Inside Arvada

Inside Arvada's Water Rates with Sharon Israel

• City of Arvada • Season 1 • Episode 17

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Arvada's Utilities Department ensures that our high-quality, essential water, wastewater, and stormwater services are running 24/7, 365!

Join us with guest Sharon Israel, the City's Director of Utilities, who shares how water, wastewater, and stormwater services are handled with care. Learn more about how the City budgets for these services, including the upcoming adjustments to rates and fees for 2025 that aim to sustain Arvada's robust and aging infrastructure.

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Visit us at ArvadaCO.gov/Podcast or email us at podcast@arvada.org.

Speaker 1:

Welcome to Inside Arvada, the City of Arvada's podcast, where we bring you conversations with the people who make Arvada a thriving community. Hear stories about the past, present and future of Arvada through the lens of the city team members who help make it all happen. Explore the complex topics impacting our community, from the roads you drive to the water you drink, the parks where you play to what your neighbors think. Join us as we take you Inside Arvada. Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Inside Arvada, the City of Arvada's official podcast.

Speaker 1:

Today, we are excited to have our Director of Utilities here for the City on with us, sharon Israel of utilities here for the city. On with us, sharon Israel. Sharon has been with the city since 2019 and has called Arvada home for almost 20 years. She leads the city teams responsible for water, wastewater and stormwater operations, as well as curbside recycling and trash services, fleet operations, utility billing and the city's sustainability program. Sharon is a licensed professional engineer and has a master's degree in civil engineering from Stanford University and a master's degree in public administration from the University of Colorado, colorado, denver, excuse me, and with me today, as always, is my co-host, sean Starr. Hey, sean.

Speaker 2:

Hi Katie. Yes, very insightful interview today with Sharon. It was interesting to learn everything that's included in the utilities department. It's more than just water and wastewater. There's a whole lot of other really critical services that her team provides to the city and the community.

Speaker 1:

And so with that let's dive into our interview, into our interview Hi Sharon, Thanks so much for being here with us today. So to start, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do for the city?

Speaker 3:

Yes, thanks, katie. I'm Sharon Israel. I'm the director of utilities for the city. I've lived in Nevada almost 20 years and it's an honor to serve in the community where I live. I really love this work.

Speaker 3:

We do all kinds of things that touch every single person in our community, whether it's water which folks use to make coffee, make beer, take a shower, water your lawn, or maybe you don't think about this but it's also used for firefighting by our VATIFIRE. Or maybe it's our wastewater services, like when you're done using that water and it goes down the drain. Or our stormwater services, which carry the water away when it rains or if there's snow melt in the street. So all of those services are in the Department of Utilities. We also manage solid waste services, so that includes a curbside pickup of trash and recycling, also our very popular bulky item drop-off and leaf recycling events. And we manage in our department the entire city fleet, from Nevada police cars to dump trucks, snow plows, mowers, weed whackers. We take care of all of that and to do all of this we collect revenue through rates and fees. People pay on their utility bills and we definitely work hard to make sure that we can keep those rates as low as possible, while still maintaining our level of service.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and so we work really closely together. So I'm excited to have you on and talk more about this today. Today we're going to focus really on that first part of what all you all do here for the city that really, as you said, affects everyone and a lot of seen and sometimes unseen, unthought of ways right, water lines, sewer lines are under the road. We don't always think about them all the time, but every year we do have rate and fee increases to our water, wastewater and stormwater rates and fees that our customers pay, and so those are adjusted each year and I wanted to ask a little bit about first kind of how our system's funded and then what those rates are going to be. This for 2025.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely. So a little bit about how each of these are funded. We have a water fund that's separate from a sewer fund, that's separate from the stormwater fund, and we run each of those funds like its own business. So the rates and fees we collect for each of those funds go toward that particular service. So when we go about doing an annual adjustment to rates and fees, we look at what the water fund requirements are and we set those rates. We look at what the sewer fund requirements are and set fees and rates, and then we look at stormwater fund, and we do them all separately. But the important thing to remember is that we look at them each as their own business unit.

