A bill for an ordinance approving a proposed Intergovernmental Agreement between the City and County of Denver and the Colorado Department of Transportation, the High Performance Transportation Enterprise and the Bridge Enterprise regarding Montclair and Park Hill basin drainage improvement and I-70 transportation enhancements. (INFRASTRUCTURE & CULTURE) Approves an intergovernmental agreement with Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), the High Performance Transportation Enterprise and the Bridge Enterprise regarding Montclair and Park Hill basin drainage improvements and I-70 transportation enhancements; the estimated total costs of $134 million for the drainage project will be shared by the City and CDOT, 60% and 40% respectively; the City's contribution to the transportation project will be $37 million (201522456). The last regularly scheduled Council meeting within the 30-day review date is on 7-20 -15. The Committee approved filing this bill at its meeting on 6-3-15.
Nice. 325 has passed. All right, we've got one more. And just remind counsel. After the public hearing and vote on 381, we will also need to vote on 430 the companion bill. So don't take off after the 381 vote. But first things first, Councilman Leavitt, will you please put 381 as amended on the floor? Yes, sir. Mr. President, I move that council bill 381, as amended, be placed series of 2015, be placed on final consideration and do pass. Has been moved. We need a second. Got it. Thank you. The public hearing on 381 is now open. May we have the staff report? Good evening. Thank you. Council President Herndon and thank you. Members of council. I'm Diane Barrett. The mayor's chief projects officer. As you will recall. We made a lengthy illustrated presentation at the Infrastructure and Culture Committee on the 3rd of June. And I. Know that you all heard a lively and comprehensive. Discussion about these projects with good questions and answers at the first reading on the 22nd. So my remarks tonight will be very brief. There are four. Points that we want to emphasize. Number one, the city agrees in this idea to pay Scott a total of $37. Million. For elements of their transportation project. This is a. Payment for the. Construction of project elements that see that would not. Be including. If it were not for the city's. Work. Those elements are first, the bookends on either side of the cover. That are. Essential for good urban design. B certain amenities on. The cover itself. And see the slip. Ramps which will distribute and disseminate traffic that's coming from the highway into the neighborhoods in a more. Orderly and. Limited. Fashion. These are elements. That greatly benefit our neighborhoods, but they would not otherwise be part of Scott's project. So we will be. Paying for those. The city only begins the payment of the $37 million in 2022 after those elements have been constructed and are in use. Point number two. CDOT agrees in the IGA to pay 40% of the city's to basin drainage project with a large portion of their share of those costs to be paid early in the construction process. The two Basin Drainage Project will provide protection from the 100 year storm to a wide swath of the city that includes the I-70 East Transportation Project . Absent seeds, cooperation and financial participation, the city's two basin drainage project would have provided only five years storm protection for the area and would likely have been delayed by many years for lack of available funds. Point number three, the IGA does not represent the end of the discussion about the impacts of the I-70 East Transportation Project on the local neighborhoods and their residents. Unfortunately, some people have tried to characterize the adoption of this IGA as the last bite of the apple for the citizens of Denver. And that is not true. The community in this area. Will be, as they have. Been for the last ten. Years or so, a critical stakeholder in looking. At everything that's going on with this project. In particular, the community has been tremendously involved and will continue to be in the design and the implementation of the cover over the highway. The NEPA process required for this project under the National Environmental Policy Act is being headed up by the Federal Highway Administration and CDOT, and it's been going on for 11 years and the communities have been involved, as have you all, on this council in that process. After some false starts, it did produce a draft environmental impact statement and a supplement to that draft. The city had significant. Input into those documents. As several of you council. Members will remember. Because you were entirely involved in making comments and corrections. And you will be. Again when the final environmental impact statement is issued in January of next year, the city will once again mount a concerted effort joining people, joining our efforts. So that we can communicate. Properly with Seedat and provide input to them about. The. Area, air quality and other impacts that are addressed in that study. And helping to achieve mitigation that's required under NEPA in ways that are commensurate with the federal requirements for environmental justice in the Globeville, Swansea and Elyria area. Point number four. Finally, to answer the question that's been posed about the timing of this idea, the two main reasons that now. Is the time to take. This action are, one, the early action portions of the drainage. Improvements need to be completed. Well in advance of the beginning of the transportation project so that nobody is in the way when CDOT gets going. Secondly, see, Dot's procurement process has already begun. Bidders have submitted. Statements of qualifications and they are ready to go if see how it can give. Assurance to bidders of the city's. Cooperation on this project. We expect the bidders to respond with significantly. Lower costs for the project. And I want you to note stands the terms of the iwga require that any savings in this bid. Process will be. Shared by sea with the city. Proportionate to our contribution to their project. Thank you again for your attention. Please note that Leslie Thomas, the city engineer and deputy director of Public Works, and Gretchen Haller, the deputy chief financial officer, are both here to answer any questions and provide responses as needed. Tony DeVito from Seedat is also here. Tony is the project manager. And you had his his wisdom at the first reading. Sean Sullivan, the. City's attorney assets, has been our attorney on this project, and he is here tonight, as well as several staff members from both community planning and development and public works. Who will be able. To and happy to answer questions and make comments. And I just want to say. Then I'm really. Pleased that it will be this council that will be voting on this project. You folks have been steadfast in your work for these neighborhoods and you have been so much a part of all that's going on in this project. And I'm glad that it's you that's voting tonight. Thank you. Thank you. We have 11 speakers. I will call the first five. You can make your way up to the front pew and we can make some room for them and be great. Make sure it is true. DUTCHER Shannon Gifford, Jason Winkler and Betty Cram so you five can make your way up to the first pew and Mr. Sherrod, as you can begin your remarks when you're ready. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the council. I know it's late, so I will be brief. My name is Mike Gerardus. I'm the director of the unit within the Department of Transportation in the state called the High Performance Transportation Enterprise. We have the authority within the state government to pursue innovative financing for projects of this nature. I visited, I think, over the last several months with with each of you here walking through, answering questions about a procurement process that involves the private sector. That decision has been made by the Transportation Commission, as Diane just mentioned. We are in the middle of that procurement. This idea that's before you tonight is important for several reasons. One, it helps us fund the project, helps fill a gap that existed in funding this, as everybody knows, at the state level or at the city level . There are not a lot of funds floating around. And we've we've been struggling to put together some of that funding, which this is this in to it addresses an important risk element of this project, the drainage the storm drainage aspect of the problem, which we think is quite important. I think Tony can answer questions about that. Third, and most important in my mind is to underscore again what Diane pointed out. We have got a project that fundamentally involves the interest not only of the state, but of the largest city and county within the state. And without a measure of cooperation between those two entities, the people who are out there ready to invest tens of millions, maybe even hundreds of millions of dollars in this project, raise their eyebrows in terms of wondering whether the political risk of the of the project is worth it. It's quite important for that from that standpoint. Lastly, I want to I want to not forget about the elements of this contract agreement that address the commitments to collaboration between see DOT in this seat in the city going forward. I think probably I don't know at this point. I'm maybe not the longest living resident of Denver, but pretty close to it. This is sure as I apologize you 3 minutes is up and. Maybe John is. I don't know. We'll have to compare birthdates. But in any event, I know. You're 3 minutes out. Mr. Shaw. I'm sorry I had to stop here. So thank you very much. Thank you. Next is Drew Dutcher. Hi. I'm Drew Dutch. I live in Illyria. I live about 200 yards from the highway. It's soon to be very close. I want to just first say I blindsided by this. I found out that fortunately somebody called me a week ago saying, you know, that we've made $83 million agreement with the city. No public hearings, no meetings, no nothing for this. I support the drainage project, but I think it's very devious for the city to try to roll this package together to ram through the I-70 project. In this way, we put a lot of work into comments for the draft, the supplemental draft, EIA. Yes. And that the final yes is not coming out till January. We have no idea and no faith that any of our concerns will ever be met. What guarantee is there? They're not even talking to us. This was some backroom behind the scenes deal done with the city. And see, Don, there's there's too many disturbing things about this for me in 3 minutes to go into it. But there's just and I'll mention a few this CDOT is using a ten year old study to justify ten lanes. Now, there's many people who will say that a NEPA process five years is the shelf life of a of a study the unacceptable 300 feet wide highway. We're not sure we need this the funding mechanism and mechanisms of privatizing the highway with toll lanes. So these are very questionable. We can't get air monitoring or any kind of sufficient health study. We've never gotten answers of what will be the construction impacts that the impacts to the neighborhood during construction. None of these issues are being addressed. When when will we talk about them? You know, you're making these agreements in our behalf that we're paying for. And what and what what say do we have in this process? I feel you're giving away everything to see that. Why doesn't the city represent the residents of Denver? You know, one of the things that I really don't understand is I hear city officials say this is a done deal. I don't understand what you've done, what's done about it. I keep hearing this. You know, you've got your your chorus all saying this is a done deal. There's a lot to be done yet before this is done. We need to have a public discussion about this. And there's many people who wanted to come tonight. First of all, I wasn't going to come. It's 10:00. But there's many people who are really boycotting this hearing and won't come tonight just because they don't like the way that this was rolled in with all of the other projects. Judy, I really would have like to end on a high note, but, you know, I'm afraid this is difficult. You know, the really most harmful thing about this is there's a lot of goodwill that we had built up in a lot of the other processes, the neighborhood processes, the National Western Center. And it's being destroyed through this ice, this I-70 process. Thank you. Thank you, Shannon Gifford. Thank you, Mr. President. Council members. I'll be very brief. My name Shannon Gifford and I live at 32/29 Street. I'm the current Transportation Commission member for District One. Which represents Denver County. As many of you know, the planning and environmental. Review process for the. I-70. East. Project is now in its 12th year, and I particularly like to acknowledge Councilwoman Montero's leadership and involvement throughout this very long time and congratulate her on the work that she has done to bring. Members of the. Involved communities together to contribute their knowledge to. Forging solutions. And obviously there remains work to be done. The intergovernmental agreement before you tonight is just one. Example of many projects throughout the state, which, due to the current state of. Transportation funding in which and due to the current state of transportation. Funding, SEAWRIGHT is turning to local partners to deliver projects. And as those of you who studied these drainage issues in this area, and I know we talked about it a lot a couple of weeks ago, well, no, we can. Accomplish more by working together on. This specific aspect of the project. And I believe that this much needed level of preparation just just simply makes no sense. So finally, I know that. Sidewalks mitigation commitments. Are a primary concern for many members of this council. And I know some members are going off the council now. And the the the fact that we. Have sort of a changing council and that. A lot. And when you have such a big project, you have a lot of processes going. On at once. There's been a lot of concern about Sea Dot's real commitment to the mitigation. And I just. Want to assure you that Seattle is committed to working with this and with future