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HomeMy WebLinkAboutminutes.council.20220726 1 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL JULY 26, 2022 At 5:00 p.m. Mayor Torre called the regular meeting to order with Councilors Doyle, Richards, and Mesirow present. Councilor Hauenstein was absent. PUBLIC COMMENT: Don Rogers – Mr. Rogers said he started yesterday as the new editor of the Aspen Times. He is looking forward to learning and getting to know the councilmembers. Council welcomed him. COUNCILMEMBER COMMENTS: Councilor Doyle spoke about the continued drought in the west and the forest fires which are all over Europe. The heat wave is baking things. He mentioned April Long from our Engineering team who is the Reudi Power and Water Authority Director. She had to make a request for no fishing this past week due to the high temperatures. Fish get stressed out when the water is above 65 degrees, so, April helped with this and it’s important to tell some good news. Councilor Richards said she would ask that people on bicycles start paying attention to the rules of the traffic road. She’s seeing a lot of dangerous behavior and they are riding at night with no reflectors, and this is very dangerous. Sharing the road requires responsibility, and she would like to see this change before there are any injuries. Mayor Torre brought up mental health awareness. If you know someone suffering, there are a bunch of resources in our community. He mentioned the Hope Center, which is available 24 hours a day. aspenstrong.org has a lot of resources and also has opportunities for scholarship or pro bono counseling. He always likes to mention better things people could be doing, and tonight’s highlight is the Sound of Music. This is an outstanding performance with an orchestra and Theatre Aspen. It starts at 7:30 this evening. He also has a question to council regarding the living lab downtown. He’s wondering about modifications that need to be made. He sees room for improvement and changing the loading zone on Hyman Avenue. It’s slated to be in place until October 1st. He wants to know if council is interested in having a discussion at next week’s work session for modifications. He spoke with Ward about it this evening and he was open to the conversation. Our speed limit in town and side streets are still at 20 mph and perhaps we should lower it in the core. He’s interested in revisiting the bicycle rolling stop signs. What we are seeing is no longer with pedal power, they have small motors on them. We’re seeing different conditions with bikes. Councilor Richards is wondering what we go back to when the living lab is over. She does appreciate the conversation and looks forward to it. Councilor Doyle supports revisiting it as well and making some tweaks. Councilor Mesirow said he’s always in for listening and learning. Maybe we need a refresher on changing biker behavior and speed limits. He’d like staff feedback on what they can really do to be effective. Mayor Torre said he will speak with City Manager, Sara Ott, as to when they can get a discussion together. 2 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL JULY 26, 2022 Public Works Director, Scott Miller, said the rolling stop sign was state enacted. Mayor Torre asked about changing it for Aspen. City Attorney, James R. True, said he will look into it and see if we have the authority. Councilor Richards asked if at a future meeting we can ask the city arborist for the status health of trees. She’s seen a lot of them browned out. She’s wondering if it’s a new disease or just drought conditions. AGENDA AMENDMENTS: None. CITY MANAGER COMMENTS: Ms. Ott said they’ve been scheduling the living lab discussion for late September. She announced the Recreation Center hours are back open to seven days a week. BOARD REPORTS: Councilor Doyle said he had a CORE meeting, and the methane project is moving forward. Councilor Richards is leaving tomorrow for Rangely for a Club 20 policy meeting. Public lands and energy are topics on the agenda. Councilor Mesirow had APCHA which continues to work on rightsizing standards for sellers. We had our 4th HomeTrek presentation at this meeting. Mayor Torre said he had ACRA and that Steve Skadron was in attendance as a presenter and he spoke about the childcare room and working that into a training facility while also extending the capacity for infant care by eight spots. The big conversation around the table was surrounding the living lab on Galena and Cooper. Ms. Ott gave an update on the Airport Advisory Board. She said the discussions were focused around making a recommendation to the BOCC regarding baseline gas emissions. Noise mitigation for aviation aircraft was the topic of conversation. The group will meet again in four weeks. Councilor Richards wants to know how many employees it takes to run the airport. CONSENT CALENDAR: Mayor Torre pulled both items. Resolution #093, Series of 2022 – Paepcke Transit Hub Change Order 2 - Mike Horvath, Civil Engineer Mayor Torre said this is the second change order and the cost has been 400,000+ in change orders. He understands why this one is coming through but is wondering about overall project budget. Mr. Horvath said the project is on schedule at this point and won’t set them back substantially. This amount is also within contingency. He said they are past the large part of discoverables at this point. Mr. Doyle asked what date going across Main Street will take place and Mr. Horvath said late August and are looking at traffic control and for the best path forward. It will either be night work or a lane closure. Resolution #094, Series of 2022 - Lumberyard Design Team Contract Amendment to add 2022 Entitlements Planning Services and Related Consulting Services – Chris Everson, Project Manager 3 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL JULY 26, 2022 Mayor Torre said he has the same question on this one. We have recently moved up funding and he wants to know if we are in sequence. Mr. Everson said he was here to add additional services on June 28th. At the time, we had just finished the schematic design process. Now we need to get ready for the landuse and titlements process. Everything you see here is designed to fit within the 2022 budget. Mayor Torre said affordable housing has been a big topic of conversation this past week, and we are the representatives of our community, and want to do the best for our community. He said he is supportive. Councilor Doyle motioned to approve the consent calendar; Councilor Mesirow seconded. Roll call vote: motion carried. All in favor. First Reading of Ordinances: Ordinance #15, Series of 2022 – 470 Rio Grande Place, Theater Aspen, Minor Amendment to a Planned Development Project Review Approval – Amy Simon, Planning Director & Alan Richman of Alan Richman Planning Services, Inc. Councilor Richards motioned to read Ordinance #15, Series of 2022; Councilor Doyle seconded. Roll call vote: Doyle, yes; Mesirow, yes; Richard, yes; Torre, yes. 4-0, motion carried. City Clerk, Nicole Henning, read Ordinance #15. Ms. Simon said this is a straightforward request. We are asking to amend the approval of the current cover over the theater tent. This has proved to have some downsides. It’s expensive to put up and take down each year. She showed a rendering of a more permanent tent on screen and said it will release Theatre Aspen from having to remove the roof each year. This new technology of the roof top will be ok for snow loading. She read the conditions of approval. Mr. Richman said Theatre Aspen is comfortable with all conditions. M. Simon said the public hearing will be August 9th. Councilor Richards thinks this is an appropriate request and looks forward to the second reading. She would like to take a look at the master plan. She doesn’t like the travel trailers. Councilor Doyle supports this going forward but said this is another example of something intended to be temporary or seasonal and will now be permanent. It’s concerning, but he’s supportive. Councilor Mesirow said he is supportive. At first blush, it seems reasonable. Theatre in our park isn’t a bad thing to be permanent. He’s curious if there may be long term programming in the future for wintertime. Mayor Torre said we have some meetings coming up to discuss that very thing. He is interested to see some past invoicing. He has questions about the security of it in the wintertime and maybe there are other wintertime uses. Councilor Richards motioned to approve Ordinance #15, Series of 2022; Councilor Mesirow seconded. Roll call vote: Doyle, yes; Mesirow, yes; Richards, yes; Torre, yes. 4-0, motion carried. Councilor Mesirow motioned to adjourn; Councilor Richards seconded. Roll call vote: Doyle, yes; Mesirow, yes; Richards, yes; Torre, yes. 4-0, motion carried at 6:00 p.m. 4 REGULAR MEETING ASPEN CITY COUNCIL JULY 26, 2022 _____________________________ Nicole Henning, City Clerk