Speaker 3:

So, looking into 2025, for water, there is an increase of both the service fee and by monthly rates, and that starts at about $6.19 per thousand gallons for next year. For sewer, the typical rates will be $7.46 per thousand gallons. And then for stormwater, we charge a rate based on the property's impervious surface, and that's inner city code. But what that means is that if there's any kind of surface that water can't sink into think about concrete or asphalt and for that rate we actually charge less than a cent per square foot and that's calculated based on an evaluation of each property separately and looking at maps and seeing how much impervious surface there is and uh, worth mentioning the rates that we're talking about, because we're talking about rates and b's.

Speaker 1:

How are those different? So rates are based on usage. So how much water you use, um, is that's tiered, and so a lot of folks use more water in the summer for outdoor watering and you might go up a tier and it might cost a little bit more per thousand gallons where sewer services, wastewater services, are based on wintertime usage, and so that's how much water is going down the drain in the winter when you aren't doing the outdoor watering. And then stormwater you mentioned that one. Why do our rates change? What do our rates pay for when they change?

Speaker 3:

Well, each year we take a look at what is happening with our cost of providing all these services, and that includes cost of the people to operate our facilities, the cost of the chemicals we need to use, the cost of electricity to pump water and we calculate how much more it costs us to provide those services. And then we also have pass-through costs that are kind of out of our control, because all of our wastewater is treated by Metro Water Recovery down in Denver and each year when they set their rates, what we do is we pass through any increases from them. And then same thing with Denver water. We get about 75% of our water from Denver water and again they look at their rates every year and if there is an increase we pass that through. So all of that is around kind of covering inflation, any kind of increased operating costs and costs with our partners.

Speaker 3:

And in addition to that we also have a capital program and our rates and fees pay for a portion of the capital program. That's mostly related to aging infrastructure. So that can be things like rebuilding our filters at our Ralston water treatment plant we're doing that this year A water line replacement program. So as water lines get old and they have a risk of breaking. We try to predict that and go in and replace lines ahead of time. So we take a look at this every year it's part of our analysis of overall operations figure out what the cost increases are, and then we have a conversation with the city council and we talk to them about what the revenue needs to be to cover all the costs. And we have a conversation with them and then typically in October each year, they will pass an ordinance with new rates to go into effect the following January.

Speaker 1:

And we'll be sure to link to more information. That's a lot of information to share with you all, so we'll be sure to link to more where you can kind of read this as well online on our website.

Speaker 2:

And even with some of these rate increases, where does Arvada kind of stand with some of our neighbors? As compares to the cost of water, I know we were below average for years and maybe we're creeping more closer to average.

Speaker 3:

Thanks for that question, sean, we are. Historically, we had much lower rates than some of our neighboring communities, which was nice because we had lower bills. But what happened over time is that we just weren't collecting enough in our rates and fees to pay for everything that needed to be replaced, and so the last few years, we have fees to pay for everything that needed to be replaced, and so the last few years, we have had to do more of that. But even with the recent rate increases and the one coming into 2025, we're still right in the middle of the pack as far as our neighbors. So if you do look at neighboring communities which we do every year as part of our analysis, which we do every year as part of our analysis we talk to you, know what everybody else is doing and we compare our numbers and again, we're still very much average for this part of Colorado.

Speaker 2:

Always good to put it in context, and it's high quality water that our community is paying for too. Thanks, I think so.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, never forget that one and then. So what can somebody expect on their bill in 2025? What kind of difference do these numbers kind of average out to look like?

Speaker 3:

Well, what we do is it's hard to pick any one house and have that be like the one that is like everybody else's. But what we do is we come up with an estimated amount for a typical single family home and use that as a point of comparison. So that's a home that's going to have irrigation, so they're using more water in the summertime, maybe less in the winter no-transcript.

