Well, good evening and welcome to the City and County of Broomfield. August 18th, 2026 Study Session agendas for study sessions, including concept reviews, can be found by visiting Broomfield website at Broomfield Council member Anderson is excused and council members Delgadillo and Ward are attending remotely.
There are seven council members in attendance. Yes, our study session agenda item, their study hour session that our study session agenda this evening includes three items. Since there are no concept review scheduled for the agenda this evening, there will be no public comment. You can watch the study session live on channel eight and through video streaming on broomfield.org.
Council meetings for our hard of hearing residents present. We have wireless headsets available in the back of the council chambers through our AV team. Our first item this evening provides an economic and fiscal update, including 20, 26 and 2027 budget highlights. Council has a copy of the Agenda Memorandum, which I’ll ask our staff to begin the discussion.
Thank you, mayor, and good evening, community and Council. And before we move into tonight’s budget and economic update, I wanted to provide a little context around the 2027 budget development and our long range financial outlook. You’ll be hearing more from Mr.
Romine tonight about an interactive tool that council will be able to begin to explore, and we have a live time session that Mr. Romine will walk us through. And I don’t want to get ahead of the presentations that you’ll hear from finance. Um, and, um, Mr. Romine and their updates.
But I do want to frame where we are and what we can expect as we continue this work. So tonight is an introduction, um, to the 2027 budget and that look forward into 2028, 2029 and 2030. As we all know, there isn’t anything that happens statically in one year. The rate information and the utilities are an example of that. We take a five year snapshot. We’re in year three.
So the the preliminary information that we’ve shared in the memo and the presentations identify an emerging structural issue that will begin in 2028. And it’s important to provide context around that because the inversion occurs if there’s no additional action taken.
So that’s really the reason for many of the discussions that we’ve been having tonight. Um, throughout the year and for the past three years, um, council will remember beginning in 2022, we started talking about the precipice that we were walking towards, and some of the modifications that needed to occur in order not to approach the precipice.
We’re closer now, and we can see what that end may look like. So we have taken significant strides to ensure, um, the, the important distinction of, of the work that we’re going to talk about tonight and throughout the year is we’re not indicating that Broomfield is inverting.
So there’s some chatter out there, um, indicating the structural deficit. We’ve all become accustomed to what a structural deficit is, because we’ve been in one in the state of Colorado for the last four years, and it continues to grow.
The reason deficits continue to grow, particularly structurally, is you either have one time fixes and or you don’t make those difficult trade off decisions to narrow that gap. That is not how Broomfield is approaching. Um, that that potential inversion, an inversion occurs when expenditures grow faster than revenues. It’s pretty simple. It’s not a highly complex calculations.
So when we look at particularly the declining property tax revenues, that will continue to go in one direction, and that is down. So right now our projections show annual revenues increasing by approximately 7 million, while our expenditures are anticipated to increase by 11 million. Simple math, $4 million structural gap.
So as we continue this work, it is through that filter that we are processing information as well as establishing information to address, not just that gap, but long term sustainability and what it looks like from a multi-pronged approach. So throughout the development of the 2027 budget, we focused on structurally narrowing that gap through cost saving measures, operational efficiencies, process improvements, outsourcing where it makes sense, appropriate adjustments to fees for the amenities that we that we offer, including
council’s already heard the, um, the fee increases for non-residents um, at the Bay. Another ongoing chart changes. Excuse me. Our goal is not to balance again through one year actions and adjustments.
Although we see one time adjustments on both ends, we see it on the expenditure end and we see it on the revenue end. But you can’t budget based on anticipation of one time hits for any particular future year. Uh, I also want to emphasize that we look beyond 2027, 2028, 2029, 2030. Our long range financial plan is specifically designed to provide that five year view.
It allows us to identify potential challenges early, which we’ve been able to do over the last three years. Model difference assumptions, which is really the key, and understand how decisions we make today affect our financial position for future years. At the same time, many variables change from year to year. Sales tax performance, assessed valuation.
We’re all on the receiving end of inflation. Personnel costs continue to increase. Service demands, capital needs, state and federal mandates, and the broader economic conditions all influence those various projections. So what we do know is when we project three years out, it will be wrong. When we projected three years out three years ago, it was wrong.
So again, it’s it’s the context around those dollars and those amounts that are most important. It’s not a snapshot in time to be able to indicate an overwhelming concern or identified issue. You have to be able to have a much more robust conversation about where those numbers come from.
That’s why our long range financial plan is intentionally agile, and why we continue to update it as circumstances change, which we know it changes from January to August. We move through this budget process. Staff will continue to review the long range financial plan with council and the community, including the assumptions behind it.
The modifications that occur as those assumptions change. Drafting this opening, I also think that historical context is useful and practical as we move into the budget presentations beginning in September, staff will pull from prior memos, presentations to provide a snapshot of those budgeted amounts. The financial conditions, major headwinds, and the changes that brought us to where we are today.
All of that information has already been presented publicly to council through the budget process. Prior discussions, prior presentations and prior decisions, which leads us to where we are. I’ve also seen comparisons that use 2017 as the starting point for per capita spending. While interesting, those can certainly provide historical information.
I don’t think that having a 2017 as a single benchmark necessarily provides the most relevant picture for Bloomfield’s current financial environment. A great deal has changed since 2017, particularly since Covid, so the cost of providing services, purchasing goods, constructing maintaining infrastructure, employing people, obtaining insurance, utilization of technology and operating an organization has changed substantially since 2019.
With Covid population and inflation are relevant measures, no doubt, but neither Standing Alone fully captures those changes. So rather than selecting one year and drawing a line to today, a much more useful approach for the council and the community is to provide a reasonable historical snapshot from information that we’ve already presented and then focus on where we are today and what the long range
financial plan tells us where we’re headed. So the same principle applies to the utility rates. Staff can pull the public memos presentations from prior years. This council has seen over 37 presentations, over 40 memos have been provided over the last three years regarding the utility rate studies.
So by pulling that information and gleaning to contain the analysis and supporting documentation that has been passed by council, none of these budgets, whether it be utility rates or any other budget, nor the rate changes, have been done in a vacuum. All of these decisions have been formally adopted each year, with accompanying data, memos, calculations, and public presentations.
The fact that all of this historical information is not repeated on a particular slide in a preliminary presentation shouldn’t really be confused with any kind of lack of transparency. Again, that information was publicly presented, discussed, and approved, and as part of the public record. Can staff make that easier to navigate? Absolutely.
Do we have intentions of doing that? Absolutely. Continues to be a work in progress. We can always get better, but there’s important context behind the most recent rate increases. For approximately a decade, we’ve had this conversation probably three dozen times as well. Beginning around 2012, documented the Broomfield had no or very limited utility rate increases.
It was presented and discussed over the last four years leading up to the pass rate increases, and currently we’re in year three of a five year plan presented, discussed and approved in 2020 for those past decisions did not increase the recommended rate increases.
I’m sorry, not passing those rate increases compounded over time. So compounding is a very a very elusive animal. It’s not where you have 4,000,001 year and then you add 4 million the next year.
Compounding measures means that you have 4 million times a multitude of other amounts, so that you wind up with a really significant hole that you have to get yourself out of. Meanwhile, the cost of maintaining, replacing infrastructure, securing long term water supplies, meeting regulatory requirements, and operating our systems all continued to increase. Skyrocketing in the last four years. That ultimately contributed to the need for rate adjustments that began two years ago.
And yes, as unpopular as it is, we do not see a year where there will not be a rate increase because as costs go up, those business services must be provided. Cob nor our enterprise, our fund generators. It’s not an income driven base, it is simply to pay for the services that are being delivered.
So there’s considerably more information coming. Council. The proposed 2027 budget will be released, as always in early September. The presentations that follow will provide additional context, along with the forward looking perspective through the long range financial plan. As I mentioned, Mr.
Romaine will be discussing excuse me and demonstrating this evening, and that will include the identified dollar amounts and corresponding departments resulting from the work over the last three years to reduce spending, find savings and improve operational efficiencies.
Those efforts are not simply driven by the current budget outlook, but rather we continually look for efficiencies, reducing unnecessary costs and evaluating how we deliver services is simply good governance and part of our responsibility to be thoughtful stewards of the taxpayer dollars. Importantly, we’re separating those two efforts into distinct categories. As I previously mentioned, one time savings, but it’s really the ongoing structural modifications that help narrow the projected financial gap in future years and move us to a sustainable trajectory.
Even with the headwinds, whether those measures alone will be sufficient remains to be seen. Current projections again indicate that additional substantive changes will likely be required even after all of our adjustments and modifications during the last three years. That’s where the conversation becomes broader than finances alone.
The budget reflects policies, service level and priorities that have been established over many years. Those policy decisions attached to much of that suspending are changing the spending. So that means changing in the underlying policy and or service levels. That’s a different conversation than what we’re about to talk about over the next three months regarding this budget.
And it’s one council will have to have deliberately, with the full context in front of you. Staff’s responsibility is to first evaluate the measures within our control, identify the financial impact of those possible and potential changes, and provide council with a clear picture of what remains.
From there, we distinguish between additional administrative operational changes and those and those decisions that appropriately require policy direction from Council. That’s the fuller picture of what we want council to have as we move through the 2027 budget. As we begin to look at 2028 and beyond. Tonight is just one part of that larger conversation, and I appreciate the opportunity to continue and introduce our speakers for this evening.
Economic is first, Mr. Romine will be followed by Director of Finance Graham Clark. We look forward to a robust and all of those questions to come. Mr.. Remind the floor is yours. Thank you. Manager Hoffman, mayor, mayor pro tem council members, next slide please. Curtis.
Um, as as many of you saw in the in the presentation that was provided previously, here are the five things we’re going to run through really quickly. I’m part of number one. And then I’ll be handing off to Mr. Clark, who will then proceed through the rest of the agenda. Next slide please.
So you’re going to hear and council will hear this both in some of the elements as you’re working through Broomfield together, which is the comp plan. And as the community seen, there’s a lot of data that we’re putting together and that we’ve contracted to pull together for that comp plan that we’ll talk a lot about where the community is today,
how it’s gotten here, and in fact, some forecasts where the community is going both from business and employment and population household standpoint. So I’m not going to belabor that today, because you’re just going to hear it so many times.
And so I’m just going to hit a couple of snapshots here to talk about our economy as it exists right now. Um, as you can see, the wages per employee is right now at about 119,000. That’s the wages paid by the firms that are located here in Broomfield. That compares, as you’ve oftentimes heard, is we’re significantly above the state of Colorado.
And you can see the number for the state of Colorado for the for the the previous years. So these are obviously previous year because they’re the actual numbers. Um, at the same time, I would just point out that there are 41, just about 41,000 persons working for the firms within Broomfield.
Some of those are working every day here, some are remote, some are hybrid. And so they’re working off and on. And so I just point out that number because that’s the firm employment. And I’m going to come back to that a little bit later in this slide.
The second item, which I don’t want to confuse because this is this is one of those numbers that comes out and that is the median household income. So these are the residents here in Broomfield. And this is what the median. And in those of you remember your average which is mean median which is the middle point. Those are two varying statistics. But our median household income is 125,000.
And that compares to the state of Colorado’s 97. Once again, I would just point out that in on the employment side, the average or mean wages, we are the highest, one of the highest, if not the highest in the state of Colorado. And we’re near the top on the median household income also.
So if you think about it, I’m going to use one of those counties that outstrips us on the household income side, which is Pitkin County. Those of you also know that there’s this famous town in Pitkin County called Aspen. For those of you who are newer to Colorado.
And so you can imagine that their median household income is a little bit higher than ours. When I go and look at the numbers, though, their average wages per employee are significantly below ours and in fact below the state of Colorado’s. And it makes logical sense when you think about it, because it is a hospitality economy.
And so therefore, there’s a significant number of persons who are employed there who obviously are getting paid much less than the people that live there. So I throw that out to you only to illustrate why these two numbers are different.
But also what’s interesting about it is Broomfield, as you’ve heard me say time and time again, we’re the leader. We’re one of the leaders on both of these, which is very unusual. And so it’s a characteristic of our community that we are a leader in both of those.
The jobs, the housing ratio is one of those measures that I oftentimes look at. And I brought up to you before. And again, you can see what that looks like. So we have lots of people working, whether it be in Broomfield or elsewhere. We are getting paid a lot. Our firms are penalized.
So think about that from the standpoint when I say we have a stable and strong economy, those are the types of numbers we’re talking about because it says something about a residential base and the ability to buy things here locally, invest in our community. At the same time, our firms are doing the exact same things.
So the two sides of what I consider what many people consider the economy, which is the residential and the business side, both of them are strong here. And again, you will see there’s a report that we put together. You asking the former state demographer who retired about a year and a half ago.
We brought her out of retirement to work for us on a project, and she has a 120 page report that we have that talks about our community, that will be shared, will be shared with the city Council and the community through the Broomfield Together process. So I throw that out. Secondly, and I just want to hit this before I move off this slide.
And that is is we also have a lot of people that are in the gig economy who are doing things, running a small business, perhaps out of their homes. It’s not really employing anybody or perhaps working 3 or 4 jobs or whatever.
And so you’ve got this whole gig economy going on 20 years ago, 30 years ago, we really wouldn’t talk about that very much. It would have been maybe another thousand or 2000 people in our community. Today, it’s almost 10,000 people that are part of our economy, that are contributing to our economy, but not being employed by firms here in Broomfield. Um, oftentimes elsewhere.
So I just I bring that out because it’s important to note that side of the economy. It is not a shadow economy. It is not a black market economy. This is very relevant and a very much a strong part of our economy today. So I just wanted to make sure that I’m mentioning that number and you will see that.
And to give a quick explanation of what that looks like, those are the people that if you are buying food and having it delivered, oftentimes you’re driving it to your home and dropping it off. Those people do exist within the economy.
They’re a little bit more difficult to measure, but we have tracked those, and that’s part of that report also. Next slide please Curtis Broomfield did just give it a little bit of historic perspective. I just wanted to hit on this because it’s really important. Not only are we pretty strong today, we have been building and maintaining that strength throughout.
So as you can see, our annualized population growth is at 2.6 since 2001, when we became the city and county, you can see our employment growth is at 2.5. So we’ve been able to maintain that balance.
And you have heard the city and county manager mentioned many times, and many of you have said this to the balance of our community is critically important for a number of reasons. And that’s one of the things that Mr.
Clark and his colleagues oftentimes think about is, is making sure that as we think about the budget, as we think about how we’re going to fund things, it’s about how this revenue comes in and it’s coming from those varying sources. The direct sales to our residents and visitors, and also what the businesses are doing within our communities. So looking at that and recognizing both of those are growing at a similar rate and have been as part of our strength.
The other part that’s that I think is important to understand that I wanted to bring up tonight especially, is where does the population that is growing? Broomfield. That 2.6%, where is it coming from? Um, and you’ll see lots of data about it in that report.
But the two things I wanted to just let, let you know is, is 92% are moving to Broomfield from somewhere else in Colorado or the US. And so what we see is an in the net immigration of folks coming here. And oftentimes they are bringing their when you look at it and you’ll see the statistics in that report.
But roughly they are they’re being paid significantly higher when they the people that move to Broomfield are paid higher than they are when they’re coming to other counties. Oftentimes in Colorado. And this is not data that we’re making up.
This is IRS data that talks about what that pattern of of migration looks like, where they’re coming from, specifically within the state of Colorado, other counties, and also what counties are coming to you from, from other parts of the US. So 92%. So therefore the remaining 8% is coming from international migration. So you can see a lot of the people are coming here from California, from Texas, from the Midwest.
That’s where our residents and you know this because many of you have done that same commute to Colorado. I was a former person from Chicago and was brought up, raised in Iowa, and I have come to see the light in the sunshine, as we’ve seen today. Um, and so that’s why I moved to Colorado.
And so, you see, many people do this and it’s interesting sometimes when I give a more generalized speech, I’ll ask how many people were born here in Colorado. And it is amazing how many people have chosen to come to Colorado and make this their home. Um, and so that is really accounted for. Most of the population growth. Um, and you can see where it’s coming from.
Next slide please. These are two important statistics that we’re tracking. And this is what the elements of our primary revenue sources, our general fund revenue sources. So if you recall we oftentimes talk about taxes. And then we talk about other revenue.
The the key to taxes, as many of you know, is the sales and use tax. And the other is the property tax. And so these give a quick thumbnail snapshot of where they are. Today we have roughly $2.
2 billion worth of activity sales activity which results in the plus $90 million that creates the sales and use tax that Graham talks about when he talks about sales, tax revenue and others. And so he’ll talk a little bit more about that. But that’s that basis. That’s an awful lot of activity. $2.2 billion. And again I’m not going to do the infamous how many seconds create a million. How many seconds are in a thousand.