councils. As we refine and finalize these commitments. So I hope that you'll support this intergovernmental agreement. And thank you. Thank you. Jason Winkler. Good evening and thanks to all the members of council for having us here and thanks for staying attentive this late in the evening. To that end, I will be really brief. My name is Jason Winkler and I'm a resident of Denver and also really fortunate to be working on exciting projects in the same kind of part of the city that most of the preceding talks were about. And and that's really what I bring here is a limited but I think a pointed perspective on the different things happening in what I'd call Greater North Denver, which is really all these areas I've learned really by, I would say, trial by fire, how incredibly important drainage and all the different infrastructure that needs to be done at a city level is to private development and and to the progress that that can be made and some of the exciting things it can be made to happen in a neighborhood when the private sector and the city work together and looking at this particular drainage project and the way the city has handled it. And when I say the city, I talk about you, members of council and the mayor's office. And when I describe the kinds of creative thinking that bring together the city, for example, and see not at the state level and how the two can come together to act quickly and in part of town, that's changing quickly and make things happen in a nimble way, folks, whether they're they're just friends or whether they're coworkers. Or financial partners from outside the city, they are literally in awe at how impressed they are. By the way everything moves in Denver and everybody in Denver, whether you're on the government. Level, the private. Sector should be really proud and excited about that because you probably if you don't hear that from outside, you don't realize how unique it is. So to that end, I wanted to just give my. My level of support. Largely from the way on Brighton Boulevard, the. City has worked with both private and public sector. And the way the process was so incredibly transparent, so incredibly creative and so incredibly inclusive and collaborative. And so to that end, while there's a ton of work to be done and the details of exactly how these two drainage projects almost come together to be one drainage project, there's a ton of work still to be done, but I have full faith that the groups will be all of those things that I. Just described. And have all the brains, if you will, come together to come to the best solution and work in a timeline that's going to work ahead of I-70 and in conjunction with all the redevelopment that's going on. So I'm. Here in full support and. And thank you. Members of council as well as members of the mayor's office for how everybody comes together to make smart solutions happen. So thanks. Thank you. Next is Betty Crane. And as Betty comes up, I'll go ahead and call the next six speakers. Just so you know, it's David Bennett, John's AP. And no, let me go. Cindy, said Stritch, David Wolinsky and Ann Elizabeth. So you all can certainly make your way up to the first two pews. And Ms.. Graham, you may begin. Thank you so much. I'll start out by saying I live in the area and when you go down there, sometimes, sometimes you find a little bit of cement laying around. It's just what's fallen from the highway. And so this is to who? It's concerning. Little chicken said the sky is falling and Denver County says no I-70 may fall. See, that said no. We will make a new I-70 and we will do what is right for the neighborhood. Really? I thought that issue was settled with a new raised viaduct. It would come north and have eight new lanes. Now you say that you need more than eight lanes. You will not build a new viaduct. So now the plan is to have ten lanes to toll roads. This will gobble up a lot of our historic area because now it has to be a 30 foot deep trench. At least ten lanes slide and about 20 blocks long. Not to mention the two access roads to run along the side of the highway. This will destroy over 60 homes and over 20 businesses. This trench will have no exit along the route. You state you will build a lane or park over the highway in front of the school. But the city will have to do the maintenance and the care of the park. There will be a network of side roads for travel in the local area, which will bring a lot of local traffic trucks into the area in order to get an entrance to I-70 east or west. Two concerns in our area are the filtering of the water away from the 30 foot trench and the salt pollution that will be a problem near the school and the residential areas close to I-70. Why does it seem this area from Brighton Boulevard to Colorado Boulevard is a target for your toll road? I don't hear of any other toll roads planned for about ten years in this little area. This toll road is not fair to the local citizens who are the working class, poor, poor class, nor for the local traffic that would come through to the National Western Center would be traveling through the area to see that in Denver. Please scratch your heads a little longer and come up with a better plan for us. Thank you. Thank you. David Bennett. Good evening. My name is David Bennett. I'm with the Urban Drainage and Flood Control District, and I'm here representing the district who is a partner with the city and county of Denver on this project. Now, for those of you that don't know the district, we work with local government. So we've been working with Denver on this project for a number of years in the planning phases, the design phases, and then we'll be partnering with them in the implementation phase. We also provide a technical resource of drainage and flood control. We helped guide the vision and most importantly, were a funding partner in this project at about 11 and a half million dollars. This is a very important project from the drainage perspective. We've been working on it for a number of years. I think the solution we're proposing is innovative. It meets a lot of the needs and you're getting a much upgraded system from five year to 100 year. So from our perspective, the drainage perspective, this is a great a great improvement for the area. So basically, we're in support of this bill. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Bennett. Next is John Sapin. Well, here we go again. I agree with almost everything this lady said initially. I wish I wish we would have heard this ten years ago or even eight years ago. The former head of Public Works, Bill Fidel, was in the neighborhood and he didn't say a damn thing about this urban drainage. You knew about this such. A long time. Why did you not come to our neighborhood? You have the wherewithal to do that, at least some public notice of some sort. We've got we've got this issue and it's I, I won't use the term devious, but I think it lacks some veracity. It would have been really an addition to the goodwill with C dot if this would have come up at one of the neighborhood. Me. How long up? God. How many meetings we've had in the. Last ten years or so? The main concern that I have about the drainage thing is that. When this project's complete. It's a funnel at Washington Street, and the next project is going to be expansion of I-70 through Globeville. We've had a hate relationship with the Colorado Department of Highways since the fifties, and that's ingrained. And I'll admit there's some bias. But but to deal with this amount of money that your grandkids, our grandkids are going to be paying for this. Yeah. And there's no end in sight. I think it has to be addressed and it has to be dealt with. But I don't think this is the way to do it. There's a public. Process that hadn't. Taken place, and we're talking about a lot of money. And, you know, I hope it's not a done deal because like I say, I don't think it's devious, but the term veracity is up in the area. Thank you. Thank you. Now let me go. Good evening. Thank you, Mr. President. Hello, councilmembers. My name is Nolan Miguel. I live. At 4930. Vallejo Street. I know many of you. I worked for Councilman Monteiro for the last three years and just had my first day today as the new director for Global Air since I live well in Focus Points Family Resource Center. So I'm here today as just me and I really appreciate the deliberation intention that you all have given to this issue. I know that you just found out about this idea several weeks ago as well and have been rummaging through it and trying to process it as well. And I just want to say, we will need your continued support on this I-70 project. This isn't it. We're not done. This isn't a final agreement. There's a lot more that we need to work on together and appreciate your continued support. I generally support this idea going through because the drainage project is so huge and important to the neighborhood as a benefit. We just saw that recently with the floods of 46th Street was filling up with water. Washington Street was. This is a huge, huge need in the neighborhood. I understand that having an agreement with the city is important to see that to be able to move forward with the contractor. I also understand that in order to get these this drainage agreement, there had to be this larger package that had to be negotiated in order to get this and that. That's kind of how ideas work. But I just want to say, in no way that we're that this that we're done, that this is it in working with the city or CEDA and addressing all the concerns and the priorities that the neighborhood has. This is not mitigation. We're still working on mitigation. We still have the RFP. That is critical document. We still have the final year and other critical document. These are all things that we're going to be working with residents on and pushing for long term solutions to the impact that this project is going to have. Councilman Monteiro has worked to establish structures around housing, health, jobs and education to get some of these priorities addressed. You know, we have a lot of things that we'd like to see happen. We'd like to have a percentage of the projects, for instance, go to training in the neighborhood. They did. That in. I-64 in Missouri. We'd love to see business opportunities rerouting truck traffic in the neighborhood, increase services to 500 feet from the highway, jobs, replacement, housing for neighborhood viability, all of these things. But these aren't things that are appropriate for being in this idea at this time. There are some things that would be appropriate to have maybe in the idea, such as narrowing the footprint of the highway or maybe looking at other regional solutions to, oh, it's over to the to the. The. Issues in for I-70 and also 47th in York. That's a big one. Sorry, I could keep going, but overall, I support this. And we're looking to Tony to to. Director, to. To make sure it is to keep working with us in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Cindy says, stretching. And I apologize if I mispronounced that. I'm Cindy Sestak. I live in District ten of Denver. And I am here today as a spokesperson for the Denver League of Women Voters. Would you. And thank you again for scheduling this special hearing. We do. Appreciate it. Please put our letter of June 24th into the record. Where we voiced our concerns. Regarding transparency and. Public process and prudent use of taxpayer. Money for the nurses drainage and I-70 project funding. We agree this project is necessary. However, we have observed meetings. Televised and in-person. Where questions have been. Where questions asked haven't been fully answered in public. The data needed to justify your upcoming decision to approve these large amounts of funding. Hasn't been published. Or noticed noted in meetings that we can find. Outside experts. Should be. Allowed to audit the cost sharing agreements and long term funding obligations of taxpayers funds prior to making your final decision. At a minimum, you are obligating. Nearly 200 million. For. Drainage projects, transportation enhancements and in-kind contributions, which are lost revenue for the city of Denver. But this agreement appears to be open ended with unforeseen consequences for years to come. There's a lot of funding involved. We think this agreement. As stated, is too vague. For this a large amount of taxpayer obligation. Therefore, we urge. You to vote no tonight and allow the incoming council to give the time and attention this project. Deserves to fulfill City Council's duty to the citizens. Of Denver. Thank you very much. Thank you. David Wolinsky. Thank you. My name is David. Let's give me a Globeville resident. I live in 4930 Logan Street, and I've been to a lot of meetings, and I. Never heard anyone support the I-70 project. We always denied it. But you're still moving on with it. And I can understand Drew Tucker's frustration, you know, and. You know, June 16th, 50 years ago, that river flooded and this year it was pushed to capacity. And then we had Cherry Creek with that that that that that that freak rainstorm or whatever we had. Why did you study this? Did you study it after this year? You didn't study that for this rainy season, have you? You know, I, I this is going to be rethought. I mean, they're going to have a new conversation. I mean, we don't know what the future is going to hold. I've never seen this kind of rain that we got this year walking that river constantly. You know, I seen the 65 flood. I was ten years old. It was the scariest thing you can ever imagine, you know, and and watch this river run high the way it is. I drive the trolley down there down on College Park and just walking that river high and low, lying low in the snowpack in the runoff we've had. I think he's a under thinking this. You know and it ain't going to work. It's just not going to work. You're putting that up. You're putting that highway under river level, you know. Are they are you engineers going to be held accountable or responsible if this thing floods and there's death? Or is that is that figured into. I don't think it is. You know, I mean, if you're if you're a bus driver and you get drunk and you and you crash your bus, you're held responsible. We need to start holding these engineers responsible because they're doing some things that I don't know if it's ever been done in this state. I've never seen it, you know. And, you know, if you if you did take if this isn't a done deal and you did move I-70 out, you know, there's a fortune in land sitting there that we could we could heal all our ills, our housing problems, you name it, it and the developers. This is a perfect time. Colorado now just moved in a number one spot for housing. And we're going to stay hot for a lot of years to come, you know, and if you turned I-70 and even into a boulevard and you moved it out financially, we could go ahead and and do it because the property values is going to be there. Well, you know, we looking at we don't have enough land. Well, there's a lot of land under there and it's an ideal location. And I think this has to be rethought. We got to really look at it. And, you know, we just this the way these floodings happened, the way there's water, the way the rains are coming, it's never done that before. John and I were talking. We've never seen it rain like that. Debbie's a longtime resident. You or have you ever seen it rain like this? I've never seen it rain. Mr. Leslie, your 3 minutes is up. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, sir. Last speaker and Elizabeth. My name is Anne Elizabeth Glanville, and I'm a past member of the Steering, the Globeville Neighborhood Planning Steering Committee and associated member of the Elyria Swansea Steering Committee for the Plan, Neighborhood Planning and a National Western Center Advisory Committee member. It is a reflection of the exhaustion of people and people that are boycotting this that several of us are speaking several times. And I do want to say the tip of the iceberg is here. I normally very much would support the drainage project. We need this. And I think Denver is rising justifiably with some exciting commitment to the drainage project. But I would and I and I want to say that I have had extremely good responsiveness and I'm working diligently with Cedar at all levels to get better communication out. And I'm very excited at the possibility of greater engagement. And with that, I would ask the city council to defer this for 45 days after the new council comes on. Do your job to make your case. Let there be some more public conversation, with all due respect, a sentiment that you've worked hard on. And so I hope the council this council can be the one to pass. It is not a good reason to pass something. Judy Montero is right that the neighborhoods need not to be sidelined. And I'm going to say to you with my heart, in parallel to what you're asking, we're keeping the community engaged and not marginalized. Please ask for this to be passed in 45 days and not before so that we can have more engagement and have more explanation as to the ramifications of this. The elephant in the room is, of course, that people that there is not a consensus in the neighborhood. There are unanswered questions. What are the ramifications? I have disassociated from the time from some of the culture, the leadership of the reroute group that I do not feel does build goodwill within the neighborhood. I also am very concerned that some of the research that's being generated around the possibility needs to be vetted more strongly. And we need to let the the Federal Highway Commission process complete itself. I am very in awe attending Transportation Commission meetings, looking at the HPT and the the the bridge is conversations that the individuals in this room that are doing a spectacular job trying to come up with a good, creative and innovative way to deal with the highway project that has a serious financial shortfall. We are not each other's enemies and we need to engage with each other better. We need more explanations as to why is this the solution and more guarantees that truly this is for the best interests of the neighborhoods. Plural, by the way. Welcome to District nine. Mr. Albert. But you continually say the neighborhood has come together globally. Swans here, three neighborhoods. You'll get it. Plural. Three neighborhoods. There are more. You know, I'm. This is part of the full understanding of this. So I would ask the council. I embrace that partnership with the city on the flooding project. But it is also the case that this is marrying the partially covered, lowered option with particulars that are up in the air. And let's let the process get a little bit further and let's let's give it another 45 days, bridge it to the new council and let's have more public exposure of the issues in the ramifications. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes our speakers. Time for questions. We are. I have a list. Councilman Brooks, you're up. Thank you. I live seven blocks from these neighborhoods, so I do know that there are three neighborhoods. But I wanted to bring up Diane and also Leslie, and I'm going to go. You did a great presentation, nice summary of kind of what we're going through here. But number three is, is the big issue and it's around I've gotten a lot of emails saying is this does this IGA give neighborhoods the last kind of bite at the apple? Will they have other other opportunities to comment and to talk about some frustrations and some issues? And so maybe, Leslie, this would be better for you. I'd love for you to read into the record. I found this the the the FDIC review process plan. And I want you to just it's going to take a little bit of time, but I want you to go through it, talk about the number of days that council and the community have to speak into each one of these issues. Thank you. Good evening. I'm Leslie Thomas. I'm the city engineer and deputy director of Public Works. So we have prepared our team and public works like what we did with the supplemental draft as a whole. Plan for the review of the final year, which is now scheduled. Our best information is that it will be available for public review January 15th of 2016. So what we've prepared is. A tentative. I-70 East Project FISA review process. It includes three. Steps review. Preparation. So what we do in that timeframe, it's about two months starting in October excuse me, August and ending in October. And it has steps that take a look at verifying the technical folks within the city to review the study. Excuse me, who did review the supplemental draft? This it's been a little while, so we want to be. Sure we have the right folks. We'll take a look at the past comments that we got from council and technical folks and that what we've heard in a series. Of public meetings that. Public works and Councilwoman Monteiro, Councilwoman Ortega. Organized with the community, I think about January, December through March this year. We did that specifically so that we could understand that the. Comments that. We did submit to see that were. Resonating with the community. I want. To let you know that two of the big ones that we did talk about were. Drainage and traffic. In the neighborhoods. There are multiple, but I. Won't tell you all about those. Tonight. We also want to confirm that the what the prior mitigations were that we requested requested so we can have that at our fingertips. We'll also be. Reaching out to the. Administration. Cabinet levels and. Managers as well as to city council to bring. Everyone up to speed and remind us of what we. Did about a year ago. Then we will spend about 30 days doing training. That will be training of our staff who technical staff who will be taking a look at this FISA as well as reaching out to council and council staff. There's a there's. A lot of comments and it will be a very large document that we need to review within. 30 days. 30 calendar days of receiving the document. So we want to have everybody poised and ready to go to read their favorite sections in a way to pull those comments together, starting once we receive it. Expected in January will begin a staff review with issue escalation among the technical folks. As well as working with council to help collect the comments and put them together if that's what council desires. I believe in the stages. We had a administration and technical letter. And we also had several. Letters from council and that is totally okay. We're here to help and facilitate that. That'll give us a few days. It's about two weeks to review it, so it's a lot of work to do. In a couple of weeks we'll. Send spend a week to compile it and. Then send comments out to see that during this. Time, the this 30. Days. The neighbors, the citizens. Can all comment as well while we're doing that and those comments can be. Made directly. To see that. So right now, this is our tentative based upon the timeline that we have from Syria, but we'll be preparing in that way. Mr. President, just let me just get that in summary. That was that was good. Thank you. We're going to review and prep for 62 days. We're going to do a training for 31 days. We're going to have review, comments and resolution complete and submit comments for another 30 days, which, you know, is about 123 days. And we as specific council members can work with community leaders, community folks to compile all of these comments to submit into the office. Okay. One more question. All right, Mr. President, I haven't talked tonight. You know, we have gotten a lot of residents in Park Hill, a lot of residents in on the east side of Denver, a lot of residents and guess who have have been emailing me about, you know, the issues with the flooding at a very high level. And technical. How bad is is the Park Hill Basin in the Moncler Basin. There a big. Challenge because they are a drainage way that was built over. In the city back in the 18 and. 1900s. And I think when Paul Heineman discussed this at committee, he was pretty concerned. And thought that if we did. Receive excuse me, 100. Year storm. In this basin, that it could be Katrina like I think is what he use. So it's a concern and we're excited. To have a partnership with that, to be able to take this on. And one more question. If we weren't able to partner or figure out a catalytic project to leverage dollars on. I want to make sure I got this right from Diane. We would only be able to build a five year storm drainage system. Yes, that's correct. Five years is about an inch in an hour and 100 years is about 2.6 inches in an hour. Okay. So what we saw recently in the basin was. About. Two inches in an hour. Which is about a. 25 year storm, which we had. Some significant impacts. So we're happy to be able to give a higher level of protection. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Lopez. Councilwoman, can each Brooks think outside? Brooks, I'm staring at Lopez's name I that my apologies. Katherine McGinnis. Thank you, Mr. President. I wanted to just pick up Leslie, if I can just close and then I have some questions that I think I would like to have urban drainage answer as well. But I just want to clarify. So when we had speakers say you should reevaluate the project in light of recent rain, recent rain, what was the highest level of rain we had recently? In this area. What I saw was about two inches. But Dave, is that correct? Dave Bennetts with there urban drainage, they keep track of it with rain gauges. So you could stand up and just confirm. And I think I'd like to hear it from you since you're the drainage expert. We've had a very wet spring, as everyone's aware of the rainstorm we had last week. We were seeing close to 2.6 inches of rain in some of the areas. Very intense rain in a very short period of time. You mentioned, I believe, that we were seeing high flooding on the South Platte River. We had the fourth highest recording flow ever on the South Platte River that week at 14,300 cubic feet per second. So it was a very significant event with a very short, intense rainstorm. I think, as Paul was alluding to earlier, if you move that to a different basin that doesn't really have the infrastructure to handle it, it could have been quite a devastating event. There was some localized flooding and flooding, but it really centered over Cherry Creek and that's why Cherry Creek flows were so high. Thank you. And so can I clarify then? Because I think the question that got asked is we've all been talking about how great this proposal is. Is it good enough is if we've recently had that level of rain? Is the plan that you have for a similar level of rain adequate. For what we're talking about for the basins right now? Yes. I mean, we've been looking at this for a number of years, and I think we're confident as we move ahead that this is a great plan to address that. Is there any area of the city that has a higher level of protection than the 100 year level or. There's other areas that certainly do have higher levels of protection? I think Leslie alluded to the fact that the city basically built over the drainage way, even in some of the other drainage ways, like Harvard Gulch or Wesley Creek, still existed. They maybe couldn't carry the capacity, but we completely buried this one and it's not there. And so now that's why it's so expensive. We have to go back and recreate 100 year storm. So. Got it. So. So there may be areas that are at less risk, but it's because they were never at this high of a risk. We didn't bring them back from the brink. That was correct. This area back us. Thank you. So my next question is about process. I'm familiar with the work that you all did around the Globeville Basin, where there were public meetings, there was a series of discussions, and then the entire approach made it into an urban drainage plan that was adopted. It feels to the residents like this process did not follow that same approach. Is that accurate? And if so, why? Basically, the city took the lead on the public relations part of this. So all of these discussions have been part of this ongoing plan. So urban drainage did not specifically hold a meeting to talk about this because it's been this part of this larger plan. But we've been talking about this project for five or six years. So. Okay. So maybe the city would like to speak to this question of so I guess feel free to respond generally, but I want to even be more pointed. When did the discussion begin with see that for this particular AG that we're seeing today, where the drainage project became a piece of the discussion. We started a. Multi-Agency technical team