Speaker 1:

Thanks. And if you're really aware of how much water you use in a year, you wanted to add. And from talking with Brian Archer, our director of finance, recently, we've learned a little bit to know that that's really not the case, and he shared some general information about our funding sources for the city. But can you explain a little bit more about what customer rates do and don't pay for and how that kind of growth is paid for differently?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, thank you for this question. We actually get this question a lot and I'm a 20-year resident of Arvada so I take this question really seriously. I want to be clear on this that in Arvada growth pays for itself. So as development is coming in and if we need to do something like add a storage tank, make a pipe bigger, add a pump station, our current rate payers are not paying for that. So those kinds of projects are paid for through a charge that we pass through to developers. It's called a system development charge. Another term for it is tap fee, and we account for those funds differently and we put them sort of in a separate bucket from the other money, so to make sure that we're not unfairly imposing additional costs on our current customers just because there's a new development going in.

Speaker 1:

Thanks. I think that's such an important thing to touch on for folks. And then kind of back to the customer rates side. We do have some programs to help folks with bill affordability. Particularly as we have these, the increases you mentioned over the last few years, we want to be thoughtful about how we're helping folks pay for this critical service that we provide. What are some of those programs?

Speaker 3:

Thank you. We take this very seriously as well. We talk a lot about affordability. We really do work to keep our rates as low as possible. That's something that the council has asked us to do for the city and we do that. But again, in these times with increasing costs and we have a lot of aging components of our utility systems, we are in a position where we need to raise more revenue. So for those folks in our community who may have trouble paying their utility bill, we do have a couple of different programs and I do want to encourage anyone who is listening or maybe knows someone if they're having trouble paying their bill, the best thing to do is please contact our team. The kinds of things that we can offer are one-time hardship credits of $100. We can also help set up payment plans no interest payment plans if someone's going through just a period of time in their household where they need some extra support. We really try to work with folks who reach out to us and try to help them cover those costs.

Speaker 1:

Thanks, and we'll put this in the show notes as well as how to contact the utility billing team. But their phone number is 720-898-7070. So we'll add that in the notes. I feel like I just did an ad a little bit there. So we mentioned earlier, outdoor watering can more than double a household water bill in the summers for some folks, and so we have some resources to help with outdoor water conservation with Resource Central. What are those programs that we offer our customers?

Speaker 3:

We have. We've been partnering with Resource Central for a number of years. They're a wonderful organization and they provide a range of services, everything from education on improving your irrigation system through seminars, education on improving your irrigation system through seminars. They also offer one-on-one support for helping folks look at their irrigation system, see if there's anything that needs to be repaired or replaced. You can actually schedule a site visit with an expert to go out and evaluate that with you. They can also help upgrade you to a smart irrigation controller which has features like it will make sure the irrigation system shuts off when it rains, so you're not watering your lawn when it's raining outside. So those are a couple of really popular programs. We also offer low water use plants through the Garden in a Box program. It's very popular. It takes some of the guesswork out of designing a beautiful water-wise landscape. All that information is on our website.

Speaker 1:

Yes, again, we'll link to it and we offer. Essentially, how that partnership with Resource Central works is that we offer a discount for our residents that you can then. So there's a limited number, but you can pay full price for resource central programming too. So I know, like Garden in a Box is really popular. It sells out every year, type of thing. So just for awareness for folks and transparency on that one. And so the utilities department provides these services we've been talking about 24-7, 365 days a year to our community. You mentioned some of the folks that we're talking about that your rates pay directly to keep those folks employed and keeping our system working. Can you explain a little bit just the scope and the scale of all of these assets that we're talking about? What is our utility system that we're talking about?

Speaker 3:

I love this topic. I'm going to share with you some numbers. We cover 40 square miles across the city of Arvada and some of unincorporated Jeff Cohen, adams County. That's over 120,000 residents and we serve just over 40,000 households. Right now it takes about 100 employees to do that Everybody from the folks who work at the water treatment plant, who are out in the distribution system working on the water lines, the folks that are managing our wastewater collection system stormwater operations team, our excellent engineering team, and then, of course, the folks who are working on our customer service frontline customer service and billing as well.

