Inside Arvada

Best of 2024

• City of Arvada

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Happy New Year to all our listeners! As we reflect back on 2024 with some of our favorite moments throughout the past year, we are also looking ahead to be an even better podcast in 2025.

Help us improve the show by taking a short 3-question survey. Provide us your address at the end of the survey and we'll mail you an Inside Arvada podcast sticker! 

This best-of episode features a snippet from each of our first 19 shows (links to YouTube or available wherever you listen):

News and Events: 

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 our next episode of Inside Arvada, the first episode of our 2025 year. Happy New Year everyone.

Speaker 1:

We're excited to be back, but before we start to look ahead at 2025, we are reflecting back on 2024 a little bit, and so we just wanted to start with thanking all of our listeners.

Speaker 1:

And, as we've reflected back on this year, we've been thinking about how do we continue to make this podcast worthwhile for our listeners, and so we created a quick survey where we want to hear from you all about what you've enjoyed, what you'd like to hear more about as we go forward into 2025. We've already got some things scheduled out and planned, but we also want to adjust to what our listeners would enjoy. So it's a super, super quick three-question survey. We've linked to it on our webpage and then also in the show notes, and then, if you'd like, there's a place to put your address at the end of the survey and we will send you some cool Inside Arvada podcast swag in the form of a really cool sticker. And so, also, as we're reflecting back on 2024, we went back, sean and I, and listened to all of the 19 episodes that we have done so far and picked out snippets that we call our best of of the podcast.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it was really cool to go back and look back through the past nine months and listen back to some of the interviews we had. We had some really great guests on managers and directors from a wide variety of divisions and departments in the city and you know it was really cool to kind of jog your memory about all the cool topics and projects that we talked about. You know we had folks from infrastructure and from parks and sustainability, finance, police department planning, economic development. We even had a few community members as part of our Parks and Rec episode, as well as one of our neighborhood leaders, marco Randazzo, on there. So I enjoyed going back through and it's kind of hard a few times to pick out which snippet to include in this best of.

Speaker 2:

But yeah, we hope this episode is a way for perhaps if you're a new listener, you can kind of get familiarized with the podcast and then we'll link to every episode in the show notes too. So if you hear kind of a little part of an interview that you want to hear more, we'll link to that episode and you can listen to the full episode. So, yeah, can't believe it's already 2025. Happy New Year. So with that we will turn it over to our best of segment, and then we'll wrap it up with news and events, and our first episode is featuring Adele Burton. She is the special events and public arts manager with the city. She started with the city in 2019 as an assistant and since 2020, she's been leading the city's festivals and events. And perfect time to have Adele on, with our biggest event of the year coming up the Arvada Kite Festival on April 14th.

Speaker 3:

I work with the Wonderful Festivals Commission, which is 25 Arvada residents appointed by city council. They they are really the backbone of all of our events. Um, they support and develop and plan and help me execute everything. Um. So kite festival is one of our largest ones, so it takes a ton of volunteers. So not only from the festivals commission, but we also recruit outside volunteers. Um, so if anybody's ever interested in volunteering at any of our events, you can reach out to me, aburton at arvadaorg, or through our facebook or instagram. But it takes, you know, all the people, all the support. We great, we get great support from parks and then we've got tons of great local vendors and food trucks and then, just you know, the Rocky Mountain Kite Association. So it just takes a lot of people, a lot of moving parts and just a lot of teamwork to get these events done.

Speaker 2:

We have Nature Center Director Anna Hoover, and Anna has been with the Nature Center now for almost eight years and she has a really interesting story in that she started as a part-time marketing specialist back in 2016.