in October of 2013, and it had to do with solving issues surrounding the RTD. Eagle line. That cuts through this basin where. There were significant. Drainage concerns as. Well as with see that. As they announced their partially covered lowered section. And so we worked with urban drainage. And each of those other entities. Engineering consultants to figure out what the flows. Were. These are technical pieces of information that everyone needs to be on the same page with. And we came up with this recommendation that you. See coming forward to you. To basically leverage all of the improvements that each of. Those. Public entities were planning to work on in order. To come up. With this one solution that benefits all of us. Now, the challenge that we've. Had is that until. We were able to bring this agreement to you. We did not have. Seat outs, agreements in place to be able to make the commitment to the 100 year. Storm. So we've been working on a five year storm up until that point. As well as RTD. That's the level of effort that they did. So with this idea and this approval in price. We'll be able to move forward with 100 year strategy and service level, which we're really excited to do. I guess we need to kind of. Ask to put. I need to push a little more to understand better, because all the time we as a city has plans we don't have funding for. We go out, we have process, we have discussion. The Globeville Junction drainage plan is not funded. It it may not be funded for a decade or more, but we had public meetings and we had discussions. So I guess I don't understand why we could not or did not have any public meeting because we didn't yet have the funding commitment. To me, planning and design and what kind of flood protection we need is a very different conversation than how we're going to pay for it. And so, I guess help the residents and help me understand why. And how is it that we did not have any public discussion about the solution? Well, I guess. Put it this. One thing to add, we. Have gone to the community as to whether this is a problem. We did have public meetings on our. Outfall, our. High street outfall. From 40th. Down to the river. We haven't gone up in. The basin because, to be honest with. You, we didn't know whether we're going to be able to do. It. We do have urban drainage now under. Contract and there designers under contract us help us to do it. So we're ready to go now. Yeah, I guess that's not very satisfying when we have meetings all the time for projects we don't have funding for. But I will let it go because you've done your best. We met. Well, just to add another thing, we did have our folks from Urban Drainage and our master plan folks at the end. Public meeting several times for months about this particular. Yes. Showing the issues that we had. But was it an actual. OSP, which maybe I'm too technical. Here is what you're talking about in Globeville, where they had a specific public meeting. We have not had one of those yet. But we have carried this issue. Forward and had Shay Thomas. And others from Urban Drainage. Selina Koslowski are engineers at the DCC meetings. To. Talk about the issue. And show the pictures that we're showing in the. Iwga generally as to what the solution. Is. I have some more questions for seerat, but I can seed and go back in the queue if someone else wants to. Mr. President, it's your pleasure, but I have another line of question. I hope we can come back to you, Councilwoman and Councilman Lopez, Europe. Thank you. My question is that we can't make the microphone. Microphone. My question is addressed by Mr. Bernanke. He addressed it eloquently. He already did. You already did that. So our next speaker. Thank you, Councilwoman Robb. Thank you, Mr. President. And I am going to move from the stormwater issue, which I am convinced is necessary. And I'm delighted that in this agreement the state is stepping up with this 6040 share there being 40. But I want to talk about the 83 million that we are putting into the transportation piece. So I think my first question is probably for Diane Barrett. I am thinking that I used to hear Don Hunt talk about the total cost of the I-70 project, and I haven't heard Salem bought talk about it yet. But what I'm remembering is the total cost of the project is about 800 million up. We're if we're talking. About hard costs, I think 800 to. 1.8 billion is about that's what we've been that's what we've been working. Toward. Obviously, the cost of the project. Won't be truly. Known until. The builders have done their. Thing and we've had the. Procurement. So do you think the 83 million in this agreement we keep talking about future bites of the apple for. Mitigation and things that may be in the final year. But do you think the 83 million is our total commitment in terms of the transportation piece of the I-70 project? Have have we taken our final bite at that one? Yes. Okay. So then. Councilwoman, I think it might be a little. Bit confusing to use the 83. Because. We have $37 million that's dollars on the table that we're paying for things that we're getting. Right. The other portion of your 83. Some of it is actual dollars in the sense of relief from permit fees, for instance, and that sort of thing. Others are a bit more. Nebulous in that there's $10 million in this instance for risk, that sort of thing. So it's kind of it's kind of apples and oranges. So probably better to talk about the 37 million and then. The in-kind support perhaps. Yeah, I just think some of the income. Well, let me talk. About it any way you want because. Related to that, to the in-kind. I want to know about the slip ramps and bypass lanes because I call those access roads. Am I calling them the right thing? I would love to have Tony DeVito talk to this because I'm not a traffic controller. But let me get there's a bigger question. Okay. So my thing is mostly the neighbors and some of us are council didn't want the highway right away to be so large, and yet we're contributing to making it wider white. Why are we paying for that piece of it? Because in the last analysis, we ended it. And I do need Tony. In the last analysis, we ended up agreeing with, see that that that this Steele and Vasquez intersection and the Colorado Boulevard intersection. Would be two halves of a hole. And what happens is the bookends. No, that's. Not the bookends. That's something different. I'm sorry. That's mine. I'll explain that, too. But. But the way the intersection works. Traffic would be dumped. Into the neighborhoods like that. Whereas if the slip ramps are built, the traffic will be dispersed and disseminated as it comes off the highway. So it's not coming out in large numbers all at the same time. Tony, do it more. Do it better, please. T-Rex. T-Rex. Talk about T-Rex. Yeah. The interchanges of Vasquez and Colorado are two independent split diamonds. As we move into the final design of what's being proposed, and it's actually a $1.17 billion project is as we're moving forward. It was working with the city of Denver is trying to identify how those interchanges could best work not only from an interstate, but also not end up in a situation where people would bypass the interstate and use more of a local system. This was something that the city and county of Denver traffic engineers made very clear and evident that these slip ramps and bypass lanes were needed to try to better negotiate that weave on the interstate template and not into the neighborhood. And so it was a request from the city and actually a slight detriment to the interstate operation to incorporate this. And in working with our federal partners, we've come to an agreement on that. Okay. Actually, that explanation was helpful to me and hopefully to the neighborhood because I'm not at every neighborhood meeting. I have another question. And Tony, it might be for you as much as for Diane Barrett. The agreement says, see, DOT will consider abandonment of Brighton Boulevard. What's it mean will consider I mean, is it going to be abandoned or not? Abandonment is performed as an action of the commission. That action has not happened. So as part of our agreement, once it's finalized at this level, we will take it to our Transportation Commission. At that point, our commission will always rules on abandonment of state owned properties. Now, this is a section of old historic connector in there that really doesn't serve as a a an interstate or a highway or a state local collector. It really serves as more of a local road, and it's just something that has been on our system for way too long. So I think we discussed this in the meeting and I'm always interested in it because I've had constituents who would love to see devolution of Colfax Boulevard so that we could make it a little more urban and, you know, be a little freer with the access points and whatnot. But this is a very short stretch that you're talking about. Less than a mile, I believe it's less than a mile. Okay. Already those those are my questions on the transportation piece. Thanks. Thank you. Well, there you go, Councilwoman Ortega. You're up. Thank you. Let's see what you make coming back to the microphone, please. So you described a process that the city is going to engage in prior to the EIA being released. So what I'm not clear about is if Denver is going to receive that information prior to the release or if you're just prepping for the release of the final year. We're prepping for the release of the final. EA's will receive. It at the same time as the. Public does in January of 2016. Okay. Are there ongoing negotiations between Denver and CDOT around some of the other issues that were in many of the responses that came from the neighborhood? Some of them came from city council. Some of them came from some of the neighborhood associations. You know, Denver had a lot of comments as well that overlapped with some of those issues that came from those various groups that I just mentioned. So are there still some of those ongoing negotiations happening right now? What we are working with Don on is the preparation. For the RFP for the contractors. See, that is we received five responses, four qualifications. And in those. Technical. Conversations, we are working on things like the air quality, the construction, how. You know. Traffic mitigation for soils or I miss mitigation maybe isn't the right word. Sorry, it's a little late for me. I'm in awe of all of you. But anyway, materials handling, that type of thing that we were always. Keep in mind and review the comments. That were provided to us and that we did during the year to put in place into the contract the right things. To address them. So if they're in the contract and we assume that some of those things are going to be clearly addressed in the final year if it's part of what's being negotiated between Denver and Cedar. Yeah. As a part of the RFP and Tony, you can jump in here. Things that go in there would be what the contractors would. Need to respond to. Do you want to add? Again. Tony DeVito, project director. To answer that question, there was over 900 or 2000 comments through the supplemental draft. Yes. That are being responses. Are we prepared? And those will be released as part of the office. In addition to that part of the office, there is another 30 day comment period that ensues along with we'll have scheduled meetings with the public in August, August 18th, 19th and 20th, where we will go back out and talk about the office. We'll talk about a little bit of the transparency requirements in what's involved in a public private partnership. Like I said, again, 30 day review period and then public meetings also in January with the release of the office. So the public meeting in August will be just to convey to the community what the process will be for when the final year is released. Correct. Correct. Okay. So the since I have you up there, Tony did draft the supplemental draft called for the lead over the highway being mitigation. Correct. So why is it that Denver is being asked to pay for the some of the improvements and the maintenance of that lit? Because I've been told by a C dot person and this was when several of us went and did the tour in Seattle of Delayed so we could see what that looks like and how they were maintained. We were told that anything that is considered mitigation is the responsibility of CDOT to maintain it. And, you know, in all the communication that was with the neighborhoods, the neighborhoods were told they would have input into designing it. And that's been sort of a separate process that ended up happening with Denver Public Schools. I think there will be some benefit to the neighborhood, and I'm grateful that it's not going to be gated or locked most of the time, as was originally talked about. But help me understand why Denver is paying for that when it is considered mitigation, which is normally the responsibility of the transportation agency. It's a fair question. You know, as we as we've worked through this shared negotiation, it is very evident that what we want to provide as the identified mitigation to the school and as a connection to the two communities, wasn't met with full acceptance of this. The city and some of the other members that we were working with identified additional types of uses on top. You seek a balance point, especially when you start looking at maybe some of the different types of loading that can associate with that. And we meant we came up with the agreement that fine, whatever is ultimately designed on top, we will design and pay for that structural underneath. And then as as a good negotiation, you have to look at then the tradeoffs. You know, as far as anybody that would we would probably want to encourage some sort of trust development or something to come in here and really be the the group that maintains this. Especially when we get into some of the landscaping grasses, that's just not see, that's fortes. So if it's a third party, but the cities in this agreement obligating themselves to pay for the ongoing maintenance, then the long term expectation is that Denver's going to pay the cost of some third party to handle the maintenance. Is that correct? That's correct. Okay. That's very disturbing that we on the hook for what could be a 50 year project, assuming that lasts longer then