Approves an increase in sanitary sewer and storm water charges beginning 7-1-16. (INFRASTRUCTURE & CULTURE) The Committee approved filing this bill by at its meeting on 5-4-16.
We hear government officials talk about transparency all the time. But it's things like this that cause citizens to suspect underhanded methods and doubt that our representatives are speaking the truth or looking out for our best interests. This whole experience has left me feeling suspicious, marginalized and unheard. I would like to end by thanking Councilman Rafael Espinoza for his ongoing questions regarding this project and for his attempts to make project management speak the truth and not talk around the issues or twist facts to their advantage. You are a true voice of the people and this person appreciates it. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Mayor Jeff Shoemaker. Good evening, Mr. President. My name is Jeff Shoemaker, and I'm here tonight in my role as executive director of the Greenway Foundation. Floods can happen in your neighborhood, Mr. President. Floods can happen in your neighborhood, Councilman. Floods can happen in your. Neighborhood. Councilwoman. But floods don't happen in my neighborhood. I don't need to worry about them. They're not going to happen. We don't have to plan for that. We don't have to worry about that. I don't because it's not going to happen to me. Well, take that belief system and share it with the folks in Jamestown. And Lyons and Boulder and Weld County and Estes Park and Longmont. Let us not forget. What happened on September. 12th, 2013. I stand before you tonight as the eldest son of Joe Shoemaker, the founder of the Greenway Foundation. And as I begin my 35th year as his executive director and yes. I am at old, I can assure you that Joe. Who is Denver's manager of public works. From 1959 to 1963, would fully endorse the need for. And related benefits regarding this measure. A measure that speaks to the need for increased. Protection and life safety issues. Involving our city's storm water infrastructure, thereby providing much needed benefit to the water quality and flood control safety. Of the South Platte River watershed and therefore our city. Significant issues such as these are never easy. They're always complicated, they're always challenging. And therein lies their importance. Please support this measure. Your support will speak towards the needed additional funding to provide ever increasing sufficient storm water protection. Within our city and therefore. Our urban waterways. And therefore our citizenry, both now as well. As for generations to come. Beyond ourselves. Beyond today. That's how leaders plan and that's how leaders act. Thank you again for the opportunity to stand before you tonight. And I personally thank each and every one of you for all you do and give to our city and its citizens every day. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Theresa and No. Is not here. Okay. Ben, Shannon. And as Ben comes up, I'm gonna call the next five. Joel Noble, Keith Pryor, Allison Tor, Vick, Lemon Knowles and Ryan Hunter. You can make your way up to the computer and just go ahead. Thank you. My name is Ben Schneider. I'm here tonight on behalf of the Whittier Neighborhood Association. I am the land use and zoning chair for that neighborhood association located in District nine. Your neighborhood association is Ridder's third neighborhood. Organization and one of Denver's oldest neighborhoods and urges city council to vote yes and the plaque to Park Hill Drainage Project. What are your neighborhood and our neighbors to the north currently experiencing street and home flooding. Due to the natural drainage way for the Montclair Basin having been developed over over decades. Ago. The Platt to Park Hill Drainage Project will lay the foundation for the flooding issues to be addressed by slowing the volume of stormwater. And high volume storm events as well as in the future, helping to address Denver's aging and adequate stormwater infrastructure. We frequently hear about how Denver's aging infrastructure is affecting quality of life and how pressing it is to address. We need to do something about this aging infrastructure, and this project is a way to start that. Members of the Whittier Neighborhood Association have attended dozens of meetings on the plot to Park Hill Drainage Project, as well as hosted our own neighborhood association meeting on this and feel that the project engineers have adequately shown why the project is needed and how. It will address the serious issues of home and street flooding in our area. We respectfully ask for you to vote yes on this project so we can move forward to address these issues. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. John Noble. Good evening, counsel. Joel Noble, 2705 Stout speaking here tonight. Only on my own behalf. I live in the Curtis Park neighborhood, which is part of the five point statistical neighborhood in Council District nine. And while I can't speak on behalf of the neighborhood, I can report that I haven't heard controversy about this in the Curtis Park neighborhood , and that's probably why they haven't taken a position. In my last testimony, I praised a public involvement process that took two years to find the compromise. Now it's a different kind of process that was a policy to do something new in Denver, and this is a fee increase. But the contrast is notable. There was a lot of outreach done on Platte to Park Hill in the neighborhoods that are there. But this fee increase is for the entire city and there hasn't really been much public discussion about it. Therefore, I think we're seeing an outpouring of, wait, what has this been discussed? I don't know what this is. And unfortunately that's gotten in the way of the ability to have dialog with the time that we've had. I'm grateful for public works and urban drainage, who came to the emergency meeting with less than two weeks notice last week. Unfortunately, I couldn't be there, but from all reports that I've received. Dialog was difficult because people had already decided they're for or against or they were afraid or they didn't trust. I wish this had been communicated better. That said, I'm more concerned about the possibility that we might not pass this. We have 1.5 billion in storm water needs, and we spend very little per year towards that. We spend much less than our neighboring communities. With this package, as I understand it, and the time I've taken to sit down with the engineers to say what's what's real, what's happening here? Yes. A big part of it goes towards one collection of basins, the Montclair Basin and the Plat to Park Hill projects. But that's because they're the ones that need it the most. It does what we've been putting off for a long time, making the infrastructure needed to do the stormwater system. From Global Landing Park back to City Park, golf course and beyond. That costs so much that we've been kicking that can down the road. And it wasn't until the $67 million that we could get by doing this at the same time that starts doing their I-70 project that we said, you know, if we don't do this now , we're leaving $67 million on the table. Now we don't have enough time to talk about what I learned about the other projects happening around the city. Thankfully, they're less expensive, but they're important, including the one going in front of my house, the 27th Street interceptor ones in nearly every council district. And a lot of those also attract other funds. If we don't raise the funds, we don't get the matching funds. If we don't get the projects. Please vote yes. Thank you. Keith Pryor. Good evening. Keith Pryor And this is critical just as our roads, it's not sexy. It's not fun to talk about. We don't think about it. This is not something that you see. You flush your toilet, you don't have to worry about it. It rains. Water goes away sometimes. I grew up in southeast Denver with Evans and I-25, and that flooded every single time. It still floods even after the tracks. This is significant investment that we need to make in our in our city. And it's not cheap and without continued investment in our infrastructure through fee increases, our parks. Suffer. Our infrastructure suffers, our streets suffers, our enforcement suffers. You guys deal with the budget and you know what you need to look at and you know that you have limited funds every year that come up and you have to prioritize where that money goes. This is an opportunity which you've kicked down the road. Like Joel said again and again and again, we only have limited revenue sources that are available to you. And to have this opportunity come before you and to take that opportunity and to look at leveraging opportunities which are really present at this moment. And unfortunately, the city has done a really poor job in communicating why that's there. And there's been a lot of mistrust around how this is all happened and would this occur if these other projects were not going on which to city staff. Unfortunately, discredit has not been able to really be forthright and honest and has created a lot of controversy around this, which shouldn't be because this is infrastructure. This is critical to the city. I live on 24th in Tampa right now. It's an old stream bed. It flooded again today. Luckily, I live on a little bit of a hill and I have a terrace in my tree line that it comes up three times. If I didn't, my house would flood. Will this help me? No, because unfortunately, this project and other projects still have not gotten down because we are such in a deficiency of our funding that that problem for me will not be solved. This will allow us long term wise to solve some of our biggest problems, which we've kicked down the road, but also then address other issues which are in the master plan of the 2014 Master Plan, which has been updated numerous times, which continues to be updated. It will increase our water quality with the plan, which also speaks to Jeff Shoemaker and basically rehabilitating what we can see as recreational opportunities through the Cherry Creek and also the Platte River. So there is so much good in this. Unfortunately, it's gotten bad timing and there's some really mis information out there. But I implore you, this needs to be passed. We need to invest in it. Mr. Prior Thank you. Thank you, Alison. Terrific. Good evening. My name's Allison Tawfik. I live in Council District nine. I've lived in and around City Park since 1990, when I was ten. And I'm on the City Park Neighborhood Advisory Council on behalf of Uptown on the Hill Neighborhood Association. I belong to the City Park West Neighborhood Association and like 66% of the electorate, most of whom are not here tonight. I voted for the the Western Stock Show redevelopment. I think now it's a chance to embrace that redevelopment and take advantage of some of the other moneys that we all the other silent majority voted for when we said we wanted the redevelopment. If we can take some of that city money and some of that RTD money and use those work together with Serrat and with RTD and with urban drainage and public works, then we can rather than having one person, you know, one group do it and then the other group coming in and tearing it up and redoing it. I think there's economies that can be built in there. Like I said, I lived all around city parks. I'm a big fan of the park. I know there's a concern about the trees and in the golf course when the golf course needs to be regraded. If assuming that the stormwater bill passes at the park, that the PDP project goes through that to put the low part of the of City Park on the west end of the park and of the golf course instead of the east end of the golf course. There's a concern about losing trees. My understanding is that the canopy, the tree canopy has to remain 1 to 1. So we're not going to lose any shade. And I also think there's an opportunity to build some diversity in the golf course with the trees that we don't have now because there's so many ash trees. I think we all know that the emerald ash borer is going to come through in the next probably five years. And so I think this is a great opportunity for us to increase the species diversity. My one big thing that made me want this project in the golf course was when I looked at Google Earth and I looked at where the engineer's overlay was and where the water came from by National Jewish through City Park and eventually to Globeville. There's a spot there that doesn't have any houses. They said, That's where you should put all the water. Right. Why should you flood up some people's basements? Hopefully they've got insurance. If they don't have insurance. What are we talking about? 60, $60,000 that someone's going to have to take on as their debt when you can just put all that water in the golf course. So I urge you to vote in favor of the stormwater increase. Thank you. Lemon Knowles. Good evening. My name's Lemon Knowles. I am the vice president of CP Fan, which is City Park. Friends and neighbors. I have some documentation here to be passed out to the councilors. Some of them include petition signers from petitions we ran over the weekend. Anyway, we thank you for allowing us to speak at this hearing tonight. We all want to get this flood protection and drainage issue done right. And we're requesting that a delay because of a number of unanswered questions. However, tonight, what I want to do is read our resolution regarding the drainage in City Park Golf CP Fan Resolution was adopted on May nine, 2016. And it goes like this. Whereas the flood protection and ensuring the safety of existing Denver residents is of paramount importance to all of us and CP fan and in the Denver's neighborhoods. And. Whereas, protection of existing historic Denver neighborhoods, existing areas of stability and existing designated parklands such as the City Park Golf Course, is also a crucial and must be Denver's priority. And. WHEREAS, that attention, base and proposal will forever alter the historically significant fairways of noted golf course architect Tom Bender, law and landscape architect Fred Law Olmstead, Jr . Designed to highlight scenic views, trees and topography and were as the value of C.P. the City Park Golf course to birds and wildlife. Green stormwater mitigation lowering ambient temperatures, the heat island effect inadvertent detention pollution control and the community has not been fully evaluated. And where as an industrial sump is contrary to the park and recreation purposes for which the golf course was designed. And. Whereas, detention basins pose health, safety and maintenance issues require significant buffer areas for maintenance and protection, are costly to construction, maintain and replace at the end of life, and are generally considered unattractive. And. Whereas, the use of City Park Golf course as a detention facility would weigh significant investments made by taxpayers in recent improvements such as the clubhouse irrigation system in trees and where, as the city has announced its intentions to close City Park golf course for two years, remove hundreds of trees and then excavate a huge stormwater detention plant 35 to 65 acres in size. And we're as CPP fan is absolutely opposed to the use of historic city park. Miss Knowles. I apologize you 3 minutes is up. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Next, we have Ryan Hunter. And as Mr. Hunter comes up, I will call the next five Timothy McHugh, Seth Wylie and Elizabeth Frank Long Kantor and Walter Ghani's guard Guernsey. Mr. Henry, you can begin your remarks. Thank you, President Herndon. Good evening. Council members and neighbors, thank you for the opportunity to speak on this important issue. My name is Ryan Hunter and I've been a resident of Park Hill for more than a decade. I've served on the Greater Park Hill board of directors since 2010, and I was a co-founder of the Park Hill 4th of July Parade. Up until last year, I was a chairman of the board of directors for the Denver Language School, and since 2008, I've managed a Park Hill Facebook group that has over 4000 members. I support this storm water and wastewater fee increase due to global warming. We are seeing a continual increase in severe weather events. Five year storms now happen annually. Denver's population is surging and our roadways can't keep up. In 2010, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave Colorado roads a grade and our bridges a C-minus. I plan to live in Park Hill for decades to come, and I support your plans to invest in our infrastructure. The opponents of this issue talk about the damage to the golf course. I welcome the improvements. Where were the opponents ten years ago when the greens were like cardboard and the fairways looked like goat pastures? The city stepped up and invested in irrigation and improved the course. Where were the opponents five years ago when the order of the holes were rearranged to improve the flow of play? This is not a historic golf golf course that exists in some pristine state. The opponents complain about the coordination of the I-70 plans with this project as if it were some conspiracy theory rather than sensible coordination. You know what makes me mad when the city paves over my street and a few months later, Xcel is back in digging it up. Where is the harm in coordinating projects? If you're going to improve I-70, I would certainly hope you'd avoid having it flood. Lastly, the opponents this issue are pulling your leg if they're telling you that they have the votes to recall you from office. The opponent's constituency is minuscule. They're a very vocal minority. Speaking from a bully pulpit, endlessly spreading misinformation and lies. Remember that Facebook group that I mentioned? I've allowed the opponents of this project to post information about their cause over a dozen times. Do you want to know the response? It's crickets chirping. By and large, the Park Hill neighborhood is largely uninterested in this issue. Thank you for your time. I urge you to support the storm water and wastewater fee increase. Thank you, Mr. Timothy McHugh. Timothy Wong here. Okay. Next. Seth. Seth Wiley. Willie. Willie. Excuse me. Hi. My name is Seth Willie. I lived in City Park area since 2003. I own property in District nine and currently live in District eight. I'm here to speak in favor of the fee increase. This is a sorely needed project. Flooding is a serious issue in Denver and nowhere is that more serious than in the lower Montclair Basin. Residents of this. Area have routine flooding. And it's an issue that's only going to get worse with global warming. And climate change. Doing nothing is not an option. I know firsthand what flooding looks like. I've lived in New Orleans. I lived in New Orleans for seven years and have seen very serious flooding. I've lost cars to flooding and I've had neighbors and friends. That have lost much more consistently poor, lose the most to. Flooding. Everyone here knows what happened in. New Orleans in 2005. Doing nothing about this problem is not an option. I applaud the city for taking. This problem seriously. To their credit, the city is working on this issue for 15 years. They this won't do much for my neighborhood, for my immediate neighborhood. But but I believe it's important to start somewhere and you start downstream and you work from there. The only feasible option that was considered by the city, the best option. Among the feasible option are the golf is the golf course, eminent domain and loss of houses. The other option that was considered is not a very good option. Well, while this has been controversial, I applaud the city for their outreach efforts. They've done a remarkable job. Reaching out to numerous Arnaud's. Neighborhood organizations, dozens of meetings, etc.. Again, the city recognized this is not an issue we can afford to. Do nothing about. We have to act. Doing something is going to cost money over. All the fees are modest and measured. Although, again, although actions won't help me in the near term, I believe it's important to start downstream, to start somewhere, start in those areas that need it most, and do this project, move it forward and move on from there. Poorer neighborhoods downstream deserve this and they deserve our help. I'd also add that the rhetoric on the issue. Around this issue has centered on misinformation. In some cases, dishonesty and intentionally misleading has disappointed me and disheartened me as a citizen of Denver citizens. The cities need to grow and evolve and adapt. Change is a part of the game. Denver. If Denver is going to continue to move forward, this project needs to move forward. It's critically important. Again, doing nothing. Is not. An option. So I plead, I ask. All of you to do the. Right thing for Denver, do the right. Thing for the citizens of the Montclair Basin. Area. Too, for those neighbors downstream and to approve this project. Thanks. You and Elizabeth. My man, Elizabeth Globeville. I'd made it a point to the best that I could to go to the three points along this with I was at one of the meetings up at the golf course and on the West Side. And I want to say that I, I am torn by this because when the intergovernmental agreement was first put in place and people from the Swansea neighborhoods came to testify, I think to a person they were we were supporting this flood issue needs to be dealt with. The intergovernmental agreement that set in motion the transaction with CDOT, it was of course complex and it it was within the controversy of what is the best thing to do with I-70. And I'm just want to say to the city council, I hope you get. The most comprehensive vetting of all of the engineering relative to the projects. And that, yes, misinformation is happening from different aspects, from different elements within the neighborhood. There's also a veil and long view of what is the development model and who are the who is obligated to the lac to to mitigate the lack the increasing lack of porosity porous where the water gets soaked up after the rain and prevents things like the Alameda Niagara Falls going over where b b the railroad is doing, who's truly responsible for the large picture and are we? Are there veils being dropped relative to what the vision and the forward looking economy and development? Are we just focusing on tourism development or are we talking about managed growth and the true preservations of neighborhoods? And I think communication is huge. I frankly, I hate to say this, I'd rather pay $5,000 a day to sit out under this idea for delays than do the wrong thing on this project. When I talk to engineers that are outside of the project, that are very honorable in the neighborhoods and professionals and what they say makes sense to me, and then I talk to engineers inside the city. What they say makes sense to me. There's some kind of discordance. I talk to people about the floodplain that are impacted by it financially over in the Globeville area, especially in what they say makes sense to me. Then I talked to people inside the city and the Army Corps of Engineers and what's going on with FEMA and the changing of models and what effects the definition of a flood plain. I keep coming back to we don't understand because there's something about the way and the pace and the volume of communication that hasn't brought us along in our own neighborhoods, in our own city to be confident that we're working toward a solution. All of us who remember the O-ring on the Challenger loved most of the engineers. Frankly, I hope the city council is comprehensively looking at what is going on from the from from the very basis of what is the true environmental problem that needs to be solved. And so the fee is an indicator of the acceptance that the solution has been defined appropriately and most constructively. And that's where most of. Our time it was off. And I apologize for that. But you have gone over to Dallas. Never happened to me in my life. So thank you. And our our apologies for that. Next, we have Frank Locke and. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, city council members. Happy Tuesday. My name is Frank Lucas, and I am. I live in the City Park West neighborhood at 16th and Gaylord. I am just. That's District nine, City Council District nine. But I'm one block away from District ten, so I'm kind of nine and a half in the glorious Colfax corridor and and right near where the new Carla Madison Recreation Center is going to be built, which I am really excited about. And I want to thank you and your predecessors for making that happen and helping me and my neighbors stay healthy. I really appreciate your work and the investment that you've made in our communities. I'd like to encourage you to continue to invest in our neighborhoods by voting for the stormwater fee increase. And while I have been and continue to be active in different neighborhood organizations, I'm here just representing myself. Last July, when that freak storm hit, I was working in my office on Colfax in a beautiful garden level office. When I just tapped my foot and thought I heard a splash and felt a splash. And I tapped it again. And I did. And. I you know, with all the freakish calm I could muster, I pulled up the cords of my computer and unplugged them really quickly and just ran out of there and went for shelter in the doorway and watched this wild river just roll right down COLFAX bringing debris and voodoo donut boxes and all kinds of other stuff right on down Colfax Avenue, past Lafayette, and then in in the weeks following and taking bike rides down the Platte River in just a five mile stretch, my wife and I saw no less than four cars that had been washed off of the roads and into the Platte River. I it's pretty clear that our storm water infrastructure isn't sufficient. And and and we and it's not sufficient for the population that we have, the population that's growing and the waterfall that we sometimes receive. So when I heard about these meetings that were being held about it, I started to attend them. And unfortunately too many of the meetings became shout fests and relatively uninformative. My understanding of the issue is that the stormwater infrastructure has not been sufficiently upgraded for fourscore and five years. Our population has increased dramatically since the thirties. Catastrophic climate weirding has made weather quite freaky and unpredictable, and in areas like Montclair or pipes are 30% the size that they need to be. We clearly need a better stormwater infrastructure system. Please vote to support the stormwater fee increase just like the investment you and your predecessors made for the recreation issomething central. So your 3 minutes are up. Thank you. Next we have Walter Garnet Guernsey, and I'll call the next five speakers Kimberly Morris, Justin Croft, Susan Payne, John Ben Skinner, Edward Armijo and Mr. Gardiner that you can begin your work. Thank you, Mr. President. Council members. My name is Walter Guernsey. I've been a long park Parkville resident and I'm here in opposition to the wastewater fee increase. I don't think anyone can disagree with the fact that the city needs to upgrade the stormwater system. Unfortunately, the proposal that's before the city council now, which incorporates the plant to Park Hill plan, is not the right plan. The as I understand it, there's $1.5 billion worth of stormwater plans that are in the the stormwater plan that was approved in 2014. Those that plan is what should be implemented. The money that is being allocated to plan to Park Hill is a huge mistake. It does not remedy the problems in any significant way south of I-70. We've been to several meetings and I have had no clear explanation as to how there's any significant benefit to anything south of I-70 . The benefit to this project is the area around the National Western Stock Show. It's the CDOT plan for I-70. It's the other real estate interests that are in the area that are north of I-70. Those those projects should provide for themselves whatever stormwater is needed. We should not have to do it at the incredible cost of re-allocating significant amounts of money that are not then available for all the other projects. The projects that need to be done to help my neighborhood involve with the prior speaker talked about, which is increasing the size of the pipes coming from Fairmont north west. That's not being done. Nothing is being done with this money that's now being that would be approved as part of the park. The plant to Park Hill plan. I. I want to make another point, which is that. The City Council should understand that there are serious legal deficiencies in this plan for the parochial plan as it applies to using the city for a golf course as a detention plan. First of all, the closure of that park that that dedicated parkland for a period of two years is not a deer. It is not a park use. The closure is for another use. That's not a legal park use. Secondly, the the entire program will eliminate significant trees, which will change the park nature of that in a way that is illegal under the common law of Colorado. And I think that if the city council and the city proceed on this basis, they're going to find that what they're doing as it applies to the City Park Golf course is going to be determined to be illegal. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Mr. Gonzales. Kimberly Morse. No. I think you. My name is Kimberly Morrison. I'm coal neighbor and I am strongly opposed to this project. I recognize that we need infrastructure investments in our city. I do not think this is the right project. We spend our money as citizens paying consultants and engineers for the city to come up with a stormwater master plan every few years. And we did so in 2014. And these are real projects that will help real citizens in the Denver area. In just a few short months after that project plan came out or that master plan came out without any prioritized projects, without any mention of this particular area. The letter of recommendation came out from the Met specifically saying that we should do a stormwater drainage project for seed at RTD and CC in that order. And the first order of business in the solutions for that drainage plan was cutting a ten foot deep channel. It didn't say how deep at the time, but a ten foot deep channel through my neighborhood, a ten foot deep channel, 100 feet wide. Isn't why enough to make that not so. Steep that people can't fall. In? It's not a park like amenity. I think we should be investing in infrastructure that helps the neighborhoods across the city, since all Denver residents are going to be paying for it and not funding the development in a valley that is prone to flooding and putting myself and my neighbors at risk. Thank you. Thank you, Miss Morse. Next, we have Justin Croft. Good evening, Members of Council. Thank you for the opportunity to speak in front of you tonight. My name is Justin Croft, and I'm here as the chair of the Rhino Business Improvement District, and I'm here tonight to urge you to delay this vote. I think based on what we've heard tonight and what we have heard in our community and others, there is a lack of information. There's a lack of understanding around this particular issue. And I think we've come to a conclusion in the Rhino bid. We took a vote on this last week that a measure of this magnitude in a fee increase of this level begets a responsibility to build consensus in the community. And if the community is confused about this and feels that there has not been enough outreach effort, again, with a fee increase of this size, I would urge you to delay at least 30 days to letter that we issued this morning in order to build consensus in the community, in order to bring the facts to light, in order to really communicate what work has been done to come up with this particular solution. The kind of vacuum I think of information that is present around this fee increase, at least insofar as people's understanding of it is the kind of thing that unfortunately sets community members against community members. And you've seen that tonight where folks are really they end up marginalizing each other and trying to push each other towards an extreme position. And again, I would urge you to delay this vote and really build consensus in the community. Embark on an outreach effort over the next 30 days to bring people into the facts surrounding this particular issue. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Craft. Next, we have Susan Payne. The pain's not here. John. John Barnes, give skipper. And we have 18 minutes left in their cursory public hearing. Thank you for having me. Allowing me to touch the bite. My name is John Van Schuyler. I am the the secretary of City Park. Friends and neighbors. I'm going to clean up a little thing. That that. Happened. Lemon Knowles was reading our our resolution, and she couldn't she didn't have time to finish up the now, therefore, which is probably pretty important, too, that. All those. Things about why we considered City Park important and why we were asking for more research on this now therefore we move as the city evaluate other options based not solely on utility for C dot RTD and revenues of the city, but on full study and meaningful neighborhood involvement. All right. That's something that we passed in that included was one of the issues one of the whereas is which talks about something called inadvertent attention. So if you don't know what inadvertent attention means, please keep your hand down right now. All right. Thank you. Nobody raised their hand. Inadvertent attention is. A hole in your front yard that fills up with water and never drains out. It could be a five gallon bucket in your backyard that fills up with water, that evaporates. It can be bigger things like they have in city park, like the ball fields. In City Park proper. I'm not talking about the golf course. It's in the northeast corner. The ball fields create a detention area that does is part of the drainage area. That does not that does not get down to the main stem and therefore, does not need to be detained again. And so why is that important? Why why am I talking about that? Because the more inadvertent attention you have in a drainage basin, the smaller your flow is going to be, the amount of rainfall is the same . But every time you catch water and you stop it in the upper bays and it doesn't get down to it beyond the beyond the golf course and down to the other neighborhoods. And it's not a problem for the ditch that Kim was just talking about. I'm oh, I. Have to stop for a second and say. An engineering joke because I'm an engineer and not an optimist, says. That the glass is half full and the pessimist says that the glass is half empty. And the engineer says, Why is a glass so big? And apply that to the size of the tension that is planned for City Park Golf now. If I go walking, if any of you go walking by the ball fields, which I suggest you do, there is an area there which is surrounded by roads or parking lots, raised ground on all sides, so that if water comes into it from 23rd Avenue, crosses Colorado, it flows into that basin and it stays there. We don't play what we don't play. You don't play. I'm running out of time here. This plan does not consider giving. You ran out of time. Sorry, sir. Thank you. I'll have to. You have to call me. Thank you. Next, we have Edward Armijo. And as ever, come forward, I'll call the next five. Bridget Walsh, that techs, Adrian Brown, Steven Eppler and Dennis Royer. If you could make your way to the front end. Sorry. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name. Is. Edward Ami Ho, who? I've lived. In the neighborhood for 15 or. 16 years now. Because I just turned 65. I'm getting tired of hearing people coming in to Denver and saying, Well, I lived in Denver for 15 years and the streets are flooded. I've been here for 60 years. It only flooded once, 1965. The donor boxes. If the gentleman would have went. Outside and. Picked them up, the gutter wouldn't be back. And now, if you had pick up these water bottles, the gutters wouldn't be back and up. Another thing I am ashamed of, every one that sits on the Infrastructure Committee except you or Debbie, you guys didn't have the guts to contact me, get confined, space trained, and really inspect your so-called deteriorating storm sewer. You guys want me to respect you, but you can't even respect what I ask you. And I've been involved working with the city council for years to clean Denver up. Then you got somebody talking about New Orleans. We're a mile high. We're not below sea level. Come on. And another thing that I need to make U.S aware of this. Do you ever watch your own recording on TV when it's posted? You guys were running a circus. At your. Last meeting because you got all these people that are more intelligent than me, but they're playing the blame game. Well, what do you think? What do you think? Well, what about that? We had 90 meetings. That's funny, because I went to their last zoning meeting when it was at the Fort Lee Museum, and I personally asked Michael after he made the statement. Well, we talked to everybody. We had these private meetings. So I turned around and told Michael and this young lady, he's heard it before. Your demographics. Your study says the whole neighborhood and Swan, she and Larry are full of a bunch of low educated Mexican nationals. They don't speak Spanish. I don't speak Spanish. How can they have 60 meetings with a bunch of individuals. That they say are under educated? They don't speak. English. They wouldn't give me an answer. Almas Michael made a deal with me about Keep me in the loop. If they would have gave me the respect to let me pick an interpreter and set up a meeting with the minorities that do not speak English. And I do speak at my knees, by the way. But I don't speak Spanish. Each and every one of you would have. Got a better. A deal on who wants what. I even went to a meeting at state capital. The highway. Does not need our flooded stream. Because it does not flood in the coal neighborhood. Mr. Romeo. Guys, guys. Sorry. Sorry. Your 3 minutes are up. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Next, we have Bridget Walsh. Hi, I'm Bridget Walsh, and I'm here speaking on my own behalf. I am a board member, not a board member. I'm a member. Of City Park. Friends and neighbors. Has. Have any of you seen the video that was produced that expressed our position? Would you like to show that? The video that was produced by Phil Hanlon and that expressed our position and produced. In two days over 1100 signatures for people who are against it, sort of like educated them about what we saw, our vision of what this project was about. Would anyone like to see it? Was This is your opportunity to speak. The reason we're not responding. We want to give you your 3 minutes to speak. All right. So at any rate, I would like to point out that in the whole neighborhood, the trench you intend to dig there and call neighborhood is under asphalt. And as far as I've been told, it's an unmitigated Superfund site and will expose not only the residents of coal, but the residents of Denver generally to a lot of hazardous waste ply to Park Hill provides flood protection for I-70, RTD, new development and quarter of opportunity. We want to know why the the lion's share of the stormwater fees is going to be used to protect these projects to the detriment or to the loss of the other neighborhoods in Denver. Why should Deborah homeowners rather than the project developers pay for flood protection for I-70? RTD a new development in the corridor of opportunity. The engineers will tell you that this is not going to do anything to stop flooding really south of I-70. Yet all of this money is being focused on this tiny area of new development, and we are wondering why our projects are not being addressed. Why does the city keep telling us that the project is unrelated to I-70 when numerous public documents that we've all read and common sense tell us that it is there for I-70 a related development. Why is there no ice for affected neighborhoods in parks? That's a real sore point, and it really engendered a lot of distrust. How can the city claim to care about. Cost of housing? IT plan to double fees for. Denver homeowners to subsidize new development. Why did the city wait until November 2015 to begin talking about the coal open channel and digging up City Park golf course when they knew about it from at least January 2015. Why did the city rush the I-70 intergovernmental agreement, including the time out for this plan? Timeline for this plan through the Lame Duck Council on June 215. Why won't the city address the numerous questions raised about this plan by neighbors digging up unmitigated Superfund sites will endanger all residents of Denver. Almost done. Why didn't City Council go on a junket with over 100 parties with vested interest in their vote on this plan ? Did they buy your vote? So thank you very much. Thank you as well. And you should look at the video. Name is on that text. That texture. You know, lots of people ask me. What should I say when I go down there and I say, you know, it doesn't make any difference. Say what you want. You're not going to change anybody's mind. Everybody knows that. And that's okay. You know, you shouldn't probably change your mind. Everybody want you to study issues in advance and understand what's going on. And it should be hard to to change. But it's really disappointing for people when they work real hard and they try and make reasoned arguments and they think they're going to flip you. They're going to say the magic words, and they don't. And then what do they say? They see you traipsing off to Brooklyn with Brownstein and with CRL and they look at your contribution list. And they say, I can put two, two, two together. I go down there and I talk and it doesn't make any difference. And they go off to Brooklyn and guess who gets their way? And you know, Paul Krugman talks again about how few people participate in what low esteem government is held in. And somehow you don't make connections, you don't think about there any consequences for what you do, that people are stupid and people just don't think about it and it's all right. It's one of the perks of the job. It's just one of the perks of the job. We all know you're going to pass this. We all know you're going to pass the last one. It's a kabuki dance. And then you're going to stand up there and you're going to thank people for sitting in the hard benches and staying late and talking so eloquently. And people will trudge out of here and government will be in just a little bit less repute than it was at the beginning of the evening. Adrian Brown. Thank you, counsel, for sticking around so long. Thank you, Rafael, for providing the only meal that we got tonight, which is greatly appreciated. My name's Adrian Brown. I live at 123 West Fourth Avenue. I'm here on my own recognizance. I'm a 40 year professional engineer and I'm in the hydrology business. So I actually know something about this. I question the need for this huge fee increase for the purposes which have been stated? What will happen based on my research and discussions, extensive discussions with the city and others, is that most of the money that we are talking about tonight is going to convert the Montpellier Basin and the Park Hill to to Platte River area from a network of small hydraulic systems, stormwater systems to a major system. This requires increasing the service level that it requires from 2.5. 2 to 5 years storm frequency to a 100 year storm frequency because we move from small systems to a large system. This is by Denver ordinance, so it's not forced by anything other than that. So what we're going to do or we're proposing to do is to convert from the current system, which works fine, needs work, but works fine in this area to a major system which is a $300 million mega project. And as many other people have said it is, I concur that it will achieve essentially nothing for the people up south of the approximately 70 line. Do we have to do this? No, we don't. Consider the alternative. We got into this pickle by creating a whole bunch of impermeable land where there used to be permeable land. We need to turn back that impermeable land to permeable land. There have been wonderful work done to creating permeable structures out of parking lots, out of driveways, out of roads. Romans were pretty good at that. And all of the structures that we think of and which are today impermeable to turn them back into permeable stuff, even roofs and that sort of stuff. And we can do that by increasing local containment, by increasing local infiltration, by increasing local pipe systems to convert water to locations where it can infiltrate. $200 million buys you one hell of a lot of incentives to people to do that. Like the same sort of money provide you incentive for solar. So don't do the the redundant work that has been recommended for Mr. Brown. Mr. Brown. I vote yes on this, but for the right reasons. Thank you. Thank you. Stephen Epler. But even in the. End, we have 2 minutes left. So you may be our last speaker. Mr.. My name is Steven Eppler. I reside in Congress Park. I'm a member of CP. And I'm here on my own behalf. I don't think there's any question that. Denver needs to put money into infrastructure. Particularly into sanitary sewers and water quality. However, the wisdom of this particular project in terms of wastewater, I urge the Council to delay and reconsider this specifically. It's clear from neighborhood meetings and polling that we noted that over one third of the residents. Want. More information. About this. And the. City has been woefully inadequate in terms of providing accurate information. And what we're told seems to change frequently. The plant. The city's 2014 stormwater drainage program sets a goal of providing wastewater, a level of service to residential areas of sufficient capacity to sustain a two year comment and a. Five year event. Capacity for. Commercial areas. Whereas the. P2P project proposes to increase that to 100 year event protection. I want to read from the 2014 wastewater proposal. Cost effective implementation of a citywide 100 year drainage system is not. Radical. Because of the significant capital cost to retrofit construction and limited annualized flood hazard reduction. Consequently, a phased program is recommended that prioritizes improvements to address current hazards while improving minor the minor storm system. This does not really address those minor problems at all and actually provides disproportionate protection to an area of the city that slated for redevelopment and to which the government which we already have passed a bond issue for. I don't think the whole city and county of Denver should have. To pay for this limited improvement. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Eppler. And that is we just hit one hour. So that concludes our one hour courtesy public hearing. That concludes our speaker now time. And Madam Secretary, can you if you could take those speakers off the screens or actually council members names? Questions from members of council. Councilman Lopez, you're up. Thank you, Mr. President. If I could have either George Delaney or somebody from Public Works in terms of cost. I know you've heard a lot of different numbers. I'm curious about the impact to the average Denver property owner taxpayer that this will affect. What does that look like if this were to move forward, this future increase, what does that look like for for those taxpayers? From here on to the. Okay. Next benchmark. Sure. Every year. Thank you, Councilman. Again, George Delaney. Department of Public Works. This fee increase on the sanitary side is proximately a dollar a month. This fee increase on the storm side is approximately a dollar a month. So that the total increase for the combined bill to individual home or the average homeowner is about $23 per year and it'll be $23 each year for five years until 2015. The Sanitary Bill is billed monthly. 22 over 20. Yeah, 2020, I'm sorry, not 2015. The sanitary bill is billed monthly, so you would see that dollar dollar increase in your water bill. The storm bills right now billed annually, but we have plans to bill to start billing it on a semiannual basis to spread it out. And we're working with Denver Water to even potentially do it on a monthly basis so that it would spread out that cost. So rather than getting one bill that's increased by 12 or $15, roughly, it would only be a dollar monthly cost to you. And just two more questions. Well, I have a bunch, but I'm not going to sit here and take up all the time. The. Just too just from. I've heard this a few times that I just want to make sure that on the record right here in council chambers impact on global areas once they call those neighborhoods does . What's the impact now and what's the impact in the future with the plant, the park? You know. Globeville has two sources of potential flooding. One is over the gap in the levee. That's down around 38th and Brighton and that area where if the river gets high enough, it could come in behind the levee into the town. And the other one is from flow from the north. And that's that, that basin is called Utah Junction. So those are the two things we're studying. We're studying the river, we're studying the outfall for Utah Junction to decide what's best to do for Globeville. The PDP project is on the east side of the river. It does not impact Globeville. The Globeville landing outfall is north of where the levee gap is, so that water will go in to the Platte River. It will flow north into Nebraska and it will not go backwards into the levee and flooded. So we do not believe P2P will have any impact on Globeville. There are other factors that have impacts on Globeville, and we're studying those and trying to come up with the best solution we can so that we can fix get those all fixed. But those studies are underway, but we don't have them finalized. Let me ask one more one more question on that, if I may, Mr. President, since we're in global response here, it just so happens to be a pretty defunct viaduct and a crappy highway that goes right through the neighborhoods. It's always split it. What impact if this does not pass, if this council were to reject this tonight? What impact does that have on I-78? As I do? Is the reroute resurrected suddenly? And what happens to our voice and Denver's position and seat us? How does that how does that affect that whole scenario? Because I think there's. Questions floating around about that and. Sure. Good question. First of all, Cedar is going, you know, depending upon whatever court cases they have to do and depending upon getting their record of decision from the Federal Highway Administration, all that. See, that's going to build their road. Now, if. We whether we. Whether we because P2P, we have to realize P2P is is not being built because of I-70, it will relate to I-70. We can't deny that it won't keep water away from I-70. It will it does relate, but it doesn't isn't being built because of it's being built because that's the worst basin in the city and the floods all the time. But what see that will do is they were going to give us $63 million towards P2P and what Cedar will do is say, fine, you don't want to do it. We'll take our $63 million. We'll do detention around our our our highway, you know, whatever that might look like, whether it's detention ponds or pits or whatever. And so they will they they have their money for their detention. They can either give it to us or we can do a broader project where they can keep it and do their role. But I do not believe personally and I don't know anyone who has a different opinion that that us not doing P2P will stop CDOT and say, Oh geez, now we have to move our road. No, that will not happen. Well, this will this have any kind of impact, Mr. Delaney, on this lowered alternative or I mean, continuing to build at above grade? I mean, what what would their next step be in terms of what it looks like? And do they. Still have options to do whatever they want? Sure. Yeah, they do. And they will. And, you know, I, I said that I probably misspoke in committee when I said, see, that doesn't care about the neighborhood, but CDOT cares about the road. That's their job, is to protect that road from flooding. This map that you've all seen shows the the purple area north of I-70 being flood, the flood risk being substantially reduced. The reason it's reduced is because we're putting in the channel, we're stopping the water back up, up, up the basin. If and remember now there's a viaduct there now. So the water runs under the viaduct and it floods these areas. When you put a road down into the into the in the surface, then that water's just going to go and it'll be stopped. So what we're trying to do is say, we can stop this down here and stop more of an area that floods by doing our project, whether c that worries about flooding in this area. And that's another issue because they're they're going to protect this line right here, you know, and they're not going to necessarily worry about the surrounding neighborhoods. And I don't mean to say that to be disrespectful to Cedar, but that's their purpose in life. Their purpose in life is to build roads and keep them dry. And so our purpose in life is to protect neighborhoods from flooding. And that's why we're our project has a little broader scope. Thank you, Mr. Delaney. Mr. Heineman from the Urban Drainage Flood Control District, if you can please come to the podium. By the way, this man is retiring sometime soon. And I think it's okay that we bring him to these late night. I just really think that you don't got it easy on the way out. I want to talk hydrology in that 100 year event we go back to. I think I think a good starting point is September 12th, 2013. What did the hydrology reports when we looked at that? What did the aftermath look like? And I know everybody saw images of Longmont and Boulder and some of these other areas. And then there was also Aurora in some of these areas and more closer to metro Denver. What was the difference? Is there any kind of difference between what we were doing out here? I can't say we because we're not Aurora, but what they were doing up there versus Boulder. I know that I read reports that there was actually more rainfall out here than there was in Boulder. Yes. Thank you. Paul Heineman, executive director of the Urban Drainage and Flood Control District. Yeah, the flood that we had back in 2012. What happened is that there were two kind of major storms within our boundaries. Our boundaries are contained. 