Speaker 4:

So the Nature Center we often hear from people who have lived in Arvada for many years is a hidden gem because they come to it and they're just in awe of all of the things that are in the park. We have beautiful mountain sort of panoramic views, we have wetland areas, we have prairie grasslands, we have just about two miles of trails and that's just the park itself. Inside the nature center it's on a hill overlooking the lake and you can interact with not only our outdoor demonstration garden to see some of the native and regionally appropriate plants that we have, but we have interactive displays and exhibits so you can go into and crawl into the life-size beaver dam and really feel what it's like to be a beaver in some of our waterways or sort of interact with what we have, an augmented reality sandbox that really projects a live typography map of a watershed. So as you move the sand it'll create a new watershed map and you can simulate rain and flooding and islands and you can kind of play around with the sand and the typography of it and so it's really fun ways to learn and to have a memorable experience. And for the most part, everything at the Nature Center is free to visit, free to join, free to explore.

Speaker 4:

The park is open pretty much dawn to dusk, so the parking lot and the park, anybody can come, even when the Nature Center itself is closed. But the Nature Center is open for public hours Tuesday through Friday, 10 to 3. But we have a lot of programs outside of those hours too. So we have school field trip programs or group programs by request, so groups can come and they can have a very specific deep dive into trees or more of a broader scope of ecosystems and environments. We also do a pretty widespread of public programs for pretty much any age group, so littles all the way up to adults and families. We do astronomy nights, bird walks, art classes, all kinds of things in our public programming. And then we also we offer up community spaces for partner organizations or families that, or even just any community member that wants to kind of connect with the site. We have rental availabilities and we also do a lot of partnerships with other events at the Nature Center too.

Speaker 1:

We are excited to have our guest, jacqueline Rhodes, public Works Director, on today. A little background about Jacqueline. She started with the city in 2020 as an engineer working on utilities projects in our Public works department. She transitioned to the city engineering role, overseeing all of our engineering teams, and then, in 2022, became the public works director. Her background is in engineering. She got her bachelor's in chemical engineering and master's in environmental engineering, so West 72nd we have also made a lot of progress on that project.

Speaker 5:

Overall we're about 60% spent on the original funding. But, as everyone knows, we're coming into what we're calling a pause on the project. We've completed the first two construction packages primarily all of the utilities, relocations and a lot of the roadway improvements, and the final construction package is building the underpass. So we just got through our open house community meeting last week and have been talking a lot with the public about what this is going to look like Essentially for the next year. We're going to see activities slow down on the corridor, meaning construction will pause.

Speaker 5:

We are still trying to achieve all the approvals we need to get from the Union Pacific Railroad to approve elimination of this crossing and building the underpass. That is a challenge that we've been working really hard at. Our teams are pushing to get through the approvals process and it has delayed our project significantly Also resulted in rising costs. So we've identified the funding needed for what we're estimating the rest of the project is going to cost to complete the work. But there's still a lot of significant work ahead as we move into construction of this underpass.

Speaker 2:

And on today's episode of Inside Arvada, we're talking all things trees with our guest, ian McDonald, the city's forester, and he began his time with the city as a forestry technician in 2013. And in 2020, he was promoted to his current position as city forester.

Speaker 6:

Our utility team has been really good working with us on Davis Lane and Danny Kendricks to implement the tree protection zone. We've moved the sewer line a couple times to try and save some of our bigger, more mature trees. But part of the compromise is you have a couple of times to try and save some of our bigger, more mature trees. But part of the compromise is you have a couple of these trees are going to have to go or we're not going to have a sewer line large enough to service the West side of town or the East side of town, like you, have some development. Some of this stuff is going to go. Um, so in those instances where some of those trees have to go, we have a consulting arborist come out. They do a tree evaluation. Most of them are certified with the 10th edition of the tree and plant appraisal guide. Some of them still use the ninth edition. I found that they come out fairly similar, but essentially what happens is they'll take, say, a 30-inch cottonwood tree and they'll compare it to a pristineistine specimen 30 inch cottonwood tree. If that tree was pristine and perfect, you would ultimately replace it with 30 inches of trunk diameter. So it would be 15 two inch diameter trees. But most of the time your tree is not perfect. You have dead in there, you have trunk wounds, you have decay, maybe the tree is past its prime, because they don't live forever. They just live longer than we do. And so you start mitigating down and say you get to like 15 inches of mitigated diameter. So they would give us roughly seven trees of two inch diameter.