than an elevated structure where, you know, the first few years, it's going to be nice, it's going to look nice, but over time it will deteriorate. And, you know, it's subject to annual appropriation from the city to ensure that the funding continues to be there. We're obligating taxpayers to $2.5 million for the next 30 years. These are concerns. So I guess. I guess I'm preaching now, so I'm not going to continue. I know Councilwoman Kennedy had some additional questions, but I guess I'm disturbed that we're we're giving up so much right now and any leverage we have to ensure that the kinds of things that we want to see in the final year, there's no guarantee. And to I mean, for me, this is very similar to when we were asked to approve a proclamation committing to the preferred alternative where we hadn't seen the supplemental draft of what was going to be in there. And again, this was Denver had been having conversations with CDOT about, you know, what was going to happen at Vasquez and Colorado Boulevard and. This is very similar to that, where we don't know what's going to be in the final e-mails. But we're asking we're being asked to make commitments now about. You know, the drainage project is absolutely critical for all of these neighborhoods. And I support the drainage project, but I'm I'm having heartburn with how we're doing this by putting all of these things together and yet not ensuring that the things that need to happen to these neighborhoods which have paid the price for this highway project. And Tony, as you well know, under the NEPA process in Title six, which is part of the Civil Rights Act and part of the, you know, environmental justice, that has to happen with this project. These neighborhoods can look at past harm to these communities. And it's frustrating to know that that stuff is sort of being pushed off to a back burner and being told, trust me, these neighborhoods have heard that too many times. I mean, you know, the on and off ramps don't get maintained ever in these neighborhoods. And we're talking about the lead over the highway that's going to have some beautification improvements. So, you know, we're not only talking about the on and off ramps and what's going to happen with those and what the retaining walls are going to look like and some of those other kinds of things. So I guess I'm just very concerned and disturbed and. We've been involved in this process for the last two and a half years on a weekly basis, sitting in on meetings with with Saeeda and with Denver and trying to work through ensuring full engagement with the neighborhoods and. You heard people here talking tonight. They didn't know about any of these details. And, you know, yes, the drainage has been part of the conversations, but not the details of how all of this was going to be financed and what kind of long term commitments we're asking Denver taxpayers to make on this. So I'm going to stop with that so that other colleagues can ask their questions. Councilman Canete, you're back. Thank you, Mr. President. Two areas of question. Yes, stay there. So my previous questions just to share were based on the testimony that surprised me. I did not know. We'd never had a dedicated meeting about drainage. That's to me, just a missed opportunity that I did not know about until tonight's testimony. What I expected to hear a lot about is the transportation project and how people feel about it generally. And so that that I know you've been meeting about and that I knew that we would have questions about. So so that's where I'm moving and that is the question about the ten lanes. So we haven't actually had this discussion in this chambers before. And because we are now contributing money to a transportation project that as drafted has ten lanes, I think it's important that we have that conversation. So can you speak to. The justification? Well, first of all, actually, let's go back because there was a comment made by one of the speakers that I want to clarify when we had. And Diane Barrett, you may be the one to do this, because this was probably before Tony took over when we were going to do the replacement of the viaduct with a bump north. Was that an eight lane project or attending a project? I believe that was ten lanes as well. Okay. So so it sounds like that that addition of a lane was not new to the partially covered lower. One of our speakers thought that it was. Okay. So then back to Tony, then talk about please the reasoning in particular on the need for the additional lane. So when we look at a project and after all the years of disagreement and being stymied on a decision, the partially lowered culvert alternative is one that finally kind of made up for the sins of the past, actually got the community on board, that there was a way to reconnect the community. Now, I'll remind this council that this alternative is a couple hundred million dollars more expensive to provide this type of mitigation versus replacing it with another elevated structure. So when we start talking about costs for those mitigations, that's that's a conversation outside of this room that I have a lot of times explaining why we're spending that much more for this mitigation once we're into this trenching and building a lowered section, unlike a replacing a bridge with a bridge where if in future growth we have to add capacity. It's not as hard to do with adding extensions on piers and adding additional girder lines. So we took an extra hard look at the traffic growth numbers provided by Dr. COG and had to make what is the most prudent and best use of sustainable decisions for the taxpayers of Colorado. And that is the ten lane template. It is clearly identified in any of the alternatives. But once we get into this trenching situation, we cannot start smaller. There is no application of saying no. We'll take a smaller template and then a bigger bite later. This is what the growth projects. This is what we see from the Dr. COG model and we cannot build something that's not sustainable. Going back and correcting this is not a viable solution. So if I can ask about the Dr. COG model, because I was, you know, being one of Denver's reps to Dr. COG, I was part of a meeting where they went through the history. And so I just want to confirm that you are aware that the model that they are currently using is not the model that those that that that model was a prior model. That, that if we were to run the model today, it would be run with totally different technology than was used for that model. So you're aware of that and still feel like. That's the model you're going to rely on. From the team of experts that we have on the project. That is the correct projection to be using as we move forward. Correct. So has there been any conversations about proceeding with the project? Should I mean, should the. I don't even know if that's possible for the final environmental impact statement to say yes, partially covered, lower option, but not ten lanes. But I mean, what is. Is that is that a conversation that we can pursue in terms of limiting the footprint of this project? So the answer for the Federal Highway Administration, who was the ultimate signature of the document? You clear the window that is needed once you after a record a decision. If there's ever any discussions on any modification that comes afterwards and you have to demonstrate viable cost benefit and valid reasons why you would build something less than what was ultimately cleared in the record of decision. But that is the process that's used that we've used on other projects. Okay, we won't see the road till next year. So I guess my next area of questioning is really a question about the mitigation. And so some of the members of the public were not here. When I kind of read you the riot act last time on first reading, this is one of those two reading agreements. So they were here previously and stood up there. Can you commit now that you would amend this IGA to put in writing in contract with Denver other areas of mitigation that are agreed to in the future? Should we kind of rephrase my last comment? I mean, this is an agreement. It's we can make tweaks and modifications if need be. But the binding contract that lasts for a long, long time is the record. A decision? The record a decision will identify and indoctrinate those mitigations that are committed to. And so whoever is up here from seed out in the years ahead, phase two, whenever anything is completed, that is what binds the Department of Transportation and FAA CWA with the commitments made those that's that's what we've done on numerous other records of decisions that's the binding contract. This is an agreement. Can I ask a question for the city attorney who has standing to enforce the IGA as compared to who has standing to enforce a record of decision and in particular going to get really legal everyone's sorry our third party beneficiaries do they have standing in either of those in terms of or I'm asking the city where do we get to enforce or have standing to enforce? But then secondly, where would third party beneficiaries homes that were due mitigation improvements, communities that were do investments, things like that. With Sean Sullivan, the city attorney's office. With regard to the Iwga, the city and the state are the parties to the agreement, so they would be the parties who'd be able to enforce it. Specifically, we didn't allow for third party beneficiaries. With regard to the record of decision, that's not a contract per se. Well, Mr. DeVito, it's an enforceable document that requires the state and the federal government to. Adhere to the. Mitigation that's required in that document. It's not a contract, per se, but it would be something that would be enforceable by other parties if if they weren't following it. And without going into a lot of detail, that's the best I'm going to give you tonight. All right. Well, that's an area we need to continue, because I guess what I heard you say is I didn't actually hear you give an answer to whether you would amend the saiga in. My concern is that if there is a greater level of protection for the people of Denver to have you commit to the mitigation, even if it duplicates what's in the record of decision, if there may be a compelling legal reason why it's important for you to commit to those things in this type of agreement versus just having it in a record of decision. I don't want to rely on an act of Congress to try to compel performance if I have an easier way to enforce. So. So what I'm getting at is I think I mean, the question people have had about is this it's not the last bite at the apple. I want to know what the next bite of the apple looks like. And I want it to look like this. I want the next bite at the apple to be that, yes, we can enter into a contract between Denver and see that to clarify any remaining mitigations that get agreed to. That's the answer I'm looking for. I don't know what I'm going to get it, but that's what I'm looking for. Counsel. I would probably suggest that we would just write a new figure if there was things that developed as we went through here. I mean, what we're trying to do is identify the the key part of this is the drainage. And to give a level of comfort to the bidders that CDOT and city and county of Denver are in partnership. You know, that's that's what's needed right now to move forward and not move prescriptive. In my 24 years as a civil servant, often to often see that and this is really what the the crest of this agreement is. And so if we had to come up with something else, the partnerships that have struck, we'd strike another idea. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Monteiro. Thank you, Mr. President. So Diane and Leslie, if you can help explain to everyone here what the structure is for negotiating with the whole issue of I-70, because it can get a little bit confusing and there can appear that there's a lot of layers of bureaucracy, which is diminishes trust. I know that both of you worked very, very hard and as did see that to come to this point and it's frustrating not to be able to communicate what the city has gained and how much support has moved in terms of trying to get to this intergovernmental agreement. So what I would like for you to talk to me about is the internal structure of the city, and I want you to talk about that so that people can sort of be clear about how those decisions are made. And then if you have ideas about. How we how the city communicates, where you work, how you're doing on each of these mitigation things that are 1900 to 1000 different things, because we worked really hard to thread it all the way through from the neighborhood and issues that they had, the nonprofits, the churches worked with city council , worked with the city of Denver, all these different layers to get on one page in terms of the the mitigation that you have in front of you. I know that's a lot, too, when we start all over. No, please don't. Thank you, Councilwoman, I. I was hoping to have an opportunity to say, because people. Some people are stressing that the city's paying all this money. We are getting a lot. We are getting a lot, sweetheart. Agree to build the cover. Absolutely. And they will. And they have. Never faltered from that, not once. But they didn't agree to. Make it what we want it to be. Brad. I may ask Brad to come up if you guys have a if you feel like a few minutes to talk about urban design and to talk about the kinds. Of things like the. Bookends that are so. Important to the city, that's, you know, it can't it can't. Be important to see that it's not what they do, but it is what we do. We build cities here. Brad, would you mind? Brad, you can talk just a. Little bit about the. Bookends and the things we're asking for on the cover. Good evening. Pat Buchanan. Executive director, community Planning and Development. And our team has been involved in some of the work helping the process with the design of the led the community process. And Steve Nally, who's been the rock star in front of you most of the evening, is here also and can give you more detail to that if you'd like. But in terms of the lid, a couple of things we learned and really pushed hard for was from from visiting the lid in Dallas that is very similar in sort of how it can tie together