8-16-22 Vail Town Council Agenda Breakdown

Written By Vail Sticky

A VailSticky guide to Vail Town Council Meetings: for folks that don’t have time for that.

6pm Citizen Participation (a.k.a. Open Mic Night):

You get 3 minutes to speak your truth to a captive audience of your leaders – in person at Vail Town Council Chambers or over Zoom. The most powerful and underutilized channel of engagement in Vail. What will you say?

Some things we think are worth saying…

  • It as been 91 days since the Town Council unanimously voted to rezone West Middle Creek for housing. The Town of Vail wrote on May 13th “The rezoning process is to begin immediately and will be completed by September 1, 2022.” The next Town Council Meeting is September 6th. Rezoning has once again been tabled in PEC - this time to September 12th at the request of the applicant - which is the Town of Vail. What is the problem? Will we stand by our word? Is Town of Vail’s commitment to housing contingent on Broomfield?

  • In response to Eagle County School Districts desperate plea for housing - What is the Town of Vail doing to provide housing for childcare providers and educators right now and in the future? Can we…

    • Ask the Vail Homeowners to provide an extra bedroom.

    • Write an open letter to Eagle County Schools and the Town of Minturn offering the Town of Vail’s full financial support to expedite the development of up to 150 units of residential housing at Maloit Park - as defined in ECSD’s housing master plan.

    • Provide a per bedroom rent subsidy directly to any landlord that signs a new lease with one of the 50 ECSD employees in need of housing in Vail.

2023 Budget Preview

Watch the recording on Facebook here

Town of Vail Staff will be presenting the 2023 budget to the Vail Town Council and getting their feedback. 2023 revenue is projected at $86.8 million; $76.5M is available for use above reserve mins.

The presentation will start at 9am at the Grand View room if you want to show up in person to the Lionshead Parking Structure. To listen in remotely catch the livestream on Town of Vail’s Facebook Page or you can register for the afternoon zoom meeting.

If you watch this meeting pay attention to the council members questions and reactions - keeping in mind that Residential Housing is Vail’s #1 community priority as reported in the 2022 community survey; and the Destination Stewardship Plan shows housing as “the undisputed top concern in the Vail Valley” according to the mid-year update - which will be presented at the afternoon Town Council Meeting later on 8/16/22.

How will our money be spent?

The town’s reserves alone will not be able to fund all of the below projects. The Council will need to prioritize projects in addition to looking for public-private partnership and grant opportunities.

  • Booth Height Open Space Parcel Acquisition (a.k.a. the cost of condemnation)

  • Timber Ridge Redevelopment

  • Civic Center/Dobson Redevelopment

  • Children’s Garden of Learning Long-term Permanent Location

  • Nature Center

  • Outcomes from the Ford Park Master Plan update

  • West Vail Master Plan Implementation

  • West Middle Creek Residential Housing

  • Development and purchase of East CDOT Parcel

  • Other Future Housing Opportunities

Reference Links:

Afternoon Session of the Vail Town Council - 8/16/22

Watch the 8/16/22 Afternoon Meeting recording on Facebook here.

Below is a quick rundown of what’s on the 8/16/22 afternoon agenda. This is not a complete list, just some snippets of what we think are sticky issues. You can find links to the full official agendas at the bottom of this page, including info on how to participate, and where to watch.

Destination Stewardship Mid Year Update

At least $169,000, and an unknown but likely staggering amount of hours, have been spent determining who we are protecting Vail for, who we are protecting Vail from, and what actions should follow. There is a substantial amount of information contained in this update - the best way to digest the information is to review the Steward Vail Council Update Presentation (this is a huge file - use wifi on mobile).

If you recall all of the begging and pleading to engage with the Stewardship survey over the last few weeks - some of you answered the call. It made an impact.

The Useful and Interesting Info:

Response data is the most insightful part of this update (appendix A-D linked below). TOV has likely never undertaken a more intensive effort to extract useful opinions from the community beyond simple surveys. It’s worth taking a moment to appreciate the scope of the work - and also how that impacts representation.

Hands down the most interesting part of this presentation is Appendix C - Community Survey Comparison; which divulges the breakdown of community survey results by residency. This is a master class in how demographic information can change the narrative of survey responses (more on that here). Imagine how our policies and practices might change if we built out citizen personas to better represent the unique needs, wants, and challenges of different subsets of our community.

Results from the 2022 Community Survey (Full Results here) Summary here

Same Question broken out by residency cohort: Appendix C - Community Survey Comparison;

The MEAT:

The firehose of information contained in The Sustainability Analysis DRAFT (appendix E) requires a more thorough reading to provide valuable insight. Take a look and let us know what you think. Better yet - write about it and we’ll host your analysis on the VailSticky.

