City Council weighs priorities

Longmont council members look to boost child education, affordable housing, transportation

The Longmont City Council wants to focus more on housing for all, transportation and early childhood education for the remainder of 2023 and 2024.

During its study session Tuesday, the City Council discussed those three priorities and got a small taste of next year’s budget.

By 2035, the city wants to have 5,400 units — 12% of its entire housing stock — be affordable housing.

The city defines affordable housing as homes sold at a price that is affordable to households at or below 80% of the area median income and units rented to households at or below 50% of the area median income.

Between 2017 and 2021, the median household income in Longmont amounted to just over $83,000, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

By the end of 2023, the city projects that it will have just over 2,800 affordable housing units.

While the city’s Inclusionary Housing Ordinance requires that 12% of units in new residential developments be affordable to lowand moderate-income buyers, developers can — and often do — pay a fee-in-lieu instead to satisfy the requirement, which goes into the city’s affordable housing fund.

Councilmember Tim Waters thought the Council needed to review local ordinances concerning accessory dwelling units and short-term rentals and assess how they impacted the city’s overall housing goals, to which the rest of the Council agreed.

“It’s an important question relative to what we’re trying to accomplish with … housing,” Waters said.

With respect to transportation, the City Council wants to “provide more and various options for safe, comfortable and efficient direct

trips in town,” according to Tuesday’s presentation.

There is approximately $648,000 of one-time funding for a micro-transit bus system in the proposed 2024 budget.

Mayor Joan Peck said that she supported the city’s transportation goals but thought there needed to be additional information concerning possible rail service to Longmont.

“We need to discuss as a city, as a council how are we going to do this and I don’t think we can put it off,” Peck said.

Within its priorities document, the Council also highlighted the need to “provide 100% of Longmont children below 5 years of age access to quality early childhood education.”

Longmont City Manager Harold Dominguez made clear that just because certain initiatives may have been left out of the document did not mean that the city was not still actively working toward other goals.

The city must always deliver reliable core services such as police and fire protection, waste management, clean water and more.

The City Council voted unanimously to approve the priorities document with the stated additions from Waters and Peck.