How many are in a billion. Those games are always interesting. And you can do those. And and you want to find out how many seconds are in a trillion. You can do that. And you’ll find out how many years it actually turns out to be.
But it’s a very substantial number, a significant portion of that, obviously, is within Flatirons Crossing and what they’re producing. And that’s part of the reason why this the former council and this council has expressed and did a strong commitment to, to revitalize that and encourage the reinvestment in it.
So that is about strengthening that side of the sales tax or the tax revenues and the revenues going forward. And Graham will talk a little bit more about that, and I will also talk about how that is changing, how that is growing. On the other side, when we talk about balance, one of the things we talk about is the property tax balance. So this number, the $1.2 billion is actually what it is.
And that is showing the parity of the assessed value. So just as a reminder, this is not the market value of the properties we’re talking about. This is the assessed value. And the reason why we look at that is that’s where the taxes are derived from the assessed value.
Obviously the assessed value is derived from the market value, but those are just as a quick reminder, the assessed value of commercial property is roughly four times the assessed value of of residential property. Because the the commercial assessment rate is 25% and the residential rate is roughly 7%.
So as we look at that, you can see what that relationship. So this is actually what is the taxable value and how that is balanced. And that’s an important thing. And we’ve talked about that before.
Uh the other item that you’re going to hear, Graham and I talked about tonight at a couple of different points is the, the what’s going on with the property tax and especially the commercial side. We’ve talked multiple times about what’s going on with the office market. And we’ll continue to monitor and watch that and bring it to council for your consideration and understanding.
The other is the oil and gas values and what that is. And quite frankly, in real quick snapshot, Graham is going to get into this a little bit more. And then I will also later. And that is is about three years ago. The valuation of that was about $12 million in property tax that we were seeing revenue.
And it’s dropping to about 3 million for the 27 budget. So it’s not a one year change from 12 million down to three, but it is a three year. And that is because those those oil and gas, primarily natural gas that that activity is slowing down because those resources are being tapped out.
So those are those are the things that we’re adjusting and trying to understand and make sure we’re tracking on the property tax side. Finally, as you can notice, I already mentioned that the sales tax is rising about three, 3 to 4% annually in 26. It’s just it’s pretty close to 4%.
But I always like to give just a little bit of a range. And the flat crossing reinvestment is already beginning to pay dividends, and we’re already seeing that growing over the previous years. And we only see that growing more. Many of you have done a tour and recognize that there’s some significant retail opportunities and restaurant opportunities.
There will be opening in April 2027 and then some others opening in hopefully April 2028. And that’s on top of the retention that’s occurring. And many great stores that have now opened. There are other things happening around the community. Many people have enjoyed a hamburger and beer or whatever, and nearby restaurants, some changing hands, some reinvesting, others coming here for the first time.
Um, so next slide please. Curtis. So without further ado, I did want to hit on a couple of more things before I conclude. And that is the factors in those.
So if you think about what what an economist does and what this does from the standpoint is you’re thinking about the 27 budget and is Mr. Clark and Mrs. Hoffman think about as they’re putting together the budget and bringing it all together. There are things that are over the top of of our localized budget, if you will. Those are the things that the umbrella is capturing.
And hopefully on some of the factors, we’re making sure that they’re not hitting us directly. Um, perhaps those raindrops are hitting us and wetting out our hair or turning our clothes wet. Um, and so that’s what we think about in order to construct that umbrella, in order to bring it forward. At the same time, we have the strength.
So very briefly, I’m just going to hit on a couple of them, um, because many of them, you know, so on the global standpoint, open up any newspaper, go online and read any media, and you’ll see these first items in the global side become very clear and are talked about repeatedly.
Um, the slowing of major trading with partner countries through trade and tariffs and other things, the impacts on energy and materials. Right now, China just reduced their economic forecast for next year. Another percent down. And that’s one of our leading trading partners. So as you can imagine, as we’re seeing that European countries are still struggling in certain ways, primarily through energy.
And obviously some food issues that continue to prop up. And so there’s a fair amount of turbulence that we’re facing on the global side. And that’s not just Broomfield. That’s the nation as a whole.
The reason why it impacts is somewhat is because obviously that flows into our community, affects our household and affects our businesses. One of the ones that you can imagine are very directly affected is Vail Associates. Um, because of they are such an international firm and they lead both from the standpoint of tourism to the resorts here in the US. But they also have international properties.
And so they are impacted with with travel and transportation and all of those things all at the same time, as well as many other factors on the national side, employment and labor. Um, obviously we’re seeing that inflation. You’ve read about that. Oil prices, interest rates and economic confidence.
You’ve heard and talked about these, and there is still some concern amongst economists, actually more than some concern about economic confidence and the relationship between retail spending, which affects us very directly. And that is, is there’s an increasing level of retail spending being produced or being financed through credit cards and other borrowing, and so that can’t go on forever.
And so as we see that shifting, um, and that movement toward, um, credit borrowing and credit spending, that’s a different issue. The other one that I just wanted to bring up tonight, and that is is the cost of borrowing, period. And that is the interest rates.
It is affecting, obviously, as many people know, are home or potential home buyers are developers or businesses. But here’s the other part of it. Last week, the Treasury just issued their latest rounds of Treasury notes at at one of the highest rates ever issued. It is pushing a bond rates. Um, and so bond rates are up probably another half percent from when we financed.
So when we financed those water projects. So think about that. Those bond rates have now increased, which means our interest rates would have increased. It would have cost us more. So there’s a savings by taking those steps at the right time and paying attention to that.
So we’re going to see that cost of borrowing continue to rise for our developers and for people considering purchasing homes here in Broomfield. And that will affect our localized economy. So therefore, there’s still a weakened demand factor. Prices are still impacting us. And then there is the wealth perception.
And each of us that have retirement accounts of some form, you get your quarterly report and some quarters that comes out with a nice big black number that says, boy, you made more money than you saw before.
The ones we fear are the ones that in the quarterly comes out with a red number that says, the value of your retirement account just fell by X number, and they give you a percentage. So that wealth perception translates to many, many individuals and many households to change the way they think about some of their investments, whether they be a rehab of a home, purchase of a car or a major appliance or other things.
All of those impact. Broomfield. Those of you who recall, Broomfield gets the sales tax of a vehicle no matter where it’s purchased, so the slowing of vehicle purchasing or the changing of those prices impacts our budget very directly on the business base. I’ve hit many of those things. I’ve talked about this many times. You can read those.
So I want to turn to the last slide before I turn it over to Mr. Clark. And that is is the three lenses for future decisions and how we think through those obviously balancing development.
I’ve talked a little bit about how we balance development, both from the standpoint of the way that the economy works between households and business, the way that we think about it from a sales tax and property tax. And then internally within the property tax characteristic. So how those fit together is something that we track.
It’s something that the long range financial plan model very much focuses on. And we have adjusted it so that we can narrow and really keep track of that and pay attention to it. So therefore there’s a little bit of an early warning to say these are how things are changing.
I’ll talk more about the long range financial plan model and the work we’re doing there. Following this presentation, thinking about the full fiscal impact of any decision you all have asked for, and we provide that information to you with fiscal notes or something similar to that in economic.
Quick note in many of the things that we do, and then we continue to track all the things that we’re doing at and that are affecting us from external. So, um, Miss Boulevard and others track what’s going on at the legislature. We’re paying attention to what’s going on at the national economy at the same time. And in the US legislature, both with the way it impacts some of our programs.
So oftentimes, you’ve asked the Human Services Department or Environmental Health who’s talking about where they’re seeing cuts. That is really what the element of that third item. So at that, I appreciate all of your attention to this portion of the presentation. And I’ll turn it over to Mr. Clark. Thank you very much, Mr. Romaine. Thank you, Mr. Romine. Mayor.
Mayor pro tem and council. Good evening. I wanted to start off tonight, talking about some of the community information that was passed along on some of the per capita spending since 2017. Uh, like other graphics, it’s important to have some context. Uh, it shows about half the picture.
What it doesn’t show in the graphics, uh, is in 2020, uh, Gatsby 84, which is the Governmental accounting standard. Boards required that, uh, the receiving entity, which is Cob on a lot of the property taxes show the fiduciary funds on their accounting and budget. Uh, that was not done up until 2020.
And that’s about $200 million a year that we basically get in from property taxes. But it goes right back out to metro district districts. Um, school districts and, and other districts. So it’s not actual money that Cob can spend. It’s just the pass through dollars. And that’s what a fiduciary fund is. It did not really have that information on the graphic.
Wanted to make sure that we got that sorted out. Next slide. So at CMO discretion and direction for the third consecutive year, finance and each department has conducted a comprehensive line by line review of every departmental budget to ensure that the resources remain aligned with the organizational and community priorities.
Departments evaluated expenditures, staffing, programs, contracts, and capital to identify the cost savings and efficiencies and opportunities for reallocation in the existing budget. As City Manager, Hoffman noted, over the last several years, this disciplined approach has identified nearly $15 million in savings, and about half of that is reductions in efficiencies within the fleet
program. But importantly, about $4 million of those savings are recurring annually, creating ongoing value rather than one time budget relief. So this annual review that we just concluded has also allowed us to reallocate resources toward the highest priority services and needs. This is an important distinction.
And the fiscal discipline is not simply about reducing the expenditures on the front side. It’s also about making choices about where we invest, where we can operate differently, and where resources can be redirected to deliver the to deliver the excuse me, to deliver the greatest value to Broomfield.
So, as Jeff mentioned, as we move into 2027 and we look forward into 2028 and beyond, the same discipline will become increasingly important. The work over the last several years has positioned Broomfield well, but maintaining that stability will require focus. Thoughtful tradeoffs and a willingness to make deliberate choices within the financial conditions that will be changing over the next couple of years. Next slide.
One of the highest priorities in 2027. Um, slide ten, please. One of the highest priorities in 2027 is proposed budget. That you’ll see soon is employee compensation. After constrained 2026 budget that included below average merit increases and no market adjustments, the proposed 2027 budget does restore market and merit to closer to historical levels that we’ve seen previously,
that supports our ability to retain high performing employees in this competitive environment. Next slide. Here you can see the classifications shown to provide the consistent framework that we’ve used for the last several years in distinguishing required investments from discretionary adds. So mandates are federal and state requirements.
The critical needs here refer to essential health safety operations and operations, and the obligations. The third one here are existing contractual or financial commitments that are already in place. This framework has been very helpful to keep our limited resources focused on the organization’s highest priorities.
With constrained revenue growth in 2027 coming from the commercial office, property taxes, and the oil and gas property tax revenues that Mr. Romney just talked about. We we do have a pretty large decrease. The oil and gas property taxes are projected to be nine, down 9 million since 2024.
Numbers, which is a large number for us to try and figure out and reallocate throughout the course of the year. So with these increasing expenditure pressures, new services are not anticipated during the remainder of 2026 and throughout 2027. We have shown ways that we’ve been resilient over the last few years, and we are optimistic, as Jeff mentioned, about the sales growth into the future. Next slide.
Here you can see we have a limited number of proposed 2027 positions. The first item in CEO is is partially offset by other cost savings, which is why it’s a little bit lower. So the net is represented here. The data engineer on the second line coincides with the ERP data and analytics.
This will be helpful in making sure, uh, analysts and business intelligence teams have clean, accessible data to work with. And after that, we have a few enterprise related positions, one which prioritizes water resources. And the over the other one overseeing stormwater CIP projects.
And lastly, we need to highlight um, ranked choice voting, which is one of the higher expenditures on the list. Uh, this is required for compliance to the 2021 voter approved ballot question. We do anticipate future staffing needs in areas including asset management. Uh, AI data and analytics, and process improvement. Next slide.
As we’ve done in 2026, vacancy hiring will continue to be closely scrutinized throughout 2027. Each vacant position will provide an opportunity to evaluate whether the position remains necessary in its existing form, or whether we can make, uh, the work done differently. Um, accomplished differently, including, uh, examples such as contractors, uh, limited term appointments and other alternatives.
Additionally, on the right side, you’ll see vehicle replacement was paused during 2026 as part of our organization’s effort to manage capital expenditures and prioritize available resources. The 2027 budget anticipates only minimal vehicle purchases. Continuing with the emphasis on limiting fleet replacement to essential operational and public safety needs.
As part of the 2026 revised budget that you’ll see, we do have an exception of three K9 outfitted vehicles at roughly 115,000 each, or 345,000 in total. And that is requested from the PD and the increase in expansion of the K9 team, um, to to three dogs necessitates this request. Next slide.
Uh, in terms of the lodging tax, as you know, as you know, Broomfield is lodging tax has remained at 1.6% for for nearly three decades now. It’s currently the lowest among the entire Front Range. And the ballot measure in November will allow voters to decide whether to increase this revenue source and dedicate the funding to affordable housing priorities.
Additionally, other revenue diversification will continue to be a priority and will be evaluated as such over the next couple of years. Next slide. Okay. For additional context on this slide, uh, beginning in the 2022 budget, um, Broomfield shifted CIP to taking care of what we already have as a community approach is build out. This transition is increasingly necessary.
This philosophy toward maintaining the assets we already have is critical to to funding priorities in the future. So, uh, the 2027 through 2031, five year CIP has an average of 75% dedicated to existing assets and 25% to new projects. This is a more sustainable approach for Broomfield moving forward. Next slide.
So running parallel to the organizational strategic plan, the comp plan and the upcoming long range financial plan that Jeff will talk about tonight are these three initiatives as well that we’ve been working on and have been a key focus for the last couple of years, the transition to a more mature, asset focused financial model requires more
than just changes to the annual budget. It requires better financial information, stronger asset management systems and an AI and process improvement focus, along with the disciplined approach to how CIP resources are allocated, which we just talked about on the ERP side, significant time and resources are going into the ERP implementation.
Um, we are in the midst of the financial ERP with the go live scheduled for the beginning of the year, January 1st. So we were right in the middle of all the decisions and, uh, tough work right now on the finance and HCM side. Next slide. So moving over to to speak a little bit about Borough.
After a couple of years we have completed an extensive review of borough’s financial position including historical agreements TIF obligations and developer agreements within those areas. The review has been very complex due to evolving historical modifications to modifications to these Oras and limited documentation that that was centralized. We’ve also looked at past developer agreements and eligible expenditures over this time.
The review identified capital projects eligible for borough funding that were instead paid out of Cob funds. Going forward. Uh, this review will ensure borough resources are used in those instances. Next slide. As you may remember, back in 2021, we received federal Arpa dollars, roughly 21 million.
The good news is that this will be the final update in terms of Arpa. We have over the last five years, spent the funding on four different projects. The federal requirement was that we expend all funds by the end of 2026, and we have done that.
We’ve been audited on the grant compliance each year, and we have passed the audit each year. And so Arpa is fully expended and that those projects are now complete. Next slide. As we move over to the Enterprise Funds 2027 will mark the third year of our five year rate plan. As manager.
Hoffman mentioned at the opening, uh, this began in 2025, and the rate increase is approved in 25 and 26. Put us in a more stable position and allowed us to successfully issue bonds for water and sewer. Earlier this year, heading into 2027, staff is recommending staying with the previously presented five year plan, which is a 7% rate increase for the budget year 2027. As communicated in our July study session.
We’re also recommending implementing commercial tiers to align commercial customers with residential customers. We will cover this more on the next slide. But these proposed increases reflect the minimum funding needed to keep pace with the aging infrastructure that we already have. Next slide.
As you know, Broomfield currently has a single rate structure for commercial customers, but a tiered rate structure for single family homes and multi-family homes on the residential side. We are recommending switching to a tiered structure for commercial water customers.
Most municipalities on the Front Range are already operating a tiered structure for both customer classes and, more importantly, moving the tiered commercial rates will ensure fiscal sustainability and it will also incentivize businesses to conserve water, and it will also create a more equitable rate structure for businesses and homeowners going into the future. As you may recall from that study session on the topic in July, commercial and industrial users account for about 15% of the total water usage in 2025, and only 10% of the revenue.
The new commercial tiers and rates will bring that revenue contributed up to about 12%. We brought this back to flow and after robust discussion with the Flow Committee and considering all options, they chose to keep their original recommendation on what is which is what is on this slide and
revisit the, um, the amounts and the prices next year. Next slide. This slide shows the estimated impact for the proposed 2027 increases for the typical single family home, multi-family home, and a commercial standard commercial business. These charges on on the bills would include both the water, sewer and stormwater that’s represented here.