Speaker 6:

And we put that kind of into a big mitigation pot and we say, all right, we're taking all these trees out. We have 150 inches that we need to replace. How many can we replace on site? Danny Kendrick's Park and Davis Lane have a lot of trees. Can they hold more? Absolutely they can. So we're planting back, say, 50 diameter inches. We're going to do 25 two-inch trees in each of those parks. Well, the inches that don't get replaced we're compensated for monetarily. That goes into our tree replacement fund and we use that in other parks throughout the city that need more trees than perhaps those two parks can hold. So it works very similar with the land development code too. If you're putting in a new building and trees have to be removed as a result, land development code too, if you're putting in a new building and trees have to be removed as a result.

Speaker 1:

We are so excited to have our interview with Marco Randazzo today. He is a neighborhood leader with our Neighbors Connected program. He has lived in Arvada for seven years with his wife, lizzie, and their two kids. They live up by Stanley Lake and his background is in music, teaching and production and he's been a full-time realtor here in Arvada for the last five years.

Speaker 7:

The reason that I continue to join it and be a part of it is its impact on my life, my community and other people's communities here in Arvada. It's great. There's lots of things we could talk about on this podcast, but yeah, essentially what it does is it helps neighbors connect to each other, learn how to support each other. The quarterly meetings provide resources for us about, you know, neighborhood conflicts and neighborhood programs and ways you can volunteer here within the city and stuff happening around the city all sorts of stuff like that. That's one thing that it does. Another thing that it does is it helps empower people to be leaders in their neighborhood and throw parties for their neighborhood and things like that.

Speaker 7:

Who doesn't love throwing parties? Well, I guess not everyone loves throwing parties, but everyone loves going to parties if you're invited to them. So it provides people opportunities to invite their neighbors to block parties, social events, things like that, which is extremely important. We can talk about that for a while, but not a lot of people have the resources or they don't know just how to do it. I know we'll talk about the block party trailer here in a minute, but there's other ways to connect with people and just encouraging neighbors to reach out to each other and provide an invite.

Speaker 2:

We have Parks and Urban Design Manager, darren DeLay as our guest today. Darren began with the city in 2021 in his position as Parks and Urban Design Manager. Before that, he spent 12 years in the private sector as a landscape architect and 12 years in the public sector, including time with Denver Public Schools and their Learning Landscapes program.

Speaker 8:

From an equitable standpoint, looking at the city as sort of the three areas that we have area supervisors for, through parks, maintenance is trying to sort of make sure all of our activity and design and construction isn't happening in one particular region of the city so that we're serving all of our residents and all of our communities sort of as best we can when we can, serving all of our residents and all of our communities sort of as best we can when we can.

Speaker 8:

So we'll use those sort of those filters to elevate or move projects down and then take a handful of six to eight projects that might fit that criteria and that time span and then we'd sort of dive into those playgrounds a little bit. And then we generate a community survey when we select our top priorities, we'll put out a community survey through is that Speak Up, yeah, and with Emily Combe and yourself, and sort of work through that and see what the community needs or wants and or thinks that they want. And then we trust our experts, which you know, ourselves and our design consultants in that RFP, giving them that feedback that we received designed to this program statement. And then we look through that score those, pick a winner that seems to best fit and meet those needs and add some variety of play areas throughout the city.

Speaker 1:

Today we have Evelyn Rhodes, the city's water quality administrator, on with us. She and her small but mighty water quality team work at the city's water treatment plant and with the water treatment department. They perform sampling and analysis of our raw and treated waters and ensure we maintain compliance with all water quality regulations and there are quite a lot of them. She has been with the city for a fantastic four years and previously held positions as the pre-treatment coordinator at Metro Water Recovery and as North Glen's water quality lab supervisor. She has taught water quality classes at Red Rocks Community College and regularly works with the water quality program at Arvada West High School, including serving on their advisory board. What should folks know about protecting our water sources?

