June 26, 2023 Board Meeting

Transcript

Describer:

Board Meeting Agenda

Monday, June 26, 2023, at 6:00 p.m.

7404 Yorkshire Drive, Castle Pines, CO 80108

I. Welcome. Call meeting to order. Pledge of Allegiance.

II. Roll call. Determination of quorum. Disclosure of potential conflicts.

III. Consider approving the June 26, 2023, board meeting agenda.

IV. Consider approving May 22, 2023, board meeting minutes.

V. Consider approving April 24, 2023, board meeting minutes (holdover).

VI. Public comment period. (Three-minute maximum per person).

VII. Elect of board of directors-officers (President, Vice-President, Secretary).

VIII. Consideration of approval, Petrocco Farms Lease- Austin Hamre esq.

IX. Discussion Regarding City of Castle Pine’s Urban Renewal Authority

A. Background, and explanation of the plan- Sam Bishop, City of Castle Pines Community Development Director.

B. South Metro Fire, Reasoning for wanting South Metro to represent special district issues.

C. Potential Discussion/Action Item: Decision from board on desire to have a CPNMD board member serve on the commission.

X. District Engineering Report, and introduction- Greg Sekera P.E, Kennedy Jenks, District Engineer.

XI. Operation Manager’s Report, and Introduction- Will Parker, Semocor.

XII. Finance Director's report.

A. Consider approving claims for payment including check numbers 27899 - 27980 and electronic payments issued from May 19, 2023, through June 22, 2023.

B. Update and timeline regarding 2021 and 2022 Audits.

General Fund/Open Space Approve $56,155.78, Ratify $66,864.13, Total $123,019.91

Enterprise Funds Approve $183,414.79, Ratify $869,470.54, Total $1,052,885.33

Electronic Payments (all funds) Approve $79,496.54, Ratify $288,269.44, Total $367,765.98

Total Expenditures Approve $319,067.11, Ratify $1,224,604.11, Total $1,543,671.22

XIII. Legal Counsel's report.

XIV. District Manager’s report

A. Facility tours

B. Consumer Confidence Report

C. CPNMD projected timeline

XV. Director’s Matters

XVI. Adjourn

District Manager Nathan Travis:

All right. Time is now 6:06pm when I call the, regularly scheduled board meeting for Castle Pines North Metro District. Monday, June 26th, 2023 to order, we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance.

All:

Good. 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.

Nathan:

All right, so the, first item that we have on our agenda is consideration, for approval of the June 2026 or June 26th, 2023 board meeting agenda.

Board President Jason Blankaert:

Nathan, we need to do roll call first.

Nathan:

Oh, I'm so sorry I missed that one. Thanks, Jason. We'll do roll call.

Jason:

Director Blankaert. Here. No conflict.

Board Member Director Jana Krell:

Director Krell. Here. No conflicts.

Board Member Director Tera Radloff:

Director Radloff. Here. No conflicts.

Board Member Director Leah Enquist:

Director. Director Enquist. Here. No conflicts.

Board Member Director James Mulvey:

And Director Mulvey. Here. No conflicts.

Nathan:

All right, so we have five in attendance. That is a quorum. we will move on to the third item of the agenda, which is to consider approving the June 22nd, June 26th, 2023 board meeting. Meeting agenda. do any of the directors have any comments?

Jason:

I move that we just put a number three, four and five together and approve them. Minutes. Yeah, the minutes for, June 26th, 2023. The minutes for May 22nd, 2023 and the minutes for April 24th, 2023.

Nathan:

Okay, so we have, an amendment or a motion to combine, item number three, four and five. Do we have a second?

Tera:

I'll second. Any discussion? Yes. So, on the May 22nd meeting minutes on page four. my name is misspelled. It's TERA. It's correct. up above. But on the last page, page four. So. And then.

For the, April 24th meeting minutes, to strike the third paragraph underneath directors matters.

Would be my recommended changes. And the spelling needs to be changed. But other than that, I don't have any other discussion.

Jason:

So I move that we approve the meeting. The meeting agenda for 2020 June 26th, 2023 May 22nd, 2023 board minutes and April 24th, 2023 board minutes with Tera's corrections.

Tera:

I'll second that motion. Is there any other discussion from.

Board Voting All Speak:

Okay, okay with that, we will call for a vote. I'll just go down the line. Director Blankaert. Approve. Director Krell. Approve. Director Radloff. Approve. Director Enquist. Approve. And Director Mulvey. Approved.

Nathan:

All right. Motion passes. Five to nothing, and we will. Keep moving on down the line. Next, we have a, public comment period. Is there anyone.

Do we have anybody that signed up officially or anyone that would like to speak during public comment in the room? Please state your name clearly. And then the address that. Yeah, that was name and address. And that's all we got. This is my first time doing this. They usually handle it. So I'm going, yeah. There's a little, like, face with a mouth.

Hey, you figure it out. All right? You've got three minutes.

Steve Dawes, Castle Pines Resident:

Thank you. My name is Steve Dawes. I live at 5703 Jasper Point circle, catty corner from Tera's house. I wanted to ask you some questions and let me make a couple of comments from the last board meeting. ... You said that there was going to be some orientation for the new board members.

Did those ever occur?

Nathan:

The new board member orientations are in progress. So at the study session this last month, we, did the first two hours. We've got another two hours scheduled coming up this upcoming month. And then we're also working on scheduling facility tours.

Steve:

So we're so they're being handled through study sessions. Correct. Okay. And so when we look on the board meetings that should say study session agenda, including orientation for new board members.

Nathan:

Correct. And it does. Yep.

Steve:

I spent about 35 years representing municipalities, special districts, state of Colorado in litigation and, had an interest in this organization because in the first two years we moved to Castle Pines, which was in March of 2020, there were two boil water advisories. And now we have what are the smells like chlorine?

I lived in Denver for 50 years and never had any of that. So it struck us is that, there are some issues that this board has to deal with, and I think they're adequately stated in Mr. Travis's report dated to June 26th. That's in your packet today, on the first page where it says CPNMD and has and honestly, well deserved your reputation.

Frankly, when I was here at the outgoing board members who said their speeches, when the new board members came in and the impression one got from the outgoing board members was that everything was just hunky dory, I was somewhat appalled by that, to be honest with you, because that's not the impression I and some of the people I've talked to have about the district.

Now, this is not a reflection on the work activities of anybody. But, it seems to me that you're struggling with a lot of issues. And so, my wife Roberta and I decided to pay a little more attention as what's going on with the water board. For example, when you have a public packet, all the municipalities I dealt with before would push this online so any citizen could get online and get the packet.

And I was prepared to recommend that to you here today, until I talked to Mr. Travis and discovered that I'm the only person who has ever requested a copy of the packet, so I'm not sure it's worthwhile for you if there's only one person who interested in getting a copy of it. The copy I got in Mr. Travis report contains these redactions.

I'm advised by Mr. Travis that these all reflect attorney client communications. And if that's the case,

Nathan:

I do. Yeah. So I do have more to report on that. So there was a portion that was left out. I wanted to speak with my attorney before I directly spoke with you about what was under that, just to verify it.

And so he did confirm that I can give you the full copy of that one. So I'll get it to you. You can have mine in front of me if you want, but I just need to talk to

Steve:

Or I just want to email it to me. Yeah, absolutely, I can do. Thanks very much. Mr. Travis, I have to say, has been very cooperative in the discussions we've had.

We I've talked with them a number of times, including shortly before this meeting in which he explained some of the issues, that you have to deal with, including, I guess there was a spill or overflow at lift station number three recently, and that there's water been running in under the door of some other facility. So, the reason that, my wife and I have taken an interest in attending these meetings, and actually, Tera asked me the meeting for what I was doing here, and I wanted to just get some information the first time.

What I'm doing here is to respond to Mr. Travis's. And what River is doing here is responding to Mr. Travis, his comments here. I look forward to hearing his discussion of the report and what efforts the board can make, to correct some of the issues here. I think that, I respect the fact that the folks who, applied for the positions and were elected to it, are taking on a thankless job that nobody else wants to volunteer for.

We recognize that. On the other hand, I think you have your work cut out for you. And, we're here to support the board and support the district not to be critics of it or anything else, but, I guess, our interest is, is finding out why there's such a poor reputation, why you're having so many problems.

Well, that's it, thanks.

Nathan:

All right, so I will, I don't know what that was. Generally speaking, I leave it up to, the board to give me direction. If you would like me to respond. If there's anything you guys would like to respond to. I can also certainly schedule time to, speak with Mr. Dawes. another time to kind of addressing these issues and bring them online to,

I leave that direction up to you guys.

Tera:

There. I think since the, question was, public comment, I know that's not normal protocol to respond to the public, but, since it was a public question, a public response probably would be good. I don't know if it's a a lengthy discussion to address those concerns or I mean, I'm certainly open to you meeting with him one on one and then maybe just updating the public in a, in another meeting or I'm not sure how you guys feel.

James:

I'll take I'll take this one. since I'm sitting here for the exact same reasons you just highlighted, it was one of the key issues where I was concerned. I have black and rust particles coming out of my spigot periodically during flushing times. Anybody who pays attention to Nextdoor understands that there's significant issues across the community that need addressing.

And I think, again, the redacted portion, I think, talking to Kim, I don't think it is privileged and he doesn't think so either. So, okay. So I think that, it behooves us to speak to the people of the town and, and fully disclose, you know, the current situations. There's no reason not to.

Tera:

Question is, it's not normally we don't normally respond to public comment, but if you guys are open to responding to public comment, I'm certainly open to it.

Leah:

I would be open to it.

James:

I'm open to it as well. And since it was redacted and shouldn't have been, there wouldn't be a question if it wasn't redacted.

Tera:

Specific questions. Is it just about I wrote down, excessive chlorine.

Steve:

Yeah. Water smells like chlorine. It's take a bath is like coming out of a swimming pool. Yeah. You can smell on yourself. I don't claim to have an exceptionally good smelling apparatus, but it's clearly noticeable. And, maybe that's, par for the course. Maybe you need to do that to keep the bacteria out. I don't know, but you can definitely smell it.

That's all I'm saying.

Tera:

So is that what you would like addressed? I'm just trying to clarify.

Steve:

The reason I signed up for the public comment was several fold. Number one, I wanted to ensure that the orientations for the new board members complied with the public meetings law. I saw nothing on the website that indicated that the orientations were, noticed as public meetings until it was explained to me that as part of the study session. Having litigated the public meetings law cases multiple times, you may know there are lawyers out there who are doing nothing better to do and look for violations.

Same thing with the Open Records Act. I was going to suggest that, if you're going to redact something out, say the reason for it in parens like attorney client privilege, that's what I used to do. And, suggested that the packets be placed on the website for people to get access to, which is what most municipalities have dealt with for many years to do.

But as I said, since I'm the only one who ever requested the packet, I don't know if it's worth the trouble to to put the packet on the website. That was my comment. And the third reason was to ask you to address the issues that Mr. Travis raised in his memo, which is where the issues I was going to raise until I saw what he had written when I got his packet today.

And I'm looking forward to his discussion today of that memo and why there are such a poor reputation.

Tera:

Perfect. So actually, it sounds like most of your issues have been addressed. And then we'll just do our regular stuff because right. Video from the from the study sessions available online. I watched it, the considering putting the board packets online, I think is something that we should talk about at a future agenda because, they were available in the past and some point in the, and administrations, and they got removed, but they used to be available so we can make them online, and they used to be available in the back so that

the public, because we are making a concerted effort to, promote our level of transparency. So, I, I think that's something that the board can talk about later, but it sounds like we don't need to address it now that everything's been addressed and we can continue.

Steve:

Right. I think it would be great if you put them online.

Other people might want to look at it. And if you're going to do that and somebody thinks there's an attorney client privilege communication, then they're gonna make that judgment ahead of time. Probably consult with Mr. Seter to make sure they're on solid ground. That's all.

Tera:

Perfect. Thank you for clarifying that. Thank you.

Nathan:

Do we have anybody else that is signed up for the public comment period? Terrence, Corby, anybody online?

All right. That brings us to the, next agenda item, item seven, which is the election of board of director officers.

Does anybody have, any motions that they. Sorry, any motions they'd like to make regarding electing officials. Any questions for Mr. Seter before you do that? Any discussion you'd like to have? Not really sure how to introduce this one.

Legal Counsel Kim Seter, Esq.:

Just ask for any nominations or a motion. There we go.

James:

I'd like to nominate, Jason Blankaert.

For president.

Jana:

I will second that.

Jason:

So we have a motion on the floor. we need to vote on it.

Nathan:

Unless there's some discussion.

Tera:

So, let's have the discussion. Basically, I think that it's important for continuity for this board. Obviously, Jason and I are the, people that have been involved in the board the longest. I'm certainly supportive of him in that role. And, I support him.

Board Voting All Speak:

Okay. Any other comments? Then let's move to vote. Sorry. We'll start with, Director Krell, I approve, Director Radloff. Approve. Director Enquist. I approve. And Director Mulvey approve. I approve also. So that's, one vote for president.

Jason:

We still need to vote for, vice president. Secretary, do we have any nominations?

Jana:

I'd like to nominate myself for vice president.

Jason:

Any discussion? ...

Leah:

I'll second that.

Jason:

Any discussion?

Tera:

Yes. I go on record as saying, obviously, this is a role that I'm interested in. Was being president and vice president just because, to everyone's admission, I'm the one that has experience in that role. I support everyone here. I look forward to working together. I, I hope, that's a great learning opportunity.

Jason:

I'd like to say that, I too, would like to see Tera in the vice president's role.

Nothing against anybody or anything like that. No, I'd like to see her in the president's role, so I'm probably not going to vote yet on this one. But, there's a motion, and it's been seconded. So, let's go for the vote. Go ahead and we'll start with you, Director Krell.

Jana:

Can I speak on it just for a moment before I vote?

So, No, I do realize you do have loads of experience in this one, but this is where I feel comfortable with my technical experience and my career in municipal government and local agencies. And so to me, this is, you know, I don't feel, I don't feel any concern being vice president, because I do think I do bring a lot of board experience or experience in the water and sanitary, infrastructure department.

Jason:

Any other comments?

James:

Just after shortly meeting Jana, just a night. We were doing the forum here, and I've told her this before that, I really got a sense of her competence, her honesty. And just a person I thought I could trust almost implicitly and immediately. So.

Board Voting All Speak:

Let's go ahead and start with the votes, and then we'll start at the other end this time, director Molly. approve. Director Enquist, I approve, director Ratliff. Approve. Director Krell approve. And I will approve also. So now we have any nominations for Secretary.

Jason:

I'd like to nominate Tera for secretary. She'll take the position.

Leah:

I'll second that. Any discussion?

Board Voting All Speak:

Let's move for a vote, then. Director Krell, approve. Director Radloff, approve. Director Enquist. Approve. Director Mulvey. Approve and I approve.

Jason:

So we now have a Board of directors officers. So, we can close out item number seven and move on to item number eight. Consideration of approval.

Kim:

Mr. chairman, the Secretary's position should be the secretary treasurer. Historically, you've had those two combined under the bylaws.

They could be separated. But it's always been one person. I just wanted to make sure you're referring to his secretary. But there's more to it than that.

Jason:

Very good. Thank you. I did not know that. So you. Tera then has been elected as secretary treasurer. Thank you. Okay, moving on now to item number eight. Consideration of approval for this, that.

