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HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.council.regular.20200428 1 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL APRIL 28TH, 2020 At 5:00 p.m. Mayor Torre called the regular meeting to order with Councilmembers Richards, Mesirow, Mullins and Hauenstein joining via video conference. PUBLIC COMMENT: Jeffrey Stromberg – Mr. Stromberg said he is calling on behalf and in support of Lee Mulcahy. He said council should review Lee’s hours as it relates to his work approval having to do with his property. Mr. Mulcahy is currently in non-compliance and would like to pay the fines to be brought back to a state of compliance. on compliance. If council were not to do a review of his hours, it would be him losing his due process. Lee Mulcahy – Mr. Mulcahy said his friend Tom Coggins is having difficulty getting through, so he read a statement from Mr. Coggins asking how the situation got so out of control. He said that Mr. Mulcahy has not been given credit for construction hours and is asking for compromise. APCHA had a retreat recently and discussed obeying applicable laws. Peter Grenney – Mr. Grenney asked when will there be a public discussion on how the 13 million dollar budget shortfall will affect the new city building and remodel of the Armory building. He said the new city project should be suspended now until the community can weigh in. Mayor Torre said there will be a budget update work session coming soon. COUNCIL MEMBER COMMENTS: Councilwoman Mullins showed off her mask which she got from the city. Last night we did quite a bit to help one of our largest business sectors. She has an idea which would benefit restaurants and people in need of meals by doing a restaurant voucher program. Avon and Silt both have them currently. It might be something to look into and benefit a lot of people in town. Councilman Mesirow thanked Ann for her suggestion. He’s also thinking about how we invest in the future that we want. Councilwoman Richards thanked everyone watching. She thanked people who have been isolating and thinking twice before leaving the house and using face coverings. She follows the national news and said it is interesting to see the trouble that all states have had with obtaining accurate testing. She said they are currently doing everything within our powers and abilities to help the city. Councilman Hauenstein said he took a ride through town today and it was nice to hear a jackhammer and see some activity in town. He thanked the engineering department for the 700-site safety plans they processed to get things going again and emphasized how important it is for the contractors. Mayor Torre said he wished everyone health and happiness during these times. The stay at home order and social distancing still in place and these are important days. The city did put in a mask mandate and it’s up to each of us to do our part. Thousands of masks have been ordered by the city and should be here by the end of the week. He supported the mask ordinance because this community is still seeing arrivals from out of town. A return to work is on the horizon and there are more social contacts going on, but we don’t want to see a resurgence. CITY MANAGER COMMENTS: 2 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL APRIL 28TH, 2020 Sara Ott said that last Thursday she made a disbursement of 200,000 to Pitkin County as part of the financial economic assistance that city council authorized. This was run through Aspen Community Foundation and an anonymous donor matched us dollar for dollar on that. The budget update is scheduled for May 4th this coming evening and have some updated revenue estimates to make everyone aware of. She also wants to share that Jeff Woods, after 23 years of service, will be retiring on June 30th. He is known for some of the most iconic features of our parks amenities including Sky Mountain and the John Denver Sanctuary designed. He personally helped design most of that. She will be making an interim appointment but won’t fill that position for the rest of the year. She has hired an Assistant City Manager, Diane Foster. She is most recently City Manager of Park City, Utah. Work ethic and technical skills. Councilman Hauenstein thanked Sara for burning the candle at both ends. Mayor Torre thanked her for her hard work as well. BOARD REPORTS: Mayor Torre said ACRA met this morning in its first teleconference. A lot went on regarding the hospital, airport, tourism recovery plan, etc. He said he will get council the notes on that very soon. Councilwoman Mullins said RFTA is meeting tomorrow morning and the Board of Health on Thursday. She said they saw an educational presentation about the state of our county today. She said they had a CORE meeting a week or so ago discussing budget and next week she will have a RFTA report. Councilman Mesirow said that last Friday, they held an APCHA retreat. It was a successful retreat. He said they went through their mission statement, vision statement and values and plugged them into ten areas of focus. We will have a plan which APCHA will review and will share with the council. We will have 5 big picture priorities. Councilwoman Richards dittoed what skippy said on the APCHA retreat and said there will be a zoom call Friday with club 20. CONSENT CALENDAR: No items were pulled for review. Councilwoman Richards motioned to adopt the consent calendar as presented, Councilwoman Mullins seconded. Roll call vote: Hauenstein, yes; Mesirow, yes; Mullins, yes; Richards, yes; Torre, yes. 5-0, motion carried. NOTICE OF CALL UP: 227 E. Main Street Amy Simon Ms. Simon said it’s a 3000 square foot lot. There is a Victorian era miner’s cottage on the property and will be converted to a single-family home. They will restore the house and expand it. HPC approved this unanimously 7-0. 