So the commercial customer impact on this example is about 12.9%, which is more to the more than the 7% due to moving to the proposed tiered rate structure. The next slide in terms of the Ura assistance, um, the total number of applicants for 2026 is now at 832 households, and of these households, 612 have been processed, with 533
approved. The other 220 applications are still in the process of being reviewed. Total expenses incurred year to date is around 50,000. However, we do expect a significant increase over the next couple of months with the number of new applicants approved and the summer months increasing the bills and therefore needing more assistance.
We do, however, feel comfortable that the allotted budget number of 300,000 will be enough to provide the assistance for the 2026 year. Next slide. Before opening it up for questions, we want to remind you of the next steps in the budget adoption.
On September 2nd, we will be distributing the proposed 2026 and 2027 annual budget to Council and posting it publicly on our website of broomfield.org. And we will also have two additional study sessions on September 17th and September 24th, where department heads will answer questions about their specific budget. Following that, we will have the first and second readings of the 2026 R and 2027 operating budgets and enterprise fund rates.
On October 13th and 27th. So, in summary, we’ve strategically balanced the budget for 2026, revised in 2027. Proposed. We’ve prioritized employee compensation. We’ve proposed a limited number of strategic FTEs based on need and within the budget of 2027, we’ve continued with exceeding the required rev reserve levels, which are now at 20%, which we
intend to keep at 20% in perpetuity. Next slide. With that, we can open it up to questions. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Clark. And we’ll move on to questions or comments from my colleagues who would like to go first. Councilmember Peterson. Thank you. Mary. Mayor.
Thank you very much for both those presentations. And I appreciate Manager Hoffman’s introduction as well. Um, some of my questions have been answered already, and so I’ll attempt to stumble my way through them. And I may request that you repeat some information. Um, first of all, Mr..
Amin, um, could you help me understand the significance of the job to housing ratio? Um, mayor, mayor, pro tem council members. Absolutely. So the jobs. Jobs to housing ratio is oftentimes used to kind of evaluate and determine the, um, financial strength of a community.
Um, so if there is, as an example, let’s say we’re closer to one job per household as opposed to what we are at 1.48, you’d have less resiliency within the economy in order to offset. So you would see the behavior. Um, you’d be much more reliant upon the sales tax as an example, or visitors coming in. And so it creates this, uh, we we lose a little bit of that resiliency and that sustainability.
Um, and so oftentimes that’s what you’re trying to focus on is making sure that we are somewhat balanced. Broomfield, as I pointed out very early in the the presentation has a very strong business economy here. So that’s what’s really giving us the ability to have that strength.
So we’re seeing the revenues coming in from both sides. I hope that provides the answer. Yes. Thank you. And then, uh, Mr. Clark. Um, you mentioned that, uh, in preparation for this year’s budget and actually for the past three years.
Uh, you’ve been going through, uh, each, um, each department and their budget to determine what areas we have for, um, reducing costs and, uh, and kind of comparing what their, uh, what they’re spending money on to our priorities. Uh, can you clarify what, uh, what those standard priorities they’re being compared to are. I didn’t see those specifically listed. And I’m just curious.
Currently, it’s the priorities that are in the, uh, strategic plan that we’re going to, um, that we’re going to come out with soon. Um, one of those being, um, fiscal sustainability.
Um, I can’t remember all the other ones that are in that document, but, um, really, we’ve we’ve looked at historical spending as well, and we’ve made sure that we’ve aligned our budgets with the historical spending and that we’re not over budgeting for any particular purpose and that we’re reallocating those dollars to, to what the departments and council considers priorities. Okay. Thank you. I’m sure those are challenging conversations. Um, okay.
So, uh, the memo says that, um, new services and ongoing costs are going to be deferred until we have more budget flexibility. Um, but at the same time, uh, we’ve decided that there are the, um, the six positions that are being added in. Um, one of which is an app.
Could you clarify that? Uh, in referencing the, um, the app, is that a person being hired to create the app or something else? No, that’s non personnel. That’s, uh, an app that’s easy for residents to use. And so it’s it’s not a person. It’s actually purchasing the app. Yes okay okay. That helps.
And then um for ranked choice voting um, that’s uh every other year because of, that’s uh, how often we’re going to be utilizing that. Correct. I believe that’s correct. But maybe Nancy would know a little bit better than I. I’m going to, um, I’ll I’ll take that one. So the first question of are there, we aren’t juxtaposing those savings with the priorities.
So we’ll be sharing with Council the full spreadsheet archaic word. But that’s essentially um, it’s a it’s a, it’s a Google doc that has all of the categories that we talked about. Um, and then separating them by one time ongoing and departmental.
So before, so at the at the end of this year is when we are rolling out the strategic plan that has those priorities. So all prior priorities have been from the 2021 Council. Those five key priorities as we have moved forward. So each it’s like anything else. Council. Council member. Um, you spend money on your priorities.
And so then when those priorities are established, staff then structures teams to support those priorities. And thus the, the the corresponding KPIs. Okay. Um, so there will be a reevaluation because the strategic plan internally, um, that is completed at the end of this year will then have a juxtaposition with the budget as we begin to roll out and work on the 2028 budget.
So you’ll see a different level of alignment, which is why the software that we’re purchasing, that’s the data. That’s the, uh, the public facing dashboard to allow council and the community to track each one of those strategic operation categories and the corresponding KPIs.
So then you’ll have are we moving the needle? Are we not moving the needle. Do we need more funding. Do we need more resources in order to move those needles. So again, it’s a first time we’ve had a public facing, um, a dashboard. Uh, certainly to that, to that extent. And it corresponds and aligns, um, with the new ERP system.
So the ERP is not going to be an end all, be all silver bullet, but it is going to work in alignment from a, from a transparency perspective. So the slide we what we should have said on that slide isn’t an FTE related increase. It’s a it’s an expenditure increase, not FTEs that are attached. So that’s it’s non personnel. And then personnel.
Okay. Um regarding the vehicles. Um so replacements are being paused um on fleet vehicles. Uh, except for the three K9 vehicles. Um does that mean that we have, uh, existing fleet vehicles that are, um, past their replacement time that were just going to be maintaining. Thank you. Council member Petersen. Yes, that’s correct.
We have, um, added a few more years of life when we would maybe potentially sell it or trade it in or something along those lines. We have, uh, asked the departments to keep those for a couple more years before replacing them. That’s correct.
I’m going to add a little bit more to that council member Petersen. So it’s like, um, where you are shifting a philosophical approach to maintaining versus purchasing new. So it’s not unlike the discussions that we’ve been having from a maturing community perspective, since we’re not growing at the same level that we have been growing, having additional vehicles.
Um, the, the cost recovery ratio, it makes more sense to put dollars in maintaining versus purchasing new. So it’s an ongoing it’s not an all or nothing. It’s again refocusing on our fleet maintenance, i.e. an additional employee to be doing that fleet maintenance, um, versus the five year replacement value for that vehicle.
So we look at each one of those elements before we make a decision on it’s not a kick that can approach. Okay. Um, you identified some projects from the Capital Projects Fund that were eligible for borough funding that, that funding wasn’t applied initially.
Um, do you have any any numbers related to that? Um, and did it make a significant change to the fund balance? Graham I’m going to have you start, and then I’ll finish with the with with with the recommended next steps approach. Sounds good. Yes. Council member Peterson, we did identify, uh, 7 million that we’re going to reallocate into, uh, the capital improvement fund from some of the borough projects that we had done previously.
Um, it was quite a big, um, undertaking that we looked at all the, the different projects. Um, and we’ve also looked at our five year CIP going forward and identified any projects that are in the borough areas in the five year CIP and allocated those to borough and taking them out of our five year CIP.
If it was in there kind of going forward as well. Oh, that’s great. This was our final. So, so some, some members of council have have been on this five year journey of discovery.
Um, and not necessarily a, a positive discovery in the sense of all information is good information because it helps council, uh, make well informed decisions. Historically, we did not have an inventory, so therefore we couldn’t identify the impacts of business development agreements. Um, of HOA kind of handoffs. When you got to that time frame. So the last five years have been spent on the enterprise fund understanding where that is. Uh, asset identification and plans.
Business improvement decisions that were made that will impact this council’s decision for the next 25 years. Debt conversations about where that capacity is building the credit ratings and building reserves, the the reserves. Um, and the the final piece of discovery is the urban renewal areas. Broomfield for our size, has a incredibly unusual high number of urban renewal areas.
Um, I can’t speak to the metro districts, but I can say for the last 25 years, the base of Broomfield was based on metro districts and urban renewal areas. Those prior business development agreements, each one is is is complex, not difficult to understand, but complex to weave through.
Those spreadsheets to identify what were the development agreements, what degree was the school district impacted? What degree was North Metro fire impacted? Um, and prior to House Bill 13421348, forgive me. Municipalities could come in and I’m giving you the background on urban renewal areas.
Um, simply to indicate it is a tool that requires a significant amount of management oversight and understanding for each one of those. We’ve been working on it for the last two years. Again, it’s our final piece of seven over the last five years will be coming back with council, um, with the top line, particularly from a policy perspective, saying instead of closing out individual urban renewal areas will be recommending, based on what we
foresee for the future and continuing to keep the urban renewal area in place. But to alleviate or relieve the school district portion from that urban renewal area, thus freeing up funds that are being collected by Cob but not shared with the school district. Because of prior decisions of those business development agreements, we are in control.
Council is in control of those Broomfield Urban renewal areas. So making a well-informed decision about to what degree, under what circumstances and what is the timeline of closing those down, keeping those open, some of those urban renewal areas to to Mister Clark’s point should have been paying for specific capital improvement projects within
that urban renewal area rather than from the general fund that was not occurring. So that amount that Mr. Clark is talking about now is shoring up that one piece. Again, we’ll be returning to council to discuss all nine of those urban renewal areas.
Um, with the primary goal of completely removing the school districts from the existing urban renewal areas, whether we close them or whether we keep them open. Our recommendation is we should not be doing capital improvement projects with school district funding. We should be figuring out how that works. Okay, so much more to come on that.
Uh, you also talked about the, um, the Arpa funding and how that was well used within the timeline. And, uh, and met the evaluations and all that. But, um, my understanding is that, uh, the philosophy is if you have one time funds like that, you use it for one time projects.
Can you give some examples of what those projects were? Yes, a few of them that I can think of is the fiber project. Um, just installing fiber. And now we lease some of those fiber agreements to, to different companies.
And so that was that was a large project that was well over 2 or $3 million. We also had the Broomfield Heights stormwater project, which is a very big project, ended up being around ten, $12 million. Something along those lines. And that was a lot of reconstructing of the Broomfield Heights area. And we also had pavement management on there as well.
So $9 million went to, uh, street improvements as well. So those are some of the examples. I think there’s one more that I might be omitting right now, but they yeah, they definitely went to kind of the one time areas. Um, and we made sure that we didn’t use it for kind of ongoing items and. Long term benefits. Yes.
That’s great. And I’m gonna add one more piece. And that is based on the Arpa requirements. It had to be spent in distressed areas in every community. So um, there were upfront criteria that had to be met. So each one of those areas were not mutually beneficial for all of Cob.
Um, they were considered, um, low economic producing areas that otherwise hadn’t been prioritized in our budget. Um, and it would be great. Let’s let’s send council, um, those specific projects. Um, just from a, an area of, of interest that you can count off those six particular projects. Yeah.
It would be really good to share that with the newer folks, because it was a whole exercise on ward equity. And that’s why those areas were were prioritized, because it wasn’t equitable before. Okay. And then to the, um, the water utilities.
Um, if you go I don’t know where slide 19 is anymore, but, um, uh, but it was showing the, uh, the effect of the increases on, um, uh, residential ratepayers and, uh, it only went back through the, uh, the last couple years. It didn’t include before the, um, the first year with the 50% increase.
And I’m wondering if you can give a more long term example of what the rates have been like over the past five years and what they’re going to look like in the next couple of years with the expected increases. Yeah. Thank you again for the question. So I’ll answer the first, uh, the last part first. And we do anticipate, uh, being 7%, um, for the next few years.
And that’s in order to keep up. Uh, in terms of going back many years, you could you could put any number of years back. But, um, we went back on, um, when we were doing all the rate increases, uh, for several years, we went back to 2013 and there was a lot of, uh,
recommendations from a rate study that was done in 2013. That happened once in 2013 at 7%, and then the next, uh, 10 or 12 years after that. We’re very low in the one 0 to 1 point 5 to 2% area. Now, that doesn’t even cover inflation.
And so we could go back to 2013 and show those graphs. But we do estimate that we would have gained about $40 million. Uh, had we implemented the rate recommendations from the rate study back in 2013, we didn’t do that. And then, of course, that doesn’t include all the additional compounding that.
Uh, City Manager Hoffman mentioned. So, you know, we could go back to 2013 and get you more information. Certainly. Um, but just going back to the larger increase, that was more of a catch up. Um, probably wouldn’t show the, uh, the whole story either. Mr.
Clark, I think what would be very helpful again for the new council members. Um, the presentation, um, from 2023, with the recommended rate increases, um, had a very full memo with the what was what was recommended, what didn’t occur. So again, when you’re looking at those snapshots between saying, you know, over the last ten years, water rates have increased 287%. That’s true.
Um, so again, from context, perspective, on one hand, we have we didn’t do those rate increases. And that’s why we’re in the shape that we’re in on the other ones. When you start doing something, it’s that it’s the double whammy right.
So you’re going to you’re going to have unhappy people across the board using both sides of those examples. So I think that that one presentation and that one memo has all of the information that says why we are where we are, what it looks like in order to move forward.
And those other steps that were taken in 2022 and 2023, in order to alleviate the pressure on residents. So 2023, we pulled a lever that said we’re going to have development pay its own way. Didn’t happen.
And then in 2024, when development came to a screeching halt because of interest rates, um, and all of the other unknowns, um, the subsequent year, we said less base it on consumption. So only only those that use the water will pay for it. Again, trying to alleviate the entire community from having to pick up this load. It happened to be the most unprecedented wet year that the state of Colorado had seen in the last two decades, so that didn’t work.
It brought us that third year to the most uncomfortable, excruciating place that a city manager and staff and council had to move through in order to increase those rates. But that memo really does spell out, um, a very complicated, complex story of what should have happened. It didn’t. And that left us where we are.
So we’ll we’re happy to share that that memo in that presentation with Council. Again. Thank you. And did that show a comparison to like had we been doing 7% along the way where we would be at now? Absolutely. Okay. That would be very helpful. Thank you. Yes.
Now with the, um, commercial and industrial users, uh, you said that, uh, they’re currently using 15% of the water, but providing 10% of the revenue. And with the changes, that’ll go up to 12%.
Uh, why not try to get them to 15%? Um, and is it still the residential taxpayers that are making up that difference? Yes. I mean, um, the the short answer of, of that is, uh, we can look at those, uh, tiers and increases and get it to the 15%. If council would like that.
Um, we did take it back to flow, like I mentioned in the presentation, to see if they wanted to make any changes. We did have a robust discussion on the pros and the cons. Um, their idea from the Flow Committee was to keep it at the recommendation of roughly 12% and address it in future years. More of a, um, a graduated increase.
Um, but ultimately, it’s council’s decision. And, um, we could we could certainly get you more information on that. But this way we’ll be able to see the the impact over the next year. Yes. Okay. Correct. Great. Thank you very much. Um. All right. We’re going to go online to Councilmember Delgadillo next. Thanks for your patience. Oh of course. Thank you. Mayor.
Um, I have a couple of questions. So, um, from Councilmember Peterson’s questions, it sounds like there’s going to be a lot of discussion about, uh, borough and that sort of thing. So we don’t have to dig into the specifics there.
But I’m at I want to know from a structural, procedural standpoint, uh, going forward, what if staff doing to ensure clarity on borough fund eligibility so that we don’t end up in the situation where we have to reallocate general fund dollars with borough dollars? Are we digitizing records, making them more centralized? I this probably ties a little bit back to our asset management system project, but I would love to hear what’s going on.
Thank you. Councilmember Delgadillo. And, um, yes, yes and yes. So it’s tied to getting the data clean before implementing and rolling out the ERP. So it will all be automated as we move forward. Um, and it will not take a team of five to identify, analyze and calculate.
It will be, um, an ongoing automated system, which seems so fundamental, um, to how everyone operates. So we’re coming into the, the, the 21st century, um, 15 years late. But yes, it’s not only digitized, it’s.. Yeah. Over here. Yeah, I realize that it’s a we have records going back a very, very long time, so I can only imagine it’s quite a long task.
So that’s very exciting to hear and good to hear that. The, um, the upfront work that we’ve done will be moving into this more scalable, correct solution. Wonderful.