Petra,

Nathan:

I've got this one. this is this is, Austin Hamre. Here is the, district water rights attorney. He, he and I have been working with the Petrocco Farms. It's, one of the pieces of property that we owned that was formerly associated with the water rights that we sold, about this time last year.

And so I just kind of wanted to give him an opportunity to, like, walk you to kind of a brief history, and then this is, consideration of a lease agreement where we would lease the land, as we have to Petrocco Farms, this year was different than it has been in the past. Since we didn't have the water, there were a lot more moving parts, and I thought it'd be better if he explained it than me.

So with no further ado.

Austin Hamre, Water Rights Attorney:

Good evening. so, as Nathan indicated, I'm Austin Hamre. I've been, representing the district on, most of your water rights issues for about the last 20 years. just for background, in 2009, 2010, the district bought shares in four mutual ditch companies up in the Fort Lupton Platteville area.

That was went through water court change process and and that kind of thing. A few years ago, the, the board decided that that's not the direction it wanted to go. It was going to go different direction as far as future water supply, and decided to, to sell those, water rights. So went through a bid process.

You had a few interesting twists and turns as that played out. But, that sale of water rights became final, late last year. In the intervening ten years or so, the district had been leasing those water rights back to farmers up in that area. Actually, the district bought some of the shares with land and some of them without that.

So the district still owns land and, still owns the land up there. The the shares have been purchased by most of them, by the city of Aurora and some by the city of Brighton. During those intervening ten years, to keep the water in use, the shares were leased to farmers up there. It's probable that this will be the last year.

that that'll that will happen. Brighton and Aurora are going to be taking those water rights into they're going to be using them for their municipal system, probably starting next year. But for this year, we, their cities weren't ready to use the water. Farmers still wanted to lease the water rights. so we got a lease worked out.

For this year it's the, the the Castle Pines North metro district is just leasing the land. And then there are wells, and, there's some contracts related to use of the wells that the district owns. So that's that's what we are leasing to, Petrocco Farms. During that period of time, the district mostly wanted to, like I said, wanted to keep the water rates in use.

And, and also, you know, coverage cost to the extent possible. what is becoming very valuable. Farmers weren't able to pay the same rates that that, municipalities were able to, but in any event, we've, we negotiated a price for this lease for, 33,000 for this year, that a few thousand dollars short of covering your costs on the augmentation contracts for the wells.

But that was that was about as much as Petrocco Farms could afford, given that they're also having to lease the shares now from the other municipalities and, and that kind of thing. So this is just a one year, one year lease. That, at least minimizes what you lose. I could wade into a bunch of details, but, I'm not sure that, you know, the all the minor details of the lease are that that's significant.

If you have questions, I'd be happy to answer.

Jason:

How much property are we talking about? Like acre wise?

Austin:

That's a good question. I think for the Petrenko Farms lands, I think it's.

I used to know that number. I think it's about 150 acres. Ballpark. Not much. Not. Not a huge amount.

Nathan:

Yeah, the the primary driver for this, so that we're not going to make any money off of this. As a matter of fact, we're kind of coming out a little bit behind when you put all things into play. One, it helps us make sure that that piece of land, while we own it is being used and well kept.

So it kind of helps us reduce a little bit of liability. We also have quite a few things that are going to be coming up over the next few months regarding these properties, mostly like what do we want to do with the land mineral rights? And then there's also a contract that's associated with them, which is, water accounting.

Austin:

The. Yeah, that relates to, the use of the wells.

Nathan:

Right. Yeah. So that relates to the use of wells. And so there's also, potentially some value in that contract that we need to look at. And so this is really just something to help keep that land in use, cover a little bit of our costs on the back end and then give us a little bit more time just to get everything set up.

But we'll be having over the next few months, probably quite a few discussions around what to do with the rest of that land, and then the associated mineral rights as well.

Jason:

How long have we been leasing this land?

Nathan:

Since 2009, yes.

James:

Question the water that, is associated with these wells and things like that. It does.

Water, light. Right. Water rights have been leased out to you, said Aurora and Brighton. And, the purpose of that, it looks like when I look at the lease document is you have to use that water per year. It seems like to be a term in the contract for leasing. I mean, maybe I misunderstood it, but it made it sound like that water had to be, properly used or disposed of.

And that's why we're letting this farm utilize that water.

Austin:

Up until this year, Castle Pines was leasing out the the land, the ditch company shares that had been used on it, and also the use of these wells over the last few years, the district has gone through a process to sell the ditch company shares. So.

So you no longer own those. So this this year CPN is not leasing the shares because it doesn't own them anymore. Aurora and Brighton have made separate arrangements to to lease the shares to these farmers.

James:

Okay. Thank you.

Jason:

All right. So are you looking for approval of this lease? Yes, sir. All right.

Tera:

So why? It's a year lease, and it looks like it's dated back to January of this year. Just curious why we're just now looking at it.

Nathan:

Because of all of the moving parts. And so this thing kind of jumped up a little bit later.

We were kind of operating under the assumption that the water wouldn't be available to them. so awesome. And I have been, I mean, really probably since February or March, trying to get everybody involved. So we're trying to figure out the contracts, trying to get somebody from Aurora to reach back out so that we can find out if the water's available for them, because obviously Petrocco didn't want to lease the land if they weren't going to have water available.

And so it just took us a long time to figure out if it was even possible or going to happen. So once we got to that point where everybody was at the table, it just took a really long time to get all the parties aligned and paying attention to each other.

Tera:

And the termination date is, December 31st of this year.

Austin:

Yeah. It's best it'll run through this irrigation season.

Tera:

And I was a little curious about, the, how abandonment. There's an abandonment clause. And but it wasn't defined anywhere that I could tell that says left vacant or abandoned. What constitute vacant and what constitutes abandonment? Can you number 11. Thank you. Page five.

Austin:

Is what they're referring to. There is, if you I mean it's it's not going to happen this year. But the the provision is designed to address the situation where if the farmer just doesn't do anything, doesn't plant a crop, isn't taking care of the property, that sort of thing, you can step back in and and take control of the property.

Tera:

Right? I understand that, I just wasn't sure what constituted abandonment. Like how long is that or what is the what is the definition of that?

Austin:

The it would probably depend on the circumstances. This lease has been in place for about ten years now. it's it is really a moot point for this year. Previously, these, these leases have been 3 or 4 year leases.

So that's why you needed to have the ability to step back in for a one year lease. It's really not much of an issue. We tried to keep the lease as make as few changes from what they'd seen previously, just to keep farm up rolling.

Tera:

Makes sense. And I didn't realize it was just probably not going to continue after this year when I was reading through.

So I had just made that note to ask about. So thank you very much. Okay.

Jason:

Okay. Do we have any motions to approve this lease?

Tera:

I move to approve the lease as presented.

Jason:

Any second.

Leah:

I will second that.

Jason:

Any discussion? Then I move to vote.

Tera:

So sorry. I have one other question. For it says, that it was going to be signed by Nathan Travis as secretary. Can we get that updated?

Nathan:

Yeah, I literally just caught that myself. Yeah. We'll get we'll make sure the signature page is correct. Thank you.

Board Voting All Speak:

So all right, so we have, second on the floor. So call for a vote. let's start with Director Mulvey. Approve. Director Enquist. Approve. Director Radloff. Approve Director Krell. Approve. And I approve it as well.

Jason:

So moving on, then we'll close out number eight and move on to item number nine.

Discussion regarding City of Castle Pines Urban Renewal Authority. Nathan, I think you have some visitors on this.

Nathan:

Yeah we do. We're going to start with, Sam Bishop with the city of Castle Pines. He is the community development director. I think I've got that right. He's going to start with a PowerPoint presentation. Give us some background, just general information around it, and then, take some questions.

Sam Bishop, City of Castle Pines, Community Development Director:

Perfect. Thank you. Nathan, I am the community development director for the city. So what that involves is planning, zoning, development, building. I can help you out with roads and stormwater, but that's not really in my purview. My skin's not thick enough for those positions. So, outside of this meeting, if you have questions about anything development related, please feel free to look me up.

Easy to find online, or I can give you my contact information. So I'm here this this evening, to provide you an overview of the city's recent formation of the Castle Pines Urban Renewal Authority and our pending. This is a mouthful. Castle Pines West commercial district urban renewal plan. And I'll get into why we're calling it that.

Describer:

On screen.

What is the purpose of Urban Renewal?

To revitalize an area that requires additional intervention in order to remedy blight, restore economic vitality, and/or improve safety.

• Redeveloping existing areas is more expensive and difficult than new development.

Colorado has empowered local authorities with certain tools, including tax increment financing, to offset costs and encourage investment by the private sector in urban renewal areas.

Incentivize property owners/developers to tackle the challenges associated with infill redevelopment or environmentally complicated sites,

Attract private investment, utilize underdeveloped land, and leverage public investment to provide necessary public infrastructure to serve the subject area, all for the purpose of remedying and preventing blight.

Sam:

So again, I'm just going to provide you an overview. This presentation is text heavy. I'll send it out if you don't already have it. I'm not going to read to you but when we talk about urban renewal, it can be somewhat of a confusing subject. so I just want to make sure that we're consistent with the language that we're using.

And I'll get to the plan area and what this is really about. I don't think it's a surprise to anybody here in this room. We have a business district. I wouldn't say that it languishing, but it has really been, I would say flat for the last 14 years that I've been here in town. It has not been successful, by any imagination or kind of in imagination.

But it is very important to us. It generates our sales tax. It's our employment center has a residential component. But what it is not a it's not vibrant. It's not a place to spend quality time with your family. It's, neighborhood based service center. But that's no real way to run a city as far as the downtown area.

Describer:

On screen. What is the purpose of Urban Renewal?

"The purpose of this Castle Pines West Commercial District Urban

Renewal Plan is to reduce and remove blighting conditions adversely impacting properties and businesses in the Area"

"Eliminate and prevent the development or spread of blight"

"Authority's intention to finance, install, construct, reconstruct, and cooperate with others to complete capital improvements to infrastructure and utilities, in an effort to further economic growth locally and regionally, as well as facilitate the orderly development of the community".

Sam:

So admittedly, it has been, my biggest challenge here in this role, for a number of reasons. And I'll get to some of those reasons not to make excuses, but, and I'm not sure that urban renewal is the silver bullet that's going to solve the issues within that district. It will take a public private partnership. And we do need investment from the private sector folks.

So again, we are calling it the Castle Pines West Commercial District Urban Renewal Plan. That's important because it's on the west side of I-25. In the future, there will be commercial development on the east side of I-25. That's a master planning community that's probably going to more resemble a downtown area where the streets are adequately planned.

It's under one unified development plan. So we refer currently to this as the West Commercial area. And eventually we'll have commercial property on the east side. The technical term is the business zoning district, but this area encompasses slightly more than that or not the entirety of it, I should say. But again, that sounds somewhat sterile, today.

So urban renewal really is to prevent and eliminate blight. I understand people don't like the term blight. it is a statutorily defined, criteria. We can get into what blight really means. We have done the condition study for this area. We have found, I think the state statute outlines 11 criteria we identified for that.

You you'd be hard pressed to argue with, but I think there's probably upwards of nine, ten, possibly even 11, within our business district. But we'll we'll get to that as well. But again, an urban renewal area, is a defined area, and the plan is the really the financing mechanism to incentivize and spur development and redevelopment.

Describer:

On screen: Castle Pines Urban Renewal Authority

Organization

25 registered electors file a petition with the City Clerk describing the need for a URA

City Council held a public hearing determining the need for URA

• Council found that at least one "slum" or "blighted" area exists and that redevelopment is necessary in the interest of public health, safety, or welfare of the residents;

Council designated itself as the URA; and

• County Representative, School District Representative, Representative from remaining tax entities, and a Mayor appointed board member [Mailed notice on 5/19/23 to 36 taxing entities City-wide]

Sam:

As far as the organization, it's fairly easy to organize an urban renewal authority. 25 registered electors within the city need to file a petition with the city clerk describing the need for an urban renewal authority that was done in April of this year, or city council shortly thereafter held a public hearing determining the need for URA.

At that point in time, we did review the condition study that was presented. The city has worked on this effort for well over a year. And if you're a historian in Castle Pines, we actually had an urban renewal authority, just over a decade ago that was, a referendum and was ultimately abolished by the, citizens, for a referendum vote.

So this is, take two, if you will. But again, the business district has not improved since the original formation of the URA that that went away. And this is we identified this as the number one tool that's really going to help us out in getting where we think the community wants this area to be.

Which what is typical of urban renewal authorities Council appointed themselves as the authority. I would say there's been more recent changes, in urban renewal law. Now a county representative must sit on that board. That is going to be Commissioner Teal. We have notified the school district, about their vacant board seat. They have, not appointed anybody at this point in time.

And then this is where it gets fun. The state statute says of the remaining tax entities, there's a vacant board seat. In our case, there was 36 tech taxing entities citywide. This is not just for the plan area. Again, state statue is not really clear other than it says you need to provide notice to all the taxing entities citywide.

So we did that. I will tell you, there's I guess I would say there's duplicates. There's like Metro district one, two, three and four and some are financing. So that number seems somewhat inflated. I will tell you within this, area that we'll discuss, there's really seven tax districts, that I believe that should be available for this, vacant seat.

Describer:

On screen. Procedure for Creating an Urban Renewal Area

• Determine survey area boundaries

• Notify property owners within boundaries

> Verify presence and location of "blighted" conditions (field survey)

• Prepare conditions survey

• Present survey findings to council for acceptance

• Define boundaries for urban renewal area

• Complete market assessment to develop assumptions for impact report

• Prepare urban renewal plan

• Quantify (tax increment finance - TIF) potential within area

> Complete taxing entity impact reports and enter in IA's

Present urban renewal plan to Council for adoption

Work with owners and developers to advance redevelopment/reinvestment Implement plan

Sam:

And then the mayor can appoint a, board member at large to make an odd number. The board needs an odd number. So there'll be 11 folks on this board. So as far as the procedures, again, I kind of just. I bolted towards the end. This is where we are in the process. So the Urban Renewal Authority has been formed.

We've met all the statutory requirements where we've met with property owners. Again, we've been working on this well over a year. We've held a number of zoom meetings. A lot of our property owners are out of town, which makes it challenging for face to face meetings. So we've accommodated, property owners out of town. We've met with business owners.

This doesn't necessarily affect the business owner if they're just renting a business. whereas, you know, they're typically just paying a rent, which is, you know, includes a lot of different, I guess, things in that line item as far as a rent goes, common area maintenance being one of those, which includes property taxes. And we'll get the property taxes here in a minute.

Again, a condition study was, performed for the subject area. Those were presented to council. We've prepared impact reports. We've met with the county assessor. We've prepared an urban renewal plan again, that's in a draft format. And then, tax increment financing. We'll get to that. You can't talk about urban renewal, not talk about TIF is the acronym.

If you hear that it's tech, it's tax increment financing. And again, we're at the point now where we prepared impact reports and we need to enter into any revenue sharing agreements. And those typically are in the form of an IGA or an intergovernmental agreement. And then lastly, council will approve an urban renewal plan. And we anticipate the Urban Renewal Authority, meeting for the first time, probably in September of this year.