Not Useful Information:

As with any large scale project involving a large team of consultants - there are also many words and pictures that collectively fail to say anything definitive, actionable, or measurable. The preeminent example of useless information would be the Image Research deck linked below as Appendix F. A casual reader might be enticed to flip through these 12 pages and draw some conclusions - which would be a mistake because there are no actionable or insightful takeaways contained within these 12 slides.

Reference Links

Special Event Funding Model

How does Vail decide which events we want? How do we objectively measure how a event ‘fits’ and what value it provides to the town? Modernizing the evaluation and selection process for events could make the process more transparent, and less susceptible to subjective interpretations of ‘value’. The council will be asked for their input on the formation of an Event Funding Committee and Event Advisory Committee which would supplement the existing citizen led Commission on Special Events.

If you are interested in understanding why we have tiny pop up tents of street performers playing to passerby’s and no Spring Back to Vail - this could be a conversation to listen in to.

Reference Links:

Evening Session of the Vail Town Council - 8/16/22

Watch the 8/16/22 evening meeting recording on Facebook here.

Below is a quick rundown of what’s on the 8/16/22 evening agenda. This is not a complete list, just some snippets of what we think are sticky issues. You can find links to the full official agendas at the bottom of this page, including info on how to participate, and where to watch.

TOV buying more properties for housing

The owners of these properties should be commended for selling them to the Town of Vail - thereby ensuring they will be occupied by residents in perpetuity (which according to our Housing Director George Ruther is a very very long time :)

  • Buffehr Creek Condominium, Unit A9, 1860 Meadow Ridge Road, Vail, Colorado 81657

  • Buffehr Creek Condominium, Unit A7, 1860 Meadow Ridge Road, Vail, Colorado 81657

  • Columbine West Condominium, Unit 1, 2833 Kinnikinnick Road, Vail Colorado 81657

Keep the Change for Housing Ballot Language

Vailiens approved a .5% sales tax to fund housing last year (2A). CO’s weird tax rules (TABOR) says that you can’t keep more than you planned for in the first year. Vail’s been crankin’ and that 2A hosing fund is expected to rake in .5 to 1.5 million more than anticipated. The tax didn’t change – people are just buying lots of stuff and prices are higher. (Note: Groceries are not taxed). Town Council needs to allow Vail voters to decide that TOV can keep the change in November. If we don’t allow TOV to keep the change all the small businesses are going to have a real pain in the ass updating their POS system to stop and then re-start collecting sales tax for different periods of time. If we don’t let TOV keep the change and we collect too much - it’s going to be expensive and time consuming to figure out how to return that sales tax that you probably didn’t even notice you’re paying. (Groceries are not taxed, locals there will be no fat check coming in the mail even if you vote no on this.)

Parking Fees


An extremely thoroughly discussed parking plan proposal from the Parking Taskforce…highlights include:

  • If you are a local - it is going to be in your best interest to get yourself a parking pass

  • There is absolutely no free parking in Vail on Peak Days (50 of them) - unless you are car pooling.

  • Frontage Road overflow parking will be $20 per day

  • Parking fees being proposed for Trailheads for parking there over 3 hours

    • Note: Hunters are not adequately accounted for in this model; a user group that is non-peak, legally excluded from using the bus system with a weapon, require parking for over 3 hours, and also already pays for conservation via licenses and excise taxes by virtue of participation.

Reference Links:

How to Participate & Comment at Vail Town Council Meetings:

The first 10 minutes of every Evening Vail Town Council starting at 6pm is Citizen Participation (a.k.a Open mic night).  You get 3 minutes to preach to a captive audience of your leaders – in person or over Zoom.  This is the most powerful and underutilized channel of government engagement in Vail. Public comment pertaining to extra spicy issues on the agenda may be held later on in the evening prior to a vote by the Council Members - these issues are usually in the “public hearing” section of the agenda.

  1. Register in advance to participate by Zoom. Quick links to registration pages:

  2. Show up to the Vail Town Council Chambers before the 6:00pm start to comment in person.

  3. Email your input for the public record to publicinput.vailtowncouncil@vailgov.com and CC: TownCouncil@vailgov.com before 12:00pm on Tuesday. Your emails will be part of the public record, but will not be read aloud at the meeting.

Where to Watch Vail Town Council Meetings:

  1. Catch the livestream on Town of Vail’s Facebook Page

  2. Follow the Twitter feed @VailTownCouncil

  3. Watch the recording on HighFive (it takes a day or two for the recordings to be posted. Facebook is better.)

NOTE: Comments on social aren’t really read or responded to in real time. If you have something to say see the above section on How to Comment.

Reference Links:

Note - External links open in a new window/tab. To navigate back to this page - check your open tabs on your mobile browser.

8/16/22 Vail Town Council Evening Agenda (Official)

8/16/22 Vail Town Council Afternoon Agenda (Official)

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