Speaker 9:

Well, we work really hard to protect our drinking water sources and, in fact, if you go out to our redder reservoir throughout the week ever, you probably see us out there sampling on our boat and behind the scenes. We're also supporting wildfire preparation and mitigation efforts in order to protect our sources if and when a forest fire hits our watersheds. And I think it's also really important to realize that everyone is upstream of another water user, so things that you do to keep our stormwater drains and our canals and our streams clean help protect downstream water users.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and often that can be things like as simple as picking up after your dog's poop or being cautious about when and where and how you're using fertilizer to not have it spilling into the stormwater. The curb and gutter those are the two that pop into my mind cleaning up a spill, if you have an oil spill, those sorts of things that are really just kind of everyday things that happen but can really pollute our water systems.

Speaker 2:

So that means our guest today is you, the community member, specifically the variety of different folks that we spoke to at different parks around the city. It was a really fun project going around trying to find different park users at our different parks and just hearing from them how they enjoy our parks and why they feel like they belong there from them how they enjoy our parks and why they feel like they belong there.

Speaker 10:

We're at our Vata Reservoir my name's Dave and taking my grandson teaching him fishing for the last couple of years. He really enjoys it. Oh, it's very relaxing and, like I said, it's good you kind of bond with your grandkids. You have a granddaughter as well that comes out. She's a little, she likes to do the bait fishing more. Yeah, just a different venue for everyone to kind of bond and they can picnic. And the rangers we met a couple of the rangers, real nice. They always come down and talk to us.

Speaker 12:

My name is Hudson and we're in Lake as a Reservoir fishing.

Speaker 2:

And how often do you come out here and fish? Probably like one week to two weeks, I don't know. And how many fish have you caught from this reservoir here? Arvada Blonde Reservoir 23. 23? Wow, what's the biggest fish you've ever caught here?

Speaker 12:

13 inches. It was a rainbow trout 13-inch rainbow trout wow.

Speaker 2:

So just how do you feel when you're out here at the reservoir fishing with Grandpa Happy? If you had any advice on how to catch fish, what would it be? Because it sounds like you've got the hang of it. Patience. Awesome, Hudson. Thank you so much.

Speaker 2:

Good luck today okay we have our boss on as a guest, rachel kuroiwa. She is the communications and engagement manager for the city and we're having her on to talk about the city's 120th anniversary celebration. That's been going on and continues to go on all summer long and so Rachel has been with the city since 2019. She started off as the infrastructure communications manager and she's been in her current role since 2022. Prior to the city, she was at the University of Colorado, denver, where she worked for 10 years doing communication and recruitment for CU Denver, and she's also still an instructor there for the communication department at CU Denver.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm glad you made the distinction between the 1870 day and the 1904 day, because if you get off of I-70, onto WADS and you see, you know city of Arvada 1870. And they're like, wait a second, I thought you're celebrating 1904. So 1870 is kind of when we were literally on the map. 1904 is when we officially became the town of Arvada, so glad you made that distinction there. Speaking of kind of going back in history, how did we get our start as a town? I know, you know you mentioned the name Ralston and the discovery of our first documented discovery of gold was a big part of that. So how did we kind of get our start as a town back in the 1800s?

Speaker 13:

Yeah, so in 1850, in, I think, june of 1850, louis Ralston, who was a prospector from Georgia. He and his party were just kind of moving through the area. They set up camp on the bank of what is now the confluence of Clear Creek and Ralston Creek and he, you know, looking for gold, and just got in the creek and found a little bit of gold and that dedicated resident, lois Lindstrom, went through the process to show that this was the first documented gold find in Colorado. For years before that an 1859 gold strike in Denver was considered the first one in the Rocky Mountain region. But she proved that Lewis Ralston's was the first, and so that really was one of the things that brought people out here.

Speaker 1:

Today we have on the Community and Economic Development Director for the city, jessica Garner. She began her role as the city's Director of Community and Economic Development in 2023. She provides leadership and direction for the city's community and economic development departments, which she'll talk about. Those include planning and zoning, building services, development and housing. She has 24 years of local, statewide and national land use planning, transportation and public health experience. Before joining the city, she was the community and economic development director for the town of Estes Park.

Speaker 11:

I think the important thing that we do is we utilize our comprehensive plan to try and determine really what is the community character.