Speaker 3:

Every single one of them is proud of the work that they do. We really hire a lot of passionate people who care about serving the community. And yeah, we are out there 24-7, 365. There's folks on call around the clock.

Speaker 3:

You might be interested in hearing a little bit more about our water supply. We get about 75% of it from Denver Water. That's through some agreements that go back to the 1960s and Denver Water has a large system that collects water from the western slope. It comes through the Moffett Tunnel and then eventually into Gross Reservoir and down into Ralston Reservoir. So as part of our longtime partnership with Denver Water. We're actually partnering with them on the expansion of Gross Reservoir. So when you see it in the news it's usually a build as a Denver water project.

Speaker 3:

But Arvada is a really proud partner in helping that reservoir expansion and it's a critical part of our future long-term planning for water supply as well. So again, about 75% of our water comes through that system and then the other 25% is more local, most of it coming from Clear Creek. 25% is more local, most of it coming from Clear Creek. So if you go out to Clear Creek out by Golden, there are several ditches that divert water out of the creek and they kind of widen their way through Jefferson County and into Arvada. A couple of them head up to Stanley Lake in Westminster and some of that water is actually Arvada's water and we divert it and bring it into the city. Overall we treat over 6 billion gallons of that water every year, ready for some more numbers.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, let's do it.

Speaker 3:

All right In the city system. We have 11 water storage tanks, 7 pump stations, we have over 600 miles of water distribution pipes. We have over 600 miles of water distribution pipes. We've got almost 40,000 water meters, 6,000 hydrants and on the other side of things, we've got 400 miles of sewer line, over 10,000 maintenance holes and two lift stations in our sewer system that collect wastewater and pump it, and then, on the storm side, over 200 miles of storm drains as well. So just a massive amount of assets that have been built over the years. As the city has grown, we've had to add to the system A lot of our. If you think about when our community was really growing quickly in the 1950s, 60s and 70s um, that's the age of a lot of our infrastructure today. And so, um, you don't build a system like this overnight. You build a system like this over decades, and so some of the infrastructure that we put in during those boom times, um 60 or so years ago now, it's just time to go in and replace them.

Speaker 2:

I think that's a super important point for just the city at large is people. You see a lot of times like everything's always under construction, there's always, you know, there's always things going on, you know roads closed and whatnot, and it's like I mean, there is a kind of reason behind that, because we are at that sort of critical point where a lot of this infrastructure is reaching its end of its useful life, and so it's not sort of by accident or poor planning, it's just kind of where we're at as a city.

Speaker 1:

And we'd be remiss not to give a shout out to our really awesome community members and residents who are patient and kind with our construction teams and our inspectors and all of the folks who are out there getting that work done. We know, you know behind the scenes or in the long run right, that's really to help continue providing this high quality, reliable service. But in the short term that disruption can be really tough for folks and just worth both acknowledging that and thanking all the folks who actively have construction, maybe out front of their house right now.

Speaker 2:

I think I've seen one of those tall skeletons with like the construction vest and hat on, maybe like peeking over a little joke with the residents there, but we hear you. You know it's not ideal to have those sort of disruptions, but when it all is complete it's to make things and the quality of life better and improved. So the lift stations too. If anyone had a question about that, we had a new one. And what exactly is a lift station?

Speaker 1:

Not a new lift station, improved lift station.