3 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL APRIL 28TH, 2020 Councilwoman Mullins asked if it’s a mixed-use property and Ms. Simon said yes. Councilwoman Mullins asked if the house is remaining in its original location and Ms. Simon said yes. Councilwoman Mullins said she doesn’t support calling this up. Councilman Hauenstein said he did a site visit and it needs some tender loving care as it’s in bad shape. He asked about the trees in the back being removed and Ms. Simon said yes, the parks department has given permission for this. He’s comfortable with this and said he has no desire to call up. Councilwoman Richards said she sees no need for call up. Mayor Torre said he has a concern on Main Street with residential taking over commercial. He wondered if there is an opportunity to talk about this and asked if community development is also concerned. Ms. Simon said with the recent code amendments, council did discuss the uses and what is most acceptable on Main Street. There are a lot of historic homes which line that street and the square footage allowed for residential is much lower. There are a lot of upsides to the restoration. Councilman Mesirow said he’s not interested in calling this up and we need to respect our boards and commissions vote and is in the scope of what we allow. To him, however, this does not meet the best outcomes for the community. Councilwoman Richards said she’d be happy to look at the zoning on Main Street for better outcomes. Councilwoman Mullins said its city council’s fault because we’ve been scared to death to touch residential guidelines. It’s not HPC’s fault. This is something that this council should look at in the future, not now obviously. We do need to approach it at some point. Phillip Supino said community development is happy to have this conversation moving forward and are prepared to come to a work session to facilitate this. Councilman Mesirow said he puts the blame with the decision makers of the past. He’s ready for this conversation. Mayor Torre told Ms. Simon there will be no call up on this item. PUBLIC HEARING: Ordinance #03, Series of 2020 – Second Reading of Wireless Communication Facilities Design Ben Anderson Mr. Anderson said they postponed this from March 24th and said the city has spent extensive amount of time on this. public outreach campaign. HR Green, an engineering consultant group, has been really helpful. The primary thing this ordinance does is adopt design guidelines for wireless infrastructure for small cell facilities. He said they amended chapter 26 of the land use code to reference these guidelines. Mr. Anderson summarized that was presented previously and the adjustments that have been made. The carriers think our set up won’t be feasible. We certainly heard their comments on dimensions and underground vaulting but think that what is going on in the industry. Denver is on version three of the guidelines in response to these things and there will continue to be changes. There is a variation process with HPC and P&Z. If the carrier can make the case for the variation, we will grant it. 4 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL APRIL 28TH, 2020 Staff recommends approval on second reading. Mr. Anderson read a public comment from Ruth Krueger received last minute. She’s opposed to having dangerous technology in her backyard. She’s satisfied with the level of service she has now. She mentioned invasion of privacy. Many cities are refusing this to be allowed. It’s not compatible with our special environment. Stand fast and just say no. Councilwoman Richards said council received an email from John Bush regarding the original historic streetlights. We need to keep the older street lights and use them in other places and preserve them. She also wondered how we build a defense in advance because she doesn’t want every location to receive a variation. It makes her nervous. Mr. Anderson said the carrier would have to make a convincing case on our design guidelines not allowing their service to work. We have to be reasonable in what we are asking of these folks and find an appropriate balance. Andrea Bryan said that at present under our guidelines and using the AT&T master license as an example, the providers are required to comply with federal law regarding emissions and health concerns. Locally we don’t have the ability to regulate this. Unless the federal standards change, we just need to comply with this and we can’t use health concerns to revoke a permit. Councilwoman Richards said they are hearing a lot about carrier requirements, but we need to be equally as strong about our community requirements. We are the first in the country to introduce the parking system we have now. We didn’t want standard parking meters. There are a lot of examples of the extent we’ve gone too on these things. We do we need to put into the ordinance that they need to preserve our historic streetlights. Mayor Torre agreed that is what he is concerned about as well. Tyler Christoff, Utilities Director, said that would be spelled out for the carriers from the get go. Councilwoman Mullins said this is a really tough project with obstacles put forth by the feds and big businesses. She thanked them for working so hard on this. She asked how we hold strong against the creep of height or size. Mr. Anderson said there is discouragement on going in front of a board. AT&T has wanted to work with us and they’ve been pretty close to what we want. Our guidelines force them to be creative, and no one wants this to be adversarial. We do have a precedent for doing things