Uh, and then the other one is, um, so walking me through the classification methodology or just some clarification on where that 7525 split number is coming from, and this is from a glance at the 2027 CIP. The attachment at the end of the memo. And if you look at the growth non growth split, it’s a little closer to 5050 I think it’s 4753 is what it is.
And so I realize that you said the 7525 split. It’s over the next five years. So will we expect to kind of glide into that like I I’m just I’m wondering where those numbers are coming from because they’re just not, um, in 2027 specifically. Yeah.
It is, it is looking at the, the whole five years and the average of that. And so, um, like I, like I mentioned kind of beginning in, in the 2022 budget, we’re, we’re slowly getting there.
I think it was um, quite a bit the pendulum was quite a bit the other way when we first started, uh, there was still a lot of new as we, as we move into, um, kind of the maturing community, we don’t have as many new items, and we really are trying to take care of what we already have. And so the, the 2027 number, uh, you’re right, is is closer to that number.
But when we kind of look at totality of the five year CIP and the average of each year, um, that’s, that’s the goal is to get to that 70. It is it is 75, 25. And that that was always the goal to begin with. Okay. Great. I appreciate that clarification. Just because that the number wasn’t exactly squaring. But I also knew you were looking at a longer horizon.
So that’s very helpful. And then, um, since this is a study session, I’ll just have some comments that were not asked for, but I will provide anyway. Uh, which is that I think the shift towards maintenance and rehabilitation is great. Um, as a maturing community, we need to be really forward thinking with that.
And that’s wonderful to see that we’re doing that. Um, I do want to lend my support for that, uh, merit increase coming back. I think that’s great. And I think we should, um, not be pennywise and pound foolish.
Right? Because these are the people who are figuring out the ways in which we can scale to be more efficient. And so you pay those people. Well, I think that makes a lot of sense. Um, and then I’ll do my, my plug for road diets as a fiscal sustainability tool so that $9.
1 million annual budget for pavement and management, um, if there are ever some streets where it makes a little bit more sense to have extend the bike lane so you have less wear and tear on the roads, less heavy vehicles on it, and thus lower liability long term when it comes to that pavement replacement, I would encourage us to get creative on that.
I would even volunteer Varvara to go first. That should not be two lanes in each direction. I really think it should be one in each direction. So you can start right in my backyard if you ever want to. But, um, thank you for this.
And I think this is very forward looking and, uh, very helpful presentation to understand where we are. All right. Thank you, mayor. Thank you. Council member Twiss. Thank you. And thank you for the presentations and all the explanations. It’s good to be able to look ahead and and hopefully see what’s coming towards us.
I’m very much looking forward to the the actual budget coming in September, along with the the plan and the teased, uh, demography report. All very exciting stuff. Um, I’d like to echo, uh, one of Councilmember Delgado’s, uh, points that she just made on the employee compensation. Um, I also feel very strongly about that.
Um, our employees people are what make things work. It doesn’t matter how much stuff you have. Uh, how many resources you have. If the people are not there. Um, and and supported. Um, so I guess I have a couple of kind of jumping around questions here.
Um, if you can explain a little bit more about the oil and gas job revenue portions, why they change so much year to year and why that isn’t more predictable. It sounds like some of these numbers were somewhat of a surprise. You. No. What? No, I mean, the okay, please. Mayor, mayor, pro tem council members.
So as as many individuals within the community know, there was a ramp up, um, consolidation down, but then also ramp up of the activity. Um, but consolidation down from the number of drill sites down to a fewer numbers. So part of it was that history and bringing it together and getting that done.
So there was prior to that, we were getting around 400 to $500,000 a year in revenue. So there was a significant ramp up on all this. What is referred to as fracking occurred. Um, fracking therefore, is taking the residual out of those seams. And, and extricating it. And that’s then collected.
And so that’s the system that we are living in here, as opposed to our neighbors to the northeast where there is new basin wells, as well as the fracking activity. So as to understand all of this and to be able to better understand the impacts on the property tax. We actually consulted with weld, um, because they are our nearest neighbor that really has an effective, um, approach.
Um, and what I mean by that is they both have the fracking activity as well as new drilling. We don’t have new drilling per se. So therefore we have a very short lifespan with those wells. And so that is really what the run looks like.
Um, in our understanding and working and talking with the weld folks, it is less related to the price of the natural gas that’s coming out or the oil. Um, it’s primarily related to the contracts for those. And those contracts are done by the people that are doing it. And so it’s a fair market. It’s it’s all of that.
But nevertheless, it’s not the pump price that you see for gasoline. Um, the other part I would just mention mayor and council members, is that most of the activity here is natural gas. It is not oil.
Um, and so if you also know a little bit about what’s happening in the energy sectors right now, US natural gas prices are pretty stable. Um, it’s the oil that is the pricing that’s really taken off in this in this short term period. So therefore you have that.
So the real combination of what’s going on here is the is the eventual dilution and eventual, um, there’s nothing left to take out of the wells and therefore there’s no activity left. Um, we have seen it happening. Um, it wasn’t a surprise, but what really is, is just the sharpness of which that that has fallen. Um, and that’s really the activity.
Um, fracking is not necessarily a brand new technology, but it is relatively new here in Broomfield, as well as in Colorado, where most of the activity prior previously was new, new well, as opposed to the fracking. And so the lifespan of the wells is vastly different than in new. Well, going in, if that makes sense.
So there’s that combination of three things going on at the same time. And that’s what’s that’s what’s done it. Um, we continue to see that evolution. We will not see, uh, as many of your colleagues would know better than I. In fact, we’re not seeing any new oil and gas activity.
So you’re going to see that 3 million drop further, drop further and drop further. And while there’s a long tail to these, it’s not a very productive tail. So we’ll continue to see the property tax continue to fall on that element of it. So I believe mayor that’s a pretty good explanation of all the factors. Council member but that’s what’s going on.
And that’s why took a very hard look at this to really understand it, so that we could forecast it going forward for the next five years. Okay. Thank you. That does help. Um, jumping around again, um, in the section where you talked about vacancy hiring, um, and how it will be closely scrutinized through next year.
Um, the positions will be evaluated to see whether they remain necessary in the existing form or whether the work can be accomplished differently. Right. Um, so I’m curious about what level those decisions are made at.
Is it the department, is it HR, or is it the city manager’s office? Who looks at each one and decides that you can do without this position? Or it should also include this? Or maybe we can combine these two. Where where does that happen? I’ll take that one. Mr. Clark.
Um, it happens at the hiring managers level with their supervisor, with their manager, with their department head, with their business professional and HR. Um, adding positions. The evaluation, uh, really occurs at the department level. Adding positions occurs at at the higher level. Um, so again, when we’re looking at. Coupling.
AI is something that we are and have embraced, uh, and not from a replacement perspective, but from a freeing of a creative perspective. Um, and those conversations that occur at the department level remain the same. So creatively.
And by that, what I mean is, how can we what else does it look like? So if you save that 20% of time because of automation, are we as an organization, do we have a culture that says, now I want you to do 20% more work? That is not the messaging.
The messaging is how can we then establish that 20% time to be able to say, how? How does this look different? How can the service delivery look different? Under what circumstances can we move? Um, the most creative library person into economic development. What does that cross-pollination look like? Um, so again, the reason I say that creativity piece, because it really does transcend into should we be hiring that same person that we’ve had for five years, that now leaves? Is that the same position now that it was five years ago? So it’s
those much more robust conversations with HR and the business processing folks to be able to say, what does it what looks different? And I just had a conversation two minutes ago about reorganization. So all of those conversations, they don’t happen at my level, nor nor should they happen at a CMO level.
Okay. Thank you. Uh, jumping back into borough, um, the moving the specifically the Emerald and Upham streets paving projects, does that mean that those will happen sometime soon? Um, and how does it even though it’s paid for with different dollars, how does it get incorporated into the workflow and the planning?
I’m going to have Miss Burton’s start that initial, um, conversation, and then Mr. May want to finish that because it’s in conjunction with our other drainage project. So we try to capitalize so that we’re not doing standalone projects. Right. Thank you. Um, Manager Hoffman. So in this case, moving the funding help to expedite the project.
So it’s not a matter of removing the project or delaying it. It actually helped to, um, have the the drainage improvements in that paving improvement, uh, go forward together. And so that was an assistance. Um, and really, I don’t think that there’s an impact in terms of adding to the workflow.
There’s not a change to how our capital projects do the work. Once the funding has been approved as part of the budget. Mr.. Do you have anything to add to that? Ken has been the person doing the neighborhood, uh, meetings. Mr. Rep. Yeah. Good evening. Council. Mayor.
Mayor Pro tem and council member I don’t get to talk to you about water right now, so, um. Yeah, that was a really good summary. Uh, basically, uh, like, everything we need to process in a and the right priority and the right order to make this project successful in the first part is the stormwater piece.
Uh, that is going through, um, in part of the upcoming CIP plan over the next five years. And then once that is done, then we’re able to come back in and pave. One of the critical things is that the stormwater is so critical that a large portion of that area, if we didn’t do the stormwater project, would then become into a flood area.
And so most a lot of those houses would be impacted by floods. So that’s why it’s critical to do the stormwater piece first, and then we can come back in. And so both of those projects are are programmed into our CIP projects okay.
So is it just the paving that is burgh dollars or is the stormwater project also a responsibility? Thanks for the question. It should be both. Both are in that area and therefore both are eligible. Okay. Um. All right. Um, just one more thing. Going to the, uh, proposed development fees. Um, for the increase to the water, sewer and reuse tap fees.
Um, do when developers build something new, a do they have to do the reuse tap, or is that only if they’re planning on using reuse for for irrigation? Yeah, it would be the latter only if they chose to use reuse water.
So we’re looking at a minimum of $55,000 for tap fees or closer to 70 if they choose to be part of the reuse system. Is that right? That sounds right. I don’t have the numbers right in front of me, but that that sounds accurate. Yes. Okay. Thank you. That is all my questions. All right. Next is Council member Henkel. Thank you, mayor. Um, thank you for the presentation tonight.
I’m going to keep it fairly short. We’re already at an hour and a half on agenda item. So and this is an overview too. And we know we’re going to be talking about budgets and and all of this. So I don’t want to get it too much in the weeds.
I appreciate the presentation on especially the competitive pay. We want to make sure we keep our staff, uh, employed and working in Broomfield. And I feel like that’s really important and living here as well.
Um, when two things here, when we I’m just sort of looking at just themes here at this point. But it said, you know, that Broomfield is entering a new stage of development, shifting from adding new programs and assets toward maintaining what already exists. As the community approaches build out. That’s one of the biggest themes I’ve seen over the past year with how we’re spending.
Are we going to and maybe this is a question for manager Hoffman as well, but are we going to be looking at different job descriptions in the future because of this? Because of this shift where we’re we’re becoming more, um, like other cities.
We are special that we’re a city and county, but we know that other places are don’t have a lot of space to build anymore. So as that comes about, our job description is going to change. Like what structurally is going to change within the city and county of Broomfield as a result. I think it’s more, um, thanks for the question, Council member. Nickel.
And I want to say collectively, um, we have all of the department heads that are listening tonight. Um, so the text messages of, oh my God, thank you for the for the support. Uh, it it means a lot and and 5%, uh, up to 5% is pretty significant. So we appreciate it very much. That’s just a sidebar.
Um, job descriptions will modify based on job skills. So, um, job descriptions, when we’re doing market analysis, um, particularly as we it’s I think it’s, it’s less about going into asset management and it’s more about from a leadership and a culture perspective, uh, ensuring that we’re training, that we’re upskilling, that we’re having the conversations early about what it looks like
in this new environment so that folks aren’t thinking, I’m going to get a new job description because they’re going to be hiring someone else to do asset management, for example. Um, so it’s really incumbent not only on Broomfield, but but all municipal employers to be seen to be paying attention to what it means.
Five years from now, our workforce is going to look different. Um, folks, that we’re hiring right now, the questions that we’re asking are very different, regardless of what that job description is. Uh, again, from a technical perspective, being technically savvy, understanding how it works.
Um, so even on the front end, Councilmember Hinkle, um, I think not just from a municipality perspective, but but overall, it’s going to look different. Our workforce is going to look different. Therefore our job descriptions are going to look different. Therefore, the level of commitment from our organization to our employees needs to morph right along with that. Okay. Thank you. Yeah.
I also just don’t want to remain, you know, or be stagnant, which we haven’t been know if a lot of, you know, we’ve really integrated a lot of our Dei. We’ve integrated a lot of our and we had to adjust immediately with oil and gas, you know. And that took on a lot of staff, um, as that is sort of easing up.
We had to shift back more towards asset management. And I feel like, uh, you know, that book Who Moved my cheese? Right. We have to be able to adapt and and do that. So that’s just, um, I appreciate that.
Uh, I am appreciative also of the mandates, critical needs and obligations as the state might come down again in the next two years with a new legislature that actually might bring even more mandates than we’ve ever seen. I do have a lot of concerns about that. Um, I’m just, you know, making that sort of noted right now as a new legislature comes in.
And then the last thing to I know we’re tracking sales in Broomfield and Mister Remind, you had mentioned sales and use tax will continue to grow 3 to 4% in 2026. Uh, this is led by our Flatiron Crossing reinvestment, which is fantastic. We have a lot of great news coming out of there. Super excited about that. And then rising online sales.
So we’re seeing online and then we’re also seeing sort of like these big places to shop. What about the smaller places? Are we tracking that? Um, are we doing any exit surveys if we have like a restaurant closed down or anything like that? Or is our chamber tracking that?
And I know I’ve probably asked this maybe three times from the dais, so. Uh, I think the question from a local government perspective, that really is the chamber. I was at the chamber meeting this morning with Council Member Delgadillo. Um, and they do review. Um, they don’t review.
Who’s leaving Broomfield? Uh, they do do I don’t know if they do exit strategies. Um. Uh, but building that business inventory is really something that we would. Emphasize to be very important for a business chamber to be doing that. They’re the initial contact. Um, and we do support the chamber with, uh, significantly with those, with those dollars.
So perhaps an additional conversation about level of expectation, about building what that inventory looks like. Um, and really, from a staff perspective, um, stay interviews are just as important as exit interviews.
And why are you still here? Um, versus why are you leaving? So I think more robust conversations with the chamber, um, would be, uh, would would be, uh, in line and timely and a great idea. Um, they’re kicking off their, um, go Broomfield business in anticipation of Sundance, so that might be a great opportunity for them also to build that capacity from a Broomfield business perspective. Okay. Thank you.
Yeah, I noticed, you know, there’s certain things that we do versus Bay, for instance. Right. And I think us versus the chamber, uh, we can work synergistically as well. Um, I just I do worry about any restaurants that are closing, and we need to know why.
If it is a governmental thing, if we are charging too much for permits or permits are taking too long or something like that, we just should probably know from a government perspective as well. Thank you. All right. Thank you very much. Mayor Pro Tem Lim. Yes, in the 27 budget, um, there will be, um. Well, it’s. previewed anyway. There’ll be an RFP for the asset management system.
Um, so I’m interested in broadly in what the scope of that will be. Will we see, um, what we’ve come to know as asset management within the utilities. folded into that asset, that overall asset management system, will we see CIP prioritization folded into that asset management system. Thank you for the question.
Uh, Mayor Pro Tem Lim, uh, in terms of the RFP scope, um, all those things that you mentioned will be in there. Um, we’re in the process of hiring an asset manager right now. Um, in the next few weeks.
And, um, once they get on board, they’ll be, um, tasked with, uh, what that scope looks like, but it will certainly include utilities, and it will certainly include CIP prioritization, among many other things. We’ll also want it to be as implemented as it can or integrated integrated as much as it can into our new ERP.
And so that will be another thing that we’ll be looking at specifically, uh, and then we’ll also be looking at several other kind of best in class um, systems. And uh, software that, um, we are looking for, for some of the best ones out there. And that will mostly be led by the new asset manager. Okay. Um, will there be. So we’re looking forward to the public facing budget dashboard, certainly with the ERP system.
So will the asset management system have a level of transparency for the public also, or will that be more internal facing? Uh, we hope that it has some dashboard capabilities. A lot of them do these days. I wouldn’t be surprised. I wouldn’t want to promise it yet.
But, um, a lot of them do have that, uh, capacity to, to do that, show that of course, we’ve got to spend some, some years getting all the information into the system, and that could take a while. So it’s not going to be an overnight type thing.
Uh, we have to get the inventory, make sure that it’s all proper before we put it into the the system itself. So it may be a year or two down the line after it’s implemented. Um, but we certainly hope that that’s what it looks like. Um, towards the end of that. Okay. Thank you.
Um, I was glad to see that the RAF fund is funding is being maintained at the same level as for 27 as it is in 26 at least. So, um, uh, you said you anticipated that the funding for 26 will be sufficient.
