curious, was that a fruitful process? Was that a stress-inducing process, all of the above? I mean, that's a substantial reduction. So curious to learn a little bit more about that in the context of the work session.

Yeah, any of us probably can answer this. I'll say I think the answer is both. It was certainly stress-inducing for departments as there's not a lot of excess in operations. And so, again, we're on kind of a multi-year process like this. So there was definitely some stress. I also believe it was very fruitful. And I think that you will see when we bring forward the recommended budget. Again, we're not quite ready to share those things tonight. But it brought forward some really good tradeoffs and choices of things that we are able to, I think, bring forward to council to make good decisions about your budget moving forward.

Thank you. One other question, I think kind of tying this back to the council priority of financial sustainability. And some of these things in the upcoming budget are new and exciting and really cool. And I want to make sure that we're on track for taking care of what we currently have. Um, so curious if there are adjustments that have been made or should be made in terms of just capital needs and replacement strategy, um, both for buildings and roofs and software and all of those less exciting things, but things that are in line with that priority.

Uh, yes, it's a great question. So on asset management, we do have a lot of distributed kind of asset management plans and programs across the different departments for their specific areas. So, for instance, Parks and Recreation would have their own asset management plan. But when we look more holistically at like city facilities, for example, we don't see those costs coming in as ongoing cost requests. They're more one time in nature. So for our facility asset management in this budget cycle, we saw almost $10 million of requests across different asset management projects. primarily things like HVAC replacements or roof replacements. We did briefly discuss with the council finance committee last week that we have an opportunity to advance those already this year. So as I mentioned, there is some favorability in this year's revenue above what we had budgeted. Some of that is one time in nature, so not necessarily something that we see as closing a potential budget gap, but it provides some opportunity for us to accelerate some of our investments into this year. So if council would like, and if we see continued favorability, we could bring forward a million-dollar supplemental appropriation this year to advance the asset management work by doing the design work for those projects that we're currently estimating about $10 million. And that's what we typically see is design costs can be about 10% of total project costs. And what that would allow us to do is complete that design work probably through Q1. next year and really sharpen the project cost estimates understand exactly what the need would be to deliver those projects we have seen some other project costs come down as we get more into the feasibility or design for instance the police services building hvac it turns out the original design that we had which would have included 100 electrification wasn't feasible for that facility And as they change the system the cost of the other system that was feasible was actually less so that That was a favorable direction They are not all favorable But it would allow us to solidify those project costs and make sure that we have shovel ready projects as we have that one-time funding available to advance them

And I can add on a little bit. I mean so Victoria explained well asset management, particularly around facilities, is an area where the city has lagged in investment, and that's a known issue to be addressed. There's a couple ways that we're starting to think through this, and I think this budget proposal that you'll receive will hopefully start making some real progress. I'd say from the biggest picture, aligning with the council's goal of financial sustainability as we really try to be in a reasonably conservative position in both our revenue forecasts and expenditure forecasts. It puts us in a position in more stable economic circumstances. Those are never guaranteed in any given year, but more stable economic circumstances where we are having a healthy amount of reserve generation that does allow us to then invest into these one-time asset management needs. So I think simply some of the realigning work that ideally is going to occur with this budget will put us in a much stronger position in future years to be able to address asset management. Another emerging need, which likely won't be able to be fully addressed in this budget, but will be top of mind as we move into the integrated citywide capital planning work next year is there is not currently an ongoing source for some of this asset management. While every project is one time in nature, for the most part, with asset management, we are seeing a sustained level of need. So particularly as our financial capacity ideally grows over the next couple of years, I think that will be an important part of the discussion how are we appropriately resourcing our asset management efforts going

forward. Thank you so much. Anyone else? Yeah, Chris, go ahead. Let's see. So I would just start

off by saying that I really support accelerating the start of the recreational paved trails.

trails. When I was knocking doors, I heard a lot. Let me start like this. I ride my bike

like everywhere and like love the trail system around the city and I'm like really enthusiastic about bikes and stuff. And I know people love to drive and it's great. And so I was like shocked when bikes would come up way more often than I was expecting. Knocking doors is like a key thing that people were expecting from city government in newer neighborhoods in northeast fort collins so i really i really support accelerating the recreational paved trails funding i noticed in the description of them in the in the addendum to the packet right that they're like the most highly rated thing about fort collins and i think leaning into our our identity as like a bike friendly city is a really smart way to move forward not only just in terms of providing quality of life to our residents but like kind of having like a like our own little niche to fill to be this like really interesting place in a certain way. So I would support that. I think moving that up makes a lot of sense to me.