Describer:

On screen. Urban Renewal Area map

Condition study Area

It is defined as from I-25 to a block before Yorkshire Dr. Along East Castle Pines Parkway. It moves south just beyond Villa drive and Village Square intersection. And it extends north just beyond Max drive.

Sam:

And then after that, it's really to put the plan into action. And we'll get we'll talk about what that looks like or means. So you're probably curious, I apologize for the way that the, the sun setting on the screen. So this is the, the, the subject area. a]As I mentioned before, it is the city's business zone district.

What we did carve out are the deed restricted park parcels around the, around this building, the metro district building. I put a store in the Metro district building just to provide you some sense of context. So off to the right of the screen is I-25. And then Castle Pines Parkway, kind of traverses through the, the middle or the center or kind of along the northern edge of our business district again, which is one of the issues we have.

Typically in a downtown area, you'll have your arterial street actually go through the downtown. Ours is nice because it zips you around it and you get to go 45mph, but it doesn't allow you to actually see the buildings that are here in the tenants and a number of other things that you find in the typical downtown, how that works.

So what we have going on here again is, it's roughly 150 acres. there's a handful of, I would say they're considered to be infill parcels that are vacant parcels. I typically tell people they're vacant for a reason. the either the access, the visibility, those are two of the primary ones. When you're looking at commercial property, I get calls on these, you know, over the year, some just aren't for sale.

People will tell you anything is for sale if you get, you know, if you get a check big enough to, to write for the property, but they're not being marketed. Again, some of these folks are out of state. These are just line items on their spreadsheets. So there's there hasn't been any real, I guess I would say investment, within this area, we can get into some of the issues, but this is, with, with the exception of Castle Pines Parkway, in the city actually owns lot four, which is kind of in the, I guess I'd say the southwest corner of this area, on the, the southwest corner

of Castle Pines and Legae. Other. With the exception of that in the roadway there, there's no public property in this area. So if you're familiar with like Village Square Lane, Village Square Drive, Terrace, I call it that kind of that connective tissue over near Dukes and some of the other areas. Again, typically what you'll find in the downtown area is private property or public property.

Public investment, whatever that looks like. It can be, you know, benches, wider sidewalks, trash cans. A lot of those pedestrian features are absent, within our business district. it's clear that it's very auto centric. People want to get in, they want to get out. But again, people aren't really spending quality time. We we're just more recently officing in the library building.

We moved just above the Bunt shop. A lot of my landmarks are always restaurants, so forgive me. But I'll literally see somebody go from the dry cleaners to the post office to another business over there, and they get in their car and they go to each spot. It's just it's not a great place to walk. We, you know, we've done community surveys to wear blue in the face.

We know people go to Lone Tree. We know people go to Castle Rock. People are like, why don't you build it? We want to stay here. We want to invest in the local community. And we do. But it's just not good enough at this point. I don't live in the city, but anytime I have an opportunity to shop local, I do.

Describer:

On screen. Urban Renewal Area Statistics

Zoning - Business District, Planned Development

Total Parcels - 91

Acres - 150 approx.

Total Actual Value - $145.7 m approx.

Total Assessed Value - $21.6 m approx.

Value Per Square Foot - $23.25 approx.

Property Tax Base - $2.1 m annually

Ownership Groups - 29

Parcels Owned by Out-of-State Interest - 25 (46% of Total Acres)

Out-of-State Ownership Groups - 13

Potential Development | Redevelopment Sites - 8 sites, 15 approx.

Tax Increment Revenue Forecast - ~$38 million (Sources: property, sales, use taxes) - next 5 to 10 years

- ~$91 million (Sources: property, sales, use taxes) - next 10 to 25 years

Sam:

But it's not moving the needle within this area. So this is kind of a again, this is an overview of the area. This is our consultant pulled this together for us. So there's 91 parcels within this area. It's 150 acres approximately. We worked with the tax assessor. We figured out what the actual value is. At this point in time, nothing has been set as far as the base tax rate.

This is still a work in progress until the actual urban renewal plan gets approved by city council. And again, we say roughly 46% of the total acreage. So if you can you think about that, that's owned by out of state interest. That's huge. It's really hard to coordinate when you have folks, again that live at a state.

The good news is, is a couple of these larger properties, just within this last year, have actually turned over to local groups, which are really excited about. We were actually excited to say, hey, you know, there's maybe a really a redevelopment opportunity here for you or what can we do to assist you? They, at this point in time, seem to be kind of value plays.

Describer:

On screen.Urban Renewal Blight Conditions

A determination of blight is a cumulative conclusion based on the presence of several physical, environmental, and social factors defined by state law. Blight is often attributable to a multiplicity of conditions, which in combination, tend to contribute to the phenomenon of deterioration of an area. For purposes of this Survey, the definition of a blighted area is based upon the definition articulated in the Colorado Urban Renewal Law, as follows:

"Blighted area" means an area that, in its present condition and use and, by reason of the presence of at least four of the following factors, substantially impairs or arrests the sound growth of the municipality, retards the provision of housing accommodations, or constitutes an economic or social liability, and is a menace to the public health, safety, morals, or welfare:

**Conditions in bold present in Survey Area**

CITY OP

CASTLE PINES

(a) Slum, deteriorated, or deteriorating structures

(b) Predominance of defective or inadequate street layout

(c) Faulty lot layout in relation to size, adequacy, accessibility, or usefulness

(d) Unsanitary or unsafe conditions

(e) Deterioration of site or other improvements

(f) Unusual topography or inadequate public improvements or utilities

(g) Defective or unusual conditions of title rendering the title non-marketable

(h) Existence of conditions that endanger life or property by fire or other causes

(i) Buildings (or sites) that are unsafe or unhealthy for persons to live or work in because of building code violations, dilapidations, deterioration, defective design, physical construction, or faulty or inadequate facilities

(i Environmental contamination of buildings or property (k.5) Existence of health, safety, or welfare factors requiring

high levels of municipal services or substantial physical underutilization or vacancy of sites, buildings, or other improvements

Sam:

They were bought. They're going to be fixed up to some extent. But we don't know that they're fundamentally going to change anything about the properties or the tenant mix at this point in time. So these are the blight conditions. Again, this is a cut and paste job out of state statutes. You can look this up. We bolded the ones that I think you know again are going to be hard to argue.

I call this the straight face test. I get it, the state of one is somebody with a straight face and say, yes, these are issues within our business zone district. Again, I'll just run through these real quick, inadequate street layout. There's a number of one way streets, faulty lot layouts. Again, there's some infill parcels.

You know, I would say that there's almost a third tier of commercial property off of Castle Pines Parkway. If you, you know, where the I don't know, the the Indian restaurant again, for my landmark as a restaurant. I would say that's almost three blocks off of Castle Pines Parkway. There's not enough signage in the world for somebody to know that there's a restaurant back there or dry cleaners.

You got to kind of know that you cut through there when the parkway is really backed up, or you're running errands and you can find your way over there, unsafe conditions. Again, you know, this area started it was actually zoned in the 50s. I don't think it's all any real development until the mid 80s and then into the 90s, but it was every developer for themselves.

What that means is you bought a parcel, you had to put in sidewalks to the extent, you know, the county thought it maybe didn't need a sidewalk on a side or adjacent street, they weren't required to put one in. Then there's a vacant lot. There's not a sidewalk there. There's not adequate street lighting. And again, if you go over there, it's pothole City.

It's cracks. It's a number of other issues. And again, without the public, investment in that area, the city cannot come in there legally and do anything about that. Inadequate kind of public improvements and utilities. Again, these were kind of designed that a period of time, you know, there's stormwater ponds along Castle Pines Parkway that's kind of like the last thing you want within your downtown area are detention ponds.

And then, you know, you see the backs of the buildings. Again, we all support these, you know, businesses. But it is easy to point out some of the the physical, I guess deficiencies within this area. And then again, I mean, there's always a catch all just, you know, health, safety and welfare, you know, high levels of municipal services within this area.

I the only thing that I would really attribute to that would be Castle Pines Parkway. You know, it was just redone this last year, but it still needs work closer to I-25, which, you know, this area is within that area. And the city has made a number of investments along Castle Pines Parkway and continues to as well.

Describer:

On screen.

Castle Pines Urban Renewal Authority "CPURA"

This is a path of development.

Key Steps:

Gather Signatures on Petition

In Progress:

-Create Urban Renewal Authority

Prepare Conditions Survey

-June 1st - Prepare Impact Reports and Notify Taxing Entities

-- In Progress - Negotiate Revenue Sharing Agreements

-Prepare Urban Renewal Plan

--Public Hearing

Prepare Preliminary TIF Forecast

* Any twenty-five registered electors of the municipality

Sam:

So if you're a flow chart person, over on the left, we gathered signatures. The Urban Renewal Authority has been created. We had prepared the condition survey. we have put together some of the tiff forecasting. And then on June 1st, I sent, a letter to your district, basically notifying that we're there's a pending urban renewal plan.

It does have a Tiff component. And as part of that, the city, you know, is required to enter into a, again, a either a revenue sharing agreement or an IGA. We have prepared a draft, plan or IGA for the board to consider. I'm not here tonight to pitch that or negotiate it or do any math.

But I'm here to tell you, provide you an overview and just let you know that we're we want to work with you. This is an important project, I think, for everybody's interests and residents alike. And then at the end of that period, when we have agreements in place, we have to have agreements in place. we will adopt an urban renewal plan at a future public hearing.

Describer:

On screen. The Basis for a URA

• City Council's Strategic Plan (2022)

Gateway and Wayfinding Plan (2019)

• Mixed Use Design Guidelines (2018)

Castle Pines Commercial District Assessment (2012)

Castle Pines Village Square Library Subarea Plan (2014)

Castle Pines Central Business District ULI Technical Advisory

Panel Report (2018)

• Castle Pines Parkway/1-25 Landscape Plan (2021)

• Economic Action Plan (2020)

Sam:

So I want to assure the board that City Council, just this last year, didn't think this was a great idea or needed tool. We've always thought that, these are adopted plans, you know, that really kind of guide in our decision making and other projects that are a priority for the community. So I've just kind of listed these and put the year out beside these.

I mean, the earliest one on here is 2012. I would say that there was probably some stuff done before that. But that was four years after incorporation. But this area has always been a priority. And I would say half of these specifically say you need a form, an urban renewal authority to cure the defects within this business district.

Some of these other ones just kind of speak to, you know, helping maybe implement that area, like our gateway and wayfinding plan, you know, that's currently under construction right now. It's a nice monument sign off of I-25. We're trying to work on branding. It speaks to economic development. But again, it it is, along the lines of economic development and trying to improve this business district and driving folks to existing businesses.

Describer:

On screen. This is an overview plan and map with detailed labels. Refer to the URA for a more detail description.

Urban Renewal Plan

The intent of the URP is to advance the Objectives of the City's Comprehensive Plan

Goal ED-3: Retrofit the Business

District to create a stronger mixed-use downtown feel with unique sit-down restaurants, office, retail, and housing.

ED-3.1 Encourage redevelopment at a higher intensity with clustered areas to facilitate walkability.

ED-3.2 Encourage retrofitting traditional auto-oriented recall centers to comfortably and safely accommodate pedestrian and bicycle connections.

ED-3.3 Advocate for public outdoor gathering spaces as part of redevelopment efforts, providing places for community events and socializing

ED-3.4 Support and cultivate local and existing businesses to increase business retention.

21-3.5 Promote reinvestment, redevelopment, and adaptive reuse of under-performing or vacant commercial properties.

ED-3.6 Foster a pro-business environment conducive to attracting a variety of retail, restaurant, service, and grocery options.

ED-3.7 Improve shared parking access to serve largely simultaneous use of retail, office, and civic uses.

Goal ED-4: Promote fresh food production for health, food security, and economic opportunities.

ED-4.1 Promote farmers markets and produce stands where appropriate.

ED-4.2 Support local food production in appropriate residential locations for community gardens or small urban farms.

Sam describes. There is another slide with development visions which describe their vision of what they believe the area will eventually look like. There is no readable text to share.

Sam:

So this is a little, this is a literally a page or snippet out of our comprehensive plan. The city's comprehensive plan is a it's a long range planning document, has a shelf life of roughly 25 years. And then we revisit that every five years, as new people move into the community, maybe the vision changes. So we kind of, you know, of course.

Correct. And see where we are. but what this is, is, is kind of a, it's an aerial look generally of the business district area. And you can kind of see these, these blue, building forms. And this is really an input from the community, again, about what this area could be, should be and incorporate open space, walkable streets, streets that are lined up, a good a different tenant mix than what we currently see, which is primarily service based.

So again, this doesn't happen without urban renewal. And this is part of just the case for, you know, why we're doing this. These are other plans and reports. Don't let these scare you. But again, these are adaptive plans. These are like kind of visionary. They may or may not happen. These are not regulatory in nature. They're advisory.

They are pretty pictures. we this is what we aspire to be someday. But it's not. We're not telling any property owner. You have to build this. You know, when you come in and you want to change something on your building or your property. But again, you see, kind of on the right, you're not really going to get the context of this, but this is kind of where Village Square Lane and Village Square, drive me that's over near Dukes.

Again, there's a vacant parcel there, but there's a thought. Hey, wouldn't it be cool? You know, those roads are 80ft wide, which is ridiculous. You know, for that area, people speed up and down to get to the, the apartments right now. Again, there's a real opportunity here to make some improvements and kind of rethink about things that are done.

Describer:

On screen. Urban Renewal Terminology

• Tax Increment Financing (TIF)

The tax rate does not change, and no new taxes are authorized.

TIF is the additional value created by new development as multiplied by the existing tax rates.

Urban Renewal Law allows the urban renewal authority, developer or property owner to borrow against this revenue stream up front in order to construct the project.

TIF is a new source of tax revenue, not an additional tax, that would not be available but for the new investment.

Sam:

But that's one of the biggest challenges with these areas that are established is kind of, you know, rolling back the clock and trying to, you know, unwind what what has been done. But Tiff, as we are right here, right now, is the biggest financing tool to help that get started. So the additional value that's created in here and I got a kind of a chart to help visualize this on the next slide is as new development occurs.

And that's the key word new development redevelopment. There is what's considered tax increment financing. So again the next slide I'll kind of visually demonstrate the the the tax base. And then as new develop new development occurs. The assessor is going to come in and attribute that new development to higher property tax rates, and that the difference between the existing base and the new was considered to be, the tiff is that tax increment and that is reinvested back into the business district or that area that I showed you on a map, and why that's important.

Describer:

On screen. Urban Renewal Terminology

~ Tax Increment Financing (TIF)

A line graph describing the TIF Assessed Value and increasing over the next 25 years as compared to the Base Assessed Value which steps up every 5 years approximately. "The New revenue over the base is reinvested within the area". Sam explains.

Sam:

It allows the Urban Renewal Authority. So the board themselves, but more likely a developer or property owner to borrow against that revenue stream into the future. This urban renewal plan lives for 25 years. So it has a shelf life of 25 years. And I'll go to the next slide because I, I hope this helps visualize. This is like if you've if you ever go here, do you think about urban renewal with I'll show you this slide.

So how this works is the base year on the on the far left in the corner base year. That means this year, it has not been established again. We've met with the assessor. They have not set the base year once the urban renewal plan does. There's again, this is a heavily regulated, topic. They the assessor determines when that base year is set on those property values.