So, um, will we have a good handle? Will we have a good handle? Well, yeah, I guess we might. Will we have a good handle if it really is sufficient, if they’re still outstanding applications by the time that we, um, approve the 27 budget. Yeah, that’s a really good question. Uh, we will have probably 80 to 90% of the numbers in there.
We should be able to project pretty well towards what that is. We’re trying to do that now, but we are waiting for those additional 220 to get processed and see what additional ones come on. But usually I believe it ends, um, at the end of September.
Um, and so we should know, uh, and have a very good idea by the time we get to the budget time, if we need to make any kind of last minute adjustments. Okay. Thank you. Um, I’ll, I’ll just note, in general, we have with the impact of the state budget, that’s that’s kind of out of our control. That’s referred to in these documents.
Um, Council member Henkel referred to what the state legislature does. And we also have ballot initiatives coming up in November, which could impact us. And hopefully the public will pay attention to those budget impacts that are possible with those ballot initiatives.
Um, the other thing, I guess this is a comment just with the oil and gas revenues, I’m those of us who have been involved with this for a while, talked about the fact that these revenues were going to drastically decline. Um, I think when we were first talking about it, we thought it would be a precipitous drop off, maybe at five years, but it seems a little even earlier than that.
Um, so but we knew it was coming. It’s, um, every community should consider use us as an example to to look at, um, what happens when you do this. Um, and I just wanted to say that the reduction in revenue doesn’t absolve Broomfield.
Certainly from my perspective of its obligations to the residents to fully protect the residents from health and safety hazards associated with the pads in the future. Um, and as I think, um, Mr. Romine referred to, this has a long tail. The long tail, these things can drag on for 30 years.
And unfortunately, then Broomfield has a level of responsibility for monitoring this infrastructure and making sure in this case especially, it doesn’t pollute our open space on which it was placed in the future. So thank you. Thank you. Mayor Pro Tem Council Member McKenzie. Weldon. Thank you. Two questions. The first one is confirming that we will have access to the model. The LRP. I thought.
We were going. To do like a. Little dog and pony show tonight. Mr.. Remind, we are. Oh, okay. Okay. Yes. You you will. In addition to the show. Yeah, yeah. So we’re not going to tease you with showing how great it is and then not give it to you. Yeah.
This will be something that that will be interactive for council. Uh, with a multitude of categories. So second question what discount factor do we use in our economic and financial modeling? I apologize, could you repeat the question. Yeah. What discount factor do we use in our econ financial modeling.
From a discount standpoint for our costs or or are you talking about our revenue because we use a forward look. So there’s no discounting in the sense of we’re using it. We’re using an inflation rate that’s roughly a two, 2.25%. But we will vary it based upon where we where we think the feds are in any given year.
Um, obviously as we go long term, then it’s going to be in that two and a half to 3%. Um, we can model it either way so we can push it that way. So we’re using it from the standpoint of a, of an inflator as opposed to a discounting factor. Um, if that’s what you’re getting at. So we don’t use a discount factor. We use an inflationary factor.
So you could argue it’s a discount factor. If we were bringing the dollars back to today okay. Cool. That’s it. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Council member Brown. Thank you mayor. And thank you, staff for the presentation tonight. And really just the amazing level of detail that you’re providing.
Um, along with the commitments that you’re making to share all this information and really consumable ways for our community. Um, something that jumped out at me in the memo is the discussion of how AI is critical to process improvement.
A lot of folks I’ve talked to are concerned about responsible AI implementation, and I specifically want to key in on the fact that we know AI adoption was fueled by heavily subsidized pricing, but now we’re seeing costs increase significantly. Um, so I just have a couple questions about what we’re expecting and planning for.
So first one is how is our IT department forecasting and controlling for the highly dynamic consumption based costs associated with generative AI tools, compared with what we have experienced in the past with our traditional fixed software licensing models. You’ll get a. Deeper answer for that during our department presentations. Um, so it’s it’s like everything else, how we move in this organization is multi-pronged.
So it’s not just it it’s it’s it’s it, um, it’s our economist, it’s finance, it’s CMO, all things. It are coming out of the CMOs office, not it. So those conversations, um, not only regarding governance and costs, um, are something that we. Haven’t absorbed because we haven’t taken the implementation from a practical perspective to scale up.
So where we are right now is still in our community of champions, figuring out what what tools are most appropriate for what department, under what circumstances and what is the outcome. The closer we get. Uh, Councilmember Brown, I would say by the time we hit June of 2027, we’ll be able to have a much more robust conversation about those cost implications. Thank you. Um, and follow on question to that.
And I guess this is a recommendation going into that conversation. If you haven’t gotten here yet. Yeah. Um, what KPIs and cost benefit benchmarks will you be establishing to verify that the expanded AI adoption is actually leading to measurable operational savings and labor efficiencies? We’re fortunate staff because we, uh, we have a council
member that does this for a living. Council member. Brown. Um. so we would certainly be having those additional conversations, particularly, um, because it’s not just about ROI, right? That’s just too simple of a of of of of something that is a half of it’s going to be unquantifiable.
And how do you collect not only the dollar implications, not only the process improvement, because there’s when we talk about AI, um, having immediate cost process improvement implications, that is not our approach. And we have not seen from the AI deployments that we have been doing that that’s our first step, is a process improvement.
Um, process improvement really, uh, AI is a tool. It’s a tool that comes in the middle of a human being here, and then a tool implication. Um, but AI doesn’t do the mapping. AI takes the information and says, okay, here’s a great idea. Here’s how to streamline that.
But it takes the philosophical approach of good governance to be able to say, under what circumstances would we then deploy AI when we start talking about that scaling up? So ROI is very different for us. Um, because we’re in the business of human beings. Thank you. I look forward to the continued conversations. That’s all. All right. Thank you.
Any other questions or feedback from my colleagues? Well, I just want to remind folks, this is just the beginning of the budget process. And there is a path to adoption, which would be on October 13th. But until then, in September, there’ll be two opportunities during study session September 17th and September 24th with our department heads.
And we will be taking public comment on both of those study sessions. Also, October 13th will be the first public hearing. Um, and we will be taking public comment then. So thank you all for tuning in to this episode of budget. And we’re going to take our ten minute recess, and we’ll be back at 810. Thank. You. That’s okay. Here it is.
Welcome back everyone. We’re continuing our study session with item three. Be the long range financial plan update. Our council has a copy of the agenda memorandum, which I’ll ask our staff to begin the discussion. Mr.. Mind you’re on. Thank you. Um, if I could get the first slide. Thank you.
Mayor, mayor, pro tem council members. So this is a further update of both the modeling and the plan. I would just make sure that sometimes I’ll be careful on the language, but sometimes I may slip. So the long range financial plan is an element within the budget document.
It’s a roughly 5 to 7 page plan that is part of the budget document. This model that we’ve been talking about is building in is what the plan comes from. So I just want to be really careful about that. So, um, the model is really the technical part. And all the data that builds into the, the actual policy document.
Next, next page please. So what I’m going to cover very briefly is six different items. I’ll spend a little bit of time on a couple of them and a little bit more on time and others.
Part of this is this is building off the March presentation, which we provided to you, and a little bit of the presentation that was provided as we’re talking through the changes in the ordinance related to using fiscal impacts as part of a criteria for Council, as they’re making decisions about SPS amendments to SDP and special use permits and other things. Um, so real briefly, you’ll see those six items.
I know the presentation was available and you’ll see how it all fits together, but I just wanted to make sure I do highlight. And we cover each of these items. Next slide please Curtis. So the Broomfield approach and you heard this a little bit in the first presentation that I made tonight.
Um, but this is where we get in a little bit more detail about it and talk a little bit more about the development side as opposed to the economic slash revenue sides. Um, obviously, is every council member knows, um, the orientation of where revenue comes from comes from the activity and the development, and the activity comes from specific types of development.
So those two things, it’s almost like you’re building up a base, the the development aspects, what’s going on in the community, the households, the business or the the commercial properties become the place that houses the businesses and houses the households which then create the activity which generates the revenue. Um, so all of these connect up.
And that’s what this modeling approach really does and has done since 2004. So we talk about where we are. Um, it’s mentioned multiple times that we are at roughly 34mi. We’re at 80% build out. And I just want us to just correct something or not correct.
But just make sure I’m very detailed about that. That’s build out of developable area. That does not mean that we’re figuring out the word that if you do, the 40% of open space and you subtract that from 100, you’d say, well, how could you be at 80% build out when you’ve only got 60% of the land? So whenever you see that we’re
talking about the developable land. Um, and I just I know you all know that, but I just want to kind of say it publicly because, um, there was a conversation internal here earlier, uh, last week, and it was wait, wait, how could we be doing this? And the answer is 100% is 100%.
There is no 120% here in Broomfield. Um, it is what it is. Um, additionally, we are changing the way. And you’ve heard this many times. We have certain areas which are mature, but they’re evolving. And the example is along us 36. It’s Flatirons Crossing, it’s 120th. And we’re seeing that redevelopment begin and happen and we’re seeing more of it.
So sometimes we talk about growth areas, growth frontiers. That’s primarily in the northeast. However, we will see growth through redevelopment. So what that growth may be is, is an area that has 100,000ft and no residential becomes 50,000ft and 200 units. And so we see growth occurring.
But it is a it’s an evolutionary growth as opposed to anything else. And then finally, um, therefore causes the planning and the long range financial plan, as you all know. But I’m just I want to just make sure that there’s a context to it is a binding link between the long range or between the finance side and the development side.
So between the comprehensive plan and the mobility plan, the Broomfield together and the annual budgets and the long range financial plan, all of this fits together. And so this becomes one of those binding links because both this council and previous councils and the community have continued, emphasize that financial sustainability is one of the
goals of the community. So that’s why this sits here. Um, it is not sitting here for any other reason that it is part of how we think about things and how we make sure that the vision can be both accomplished as well as paid for.
Next slide please. Um, it’s not this is not um, when we talk about financial and fiscal balances, it’s not just a revenue issue. It’s also an expenditure issue. It’s thinking about where the how they intersect and come together. It is more than developing a property tax. So sometimes we spend an awful lot of time talking about that.
But the reality is, is right now and this is an evolutionary change here in Colorado, but also very much so in Broomfield. We are seeing a de-emphasis of property tax in Colorado. And a further emphasis of sales tax.
And that is occurring both because of legislative priorities, but also just where we are in the Front Range is development. It is very much about how do we do more with less, or how do we do more with the same. Um, and so how do we bring that together and how we think through it? It’s more than just property tax.
It’s more than just development. But that’s part of the balancing that occurs. The retail and dining sales activity is playing an increasing role in our revenues. When we talk about that, we’re growing our sales tax by 4%. We’re really talking about that.
So as we mentioned earlier in the the economic and fiscal update, we are seeing a slowing. In fact, in some cases a a lowering of property tax. And we’re being now increasingly held up by the sales tax and use tax side.
Um, and I would just mention one other thing that that wasn’t brought up as much in tonight’s conversation by Graham or myself. And that is, is the use tax is an interesting use is an interesting thing. Much like we are doing more things mentions about AI, AI requires software purchases by businesses and others and that that creates use tax.
And so we are seeing an increasing level of one what sometimes referred to as one time use tax payments by companies who are who are improving their AI capabilities and having to buy the software that it takes to do that and that. And that is both prescriptive or very unique package, soft or unique software and package softwares. So both of those are coming through.
Priorities and needs are having emerged and are engaging, and the community has matured. So we’ve talked about that. And finally, I would just end with the expenditures. And that is is the expenditures are both a change in costs as well as a change in type. And those are not necessarily unique.
And so, um, Councilmember Twist mentioned earlier, my much promised, um, uh, community and, and development, um, 120 page study that’s really talking about how we’re seeing the evolution in the community. So oftentimes people talk about, oh, we grew 2000 people, or we grew 200 jobs or something like that. The other part of this is we’re seeing an aging of the population.
Every council member knows this. Every member of the community can see it. But as we’re seeing that change that causes changes in what we need to do. Um, one of my classic examples that I’ve oftentimes used, and I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it recently, is that causes pools temperatures to be adjusted, that causes the type of
programs to change. Senior aerobic programs as opposed to youth swimming, uh, lap swimming, things like that. So you start seeing changes in demands and the timing. All of that comes together.
So it’s not just cost, but it’s also what needs to be done and how they create pressures onto the system. Next slide please. So we are trying to capture that through the long range financial model. I’ve talked a little bit about that.
This gives you a quick snapshot of where we are and where we are right now is we are updating, uh, so the model that you saw and that we talked about back in March was built on the 2024 actual we’re updating now, the 2025. It doesn’t take as much work as as it used to. And so it’s something that we’re moving through pretty quickly. And we’ll have that operational early sometime next week as we work on the long range financial plan.
In addition to that, we’re finishing that plan and as I mentioned, will be included into the budget and process and various elements of it. But I will let you know that the model that exists, we are using it. We are talking about what we call a financial model, um, a financial policy outcomes model.
That is something that will look something to the model that I’m going to show you a little bit later, in the sense that it’s a really policy oriented model.
But right now, as an example, the city manager a couple weeks ago asked me to do some modeling using our existing long range financial model, and in that it’s a little bit more cumbersome, but we go through and we can get the results that we needed to for the the policy question that she had asked at that time. Next slide please. So you had seen this slide.
It actually was about ten slides last time. And the real key is is off to the left side where we’re going on the key framework. We’re changing the planning horizon, the scenario testing. So there’s those two policy models that I briefly mentioned. I’ll talk more about making sure that other people use it.
Part of the reason why you see a couple of extra people tonight who aren’t speaking, but you’ll see them. You see them oftentimes talking about other elements. Uh, Brandon Rose, an example. It’s because they are part of this, and it’s ensuring that multiple people know how to use this thing, how it works together. Um, it’s market reflective and responsive.
So you’ve heard that and I’m not going to belabor any more of that. These are of the 14 changes that we made, these are a few of them that we highlighted on the right side. Um, obviously you can read those. I don’t want to go through it.
The key thing there is is there instead we switch from a single variable that was driving everything, which was a effectively inflation rate variable for both the the expenditure side and the revenue side. We’ve switched it in. I referenced back to a question that was asked in the previous section by the council member. I’m asking about discount rates.
That’s why I couldn’t answer it as specifically, perhaps as I should have. Which is to say the discount rate is 3 or 2.5% because there are multiple factors combining up to drive the revenue or the expenditure side. Um, and so it’s not a simple discount rate for this type of a model. Next slide please.
Uh, so um, there are three models that are effectively all connected, all building off the long range financial plan model or the long range financial model. Um, and there are two policy models. One of them is the financial policy outcomes model. We’re working on that now. It’s not operational yet, but it’s operational in the sense of the clunky ness of it.
But that’s the next thing I’ll be working on, is to get that into a much more refined approach. Um, the development fiscal impact model. The mayor already hinted that I have something fun to show you tonight, um, that you’ll all get to play with.
And we’re going to talk about that one, which is the one in green, and that’s the one that’s actually connected to the council’s, um, ordinances, where we’re including fiscal impacts. And so this shows you the actual model that we use, um, and exactly how it works. Next slide please.
So, um, one of the things that we have talked about that we continue to mention, and we do it in different ways, but we wanted to just really highlight it here because it’s critical to this. And that is is when you think about this, we broke the land use categories into eight types.
The reason for doing that, if you recall, and I’m just going to go back for a step there and remind you is is we have three residential types and five commercial types. Four of those commercial types produce positive revenue. The fifth is government non profit and religion. Um, unfortunately most of those well I shouldn’t say most.
They do not pay property tax. Um any of those entities and they shouldn’t for various reasons. And that’s tax policy. But it is a commercial use. So it used to be rolled into the two categories we used to have. And now it’s been split out.
And so as an example, if a church were to come forward or perhaps a nonprofit hospital, we can now estimate what those impacts are. Um, and very be specific about it. Nevertheless, as we look at it, as you can see, most of our revenue is derived from commercial roughly 55%. That’s including all revenue sources, which we’ll talk about when we get to the fiscal impact model.
And you can see where the where the expenditures are going. Again, we’ll be able to show that on the residential side, you can see and we’ve said this multiple times, that the revenues that produced by a single household household, whether it be multifamily, single family, do not equal the anticipated expenditures.
That’s based upon our analysis and our work and our best practice work that we’ve been doing for a number of years, as well as being reviewed by outside parties. The right side gives you that simple side, which is the the next slide. I’m just going to go into it because it’s all right here. Again, you’ve seen this slide back in March.