Speaker 3:

Yes, yes, that was upgraded because, again, as new communities, new subdivisions are connecting to our system, sometimes we need to upgrade things like pump stations or lift stations. We call these lift stations in the sewer business because typically sewer flows downhill by gravity, so they're just pipes and when you flush things into them, or maybe water goes down the drain from a shower or washing machine or your dishwasher, it's all collected in a pipe in the street and that typically flows by gravity all the way to a wastewater treatment plant. For us that's Denver. In Denver, what lift stations do is sometimes because we have areas that are hilly or maybe we don't have enough of a slope that we can just have all that wastewater drain. Then we have to pump it uphill. So one of those is on Alkyre Street. You've probably driven past it a bunch of times if you're ever on Alkyre Street and maybe didn't know what it was. But that's an area where um sort of a small drainage basin.

Speaker 1:

All the wastewater goes to that and then we then we have to pump it and connect it to another pipe so it can continue on its way yeah, I did not know what a lift station was until I started in this role, so good clarification there we did, though, have a new water storage tank built this year maybe not quite online, but that's a good example of one, too, that, so I think we'll go from 11 to 12 storage tanks, and that's a good example of one, too, that, so I think we'll go from 11 to 12 storage tanks and that's a good example of one that was mostly paid for through developer fees versus customer fees, because it is to provide water, increased storage of water for new customers that will be coming online, that's exactly right and I don't know if we said this, but you know, just like you know, developers pay system development charges when more capacity is needed.

Speaker 1:

Once that development is in place whatever that is, business, residential home that individual then pays our regular customer rates for the ongoing maintenance and everything we've been talking about. It seems straightforward, but probably worth clarifying that one too. So before we let you go, what else should folks know about your work? What kind of maybe misconceptions would be good to clear up for folks?

Speaker 3:

I'd like to start with talking about our water supply. So we get a lot of questions about water supply, especially around growth. It's a hot topic in across Colorado. It's hot topic just locally to the Denver metro area.

Speaker 3:

Arvada has a history of a very conservative water supply planning. Over the decades we've done an outstanding job making sure that we've got the water rights, that we need the water supply so that we can reliably serve today's demand and we are prepared and ready for the future growth of the city. I'm really proud of that work. I feel like I'm standing on the shoulders of giants when we talk about this work, because my predecessors did such a phenomenal job really setting Arvada up for a very reliable long-term water supply.

Speaker 3:

I also had a couple of other things I thought I'd share. One is around cybersecurity. So across the country you may have even seen this in the news there are actors out there who are trying to attack utilities and systems, and something that I'm really proud of that we've done over the last few years is really invest a lot in our cybersecurity for our systems. We have a lot of technology that operates all of these parts and pieces at our water treatment plant, on the distribution system. A lot of that is automated and unfortunately, the reality is in today's world is there's a lot of folks out there who are trying to attack systems like ours, and I'm really proud of the work that we've been doing to keep it safe.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's really important.

Speaker 2:

Never consider the intersection between cybersecurity and water, but there it is. I'm sure it's super important.

Speaker 1:

And you think about like. We've seen a couple of like the. I think the state website went down maybe a year ago now and some of that, but you don't think of a website being that big of a deal. Well, a lot of the functionality behind the scenes, or maybe less seen by the individual resident, is a huge deal.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I might put you on the spot with question about. I've seen people say, oh, I got a new water meter reader installed and now, all of a sudden, I'm having to pay way more than I did with my old water meter. Is that just complete nonsense, or would there be any truth behind that?

Speaker 3:

Well, you know we could. We do get this question to you, sean, so I'll take a stab at it on. So I'll take a stab at it. If meters are older, they do tend to fail reading low, and so that is in some ways it's a good thing, because if you get a high water bill, you can be confident that you actually had water going through it. But over time these meters can can sort of wear out inside and they're reading low.

Speaker 3:

So if you get a, new meter and it seems like it's reading a little bit higher. It's more than likely. Your older meter just probably wasn't reading everything that you're using.

Speaker 1:

It's just more accurate. Now is essentially what is happening.