And then as time goes on. So out to the right over 25 years, the red line indicates the base assessed valuation. So that really kind of accounts for market valuation as far as inflationary factors. But as new development occurs and we hope that it does, then you realize what is the green line. And the area between the green and the red is what's considered to be the tax increment.

If you look to the far right, it says new revenue over the base is reinvested within the area. So if you again, if you can visualize that that red area development occurs in there over a period of 25 years as time is kind of moving forward. New development again, has a higher assessed value. That money is captured by the Urban Renewal Authority reinvested into that area to cure blight.

Describer:

On screen. Frequently Asked Questions:

What is the Benefit of a URA?

• Allow TIF to be spent on improvements within the Plan Area

• Identify and fund needed capital improvements

• Provide capital for property redevelopment/expansion financial assistance

• Is there a particular project or plan for redevelopment?

Will property taxes go up?

Will property values go up?

Sam:

That's really what this is about, is to cure some of those, issues that the plan sees on the front end. and then these are just kind of questions I probably anticipate, you know, what's the benefit of having an urban renewal authority? Again, it's about capital improvements. It's about redevelopment. It's about, you know, providing financial assistance.

It's clear that, you know, these these property owners are not incentive incentivized right now for a variety of reasons. They're not motivated. We actually have really low vacancy rates. And we have for the last couple of years, with the exception of Safeway, they continue to pay rent. But it is a vacant building. It's a little bit strange.

You can't really say it's vacant. They're the tenant. They pay rent. But they're just not in it. So that doesn't help anybody out. Except for the landlord who is now local. Which is good news, but it's clear that there hasn't been any investment within this area. And I think the next big question is, well, what are you planning to do?

We don't actually have any plans. This is a tool that we're putting in place to be prepared for when somebody comes to town and say, hey, I want to buy the Safeway Center, I want to redevelop it. What can you do to help me out? This is going to be that tool that helps them out. Somebody just bought the Safeway Center.

We said, great, what are you going to do with it? They said, we're going to take the parking lot and put new landscaping and new lights, and hopefully they find somebody to backfill the Safeway space. It's kind of a win win, but that's not really redevelopment. It's not moving the needle here within the community, especially when we don't tax groceries.

So again, we're trying to move the community forward. This is not an overnight type of a deal. This is actually relatively I wouldn't say it's relatively small for an urban renewal area. But we do have a lot of pieces that are fragmented. Again, there's over 90 parcels. Some aren't going to go anywhere. Right? Some people own a building on it, like Walgreens.

That's just going to be Walgreens. They have 100 year lease on that. They just built that thing in 2009. It's not going anywhere. Like it's not going to do anything. So what we're thinking about are some of these parcels that are vacant. Maybe they can be assembled. Some of the larger land holdings, which again, does that Safeway Center, which does not include, PNC Bank or Wendy's?

That's not part of that ownership group, but it does include the liquor store. So they actually have, you know, some assemblage of properties, in that area, if they wanted to do something, this is just an opportunity for them to, to do that. Another question we get, are my property tax is going to go up again.

No, it's the 97 mills over time as redevelopment occurs. And we hope that we're lucky enough to actually attract people here and attract good businesses. The property values will go up, which probably means higher rents for somebody. You can't continue to, you know, have the same rent if the area is wildly successful. So again, we want this to to rise all boats.

But your property taxes do not go up. And if you're a resident outside of this area, it does absolutely nothing other than, again, if this area is successful, it's a good reflection on the community and hopefully on your property values as a resident. So I think that's all I had. That was the overview. I'm happy to ask questions.

I know you have another speaker on this subject too. I'm happy to come back up after that. Whatever the board feels is necessary. Thank you.

Jason:

Thank you Sam. Does anybody have any questions for him?

Tera:

Well, thank you so much for joining us tonight. for that, it's taking me a while to wrap my head around that, but just, so for my own edification, and I know we have another speaker coming up, but. So you said there's really seven, districts for one available seat and so one of them is us.

One of them is South Metro is one the library. Who are the seven?

Sam:

Correct? Yeah. And I actually misspoke. So the county and the school district already have seats. So I would back those two out of that seven equation. And now you have five. So Castle Pines North Metro District South metro rescue fire district Cherry Creek basin water quality authority, library district that I'd say them.

And then there's. I can go look at my notes. There's one. Yeah, I, I think there's one other smaller one.

Tera:

So there's school district always has one. The county has one. Castle Pines, North south metro schools, urban drainage and flood.

Sam:

Oh, yeah. Mile high urban drainage. And then Cherry Creek based on water quality.

Tera:

So what about urban drainage and South Platte?

Sam:

Yeah. So those are the same district. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Thanks.

Tera:

So. This creek, the rates have not been set for this year, but our property values are very high for this year, so it sounds like it will be set very high.

Sam:

I actually think it goes back a year again. This is where it gets really tricky. And I'm not the assessor.

Tera:

I know you were.

You always say it was told there be no math. So it's like

Sam:

I have met with the assessor and they can't even give me the date. But there's dates coming up if we don't meet those and it goes for the year. It. I'm not trying to mislead anybody or anything. I just don't have those answers.

Tera:

So let me.

So I'm a developer. I just bought Safeway. And there's the you are in place so the you are a how does it work. It creates a pool of money, if you will. And then I come in and I'm going to redevelop Safeway. So I identify a specific project. And then I come, I present it to the URA and ask them to fund all of it, fund a portion of it?

Sam:

It could be all of the above, but the first question in the board is going to establish kind of rules around how you ask for money in projects, but you need to you need to open your books and you need to demonstrate, you know, is there a gap in this financing? Because let's say to, to to develop the Safeway Center, let's say it's a $50 million effort.

Let's say it includes a residential component. This developer with all and especially in this financial climate, let's say they're able to come up with 35 million of that. And they can disclose that. And they show us, you know, the banks that they've talked to. So there's a 15 if my example is 50 million, there's a $15 million gap.

If you will then come to the authority, you say, hey, this is what I want to do. You know? And then again, if there's parameters around that, the authority can decide whether or not to partner with them. It can be a portion of that. It can be a bunch of different ways that that looks like. But in a nutshell, that's the gist.

Tera:

And all of the, parameters for how are going to do that and determination.

Are those written up in some kind of bylaws or something or.

Sam:

Yeah. So the board will have bylaws. And then yeah, there's if you go, I don't want to direct you in a bunch of different places. So I got a lot of resources. So Castle Rock and Parker have been wildly successful with their projects. And who's allowed to ask and what that means in their parameters.

So they've been very helpful and helping me establish what that's going to look like as we move forward. And again, I'm going to get feedback from the urban renewal authority about what that looks like, who they want to partner with. I don't think it's going to be a handout. You know, I think if somebody wants to come again, the Safeway guys, they already emailed me.

They said, hey, construction costs are really expensive. We want a black like red black top, our parking lot. I said, hey, that's great. But that that's not in my mind. That's not a huge public improvement. You just took on that property. That's something you need to do. That's just part of your maintenance. Like we're not here for that.

Like give us something to where it's going to make the site more safe, more desirable. Reposition it, re-market it, do something that's going to help the larger community not just benefit you, because construction costs are high right now.

Tera:

Right. And I'm and I'm putting on my metro district because I want to make sure that I protect the people within here.

And they're not commercial owners. They're all out there residential. But I look at the commercial and I say, if somebody just because that's the biggest target, somebody, I'm going to come in and I'm going to redevelop Safeway and I get urban renewal money. So my incremental taxes have gone into that fund. But the if, if they do something other than pave the parking lot of the let's use, for example, if they have like residential, they have commercial on the bottom, residential on the top or whatever, that's going to increase increased demand for water.

Correct. So then how do I make sure that the district is protected from like, where are we going to get the money for? We got a and what if that creates a capacity issue on our water plant? Because now we have all these more people in all these uses using our water plant and our water plant needs upgraded.

How do we make sure that we aren't affected by this financing.

Sam:

Right. so yeah, a couple things there. I guess I would say before any development ever occurs, we always get what's called a will serve letter from the district. So if you don't have the water there nobody's developing. So that's kind of the first big hurdle for any developer.

Describer:

On screen. Urban Renewal Terminology

~ Tax Increment Financing (TIF)

A line graph describing the TIF Assessed Value and increasing over the next 25 years as compared to the Base Assessed Value which steps up every 5 years approximately. "The New revenue over the base is reinvested within the area". Sam explains.

Sam:

And I guess I'll take you back to this slide. So the the metro district will continue to realize their mill levy. And again currently it's 15.79 that, that whatever the base year is, that's going to continue to go up every two years. Property gets reassessed every two years. If this were ten years ago, whatever your base rate is today, that's frozen in time for 25 years, that's not the case today.

Again, it continues to go up. Is it keeping up with the rate of development? Not necessarily new development within that area. Those are paying tap fees. They're paying all the fees to develop within that area. Which is I hope, paying its way, if you will, as far as you know, getting that initial infrastructure in place, buying the water, I'm not sure what currently have the mill.

The mills are used by the district, you know, is that acquiring future water rights? I don't think it's paying for, you know, developers to use it on a yearly basis. I mean, people are still paying water rates, whatever those are. And I I'll, I don't know that this is I'm not here to change your mind on anything but the base here you go out 25 years.

If you see where the green is at the the end of that, when the clock stops at the end of the 25 years, then the metro district's rate jumps up to that, that green line, if you will. So you're realizing the full value after development occurs. I mean, we can be in a point where, you know, if for whatever reason, people don't develop, they don't invest in this area.

The red line actually may be flat or right, or it just it just continues to go nowhere. We're really trying to re incentivize development, get the property values up, create a livable area. And then everybody is successful in that because then you don't. Then you realize the green at the end of the day, if you don't you're just going to continue to see the the red kind of flat line.

Tera:

So it still impacts the people that live here and shop there because the developers aren't going to, you know, they're going to work all those costs back into their rent rates in there. Oh, whatever rates, which will work its way back to all the people that live here anyway. So.

Sam:

Well, yeah, but they got to be competitive on some level, right?

I mean, we're at Cherry Creek North prices right now. I don't know how some of these business owners afford it. It's ridiculous.

Jason:

So how long are these board members going to serve for?

Sam:

Oh good question. I don't think it's in perpetuity. There is, and I apologize.

Tera:

Council serves through their terms, correct?

Sam:

Yeah. but the Urban Renewal Authority does have defined terms.

but yeah, whoever's in that council position will continue to roll with council. So that's always going to be seven members on council. that fill those positions. And then I believe it's you know, it's always going to be the school district. It's always going to be the county. And then as far as this position, I think that's in perpetuity.

Once this board is formed, it's just a matter of who is serving in that position for that authority. Thank you.

Jason:

Any other questions for Sam? Kim?

Kim:

Mr. Bishop, what has the city set any deadline for getting the IGAs in place yet?

Sam:

Yes, I just know under state statute. Once I sent a letter out, which was June 1st, 120 days. Okay. Yeah. Is the the time frame for which we need to have an agreement in place?

Kim:

Sure. We have an opportunity to address it because there are a lot of issues here we need to talk about, not just with regard to the issues that, Director Radloff just raised. But, you know, we have pledged tax revenues back to the city for the under the Parks and Rec side. Somehow. We'll have to work through that.

We still have the potential or the desire to dissolve the district and possibly include in some other district. It could affect that generally urban renewal authorities, in my opinion, are a great thing. But you have a lot of issues we need to talk through so that you fully understand what we're doing and can make a decision. So we have 120 days, let's call it 90.

Sam:

Yeah. Oh it's going to go right quick. Yeah. Yeah. And I imagine our attorney will be talking to your attorney. And you guys will be having some additional meetings about this. I would say this is going to be the most complicated agreement that we have to work through just because of those factors. Exactly.

Tera:

So that was another one of my questions.

I don't know if that's for Mr. Seter, for Mr. Bishop. So it says by Colorado Revised Statutes that we have to have an agreement correct. And if we don't sign an agreement with you, then what happens? ...

Sam:

We go to, well, we go to mediation. And I don't know what that looks like.

Tera:

I don't know if that meant that you just didn't get our 16.4% or and you got all the other ones, or if you.

Sam:

Yeah, just says we go to mediation. Okay. So ...

Kim:

I've done a couple of those across the state. The last one was in Delta and we've never finished one. We always get together at the mediation, figure it all out. So I think this one will have probably figured out in advance, because the city and I think understands the the numerous issues we have to think through.

So this draft intergovernmental agreement that the cities provided is the basis for that. And we can negotiate giving a lesser percentage, giving it for a lesser time, you know, whatever we can work out if you want to work out anything. And if nothing works, then you go to the mediation process and the mediator will decide if you have to.

Tera:

Well, again, thank you for coming tonight. I do, obviously appreciate what you're doing. And I know that that area has been, a challenge for the 20 years I've lived here. And, I know I don't drive anywhere along the front range without looking at a project that I feel certain was was done through URA, but, I just have lots of questions and lots of things to work through.

Sam:

Yeah. If something comes up after this meeting to feel free to reach out again, I'd. I do my best thinking outside of these meetings. yeah. Reach out and. Yeah, I mean, any to your point, I mean, any great project or place that you probably like to go right now is probably urban renewal downtown Castle Rock right now with that new development that's urban renewal, streets at South Glen and Centennial.

That's a renewal project. So it's just a great financing tool. So.

Jason:

Thank you. Great. Thank you.

Nathan:

So with I will let him introduce himself because I forgot to put his name on the agenda. I apologize.

Mike Dell’Orfano with South Metro Fire Rescue:

Quite right. I'm Mike Dell’Orfano with South Metro Fire Rescue and the chief government affairs officer or assistant chief of government affairs, whatever you want to call me. And so that includes work with our elected officials, all the, logistics and strategy behind their board meetings and study sessions and orientations and elections.

I was really involved with all the consolidations, that we've experienced over the past several years. Our IGAs, inclusions, exclusions and I work with our area that does all of our data analysis and accreditation. So wide variety of stuff. So, the reason why I'm here tonight is just to talk about that special district representative. So realizing that it's completely separate from any negotiations with each of those special districts.

So as was already covered, out of all of us, we get one seat on the board, which is great. So because we all know as a service and provider, we want to be part of that conversation. Have a seat at the table, know what's coming up? primarily because it could impact our service. So, just like you, South Metro, you know, we're.

This will be our third urban renewal authority within our fire district, Southglen, as was mentioned, Parker has three planning areas. And then this one planning area, before not too long, will be impacted by over $1 million in Tiff, revenue. Now, with Parker, we found a different, funding mechanism through there, excise tax where we can recover some of that, those funds, realizing that, hopefully the URA is very successful.

Sometimes it can improve safety of existing buildings, pedestrian safety, anything possible to reduce call volume is always great. And depending on the types of uses or the size of the buildings or the type of redevelopment, it could actually increase demand on our services. Additionally, we cover the entire city. So the city is about to double in size over time.

And so we're trying to cover all of that with our existing resources. So we're not continuing to drive up our costs. And of course, we're a large fire department. So it's not just about the fire station across the street from the Safeway, shopping center. It's all the resources that need to respond here during a brush fire or a structure fire, and vice versa.

So, a lot of resources, the more that each individual station gets strained, the more impact it has on the overall system in general. So, we understand with this position, you know, be, incumbent on that person who's appointed to, make sure that they're staying in touch with the other special districts, giving them the heads up being able to speak on behalf, from that service demand perspective, get the feedback, when necessary.