Speaker 11:

What is it that is, what are those things that are in Arvada that people want to preserve? You know, certain aspects that contribute to quality of life, and I think we need to recognize that things are in constant change. So we have a lot of property owners that may be looking at what they currently have and they might want to do something different. And, based on our comprehensive plan and also based on our land development code, you look at different parts of the city where we are essentially looking to anticipate increased density. So, for example, anything that's essentially along our train line, along the G line, is where we have anticipated that we would like to see a lot of growth and the hope is is that folks can utilize the transportation network. So if you are somebody that says I don't want to drive a car everywhere I have to go, or if I work downtown and I want to just to be able to commute by train and I don't need my car every day, it's not an essential. I want to live in some in a place that might be a little bit more dense, where I've got closer access to things that I want to get to. I want to get immediate access back into the city. Being close to transit is great and that's not a choice for everybody, but what we are seeing is that low density development while we have a you know, the majority of Arvada is low density single family homes. Those are wonderful. Those neighborhoods have been established and we want to try to preserve that character as much as we can.

Speaker 11:

But there are areas of growth within Arvada that we have to focus on because, hey, we can't control that and people want to live here and people don't always want to live in single family homes, and I think we have to really emphasize that.

Speaker 11:

The important thing is is that we create choice and that we have opportunities for people to be able to decide what works best for them. And if they want to live in a condominium and they want to be close to transit and they want to be close to old town, great, let's create those opportunities. And if you want to live in a single family home where you have a different kind of community character and feel that's great too. And I think we've been able to cover those bases really well over time and we want to continue to talk to the community about the areas of change. So that's an important conversation we're going to have with our comprehensive plan as we start to look at land uses and also state legislation, which is having a huge impact on growth and density. That's going to be coming to Arvada and there's not a whole lot we can do about it, so we have to anticipate that.

Speaker 2:

Very excited for today's guest. It's Iza Petrakowska, the Executive Director of the Arvada Economic Development Association. She's also the Economic Development Manager for the city of Arvada and has been with the city for the past five years, beginning in 2019, focusing on business retention and expansion, and the main function of the association is to recruit and retain businesses in Arvada. That's correct.

Speaker 14:

Yes, so we are a free resource for all businesses in Arvada, so we serve anyone, from a sole proprietor, a home-based business, to our primary employers, which can be 300 or more employees in the area.

Speaker 1:

And so are there certain types of characteristics or things that you're looking for when you recruit or retain businesses. Are there things that you're focusing on maybe now or do generally over time, as a almost built-out city.

Speaker 14:

I think we're somewhere 80-85% build-out capacity. We have a little bit more greenfield, raw land development out west as well as a lot of infill and redevelopment opportunities. But we really focus on creating and maintaining the relationships that we already have with existing businesses. The relationships that we already have with existing businesses. A lot of those are always looking to expand, so helping them with different services. On expansion, whether that's through physical locations or expanding workforce and employee base, Excited for today's show.

Speaker 2:

Our guest is Nick Adams, the city's Emergency Management Coordinator. Nick has been with the city since June of 2023, and before that he worked at Jefferson County Public Health as an Emergency Preparedness Planner. He also simultaneously serves on the Colorado National Guard and has been with the military since 2011. In his current role, nick advocates for emergency preparedness in all aspects of the city and advocates for the regional level for community preparedness in his role as the chair of the North Central All Hazards Regional Community Resilience.

Speaker 15:

Committee. Yeah, so we've got some really excellent resources on the city's webpage of some steps you can take with checklists and all that, but really the big thing is having that conversation as a family unit. Is that a single individual living in an apartment with a cat? Or is that a, you know, two adult household with five kids and three dogs and a gerbil and a snake? Right, preparedness looks different for everybody, but it's having that conversation ahead of time.

Speaker 15:

Hey, if we had to leave the house in five minutes right now, what would we do? And that doesn't matter if it's a wildfire, did we lose power and it's 10 degrees outside? There's a lot of different reasons and the reasons are somewhat inconsequential. It's what is your family going to do to endure whatever this hardship, is that happens? So, yeah, definitely going on there onto our website or readygov and just figuring out what resources apply to you. But they have like pet resources of.