40 local governments kind of from the north side of Boulder down to the north side of Castle Rock. So there were two major rain clouds that came over our district. One was in the Westerly Creek Basin, which as you mentioned, was just east of the Montclair Basin and it was over in Aurora and the other one was up in Boulder. And I think everybody saw the news reports what happened in. Boulder. And that's because that infrastructure to pass that flood had not been in place to pass that water that that fell in that major storm that fell over Boulder. There was actually more rain that fell over the Aurora basin, but the infrastructure had been built because we had assisted Aurora over the many years to build the storm drainage infrastructure that went through the Westerly Creek Basin and down into Denver and it flows through the Stapleton area. There's actually five major drainage detention basins in that area, along with a lot of channel improvements or stream improvements along the way. And really the only damage that you saw is that there at Utah Park, it overflowed and and went down the street and pulled up some of the pavement and sidewalk that the city crews had to replace. But that was really it. There was no structural damage to homes if that storm would have happened over this basin, the Montclair City Park Basin, that infrastructure didn't exist. And it is my opinion that you would have seen much worse damage that you then you saw in Boulder, because Boulder, even though they hadn't installed there, the drainage infrastructure, there was still a natural stream that ran through that area and did carry some of that water. Did that answer your question? That was exactly what I was going to. Okay. My second question and just added just pure transparency. And I chaired the urban drainage and flood control district while Paul has was the executive director for two years. And this is something that we looked at diligently every single month in detail. And, you know, nothing against engineers, none take longer to be kind of stale when you're presenting. I'm just kidding. No, no, I'm just kidding. I mean, that's that's where I was actually going to go with this. And I know that would be kind of speculation, but you are and by those 40 local governments and the state entity , you are the executive, you are the engineer. When it comes to hydrology, you are the main man when it comes to this. So that's what I wanted to bring you up here and hear that from you. So I really appreciate the answer to that question. Thank you, Mr. Time. Okay. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Councilwoman Black. Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Delaney, I have a question for you. So one of our speakers said that the lion's share of the money will go to the Black to Park Hill project. Can you please tell us of the $23 increase a year? How much of that will go to that project? Approximately $5 per year out of the 23. Five out of 20. Okay. Thank you. Also, there's been some people who have said that the Coal Channel is a Superfund site and it's going to spread hazardous waste throughout our city. Can you please address that question? Yeah, I'm want. To. Oh, sorry. Again, once again. Shelly Vandersloot from Environmental Health. So I'm Celia Van Vander Loop. I had been with Environmental Health for many years and I'm now with North Denver Cornerstone Collaborative. The there are two operable units of the Superfund site that it's named Vasquez Boulevard, I-70. The first operable unit one is residential soils, and it covered all of the residential properties in global area Cole, Clayton , Swansea and a little bit of five points. EPA sampled approximately 4500 homes and cleaned all of those that were dirty. They did not sample under pavement. And so where there are streets and where there are sidewalks, they did not sample under those streets and sidewalks. When the city does environmental cleanup or I'm sorry, when the city does a construction project or we acquire land, we always do sampling. If we are going to be removing pavement and digging, we will do environment. We would do environmental sampling to determine if contamination was there. We would address that appropriately when we did that. Operable Unit two is at the Coliseum property and the global landing outfall structure will go across operable unit two that has some smelter contaminated soils and a former landfill. We have a plan in place which is available on our website to clean up that property or to address that contamination, to prevent stormwater from moving down through the waste and also prevent contaminated groundwater from the waste from moving up into the stormwater channel. To answer your question. Yeah, thanks. I have a couple more questions for whoever wants to answer. Several people have said that the project would not provide any protection south of I-70. Can you please address that? Can you talk? I asked Leslie. Thomas to come up and answer them. Good evening, mindlessly Thomas. I'm city engineer with Public Works. I think you've been provided this map that talks about the number of how the protection will be, and I'll just share it with the folks here. So in the purple area, which really there are three purple areas that are south of I did you I'm sorry, did you say south or north? South. South. Thank you. Okay. So south would be area four, five and six. In area four, you have 3326 residential properties that would be benefited in Area five, 114 and in Area seven 2470. Okay. Then I have one more question. Can you please address others comments about the 2014 master plan and how we got to this plan? How we get to this plan? That would be Mr. Bruce. Thank you. Well, while Bruce is coming up, I would point to the council. We provided this at the request of Councilwoman CORNISH and. And in the yellow area of the map, the south of the channel, in a five year storm, the flow of water would be reduced by 49% in a ten year storm by 52%, and in a 100 year storm, 19%. So there is a reduction, especially in the the more normal storms, the hundred year storms, not so much. Good evening. Good morning. Maybe versus your Harnik with Public Works. I did also hear about the master plan issue multiple times, so I figured we would want to address it here too. To me, the Stormwater Master Plan was adopted in 2014 and to me it's a planning level. Document by city charter. We have to redo it every five years. So we did it in oh nine. The 14 ones, the current one we use, and then we'll do it again in 19 because so much is changing. From when I think it from oh 9 to 14. What changed in oh nine. We didn't really even have the surface modeling. We, we, we knew where kind of pipes would we use these basic guidelines. We even use guidelines of two year in residential, five year in the street, but that works for the really small basins. When it rains a lot, there's a lot of excess runoff. And in the small. Basins, that runoff stays a foot or less. And then it can get to the open drainage way. But in. A big basin like. Montclair, there's an accumulative effect where the excess just starts to build, to build, to build. And before you know it, you don't have a foot in the street, you have two feet, you have three feet. And so that's. Why when our stormwater master plan is updated, because we're continually getting new information and I hope I touched on why it's kind of why our level of service. Is what it is that our level of service is for 100 year. Storm drain, 100 year rainfall. We want to put as much as we can under the street. And so that the street is only flowing in a foot deeper, less. We feel that that foot deep is a safe amount of. Water to flow in the street. Anything greater than that tends to flood cars. Crawl spaces. Basements and that sort of thing. That that answer your question. Yeah. Okay. Thank you, Councilwoman Black Councilman, New George. The I get a lot of questions from residents about the first I ask the question other than Park to park hill what are the other projects that are in this 383 and I look at and I say, hmm, I'm not sure. And it really talks about the lack of communication, understanding about what's going on. And there's 383 they look at the dollar figure and the other shocked, but then we start talking about flooding and they start to understand what infrastructure means. But can you explain more about what's in that $177 million relates to this sheet, this on our desk here, these projects. Sure. And I'll ask maybe Leslie or someone to get any provide detail for any of these projects. The three, there's $383 million in this plan for storm capital construction over the next five years, of which about 177 million will be paid in cash. Just a pay as you go sort of business. The other 206 million will be money that's borrowed to borrow to build the plant, the Park Hill project. And that money will be debt financed. The 177 million breaks into four categories. The first one is 53 million for what we are calling neighborhood needs, which are things like general storm, curbing gutter, that sort of project there for small projects spread throughout the city. The second category is what we call focus basins and those are bigger projects. And some of the projects, and I believe this was provided to you today at some point it's projects like the 27th Street Interceptor, $12.4 million, the liquid gold shared, and phase two construction 7.2 million. The Jackson Street System 9.6 million. The 16th Street System 14.3 million. The Oneida and Tennessee and Cherry Creek Phase one 4.4 million. So there's a list of these projects that are spread throughout the area, throughout, throughout the city, or at least in the areas where the basins are most critical. Then we have another category called focused waterways. That's where we have put to put the money for to match the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for the work in the river related to Globeville. That's where we've put money to do other kinds for we're Gulch, for Sanderson Gulch, those those kinds of projects. And then the fourth category is water quality. And we've talked a bit about water quality. Our effort to try to reduce the E.coli coming out of five basins, coming out of the outfalls and five basins into the Platte River over the next five years. So we have this list of projects and if you have any specific questions on it, would be happy to answer them. We tried to show that on that map that we had with the little triangles and that and the problem we have with that is it's hard to put that into context of the size of some of these projects. I mean, some of these projects we're talking 12 and $14 million projects. These are not but it's shown by a little triangle. So it's kind of hard to get that message across. But we hope that this. This will help provide you and your constituents with a list of ideas of where those projects would be. About how many projects are on this list? 39, 39 projects. And something a lot of them are citywide, like curbing Gutter, General Storm and some of the water quality and other sanitary projects. You know, the plan to kill, it seemed like a huge project and distance wise as well as complexity. I mean, is it the largest project that you've ever undertaken? Yes. It is certainly one of the largest projects that we have undertaken. And as the water flows, I mean the flows south to north going toward I-70 and the relationship I-70 is as you bring 70 down, it blocks the water. So you got to channel it somewhere else. Is that correct? Is that the issue? Yes. The water typically flows from south to north, towards the river and towards San Creek. Okay. And the flooding, you know, other than councilwoman saucepans basement, the flooding that goes along prior to Park Yard. Can you give examples of flooding goes on. I was interested in the gentleman's comment about he never been flooded in cold after living there 60 years or so. Can we? Mike Anderson is here. He actually has a flash drive of all the pictures. I don't know that that's what you want to see tonight, but there is significant flooding along the especially the the Coke property. There are significant flooding that happens at 50th and Colorado. In fact, that is a place where we lost a first responder about ten years ago. It is difficult to get around in that area. Still, Vasquez is difficult to maneuver when it rains. In fact, many people when it rains, unfortunately, get off the elevated section of I-70 and drive down into the area at the end of the ramps, which can have multiple feet of water in them. So there are we have a lot of photos. If people would like to see that, we'd be happy to share those with you in. The 2014 master plan. Was this the highest rated project in that whole plan or was it the most severely drain storm flooded area in this basin? Yes, this Montclair Basin we have been keeping track of by the Red Stars that you will see in the master plan for I think it's the last five years of the plan. We showed them since 20. What? 14. Thank you. It's late since 2014. And so this season has had the most challenges that we've been made aware of. And so that was one of the criteria that we used in selecting projects. A lot of residents asked me to 383 million. What's going to control the costs there? Is that really going to be 400 million, 425 million, or is it going to be 383? That is a really good question and I have an answer for that, but I have to go back and get it. Just a second. Yeah. So we have while we can't really guarantee, okay, any price of any project, prices go up, prices go down. Scopes change. We do. Want to deliver this program. You know, within the dollars that we're talking about and we're committed to doing that. So we're committed to using the legacy systems that were developed with a better Denver bond program. Many of you may be aware of those. Those systems were based upon the best of industry program management practices, and they delivered a $500 million program within the time requested and returned $20 million back to us to be able to have additional investment in the city. So some of the key program management processes that we're expecting to deploy are some program controls, which is reporting scheduling costs, tracking that type of thing, and manage project managing project risk. And I think this is an important thing for all of us to think about. We do that by identifying risk early and mentioning that keeping a risk register, if you will, and also putting together a risk mitigation action plan to manage that risk. And lastly, we have a contingency that we've planned for in this program so that if that active management doesn't doesn't come to fruition, we do have a contingency to come back on to work on that to bring the projects into the budget. The last thing that we're really focusing on right now is careful procurement and contracting strategies so that we buy this out in the in the best way possible. Okay. Thank you. The last question, going back to Councilman Lopez's after what is seems to be such a communication and understanding of that all this project with the public. What would happen if you had a delay to September 1st on this project on approval of this phase. Of these rates? Yeah. If you gave a couple extra to extra much to talk about. Or our financial projections are based upon a rate increase effective July 1st, 2016. Keep in mind that in our proposal we do intend to go out to the bond market yet this year for to borrow $121 million towards the Plan to Park Hill project. So if it were delayed, we'd have to look at the financial impact of delaying it and lay on top of that, the ability to go out to the marketplace and borrow that $120 million would would the bond with our bonds be more expensive? Less expensive? I don't know. We would have to look at that analysis. But that's one thing to keep in mind. One of the reasons why we had pushed for the rate increase July 1st rather than waiting till January is because we want to have the financial stability in the fund and the commitment to the fund so that when we go to the bond market and borrow $120 million, the investor say, oh, you have the you'll have the money now and you'll have the money in the future because of the rate increase. So that's one of the big driving factors. Will have any effect on AIG at all. No. Here comes the attorney. It's kind of a pop quiz here, but we have. Oh, here we go. Jessica Brody, Assistant City Attorney, Denver City Attorney's Office. In answer to your question about the IAEA, the IAEA does have certain timeframes that we have committed to meeting. If the rate increase were to be delayed. It is possible we'd have to evaluate whether we could still meet those timeframes. But presumably, if we are unable to meet our commitments to see that we could potentially be in breach and those are issues we would have to resolve to see that. Okay. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman there, Councilman Brooks. Thank you, Mr. President. Okay. I have a quick question. You know. Since we're on. The DeLay conversation, there are a couple of folks. Who talked about DeLay, and I think Justin Croft was one of them. Justin, can you come up to the mic, please? The Rhino. Councilman Newt talked about kind of two months. You specifically said 30 days for further outreach. What do you envision that looking like? I would envision that that would look like a pretty concerted effort to actually a lot of the issues that have been discussed based on council's questions just in the last half hour. So I think a lot of what's been discussed is there seems to be this misunderstanding or there seems to be this question has come up multiple times. Can we address that? And we've got people in the room who are kind of working on this at the highest level. So I think assembling some of that information and disseminating that in a pretty orderly way and in a really meaningful way, such that it demonstrates that the city is really behind this and that they're willing to stand behind it by. Being. Forthright, transparent, and giving as much information as possible. For people to be able to sort of. Make a community decision as to their level of support with this. Issue. You're a civic leader. You have been involved in these outreach outreaches. Never 100%. Right. So you do the 30 days. You do the 60 days, but you don't reach consensus. I think there's there's. If you can demonstrate that you've worked towards consensus diligently and in an in good faith, then you've sort of created the opportunity to build trust with the community. Whether or not that consensus actually comes to bear and my point is not necessarily delayed as far as possible to build consensus would never get anything done if every issue was. Handled that way. Great. Thank you, Justin. Sure. And David brought an issue was brought up on common law, some legal issues regarding city park that when we if this goes forward city park golf course would be out of commission for six months or whenever and we would be under a legal issue. The question is, is there validity to that? How would you respond? David Broadwell, assistant city attorney. Thank you for that question. We've been aware for some time now that this theory is out there. Once it began to be talked about more publicly, that one element of the overall project would be detention and and redesign of the City Park Golf course. Incorporating stormwater feature into the course are a large feature that's not there now. So our legal team has had time to think about this in terms of whether there would be an a validity to a claim that there's something illegal about that. And the bottom line is, we're not aware of any case law, any statutory law in Colorado that would say that stormwater facilities, flood control facilities can't be co-located with park land, but that they're somehow rather incompatible. We're just not aware of any case law that stands for that proposition, nor do we read anything in our own home rule charter that would prevent this from occurring. So the city attorney's office stands ready to defend that particular feature of the overall plan. If someone were to attempt to bring a legal claim, declaratory judgment action, for example, to to and join us from being able to do that. We were very confident we'd be able to prevail if somebody brought just such a claim. Let me conclude by saying that if it were true that there were some incompatibility between stormwater facilities and parkland, it'd be a very significant revelation, not just for Denver, but a lot of other cities that have co-located stormwater facilities and flood control facilities with parkland throughout Colorado. It's really a fairly common thing, not only in Denver but in other cities as well. So if that were to be a litigated issue, there'd be keen interest around the state from other cities in any litigation of that nature. But we're prepared to defend that, and we believe that we defend it successfully. Okay, thank you. Last question, George Delaney. One of the key, you know, points, I think, coming from some of my neighbors is a valid one and one that I share. And it's it's around Globeville. So to. To two quick questions for. You. One, and I think folks are aware of the projects that are part of 39 projects that are going to affect all of us. So can you can you outline them real quick? And then I'm going to go to the larger 50, $50 million question. There are four items in our plan right now related to Globeville. None of these are the large solution, but these are smaller solutions for certain problem areas. So we have $6 million in the plan to match the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers money to begin the design of the work for that portion of the river related to the levee, related to the banks, related to the habitat along the river, which would help with the levee. At Globeville, that's $6 million. We in a general storm category, remember, we have 5 million every year will spend on general storm, which means projects all over the city. We have three such projects in Globeville. We have the 49th in Grant Detention Plan, which is at the Platte Open Space Area, where we plan to build a 3 to 4 acre detention plan to hold some of the water that runs in from Utah Junction Basin. There's a sump at 43rd and Sherman, and there's a storm pipe extension at 40th and Fox. Now, these are not big projects. They're more localized projects, but they are projects to address areas that we know historically and over the last several years have flooded on a regular basis. So they would solve those problems, but they're not that big. 60 $70 Million. Globeville Social Solution, 60. It's going to take $60 million. And I want to I want to be very clear about this, because I don't I don't know any area, especially in my district, that is 100% solved. So it's going to take $60 million to complete. At least solve Globeville. Our master plan has projects in it for Globeville that total $62 million. Now those are in 20 $13. So with a little inflation and other costs, it's probably going to be a push. 80 million. But that's what the master plan describes as a planning document for the needs to solve problems in that area. Do you know what the cost is, too, to take care of? Make sure it's not an inundation area. Not an. Is that the river? The ocean. That is the 81. Yeah, that is the 80 million. Okay? Sure. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Brooks. Councilman Espinosa. Good news, Councilman Brooks. There are a couple of little spots over here that are 100% salt. So there are some areas there is no water flowing through. Correct. That's modeled in there bone dry at 100 years. Except for what obviously falls on it. I'm I apologize. You see me over here clicking through all these things. And that's because I was I received 1400 pages from CDOT earlier today, and I took that public testimony to time to sort of peruse it to see if anything there was something that I could use. I specifically was asking for several weeks for the more detailed information of what what the scope is that they're tasking their their concessionaires on this water quality side. Because, you know, like I said last time, there's some machinations about what I would do. And the fact of the matter is, there's no design. There's no design. There is some analysis in this stuff about parcels that would have to be acquired for the outfalls and things like that and and acquisition of streets and roadways for the low part of the ditch to drain that. And then there is what I'm going to show you, which is actually the most truthful maps I have seen. So speaking to if there is an extension in the two months, 30 days or 60 days, I need the city to get this right. I need you to be open and transparent in the way that they talked about. No more obfuscating with graphics. No more obfuscating with boundaries on on basins. No more distorting the timeline like we talked about last time, which is your design. Your idea predated your your design. Your design predated your prioritization, and none of them are reflected. There is no statement in the 2014 masterplan about these being the highest priority. Councilman, we we're still in question period. So if you want to frame that in the question. Then let me let me put these in the form of a question. I feel like I'm in jeopardy here. So let's go right to the pictures. So this is from C dot. I won't I'll I can get you the actual document because I downloaded them onto here. But this is the major basin map which is reflective of the actual basins, unlike this portrayal. This is the Montclair watershed in the park here, Hill Watershed. And I've done it larger so you can see it. The blue is the Montclair, the pink is the Park Hill. The red line is obviously I-70. And the concern here is that the 39th Avenue Channel is what connects the Park Hill watershed to the Globeville outfall. And so what we're doing is we're taking these flows, this pink flow that goes this way and diverting it into the blue area where it drains. And so what that does is that creates a problem for all this stuff that's coming down the blue area. And so to solve that now, you got to do this. You got to do City Park because you can't have both of those flows trying to go to Globeville. That's a problem. And so that's that's intrinsically sort of distorted about what's what's going on here. These purple areas are the soils map. I mean, these are the projected basins for I-70, for this corridor of opportunity. All of these basins are not so deep. Actually, the question is, are these the correct watersheds that see that is depicting or is it somehow these guys? Well, just real quickly, that is a basin boundary map. And the map that we showed you is a flood protection map. So they're two very different. So it's more like akin to these. But combining some of these areas. Correct or not. The map that you have in your right hand, the pink and blue map is a drainage basin boundary map. So let's get this much correct. That blue area drains into the Platte at that location. Is that correct? Naturally. I mean, that is the intent. And that the pink area drains into the Platte along that whole edge that touches the plan. Is that correct? That's okay. That's that needs to be understood. And that needs to be depicted time and time again, because that is part of the confusion for people, the layperson, to understand what is going on, especially when you get into that stormwater master plan, which starts to do this with all the different pages to make the formatting work. So are these the basins that the project basins for sit on? I, I can't tell you. I don't know that document that well. Okay. Then I should probably get the title. But what do you think? Councilman, do you want to continue with your other questions? Do you have any more questions? I have to put my I have to formulate it this way, because this is not easy for me to understand. And I think it's very difficult for the public to understand. But it boils down to this sort of what was presented by Leslie and I at I.N.S. this weekend and some of the comments that have gone thus far. So in order to get to that question, I have to go through this for everybody to understand and allowed to do that or not. I'd suggest you just ask your questions. Here's the here's the part. Here's the problem. It's hard to zoom in on your screen and it's hard for everybody to know. Well, I you know, if I had gotten these from sit out sometime other than right before this meeting, maybe we could have done that. Because why don't you go ahead and ask your questions? Be honest. This would have gone on this this would have been like I would have gotten this long since after this had been through city council. So anyway, what I want to point people to is this purple here, because that is the basin that we're talking about. So see, that's going to address all these other basins. Now, suddenly, we're in this partnership that is not related to I-70, but is directly related to I-70. So this goes back to this yellow line. That's the trench. And so this is a whole neighborhood right here with this orange is. The good news is, is like what the gentleman had said. There's a lot of streets that just get 3 to 6 inches of water, which is curbside level flooding in a 100 year event. But there is an area of coal that gets inundated. That yellow line is the channel. Everything knows that is bone dry. So that would be a part of your district in the future. That would be 100% salt. The key is, is that here's what it is today. So don't go and tell me that this is a coal solution when coal is still flooding. So that's part of that obfuscation that needs to be clear with the community that we are. We are fixing areas south of I-70, but it's between 39th and I-70, and it's to address this guy. Which is that basin. Here's 40th Avenue. Here's I-70. And that's what this is doing. And so when what had been asked. Of Leslie at. At I.N.S., and I just need you to confirm this. The question was posed. Somebody. One of the speakers said this is both related and unrelated to I-70. And you nodded in affirmation. So I just wanted to be very clear. I want to go on record as a member of council saying this, in fact, is related to I-70. And if we because and it's indicative of what the city attorney just said, which is if we do not approve this, we would be in breach with see. You know, see that has no control over 39th Avenue. None of this land is theirs. But it has everything to do with with that basin that I just showed you on those pictures, which I didn't. So, yeah, not much in comment, mean questions. But this needs to be. This needs to be seen. Those are my colleagues. That is the basin south of I-70, north of 40th Avenue that CDOT is addressing. This is in their scope of work that has been issued to those people that are building. This is something they have to solve for. We have not seen a solution, but the city has provided one and then done all this justification for this to satisfy this IGA requirement. So thank you. Councilman. Let me ask George Lane. Do you want to speak to that? I understand what you're doing. And now in pointing that out and asking. I just. Question it. But I want to make sure that you know the opportunity. Okay. And just briefly, Councilman, I understand the point you're making. When we show the purple in the yellow map, we are not portraying that this is solving the flooding, the areas south of the channel or north of the channel that is solving all the problems, but it is reducing the flow. So it's reducing, for instance, in the hundred year flood, it reduces the flow by about 20%. Now, 20% may not. Maybe instead of five feet of water, you get four feet of water. So but at least it's it's a reduction in the flow. Well, please keep in mind that this is the worst basin in the city, that our master plan, although this project, you're right, is not specifically spelled out in the master plan. This master plan for upper and lower Montclair Basin totals almost $600 million of identified investment needed. This is 200 million. This is the backbone of a system that the spill is still going to need three or $400 million. So you're right, this does not solve the problem. It does not make all the flooding go away. But it's a start in that direction. Spent investing money, 200 million in the basin that really we're saying needs as much as 600 million. So just as a clarifying, clarifying point, I mean, you're right, it doesn't do away with all the flooding. But actually, it's it's not sufficient to do that. So we know that. But that's Cedar Basin is on here. Oops. I'm touching too many parts of the screen, but this sea, that basin, which is south of I-70. Is is resolving. Yeah. According to. This graphic, all of that. Area north of I-70. And the only way it does that is if we're if we're bringing water through the Mont to the Montclair Globeville outfall. If we could, I. I didn't hear a question. So, George, I understand you want to rebut, but if there's not a question, council member has the ability to say that. Councilman Espinosa, any more questions? So let's ask the question now. Is this related to I-70 or not? So I guess what I would like to share with the council members is that the drainage in the area, as George has said, needs to be fixed, it needs to be fixed and it dealt with whether or not I-70 is at grade below grade somewhere else. It is a historic problem that the city has had in this area. So from that perspective, it is it isn't caused by I-70 in any way, shape or form. The solution, however, is an opportunity that even several of the folks who spoke tonight have recognized and that you all recognized when when the idea was passed, that we have an opportunity to work with the improvements that are happening. From that perspective, our TDS perspective, the development in the areas perspective, by doing this project now we can carve the outfall, the backbone system that we've all been talking about, and we have the opportunity to do that. Now, if we don't take the opportunity to do that now, some of those opportunities will will go away. There will be buildings built. There will be other infrastructure. There will be homes. There will be more things that are built that will cause it to be more expensive or not even feasible. So that's that's the way it is related to I-70 is because it is an opportunity. Did I-70 cause the problem? No, it didn't. So an area one that is an area that is largely going to be under the control of the city and county of Denver through the vote of the people in the 800 to $1000000000 in taxes that we're going to acquire through lodgers and renters. Car rental. Are there solutions that the NDC see or mean National Western Structure Complex could in fact do themselves to get that area mitigated without burdening the taxpayers, the entire city and county of Denver for an extra $206 million. There have been several alternatives looked at the the with all of the partnership in place, it seems like it was a good idea that everybody pooled their resources or cooperated together rather than and one of the speakers said it today, then everybody doing their own thing. So this is the proposal that we have for you today is a collaborative approach to solving this long term problem. So again, there are areas that are carved out here that don't have any. I mean, the the the flood modeling here clearly shows no inundation in those areas. I mean, do we actually have areas? It sure looks like there's an area below here that doesn't have any inundation as well. So it's, you know, a hundred year modeling. We actually still have areas that are not, in fact, not inundated north of this channel. Is that correct? Without this, it appears that. That's correct, yeah. And if you look at the heat maps, I think you'll see the same thing. Okay. Because that's what concerns me, is we're doing this one, $206 million gesture for a very, very specific area that actually already has a lot of public money pumped into it. And so my concern is not that I don't support infrastructure, but when we're taxed, when we're charging people citywide this burden, we should be having citywide solutions . Maybe one more graphic. I don't. Did you guys produce this or is this the people of the film? This was in that film, and it's a pretty nice depiction of sort of the scale of the different expenditures that are in that in that listing that you have here. I don't believe we produced that. Okay. It's a good graphic. It's a good way to communicate sort of the scale of what we're doing with this money. If we if we fulfill the full scope that we try. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa, Councilwoman Gilmore. Thank you, Mr. President. George, I have a couple of questions for you. So if this is not approved, how many acres of detention would see DOT have to build adjacent to I-70 to protect their highway? Okay. Good question. Does anybody have an answer? And there's no answer for that. I'm sorry. I don't know. I don't know. But that map that Councilman Espinosa had, the pink that would all have to be protected from flooding. So how many acres that is? I can't tell you. I don't know for sure. I'm not certain that see, that actually has detention in their plans. They do have some depressed areas that are quite deep that are up next to the highway in their plan to capture the water. But I'm not certain that it's it's not as as we've. Talked about before it fully designed. So I'm not sure there's a full detention plan like we're proposing in the city wide proposal. So do you have an estimate of what acreage those would be? I don't we we would have to look at that and then see that plan and study that to get that for you. So can you answer how close would those detention or those depressed based basins, how close would those be to residential homes to them if this isn't. Right next to them? Like. Like across the street or right next to. If a lot was ended and there wasn't a street there, it could be right adjacent to them. It's it's basically right behind the wall of the highway is where they will put that capture basin, if you will. Okay. Yeah. If I if we could get if I could get to the acreage, that would be helpful. So how how did public works staff determine out of all of the different proposed sites for detention? How did the two projects, the City Park and Cold Channel, how did those two projects rise to the top around the final recommendations? I'm going to ask General House if she would come up, please. Hi. Good morning. Jennifer Hill Ellsworth Public works so good question. We did through a nine month process, all terms analysis process. We looked at a variety of alternatives. We try to be really creative with our right of way with any city asset that we had to minimize property impact. The two that rose to the top were the ones that were feasible. These are low points within the basin. One resides in coal and the other within City Park Golf course. And you can see that in the heat map where there's red and where Councilman Espinosa was pointing to the orange color. Those are the low points within the basin. It's very difficult to move water uphill. So we tried, though, we looked and we pushed to see if there's any alternatives that we could look at different locations. So those two locations were identified because there are low points where water naturally wants to collect within the basin. Okay. And then I'm not sure if Leslie it was would be you for my final question. But in looking first thank you for the wastewater capital projects management list and its from 2016 to 2021. And in looking at this list, District 11 has $55,000. We have over eight miles of cement channels. In District 11. So I would like to have somebody explain to me or, you know, best case scenario, there's moneys that are allocated for District 11 in, you know, lines one through five on page one where it's inclusive of all or on page two from 29 to 36, where it says all but for a 70% Latino community of Montebello. With the only cement stormwater drainage canals in the city. It's very hard for me to ask my constituents to support. This. Service increase. And cover all of these costs throughout the rest of the city. And so I would just like to have a little bit of clarification. Sure. We have we have three sources of money that's not specifically outlined for your the channels in Montana. But we have three sources of money that we could use depending on once we get the issues resolved, like should we remove plants or should we keep plants and that sort of thing. We have bridge money, bridge maintenance money and the handrails, the guardrails that go over the the on the roads that go over those channels. We will be looking at and evaluating and we could use that money to repair those handrails and the guardrails over the bridges as far as the channel itself. Public works and wastewater has operating budgets where we do a lot of maintenance of detention ponds, we do maintenance of outfalls, we do maintenance of inlets, and that's for bays for detention. We can use the operating dollars to maintain, manage and maintain the channels. And then the third source of money is this general storm. You're right. It's a general store money, which we typically use for inlets and that sort of thing. But we could look at that if there was some specific need we needed investment we needed to make in those channels. So once we've determined the course of action that we need to take, we believe we've got sources of money built into this plan that will take care of those sorts of problems. And I think that's one of the things to keep in mind. Remember I said 53 million of the 100 and 177 million is set aside for neighborhood needs. And it's needs like that that we can we can use those dollars and focus those dollars. They're not spelled out specifically, but that's the source of money we would turn to when you ask us to look into it and make those repairs. So. So. So my last question or I guess more of a request is that there is a more robust and inclusive process going forward because this will be a service charge for all residents of Denver. And when I see a document that has 55,000 for the district that I represent, be it that it's layered in in different line items for transparency sake, it would be much more helpful for me to actually have that spelled out a little bit more. Sure. And I think one of the things, the four that came up with our last meeting and I think Councilman Clark brought it up, remember, we will bring back to you council every year our capital projects request in the waste water fund will say these are the 17 projects we want to spend money on in 2018 or whatever year that is. We will also bring to you our wastewater operating budget, which shows you how we're going to spend our operating dollars, how many staff we're going to have, and that sort of thing. So what I would encourage council to do is look at those things. We will enter into those discussions with you, with your neighborhood, whoever you want to, to see what's the best investment of those dollars as we go forward. But we do have a shot at it every year to make those decisions. So. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman Gilmore. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. A couple of numbers questions. $23 a year. So we're going to raise about 383 million bucks. Right. And about 206 goes to fund applied to Park Hill. So I'm having trouble with the it's $23 a year and only $5 per year goes to plant the Park Hill. If you can explain that to me. Yeah. Well, ask La Perry to come up from the Budget Office. You're not running a Ponzi scheme or something. Good evening. Members of Council LA Prairie Capital Improvement Program Manager in the Budget Management Office. The $5 of the $23 that we've estimated as the average rather annual basis for five years is based on the fact that we would be debt financing that particular project over a 30 year term. So that $5 constitutes the annual debt service payment that we would be paying as a city. So the $23 a year is a five year number. The $5 a year is a 30 year number. Let me clarify. The $23 a year is an annual number that the average resident. Five years for five years. Correct? Yes. And of that, the $5 attributed to the debt service for the project is an annual number as. Well. Just for five years. Correct. Okay. You probably did great. Didn't do me any good. The other thing I would point out and we're we've sort of lost some of this in in a lot of our discussion. But remember, so the $25 a year is for sanitary and storm. Remember, we're going to spend an extra from two and a half million to 8 million on sanitary. So what is that, five and a half million more per year for five years in center. That's 25 million we're going to spend. We're going to raise our metropolitan district rates. We anticipate we're going to go up 8% a year. 8% on 50 million is 4 billion. So 4 million times five years is 20 million. So and then the operating budget, which is about 80, $90 million, that's for all our people. And everything we're going to say is going up 4% a year. So when you take each one of those the 4% and operating the the of the money for the other items that I mentioned, the metro district and all that, and then the 177 million of the 383, that's how you get this pot of money that the 25 million generate. So the 177 is a piece of that. And then the $5 is a piece of that. $25. Yeah. Thanks. That was helpful. So the you said the on on reducing storm flow, the five year project would reduce the five year storm by 49%, the ten year storm by 52% in the 100 year storm by 19%. And is that across the entirety of the area, north and south? I believe. Is it just the south is still on the yellow line? Yeah. Okay. Just a second, sir. You could go over that math again. I really enjoyed that. Again, Jennifer Hillhouse of Public Works. So the the purple area depicted in the map represents a 100 year protection. The yellow is what you're referring to, that where we see the 50% reduction in those moderate events. So when it rains, you know, in the summertime, those moderate events are what we see every summer. Basically, the big events that, you know, Paul was talking about, that 1% chance of a hundred year coming. That's where you'll see the 19%. And it tells you that this is a backbone. More work to come for us to provide that level of service. This is is not intended. It's intended to take a big bite out of the apple. But we understand it's not going to solve bass and white issues, but it's a stepping stone to start to do more. Aiming for 100 years. Right. In this project. I'm sorry. We're aiming for 100 years. Yes. Yes. That's our industry standard to look at. 100 year protection in a basin this size and without a natural waterway. When we spend that additional 400 million or whatever the number was, that'll get us that hundred year protection so we won't have four feet in the street instead of five. So the understanding that to. The south that if you. Look to the south, yes. So that would be basin wide. And I mean, Bruce, you'd have to I wasn't part of the master plan so project. But is that a correct assumption. So the engineers are predicting, yes, if you invest that amount of money, you would start to build that level of service to 100 year protection. Thank you. That's all, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. And I just chimed in at the end here, and I'll be brief, even at the risk of ruining my chances in the pool as to when we'll end the meeting. The George, the annual increase that we're talking. Just to clarify for people who might still be watching if they have insomnia, $23 per year is actually $23 per year per year for five years. So it's actually like over $100 by year five. That also applies to the $5. So it's five, ten, 15, 20, so it's 25 by the end of the fifth year for 30 years. Because it is if you compound it, it keeps its relevant pressure. Yeah, that's the word I was looking for. Compound portion. Yeah, it's compound. Okay. And just a quick response. When I chimed in, when Councilwoman Gilmore asked about where six ponds are, I'm sure either she's reading my mind or I'm reading hers. But at that very moment I was looking at the I-70 East, see that hydrology technical addendum, and I was looking right at the picture of where they have the ponds mostly there in in the industrial areas east of Colorado Boulevard, north and south of the highway. But when you get to the Steel Vasquez intersection, they're on the south side. So they're right across the street from the houses on the south side of 45th Avenue. And then the rest of them are around York and and Brighton Boulevard. But there are seven ponds in total for CDOT, so I just thought it'd be good to clarify that. Thank you. That's all. Right. Thank you, Councilman Flynn. All right, colleagues, we've we've spoken for longer than the public hearing and we still got some names in the queue. So I would just once again ask. We could. Keep them. Recognize that? Councilman Espinosa, you're up. Yeah. Just with respect to the ponds. It's not like they're ponds. I mean, they're ponds in a hundred year event for a few hours, you know? So it sounds scary. And I just wanted to give clarification. So the graphics I gave were from the draft master drainage report, I-70 East Corridor Project, dated September 29th, 2015. So that's this is the document that those were originated from. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Councilman Espinosa, any other questions? 306. So, you know, and public hearing is now closed. Time for comment, Councilman Flynn. Thank you, Mr. President. I. I guess I'm kind of alone over here because I don't. I like the idea and the scope of the project. The two base and drainage project that was agreed to is that and I wish that this that this package included only that $134 million worth of scope that SEEDAT is sharing 40% with us. I like the fact that we are collaborating with CDOT and doing a drainage project while they are in there. That makes total sense to me. This I like the I-70 project, so I'm not I'm not on that side either. But I think that in the ten months since the prior council approved the IGA, the scope of this, this work that we're doing has gone from $134 million to $298 million. And while I know that there's a need to do these projects, I don't like being asked to pay for them upfront until I understand the scope of this particular project. When I look at the 2014 master plan, the Montclair and the Parkhill Basins together had about $340 million worth of scope in 20 $13, which I suppose was constant dollars. So it worries me that that we're talking now about adding to 134 million, we're adding up to 298 million. And we're not even reaching the scope of what we estimated in 2014. Master Plan. I think this should be done more incrementally, like we've done most drainage projects, like we're doing the one in my own neighborhood in District two in Glenbrook, where we've done everything incrementally. I don't I don't go into King Soopers tomorrow morning and give them $100 bill and say, I'm going to come back next week and figure out what groceries I want for it. I want to know when you ask me for the fee. I want to know what we're buying right away. I don't really like voting no on on this because of this one big project, but it is the largest project we've ever done in wastewater by far. It's the largest bond issue by far by a factor of five that we're doing just for wastewater. And we're only entering according to the presentation that we got at committee, we're only now entering preliminary engineering to refine the scope of each project and assign budgets at the project and program level. I feel we're putting the cart before the horse. I would gladly support the seat of IGA scope, but I can't ask taxpayers who have just been hit with a huge property tax increase. I don't want to go to them and say, well, this increase is only $23 a year per year, per year, per year, per year for five years, because that's still a major hit to to some people in my district. I can't ask them to pay that much based on what I know about the project that we're funding to date. I don't also don't like indexing future increases to the increase in the Consumer Price Index. This is a fee, so it's exempt from TABOR. We don't have to go to an election. It's a fee for service. I don't see the relationship between the increase in my groceries and the cost of my clothing versus the cost of civil infrastructure. I don't see the relationship between that being fee based. And so and finally, I did ask several times that the administration, George or Brendon, who is I think is on vacation from finance to consider factoring in or at least to address even if we can't institute it right now, a credit for people who install rain barrels that were just recently signed into law. We can now install up to two rain barrels, 110 gallons of storm runoff that I'm not dumping in your gutter anymore. Once I get them and