And so, our board has expressed their interest in being the special district representative, for this particular urban renewal authority. So, hopefully that's kind of the gist, but happy to chat about it more.

Jason:

Thanks, Mike. I have one quick question. Of the three you URAs that you guys are already part of, how many of those boards do you sit on?

Mike:

None. This would be the first one that was impacted by the legislation back in 2015. And so that is when, both the special districts in the county, both were allowed a seat on the board. And it was expected that the Urban Renewal Authority provide an impact statement, to those entities.

Jason:

Thank you.

Anybody have any questions?

All right, I guess. Thanks, Mike. And thanks.

Tera:

So, does, South Metro? It's under boards in support of it. They don't have any, concerns about, it affecting your service, your services or funds for services yet so that the financing may go to debt service and not to your organization being able to keep up with the demands of services.

Mike:

Yeah. So to clarify two separate things. Our board is interested in having the seat on the URA Commission to represent special districts. When it comes to urban renewal, yes our board would naturally have that concern about what's the size of it, what's the potential revenue that could be diverted to that urban renewal authority? And then most importantly, what's the impact of it?

And does that then start to cross any thresholds where we need more resources? More stations, more medic units, you know, whatever the case might be or is the area going to start drawing on our resources, that, you know, response times could go up. We're spending more time at the hospital now. Other medic units need to backfill or whatever the case might be.

So those are absolutely are what we're interested in. I think, you know, similar to any other special district that's a service provider directly and, drawing on their resources.

Tera:

And the board position, then would that be filled by you or would be filled by somebody appointed by your board?

Mike:

It needs to be an elected official of that entity.

So it'll be one of our board members. Thank you.

James:

Yeah. question for you. and some of the other, zones that have been developed under this plan. Have you quantified what the impact to your organization is at this point to what we've been?

Mike:

Well, yes, from a revenue perspective,

James:

I'm talking more resources based.

Mike:

Yeah.

So we've been tracking call volume, in particular with the Parker one. The, South Glen was free consolidation of all of our entities. So we had been watching the, call volume and within the Parker area, around the Costco, around the main street and around the Lincoln South on the west side of Parker Road. And so, kind of tracking the call volume, the response times, to see what's the impact, and then help us plan out, you know, what point might we need a second ambulance in service?

We're planning to build a fire station around Hess in chambers that will help with that system. As it gets busier and busier. Our station 42 near Arapahoe and Parker is already running the wheels off the ambulance, so really keeping an eye on that whole area. What's the future development of Aurora? So we're always looking at future planning and, in particular, that area is very quickly growing.

So, it has always caused some concern about our ability to keep up with demand.

James:

But, I'm just going to go back and ask again, have you quantified that? I mean, I know you've talked to it qualitatively, but is there any study that's been done that you can look to and point to that allows you to plan for?

If this area does get developed over the next decade or two decades, what that kind of looks like?

Mike:

No, nothing other than our normal tracking of data, call volume, and our ability to predict the approximate call volume depending on the type of development. Okay, thanks.

Jason:

All right. Great. Anybody else have any questions for Mike? Thank you again, Mike. Appreciate your, your presentation there.

Mike:

Yeah. Thank you.

Jason:

Okay. Moving on. Is there an action item here that, you were considering Travis?

Nathan:

Potentially. I'm not sure what the level of, board action we need is. Kim might be able to speak to that a little bit, but really, with the city moving forward, they're looking to fill those spots that South Metro has expressed an interest in.

And so really, as a board, we need to make a decision on whether or not we want to pursue having one of our board members sit in that seat, or just kind of ceed that position to another one of the special districts. And so that's why, Mike is here tonight is to kind of really just speak to why South Metro wants to be in that position.

And then have a discussion where we can, you know, actually make a call and whether or not we want to express interest. What I don't know is, what happens if there's multiple entities that want to be in that position? I have no idea what that looks like. I don't know if the city can answer that question or not, but, it's also a moot point if we decide that we don't want a representative.

So it would be one of you sitting on that board. I think it's probably best just to open it up to discussion for you guys. And then, you know, we have the, both the city and South Metro available to answer any other questions, and I can throw my $0.02 in as it's helpful, but.

Jason:

Let's do that.

First off, does anybody have any interest in pursuing a position on this board?

James:

I would yes.

Jason:

Anybody else?

Tera:

So I imagine I that was the question that I was going to have is if the library is interested, they submit their letter and they were interested. And South Metro is interested and we're interested how that gets resolved. It looks like perhaps that's by urban renewal law, which may not be your area of practice.

Kim:

Yeah I've done a bunch of it.

But I don't recall. I would suggest it's not a personal choice. This board will have to make that decision. And I'd suggest that we, if we can hold off. I don't know if again, if there's any deadline on this, I can find out tomorrow. But we should probably hold off on that until we have a work session or something to discuss this whole process and where we're going with the IGA.

I can see some of our issues make may make it be important. Make may make it so that you feel it's important to have, a seat on the board. Not that you wouldn't have a seat. It's just. Where's the representative going to come from? But I think it's important enough that we hold off a little bit till we've had all those discussions.

And you can make a, I don't want to say educated decision, but, knowing decision.

Jason:

So are you suggesting then maybe we, change our study session for this month and, and make this one of the topics?

Kim:

We've got 120 days on the IGA. I'm not sure what the deadline is on this, but we might as well jump into it if there isn't something more important for the for the next study session.

Nathan:

Yeah. So for the upcoming study session, we've got, Austin, where I think went home, which is good because he's expensive. Austin is going to be going over like water or like kind of like the water rights 101. And then I was going to be addressing just kind of like where we're at, in terms of capital improvements, kind of where we've come from, where we are, where we're going, general overview type stuff.

I, we could certainly, extend it a little bit. We could also change it from, study session, to an additional board meeting, which would, effectively the only thing I would change was if we have this discussion, it would allow you the capability to make a decision on it. There's nothing stopping us from doing that.

And. Yeah.

Jason:

What's everybody's thoughts?

Tera:

Well, I, I think we do need to, discuss it more, especially because ours is so complicated on that. I really want to get more, from the experience of our attorney, I want to get more insight.

Kim:

Mr. chairman, I just talked to Mr. Bishop, and he's been talking to Mr. Penny, and, believes that the city is just trying to get someone seated before time to approve the plan, which would be that September deadline that was mentioned.

So if you want to go ahead at the next study session, as it's already set up, then we could do the following one to discuss this. Or you can change it around if you want, but it sounds like we have plenty of time. If I find that there's a statutory deadline that's shorter than that, which I kind of doubt, I'll let you know right away.

And. And, Nathan can get out it to you.

Jason:

So do we change our study session this month to address it sooner, or do we put this on the agenda for the next month's study session?

Tera:

I don't know, Nate. Are there any is, you know, pending contracts or anything that would make our discussion with, the other water attorney or was that more just education?

Nathan:

I don't think we have anything that is, immediately pending through the discussion with Austin. No. So we could certainly do this, for the upcoming study session. Then Austin would be here and and also my kind of history of Castle Pines, would be moved to August. I don't see any immediate conflict or anything that would be awful about that.

Tera:

What? That he he's probably high demand, so I don't know if he, he's already set the time aside. But,

Nathan:

Yeah, he's, in terms of, in terms of evenings and, in the study sessions and board meetings, we basically he'll show up to whichever one he's got. He doesn't have a lot of evening commitments. It's a little bit different than Kim's position, which involves basically living around boards like this.

Austin doesn't have quite that same commitment. So, I'm sure I'm sure it would be fine, especially if we're looking at scheduling clear out into clear in into August. I don't see an issue. I can verify that with him, but I'd be I'd be surprised if it was problematic.

Jason:

So next study session, Austin and a discussion about this.

Nathan:

I think yeah, I think next study session would be specifically about the URA.

Jason:

Is that all right?

Jason:

Yeah. Fine with me. I just was wondering if we could have Mr. Bishop back up. Just ask him a couple of questions if that's okay.

Jason:

Welcome back Sam.

Sam

Thank you. Yes.

James:

Kind of wrote some notes, and we previously had an urban renewal project, and that was abolished you indicated. Correct. Okay. Can you provide any history about that as far as what they accomplished, what they didn't accomplish, why it was abolished, or do you not have that?

Sam:

I'll give you my opinion and I'm just going from memory. Sure. so the Urban Renewal Authority was formed on paper. They never actually got together as a group and did anything. There was a period in time, I think, for the citizens to form a referendum. They collected enough signatures, they got it on the ballot, and it was abolished.

I think at that point in time, it was just prior to House Bill 1107 and urban renewal terms that means it included the canyon's commercial future commercial area. And at that time it was allowed to do so, which was vacant property. So if you can imagine what the the Tiff rate would be on vacant property versus after it got developed.

I think philosophically there was folks that were opposed to that. And that was part of that plan. That is not the case this time. This focus is solely on an infill existing business district.

James:

Okay. And then, one other thing I took notes on. Forgive me, keep going back and forth between glasses. You indicated business owners not affected or impacted and put it in parentheses, but in the same conversation we talk about rising property values and potentially rents would go along with paying additional mills.

Don't go up. You know, essentially the value of the property goes up. Therefore that gets passed on to those business owners. Essentially they're going to be paying those taxes through their rents. Is that

Sam:

If the property values are lucky enough to go up? Yeah, that means redevelopment is occurring. This area is successful. They they get to enjoy the benefits of being in an area where people are coming and frequenting and shopping and spending, you know, more than just a morning time frame in the morning, running errands and in the evening running errands.

James:

Okay. But yes. All right. Understood.

Okay. Have you seen any essentially businesses in some of these other developed areas? Essentially going out of business or having to change locations due to those increased potential costs?

Sam:

I'm personally not familiar with that. I was in Centennial, when we did do I say when we, sure. Streets at Southland. I worked on that project.

It's been wildly successful. There was a vacant mall there that we retained Sears at that point in time. That was important to the community. What you've seen what happens here since. But, a lot of it, a lot of the plans. And again, council, as part of the Urban Renewal Authority, as part of their bylaws or the plan, they could work out transition plans for businesses that want to stay in the community if areas get redeveloped and figure out how to, relocate those within the community or within that development, that would be within the purview of the URA.

Though.

James:

Okay. And again, this is going to be a little bit of a soft question. I understand the mechanism and the funding, but, as far as how money gets decided upon and utilized and, and how that's proper, you know, how that's managed going forward from this fund itself. Can you talk to that a little bit on, you know, what you've seen in the past where, you know, this is this fund exists, you know, it takes a while to build up and this fund exists and vendors or businesses come in.

And I was just trying to understand how people request those funds. And what that mechanism is. Obviously, they make a proposal to the town. I get get all that. But, how has that money been utilized in the past, I guess, you know, to for these kinds of developments, large businesses, medium, small, you know what? You know?

Sam:

So again, Castle Pines doesn't have any history of tax increment financing and being able to partner with anybody. So you would just have to look around at different projects. Yeah. so I would say, you know, in, in smaller areas and your attorney may have more information about this than us than, than my. So if redevelopment is not going to occur, it's going to be smaller kind of one off projects.

Building facade improvements are quite common. So if you notice a building needs painted and that can be interpreted by the board to be in the general public's interest for improving that general area, that potentially could qualify for an improvement. Especially if, you know, there's no anticipated larger redevelopment project. And again, anything public infrastructure wise, I've never seen a road that didn't need improving, sidewalks, lighting.

You know, any of those pedestrian the public realm areas, those are always good projects for areas that don't generate a lot of tax increment financing.

James:

Okay. And again, we're really just talking about setting up this process at this point.

Sam:

It is it's formed. So the the Castle Pines Urban Renewal Authority is formed. Yep. You guys are being asked, you know, to enter into a revenue sharing agreement or an IGA as part of that process.

And the next step is going to be for the city to approve that urban renewal plan. Once we know what all those agreements look like. So we can approve the plan, if we don't know what the money is potentially and how we're sharing that revenue. If we're not sharing any revenue at the end of this, then there's probably not going to be projects and redevelopment is not going to occur because we can't incentivize to share any money with anybody.

That's kind of the short of it. Right? If everybody says, I need 100% for to operate, then there just won't be any tax increment that's going to be realized.

James:

Okay. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate it.

Tera:

That's some additional questions based on what you were saying. So in your experience with yours, how long are they typically in existence before there's a pool, a large enough pool of money to, to make a significant project happen?

Sam:

Yeah. So again, all urban renewal authorities or plans are in existence for 25 years. And I think the thought is, is, you know, that there's a period of time that takes. Let's just say, for whatever reason, somebody did by the Safeway Center tomorrow and they wanted to get started on redevelopment. I can tell you to go through like, let's say, needed rezoning because there's a residential piece and then there's a period where you raise the property, probably needs utility upgrades.

If you broke ground in 2 to 3 years, I'd be surprised. And then again, property assessments occur every two years. So it kind of when that gets caught up in the process, and it wouldn't be likely that they would come out of the ground day one with everything. So I mean, again, I'm just I'm sitting up here just kind of telling you... What in your experience with South Glen mall, how long did it?

Sam:

So I didn't I didn't... I didn't. My whole career wasn't spent there. So I took off. But so I don't even know what that URA is collecting at this point in time. But they got to be getting towards the end of the they probably you have less than five years left on that URA.

Tera:

And then you basically said that this is just a financing tool.

What other tools is the city planning on? I know you said, you know, property taxes won't go up the road. Yeah. It's the city looking at seeking additional taxes. Is the city thinking about asking the voters to tax groceries? Are there what other what other tools are they considering in addition to this tool?

Sam:

So there has not been any discussions around raising or considering any other taxes for the betterment or the improvement area within this area.

You know, we have economic development tools. It's tricky. The city has a property tax or mill levy in place of 4.5 mills. That's a direct pass through to the Douglas County sheriff. So we're not when we go out and talk to folks or these property owners, we can't incentivize them. We're trying to share back property taxes. They're paying for the sheriff services.

So we're really at a disadvantage for being able to incentivize anybody or offer programs. I mean, time is money. I mean, they get to work with me. But that only goes so far when I can say, hey, I can get your project approved in three months, or at least get it to council, which people like. But at the end of the day, that's not helping move the needle on a big project.

Jana:

Can I add to this? So currently at the City of Aurora, I'm working on one of these, urban renewal areas, that goes down along major corridor in Aurora. And so specifically when it came to the roadway and infrastructure underground, the shareholders got together and funded the design of it. So the city did not have to pay for it.

So the the different developers came together and said, we want to pursue this. Let's help the city out. And the city gave a small portion. And just like you said, they worked with them on, you know, we'll hire the, the consultants and all that. And it's been wildly successful. So it's, it's fantastic and it's going on right now.

And, and so it's neat to see all these different buildings turnover that have been unused for so long. So, so they use that. And then also when it comes to the actual construction, we're pursuing grants like the raise grant to pay for the infrastructure and just different things like that. So that's not always the best way to go about it.

I know it's more cumbersome, but that's an example when funds are needed to pursue other options.

Sam:

Yeah. Great point. and we'll be here all evening if you get me talking. But so we did pursue a grant, for Village Square Lane and Village Square Drive to make some improvements and some landscaping. We got all the way to the end and it was through CDOT, and they said, hey, this is private property.