The numbers that were on that previous slide on the right side are exactly the same numbers here. They’re just simplified to show the three. But I’m just going to point them out to you up in the right hand corner. You see net fiscal impact. That’s the revenue number.
That’s how much revenue received from a single family home on average. That is the cost at 6545. If you recall, when we brought forward this, you have the operational cost of 40 to 95. And then the public investment side. And that’s the capital cost, the bonds, the CIPs and those types of things.
They total up to be 6545 for a single family home using the 2024 actual numbers. And thus the single family home creates a net effect of a -$3,360 per unit. So that’s the number we use. It comes from the Act for numbers. The annual Comprehensive financial report. I always get that wrong, but I think I got it right this time.
And so it comes from the actual numbers that are looked at and that you approved back in July. So those are the real numbers. If I could go forward to the next slide, please. So we had mentioned there are a number of financial headwinds.
That’s part of the reason for the long range financial focus as well as this new policy or um, revenue policy outcomes model. It’s to really be able to understand how this comes through and how this flows and what those impacts are going to look like and how we’re going to offset them.
One of the things that should always be mentioned, it’s it’s for you all know this, but I’m going to say it anyway because I think it’s really important to reemphasize this in Colorado, no local government can run a deficit budget. It must balance.
So therefore, even when we’re looking at a long range financial perspective and it comes up red, we know that as we get closer, we would have to balance that. So we have to figure out how we would adjust expenditures.
How we would adjust revenues, what kinds of things we would do, what the tools are, the mechanisms that US Council can employ at the advice of a city county manager that in order to balance that budget. So whenever we talk about some things and we say we’re coming to a ledge or we’re coming in, we see some inversion coming on, or if you see in the long range financial plans, something where it might show a negative, it’s because that is prompting an action that’s going to have to be a
policy action. So I referenced that only here because these are the things that have to be addressed. And as council or as mayor pro tem pointed out, we weren’t surprised by the fact that the, the, the oil and gas revenues were going to fall. We wanted to make sure that everyone was aware of it.
And so those things are being addressed in the 2027 budget. When Graham stands before you in the city county manager, stand before you and say, we have a balanced budget. These are the things we have to account for, the reason why we bring them forward isn’t that that isn’t unanticipated.
Oh my gosh, what are we going to do about it? It is. Here’s the things we’re addressing, and they will always be things that we’re addressing. Um, and has been pointed out earlier. Next slide please. Um, and I apologize if I seem like I’m preaching.
I’m not I’m just trying to bring it all together into a simplified snapshot. Um, again, I mentioned earlier that the long range financial modeling approach and these two subprocesses, these policy model approaches are really there to inform both council, but also, um, the, the, the leadership.
And as we look and connect things to and to some degree, the community as they think about the comp plan and mobility plans and as you bring this forward. So part of this is, is bringing that information into a very transparent manner as best we can. And to take an incredibly complicated set of information, pages and pages and pages. As you know, the budgets are roughly 4 or 500 pages.
And it put it into a snapshot that people will understand. So, um, that’s the real goal. With all this, I oftentimes use the terms that my job is to figure out, um, how to take, oceans of data and turn it into drops of useful information.
And so you can take the you can go from the ocean to the river to the stream, and I can do that. But the reality is, is that’s the real goal. Um, and so that’s really what we’re trying to do here. Next slide please.
Um, the revenue model that we’re talking about that’s really um, here’s the snapshot of what that’s going to look like. It already includes the change in land use. That’s what the long range financial modeling does. It incorporates retail revenue changes and looks at combined conditions.
So um, when Manager Hoffman asked me to do a quick scenario on something, we I asked her a few different questions and we evolved and changed each of these factors into the the larger model. That’s where we’re going to try to simplify into something that’s a little bit more effective. Um, to answer those questions in a, in a alternative scenario kind of approach. Next slide please.
So um, recent impacts that we’ve done both from the standpoint of the the long range financial model as well as the fiscal impact model. These are a couple of these are a quick list of things that we’ve done with the model. We have looked at the Lincoln Avenue housing project.
As you well know, the AdventHealth and UC health medical facilities. We looked at real berries changes in the baseline Center Street and what that would cause and changes in revenue and expenditures, and try to understand it. Because if you recall from that particular project as an example, they were adjusting the number of square footage, they were adjusting certain types.
And so we did that to better understand what they were. They were suggesting and bringing forward and how that would overall impact it. Um, there are two revenue timelines that we tend to look at, and that’s the construction period revenue versus the ongoing period.
I referenced that here because as mentioned in the presentation around the fiscal impacts, one of the one of the primary factors we get from development in a short term perspective is the use tax and building materials that can be $1 million or more in some cases on a particular project. But it’s a one time dollar. Um, and so we see those and oftentimes developers like to tell us about that.
Our modeling on fiscal impact is much more in the ongoing operational revenue side and the cost side. And we’re going to show you that next slide, slash no more slides. Curtis is going to prompt me. And I’m going to hopefully do this right. On the from. Pretty quick on oops.
Okay. Here is the fiscal impact model. This is live. So this is exactly how it works. This is exactly what it does. Um we tested it with um deputy city and County manager Casey. And that was the one that was in your presentation. It was called Casey’s Commons.
Um, it happened to be a multi-story building that was going to be mixed use, and it was going to be located in the parking lot just to my immediate east, uh, on three acres. And then we were going to have to figure out our parking issues.
However, we thought when I, when I suggested this to Jen, she said, can you make it live? Um, and make it so you all get to make the decision. So therefore we have we can do one right now. And that is Castoriadis Commons. So mayor, you get the first question how many single family units do you want in your commons? Is it just single family? Single family right now? That’s all I’m asking.
But I could have multi-family. You can have multi-family. I don’t worry, I’m going to keep going. Okay. Um. What how how large is my parcel? How many acres would you like it to be? Because this is a do you want to be ten acres. I love that, okay. Ten acres. We’re gonna create a ten acre parcel. Okay.
Um. All right. And that’s just kind of. So I keep track of how many floors I’m going to have to do. So it’s a partial. How many would you like some single family in this or. No. No, we have enough of that. Okay. On multifamily, this is mid density townhomes.
Um, some things that you the council’s talked about. How many of those would you like? Well, I do like condos and townhomes. I think those are really nice middle market product that we’re woefully short on. So, um, give me ten acres, like, what’s ten acres? Ten acres if you do it.
So what we would tell you is staff is is normal density for this type of housing might be 15 to 20 units an acre, might be around 15 units to an acre. Okay. Let’s do 15 units an acre. Well, that if we do that, then we’re going to cover the whole thing. Oh, we need a mixed use.
If you want mixed use, mayor, you can do another one. We can have limbs. Lane. So do you want let’s let’s let’s go ahead and do 50. How’s that? I was going to say 60. Oh, you want 60? Okay. Okay. Um, and as everyone can tell, this is not rehearsed. No, no.
And if you haven’t figured it out yet, um, are you going to apply here or are they going to pay cash in lieu? Oh, no. Eho applies. Okay. So that means it’s 20%. So we’re going to put 12 in of those. okay. Okay. Um and so any affordable that we need to do..
Well um so the 100% affordable that would possibly get it. We can do that. You could if you wanted to have a. Make them all affordable, then. You want them all 100% affordable. Yes. Okay. They’re going to be 100% affordable. It’s 15%. Or so. They need to be in the 60% or below.
There you go. All right. So as you can see we’re starting to fill it in. So for that particular category you can see it’s a -$237,720 okay. Right now in fiscal impact on an annual basis, you can also see it in the total column, which is the the B column.
Would you like any multifamily mayor? Sure. We can do some multifamily. How many how many units of that would you prefer? Um. Can we do an equal amount? Sure. Okay. So we’re going to do 60. Do you want all of those affordable or do you want some of those to be eho. all of them. Okay.
So you’ve done 120 units. Um, and you are now right now at a -$387,740. Um, so you said you wanted mixed use. So mayor or Mayor Pro Tem Lim, you’re going to be in charge of the commercial side. Would you like any office flex or innovation? Because I just broke the bank. Oh, okay.
How many how many square feet of office flex would you like? Um, gee, I don’t think we need any. Okay, so we’re not going to. Need any of that. Yeah. Production is usually like a light manufacturing. It could be. It could match well with some affordable or some, um, density housing, but sometimes it doesn’t.
So do you want to bring any there? No. Okay. How about some retail dining, first floor retail dining. Yes. How many? How many square feet would you like? Oh, geez. Um. Usually this building, I will just say to just help you out on the multifamily, assume about 1200ft per unit.
So therefore your floor plate looks like it’s going to be about, um, depending on how many floors you’re doing. But if you assume six, you know, 30 units per floor, you’re talking about 30,000ft per floor. So we could do 30,000ft if you’d like. Sure. It should be the whole floor. Okay. So we’re going to do 30,000. Now obviously we have stairwells and all that went.
But we’re not going to do that tonight. Uh, miscellaneous commercial. For those of you who don’t recall, this would be like insurance agents, um, beauty salons. Um, stockbrokers, many other people. So we can put some of that in if you’d like, because oftentimes that accompanies retail, um, and dining.
Well, then we should take some of the retail dining, reduce that to a certain extent. Okay. We’ll put 5000. Dollars on the first. How’s that? Yeah. Um, would you like any office space for nonprofits or perhaps, um, anything else in there? No, I don’t. Think so. So what you’ll notice is we went from.
If you look on that gold line underneath, you will see that it totals across by each type. But then as we come to the total over in B, you can see what the net fiscal impact is. Okay. So I’m just going to pull down now or pull up I should say.
And you’ll see the revenue totals. So that’s the revenue coming in from each of those sources. And you can see as we’ve said before and council briefings, the the residential does bring revenue in. But you can see right below it the expenditure cost side right below it. And so that’s what’s offsetting each other.
And that’s how you get the negative number. Um, and then finally you can see I’ve added two lines here in the green beneath. And they will total up to the 649 that you see. And that is the general fund tax revenues. That’s property tax sales tax.
And the and the use taxes including specific ownership, which is the taxes you pay when you license your car. Um, and then on the other side, we have operating versus capital costs. So you can see it all fits together.
Now I’m just going to do one last thing because, um, just for those who are really geeky and want to go even deeper, there are they all are. There’s all the revenue sources that we’re accounting for. These are summation ones because there are about 30 different revenue sources.
So you can imagine when I say charges for services, non rec fees, it’s more than just one thing. It’s about 5 or 10 different revenue sources um and rec services. ET cetera. You can see that. And here’s your expenditures. And again as a reminder, when we looked at that house in the garage, what you’ve got is the expenses. And they’re broken out by departments.
We’ve we don’t have them individual in the in the full model. We have them fully individualized. But in this particular case we summarize them into groupings. Um, and then you can see the CIP costs. And then you can see underneath in yellow. Um, and I’m only going to reference this for a brief second.
And that is, is there’s development business agreements. And you can see that be zero all the way across. And then you can see it’s shared. So if there’s not a specific development agreement in place, say at like baseline where there’s a very specific one, then it would we would calculate it in that first line and we would zero
out the second line, because we’re already committed to giving half or um, I got to get this right. 25% of the property tax and baseline, 50% of the sales tax and 60% of the use tax. So it will calculate that out and do that appropriately.
If we put in if I do for baseline, I have to do a manual part for that. But it works. And I’ll show you where the manual part comes. So in the end that shows you the detail and that’s where it is. Um, so this model is live.
So I’m going to make one a couple of minor changes, if you don’t mind. Just prove what I just or just talk about what I just did. Um, and that is, is I’m going to make this happen in baseline. So to do that, I’ve got to go over here.
And as I just mentioned, sales tax share is 50%. Property tax share is 25%. Or use tax shares 60%. Sorry. Um, and property tax share is 25. I need to do that in both places. And I’m going to show you what this does. Um, now I’m not changing it over on the residential side.
And the reason I’m not is because we are accounted for, that when the mayor decided to make them all 100% affordable because it basically took out all the property tax and all the use tax automatically, um, because that is a council.
And then the special limited partnership does that through its procedures. So I’ll come back down and show you that yellow line that I was talking about earlier. Um, that is right here.
And you can see now, because of that agreement, we are going to be giving or providing to that development through the Ura instead of the 41,000 bits proportional share, we’d make it $181,000 in sales tax sharing, property tax sharing and use tax sharing. And you can see where it is on the other one also. So the reason for doing that is so we don’t double charge somebody.
But now you can see what happened by doing that is in this particular case we went to a -215,000. So I am not trying to make you experts at this model. Um, as asked by the council member, this model is something this is exactly the model that I use.
There are some modifications that I need to make because of some specific things to the development, but this is pretty much how it all works. It is linked in and builds off of the long range financial plan model, and it’s that data coming from the 2024 actuals that drive all of this.
So as we move in and put the 2025 in, it will adjust it a little bit because of we obviously spent money in slightly different ways or got different levels of revenue, but it will stay somewhat pretty parallel to this. And this is exactly how we update every year now. But more importantly for you all to see, this is the model.
So one of the questions that was asked when we were going through that is will we share it? The idea is, is there’s two changes that we still have to make that I have to work with the city attorney office.
And and that is we’re going to put our logo on this, and then we’re going to put the disclaimer, the legal disclaimer to say this is here. And then we’ll pdf this and send it to them as part of that original, so they can see exactly where it’s coming from, what those costs are, and if they want to disagree with how much we’re spending on police and courts, we’re willing to have that conversation.
But that’s coming from our actual dollars. So at that, I obviously could do two more, but I want to be respectful of council’s time. And so this is exactly how it works. This is exactly what I do. I then add one other thing into that fiscal note.
As you well know, as I add a little bit of the underlying economic side of it, which is sometimes the indirect, so you can tell we don’t count the number of jobs because we don’t get we don’t get personal income tax here in Broomfield. That’s in Colorado. That only goes to the state.
So therefore, while it’s important that we have jobs and we talk about those because it creates opportunities and it creates people that are going to shop in our restaurants. Unless the restaurant is here, it’s it’s what economists refer to as indirect. So that’s the model. We wanted to share it with you tonight so you could see it live. This is way this is how it works.
And this all builds off of all of that work we’ve been doing. This is the simplified version. And I don’t mean it’s simplified in the sense of its content or its or its information. It’s simplified in that we’ve condensed it down. So it’s a um, um, consumable amount of data.
Um, the models that build this are, um, roughly, um, I want to say about 300 lines by about 50 columns and there’s like 6 or 8 worksheets that are all interlinked. So it’s a relatively complicated, but it flows through and it simplifies down to this. And this is what the ultimate goal was.
So at that mayor, um, unless you want me to play more and you want to build more things, um, we could do that in another time. And it’s a lot of fun. Trust me. Um, as Dan Casey found out when I built him, and just a reference back to Dan’s, just for a quick second.
Um, you’ll notice I got his to be close to zero, so it was actually that mixed use that stays pretty balanced. And you can see that it’s got affordable units. I had show units in it and square footage and including some new office space for government or nonprofit.
So at that mayor, I conclude my presentation and hopefully council found this interesting and a little bit fun. Tonight. I think it’s great. Thank you I agree. Let’s let’s give everybody. I think that’s the last time I’ve gotten applause or. I know. Well, I guess I would you know, this is a great tool.
Are we still going to have land use assumptions like we used to have in terms of what how much of the remaining undeveloped land should be commercial versus residential? This is really in a in addition to. So this isn’t a replacement okay. For any of those.
This is simply an opportunity for council to be able to uh, rather than asking questions from the dais, be able to ask those outcome based questions once you’ve gotten through kind of messing around with it. So when you get to those negatives, it allows us to have a deeper, more meaningful conversation not only about impact, but about intentional decision making that, yes, that affordable housing, even though it puts us 500,000 under it’s
worth it because A, b, c, d e, f g. But there it limits unintended consequences so that the decisions are being made. We know exactly what that decision is going to impact, which is then going to require additional adjustments from slide three, which was the decreasing the impacts from the
state on the 6 million decreasing oil and gas revenues. This this has been a really interesting tool. As we move through the two hospitals that are nonprofit conversations.
And then you add those numbers with existing business development agreements that we have to reimburse for infrastructure, and it adds a whole different level of conversation for council to be having. If I may, Jennifer, if I may or may just add on the long range financial model is where that, number of acres and all of that that you’re asking about that sits there with that. This is just the fiscal impact portion of it. All right.
Well then we will go to councilmember questions next. First we have Councilmember McKenzie. Thank you. Very fun. Um, would we be able to get access to the LR, LR underlying model, the 300 by 50? Um, eight. Um, mayor, mayor pro tem, that’s something that we’re working on now.
And it’s something that definitely I’m happy to sit down and go through with you, um, and just do that and then, yes, we can share. We’ll share that as appropriate. Thanks. Oh, God. Sorry. Councilmember Cohen. Thank you.