Speaker 3:

Right, and we are doing a lot of upgrades to our metering system right now. We actually have been working on this for a couple of years not changing the meter itself, the way that we can read the data from the meter, and our existing or previous system had all been radio read, which meant that we had someone who was driving a truck around the city and literally driving by every single meter to pick up a reading. So we knew what the bill should be. So one of our big upgrades that we're right in the middle of is upgrading to cellular read meters, and so you'll be hearing more about that from us. One of the things I love about it is it can give nearly instantaneous leak detection. It really can provide you a lot of information about how much water you're using on a daily, weekly, monthly basis.

Speaker 1:

So if you want to track that kind of thing, yeah, that's a good example of something that's like will be a long term cost savings for the city investment upfront to make this system more efficient, but we'll, long-term both you know, have some cost savings, efficiencies for us in our operations and equips, like you were saying, the customer with more information about their own water usage and helps empower our customers, which is awesome.

Speaker 3:

I actually have been piloting one at my house because I live in Nevada and if I or one of my teenagers happens to leave the outdoor host, they get dripping a little bit. Even just that little drip will actually get picked up by the meter. And um, I've, um, I've gotten a text or an email message saying hey, check, check your plumbing, see if there's a leak in your home. And I found it and turned it off and um, definitely saved me money. That's awesome.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, excited to get that rolled out. A couple more years of getting them all installed across the city. It takes some time getting the parts and doing the manual part of that, but excited for that here in the next couple of years.

Speaker 3:

I had one more thing I wanted to mention before we wrap up, if that's all right, I just really want to drive this home that I'm grateful to the community for supporting our work to be able to provide really great service. We care about doing it right. We really are trying to keep the prices as low as possible, but when we raise when we do need to raise additional funds to provide water, sewer and stormwater services, I want you to know that what we don't do is take that money and use it to do other things. So you're not going to see us taking the right money and using it to pay for road work or purchasing a property or city facility. We really take it seriously that these are their own independent businesses, and so when you're seeing an increase to your water bill, please know that what that's paying for is directly related to our work to provide your reliable service.

Speaker 1:

Thanks. I think that's a super important one to remind folks of.

Speaker 2:

All right Sean All right, you ready for the lightning round? I?

Speaker 3:

am, I'm excited Okay.

Speaker 2:

Here we go. What is your favorite thing about Arvada? It can be a place, a fact or even a hidden gem.

Speaker 3:

Well, sean, I've lived here almost 20 years, so a lot of favorite things. But today I picked Randy's Pizza at 64th and Ward, so they've been there over 40 years. They're the local Italian place, if you haven.

Speaker 1:

All right, it's a hot spot. People love Randy's pizza.

Speaker 3:

I'm telling you, do yourself a favor, Get yourself some like baked pasta. They have a knuckle sandwich which is like sausage and meatball, so just I might go there for dinner tonight.

Speaker 2:

I was going to say I need to get lunch here after this. Yeah, what was your first, last or best concert?

Speaker 3:

The last concert I went to was actually the Colorado Symphony with my 10-year-old. My son's a fifth grader at Sierra Elementary here in in Nevada and he took up playing the violin this year, and so we went to see the symphony and really enjoyed having that experience of seeing it live and watching the professionals. It was fun.

Speaker 2:

Very cool Sierra Sabercats.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, that's right, I got some friends I have kids that go there, so they speak very highly.

Speaker 2:

What brought you to Arvada?

Speaker 3:

Well, when we moved here almost 20 years ago, I had a one-year-old and I was pregnant with my older son, and when we were looking around the area, we were really looking for a community to raise our family, and that's exactly what we've done.

Speaker 2:

Awesome. Couldn't pick up a better place to raise a family personally. So, and what was your first job?

Speaker 3:

Well, my first job was at a snowball stand, but I want to explain what that means, because I'm from the East Coast and we don't have snowball stands here. Maybe you know it as like a snow cone, maybe a Hawaiian ice. If you go back to Maryland, where I grew up, you will not see those things. You will see a snowball stand and a little shack on the side of the road, but that was my first job, and another thing that I think may be unique to Maryland is that you can put marshmallow fluff on top of it and really decorate your snowball.