We we see what the intent is, but we can't give this public, these public funds to a grant to a private property owner, even though you guys treat it as public property, you just don't qualify. So we miss out on a lot of grant opportunities because of that. And then to your point, so we have evaluated, at least on paper, you've probably heard of a DDA, a downtown development authority.

There's bids, business improvement districts. But the board member, Mulvey's Point, this area is, you know, historically been heavily taxed. A business improvement district is financed through the addition of five mills immediately on the property that gets reinvested. That's kind of a nonstarter to raise the mill levy rate here I think. We're not talking about raising the mill levy rate.

So there are other financing opportunities and options out there. This clearly is the one. I mean, this business district I can be any more blunt is the poster child for urban renewal.

Jason:

All right. Great. Any other questions? Board. Thanks again. Sam,

Jana:

I do have one more. I'm sorry. so is there a possibility that the, property would be turned over and dedicated to the city so it could be, eligible for funds like that? Because I know private property now, but that was also part of it, is that all the developers gave that as part of their good faith.

Like you can have this one.

Sam:

Yeah. So we're currently working with the property owners, that, I guess the library, Dukes, the 7-Eleven. And then there's a vacant parcel. There's a seven property owners there that own Village Square Drive, Village Square Lane and Village Square Terrace, kind of the three, the connective tissue, the roadways. They're, they're in tracks right now.

They're private. We're in discussion with them about getting those transfer to us for public property. But there's a liability there. Right. But we believe at the end of the day, it's going to be in the public's best interest to assert ourselves and have some public domain within this area. Thank you. Great point.

James:

I think I just have one more.

I'm sorry.

Sam:

Here we go into. I'll just keep talking.

James:

No, no, it's, and it's just an observation and conversations with friends that live in Castle Rock and and unfortunately, mothers with children, while fathers and mothers with children. We talk about developing this area and making it walkable bicycle. That kind of thing. you know, to be able to kind of utilize these new developments and things.

And, I'm just wondering and again, this is completely out of scope for a water board, but forgive me, is the city having those conversations about how to, you know, allow people to utilize, because the things I've seen, particularly mothers with children, that when I even go to a park or something or downtown, they have to put the kids in the car.

Oh, yeah, even if it's more than a half a mile or walkable distance with small children, they're in a car. Right. And you kind of alluded to it, you know, in your, you know, your discussion about people drives even small distances to go places. Yeah. So I'm just wondering if that discussion has been.

Sam:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes.

Again. But we're somewhat limited now because there's not any reason for somebody to come in and make those improvements. Like it's just going to cost a private property owner money to make some of those improvements. And at the end of the day, you know, they he right now don't have any vacancies. So they're not motivated to do anything.

You know, it's just all about it's literally just a numbers game for them. So we're trying to figure out well how to that that future property owner or the current property owners, how do we incentivize them to move? I keep saying move the needle. But I mean, these are like, you know, these are fundamental things that are going to change this district.

Describer:

On screen. The Basis for a URA

• City Council's Strategic Plan (2022)

Gateway and Wayfinding Plan (2019)

• Mixed Use Design Guidelines (2018)

Castle Pines Commercial District Assessment (2012)

Castle Pines Village Square Library Subarea Plan (2014)

Castle Pines Central Business District ULI Technical Advisory

Panel Report (2018)

• Castle Pines Parkway/1-25 Landscape Plan (2021)

• Economic Action Plan (2020)

Sam:

I went back to this slide. I encourage, you know, whoever's maybe watching to to go and look at these projects that we've done. But I to your point, they identified all these issues. This is, you know, for a city planner, this you just walk through here, this is like the easiest thing in the world to sit there and say, this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong.

This is wrong. Where it gets hard is how do we fix it? How do we correct this? How do we undo what people have done, you know, over the last 30 years here? That's the challenging part. But these plans are clearly, you know, this is what's wrong and this is how you fix it. And now it's a money issue.

Unfortunately.

James:

Okay. Thank you.

Jason:

Thanks, Sam. And I guess that was the last question, and I'll let you go. We need to move on. So we're going to close out, number nine here. And we're going to come up to number ten, which is the district engineering report and introduction. So we have somebody from Kennedy Jenks here. yeah.

Nathan:

So, really quickly, I just wanted to confirm what we're doing with this study session. We we're kind of in the middle of that discussion, and then we had more questions to ask. So I just wanted to confirm if we're doing this, if we're going to bring the URA discussion back in July. Is that the consensus?

Jason:

Let's bring that back then.

And, I think that will be the sole topic.

Nathan:

Yep. Sounds good. Okay. so a little bit of previewing here. I'm going to kind of jump into, my report slightly, in terms of getting the timeline pulled together, I don't have everything quite as comprehensively pulled into one document as I want. One reason for that is you guys should have a second, more recent, Kennedy Jenks report.

It was sitting next to the board packet. One of their engineers worked, over the weekend to get me a lot more, integrated information than I had expected. So, specifically, when it comes to the capital projects where we're at with the ones currently and what we have, as a future looking outlook, this is the best place to find that.

So if you take this in conjunction with the document you were giving, at last week's study session, that's a pretty good idea of some of them that we've got. I'm also waiting on, some stuff from our, well, contractor to really pull all of that together. But this is going to be substantially, what we're doing for the capital stuff.

With that, I've really just asked, Greg to make himself available and introduce himself, let you guys know what Kennedy Jenks does. And then if you have any specific questions about, any of the projects or capital improvement stuff we've been working on, he will fire away. Thanks, Greg.

Greg Sekera, Kennedy Jenks:

Thank you. So, yeah, I'm Greg Sekera with, Kennedy Jenks, senior engineering manager and principal.

Been, with the company, several decades. My, Kennedy Jenks and me and several other engineers, that work under me have been doing district water and sewer projects been involved. It's various levels with the district for, I think, about 24 years now. So yeah, we we do, really our primary role is, is engineering design.

As your district engineer, we design, the facilities, any new capital facilities, capital projects, rehabilitation projects in a district, pretty much everything. Water and sewer, related. You're primarily primarily been involved in pipelines, your lift stations, sewer lines. now, now, the water treatment plant. we also do reviews of new developments in the district.

We do miscellaneous things like size, water and sewer taps. Answer, you know, kind of general questions that, Nathan and his team might have. We also perform construction, observation on any district facility that's, under construction. We we act as the eyes and ears of the district, during construction and with developers. My report, as you can see, we have a lot going on, with Nathan and and his team.

A lot, a lot of our focus right now is on the water treatment plant, several projects there. The lift station upgrades, and then, some water line, replacements that we're going to do that are related to the city's, street rehabilitation program, primarily in Yorkshire and Castle Pines, the extension of that west and then, monarch, that are coming up in the next couple of years and then, really kind of the developer projects or as far as new projects or are kind of coming to the end, but we're still involved in, in those and trying to get those accepted by the district.

So, Nathan, I don't know if you want any more, give me more detail or if you want to just kind of far away questions or,

Jason:

I wanted to ask a question. we had a lift station issue this last weekend, and, it says that we're still in design here. Is that accurate, or where are we at with that?

Greg:

That is accurate. we we are looking at all of the district's lift stations except, number nine and Legae, because that's the newest one. But, three is, is your primary lift station, and, and yes, we are we are looking at that. It is a very complex, facility. We're very limited by space, location at that lift station.

It's high flows. There's just a lot of challenges there. There's also a lot of challenges on trying to get things reviewed and approved. And, and, so yes, that is that is a big focus of, of our team right now. And we're working closely with Nathan to identify how we can upgrade that lift station with the primary reason to, to not have any to to mitigate the risks, minimize the risk of overflows in the future.

Jason:

So we're still looking at middle of next year before we even touch it.

Nathan:

I can jump in on that one. So Lift station three is a little bit of a unique case because of the defined issues that we have. There are things that we can do at that station that don't require the site review. So some remove and replace stuff.

One of the biggest issues that we had with this last event was the insane amount of rain that we were getting. There's a grating issue with the front door of that lift station, so it's relatively flat. All of the water rolls through the front door. It goes down and fills up the basement where the pumps it, and then the pumps get underwater.

The poles start to slip and they can't run. The other issue with that is having, you know, the two pumps that are in that dry pad application that can't run under water with potential for flooding is something that we needed to address. And so we were proactive in our approach, unfortunate in our timing. So we had already made set that up so that the two there are three pumps that sit in that station.

Any one of those pumps on an individual basis is fully capable of handling that station's typical peak demand. So there's, a wet floor alarm that we're installing that will be attached to a submersible pump and a dry pit application so that when that floor alarm gets tripped, it turns off the other three, pump the other two pumps and puts it over to the third one.

That thing was literally scheduled to get wired in this week, so we had it set up. The pump was installed, the lift station was on bypass for a long time, so that we could do a bunch of different renovations to we, replaced a piece of pipe that was in the ground on one of the inflow lines.

We fully lined the wet well. We got that new pump and motor installed, and we were just on our normal timeline to get that or scheduled timeline to get that in. And we just got hit with an event a week before we had the capability to prevent it. The other side piece of that is that grading issue where the water comes back in through, the front door.

We actually have the entire front of that driveway has been torn out for, a couple weeks now in preparation for fixing that grading issue. The main reason we haven't gotten it done yet is because we've had so much weather that we haven't been able to get the subgrade the way that we needed to flush it.

So like two of the primary causes that created that, so were things that were already proactively in the process of fixing, those are things that can be done without the site application review. Some of the the larger issues, like the, you know, the overflow, containment, things like that. They are, substantial enough changes to the design of the lift station that we can really just go ahead and do them and hope for the best.

So we're actively doing everything that we can, and then we're to get to the point where it's as reliable as possible before we get the entire site up or get to the I guess it's the 70% complete set that we can do to get to the site application with the state, and then we're really just at their mercy in terms of how quick that turns around.

Jason:

So this week we'll have all that taken care of. So we won't have a, reenactment of what happened last weekend.

Nathan:

I it's all about it's all about risk mitigation. Right. So yeah, I can't I can't problem when we don't have an active overflow protection. That's honestly our biggest one that we're missing. It's also the hardest one to do.

Especially on that site. But we are taking the other I guess we're also doing, Will went out into the parking lot to talk to somebody for me. He'll give me a better update on it. But, we're also adding oh he's behind the pole, we're also adding a secondary float system, which will be a standalone level sensor to help us hit those other two pumps.

That's, something we noticed through this event that we could have used. It also wouldn't have helped us, in this specific one, but we're getting that through. We've already had I think Will said we've had like three, three separate conversations with the state. We, we called them within hours of it happening, basically as soon as we were able to get get the situation kind of under control in that time to actually have a conversation.

We got them on board. So we're doing everything we can to make sure that we're also following any remediation that needs to be done, any testing. And then we're we will absolutely do as many upgrades as we can in the interim prior to being able to get that full design put in place.

Jana:

No. I just a quick question.

So you're saying that's the mitigation that's going in place for the overflow, but the design that you guys are working on right now is for the ultimate. And that's the Q2. Yeah, the Q2 2024 bid. And so when will those plans go into for review? The 70 you're putting them in at 70% roughly.

Greg:

Yeah, it'll be this we're we're hoping to get them in this fall.

Jana:

And do those go to council pines for review.

Greg:

They, they go to several agencies. They go to the Cherry Creek Basin Authority. And then, they go to, they have to go to County or I think in this case, okay, the city and then, also CDPHE, also the district.

Jana:

So that review time could be quite lengthy, depending on all of the different.

Greg:

Okay. Yeah. It is it is the state right now just to state alone right now just once you have to get in their queue and then before they will even look at it is like four months right now. So yeah. So. And so yeah everything's a guess. Everything is moving slow with agencies contractors, suppliers. So consultants we have to use, we are still just crawling and it's.

Yeah.

Jason:

Any other questions for Greg?

James:

Just real quick. This last event was a surface water flow issue.

Nathan:

I'm sorry. It was a surface water flow issue. Yeah. Help me understand the question.

James:

Essentially, we you talked about rain flow. Was that introduced in into the system or was that surface you talking about water flowing underneath.

Nathan:

Oh, gotcha. Yeah.

So, yeah, that was a rainwater that came in. Stormwater that came in through the door. and then that's what submerged the pumps and caused the belt to swim. It was sanitary sewer that discharged into that event or into that, storm inlet. That's right by there that caused us the SSO.

James:

Are we doing any kind of surveys of the other sites to look for that type of issue and report it back to the board?

It should be pretty.

Nathan:

Yeah. So yeah, I can, I can that's part of the like history of the district. I'll get you up on. This is something that we've been looking at actually six months prior to the state even issuing the clients compliance advisory. So we started our initial, surveys and designs on these and initial design review, about, I don't know, two months before the Parker inclusion even failed.

So this is something that's been ongoing for a while. So we have, comprehensive surveys of all eight of the or all seven of the lift stations that are impacted, which is what allowed us to move to that final design. Once we got all of the flow data, information, pulled together all of the required, information from CDPHE and East Cherry Creek Valley Basin Authority, all of them.

So we're we're kind of in that, at least the, the homestretch on the design side. So we've absolutely looked at this as a comprehensive plan. The board, approved our, the initial design or the initial findings to move to final design with all of the, as good as we can approximated dollars. That happened back in January or February.

So, yeah, we've been we've been looking at that stuff for, for a good long while. We're kind of on the tail end of at least the design side.

James:

And as far as an event, I mean, I heard wet floor center, I got one of my house. It's good that you're putting that stuff in. But do all this stations currently have some way to report back

to whoever monitors this in real time?

Nathan:

Yes. Yeah. So all of them do have, they're all connected to our SCADA system. We've got, on call staff that looks at that all the time. Those if there's any issue at any one of the stations across a number of points, there's multiple ways that that goes out.

It goes to a call list that's 15 people deep to make sure that somebody gets responded to it. And then we've also got the ability to remotely look at those screens and monitor those live stations, which is what let us get to this one as quickly as we did. So this one alarmed out, lift Station three has to stand alone on its own alarm systems.

So those called out, I hate to use the term luckily, but luckily at least it was in the middle of the day. So we had operators in district. They were able to get over there relatively quickly and get it under control.

James:

All right. Thank you. Appreciate it.

Jason:

All right. any other questions for Greg?

Thank you very much than Greg. Appreciate thank you. You report there. Thank you.

Greg:

Appreciate being here. Thank you.

Okay. We'll close out item number ten. And we'll move on to the operation manager's report and introduction of Will Parker.

Will Parker, Semocor:

Hello, everyone. How are you doing? So just a little about us. Semocor we’re the ORC operators in charge.

So we basically are here seven days a week, 24-seven. We're called out in all emergencies. So that's that call chain. Nathan was talking about calls down through us. So I think Greg might have got some of our questions on there, but that's okay. I think they answered just fine. So, on events. So, you know, we can't stop things like that.

You know, we were left station three was, you know, that tornado was going through the same time we had the flooding event at the same time. So, but we were on site pretty quick, so I think it was 15 minutes on site. We had the first trucks within 25 minutes, and that's hauling trucks, materials. And then we have five different crews and different organizations working on that.

So, anyway, I'm the owner, Semocor, been doing this 25 years and we work for municipalities, districts, towns. We do multiple districts throughout the front range right through here. So, we're pretty close. We do have people directly in Castle Rock or, you know, got people that work. So, the, we got basically ten employees.