I think, you know, I think the transportation stuff is great. I guess one of the questions

I have about the transportation stuff is, again, and we talked about this in our,

some of our earlier work sessions is how much of the transportation programs and the arterial

updates are previous work that's already done and how much of it reflects an actual change in methodology like now that we're have adopted vision zero as a as a priority i just feel like sometimes i look at these vision zero vision zero arterial improvements and it looks like expanding making it easier to to drive faster down some of these roads and so i just wonder are these projects like updated from based on the vision zero are they

from previous i'll start and someone behind me might do better and we can follow up

in a memo but i think the transportation projects especially in the vision zero lane

are highly focused right on pedestrians and bicyclists and so drawing those projects that have been identified in those plans and incorporating them all the time everywhere when we're doing projects and have them. And so we did meet with staff, like if we front-loaded, are there projects and can they be done? And staff felt confident that they were.

And they wanted to balance, you know, we can only do so much, so don't give it all to us, but yeah, we can advance it for sure. Joe, do you want to? Oh, Drew.

I'll probably just add to that, that, you know, we're looking at a lot of quick build type of projects that we could advance as quickly as possible. I couldn't give you a specific example of that right at this moment, but we're definitely

with the council priority really recalibrating how we look at these projects overall. It is true

that some of those projects are kind of already in flight and already have grant funding is secured

and that have certain requirements. But as we look forward to future projects,

we've kind of changed our methodologies quite a bit, and we're looking at that quite a bit differently. So I think that what you'll see is that

how we bring these projects forward in the future will look a bit different than what we've done in the past.

Does that look like updating the methodology and the transportation plan?

Well, it would look like, for instance, updating our street standards, updating, you know, kind of all of the Lucas standards, possibly developing our own standards in that space.

So really changing the way that we rehabilitate, if you will, and design streets for the future.

Okay. I just want to put in a plug.

I'll just put in a plug too for something that I think I love the streetscape upgrades in Old Town personally. I to me that's very valuable to the city and I think I Know I get accused of being an old-town guy, but I guess I am right and so

Come to the DDA meetings when I'm talking about parking and you might hear a different story, but I

Think I think that's a really valuable program. I think it's a really unique part of the city. I had one question about a very specific item

I think it was the recycling facility upgrades.

This was just deep, kind of buried in the document here.

The Timberline Recycling Facility, it's like a million dollars.

I know it's not a big deal, but we're paying $667,000,

and it seems like we're getting a bathroom.

and that just seemed like a lot for a bathroom.

Yeah, I know this one, as we went through the package development, started larger at a larger dollar amount to do sidewalks and ADA work out there.

There was a grant received that completed some of this, and we scaled it back.

But you're right, what's reflected on that sheet, I think they did have some safety improvements that involve the fire hydrant and then a restroom out there

I can't remember if that's public facing or just staff restroom I imagine there's none out there right now and it would be a new ad for that. I

Think that's correct. And so yeah, no restroom there now for staff and the the fire hydrant piece is key It just for fire safety and that whole facility and again, but we can check on the cost but

yeah yeah it's i just just from uh the the fire hydrant is 313 000 which i don't know how much fire hydrants cost but like the bathroom for 667 seemed high um i know that's that's not like even close to being on the top of the list but i was just stood out to me um

i don't need an answer to that necessarily at this moment but But I just thought I'd point it out and kind of question that, I suppose.

Yeah, and I know I do think there's been some preliminary design work done on that, perhaps. So we'll get you a more detailed breakout of what is going into that cost estimate so you have it in front of you. And I'm sure it will have much more refinement as it gets closer to construction.

Okay, thanks.

I think, yeah, I guess just to be responsible, like if we're moving the recreational paved trails up,

I wonder how much of the nature in the city stuff could be like, again, there's already a dedicated revenue stream for the natural areas program. Like how much of that can be taken on by the natural areas program? and we can prioritize some of these other projects that are less well-funded across the city. So, yeah, recreational paved trails up.

I think I support keeping the pickleball complex sooner.