Speaker 3:

On the snow cone On the snowball itself.

Speaker 2:

So I've heard of the marshmallow fluff and a peanut butter sandwich and it's called a fluffinator. I think. Fluffernutter.

Speaker 3:

Fluffernutter, my mom would be upset.

Speaker 2:

She's from Boston so she's very upset that I missed. Uh represented the name of that, but uh, a snowball stand sounds like a scheme out here because you can just go make your own snowballs anywhere you want. Um, a very unique first job. And then, uh, what's a favorite project? You've done with the city and you've been here a while, so you've got a lot to choose from.

Speaker 3:

I do, and again, this is hard to pick one favorite. But something that we're in the middle of is looking at our city fleet and what we can transition to electric vehicles. It's actually not a straightforward answer. We're looking at a lot of data. We installed some data collection systems and vehicles just to identify patterns of usage and what would be most appropriate to use as an electric vehicle alternative. Every once in a while you might see one of our first generation Priuses which are still on the road. So Arvada's interest in emerging technology and hybrid technology has been around for a long time, but that's something that we're working on now and I think in the year ahead even you're going to see more electric vehicles with the city of Arvada logo on them.

Speaker 2:

Very exciting. Are you talking about that one that was in the employee lot that looks like it's from like the early, like 90s.

Speaker 3:

It has a decal on it that says 53 miles per gallon. Yeah, miles per gallon.

Speaker 2:

So that had to have been like the archetype for an electric vehicle.

Speaker 3:

Man, that thing is running strong too, yes, awesome. Yeah, that's why we still have it.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. Yeah, Well, thanks Sharon. Thanks for coming on today.

Speaker 3:

It was my pleasure. Katie Sean, thanks so much.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, appreciate it. Thank you so much. All right, as a reminder, we love to hear from our listeners. You can stay in touch by texting us there should be a link at the top of each episode on whichever platform you're listening on or you can always email us at podcastarvadaorg. We'd love to hear feedback about what you enjoy hearing about or some ideas that you'd like to see, maybe some episode ideas, some guests that we should talk to. And recently, speaking of feedback from our listeners, we got an email from Mark who was asking about when, essentially, it's appropriate to call 911 if it's not an emergent issue, and so we are going to hold off Mark on that answer because we're going to have Arvada Police Department Public Information Officer Chase Amos on a guest in December. So tune in in December to that podcast to learn more about that particular question. And, katie, I know you have several events going on as related to transportation.

Speaker 1:

First, yeah, so there's just a lot going on right now as we enter kind of the end of the year. The first really exciting project is Connecting Arvada, and this kicked off last year actually with some engagement. And what Connecting Arvada is, it's the city's first comprehensive transportation system plan, and so that's really looking at opportunities for the next 20 plus years of improvements to Arvada's transportation network. And so that is seeking a second round of community feedback, now that they've been doing a ton of analysis and taking that first round of feedback and created a list of priorities and recommendations that will go into this plan and before finalizing it we want to hear about the community's priorities as it relates to what they've come up with so far. And so that opportunity is open for feedback right now and you can visit the link in our show notes to participate in the survey and just share your priorities for the future of transportation improvements, and that's really everything from walking, biking, public transit to roads, so it really affects everybody.

Speaker 1:

And then it's the last couple of days of the free leaf recycling drop-off event at Stinger Sports Complex. So the last day to drop off your leaves will be Saturday, november 16th. The event is open today through Saturday, 9 am to 2 pm, and just be prepared to show proof of residency and empty your own bags of leaves into the leaf piles. Even if they are compostable, they'll need to be dumped into those piles. And, as a reminder, the entrance is off 58th Avenue this year and then the exit is on Oak Street and there's plenty of signage there on site. Arvadacogov slash leaf dash recycling for more info on that one. And then last time we had Hillary on and announced the date for the grand opening celebration of the Arvada Aquatic Center as Saturday November 23rd, and so, as a reminder, everybody is invited to come by and see the new facility. The grand opening will be from 2 to 5 pm. They'll start with a ribbon cutting and some speeches. Our mayor will be there and then some of the other project partners, and then we'll have tours and activities for the event. So we hope everybody can join us. And that's arvadagov slash Arvada Aquatic Center for more information on that one.