Mayor, if to go back to your model, since you said there was 80, what did you say? 80% built. So 20% remaining that can be developed, correct? Yes, sir. I don’t know how many acres that is, but I’m sure you know. Are you able to create several models of how that should ideally be developed so that we’re in the green and we’re all done, finished. Before we go back to scrape and rebuild mode.
So, um, mayor, mayor, pro Tem council members, Councilmember Cohen. Yes, um, we have um, the the land use side of the model is is active also. Um, and we haven’t scenario ized. We don’t realize it because in part we are right now reflects what market realities are.
Um, so right now, the main adjustments we’re making to it is, is the slowing of development and things like that. Um, we could do some scenario analysis, which is what the other model is going to do. The other policy model is to say, what happens if we change that ratios and things like that.
Um, we have to recognize within the way that we look at the land uses, what’s been approved in the PUDs or other things and reflect that, as well as the market realities. So we there’s most of those areas have an existing PUD in place. They’re not they’re not un unconsidered land.
I don’t know a good way to phrase that. I mean, could you do a scenario that says, this is where everything is now? This is based on the current comp plan. This is considered residential. This is visualized as commercial.
And how does that calculate out if it was fully developed as a commercial in this property and residential on this property, so that the current plan, this is where we’d end up either upside down or not, which I assume would be shared with the current Comprehensive Plan Committee as to whether they need to adjust what’s currently commercial to make more commercial, or to recommend that we do less residential going forward.
And we do do that, and that is part of the existing modeling approach. And then the policy model that we’re talking about, it would be that scenario change to say, what if we increase the commercial side by 20%? Um, it that’s the way that
we would do that. But we do do that now. I can do that now. And I do do that in the more cumbersome approach. So we have some sense that everything was developed as it is now, whether it would be how far we would be in the red, I assume we’d be in the red.
Well, if we or if we just keep building houses, if we keep saying yes to every housing, presumably will be upside down when all is said and done. And I will answer the first part of that question.
And then perhaps Manager Hoffman wants to add one of the things that we’ve been doing, working very hard on from the from that side of the modeling, the land use activity side is making sure that we don’t have unrealistic expectations. Um, and so that was both going back in and kind of stripping out things that were proposed or planned 20 years ago that aren’t there.
Those of you who may or may not know and maybe and Manager Hoffman may have mentioned this before, there was a plan and there was an actual plan and effort around creating a second mall here in Broomfield. Um, and so that was sitting in the model until a few years back.
And we’ve, we’ve stripped that out. Um, the difficulty we have in the way that you’re thinking about is we still have to match up to market realities.
So if you recall in the examples that I mentioned, that we have used these models for was looking at as an example at what’s going on with Center Street and the changing dynamic as they’ve adjusted the commercial square footage or, um, to figure out what that fiscal impact would be. Manager Hoffman, I don’t know if I answered that as fully as you could know.
I think just to add to that, it’s hard to scenario out anything other than the current PUD, because the process that it would have to go through, we would be modeling it when it when it came forward, the knowns are residential, costs us money. It’s not good. It’s not bad. It just is. That is just what it is.
Um, and the remaining 20%, um, Councilmember Cohen, is the very difficult to develop areas. So we’ve talked before that those areas would already be developed had it not been not because of market, but just because those are really those are tough areas. Um, and spots, regardless of of the pud. So again, the, the knowns are commercial covers the gap residential costs us.
That’s not to say don’t do residential. It’s simply to say we need to have a totality of circumstances and conversations about if this is approved, where is that gap going to be modified on on the back end? And that’s really the intangible piece of continuing to provide the gap housing.
It’s not that we don’t we’re not saying don’t do that. Uh, we’re simply saying something else needs to occur in order for us not to be in the red. I mean, we know how many homes we’ve we’ve approved already, correct? Yeah.
That we can count for what’s already approved and where we’re at. Correct. I mean, be helpful. I think going forward, especially for comp plan and budgeting, to know whether based on what we’ve already approved, where’s the trajectory, and do we need to be because we get I’m sure you do. I know council members get approached by developers.
We just had one today that said, well, would you want residential or commercial here? Well, I assume commercially just to balance the books on the counter side, of course, we’re told we need more housing to keep the housing prices from going up, whether that actually works or not.
But it would be helpful to be able to say, well, we’re in the 6040, we’re in 8020, we’re in this scenario. And there could be four different scenarios of what, based on how things develop. That’s fair. I hear I hear exactly what you’re saying. Let us because I don’t have a comp plan.
People are supposed to figure out what they should recommend if they don’t, because we don’t want to end up in a situation where we have to raise property taxes because we’ve overbuilt our homes, correct? Yes, yes. And, um, the conversation regarding the comp plan that council will be attending on the 29th, um, hearing from the 2000 residents that have weighed in, it’s pretty fascinating.
Um, the theme and comments are affordability, not affordable housing, but affordability for where we are, which means there’s a lot of people out there that are paying attention to what the last four years, five years has been generating.
So that’s a, um, Jeff and I and our team will put our heads together on the very broad if we were to. We have 6000 homes approved over the last four years. If the market agreed and said it’s on running that scenario. Yes. Uh, without To doubt one of the biggest. We’re having conversations about Center Street right now.
It’s not going to be a big shocker for you all, but we’re going to be hearing from real Barry. That Center Street is going to be pushed. So now with this. Push back or push forward? Push push back. Okay. Delayed. Yeah. Um, it allows us to run that modeling. Um, not for future decisions, but just for that current status.
Uh, to your point exactly. To be able to say, okay, we we anticipated we built out a budget seven years ago based on 1,000,000ft. And then we went to 600ft, and then we went to 200ft, and then we went to 175ft. Meanwhile, all of the residential has been moving forward.
So that gap isn’t just the future gap. It’s what this council is having to deal with as we move forward with that, that that future thought. It’s not even approving any new residential. To your point. It’s having that look statically about what we anticipate and development occurring, not for five years.
I assume we could do a scenarios based on where the market or the market takes off again. Correct. Absolutely. Go down or stay static. And I also just add because we know we I think what we need for more open space to get to 40. Right. Something like that. Close to that. Yep. Something that.
But we also I don’t I assume you have it our future parks or if we had a future rec center in a library satellite in ward five. How much space that would take. And that’s not you know, that’s zero revenue land. Correct. Or if the fire. I don’t know if Metro fire needs another fire station in addition to the one they’re hoping to get.
Now, that kind of scenario planning would just be helpful, but it’d be nice to have a different model knowing that the economy might go here, it might be here, it might be there.
What we should how conservative should we be in welcoming housing? Or we obviously want commercial, but I think it’s a question of how much housing we want to invite.. Staff will produce and provide, uh, as many scenarios and outcomes as possible. And council will, um, be, uh, be left with, uh, a fully transparent decision making tool. And a crystal ball. Okay. Thank you.
And don’t forget, the state likes to override our zoning to. And I’m sure they’re not done. With that. I don’t. Even know. How. I yeah, I don’t remember what. Council member, um, had indicated earlier, but anticipating additional unfunded mandates, whether that be, um, in zoning, whether that be in human services, whether that be.
So again, our, our being a city and county, while fantastic and and great jazz hands for having a combined, uh, a combined government. Uh, if we were just a municipality financially, we would be, um, very solid. The county level services, of course.
Um, we combine our budgets, but it’s really those social service networks that we are trying to balance and compensate with the municipal budgets. Um, so we don’t forget, we don’t expect in the next decade for things to get a whole lot better. Right? Though I think it would just note.
From the final statement going back to the previous conversation that, well, we’re looking at the inverse and trying to figure out how to avoid a bad financial. Other places are in a much worse scenario right now. Colorado Springs is cut its I think, its personnel by 1%. Um, Denver is cut hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of staff. I think Aurora’s already dipped into reserves at this point.
So the fact that we’re not at that stage is good. And obviously we want to avoid that. But I don’t want people to get the perception that things are super dire here, but we’re actually still holding on pretty good compared to our, our, our neighbors. We we are stable.
Councilmember Cohen and I meet with the Adams County managers monthly, and I meet with the Boulder County managers monthly. Um, and in years past, I would I would rail off those community names, but I don’t I don’t do that anymore. Um, simply because primarily the struggle with their teams and staff.
So they these budgets, all of us are in the same position of announcing these budgets. Um, you will see from an Adams County and a boulder perspective, um, probably seven communities that will be cutting from hiring freezes to significant cuts, in addition to what they had to do last year. Yeah. I just read boulders cutting. Boulder County is cutting 13.2 million. Yes. Last year.
And that’s on top of what what they’re what they what they’ve already what they’ve already cut. This council has made. Very difficult decisions over the last four years. And fiscal sustainability and security has gotten us to where we are able not to weather the storm because this is an a storm. This is this is where we are.
Um, so it’s the past four years in council’s direction and decision making that allows us not to be having those conversations with staff right now. Anything else? Council member. Cohen. Okay. Mayor Pro Tem Lynn. Um, I appreciate that.
The memo brings out the fact that this is, um, a model that council can use in their decision making process, that there’s other factors to take into consideration. What seems to me would this is ideal, but there there would be data on other fiscal impacts that could be in the model as far as our utility resources.
So, you know, like so we’re building, um, an infill project and we we don’t have, you know, we and they don’t have the infrastructure to, you know, to change out a single family house for a, you know, six, six, uh, unit duplex, you know, that kind of thing. So in that smaller case, but then there could even be commercial. I’m thinking of what we have a moratorium on.
There could be commercial where hey, we just say we do not have the water resources for this at all. And so how. So that to me, seems like it’s data based, but it’s not going to be presented in this model.
So I just I guess I want to know that that rest of that impact on utilities is going to be presented still in any memo about land use. Does that make sense? Absolutely. It will be. We’ll continue to have fiscal notes outside of of this general tool. Um, again, this is just it’s a it’s not a 300 zero foot. It’s not a 15,000.
It’s a 5000 foot. Giving council the opportunity primarily council. Mayor Pro Tem Lynn, not to be a decision making tool, but to help council understand the trade offs and to help council understand what those decisions, what those impacts are. So it may influence the decision, but it’s not a matrix.
In order to say thumbs up or thumbs down, there’s going to be a multitude of other elements to be considered. Timing market bonding, um, capability for that additional, you know, those that financial layering. Um, we just wanted to provide a tool that wasn’t so cumbersome.
You all would have to be staff in order to navigate the multitude of elements. But these are all of the top lines. Um, and we’ll continue to add, um, a those static figures on that on, on the line.
So not only the numbers that you would put in, but the broad based, can we Curtis, would you be kind enough to pull back up? Um, Jeff, I think it’s pay. What? Uh, it’s this. It’s the matrix that has the the static numbers per.
Element that council can then look down and say, how much is X? And then they’ll be able to put it back up in that model. Council member as as criticism is is is is pulling that up. I think the easiest way to, um, uh, next page, please. Um, these numbers will also shift.
Uh, Council member, uh, Mayor pro tem, to your point, um, as utility costs go up, like on our on our house matrix Y, we have the garage now is because we always had service levels, but we didn’t have the infrastructure utility costs, which is now what we consider to be the garage. Those static numbers will continue to move. What that annual cost is. Um, so council will will also continue to have.
Again, this is it’s not a static document, which is why we don’t use it as a decision making tool. We use it as an informative tool, as one of those elements to help council make these decisions. Mr.. Remind the, you know, the sheet that I’m talking about that has. It’s the page before after this one I think. Thank you.
I think it’s the the house you’re talking about. Right. That what you’re talking about or. No, but I don’t want to go to 10:00. I know that council’s tired. Okay. Um, next slide. Next slide. Next slide. Next slide. Next slide. Uh. One more. Oh, we’re getting really close. Oh, this is the the very last slide. Yeah. It’s the details.
There we go. Okay. So those are the fixed costs that council will can that will continue to be modified as we move through not only annual budgets but as we update those expenses and those revenues. So those static categories Councilmember limbs. So if you look down, um, debt payment is a great one.
So kind of what Graham was talking about before when the Gatsby changed, um, and it looked like we all of a sudden we were spending $200 million more than we were the year before. Simply because of the recording and reporting.
This will provide transparency not only to each one of our divisions and departments, but as those costs and revenue increases and decreases, Council will be able to begin to familiarize themselves with these categories that we use. And then input those into that, into that matrix.
So you all will become resident experts of being able to navigate this tool and will give you insight into what our conversations are on the front end, the back end. And as we’re putting those those those memos together. Okay, good. Thanks. All right. Thank you. Any other comments? Questions from council? Well, thank you very much. Mr. Mayor. Council. Thank you, Mr. Clerk. Uh, our next item this evening provides an update on the City and County of Broomfield.
Zero waste goals and initiatives. Council has a copy of the agenda memorandum, which I’ll ask our staff to begin the discussion. Where we’re coming around third, heading into home. Mr. Gordon. Very good. Mayor. Mayor Pro tem, uh, Council members and city leadership. I’d like to introduce our sustainability manager, Alex Maura Van Dyke.
She will be giving a presentation on our zero waste plan update. No one wanted to stay. It’s gonna be thrilling. Uh. Thank you. Uh. Good evening. Mayor. Mayor pro tem and council. I will attempt to keep this under two hours. Um, just kidding.
My concealer is fading, so we gotta get out of here. Um, but I digress. My name is Alex Van Dyke, and I’m the sustainability manager for our sustainability team. Um, located within the Public Works department. Tonight, I’m here to present our zero waste update, presenting where a 2025 diversion numbers landed.
What’s driving the trends? You’ll see in the data and where our team is focused next. Next slide please. So it looks like a lot we’re going to run through it I promise. Um but we’ll start with the background on what we mean by zero waste and diversion to level set. Um why this sector matters for our mission goals.
And then we’ll walk through the council adopted goals and initiatives that anchor this work. From there, we’ll dive into the actual numbers and the trends behind the data, how some of those have shifted, and the context behind those changes. And then I’ll close with what our team is actively doing right now and where we’re headed. Next slide please.
Okay. So before we get into the numbers it helps to remember why waste is part of our climate work at all. Landfills generate methane a greenhouse gas roughly 28 times more potent than carbon dioxide. Separately. Plastic pollution has impacts at every stage.
Production affects fence line communities and improperly discarded plastic pollutes our waterways, much of it difficult or impossible to recycle. In 2020. In our 2024 community and community wide emissions inventory, the waste sector accounted for 2.2% of total emissions. About 16,000 tons of CO2 equivalent.
That’s a smaller slice than transportation or buildings, but this sector is arguably the one residents relate to most, as it is highly tangible and offers a daily choice. Deciding what goes into the recycling bin versus the trash can. Next slide please. Before we get into the numbers again, I wanted to show here our zero waste action plan how it defines zero waste and diversion rate. So zero waste is much more about just recycling.
It’s a systems approach eliminating wasteful practices up front, then building our reuse, recycling and composting systems so materials get their highest and best use. Ideally recirculating value back into our local economy. Diversion rate is simply just the amount of waste diverted from the landfill through recycling, composting, reuse. Divided by the total amount of waste generated.
That’s the number you’ll see me come back to you throughout this presentation. Next slide please. Speaking of the zero waste action plan, let’s talk about where this commitment came from. So in February of 2020, Council adopted resolution 2020-65 establishing Broomfield zero waste goals.
The 2022 zero Waste Action Plan translated that resolution into 14 specific policies, programs and infrastructure initiatives. The target state 50% diversion by 2025 and 100% by 2035. If every initiative in the plan is fully implemented, that would get us to about an 80% diversion rate.
Also, just to note that the Zero Waste Action Plan states that our diversion rate in 2020 was 28%. But recently, looking at our data from 2020 and retract, which I will talk about more, it now states 25%. This change could have occurred to a occur to due to refinement in data, which could have taken place after the data was gathered. For purposes of this plan.
But I state this now because 25% is the more accurate baseline number reflected and will be used throughout this baseline presentation. But more on that number here shortly. Next slide please. So the 14 initiatives highlighted in the plan Blankenship break into three categories.
On the policy side, we have community Recycling and Composting ordinance product policies. Leading Colorado on reusable a clean community fee and construction deconstruction, demolition, diversion requirements. On the program side, we have leading by example internally, outreach and education, technical assistance, universal collection service provider incentives, a food waste prevention campaign, and a business recognition program.
And on the infrastructure side, Building Materials Reuse Center and a local center for hard to recycle materials like a charm. Next slide please. All right. Now to the numbers themselves. Our 2025 diversion rate came in at 26%. That is 17,128 tons diverted out of 65,483 total tons generated. This diversion rate includes materials, recycled, organics, composted, and materials labeled as reuse.