Speaker 15:

Hey, if you have a pet, what are some things on your checklist that you should have? Maybe like a bag that has an extra leash and collar and a little bag of food or something like that? All right, does that take five minutes to prep? Sure, but if you do that right now, instead of when the event's happening. You know it's right there and you can grab it. But yeah, just general things I would say of making a plan for whatever event is going to happen.

Speaker 15:

And having a go bag is always a good thing. It doesn't mean anything crazy, just some extra toiletries and two pairs of clothes and, you know, hopefully maybe your important documents. If you can scroll those away, that's always a good thing to have with you with you. And then you know your basic safety stuff of a fire extinguisher in the house or like one of the like blankets to put over a grease fire in your kitchen, like there's all sorts of different things that would better apply to other individuals. But yeah, just looking at your house and thinking what happened, what would I do if something bad happened?

Speaker 2:

Very excited for our guest. It's Kelly Van Bruggen, the city's bicycle pedestrian coordinator. Kelly has been in the transportation planning field for 17 years and she's developed a passion for helping individuals feel safe and connected through multiple travel modes. As a transportation planner, she's worked with various government levels and has helped leverage millions of dollars in funding to provide safe and accessible facilities for the communities she has served.

Speaker 1:

What should people know about what transportation planning is?

Speaker 16:

Absolutely so it really looks at the network holistically. So most of us probably drive. However, there's people that have different options or needs for getting around the community or the metropolitan area. So we want to make sure that when we're addressing some of the transportation needs and concerns, that we're really looking at it from an approach of how everybody wants to get around. So a lot of transportation planning is just kind of determining where those different facility types make sense.

Speaker 16:

And with our bike master plan, we put in a lot of work back in 2017 and had this approved, where we took a look at the current existing conditions in the community where we currently have bike paths on street network, so bike lanes and things like that or signage that you might see around the community and took a look at what roads they were on and how comfortable that felt to people, and then assess that even further. Does that specific facility make sense for that type of roadway or should it be a little bit more protected for individuals because there's higher speed of traffic or there's a lot more traffic on that roadway? And so it gave us kind of a blueprint for how we would move forward with different projects.

Speaker 2:

Our guest is Nalini Margaitis, the city's senior sustainability coordinator. Nalini began with the city in January of 2023. Before that, she was with the city of Bellingham, Washington, working for their city council office. Nalini has over a decade of experience in the public sector and is extremely passionate about climate resilience measures that communities can take to adapt and prepare for climate-related events.

Speaker 17:

It's really important to also understand that there was a Sustainable Added Plan back in 2010 that was created by our advisory committee, the Sustainability Advisory Committee, and revamped again in 2012. But that was just kind of like a founding document relatively short, not too extensive. This plan itself will include, you know, science-based metrics and targets, engagement with the community and also input from staff and, ultimately, city council, and so we'll look at you, look at six strategic focus areas in the plan and address the community needs specific to Arvada in shaping climate change and climate policy in the city.

Speaker 2:

Our guest is Brian Archer. Brian has been with the city since 1996 and became the director of finance in January of 2014. In his time with the city, he's served several roles, including budget analyst, accounting manager and controller. He oversees all areas of finance, including treasury, budget, cash investments, accounting and purchasing. He pretty much does it all.

Speaker 18:

I think when you asked me earlier about the revenues for the general fund, I think I failed to talk about property tax, and so that's one of the things I'd like to clean up. So most people know about property tax. You pay a lot of money in property tax. The city does not receive a lot in property tax. The majority of that goes to resident. You pay about 90 mils. So really 5% or so of your property tax bill comes to us, and if we put numbers to that, the average home is about, let's say, $600,000, $650,000. And Arvada would get somewhere between $150,000 and $175,000 of your property tax bill. Now, certainly we have metro districts. I can hear the people out in Candelas and Leiden Rock saying wait a minute, I pay more than that and that is a funding source in and of themselves again, where you help offset the infrastructure that went into that metro district.