We work with the engineers districts. We're with district managers. Anybody in between that whole set, trying to adjust things and how we can design, help design, not design, but help design things in field. So, I feel pretty good about the district. I know there's things that need to be tightened up in the sense that, you know, we get some water calls, discolored water and signs.

But we've been really doing a lot of work over the last couple of years. When we came on, I think we came on during the transition of the, the water treatment plant. There's still things that we're moving forward with. And Nathan, I think, brings you in the loop mostly about those things. So, there's a lot of working parts in the district.

And just as a reminder, like to remind everybody is we're working with parts that aren't just pull off the shelf type parts that we're always dealing with, you know, that we normally would with our homes. We're working with parts and supplies that are specialized, built on site or, you know, etc. so, I think that's kind of all I have just in general.

So if any questions or.

Jason:

Yeah. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions for great.

Tera:

Thank you for that. And thank you for coming. So it's your license basically that's on the line. You're the license holder for the...

Will:

All the operators that work for me are certified at the ORC is Scott that works for my company so we supply.

Tera:

But you're invested because that's.

Will:

Oh absolutely. Yeah. Your it's my it's actually my company

Tera:

and they hold the license of

Will:

One does for this location.

Tera:

Okay. Thanks.

Jason:

Great. Any other questions. Okay. Will thanks for coming by and appreciate your, report there.

Will:

All right. Thank you. And I do. You guys do get a monthly report from me. So if there's any questions ever about that, just get it to Nathan or me.

It's just an oversight or, you know, just a general overview of the water usage through the district and kind of the major jobs are just a quick, you know, note on it. But I think Nathan really has that mostly covered in his report. And then the engineer's report. So all right. Thank you.

Jason:

Great. Thanks again. We'll okay. We'll close out item number 11 and we'll move on to item number 12, the Financial Director's report.

And it looks like we have Sadie with us. Welcome Sadie.

Sadie, Community Resource Services of Colorado (CRS):

Yes. Good evening all. So we're going to start with item number A. Consider approving claims for payment, including check numbers 27899-27980 and electronic payments issued from May 19th, 2023 through June 22nd, 2023. I will also provide an update and timeline regarding the 2020 excuse me, 2021 and 2022 audits.

The general fund and Open space to be approved is $56,155.78 to be ratified is $66,864.13, for a total of $123,019.91. For the enterprise trends, we need approval for a $183,414.79 to be ratified is $869,472.54, for a total of $1,052,885.33. The electronic payments for all funds to be approved is $79,496.54 to be ratified is $288,269.44, for a grand total of $367,765.98.

Total approval amount is $319,067.11. Total ratification amount is $1,224,604.11 for a grand total of $1,543,671.22.

Jason:

Sadie I had a quick question. What's the difference between approving and ratifying?

Sadie:

The approval is what happened between last board's meeting and tonight's board meeting. What It gets ratified. What was already happened previous prior to last month's meeting.

Jason:

Okay. Thank you.

Sadie:

Not a problem.

Jason:

Do I hear a motion to approve the claims and check numbers?

Tera:

I'll approve the financial directors report on the numbers as presented.

Jason:

Okay. Do I hear a second?

Board Voting All Speak:

Second? All right, let's bring this to a vote. I'll start down with, Director Mulvey. Approve. Director Enquist. Approve. Director Radloff. Approve. Director Krell. Approve. And I approve also. So that has been passed. Thank you very much Sadie, appreciate, oh we needed an update on the audits. Sorry about that. I almost missed it.

Sadie:

Not a problem. The, audit update consists of two points.

The first one is CRS did meet with the audit manager last Wednesday, Andy Anderson to discuss the 2021 audit status and final adjustments. We're getting closer and closer, which is very good news. They are planning to send the audit draft to us next week for review and comment. The draft is expected to be presented for acceptance by the board at next month's board meeting.

So this comes as very good news.

Jason:

Wow. Long anticipated and sorry that's been long anticipated.

Sadie:

Amen and completely agree. Item number B went to the 2021 audit is final series will complete the open items related to the 2022 audit and submit everything to that monitor for their audit work, which is scheduled to begin mid-July.

Jason:

And how long does that process typically take?

Sadie:

It's going to take 2 to 3 months.

Jason:

Okay, great. Any questions? Board.

Tera:

Yeah. Sorry. I actually had a couple of questions on items one and two, if you'll bear with me. So under item number one, the property and specific ownership tax, it says that all taxes receive year to date have been transferred to the City of Castle Pines as required under the 2023 IGA, with the district and the City of Castle Pines.

Are we was I I didn't go back and read the agreement. I didn't have time. But, are we really transferring 100% of we are then what? What do we retain for our operations?

Sadie:

Since the Parks and Rec was transferred over to city owned Castle Rock or Castle Pines, all of those funds go directly to them via an ACH transfer agreement.

Tera:

I understand that. So are you saying then that all of our operations are covered by our fees? And then what happens if we need any capital improvements? So we're all of the all of the mill levy that's coming in. We're totally transferring. All the mill levy is that's how I read that. \

Sadie:

Right. you know, that might be a question for Phyllis.

Pardon me? I am new to district accounting. I'm going to get her on the line right now. Okay?

Nathan:

Yeah and Sadie check with Phyllis. But I believe the way that that was handled was because it was with the existing fund that was already in the bank account. So, the amount that we would have collected through 2023, we just retained when we did that initial transfer.

And so we have what effectively would be the amount that we projected to collect in 2023, left it in the account, transferred the balance. And then as we get all the evaluations back in or actually get the actual tax dollars received, at the end of the year, we'll have kind of a last, counting process to go through to make sure that we got the correct percentages, for each organization.

But I'm pretty sure we took care of that upfront.

Tera:

That'd be great if you could clarify that, because even the chart that she's put together shows 100% of what we took in going out. So I just want to verify now and then.

The other question will.

Sadie:

I am calling her right now.

Phyllis Brown, Community Resource Services of Colorado (CRS):

Hello.

Sadie:

Hi. Are you available?

Phyllis:

Do they need me or Nathan's is...,

Sadie:

They do need clarification from you as well.

Phyllis:

On what?

Sadie:

The property and a specific ownership tax in the transfer to the city every month for the total amount received. And Tera had a question. Tera, would you go ahead and repeat your question, please?

Tera:

Thanks so much, Phyllis.

So, it says that all taxes receive so 100% taxes receive year to date have been transferred to the city of Castle Pines as required on the 2023 IGA, which we I guess it's the Parks and Rec because we have the stormwater IGA too. So if if we're transferring 100% of what we're taking in, what is the district where how is the district operating?

If we're we're giving away all the money that we're taking in.

Phyllis:

So basically that, you know, the, we have funds that were in the Parks and Rec fund was included in the general fund. And then we have the water and sewer and then the stormwater, which is going away as well. And so one of the things when we do the budget for next year is, is there really a requirement for a separate general fund now that we passed off the Parks and Rec to the city of Castle Pines, because basically we're just operating water and sewer.

So operating as an enterprise, you wouldn't necessarily need a general fund, and you would allocate all your general expenses across to the water and sewer funds.

Tera:

And I and I appreciate that. So what's our revenue source for our enterprise?

Phyllis:

Your water and sewer charges. And then if we need to do any discussion about, how much taxes the district would keep if the City of Castles Pines changes that the levy.

If we get to keep a portion, we have to make sure that that portion meets the requirements under Tabor to be less than 10% of the money we're bringing in as other revenues.

Tera:

Right. But we were so so we're just talking about the 12 mils. Then 100% of the 12 mils. Is that where we're talking about not the under four that we

Phyllis:

The net mils that we're getting out?

Yep.

Tera:

Thank you.

Phyllis:

Does that answer that?

Sadie:

I believe so. Thank you Phyllis,

Phyllis:

Okay. Thank you. Bye.

Sadie:

Any other questions?

Jason:

Tera, you mentioned you had a second question. You know what? I think I'll just pass it off to Nathan. Let him.

Jason

Okay. Any other questions for Sadie? I think we're all good here. Sadie, thank you very much for your report.

Sadie:

Thank you. You all have a wonderful evening.

Jason:

Thanks. You too. Okay, we're closing out item number 12, and we're moving on to item 13, the legal council's report.

Kim:

You have a copy of the council's report in the packet, and I'll be quick. Since time is running, the only action item we have is the agreement between Castle Pines North Metropolitan District in the city for the grant of a blanket license to maintain open space, parks and trails on the district property.

You may recall we had lengthy discussions about this when we did the IGA that since we are retaining ownership of those properties until the city gets its own mill levy, where it can maintain those, we need to give them a license so that they can go on to the park, mow, weed, and do all those things, including taking care of the stormwater areas.

So this is that document. I have reviewed it. And if you have had a chance to look at it and you're willing to approve it substantially in that form, it may look a little different by the end of the week, but we'll be ready to sign. It won't be substantively different.

Jason:

Okay. Does anybody have any questions for Kim on the subject?

Should we can somebody make a motion to approve this?

Leah:

Motion to approve.

Board Voting All Speak:

Second. Great. We have a motion on the floor to approve the, agreement between Castle Pines North Metro District and the city of Castle Pines for granting a blanket license to maintain the open space, parks and trails on district property. Do I have any other questions? Then we'll move for a votes. Director Mulvey. Approve. Director Enquist. Approve.

Director Radloff. Approve. Director Krell. Approve. And I will approve as well. So five votes. The message motion was approved.

Kim:

And that's it from me for tonight. I'm looking forward to our discussion at the next study session. You'll find it fascinating. It's just a very interesting topic. So we'll make it all crystal clear.

Jason:

Very good. Look forward to it.

All right. We'll close out. Item number 13 and we'll move on to item number 14. The district manager's report Nathan.

Nathan:

So one thing that I was supposed to ask about, not like a while ago, but Will, was gracious enough to let me know. Anybody in the room drive a Ford Escape? Did you figure it out?

No one's left. Yeah, so we've got a Ford Escape. Black Ford Escape LCM 369. Cool. See me after the meeting. It's fine. It's it's, it's got a slight decoration on it, but we'll get it. We'll get it taken care of and get you guys figured out. Okay? Nothing to worry about. I promise we'll still be friends. So the first thing I wanted to start off with was the facility tours.

I got the, I have the, Google Doodle up or not, the Google doodle, the doodle pull up, and I'm still waiting on, responses on that from unless I just missed, from Tera, and Director Mulvey. That said, I think the availability is spread out enough. It probably makes sense just to do this in two batches.

And so we've got, right now, the times I have, kind of earmarked for Thursday, July 6th, for 1230 to 430, and then Monday, July 17th from 2:00 to 6:00. So I've got Jana and Jason available on the sixth, and I've got Leah and Jason available on the 17th. So I didn't know if, director Mulvey and, Tera, if you'd like to fill in on either one of those or I'm happy to set up something independently as well.

Tera:

Tell me the time again.

Nathan:

So I've got the first one is Thursday, July 6th, 1230 to 430. And the second one is Monday, July 17th, 2:00 to 6:00.

James:

Can I get back to you after this? I just got a, I have my phone turned off, and we do this, so.

Nathan:

Oh. No worries. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. That's fine.

James:

And I still have that email issue, which is why you haven't heard back from me, so.

Nathan:

Oh, You shouldn't. I will reach out to Greystone again. I got, I'll make sure that they have that I gave them the appropriate other email address because I got the password reset this morning.

So make sure you've got that.

Tera:

Okay. I'll just respond directly through the system that. Thanks.

Tera:

I should be able to make either one of those.

Nathan:

Okay, cool.

All right. Next thing I wanted to, touch base on, is the consumer confidence reports of, I included this at the end of the packet. This is the one specifically for us. The Centennial Water and Sanitation District. CCR, will also go out with ours. So this went out in an email blast today. It's been on the website, since earlier.

I really just wanted to draw your guys attention to it, to let you know that it's that time of the year. It's sitting at the printer. It, is planned to go out by the end of the week, via snail mail as well, which is what the, requirement is. Yeah. Any questions that you guys have had?

I'm certainly open to them. If you, you know, get a chance to dig further into it. In terms of what's actually in it, the vast majority of the language, the way that the charts are built, the, the, you know, where it says, like samples, that kind of stuff, all of those things are things we are not allowed to change.

So the state really just, like, informs us what information they need us to include in the way that we need to include it. So that just sits in there exactly as it came in. Really the only thing that we specifically put in, is the second page with the mission statement, kind of a summary of where things are.

And then, if you go to like page, it's like 8 or 9...

Yeah. And so the and then just the kind of the, the explanations, on pages nine and ten. So kind of the additional violation information that was also filled out by us, but the rest of the data and information, the language around all of the lead and all of that's just required by the state, these things tend to look a lot of like utility to utility.

We do tend to get a lot of questions around like just how much is in ours. So if you look at Centennial, the number of like testing points they have, the number of contaminants they report on is drastically different than ours. It's not because we're not testing a bunch of things that we should be testing. It's that, like I said, the state tells us what we have to test for, when we need to test for it, and what needs to go in the CCR.

And so that's Centennial, Denver, Aurora. These are like larger surface water systems that have a lot different, many, many different treatment technique requirements, a lot more things they have to pay attention to and focus on and track than we do. And so the reports do tend to look, different in that regard. But.

Tera:

Understood correctly, what you just said is the contaminants that we test for are dictated by the other entities.

Nathan:

Yeah. By the yeah. Called State of Colorado dictates what we have to contaminate or what we can have to....

Tera:

And it dictates what Denver does. And that's why there's different than what ours...

Nathan:

Correct. Yeah. So the state, water quality control division in the state of Colorado set all of the standards for well .... I'm

Sorry. But, yeah, they set the standards. They build the monitoring schedule. And then it's our job to make sure that we build a program that meets the minimum requirements of the monitoring schedule.

Tera:

Well, and then we did have a concern about the chlorine that was brought up in our public comment. Can you address that?

Nathan:

Yeah, I absolutely can.

In terms of, the excess chlorination smell in the water, really the most important thing is when those types of things happen is to just call us, residents reaching out to us, letting, knowing that they're letting us directly know that there may be something a little bit weird going on with their water is really the, like, best tool that we have, especially when we're looking at Jasper Point, which is like the far end of the water system.

It's absolutely as far away from our water treatment plan as you can get. In terms of pipe miles, there can be some slight chemical changes that happen that can throw, generally speaking, the chlorine smell, ironically enough, means that there is a chance we may not have as much chlorine as we should in terms of a ratio.

So we're talking about like, chloramine system, where a combination of chlorine and ammonia, and when that imbalance gets off, it can kind of make the water smell a little bit funny, or you can get a taste in it. There's also a number of things that can happen inside of a home to throw that off. And so we really need people to just call us and tell us we do have one of the first things that we did at the treatment plant.

You know, after the boil water notice in June of 20, whatever it was a couple of years ago that that chemical dosing system was one of the first things that we changed and swapped out. So we've got a much more accurate dosing system. We've got about six different online, five different online monitors, that we didn't have before.

We we install the whole new monochloramine one. So we have a really, really good idea and really good understanding with some tight parameters on like what our dosing looks like going out the door. And so we have a high degree of confidence that our ratios are correct because like hello stations, the treatment plant will alarm us if those aren't.