This rate of 26% does mean that we are behind the 50% target by 2025. Total tonnage generated is virtually flat compared to our 2020 baseline of 65,800 tons. So less than a 1% change. But that flat headline number actually understates progress. Again, total community tonnage has held steady despite a 12% population increase since 2020.
Looking at the data on a per capita basis, residents are generating almost 11% less waste than they were in 2020. And on a per capita waste sector emissions. That is down almost 12% per person. Again, more on this in a minute, but individual behavior is genuinely improving, especially on the residential side.
As you’ll see residential side as you’ll see on the next slide. Now, of course, to caveat all this, we use a tool called Re track, which tracks and calculates our waste data. Waste hauling companies are required to annually report the types and quantities of materials removed and where they are taken.
Data gets reported into the system by registered haulers by January 31st of the following year, and then the Zero Waste Program Manager over at Boulder County Resource Conservation District. Quality checks the data for major issues.
However, what I’ve noticed since diving into the hauler data for the past two years is that the data is still reported incorrectly from haulers, so I’ve been working with the Zero Waste project manager to reconcile major inconsistencies in the data. It has gotten better. Our numbers are more accurate, but it’s still not perfect. Nor is the way the haulers report their data perfect. But it is improving. Next slide please.
So getting into our performance by sector breaking diversion down by sector tells the real story. So residential diversion sits at 38% solidly ahead of our community average of 26%. Commercial is at 16%. And commercial also happens to be our largest generator. 53% of everything Broomfield generates is on the commercial side, so it is our biggest source of waste and our lowest performing sector. On diversion.
The commercial side. It’s the single largest opportunity, though, to close the gap towards our 50% target. And it’s where several of our near-term initiatives are aimed. Next slide please. That’s generation by type. But looking at what’s actually in that 65,000 total tons generated about 74% or 48,000 tons is still landfilled.
Solid waste recycling accounts for almost 25%, equivalent of about 16,000 tons, and organics is a small slice at 1.3%, or 829 tons. But that category is where we are seeing the fastest growth. Reuse is not included in this chart because it did not fit. It is too small. Um, it is only 0.009% of the overall pie.
But I did want to state that it is another stat that we do look at organics. To come back to that is up 163% since 2020. Prior to last fall, the Tree branch recycling center was only open a few weeks of the year and only accepted leaves.
Now the center is open for year round operation, excepting tree and shrub branches, grass clippings, weeds, flowers. In addition to leaves there. This was a huge part of the 960% increase in yard waste data. Specifically looking at that, um, going from 50 tons in 2024 to over 534 tons in 2025.
Again, organics is a small piece of the overall pie, but it’s a strong signal that when we build convenient infrastructure, the residents will use it. Next slide please. Zooming out to the six year picture, this is our diversion rate overall. Um, over our total, um, our total waste generated broken down from landfill recycling and organics.
Um, so as you can see, 20, 25% again, that will be our baseline diversion rate number we’re looking at here. Um, looking at 2022, that was a rough year for us. But some things happened. So understandable. But that was our lowest diversion rate. Our highest total waste generated.
Um, but we peaked in 2022 and have been coming down ever since. So peaked at 81,000 total tons generated in 2022. And now we’re back to 65,000 total tons in 2025. The takeaway I’d give here is that 2025 is our strongest diversion performance in six years, but it’s also the first meaningful uptick after several flatter years, though. So things are progressing. Next slide please.
This is where the per resident story really shows improvement. So your graph to the left total waste generated per resident is now down to 0.79 tons. While the 2020 baseline was 0.89 tons per person. Looking at our peak again in 2020, two of 1.
1 ton per person of waste generated in just three years at a swap dropped quite impressively and again, an overall net reduction of almost 11% per person since 2020, and then emissions per person tell a similar story. The graph on the right. We now have 0.15 metric tons of CO2 per person generated this past year, down from 0.
17 tons in 2020, and down even further again, of course, from our 2022 peak of 0.21 tons of CO2 per person and almost 12% reduction per capita. Both trend lines point in the same direction. Even as our community has grown. Each resident on average is generating less waste and less waste related emissions than they were five years ago. Next slide please. So this is my a little out of order.
But coming back to that six year trend and looking at it broken out by sector residential versus commercial, um, you can see here again same kind of trend. But since 2022 both residential and commercial have, uh, continued declining commercial stayed elevated for a little bit longer but has been declining over recent years.
The direction is encouraging for both sections. And as we saw in the performance by slide, performance by sector slide, a few slides back. Commercial remains the larger and slower moving piece of the puzzle. Next slide please. So some context behind why data has looked different. Um and is encouraging.
So uh, again I caution into reading too much into single year over year swing. But to look at the longer trends but reporting itself expanded this year with over 35 haulers reporting in track for 2025, giving us a more complete picture of community wide activity than we’ve had in previous years.
I conducted active quality control and review of data this year, catching hauler reporting errors where I could and correcting material classifications. The Boulder County staff have been helping supporting haulers on reporting accuracy, which is reducing discrepancies at the source and on the infrastructure side.
The Residential Waste Services program launch and the tree Branch recycling centers move to year round operation for yard waste collection, both directly boosted diversion diversion tonnages. Next slide please. So turning to what we’re actively working on. Uh, on the extended producer responsibility side or EPR, we’re contracting with Circular Action Alliance or CAA, which is the state’s regular registered producer responsibility organization for reimbursement covering recycling, outreach and education.
Broomfield Recycling Center operations and the Residential Waste Services Program administration on the Broomfield side, staff side on the Universal Recycling Ordinance or Euro. We were awarded a C3, which is the Colorado Circular Communities Grant, to bring on consulting support for a feasibility study and policy analysis.
The goal is to identify the barriers to implementation and to come back with actionable, phased recommendations. Not a one size fits all mandate, but an approach tailored to Broomfield specific situation. That means looking closely at a few things.
The challenges non HOA residents currently face, the fact that we have several distinct groups to design around, including single family homes, multifamily properties of all sizes, businesses and homes, and how a phased rollout should align with the state’s own EPR timeline, particularly as it relates to business recycling requirements. The study will build upon past experiences to inform a more robust and effective Euro. This work is directly responsive to the commercial diversion gap I flagged earlier.
CAA has recommended a Euro as a way to reinforce EPR diversion impact, and I do apologize for all the acronyms in that one sentence. Um, but it continues. We’re also evaluating organics and drop off expansion.
So food waste and green race, green waste drop off options at the Tree Ranch Recycling Center and Broomfield Recycling Center, plus a hard to recycle materials drop off location at the recycling center. And finally, we continue to fund our Green Star Schools, a program administered by Eco Cycle that brings waste reduction, composting and recycling education directly into our K through 12 schools. Next slide please.
Looking ahead to some of our near-term priorities, we have lead by example piloting, internal composting at Cob facilities and phasing out single use plastic utensils, green events and procurement. Looking at developing environmentally preferable purchasing policies. It’s a mouthful and zero waste event standards. Looking at building an eco leaders team internally. So an inter-departmental group of employees, champions that can help when just our team of three can’t get the word out.
And also a commercial partnership with the Colorado Green Business Network to offer free technical coaching to local businesses, again, aim squarely at that commercial diversion gap. Next slide please. So in closing, that is our 2025 picture.
Modest but real progress on a per capita basis, a commercial sector that remains our biggest opportunity and a set of concrete initiatives underway to close the gap towards our 50% target. At this time, I’m happy to answer any questions you might have. Thank you. Thank you very much, Miss Moore. Van Dyke, uh, that was a great presentation. Thank you. Uh, we’ll go to council next for any questions or comments. Mayor Pro Tem lim.
Hi. I just wanted to make one comment. Um, for. I don’t think you emphasize this. The, um, in the organics and drop off expansion. That’s that’s really exciting. I know there’s a lot of, um, residents who had wished that we would have included compost in our on our single hauler.
Um, so that that didn’t happen. So it would be great if we now have this drop off, at least. Um, and from what I know from the ACS committee, we’re doing it. I mean, we’re looking into options that really will not be very expensive or we won’t have to put much money into it all.
So do you want to comment on that for both the charm and the composting? Yeah. No, it’s it’s very exciting that we have these opportunities. Um, coming up fast. I know Barney has been, um, Mr. Gordon has been hard at work, um, and working with our waste and recycling coordinator.
Um, and facilities, uh, to work with local composting and, um, hard to recycle company. A hard to recycle company to come in and help us with improvement of our diversion rate and to offer it, um, at very low, if not zero cost to residents.
Um, so it’s very exciting, but, um, yeah, I mean, it’s all part of the initiative stated in the Zero Waste Action plan, and it’s awesome that, you know, before prior to this year, we hadn’t really even started work on that. And now just this year, we’ve already started on so many of the initiatives highlighted in the plan. So it’s pretty cool. I guess.
Not only will it not be expensive for the residents, it the, the the, um, hard to recycle material I know is, you know, possibly not even hardly any cost to the city. So that’s particularly what I wanted to emphasize is so residents knew this is not a big budget item that we’re talking about.
We’re we’re looking at we were doing a lot of in-house preparation with staff and things like that, that it’s not going to be a big expenditure for the city either. So that is correct. Yes. I’m sorry. Okay. Um. Councilmember McKenzie. All right. Quickly. Three questions.
Um, maybe, like a few months ago or so, we were talking about embedding GHG impacts into our systems and processes to be incubated by ACS. Any update? Yeah. So we are still actively working on that. Um, I will say it. It’s definitely on our radar. Um, and at least with the zero waste action plan.
Um, when this was put together, the financial impacts, at least in this different from our greenhouse gas emission plan, um, financial impacts were taken into account when this, uh, plan was created. So looking at grant funded opportunities, cost neutral, policy driven and capital improvements.
Um, prioritization also included, uh, estimated diversion impact potential, estimated GHG reduction, staff time and costs, which is further than the GHG plan got. But I will say those metrics are also many years old now. Um, and if we would like to reprioritize those metrics will likely need to be, I would say, revisited. Um, I’m not I’m not steering away from your answer.
I’m just saying that the at least on the waste side of things, it gives us a little bit more of an insight into how that can all come together. But in short, we are still working on it. Period. Cool. Okay.
Second question is we just had a long discussion about, you know, residential is net negative to the budget 3000 or whatever the figure is. And to, uh, Councilmember Cohen’s point. Uh, if we’re at 80%, build out the rest of the 20%, potentially, like if we wanted to optimize our budget, we should just do straight commercial, for example, I’m just taking it to the extreme.
But if we did straight commercial for the remaining 20%, given that the commercial is the biggest, they’re the biggest polluters and they’re the worst at, um, diversion. When that make your job harder. I consider it an opportunity. Yes.
It is something to definitely consider, but I will also just add that, um, you know, depending on the outcomes of the universal recycling ordinance, I think that would greatly help. Um. Period. Sorry. Part B of that question is, is very interesting because we can put in on Kastrioti Lane or whatever it was. Um, the exact acreage, the units, etc.
and we can find out what the fiscal impact is and it will inevitably have an impact on our zero waste goals. But we don’t know that. And when we’re to manage our Hoffman’s point about those trade offs, it’s sort of like this will have a direct negative impact of, let’s say, -$3,000 on our budget and the impact to our waste goals are question mark.
You see what I’m saying? Yeah. The question then is do we have are we embedding this type of thinking into our development agreements? Are we you know, when we talk to the Chamber of Commerce and the business, uh, businesses here in Broomfield telling them like, hey, we need
we need to fix this, you know, to really get that embeddedness into where we have leverage. I’m going to take I’ll take that question. You’re doing an excellent job, by the way. Thank you. But go for it, please. Um, it’s not unlike the steps that council has taken. Council member McKenzie over the last three years.
When commercial, um, never even contemplated solar. Uh, when commercial didn’t ever contemplate sprinklers, when they didn’t contemplate EV charging. So, um, yes, embedding those level of expectations, um, is certainly something not only in the business development agreement.
Um, but that in the memo and while the presentations from the developers, um, just add it to the list, right. So they become accustomed to talking about those other three main components.
Uh, so you add two more, to what degree are you going to be Leed certified? I mean, council asked the question of the architects when we had the conversation with the people that were, um, architecting and building the PD, building all of those conversations, um, not only are they relevant, not only are they timely, not only are they not difficult to embed in these conversations, but universally, a lot of those conversations are occurring in every other realm that these developers are operating in.
I wouldn’t foresee it to be any different in municipal as well. Cool. The reason I asked these questions is because the organizational consequence reality of this holistic type of thinking depends on the degree to which it is embedded in.
So the reason I asked previously about our discount rate, for example, is because that is essentially discounting the intergenerational equity on future lives. And so when we think about our financial models or development agreements, you know, without going into too much depth, it’s really an exercise to think about how we’re embedding these things together. So all right, that’s it. Should I go ahead? I’m sorry. Uh, yeah. Councilmember Cohen.
I think I’m last. I just wanted to follow up on the 16% among the commercial folks. I assume that’s typical. We’re not atypical among communities that that’s standard for commercial. Yeah. That’s great.
Is there anybody who has been successful in getting that number up to a higher amount? Anything that would be a model for us to target? Yeah. Um, I would say the municipalities that have braided a universal recycling ordinance with a single hauler program slash pay as you throw model have had the most success. Um, so cities like, here I go. Well, Fort Collins, for one. They have a they have a very high diversion rate.
Longmont. Um, I’ll leave it at that. At least on the commercial and overall side of things. Um, but they are. Yeah, they have implemented those, um, and have seen great progress.
Um, I will say overall, when we look at the state not to pat ourselves on the back, but, um, this state, uh, diversion rate as of 2025 was 16.7%. Front range was 16.9%, and ours is 26%. So that’s also hopeful to look at.
Is there anything in the Fort Collins and Longmont programs that we are missing that we could add, or at least have the opportunity when the opportunity comes to make adjustments? Yeah, that’s something. Um, I will definitely look into that, uh, more about how their programs are set up so we can, you know, use best practices and implement best practices moving forward, for sure. So look forward to seeing that.
And, um, will the state the coming recycling program from the state have any impact commercially? Yes. The initial rollout, um, of and I assume the state is EPR. I’m sorry. Um, yes. The at least that’s the hope. Uh, it will roll out first on the residential side, residential, including single family and multi-family of all sizes.
Um, that we are working through this and, uh, compost as well as businesses, schools. Um, will also be included in part of the in the EPR rollout in later years, but are slated to start, I believe, in 2028.
And I meant to ask earlier in terms of Longmont and Fort Collins, what in particular is it that they’re doing? I know businesses would if it was profitable, they’re not going to take on any additional costs unnecessarily, and that’s why they’re low. But is there anything in particular what is that’s driving Fort Collins in Longmont to have more success? Yeah, I unfortunately I can’t say, um, exactly what they’re doing at this time that’s driving such success.
I do know, though, that standing up a, um, a commercial program is extremely important to helping these businesses with the policies that we might throw at them. So if we just say, here is a universal recycling ordinance, good luck. That won’t fly.
Um, so there will need to be, um, a lot of staff time diverted to helping commercial businesses, especially smaller ones who will be mostly greatly affected by this to ensure that they will be successful and to help them with implementing recycling if they don’t already have that in potentially composting as well. But are the small businesses this do it less than the big businesses? I unfortunately don’t also don’t have that number.
It is the numbers that come in. It’s from the haulers themselves. Um, and not the businesses. Okay. So thank you very much. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Council member Peterson. I just have one question. Yeah.
Uh, I didn’t see this in the presentation, but, uh, on page four of the memo, um, it showed a chart that showed, uh, multifamily is I had 72% diversion rate. Um, which is twice that of single family. That seemed really surprising. And I’m wondering if you can explain that. Absolutely. Yes. So, multifamily. Um, is an outlier. Uh, it is difficult to obtain data specifically from multifamily complexes.
Um, and we are hoping with EPR rolling down that we will be able to be able to better break down the actual data coming from each sector, specifically breaking out residential and single family, multifamily and commercial.
Um, while we are confident in the overall community numbers, um, how it breaks down, we are trying to better understand that, especially on the multifamily side, because the graph shown there, um, from my understanding, isn’t what’s actually happening on the ground. A lot of apartment complexes have extreme issues with recycling. If they even have recycling.
So the numbers reflected in the memo, I would say put a big asterisk next to that, which is why in the presentation tried to combine from a residential aspect to kind of level the numbers out a little bit better. Okay. That makes sense. Thank you. Sure. All right. Thank you. Any other questions? Comments. I’m not seeing any. Well thank you very much for this update. And we look forward to hearing more. Thank you all so much. Have a good night.
Thank you. Well that concludes the agenda items for this evening study session. Is there any other business to come before the council? From my colleagues or staff? All right. There being no further business, the study session is