Speaker 1:

This week we have on Hillary Romersberger. She is the director of recreation services for Apex Park and Recreation District. Recreation Services for Apex Park and Recreation District. She has over 15 years of experience with an extensive background in the field of parks and recreation. She is a certified park and recreation professional as well as has a certification in aquatic facility operations and a master's degree in recreation management.

Speaker 2:

So, when it does open, what are some highlights of the new facility that folks can expect?

Speaker 19:

Yeah, so this is really a state-of-the-art facility and it's such a cool thing to have this in our community. It will rival VMAC, which is probably the closest thing in the Denver metro region, but we will host a 50-meter competitive pool and we'll also have a 25-yard auxiliary pool, which kind of sets us apart. We also will have a state-of-the-art dive well, our partners at Pools for Kids helped us with some funding and we'll have a 5-meter platform, a 3-meter platform and 1-meter springboards. So nobody really around the area. Air Force is probably the closest comparison. So we're really, really excited to have something like this in our neighborhood and in our community. On top of that, we have enhanced spectator seating. We'll actually host one more seat than VMAX, so a little bit bigger than they are, but universal changing rooms, really great spectator and it's just a beautiful, beautiful building. If you were ever in the old one, it was older, you know older it was dark. This one is super bright and just full of life and we're just really excited about it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think I had heard that divers, like when they need to practice on those bigger platforms like that, not a diver, so kind of speaking out of my territory here, but they would travel, they'd have to like reserve time in either Colorado Springs or Laramie maybe.

Speaker 19:

Yeah, that's correct, and they compete in quite a few meets, I think down in like Arizona and California. So we're really thinking that this will provide us an opportunity to host some really cool regional meets and see some really great hopefully maybe future Olympians.

Speaker 1:

So yeah that's awesome and we didn't mention that it's also a lead. It's going to meet silver lead certification.

Speaker 19:

That is correct. I know that that was a really important initiative for the city of Arvada as co-owners on this facility, and it's remarkable. It's really hard. Pools are not usually the most energy efficient facilities, so to be able to achieve that silver LEED certification is a big deal.

Speaker 1:

We are excited to have our director of utilities here for the city. On with us, sharon Israel. Have our Director 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.

Speaker 20:

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.

Speaker 20:

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, any kind of increased operating costs and costs with our partners. 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.

Speaker 1:

So as water lines get old and they have a risk of breaking, we can try to predict that and go in and replace lines ahead of time. We are really excited to have streets manager Keith Bohan on with us today as we enter the winter season and snow season. He's going to talk with us about all things snow plowing and snow operations here in the city.

Speaker 21:

So we have on our website. There's our map of our snow routes. We have priority one and priority two areas. They're made up of arterials and collectors. It's primarily to get people to move throughout the metro area to be able to get to where they want to go and then to get to and from their neighborhoods. We don't do every single street in the city, every local street. We do have right now a policy where we do over 12 inches of snow will go into every street, but that's not very common for us to do that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and that's usually yes. We rarely have storms that big or that stick around that long. And then that's the then that takes approval of the city. Wadsworth Boulevard, Sheridan, indiana.

Speaker 21:

Highway 72 that are CDOT maintained. So there are some roads that we don't do, that are within the city limits, and then we do our around their school zones, which are areas that are to and from the schools. To be able to get people to and from those. We don't typically do our bus routes, and the reason why is because bus routes change every year so it would be very complicated to try to make routes around those school bus routes.

Speaker 2:

And we're excited to have on today as the guest, Chase. Amos Chase is a public information officer with the Arvada Police Department. He's been with Arvada PD for two years following a five-year tour with the US Foreign Service, working in various roles at the US Embassy in Israel, and before that he was with the San Diego County Deputy Sheriff working patrol in the city of Imperial Beach, California. So he's got a fascinating background and does great work with the Arvada Police Department.

Speaker 22:

In that data that came out a couple months ago. It was kind of good news for Arvada because we became safer in their data. In 2022, we were the fourth safest city in Colorado and for 2023, we moved up to number three. Check that out and I think you mentioned that was cities over 100,000,.