I'd like to see the stormwater fee incorporate that in order to promote the use of rain barrels and sustainability. So, Mr. President, I have for those reasons, I, I wish I could support the rest of the rest of the scope without this large project, but that's all in one package. So I have to vote. No, thank you. Thank you. Councilman Flynn. Councilwoman Sussman. Mr. President. Actually, water is neither destroyed nor created, so you'd have to dump your rain barrel water into something sometime. Right? Then go away. Or just. Just was thinking about your last thought. I. I want to say that one of the best things that ever happened to me was being able to serve on the Urban Drainage and Flood Control Board for about four years. Never knew that I would know so much about drainage and I have some really I even know some really big words and can use them in big sentences. I really want to thank Councilman Lopez for the questions he asked Paul Heineman. They were spot on and certainly part of the history of this whole city that he and I learned from. I don't know if he was on all six years, but certainly was on for the four years I was on. Really good questions. We always and so to some extent, when this project came to me, I felt a little bit prepared. And I can I can hear the questions that everybody has and that the public has. It's it's very complicated. It's water engineering called hydrology and hydraulics, just to show off a little. And then I could tell you about drop structures. And so it's really it's very, very complicated. But I did feel good that I knew some things about this. And one of them was that the lower basin is our worst problem in in the city. And always we always knew that. We talked about it all the time. And so it's not surprising to me that we have a project that perhaps does have some leveraging dollars from Seedat, that we might be able to tackle this in a pretty serious way. We're going to be able to fix it completely, but we can. It looks like we can tackle it in a serious way. But what's more, near and dear to my heart. And I and I understood Councilman Gilmore's feeling about District 11 is the upper basin, the Upper Montclair Basin, which is right in my district, and which in the last few years has some really has flooding. I mean, people with three feet of water in their basement. And 2013, I was outside with the first responders helping people rescue them from the cars and having parked cars floating down the street at 14th. And Jasmine and I've seen this and we've had public works out several times to talk to us that thanks to Mike Anderson, who has been telling us very clearly and very truthfully that it's a 20, $25 million project and it's going to take 20 years. I mean, he doesn't he hasn't budged from it. And he he it's not good news. But we he says we're trying to work on it. They dredged Farrell Lake at City Park successfully, meaning that some of this runoff that comes down from the upper basin can be captured in City Park like now. You know, they always have to start at the beginning of where the water flows out and then move up. So instead of having to flow to put the pipes in for Mayfair at the plant, they could now do some of that pipe work from Park Hill. It's a much shorter distance. They have to do pipe work. We are lucky enough in Mayfair to find a place to do an open channel which whose benefits were described very well by Councilman Gilmore the last time. Wish we could have an open channel. We have a beautiful one in Westerly Creek through the common grounds, but we don't where you have to fix the pipes. So when when you hear about people that say that there's nothing in here for anything else, they're wrong. There's $30 million in here for my district in the upper basin. It'll get us at least to the border of where we are. The East 16th Avenue project is the one that's just going to go. It goes through South Park Hill and then eventually extend to that 14th in Jersey place. The Jackson system through Congress Park is going to extend to Hale Parkway and get up to seven and Jersey. And I think I can say this now, I've been kind of keep it a secret from the neighbors, but 40, 40, Bayard, which is hilltop, which has no pipes at all under it and no out of that, any of those outfalls. And we have always used just the streets for their drainage, and you just wouldn't believe what that looks like in heavy rains. This gentleman over here found a pipe and now has found the money that we can start putting and put put outfalls that were never built when Hilltop was built because of this money . Now it's only 30 million out of 283, but I can't tell you how grateful I am that it looks like we are going to be able to do something a little sooner than 20 years at least. We're going to get ready to get on this project faster than we were. And I know that my neighborhoods will be very, very grateful. And so I will be supporting this project tonight. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman and Councilman Lopez. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank everybody for being here tonight. I look in this this audience in the pews and. There's so many people who I respect and who I admire and that are friends of mine on both sides. And I could say for all these issues tonight in these chambers. So, you know, here's. Here's the importance of these public hearings. You really get to understand and hear people's input, but then you really get to get one final straw and one grasp at that straw that you couldn't in committee with a time limit and ask those questions. I am. Think about. The issues that were presented to us leading up tonight, like 700 emails. I got the same letter and I read it not 700 times. It's like buying a book, the same book, like ten times to read it. But regardless if it was something that was a form, letter is still meant something and I and read through every single one of those questions. I in 23 worked doing the community outreach for the Environmental Impact Statement for I-70. I led. You mean a couple who led the yellow shirt brigade and went door to door throughout every single neighborhood from Globeville, all the way out to Green Valley Ranch. Every single neighborhood in between. Every single block I remember. I still have a survey or two. I saw pictures from it. And in that there were two main things that were obvious when we were looking at the impact statement. And they said and these were right from the doors of the residence, he said. Two things. First. Take the highway out of my neighborhood. And I couldn't agree more. Is the worst thing that's ever happened to that part of Denver. It's to build a highway right through these neighborhoods. The second option, the second idea that came from the community we didn't present options is just getting input. Not just access, but, you know, having the light rail go through there and all this other stuff. And the grocery store came out and the Superfund site started coming out. This is when they were cleaning it. They said, if we can't move it out of here, can you bury it like Sixth Avenue? And at least give us an opportunity to see the other side and not be in the shadows of the bridge. Yeah, that's what they said. God. Honest truth. And I've stuck to my guns ever since. Now, when this came in front of us and I'll get to my brain in a second. When this came in front of us by way of proclamation, I made sure that people knew that I voted no. I. Did my best. And I cast my vote. It wasn't enough. That was a proclamation. It's in Syria's hands. There's not much we can do in Denver about that highway, about where it goes, what it's going to be. The fact that we have that lowered alternative is, one, it's better than having the double decker that they're proposing from the get go. Here's the issue. If I knew that this drainage issue was going to be the Achilles tendon and somehow magically revive the reroute, I'd be the first to vote for it. I support the reroute. I supported the reroute. When it was still an idea. Though I disagree with the direction we've gone in as a state and as a city. Absolutely. That's the highway. Let's talk about drainage. Let's talk about this fee. We have nationally a D-minus rating in this country when it comes to infrastructure. I love my champion Broncos, but we've so quickly approved tax hikes on stadiums and ballparks. But we get cheap when it comes to our streets and our infrastructure in this country. I spent two years as a chair of the Urban Drainage and Flood Control District. During September 12th of 2013, you really watched our policies make a difference. Take flight. And it is absolutely true. I knew what Paul was going to say. Because that is very important. And if you think that it's far fetched here in Denver, try in 2007 when a young toddler who lived in Sun Valley in one of our areas that we had very poor infrastructure, got swept away with his mother in a flash flood and was killed right here in Sun Valley. People's properties and lives are at stake when it comes to drainage and stormwater. When it comes to flooding, I don't think about it or vote it lightly. Does $23 make a difference? Absolutely. I could tell you. I could tell you how many times and I'm speaking from privilege here. A lot of us are speaking from personal privilege from say this, we've blown $23 from our budget pretty quickly. I. Well for that family. Couldn't. I bet you I would have traded $23 any day. You could do that every single day of my life to have my grandson back. And that area in Sun Valley. It's completely different because of those kind of efforts, because of fees like this, because of the the resources we pour into our infrastructure. That's the only reason why I'm voting for this. Yes. Can it be the fuzzy details? Can our understanding be kind of mediocre? I mean, I'm not an engineer. I didn't go to school for engineering. I hate math. Right. But I understand my neighborhoods. I was born and raised here. J.J. was a third baseman when I was a left fielder. Here's. Here's what I'll tell you tonight. I support this. For those reasons. You could shake your heads. But the very basic function of government is to protect your lives and your property and to do things together that individually we cannot do ourselves by ourselves. And preventing a loss of life and property in this city is by nature its core function. So in saying that. And I'm supportive of this. And I represent a district where we have a river, where we have Sixth Avenue, where we have interchanges all throughout our neighborhoods. It can be done in a way that is smart and moves water away. I would rather have the whole bunch of folks now that are in a floodplain than Lakewood Dry Gulch because of FEMA's new map. I bet you they would rather pay $23 a month than that play the flood insurance it cost. They stay in that floodplain. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you. Councilman Lopez, Councilwoman Black. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you, Councilman Lopez, for that great speech. I'm not an engineer either, nor is anyone on this council. But I have met with our city engineers numerous times to have my questions answered. And I have confidence in our engineers, their professional, honest and honorable, and have the best interests of our entire city in mind. And when they tell me that the Montclair and Park Hill Basins are a priority, I trust them. I am always reluctant to raise taxes, but our engineers have convinced of the need. Urban drainage and Councilwoman Sussman confirm that also. I understand that many people have great concerns about the design of I-70, and I hope that you share your concerns with CDOT and our governor and your state representatives, because I-70 is a state project and is not under our purview. I have personally met with Shannon Bhatt, the director of CDOT, and I learned a lot from him. Hey, they are planning on protecting I-70 from flooding. Denver's plans are to protect our neighborhoods. And it's simply untrue to suggest that we will not be protecting the neighborhoods. It's a politically charged issue. There's a lot of misinformation and accusations of conspiracies that really aren't true. I hope that we will continue to educate the public about this and that people will take the time to learn the facts. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. Councilman Brooks. Thank you, Mr. President. The last 9 to 10 months has been no joke and really tough. I think you heard tonight from many members in my community on both sides of this issue who are charged up, very smart individuals who are making great points on both sides. My neighbor at Armijo has and I have argued with each other for the last ten months about this issue. You know, and and like I said, I think folks have just made some incredible points. But this is this is where I land in their five points and I'll make them quick because it's 2:00. And you guys are incredible for being here. One is 3700 households will have a different level of protection than they ever have before. In my district. 1300 of them are in Elyria, in Swansea and they were have 100 year protection in my neighborhood. 2400 of them are in the secondary protection. They're not a hundred year flood protection, but they are an increased 20 to 30% protection in my neighborhood. Number three. Number two, 2011. I can't believe this hasn't been brought up on our most controversial votes was the fee increase. This was the fees. It approved fees from 2011, 2013, 70% increase in sanitary and 22% increase in storm. It's a 92% increase. That's 20% more than what we're approving today. We did not have one public hearing. Courtesy, public hearing. Councilman Flynn, you're your predecessor voted against it because the fish thought the fee was too high. But it went towards basic infrastructure improvement. Today's fee that we're approving for 2016, 22, 2020 is 75% increase. Four. How do we keep three? Actually sa slate. How do we keep Denver competitive? How do we look among our 19 other cities and seven other counties right now? Today we ranked 12 with a fee increase. If nothing changed for the next four years and the other cities did not do an increase, which we know they will because they need to increase their infrastructure. We'll be ranked seven. We are still competitive as a city when you look at Senator sanitary and stormwater. Other than the plat to Park Hill. There's eight other projects that impact my district eight and I can go through them all. But Joe Noble pointed out some of them huge impacts. Well, I was. Why is your district getting this? Because it's been overlooked for a hundred years. Some of my neighborhoods, this is the oldest part of the city. We need to invest in it. That's why. Lastly and this is the this is the big one. And and I'll go on record to say I will not approve a contract. George and Leslie and Jose, unless we can figure out this global peace. I feel like it's not clear. I feel like it's 50 to $70 million. Let's figure out a plan and take care of global. I understand why it's on the other side of the South Plat. But we need to figure out a plan. And I want to sit down with you all and I want to put that on my back and make sure that we figure out a plan going forward for 2017. I was 18, 2019. This is this is I want to tell the folks who who fought this pretty really hard and even my colleague, councilman forgot your name. Espinosa I'm just telling you, you've made this project and this process and the people around it actually better. And I think we all I know I have have learned exponentially more than I ever knew about or ever wanted to know about all of these issues. But this is not the end of the story. There's 39 projects that need to get contracts to go through city council. We need to continue working through this, and I hope that we can keep working to find these solutions and provide protections in our neighborhood. You know, I thought some of the folks have been asking for delay and we actually did a 45 day. It was a 45, 50 day delay for the pilots of Park Hill because the outreach wasn't good. I'll just be honest with you, and I'll tell you what. Outreach never is 100% ever. I don't care what anybody says. I don't care what project it is. And we can always get better. But I don't think 30 days I don't think 60 days is going to do anything to improve a consensus around this issue. This is a tough issue and it's infrastructure. So I'll be supporting this. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Councilwoman Gilmore. Thank you, Mr. President. You know, we have 1.5 billion in infrastructure needs and. We need to have a more robust conversation and an inclusive conversation and include interactive education in it. I don't care how smart or how, you know, you think you know how it works until you actually see where water flows. You don't know. And it's all speculation. And so to really take that to our communities, to bring that modeling to Montebello and Green Valley Ranch and give residents the opportunity to learn about this, because it's going to be a fight every single time if you don't invest in the education part at the forefront. And, you know, to my colleagues comments, every every contract over 500,000 has to come before us. We're going to ask the same questions every single time. How is there equity based on this project and how, you know? The other question is how for seniors and families who are on fixed incomes and this is a hard hit for them, what are those other options for them? What are we going to look at to, you know, not make those people feel silenced, but to really give them the opportunity to fully get educated and understand why this is a good investment. Maybe the investment in District 11 is going to be less than we would want it to be. But understanding through education that there are neighborhoods that don't have that infrastructure. And at the end of the day, if you're doing this right and from. An authentic place of inclusion. You know, infrastructure save lives, saves lives. It saves property. It makes our quality of life and our neighborhoods better. But. It's going to be a real uphill battle. If we're not providing that front end education and engagement of our communities, because it's everybody's right to understand why certain infrastructure is in their community or isn't in their community to protect and save lives and property at the end of the day. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilwoman Gilmore. Councilman Cashman. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm going to say it again. This project is being built in this scope at this time to drain ice to protect I-70. The. Problem I have with this fact is that she can't afford to give us the 67 million. They should keep some of it and put adequate ventilation in the tunnel they're going to build. Lake City staff tells me they need to do and they're not doing they need to keep some more of that 67 million and do adequate mitigation on nearby homeowners. That city staff continues to tell me they need to do I can't support funding. She does project when they're putting the burden on everybody but themselves to mitigate the construction and the post-construction traffic impacts on nearby homeowners. If my colleagues choose to not address that in this context, I understand and will respect their opinions. But I hope they will look seriously at what needs to be done on that project. That is extremely important. Another thing that I'm concerned about is somebody at some point in the city and this is just what I believe decided to try to brand this, that it wasn't connected with I-70. And and I think that was a mistake. And I believe that they recognize that. And in recent weeks, maybe the past month or two have started. Well, yeah, it is with this. Look, I've spent as much time as anybody on council trying to understand this. I've gone on bus tours and called and sat on busses, talking to staff and met with, you know, with CEDA, with the city, with urban drainage. While not as skilled as a journalist, as my colleague, Councilman Flynn, I was a journalist for a long time and I ask questions. So I finally was told if well, it is kind of connected in that, you know, they can build their own project. But since we're going to build this, they're going to they're going to instead of building their own outfall, they're going to knock into our project and we'll got the same outfall. Okay. That made sense to me. But it wasn't until a few weeks ago that I heard. Oh, yeah. And if we don't build our project, then they need to do these detention basins on the south side of the highway. So, you know, it's. It's confusing. There's just too much confusion for me to be able to approve this. Now, having said that. I'm looking forward. As I said last time to an opportunity to support I'll support a drainage fee increase. I'm not afraid of that. We need to build this stuff. It's important. I'm not going to argue the engineering of this project. You know, I'm a golfer. I play a city park golf course. Little bit worried about taking some trees. Trees will grow. Other people have addressed that. I believe we'll end up being a better golf course. But I can't I can't approve this project, this bill at this time. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Cashman. Councilman Espinosa. Just a little jab on the math. Still doing some education here. When you take 92% of a low number and that's nearly doubling it, taking 75% of that is a significantly higher hit than 93% of that original. That's actually the equivalent. If you take it back and I don't want to confuse people too much as 144% on that initial. So it's not fair to sort of say, hey, we're only doing 72% of today's number because this is so much higher than 2011. And so that's that I just wanted to throw that out there. That is, again, that sort of obfuscates the real the totality of this cost. I mean, the burden that people are going to, in fact, have to to to pay. And, you know, to Stacy's point, I did the math is less than 2/10 of a percent of the total projects are going into District 11. But yet her constituents are going to be paying the same amount as my constituents on their improvement in pervious area. So 72% of this money, District nine, on all these things that we're talking about but not talking about yet. We're not in that 72%. We're not addressing global, you know, which there are so many different ways you can have a 100 year event come down that Platte River and inundate Globeville to the 15 foot mark. You know, this is. That's easy. Fix the breach in the levee. Make that priority one. Start there. You got in. Then you said the $132 million left over to do the original project that you were agreed to a seat on the idea a year ago. I just. This is not. This is. I'm sorry. This is what people elected me for, is to not just take business as your status quo, but to actually question and challenge and understand why it is that we do what we do when there's us. There's plenty of other options. And we don't we don't get to see the full gamut of what is being considered. But we get told in these briefings, it's this way until you question it. And then you get a different answer and a different answer. This is not a hide and seek game. We're here to represent the one ninth of the city that we mean, 1/11 of the city that we represent. And I fortunately have a very, very difficult district, some of the most politically active constituents in the city. We had the highest voter turnout in District one. In that last election in an uncontested we got 30%. That's pretty that's pretty astounding. That's because people are engaged. And so if I'm not engaged, I'm not doing my job. And so I've gone off the rails. But that said, here's my problem. You know, it was stated that your management, you know, the key thing is managing risk, but you haven't even caught or sampled the area 39th Avenue. You don't know the degree of contamination you have. I don't want this to start out the way Confluence Park is today. I don't have Shoemaker Plaza there in District one. Actually, that's on the other side of the river. Never mind. I don't get to look at Shoemaker Plaza. All right. Actually, half and half. My side is an open pit. Why? Because we ran into contamination more than expected. Figure it out. Drill it a few times. Now that's cheap. You know, do an environmental assessment, all these things, and not surprised that we're circumventing the need for an EPA process on this. An environmental impact study on a $206 million $288 million total. Gouged through the neighborhood. We're putting in an amenity 13 blocks north of our best, most premier park in the city, an amenity 13 blocks north that the people in Leary and Swansea can't even get to because they're going to have a 20 some odd lane wide lane highway dividing them. Maybe they can take that lid that hasn't defined over there and enjoy it that way. So, yeah, there's some harebrained idea about rerouting. Yeah, you could. There's some right away there. And guess what? There's a proposal for a boulevard. What's in the middle of that boulevard? Big, huge green space. Their idea. There are people in this room. Before that, it talked about sort of more green solutions for stormwater, for water quality. You could turn that green space in that in that boulevard into your water quality and get it to the same spot on the Platte River. Actually, you could get it to a better spot where you weren't. You're not crossing into a different watershed. And there's creative solutions that actually would do everything that we talk about and then some for this city, but no gun deal. We don't have to think about this. We just have to deal with the thing at hand. So just now is our chance as council, we could actually say, you know what, there actually is a better future for Globeville. Elyria swans here. Not just, you know, the the overconcentration of marijuana grows, not just in the shadow of purina pollution. I mean, why are we dumping 72 million mean $270 million now? How long is Goodwill hilarious once you've been there? You know, so now we've got, you know, nearly $2 billion in investment from the city and another billion and a half from that. And now this is the great the most important priority in this city. It's not for the people that are there. That's for damn sure. So we do. We could. We could. I mean, I got elected to to sort of create real change. And I think if we want to get a world class city we started need to start having world class leadership and making world class decisions, hard decisions about what is the future, the next 50 years of Denver. It is a national Western stock show complex. It is a stellar festival park down there, and it is a thriving Globeville area, Swansea and the closest neighborhood to Denver, downtown core. And those are the amenities that have been overlooked for years. It is better improved health outcomes. It is improved access to food is improved transit options for that area than not and not a white highway. So I won't be supporting this for all the things, all the good reasons that we should not support this. Thank you. Thank you. Captain Espinosa, Councilman Clark. Thank you, Mr. President. We have massive a massive infrastructure need much bigger than this fee increase alone can solve. It's not acceptable to me to have sanitary sewer lines that are so old that they're leaking raw sewage into our storm system, which then goes untreated into the South Platte River. And it's no longer acceptable to me to simply build pipes that will spew water into the south lot without any water treatment. We have to do better than we've done in the past. It was just two of two years ago before I was on this council that I was fighting from the nonprofit sector. Exactly that project, a project that was a pipe into the Cherry Creek with absolutely nothing other than here's a giant pipe delivering water and all of the trash and all of the pollutants directly into the river. And as Councilman Lopez reminded us, it's no longer acceptable that we have areas that were flooding puts life at risk. I'll never forget the morning after that child was swept away on Lakewood Gulch because I had a group of third graders on a field trip, a conference park. Well, there were men in dove gear looking for the body of a toddler because we had a flooding issue that hadn't been mitigated. And that's, to me, where we spend this money. Without this fee increase, we'll lose the $25 million in matching funds that we need to unlock over a million in federal funds to fix Harvard Gulch, including taking my constituents in Overland Park out of the floodplain and out of the flood insurance requirement to fix River Gulch and to fix the breach from Sixth Avenue north to the city limit, including Globeville, Swansea and Elyria. Without this fee increase, if I-70 is built as he has planned, I don't believe that they'll mitigate that floodwater. They'll they'll do it in a way that is much worse for the South Platte River, with much less of any done to clean the water before reaching the South Platte. And we can do better by partnering on that project. I think that Joel Noble hit the nail on the head when he said that there is a disconnect tonight, seeing these two issues that we have talked at length about and what, two years of public involvement on a policy issue looks like and outreach efforts here. And it's not that it was for lack of number of outreach efforts, but I think that from top to bottom, there's a lot to be learned about the quality of of that process and how inclusive it is. And I echo a lot of what my colleague, Councilman Espinosa, just said. I also think that it isn't just engagement with the public, but also with council. I believe that city council as the ones who vote legislatively on this fee increase, we should have been included earlier in this process. We should have been involved in crafting this fee increase and the projects that were involved, not just brought to the table once it was crafted. And so I will challenge the administration to say I don't think that this is good enough in terms of outreach to city council. There are a lot of advocates for drainage issues, for storm and industry projects. There are a lot of really smart people up here, and I believe that we could have made this process better, not just in the outreach to the public and our constituents, but also in the end result, had we been included. And I think that's evidenced in how how many questions, how much we tried to get through in committees that were too short and into very long conversations up here on Monday nights. I think that we can do better as government partnering together as the different branches. We also have incredibly smart people, some of whom are in the room tonight, just in Croft, Kyle's Upland. What they're doing a rhino. My constituent, Adrian Brown, who finally called it quits but spoke earlier. We can do so much for water treatment and managing flooding through green infrastructure and pervious services, rain barrels. We have to be on the cutting edge on these fronts because we have a lot of making up to do for how we've handled these things in the past. I'm voting yes tonight because of all of where I started, and I'm doing my best as Adrian, my constituents said, to vote yes for the right reasons. And I'll continue to push on every single project that comes through council that's funded out of this increase to maximize both the flood mitigation but also make. Much of the water quality benefits and look for creative ways to think differently about green infrastructure and impervious surfaces. This fee increase will not get us where we need to be, but I think it will take a big chunk and I'm looking forward to pushing hard on how we spend this money to the best benefit for all of our city, our citizens, and our river. Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you, Councilman Clarke. Councilman. New. Thank you, Mr. President. I really believe in infrastructure improvement. Every great city has to have infrastructure improvements and the it has to make sure we have the funds to do that. But I also believe so strongly in what Councilwoman Gilmore has said. You know that the education and communication with our public is so important and it's missing. That's what all my residents tell me. I survey them. Several hundreds say to me, I want to know more information. I don't understand what this is about. I don't understand 383 million. Councilman Clark is absolutely right. Communication with city council wasn't great. We seemed like we were just fighting, you know, just struggling to get more and more information week after week, trying to pose questions. So we understood it fully. So. So I really would like to propose a 60 day delay to September one from July one, and with us taking action on August the 29th at the city council meeting. I don't know if I can make that a formal proposal or not, but but I'd like to propose that. Okay. So are you making a motion councilman there? I am. Okay, so we are mostly on the floor to delay found consideration for consideration for 60 days. Right. Okay. Madam Secretary, you want a date? Certain. He said September 1st. Do you say September 1st? August 29. What's what's your day, councilman? New fee increase beginning September one with the city council date of August 29th. Decision policy. Okay. So delaying final decision until. Yeah. I want to make sure we we get this correct so I'm quickly pull up my calendar so we're going to have future Monday councilman new and that future Monday that future Monday is what date. Good. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Monday, August the 29th. Postponed. Okay. Monday hours. Monday, August 20th. Councilman New has a motion on the floor ballot consideration postponed until Monday, August 29th. Madam Secretary, do you want to. You want to get that motion? I guess. They've been moved. Needs a second. Colleagues if we're going to if it has been second. All right. Any comments on the motion? Sure. Councilman Espinosa. I just want to thank you for putting offering that motion. I think it's actually a good, sensible thing considering the 1400 pages of information I got today. Thanks. That's all. Okay. Thank you. All right. All right, so we have a motion to postpone. So you know the comments. Madam Secretary, welcome. New assessment. No Black. No Brooks. High Clerk. No. Espinosa. Flynn, I. Gilmore, no. Cashman. No. Lopez. No. Mr. President? No. Councilman. Campaign manager. You know, I'm sorry. Mastectomy please those voting the results. For ice. Seven for I seven day. The motion to postpone has been defeated. All right, there or so we now have three or six up for vote. Any other comments on Council Bill 306c? None. Madam Secretary, roll call. Flynn No. Gilmore I. Cashman No. Lopez I. Knew. SUSSMAN All right. Black Brooks. CLARK All. Right. This Wednesday? No, Mr. President. Hi. Madam Secretary. Please, for the voting. Very nasty result. Eight eyes. Three days. A nice three days. Three or six has been placed on final consideration. Does pass one predetermined announcement. Monday, July 11th Council will hold a required public hearing on Council Bill to 95 to change the zoning classification for city owned properties in the Villa Park neighborhood at various addresses. 1100 North Mead Street Unit Vacant. 11 nine North Main Street. Ten one 1001 North Main Street Unit Vacant. 10,000 North Newton Street. Unit Vacant. 1048 North Newton Street in a vacant. 1049 North Stewart Street. 1101 North Perry Street Unit Vacant. Have a quiet public hearing on counter Bill 392 Changing Classification. 446 North Sheridan Boulevard and a required public hearing on Council Bill 397 Changing the zoning classification for 2151 Eliot Street. Any protest against 295, three, 92 or 397 must be filed with the council offices no later than Tuesday, July 5th. See no other business. This meeting is adjourned.