And so, it's one of those things where we just need people to call us. Sometimes it's as simple as like, yeah, the water age is just a little bit too old, and we need to flush it to turn it over. Those are really things that literally any water district has to deal with. And, you know, it's one of the, we get a lot of people that have moved here, especially after being longtime residents of someplace like Denver or even Aurora, where they're primarily groundwater system or primarily surface water systems.

Then they come here and say, well, I've never had red water before. You know, I was in Denver for however long I was in Aurora for however long. And you're absolutely right, you probably has a you probably haven't and it's more source water characteristic driven. So, Centennial, you don't get a lot of red water in their system, but you got a lot higher mineral content, a lot more scaling.

Denver right now is under like the largest, like, lead removal program in the country. It's an absolute huge, huge thing. When we talk about that, like discolored water, especially in our flushing, like, that's something that's not ever going to go away. We're going to always have to flush our system once a year. It's not a result of us improperly running our system.

It's an action taken because we're properly running our system. We have, really high iron source water. We do treat for it, which we're not even required to do. We don't have to treat remove to remove iron. It's a tier two contaminant by the EPA. The EPA gives you some guidelines. They say, hey, you probably don't want more than this.

It'll affect the color, taste, clarity. But it's not going to be like a negative health impact, especially in a groundwater system like ours. The biggest threat from those types of particulates is that it gives it a place for bacteria to hide. But because we don't have, like, those, high end organics that you get with surface water, it's really not that much of a concern.

And that doesn't mean that we don't take it seriously, and then we're not addressing it, and then we're not wanting to do better with it. We just had to stage the treatment plan in kind of the most important thing. So we went through and we've done a lot of work on our control system. Excuse me.

I've given the spiel so many times, I start to talk too fast. But we've done a ton of work on our control systems. We swapped out our pumps. All three of them were really we're gearing toward, the two projects we've got now, which are HVAC which are important for building corrosion. And just, like, comfortable, we've got the backwash supply.

And so moving into, next year, kind of one of the next biggest ones is looking at that filter system to like, we've got, you know, filters that were designed in the early 80s, mixed metal, mixed media to move towards something that, most likely green sand is what we're getting ready to pilot, but do something that's like designed for iron removal so that we'll get better at it.

But yeah.

Jana:

Is this an improvement from 2021's report?

Nathan:

I'd have to go back and look at, but just, it doesn't have a boil water notice on it. So yeah.

James:

Question for you. Fair enough. Iron in the water itself. I mean, going back from when I had wells system, it was, my well lining and iron bacteria and I'm wondering what where the source of the iron is here.

Is it, you know, dissolved into the groundwater. Is it something it. Okay.

Nathan:

Yep. It's just it's dissolved iron. So, from a treatment and that's actually another, common comment that we get is people that have been on, well, water their entire lives tell us. Well, we've been on well water forever and we don't have high iron content.

When that water comes out of the ground and into the plant, it's gorgeous. It is for the most part, especially if a well's been running for a little bit. It comes in absolutely crisp, crystal clear, because we're below the saturation point for iron. As soon as you add chlorine to the water, that's the first thing that happens is that iron oxidizes out.

You can actually like take a little bit of bleach, pour it into a bucket and watch it turn red. And so the first thing that we do with the plan is hit it with, hit it with the iron to get that process to start, we put it into a mix tank because we want that contact to be as high as possible.

And then we filter it so that filter designs like, by necessity, the last thing that we're doing because the rest of the building kind of supports that. It was also driven by our inability to take our plant offline this year, like, like we typically have. So we needed to wait for, Centennial Water to finish. Well, to get far enough along on their treatment plant project that we could pull our plant offline to, to take care of it.

But these are things that have been, you know, we've been I think we're $6 million into the plan over the last year and a half, two years. Like, it's not, I think that, you know, that's kind of what I was getting at in the report. You know, like when we talk about, like, we have a bad reputation.

We have it for a reason. Yeah. We do. I mean, we had, one boil water notice. We narrowly avoided a second one, like we've got, I mean, you can even see the violations that happened in 2022 that are showing up in this. We're also talking about a severity, a reduction in the severity of the violations that we're seeing.

And so far in 2023, we don't have anything that we're going to have to put on our CCR next year. And so as we kind of like pushed those things forward, I think one of the things that, we need to really be looking at from that community communications perspective is that, yeah, we have this reputation that we also deserve, but we're a year and a half into spending millions of dollars to drastically correct these issues.

Like, this isn't a ship that needs to be turned around. This is the ship that was turned around a year and a half ago, and we're charging in the right direction. And that's the message we need to get out. We really need to get find a way to connect with people. And it's one of those things, you know, I think it's 12, you know, positive interactions for every negative one.

But and so that's kind of like where I was at with a lot of what I spent my time at the AWWA convention was talking with Denver Water and talking about these other PR giants that have had horrible reputations and turn them around and kind of the process they did through that.

Jana:

And, Nathan, you prepared this document? Or did a consultant?

Yes. Or is it boilerplate from the state or, you know,

Nathan:

It's a combination of all of it. So we've got that. We've got the state, the boilerplate start, the part that the state puts in. Okay. the explanations of the violations I worked with, I they're all written by me, but I worked with Semocor to make sure that they were factually accurate.

The second page that's on there, I wrote that in its entirety. And then we worked with the graphic designer to make it all look right and make sense.

Jana:

And then, does anybody QC the tests or are the tests run more than once? You know, who who does the quality assurance that make sure it wasn't like a one off test?

Nathan:

The state.

So they every I read every, none of these tests or completed by us their ..... Yeah. So we a lot of old Castle Rock has a state certified lab that can do some things. Denver. But we are not remotely big enough to justify having a state certified lab for any of this. So we take this to an entity to do all of the testing.

We just have to make sure that sampling is done correctly.

Leah:

I have more of a comment and maybe something to think about. Yeah. As you're talking, I'm learning a lot of things that I didn't know before and one of the things I tried to do, you know, when I was elected was just to learn. Right? And so when I went on our website, I look under FAQs and there's nothing there.

And so I'm wondering, I'm, you know, there's probably a handful of questions that are pretty common. And we see a lot of those on next door. And so is there an opportunity to maybe build out our FAQ section on the website? Yep. To reach or if people have those questions, we can drive them to that resource. So there's kind of like a source of truth.

Nathan:

Yeah, absolutely. And we have we do that. it's something that I've been kind of slowly building on the back end. So as we get questions in, I've been monitoring them, see which ones are going to be the most helpful to put out there. And then the other step that we've been doing through the website with that ability to communicate is just like we did with hydrant flushing, that, that entire explanation I just gave around water has been around, the red water has been on our website as part of that hydrant flushing mess.

The message that went out. And so it's a lot of like one, yes, trying to find those things we can be proactive about in terms of the FAQs. And then also, you know, we can capture both of those, right? So that hydrant pages was never build something we never had before. We did, some kind of minor communication around it.

But now that page is going to be like reallocated as an FAQ. And so a lot of it's just building this arsenal up over time. The website is still relatively new, all things considered. So we've been working through and making sure we get all of the compliance stuff, making sure we hit all the ADA stuff, making sure that we've got everything that we absolutely have to have on there.

And now we're working toward building out things like the the FAQ page, the water quality page. The biggest push, the biggest thing that we've done from like the last month per month and a half that's been really helpful is we've gone from like one customer contact form to four designated different ones that go to the individuals inside of our district that are directly associated with those.

We've also, reengaged Nextdoor for the first time in a long time. That was a giant pain to try and get the Nextdoor account that was set up by a former employee here that was associated with their email address. I still don't have our account verified as the real one but I've got them the paperwork that they need to add that.

So we'll do that with Nextdoor. Facebook is proving to be even more of a difficult process to do that. But one of the things that our website or web platform allows us to do is to just automatically include, Facebook and Nextdoor posts, I think even Instagram with an email blast. So it'll automatically attach those. It'll put them on all the platforms at the same time.

The uplift there is relatively minimal. And so that's going to be a good a good first step. One of the other things that I want to do is like really work on getting myself personally in front of the HOAs, that's something that, I have done for different things and different reasons, kind of like microcosms. And it's always been highly effective.

The best time or the best example of that I had was I was a regular attendee at the Forest Park HOA for, I don't even know for way too long. But, while we were going through the, all the off gassing problems we were having there a couple of years ago now. And so really, just like getting that face time, getting those.

And I think that just getting a more public front facing front is important. We also used to have a great relationship with the chamber that's been shattered. So I've been making inroads there to try and get a meeting, to reconnect in that, to get out at events, set up tents. I'm going to make as many of you as I can drag out of your houses on a weekend, stand up there and give away dumb little water prizes or whatever we need to do.

But.

James:

If you're having issues with chambers, I can help. Help you there.

Nathan:

Oh, yeah. Chamber has been fantastic. I managed to make that inroad by accidentally bumping into somebody in the downstairs hallway that happened to work for the chamber, so that that went great.

james:

Yeah, I mean, I yeah, I think they're a great group of people. Easy to reach out to.

Just a comment. And again, I'm going to tag on to your thing because we were we had this conversation a little while ago, but, you speak to this stuff intelligently. You seem to have a command of what's going on and what what's happening and and what have you. And I'm just going to say that, you know, it sounds like you're moving in the right direction.

But I, I do think we have a public image problem and, communication issue, because it just keeps coming up, and I don't think people I just think I would prioritize that. I know you have a ton of crap going on. Excuse me, but, I just think that it just keeps coming up on a weekly basis.

I hear about it. I see stuff on Nextdoor. It sounds like you're moving in the right direction. So, I just think, you know, people have concerns, and I kind of agree about the iron and stuff. I live with it. My my groundwater for years and years and the dissolved, radon gases and everything else. And I had a, had, equivalent of a whole water system in my house back east, that treated several different things.

So I know what's important, what isn't. And I dealt with a lot of things just internal to my house. But I think, you know, getting out there, some of these, you know, some of the stuff you talk about very casually and easily here. I think we just need to get that into FAQ and kind of socialize it a lot better.

And I think, a lot of this stuff will die down a little bit.

Nathan:

Yeah, yeah. I think, you know, our I certainly agree that that's a hope. I think one of the more disheartening things, that came away from like watching presentation after presentation of these award winning customer outreach programs, is that universally across the board, the number of complaints concerns and like request angry questions, they have never goes down.

You know, there's some people that are just always going to be for what inherently untrusting of government. They're, you know, going to have all kinds of, like whatever conspiracy series theories they have or like, there are sometimes like a customer just get gets wrong, like it does happen in any organization. And, you know, Denver Water has probably had more success in that area than others have.

But it's really, you know, when they when to look at their, their reputation as this like monstrous bully that will destroy anybody in their way that they had basically their entire existence moving into the early 90s. If you look at like their customer level of trust and customer satisfaction levels like those have relatively remained fairly static. But their, you know, their image in the industry and the way that they're treated by other municipalities and, and their, their internal and external customers that aren't their residents has gotten a lot better, I think, to a certain extent, like it's one of those things where we need to absolutely do the best that we can, but also

manage our expectations. That's so one of the challenges that comes along with that is we're trying to, you know, get these principles out there that take somebody that's willing to listen and understand kind of a lot of nuances of chemical treatment and dosing and system maintenance and system management, like, why do we need to flush fire hydrants and all of these, like very long, detailed explanations that, you know, takes a certain level of expertise to even have the conversation we're going up against the next door posts.

It's like these idiots have been flushing water in front of my in front of my house for ten hours. They're wasting water. Why can't we? You know, why can't we, like, capture this water and fly it to the mountains to feed elk herds, to make their lives better? Like they're you're you're trying to explain complex system dynamics, to people that just don't have an understanding.

And I think that, that's the important side for the district to understand, too, though, is like, just because they may not understand what we're talking about or I may not agree with, you know, their ultimate views is it doesn't mean what they're saying doesn't matter and it doesn't mean that it's not valuable. I think that like, no matter that was something I put in the board report is something that like I've talked to my staff about, I've certainly talked to operations about it.

Like these people like matter, like their opinions matter. Like take the time, stop. Listen to them. I've. I will talk to every single person in this district for an hour if I have to, to get this point across. It probably be slightly less work that I'm putting in now. And it would be. That was way sarcastic and very self-aggrandizing.

But I said it anyway. But yeah, anyway, that's kind of where we're at, and I appreciate the support in the understanding of the board. And, one thing that I will be, looking at really based on conversations with a few of you is, understanding, like our own staffing capacity. And one thing that this last week showed me was that, you know, I can I can do a lot of things, but I've been operating kind of close to that, like 90 to 100% level.

And the lesson learned in that is what happens when you get to 105%. And so one of the things, especially on that communication front, that I want to look into, is, is is engaging with a firm that can help us very specifically with like public image messaging, like, how can we really engage with the public and get this information out in an effective way?

And then it's a much lower lift on my time to focus more on, like we're doing our flushing program. I can send those email blasts out, but it's like changing hearts and minds of an entire community. That's when it gets a little bit difficult.

James:

Yeah, yeah. I think if you, at least in my world design solutions, I concentrate on 80 to 90%.

And I left the other 20 to 10% kind of drop. I mean, if you try to get a perfect solution, you never get there. But, and I agree with your idea of delegating that task because it's probably not value added for you, but it's probably a tremendous value to the community at large to understand. Other thing I would say is some of these high dollar projects that we currently have on the books that you've reported, maybe a small description on why we're doing that and what that resolves.

As far as an issue in the past, we're spending all this taxpayer money, maybe a short blurb on why we did that in the first place instead of just what the project is.

Nathan:

Yeah. I mean, there's, we can put change where it's put, but if you go back and look at like, you know, I've written, coming up the election, I wrote, I wrote a pretty lengthy newsletter that was in the connection that's been on our website.

We we've got. I read it. Yeah and that's the other trick, right? Like, you have to make sure that you're not too long because people will just, like, drop off at the end. Yeah. So we can we can definitely, like, get those things more bite size. And I think that's a great place to utilize that stuff in social media.

And also like get our expert in oh man. Yeah. ... The timeline I discussed earlier. Yeah. It's kind of in two pieces. We've got the Kennedy Jenks ones. It has the Capital one, the, CRS gave us the general special districts timeline and then the update on the, audit today. So I'll take all of that information and get it mashed into something that is a little bit more palatable.

Jason:

Wonderful. Any more questions for Nate? Thank you very much, Nate. I know you had a hellacious week last week, but, we appreciate all your hard work. We're going to go ahead and close out number. What are we on 14. And we'll head to item number 15, director's matters. We'll just open this up to, anybody who has something they would like to discuss.

Tera:

Thank you. So, sorry that I wasn't able to make the study session, but I was able to watch the video. And as well as kind of looking through our finances, I think you guys had brought up, and I agree, I think we need to. And obviously this is not a priority. This is something that's our priority is the audit.

Because all of that, that's like our gating issue for everything else that we need into the audit. But as we look at revamping the budget, we go into the budget season and even streamlining that budget more that we talked about removing the general fund and stuff. But some of these reports, I don't think, no longer service. Most the people on this board now have business backgrounds.

And I and I would like to see some of the accounting reports be more reflective of that. So, I just want to put that as a topic of discussion for the board in the future.

Jason:

Very good. Anybody else have a matter they'd like to broach? No. Okay. All right, well, then we'll close out item number 15 and do I hear a motion to adjourn the meeting?

All Speak:

So moved. Second. All right. Meeting adjourned.