to two parts of the city that were were affected by a historic highway alignment. And what we noticed at that location was that the lids at either end ended with a street that crossed. And we know that one of the most important things that the lid does besides create activity on the lid is connect north and south, reconnect these historic neighborhoods. And those connections happen as much or more at the streets. And what happens at the edges of those streets, not just the lid. And so what I'm saying is that if we end the lid with a street and don't complete that street on both sides of the street, east and west side of the street, we don't we weaken the actual strength of the connection, north and south. And so rather than having the lid end with the road, the bookends extend the lid so that we finish a complete street on each side of those streets, both East and West End, and to that to the tune of about 50 feet, I believe, on to the West . And how much? 60 feet to the west and to the east ends of the lid. So those are the additional cars that we felt were really important to leverage the North-South connectivity. And I also would add that in terms of the slip ramps that are being talked about and the width and I agree that the width and every foot matters in this project, no doubt about it. But please also know that it isn't just the width of the cut itself. It is. It is the roads to the to both the north and south. And so those alignments, the the slip ramps actually allow the width, the whole the width of the overall assembly of the highway from north to south to be less. And that's because it allows a tighter diamond and steel vasquez interchange and allows us to create more developable area at the northwest, northeast, southwest and southeast quadrants of that intersection. That's true from a purely planning perspective, why we felt that the slip ramps was such an important piece. So again, not just where the where the retaining walls are, but actually if you look at the whole assembly of the East-West Highway. Thank you, Brad. And then I would like to say that. I would also like to say. That. The the. Importance of the way we work with Scott and the. Way we have developed the relationship. With Scott is great. Leslie Thomas and Gretchen Haller from the Department of Finance and I were primarily charged with this work of working with Scott. But in addition, all of our teams were behind us and with us. Kerry Kennedy was there every step of the way, looking at all the numbers working and all the numbers. This has not been individual folks. It's been teams at the city working for the best interests of the city. Scott has agreed not just to work with us, but they've embedded Leslie and their technical. Review team for the bidders. They've embedded me in the finance team looking at bidders and making those selections. This is almost unheard of for folks across the country, and this is cooperation that will benefit all of us tremendously as we go forward. So going forward, as Leslie told you about the new process or the process for the office, we will be looking . When once the FDIC. Comes out, one of the main things we'll be looking at is what they did and didn't do of the things we all asked for. And we'll have conversations and we'll have discussions and we'll have negotiations around that. And I'm looking forward to that. And I'm looking forward to involving the new council in that. So does that help. Councilwoman? Is it just me? Yes, it does. And the unfortunate thing, Karma, is that you guys are working so, so difficult. You're working so hard and lots of difficult situations and the neighborhood can't see it. And I just don't know how through this process there is some trust that's built and the realization that, you know, you're doing your best to do right by the neighborhood. So that's something that will be dealt with. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilwoman Ortega, you're up. I just wanted to ask Brad a question about the slip ramps. If you wouldn't mind coming back to the microphone. So manager of Public Works, Jose Cornejo, I guess that's executive director now. Manager had said that they looked at how to try to reduce the footprint and there was about eight feet of savings. But when we look at adding in the slip ramps, you add in the ramp and the shoulder. So what does that come out to? I thought it was about 24 feet per ramp. But you're talking about everything inside the retaining walls? No, I'm talking just about the slip ramps. Right. Which are inside the retaining walls. Correct. Right. And I'm talking about the impact, the opportunity that adding the slip ramps inside the retaining wall presents in terms of reducing the additional paved footprint north and south of the retaining walls at the Steel Vazquez interchange. What I'm trying to find out is how much more feat does it add to the footprint by putting in the slip ramps? Isn't that about 48 feet? Because it's about 24 feet per per lane. When you add in the shoulders. I can't. You know. So we save eight feet by trying to reduce the footprint. But we're we're actually adding almost 50 feet by putting those slip ramps in. This is what I got from an engineer. Okay, so. I'm an artist, you know that. Just making up these numbers. I don't have that answer. The reason we have been so supportive of the slip ramp option is that it produces many acres of developable area in the at the steel Vasquez interchange that we believe is really critically important connective tissue at that interchange and potentially could be as a location for a second load down down the road . Okay. Thank you. I was just trying to get clarity on. An. Actual footprint of the corridor through these neighborhoods. So the 300 foot wide swath. Would you just clarify that? That goes from Brighton to. Is that Quebec? Is that what's. What's the Eastern most? That's not cool. I don't know where the. Distance that that width of the corridor will carry. I know there were some additional things that were requested by Denver at I believe. Hallie Was that one of the interchanges? DIANE And then there was another one, I believe, at Quebec. So that in the future we have the ability to add additional lanes at Quebec and Peoria. Peoria. Those are the two places where the bridges will be wide enough to accept a bigger Peoria and a bigger. Quebec when that time is right. Money is. Available, okay? But that's not part of the $1.8 billion for now. The the the widening of Quebec and the widening. Of Peoria are not included. No, just the widening of the highway. Okay. Thank you. I'm done with my question. Thank you. Bob. Thank you, Mr. President. Since some folks in the public have pointed out that I'm not going to be in office very long after I make this decision tonight, I just have to ask this question. And it's based on the fact that I heard from a constituent today, in fact, that part of the reason they're saying defer this decision to a future council is that we are spending quite a bit of money. We are. Looking at sizable budget budget commitments in in a number of these decisions we we heard about the North this talk show did night nation on western this year we put a lot of money into Brighton Boulevard. We've got the river itself project. We're talking about I-70 right now. If $10 million in infrastructure into the DIA development, we had a big presentation on Bettcher and the Performing Arts Center. So my question is for finance or for the administration? What's left for input from future council members? What can we do about the rest of the city? Will there be anything left? And how is this administration going to approach that question? Because they're going to ask it. I'm the only one that stood up. Okay. Well, there's a lot left, and there's a lot of innovation that's going to have to happen among your colleagues. Those of you who are still. Here. And work with administration and the agencies to make these things happen. But I'm I'm I've done Brad in tonight, so I won't ask him again. But Brad is in charge of Brad and others are in charge of. Three. Massive planning projects right now, downtown, 16th Street Mall, The Better and the Arts Complex and the Convention Center. I sort of included those in my list. We've already been briefed on those. I know those are coming. What else is left? Sun Valley isn't huge priority. The mayor will be working with you on several projects having to do with Sun Valley related to Sun Valley. In the next few months we'll be working. And you did include the river projects. Those things. We have the the. New. Owners at the what we call. Gates Broadway site. And that's enormous. And that's a big, big project that the new council will be working on. My question is, will there be funding for all the CIP requests that come across generally throughout the city? I know there are a lot of things on the plate, but how are you going to make those decisions when we're obligating so many money, so much money, including those things you just mentioned? A lot of things will not be. From capital budget of the city. A lot of things will have to be public private partnerships. And Gretchen can talk to you more about that and Gretchen will talk to you about several other things as well. Good evening. Members of council. I'm Gretchen Haller. I'm the city's deputy chief financial officer. I'm happy to have a chance at the microphone because the rest of the team had been up here the whole night. So thank you for your. Question for this specific iwga. We are very happy about the financing that's proposed behind it, namely because it's very difficult for the city to pay for $37 million worth of. Transportation enhancements. In a single year. That is not the size of our annual CIP. So the fact that Seedat was willing to partner with us on a financing that is comparable to what the city would have been able to do in our own financing and take the upfront carrying costs of that financing through to the completion of the asset . When it is. Available in 2022 really gives us the ability to ramp up and accommodate that $2.68 million payment beginning in 2022, so that it will. Not have. A significant impact on our annual CIP. So we have the time to plan for that. We do not have the. Carrying costs for the finance. We do not have capitalized interest in accommodating that cost. So that is something that we were pleased to be able to work with SEEDAT on for the wastewater costs. I would just add that we have a number of different funds in the city. The city is is funded for capital improvements. That is a separate fund from our wastewater enterprise fund. So the cost of the drainage will be paid for through the Wastewater Enterprise Fund. As I did note on first reading of this project of this idea, the Budget Management Office is already planning on coming forward City Council. As a part of our 2016 budget preparation, we have a need to request a rate increase for the wastewater fund. We had our last rate increase in 2011 and in the meantime we've had increasing capital costs. So we need that rate increase for the long term sustainability of the fund. In addition, we in addition, we have a need for. An enhanced water quality program. And what works well in this case. Is that the Montclair Basin, which is included in the combined drainage project, is being. Proposed not as a typical. Pipe under the ground. It's being proposed as a wonderful and big water quality project that really supports the work we need for the Platte River. So in addition to the other projects or recognizing the other projects that Diane mentioned, we will continue to look for ways to creatively finance them. You'll notice that with the National Western Center we're looking to lodgers. Tax Carry had talked about that, but that is asking the voters to approve the extension of lodgers tax that's paid for by visitors for a visitor facility. That's the kind of access we look to in all of our financing. We'll continue to look for creative approaches like that and all the while be very cognizant of the city's triple-A rating and maintaining that as well. Okay. Thank you. I that was an excellent answer in explaining why this is a good financing plan for this project. I will just say now that we don't have to bring in during comments that we're still not talking about spreading improvements equitably. We're committing the CIP for any number of years on the 2.68, spreading these equitably around the city, those areas that really need improvement, those areas that really contribute to the well and a good part of the capital of this city. And I'm not hearing that answer tonight, Sky. Sure. Sky, start from the mayor's office. That's an excellent point, Councilman Robb. You've made it a couple of times and just want to put on record here. I think you and I have discussed. It, that equity around the city is a really important value and it's something we're looking towards in all of these. Projects. We actually have a subcommittee of the. Group talking about some of the projects. You talked about the downtown projects that will focus on making sure that we are looking. Equitably across the city for other issues. And one thing that Gretchen didn't mention mentioned, but I know. She would be happy to add to if I get anything wrong, is. We've been very, very careful to also preserve our geo capacity, our general obligation bond capacity. And that's something. We're going to have to undertake in the next few years to determine what those. Projects are. And that will have to be an equitable conversation across the city of where needs are and where we prioritize them, not just in this area, but everywhere. Thank you. Because I do want our successors to be successful in bringing forward their priorities. Yeah. Thank you, Sky. That's an excellent point. All right. Thank you, Councilwoman Robb, Councilwoman Monte. Thank you. I have a question for Brian. Are you still here, Pinkerton? My question is about 47th in York, which is a huge safety issue, as you are aware. Can you tell me if that the idea where we are with with 47th in New York and if the city through negotiations, try to see if that would pay for those improvements. Yes. Brian Pinkerton with Public Works. For a long time, the community has voiced the priority of the 47th in York, and we in public works in the city have