Speaker 1:

And then another one recently, more just informational for folks at this point. A lot of folks are probably aware of the traffic calming efforts that have been installed on 57th and Grandview Avenues near Old Town, those traffic circles and speed humps, and you may have noticed already that some of the devices have been removed, and the plan is actually to remove the rest of those in the spring, with some additional improvement plans coming in the future, and so that was really a pilot study that was set up to better understand how different types of traffic calming devices might help slow down traffic and improve those corridors for multimodal travel biking, walking, driving for everybody, and so if you'd like to learn more about the work that is going on there and what the future of those corridors will look like, there's a presentation posted online, a video recording, as well as just some more information about what traffic calming is on the project website, so we'll link to that in our show notes. And then, sean, a couple parks updates.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so recently we've had a couple new park sites in the city open up with some ribbon cuttings, the first being the Garrison Garden Paseo is now open and that's a truly unique park. It's a linear park that connects 57th Avenue there to Ralston Road, and previously it was a pretty steep path that kind of just cut through there, and now it's like a more gradual path and there's some landscaping. It's a really cool, unique park, and that the city did in partnership with the Arvada Urban Renewal Authority. So go ahead and check out the Paseo when you get a chance. It's strategically placed there to connect folks from that area across Ralston there where there's Ralston Central Park, ralston Creek Trail, as well as some of the other new businesses that are coming online the next few years that ORRA has been a part of.

Speaker 2:

And then the other park site that recently opened is the Stanley Lake Library Trailhead and that's exactly what it sounds like, the trailhead over there at the Standing Lake Library, just west of the library itself, and that's part of the Rocky Mountain Greenway Trail and it provides, you know, just a spot where folks can go there and park and begin their journey on the Rocky Mountain Greenway Trail, which takes part of the Little Dry Creek Trail in Arvada and it connects three different national wildlife refuges in the Front Range, and so go over to the Stanley Lake Library Trailhead when you get a chance.

Speaker 2:

It's a beautiful little project that we recently completed as well the Climate Action and Sustainability Plan Open House is Thursday, november 14th, and that's a final opportunity for community members to weigh in on that plan, and that's again November 14th at the Old Town Library and you can learn more at arvaticcogov slash climateaction. And then, finally, sustainability is also working on a Waste Diversion Action Plan. This is separate but related to that Climate Action Plan. You can learn more about that effort at arvadagov slash waste diversion.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, a lot going on right now. So thank you again to our guest chair in Israel. It was really great to talk about all things utilities with her. Be sure to listen to our next episode. As we enter into snow season, we are going to have our streets manager, keith Bohan, on to talk about all things snow plowing and snow and ice control in the winters and more about just kind of what our streets department does here at the city, and so that'll be a really great one to hear from him.

Speaker 1:

And, as always, please stay in touch with us. You can visit our website at arvadagov slash podcast. We encourage you to subscribe to the show, share the show with your friends and family, send us an email, send us a text, let us know what you want to hear more of, ask your questions. That email is podcast at arvadaorg and we will always answer your questions on our next episode, when we can, or maybe we'll have a guest on to do it for us, like we will with Chase from the police department. So thank you again to all of our listeners. Please rate and review the show.

Speaker 2:

And with that I will leave you with our fun fact of the episode. You know Sharon mentioned a lot of fun facts, but here's one more for you on your way out. Arvada's first water treatment plant was located actually where the Paseo is now, near Ralston and Garrison, and that could treat 4 million gallons of water per day. Today we have two treatment plants in the city and combined they can treat 52 million gallons per day.

Speaker 1:

Whoa.