The Estes Park Town Board met in-person for their final meeting in August on Tuesday night, and the topic of vacation homes and Short Term Rentals (STRs) was the hot topic of discussion.
To start the evening, Estes Economic Development Corporation President Adam Shake read a letter of commendation in honor of Public Works Director Randy Hunt who is retiring in October of this year.
Also, Mayor Wendy Koenig announced that she will be leaving for a fly fishing vacation this week and Mayor Pro-tem Martchink will be serving in her place. Mayor Koenig will be back in town before the next Town Board meeting on Sept. 14.
She said that all members of her trip have been vaccinated, except for an 11-year-old child, who cannot yet be vaccinated.
During Board Liaison reports, Trustee Barbara MacAlpine informed the board that following a discussion that began in April, the Estes Park Board of Adjustments has approved a recommendation to the Town Board that involves raising the downtown building height limit in the Developmental Code to be changed from 30 to 42 feet.
There will be more discussion on that issue in the future.
Utilities staff shifting
The Town Board unanimously approved a reorganization of the Utilities Department staff that is meant to ease a bit of the enormous workload being put on the department by Water Division and Trailblazer Broadband (TBB) projects.
“The Utilities department workload has increased with the addition of the implementation and ongoing operations of TBB and the Water Division’s USDA financed capital projects,” said Town Utilities Director Reuben Bergsten. “Staff has been excited to cultivate these improvements, and initially absorb the additional workload; however, the long hours are unsustainable and staff often find themselves reacting to issues instead of proactively addressing them.”
The TBB project is now transitioning from the startup to the scale-up and growth phases of its business plan. This has resulted in more work being placed on the Utilities Department.
The unanimously approved reorganization of the department will allow the staff to address current and ongoing project management needs and provide ‘much needed’ project management throughout the department.
“This reorganization also helps us to bring broadband utility operations in-house and under direct supervision of the Town, helping ensure that broadband business operations, installations, and future needs of this utility are met,” said Bergsten.
The reorganization includes transitioning six positions to Town employees.
“[This] will allow current over worked Town staff to focus on their core responsibilities and be more proactive,” Bergsten said. “The reorganization will add one full time employee, a Utilities Business Manager, and add a Lead Fiber Technician to provide direct and efficient day-to-day oversight for the fiber crew through an internal hire, which would not create a change in headcount.”
The net financial impact of the reorganization is a cost of $57,800, and will come from a TBB fund and Water fund 503.
“It’s the next step of what we’ve planned to do in our business plan,” said Bergsten.
The utilities staff also proposed the hiring of three limited-term contract support staff to complete grant and bond funded projects which have specific end dates for completion.
“Two positions will support the capital construction of our smart grid/Broadband infrastructure, and one position will be a limited term contract employee or consultant to support the Water Division’s capital projects,” said Bergsten. “We will use Board-approved capital project funds for these limited-term positions.”
Additional office space will be required, however, the new TBB office was purchased and remodeled to, “accommodate the new community owned and operated broadband service,” Bergsten said.
Annual Finance Report
On Tuesday night the board formally accepted an audit of the Annual Finance Report (AFR) from Haynie and Company. The audit met all requirements presented by state and federal law, and covers both the town’s operations and Visit Estes Park (VEP) as a required component unit.
“We have audited the financial statements of the governmental activities, the business-type activities, the discretely presented component unit, each major fund, and the aggregate remaining fund information of the Town of Estes Park,” the audit says.
The overall tone of the ‘Assessment of Town’s economic condition,’ is that the pandemic hit hard, but Estes was able to survive the initial shut downs and is on a speedy road to recovery.
“Beginning in March 2020, the COVID-19 global pandemic arrived in Colorado. The initial State Government actions taken to slow the spread of the virus resulted in short term closures for many of the local businesses, including closing Rocky Mountain National Park.” the report says. “However, by the end of the year, sales tax collections for 2020 were only down by 7.4 percent from 2019’s record collections. The local economy has begun to recover in 2021 with record sales tax collections for the first four months in 2021.”
The price of the audit came in $5,500 under the budget amount.
“The total fee for the audit of the 2020 AFR was $49,000,”said Hudson. “This is within the budgeted amount for the audit of $54,500.”
Those fluent in finance might have noticed the report generally referred to as the Comprehensive Annual Finance Report, or CAFR, has been changed to the simply the AFR. It is still the exact same report.
“The previous four letter acronym, CAFR, is pronounced the same way as a profoundly offensive racial slur in South Africa most often associated with the apartheid regime,” Town Finance Director Duane Hudson said. “Also, the pronunciation is similar to a controversial meaning in Arabic for those who practice Islam. Out of respect, the Government Finance Officers Association (GFOA) issued a policy statement earlier this year in an effort to eliminate the use of this acronym in the future.”
While it is the right thing to do, Hudson admits it will be a challenge to change a term that has been around for so long.
“As a common term used for the last 30 years or more, it will be difficult to eliminate old habits but we are attempting to do so,” said Hudson. “As a result, we have changed our website pages and will be endeavoring to remove this reference in future years.”
After unanimously approving the AFR for the 2020, the board unanimously approved the appointment of Haynie and company to perform the same audit for the year ending Dec. 31, 2021.
The 105 page AFR can be found at https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pG0afANQgGPVxuaT4gMOzP8PrQtW3lKP/view.
Executive Session
At the very end of the meeting the board entered into Executive Session for a conference with an attorney, “for the purpose of determining positions relative to matters that may be subject to negotiations, developing strategy for negotiations, and/or instructing negotiators regarding the Water Service Agreement with the YMCA of the Rockies.
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