Speaker 1:

Right Is three. Check that out and I think you mentioned that was cities over 100,000,. Right Is how they do that, correct.

Speaker 22:

Yeah, yeah, they're looking at, yeah, for that data. They're looking at cities in Colorado, over 100,000 population.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's great to take a look at the data there, cause, like I feel like everyone now with phones and social media, everything's documented and videotaped and people are like oh, like crimes at an all-time high. Cause it. It may be just because you're seeing it more often on your phone, when, if you actually look at the data, you can kind of actually see the clear picture a little bit more.

Speaker 22:

Absolutely, I think. I mean, social media is great and it's terrible, and same thing, for you know all the different platforms we use, because it's a great way to communicate things that need to be communicated either us to the public or the public amongst themselves. But it does create this. I don't know this kind of bias or it takes things out of context and you really see the worst of things.

Speaker 22:

I think way outweigh what you're not seeing. All the good work, all the packages that didn't get stolen. No one's on there like, hey, my package got delivered and it didn't get stolen today, so all you see is stolen packages. You think everyone's package got stolen. So, as much as we can, we try to remind people to sort of view it through that perspective or those lenses, because it can be misleading All right Before we let you go, as a reminder, we love to hear from our listeners.

Speaker 2:

You can stay in touch by emailing the show at podcast, our Nevadaorg. You can also visit our website at our Vaticangov slash podcast and you can text the show as well. There's a link in the show notes right at the top there. That is a one way communication tool, though, so you can send us a text. We just can't reach back out to you, we can't text you back. And then there are some news and events items to discuss as well. Trees Across Arvada is still going on for about one more month. Now you can get your order in and get some low-cost, shade-friendly, climate-friendly trees to plant. Put your order in now, by February 1st, and then go to the Majestic View Nature Center to pick up your tree in the spring. You can go to arvadagov slash trees, slash across, slash Arvada or just Google Trees Across Arvada for that webpage. And then we also have a few more days left, katie, for the city's boards and commissions applications.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so applications will close on January 6th and there's quite a few boards and commissions that have openings this year. So we encourage people that are interested to look into that in these last few days. There's six boards that have vacancies festivals, parks, planning, sustainability, transportation and then the retirement plan board. And so arvadagovgov slash boards has more info on that process and how to apply. And then some changes that have happened recently and kind of are ongoing and are at the leadership level for the city.

Speaker 1:

So, as folks probably know, former council member Lisa Ferre's seat has been vacant and that was vacant and then has been filled. So there was an application and interview process that happened with city council and Brad Rupert was selected to be the new city council member at large until elections come this fall, and you can find out more about him and that process on our city website. And then additionally, there's an ongoing city manager search, and so that process on our city website and then additionally there's an ongoing city manager search, and so that process has been underway for a while and now they're kind of to the final phase where they are opening that up to a public open house where folks can meet the finalists. That'll be on Tuesday, january 21st. They are still figuring out the time, so we'll put more information in the show notes and then link to the website where they'll update that as they know more. Yeah, and so, sean, back to you.

Speaker 2:

All right, yeah, thanks everyone for listening to today's Best Of episode and throughout the year of 2024. We really appreciate all our listeners. We're excited to turn the page to 2025. We got a lot of guests already penciled into the calendar, starting with Senior Landscape Architect Maki Boyle. She'll be our first guest here in a few weeks. She'll be talking about the Gold Strike Park revitalization project happening. So excited to have Maki on. And, as always, you can stay in touch with the podcast on our webpage, arvadacogov slash podcast. You can email us, take our survey as well. Let us know what you like about the show. Let us know what you want to hear more about. Today's podcast was recorded and edited by Arvada Media Services, and today's fun fact is that our longest episode was with City Forester E McDonald, and that was clocking in at 43 minutes and 59 seconds. And the shortest episode was with Hilary Romzenberger from Apex and I was featuring the Arvada Aquatic Center at 22 minutes and 59 seconds.

Speaker 1:

Whoa.