differently in Aspen. We work hard to protect things over time. It’s our blood, sweat and tears used to make these things happen. Councilman Hauenstein asked if we can cap this at 25 feet. Ms. Bryan said we may be able to but could expose us to more risk. According to federal law, small cell towers go up to heights of 50 feet. Having a variance process will reduce some of our legal exposure. Councilman Hauenstein said he wants to hear public comment. He’s really sensitive to the invasion of privacy comment as Ruth mentioned and he does think that is a valid concern. Councilman Mesirow asked about public noticing. Mr. Anderson said that most applications will have to submit for an administrative review since they don’t meet the guidelines. There won’t be a notice, but after approval, it shows up in a box ad in the paper. There is a poster on site which explains what is transpiring and a notice to the homes within 300 feet. The requirements are the same but will be administrative with no public hearing. Councilman Mesirow said he accepts the 25-foot height instead of the 20 feet. He’s concerned that all of this may backfire though. He said we need to alert people to what 5 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL APRIL 28TH, 2020 is happening and asked to take care with how we put this forward. He wants to make sure the public is aware and wants to confirm that on generating reports, there’s a report generated which matches what has been disclosed. Mr. Anderson said this is something we are still working on logistically and will require us to build some staff expertise or hire out to a 3rd party consultant. It is our intention that following installation and looking at facilities around town, we will do exactly what you described. We can’t go beyond the FCC regulations, but we would be testing for compliance. Mayor Torre asked Andrea for explanation for the public that she has previously shared with him. Ms. Bryan said that longstanding laws and federal code dictates that local governments cannot regulate wireless communications facilities based on health concerns. We can’t take a report regarding emissions and use that to stop these facilities. Mayor Torre asked her for the “what if” council didn’t approve the guidelines or if we denied installation and what would happen. Ms. Bryan said we would expose ourselves to legal risk and it would be quite costly with not a very good outcome. She has taken a look at all local Colorado cities and in the U.S. as a whole and examples of banning. None of those actually have been able to ban it. Mill Valley is probably closest to a ban. We don’t have the ability under our state law to ban small cell in any zone district. Mayor Torre said we are concerned and have looked at this with a microscope and what our abilities are to regulate this in our community. PUBLIC COMMENT: Dr. Tom Lankering – Dr. Lankering said there are 40 cities and counties that have made steps to slow down the installation of 5G and he is working with Coloradans for safe technology. The FCC is a captured agency so the laws they put in are nothing more than bullies. There is an absence of safety studies currently and it’s a real David vs. Goliath situation. Fiber optics already is an alternative to 5G and the health concerns are very real. It is important for the health of our community to stand up against Goliath. Until we have the safety studies, we don’t want to move forward with this. It’s a real and serious concern. Councilman Hauenstein said the frustration continues, and if we take on Goliath, we will incur tremendous legal expenses. If there was a class action suit, we could want to participate in that to challenge this. We do need the studies to show safety first, however, and then we can move forward. Councilwoman Mullins said that she would reluctantly move forward with this and keep in mind that we need to encourage any studies which look into the health risks. I suspect there are, but we don’t have the studies. We will be accommodating what is required and nothing more and we will continue to follow closely the federal guidelines and if they change at all, we will change with them. Councilwoman Richards asked if there are any amendments to the resolution in the packet and Mr. Anderson said no, they are recommending approval as presented. Councilwoman Richards motioned to approve Ordinance #03, Series of 2020, Councilman Hauenstein seconded. Councilwoman Richards said this is something we are doing under duress. A federal shot clock, as it were. If we do not pass this tonight, it wouldn’t stop someone from coming in to build out their 5 G 6 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL APRIL 28TH, 2020 system. Without our guidelines, it would be more of the wild west out there with no way to review the way we hope to. It’s important to have guard rails in place on this and we need to be prepared. Councilman Mesirow said he is grateful to be on this council with people who are focused on health and aesthetic concerns. We’ve heard from everyone in the community and we are on the cutting edge always. It’s important to have protections of our history and community aesthetic and community values. We’ve made a good faith effort with this. We have a nation leading a system in place to identify and measure and relate to the best science of the day. We can take our public health in our hands. Roll call vote: Hauenstein, yes; Mesirow, yes; Mullins, yes; Richards, yes; Torre, yes. 5-0, motion carried. Councilwoman Richards motioned to adjourn, Councilman Mesirow seconded. Roll call vote: Hauenstein, yes; Mesirow, yes; Mullins, yes; Richards, yes; Torre, yes. 5-0, motion carried. ______________________ Nicole Henning, City Clerk