agreed that that is a critical crossing that needs to be addressed. We worked extensively with the seed art team to look at if there might be some way to incorporate some aspect of the I-70 project to include an improved crossing at 47th and York. Ultimately, what was a decided or agreed upon between the entities was that this was a city responsibility to deal with this crossing and that there might be certain aspects of the project depending on. As the ultimate design proceeded on I-70, there may be certain aspects that would help make an improvement at the crossing easier to accomplish, but that it really fell on the city shoulders to deal with this because it wasn't an interregional type of mobility challenge. It was really a challenge for the communities in the area. And so the city has allocated, I believe, $200,000 in this calendar year to begin a study to look at what the options are to make an improvement in that area. There's more funding following in 2016, and we are going to be commencing that study very shortly. May I ask one more question? And then the issue related to truck traffic and the rerouting of trucks during construction? Me, I don't know if that wants to answer that, but also if the trucks are going to be rerouted during construction, shouldn't they just always be rerouted out of the neighborhood as well? Tony, do you want to answer? Tony DeVito. See that assembly project director. So with regard to truck during trucks, during construction, we will do construction specifications, especially to avoid staging areas in the neighborhood to be sure that the traffic methods that are proposed by the developer keep sacred that community. Be sure that the the phasing of the construction doesn't induce traffic in there. Those will be part of the specifications. So during construction will definitely be working with that. When the project is ultimately done. It goes back to being an interstate with a relocated 46th Avenue. And so then again, interstate. So we're going to be back to having the truck traffic. So was that one thing that the neighborhood can continue to give input on? Or is that part a done deal? You know, it really comes down to our federal highway administration making that ultimate call. And once you're building an interstate to its ultimate template and it's safe, it is important to maintain that truck connectivity. There is if you look at the stretch of the corridor, it's not only a community, it's it's 1100 businesses that rely on that commerce and that that movement of commerce and goods. So I just want to know what my response to that is, that it's very, very important to the neighborhood that trucks be rerouted out of their neighborhoods. And every effort to see that in the city of Denver can make it so that they don't need to deal with that. I would really appreciate that on every level that you can do that and the neighborhood continues to talk about that. But we continue to sort of stay in the same place. And I know that it's it's a huge impact to them. So I just want to reiterate that. Thank you, Councilwoman Monteiro, Councilwoman Ortega. I just want to piggyback on this and highlight that although the truck traffic is only 10% of the traffic that drives on this corridor. It's 50% of the pollution that is sort of left in the neighborhood as those vehicles drive through. So addressing the health impact to the neighborhood is a critical part. And when you look at the end of the day, how wide this is going to be and how much more traffic is going to travel on this corridor. And in granted, the, you know, the preferred alternative that takes the traffic below grade is less impactful. Not all areas of the neighborhood are going to be where the wind is at. So it's why trying to move that truck traffic early and why it was important for the highway system to be looked at as a whole in this quadrant as opposed to just the I-70 corridor. It didn't really factor in traffic that should be routed on to 270 or 225 that are not doing local deliveries. And I think that's the most critical part. If people are not doing local deliveries and they don't need to be on I-70, they should be encouraged to be routed down one of those two corridors. Thank you and. Thank you, Councilwoman Ortega. Any other questions? Seen none. Public hearing is now closed. Time for comments. Councilwoman Montero. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. President. As always, everything in global hilarious once a year is never easy. And and there. And no one is ever, ever, ever satisfied. I just want to reassure folks that think that this is not a highway to go out, that I have done my very best to push and push and push and push. And for a neighborhood that felt that they never had any attention by anyone before to shift from. We have more attention than we've ever had before and now we don't have time to even form. A neighborhood group is just amazing to me for, for example, to work on our housing and I'll get to my comments, but to work on a housing committee and then have someone from the neighborhood say, gosh, you know, that wasn't the right thing to do. There should have been a public hearing. You should have done this and that. I want to assure everybody that we are doing the best that we can. And I by no means feel like I'm going out on a low note. I've done my best, best, best work to the best capacity that I have to push for Globeville, various ones here. There's a lot of bureaucracy. There's a lot of layers. There's a lot of work. There's a lot of heavy lifting. But I want to tell the people in the neighborhood from Globeville earlier use once a year that if I believed that anyone was being dishonest, devious, whatever, all the ugly words that were said tonight, I would be the first one to say that, and I do not believe that. We've been working on it for so, so long. And with the support of Mayor Hancock all the way going back to even doing trying to figure out how do we get a tsunami of resources into this neighborhood, how do we turn all of these decisions that we did not make? How do we turn them around and try to get as many resources into Globeville, Elyria, Swansea? How do we try to make right the wrongs that we did not do? But we're here today and we're trying to move forward. And I want to tell everybody here and you can follow me out to my car and you can argue with me all day long. But I tell you, I have never felt that the people from the city and county of Denver have been operating from any devious perspective, anything other than trying to honor what we've been trying to tell the neighbor with what the neighborhood has been trying to tell us. There are so many things coming in the direction of Globeville, hilarious ones here, and they're confusing and they're overwhelming. And it's more than any neighborhood that I know in the city could possibly deal with. But you can deal with it. And you have been and now your voices are heard and now you're empowered. And what I ask is for and what I ask is for the city and county of Denver and see that in whatever way they can. I don't know how to work this miracle. I have no idea how to work this miracle. But the idea of building trust is so important. It may never be built. It was destroyed a long time ago. Do you stop trying? Do you spin out and say, wait till the next council, let them do it? Right. Who's to say that it'll be any better? What if it sets everybody back? What happened? Where. Where did. Where all of a sudden? Because there was an election held on May 5th, that all of a sudden we've lost our intelligence and we can't make decisions anymore. I am not going to kick the can down the road. I know with all my heart, all of the work that's been done by everyone in this room, nobody has stopped. No one has gone this way and said, I can't do it. Oh, my God, the sky is falling. Everybody is pressing forward. And so tonight, I'm going to press forward to and I'm telling whoever is telling me, wait till the next council, because, you know, there are new hope. I can't do that. I was elected to take care of business. And tonight I am supporting this. And all I ask again is the miracle that somehow all of the entities, city and county of Denver C dot and everybody else comes into this neighborhood, that there is an effort by leadership, neighborhood leadership, political leadership, that somehow we begin to build those bridges of trust. Because I will tell you, in this neighborhood, if you don't keep your word, you might as well not even go around writing anymore. You have to keep your word the same way. The neighborhood needs to keep their word to the city. And I've been in situations where people tell me I support that. I support that. And all of a sudden I'm in a public meeting and all of a sudden somebody has amnesia. I don't remember ever supporting that. We I have followed the lead of the neighborhood. I truly believe that I have. And I want to say that I am going out on a high note. And I know that I've brought everything. I have brought my best and brightest game to this situation. So I'm supporting this, and I hope that my colleagues will do the same. Thank you, Councilwoman Monteiro. Councilwoman Canete. Thank you, Mr. President. I want to thank the speakers who stayed late tonight. And I will be supporting the project. And I want to talk about why and why. I also believe that it's important that the vote happen tonight. One of the things that I think the community is asking in the testimony is about whether or not we can both be partners and cooperators as well as advocates. And I think that that's an important question. So we've described and we've lauded the city staff for cooperating with that. And I think the part that Councilwoman Monteiro mentioned that folks cannot see is the places at which you are acting as an advocate, which means pushing, shoving, challenging and demanding things on behalf of the voices that are here. So that's the challenge, right? Your public face that you have presented is one where you are cooperating and there has been no visibility to the places we are pushing, shoving, challenging and advocating. And so but I think that in part that's the role we're playing up here tonight. And that is the role that I think that I hope folks can see that you have in this council. Advocates, you know, and I think you have them in the staff, too. It's just that they do it in the negotiating room and we're doing it from the dais. We have the privilege of doing it publicly in a way that they don't. But it is possible to both be your advocates and challenge and push for further improvements and find areas of common ground. I think those can both exist. And so, you know, that's my commitment to you. So the two pieces that I believe we have done our due diligence anyway, and I really do take exception to the idea that we have not vetted this agreement. I personally have probably spent, I don't know, ten or 12 hours now between the committee meeting and reading and asking questions in between. Others, I'm sure have spent similar amounts of time these agreements, just to be very clear. We've been we've been asking questions for over, what, about 90 minutes now since the public hearing testimony ended. This agreement is vetted. So the advocating for the future is about two things. One, missed opportunity. We did not have a public meeting where we said to people, we are going to talk about drainage, please come and learn about drainage. We should have done that. We didn't do it. We need to do it going forward. This is a major improvement and it's going to have an impact on as many properties potentially as the I-70 project itself. It is a worthy project. It's a good project. People might have felt that more if they understood it and knew more about it. Missed opportunity. Now we have. Ketchup work to do. So I am an advocate. I will advocate and push that that planning process occurs in an intentional, visible way going forward on the drainage project. Secondly, mitigation, I think you heard many of us asking, demanding, pushing on mitigation. That is an area where I also expect our staff to be advocating for that as well. I expect you to go in a room and ask for things that are not offered and to push for things that the you know, I forget what's the thing before the record of decision, the thing that comes before that if it's not in there, we're going to ask for it anyway and you need to be asking for it. You, as our representatives need to be asking for it. So those expectations are high, but in a similar way. I also have to be honest, right? I have to be honest about the limitations that we all operate under. So, for example, what would materially be different 45 days from now with a record of decision be done? No. Would we, for example, have a significantly different sense of what the mitigation factors to come out in the record of decision are? No. So when will we know those things? We won't know them till the record decision comes out. So. So there's no material difference. There will be no new information today versus 45 days from now. It's simply a request or a lack of trust that we're doing enough vetting. I submit to you that you have advocates, and I submit to you that there's vetting occurring. So a 45 day makes no material difference. If we were to delay it until the record decision came out, though, there would be a material difference, which is we would be six months behind on the drainage project. Okay. And that matters. So that is why proceeding now matters. One of the things that I'm concerned about is folk, folk saying that the agreement is vague. Here's an example. So let's move off drainage. Right. Drainage needs to occur even if I-70 doesn't happen. So I'm glad we've leveraged that money to make it better. And I did review last time, for those who may not have viewed the agreement, has a clear provision that if the record of decision does not decide on this project, that we can go ahead and renegotiate and terminate the agreement we would have to have, but we would have started the drainage project at least so we could continue the drainage project. We may have to scale it down, we may have to change it, but we will have started it. Drainage will be happening, but there are separate pieces, agreement, and I appreciate those who've separated it, which is money into the project. Here's a point of the agreement that is not vague. We do not pay a penny for the transportation project actually until it's completed, not even just before it's approved. But we don't actually start paying till it's completed. So there is not a risk. We are not taking any risk, right. By making this agreement now versus making it after the record decision occurs. The thing that we allow, the one material thing that matters and the reason why I am going to vote for this tonight is it allows us to start the drainage project that is needed. Now. We leverage that money and we leverage urban drainage money immediately. And I wish I wish that that project had been better explained. I wish it had been noticed as its own topic and that we can do some catch up. But that's I can't not proceed with flood protection we know we need because we didn't talk about it well enough. There are places where we missed legal notice and I have voted against things where we had a legal notice obligation and we missed it. And I've said, you know what? We didn't follow the law. We can't do it. That's not the case here. We just didn't get our best, you know? And so but the benefits outweigh the costs. So that's where I'm at. And I know that we have a lot of work left to do, but I submit to you that a delay in the short term would make no material difference, and a delay in the long term would make a significant negative material difference. It's critical that we proceed with improvements. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman and each Councilman Levitt. Thank you, Mr. President. I did have something to say, but I don't think any syllable I could utter could add any more detailed reasoning than Councilwoman Kennish has already articulated or any more powerful meaning than Councilwoman Monteiro. Has already articulated. So I am done for the night. Thank you, Councilman. Never. Councilman, can you top that? Great. You make me look like the jerk. Speaking of drainage, I just want to go home and go. Oh, I am. And in addition to being a councilman, I have the privilege to be the chair of the Urban Drainage and Flood Control District. And I've done that for about a year and a half. Right, Dave? And all they do is talk about flood prevention, flood prevention, flood prevention and flood prevention. And before a couple of years ago, it was just a nice lunch to hang out with other folks from other counties around because we never had floods. We had droughts until a few years ago. And what we were told is that if the events that happened in Boulder and the events that happened in Aurora, which was worse than Boulder happened here, you would have a Katrina style. Disaster. And then how much do you think we'd be paying? How much? How expensive do you think that would be? 300 million. How horrible would it be to have to bury people in our city? Huh? I visited the Ninth Ward in New Orleans. Those levees were broken because they didn't get invested in. We didn't invest in them. And they're broken there in disrepair. And it's horrible. It's a failure of government. And their basic principle is to protect life and property, the most basic principle of governance. Now, I go a little bit beyond because I'm a liberal, but I'll just say this I am convinced that if we don't do anything about it, we're going to be visiting that scenario sometime in the near future. I haven't seen rain like this either, sir. I have it. And most of that flooding from the planet comes from upstream. Imagine if it hits in Denver. Denver proper, we're in trouble and there is no home in this city that is out of a floodplain that is not going to be impacted by a flood. I guarantee you, even in the highest hill. Right. Here's the thing. We did miss an opportunity. We did miss an opportunity to talk to the public about drainage and flood control and why this why this is important. And for the record, I don't know about you all, but whether it comes from the state, the feds or the city, taxes are taxes and they suck, right? You see them come out of your check. You see them come out of your property taxes. I hate getting taxed. I'm not flipping. Philosophy, sir, I do believe that necessary. These are one of those projects that are necessary, right? Absolutely. And, you know, we had done it a little. Could we have done it a little better? Absolutely. But it pays off in the end. It's an investment and it's investment that community. Now, there's two things wrong. Yes. The flooding, the potential flood. And to that highway. I was part of the yellow shirt brigade four years ago. In oh three, we were going door to door, 8000, 8000 households. And I knocked on plenty of those doors and all those council districts in every neighborhood, from Globeville to Bella, the Green Valley Ranch. And we talked about I-70. That's why I was for the reroute. The second alternative, I mean and guess what? It's not going to happen, right? And I'm not going to go picking out old wounds. Got to move on. It's not going to happen. So the best other alternative, what I heard on the doors was to bury it. I said, Can you make it at least look like Sixth Avenue? I hate that. Well, I love it. I love Sixth Avenue. I love Sixth Avenue. But I hated Sixth Avenue. Now, do we should we talk about a cover over sixth? That would be awesome if we could successfully do it here. Absolutely. But at the end of the day. This is a catalytic project. This is a project. That we should be focused on and how to leverage those dollars and that investment back into the neighborhoods, jobs, business opportunities. I don't know about that any part of the city, but in my part of the city, there's a lot of construction workers and we've hit we visited the site and three, we buried three, four, three. Three of the workers we talked to were straight up from the neighborhood, recent hires. We got a push for that kind of stuff. That's what turns it around. Now I'm supporting this. Not that my colleagues don't have valid points and they have a valid get us complaints. I think there are like I said, I think we could have done better on the public education side. But that's what we learned from right at the end of the day. That doesn't Trump not doing anything at this site. So I'm supportive. No, I'm all for it. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Lopez. Councilwoman Ortega. I'll try to be brief. First of all, I want to thank all of the state and city staff people who have participated in the many, many meetings that we've had with members of city council to ensure that we're, you know, engaged in the process with you. I want to thank the residents for their input and for coming out tonight. And the drainage project is absolutely critical. You know, when it rained last week, I went and drove around to see where we had flooding. And it flooded down on Washington Street and it flooded on 46th Avenue, as it has when we get bad rains year after year. I saw some of the neighborhoods in Councilman Brooks district where where the water was very, very high. This is a critical project for these neighborhoods. I'm struggling with the fact that we have we have mixed all of this together and we still don't have the final year, which has been delayed and delayed and delayed . And I think it's in part because of the dialog that's going on back and forth between Denver and Scott, not trying to work through some of these issues, but to not know that we in fact will have mitigation clearly identified and that those things will be in that final year and that they will follow into the record of decision is is hard for me to to just trust that they're going to be there. And it's not that I don't trust the people. I think we've got great people who are engaged in this process from CEDA and from the city. But I'm looking at history of what's occurred in these neighborhoods and and how there have been promises made. I remember when the widening through Globeville took place in the neighbors were promised that there was going to be beautiful artwork along the wall underneath I-70. And I think one panel got done. And as I continued to ask about that, what I heard was we ran out of money. And I don't want to see that happen with these neighborhoods. These people have paid the price with their lives because of the kind of exposure they've had to the particulate matter. It's why doing the air monitoring before, during and after construction is important to know what kind of health impact will you know folks will be exposed to. I want to know that the doors and windows for people that live within 500 feet of the highway are going to be taken care of. And that it's not just, you know, a portable. Air conditioning system that people are going to get in their homes. The impact to the lungs of small children from all the air quality studies that we have seen that have been published. All you have to do is Google that and you'll see that anybody who lives within 500 feet, the particulate matter, especially the ultrafine, is most deadly to small children. And it's why pushing for these things is critical to ensure that we're not compromising the health of people in most neighborhoods. So I I'm not there yet. I appreciate all the work that's been done in getting us to this point, in trying to move this drainage project forward, which, again, I think is vital to these neighborhoods. But to to just say, you know, we'll keep working on these things. In my mind, there's no reason why those mitigation issues couldn't have been part of this agreement. And what that says to me is where we haven't gotten there and in anything that's not in the final is in the record of decision is not going to be funded. And so to to know that those things aren't part of this agreement are are disturbing and concerning. So I unfortunately, am not going to be able to vote for this tonight. As much as I want to support the drainage project, I wish it could have been separated out because I wholeheartedly support the need for addressing that. But I think you've got the votes here tonight for it to pass. I just. I'm just not there. Thank you very much. Thank you, Councilwoman. Councilman Brooks. Thank you, Mr. President. And first, you know, I want to thank everybody for being here and especially folks from Greece who stayed the entire time to stay here. You know, folks who get here at 530, I don't know how you still have your cars. I don't know if you put money in the meters or whatever. But District eight office will help you out District nine in the future. Hey, this is what I lament. I lament the outreach. I lament that we didn't do a better job on the outreach from the city side. I guess I'm a little shocked, only because when the candidates were running for office in April, March and April, one of the questions that we were asked was If a drainage project was leveraged with the I-70 project, would you support it? And it was at a public meeting and whatnot. And I had I was under the assumption that this was a known conversation. Now, the specificity of the project, the details of the project were not talked about, obviously, and that's that's what we have to to work on. The other thing that I lament in this project is I think there has been a lot of good work on the part of public works to put together this regional drainage system that has not been talked about and what it's going to do for this area and the number of neighborhoods that will be impacted. There are people sitting up watching this tonight that cannot make it here because they were stuck in those storms over the last couple of months. And they wanted a specific answer from the city, including my wife. And and and they were literally concerned and in working with the city for the last four years. We cannot do projects of this size unless they're leveraged. I mean, that's the complication of this idea and this deal. And I know that there's a lot of mistrust. And we you know, I think Councilman Monteiro put it really well that there's a lot of mistrust, but we have to believe that we've got to come together in the future. And so, you know, as a person taking over this area in just the next couple of weeks, you know, that's the that's the thing that we're going to be working on is building the trust and making sure individuals know that we are working our tails off for the best output for the community. And the community needs to know they need to work their tails off to get the best from the city. You know, and I'll just leave it at that. So thank you guys so much for being out here. Thank you. For the folks who have worked so hard on this project. And I am I am believing in the future that this is going to be something that we all can be proud of. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman Brooks, any other comments? 381 as amended. And Madam Secretary, my fingers. Are frozen that. The screen just froze up. They might have to do this old school, but we'll still do it nonetheless. And we have to also vote on the companion bill once you're done with that. So let's start with 381 as amended. Madam Secretary, roll call. I'm sorry. And she just. It's frozen. Sure. Even the screens have called it. The night. Fell asleep. Brooks. I. Can each layman write? Lopez. I. Montero I. Nevett I. Ortega No. Rob. All right. Mr. President. I. Eight eyes. One knee, the eyes. One knee. 381, as amended, has passed. Councilman Leavitt, will you please put a companion bill for 30 on the floor? Yes, sir. Mr. President. And I just want to point out that we have had five public hearings, but managed to pass ten bills. So I think that's a testament to the kind of work this council puts in. So I move that council bill 430 series of 2015 be placed on final consideration and do pass. I need a verbal second. Second. Thank you. I'll have to look up and down to see if there are any comments. Scene on Madam Secretary. Roll call. Brooks. I. Can each I Liman. Hi Lopez. Hi Montero. Hi Nevitt. Hi Ortega. Hi Rob. Hi. Mr. President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please, first of all, announce the results. Nine eyes, nine eyes. Cancer before 30 has passed. Seen no other business before this body. This meeting is adjourned. Was it? Denver eight on TV and online to stay connected to your community, your city, your source. You are watching Denver. Eight TV's Your City, your source.