I think pickleball has been exploding, and I think it's a worthy project,

but I think people have been asking for.

it's so hard to make these decisions between different things but I thought I'd just I don't know

How to help you guys prioritize these things because there's seven different voices up here saying different things.

So I guess I'll end there.

Other questions? I did have one more question about the Poudre River North, the updates to Softgold Park.

And I remember that we were talking about it with last council, but now it's on the agenda for 2031 or beyond.

Why is it those park improvements delayed?

this is one that we viewed as the package came together as a as a project that would align with stormwater work out there and some parks work that would come together with multiple funding sources and some of those projects aren't scheduled for the later years which is why it wasn't

prioritized early on the stormwater that's different than the stormwater the ura is also

funding that is the north mason project i think this would be stormwater work south of like the legacy park area where there's a canal diversion structure so i think as part of the funding could be potentially partnership with some of the ditch companies that that would be involved there as

well okay can we just get a follow-up memo on that great okay i can also add that for the soft

gold park refresh that's planned for 2050 tax the timeline for that is is sooner than what's reflected for this cc therefore the capital tax work um so for soft gold neighborhood park that's a design is planned during 2026 2027 and construction in 2029 i love that answer thank you all right

um okay anyone else no i don't know if we've helped in any way give feedback but

Well, if we can bring back up the slides,

we do have a timeline for how the budget work is continuing to unfold.

So, we are here in the thick of it, in the middle at our July work session. Our prior work session in May focused on more of the revenue side. So, here we've been talking through more of the expense trends and sequencing and that we've anticipated. As we move forward, I'm working through a few other topics with the Council Finance Committee as well for some specific areas of interest. For instance, asset management was what we discussed a little bit with them last week. The direction is that we will provide some follow-up on that potential supplemental appropriation request because it's really easy to say yes to things in isolation and usually leads to a lot more nuanced decision when you see what are other potential one-time requests that it would be competing against. So we're following up on that, and then we'll delve into more of a conversation on the forestry levels of service, which we've heard questions about, as we also work in parallel on finalizing the recommended budget, which will be published by September 3rd. Another item that did come up in discussion in the Council Finance Committee, although our last work session was more focused on revenue, There is another kind of revenue opportunity that we have which we can discuss And there was desire to bring that into this kind of work session tonight so further refinement for revenues we did revisit kind of our property tax forecast or sales tax forecast and we'll see that reflected in the recommended budget an Area that council has some kind of influence and decision-making ability on is actually the natural gas franchise fee So a franchise fee is what we essentially charge Excel for use of right away for their infrastructure so that they can deliver services to our community members. Currently, the fee that Fort Collins is charging for the franchise fee is just over 1%. Most jurisdictions, home rule jurisdictions, we see charge a rate of 3% for this franchise fee. This fee, of course, is then really passed along to the different natural gas customers, so they see that as a separate line item on their bill. Increasing it to 3% would introduce an additional estimated $1.2 million of revenue that could be used against some of these different tradeoffs or service level realignments. The analysis that we have, which I believe is from 2022, so probably a little bit higher number now, was that the typical residential customer with that increase would see their monthly bill increase by, I think, $1.12 per month. So probably a little bit higher since then, but that is one of the other decision points that we have for this budget.

And just to add on to the council finance discussion, the current thinking for the city manager's recommended budget is not that that franchise fee would be part of the solve for the budget gap, But we could potentially bring forward some options on how that franchise fee could be deployed In the budget as part of the budget proposal for council's consideration in September

Are you looking for feedback on whether or not council wants to discuss because I know that's what we talked about at finance

Are you looking for the same feedback? Yes, if council has any additional feedback on that that would be welcomed I think Based on the council finance feedback. We certainly can bring forward some options as part of the budget discussion Like I said, it wouldn't be part of the main Recommended budget but certainly could be an option council could consider for modification to the budget

Yeah, I think at council finance committee we talked about whether or not we wanted to revisit the franchise fee and so I Think we decided sure we could revisit we could revisit or talk about it But not giving direction on whether or not we wanted to pursue it

Yes, and staff's work in the budget process would be to support that deliberation by the council not to presuppose any decision

Yeah, I would support looking at that I think what I'm most interested in would be the ratepayer impact So if we can get more updated info that would be helpful

Anyone else Do you have what you all need I

Think we do. Thank you. Okay. Thank you

All right, that is everything for tonight. Does council have any announcements?

Seeing none, we will adjourn. Good night, four counts.