Longmont, CO

Longmont City Council heard from multiple stakeholders about the possibility of implementing a local minimum wage on Tuesday.

The discussion was the first brought to council and no decisions were made, but a regional working group will continue exploring the option.

Longmont is a member of the Boulder County Consortium of Cities, of which some members are interested in collaborating to study, engage and potentially enact a regional minimum wage across participating jurisdictions in Boulder County. The work group includes representatives from Boulder County, Boulder, Louisville and Longmont.

Per a 2019 Colorado law, municipalities can set their own minimum wage for employees in their city within certain requirements. The current minimum wage in Colorado and therefore Longmont, which does not currently have a local minimum wage, is $13.65.

Boulder City Councilmember Lauren Folkerts, a representative for the Consortium of Cities, explained the working group’s efforts up to this point. The group is facilitating collaboration between cities and stakeholders to see what a minimum wage increase might look like, emphasizing collaboration as any community raising the minimum wage would impact other communities.

Denver is the only Colorado community that has implemented a regional minimum wage since the state passed the law, with the wage set at $17.29 an hour this year.

Folkerts noted Boulder City Council unanimously supported exploring this possibility. She said ideally the involved communities would come to a number they all agree on and then pass individually, but individual municipalities would be able to make their own decisions.

A target wage has not been identified at this time and there have been limited check-ins with stakeholders, but a full community engagement effort will be coming.

Council also heard from representatives of the Boulder Area Labor Council, an advocacy group for raising the minimum wage to a living wage. They cited a self-sufficiency proposal based on numbers from the Colorado Center for Law and Policy, which would include raising the minimum wage to $15.41 in 2024 and increasing by 12.9% each year until 2028 to achieve a target minimum wage of $25 an hour.

Scott Cook, chief executive officer of the Longmont Chamber of Commerce, added a business perspective to the conversation. He spoke about the strain local businesses are feeling in the current economic climate and asked that they be included in conversations about raising the minimum wage.

All council members agreed to consider exploring a possible minimum wage increase. Several emphasized the importance of engaging business stakeholders.

The timeline for any minimum wage increase coincides with the new year, as regional minimum wage increases can only be implemented on Jan. 1 of any year.

From eliminating parking minimums to mandating the inclusion of bike lanes in road improvement projects, biking is at the forefront of urban planning for this Colorado city.

When it comes to great places for bicycling along Colorado’s Front Range, Boulder and Fort Collins are often touted for their long histories as bike-forward cities. However, thanks to recent population shifts bringing more people to surrounding suburbs, a new wave of Colorado cycling cities is emerging.

“In recent years, there have been lots of folks from Boulder and Fort Collins who found Longmont as a place to raise their kids,” says Phil Greenwald, transportation planning manager for the City of Longmont, which is situated a half hour northwest of Boulder.

With a population of roughly 100,000 people, 10,000 of which moved within the last decade, the two Front Range cities are now similarly sized. With the added population came a need to plan for growth, and in 2016, the city adopted “Envision Longmont” — a comprehensive multimodal plan outlining strategic guidance and direction for the city over the next 10 to 20 years.

“The multi-modal plan fully lays out our vision for bicycling,” says Greenwald. “There is a heavy focus on more dollars for active transportation and making long-planned projects a reality.”

Because growth inevitably means construction, one of Longmont’s major initiatives is prioritizing the improvement of roadways for all.

“With lots of street improvement projects, we’re giving people a chance to relook at how we use roads,” says Greenwald. “Whenever we have a resurfacing project, we think about how we can improve that street for bicycling. Even with existing bike lanes, we think about how we can improve.”

Recent examples include removing street parking along Longmont’s Mountain View Avenue to add a buffer for bike lanes to increase safety. Another project removed a lane of traffic along 9th Avenue, a major arterial through town, to improve safety for pedestrians, cyclists, and drivers.

New development is also a major target for increasing bikeability, with street design standards for the city mandating that new road construction needs to recognize the needs of all road users. If a new road is designated as a collector street (one that moves traffic from local streets to arterial roads) or larger, it needs to include a buffered bike lane. The land development code also requires a certain percentage of bike parking available compared to vehicle parking for all new commercial and apartment buildings.

Plus, the city’s dedication to improvement doesn’t just stop at road development. In 2014, Longmont eliminated parking minimum requirements, an effort that is known to help reduce urban sprawl and reduce reliance on personal vehicles. In 2019, the Longmont City Council also declared a climate emergency, doubling down on the city’s efforts to get people out of cars as a key component of combating climate change. Earlier this year, the council passed a resolution to make Longmont a Vision Zero community with the goal of eliminating fatalities on their roadways.

According to Ben Ortiz, leaning on the support of community members has also had a tremendous impact on the direction of the city’s work. “We have a bicycle issues committee made up of dedicated residents who give great input on how to improve biking,” says Ortiz, transportation planner for the city. “We also have a traffic mitigation program that has been around for 20 years. The program allows neighborhoods that feel that speed limits are too fast to initiate a process to facilitate slower streets.”

Looking ahead, both Ortiz and Greenwald have high hopes for the future of biking in Longmont. Greenwald is pushing Boulder County to create a separated bikeway along Highway 119, the diagonal artery between Boulder and Longmont. While he admits most people won’t bike the entire route, it’s more about making connections in the middle, so residents can access homes and businesses in the smaller communities of Niwot and Gunbarrel that often get overlooked. He also hopes to reincorporate a bike share program back into the city that is complementary to the existing B-Cycle program in nearby Boulder, allowing folks to all use the same app and easily access bike share no matter where they go.

For the first time this year, Longmont ranked #10 for medium-sized U.S. cities in PeopleForBikes’ 2023 City Ratings, an annual program that evaluates and identifies the best places for bicycling. While this accomplishment may seem out of reach, it’s worth noting that in 2022 Longmont was ranked #88 among medium-sized U.S. cities. By prioritizing bicycling and making consistent, intentional investments, any city can do what Longmont has.

“Look at your land development code and street design standards,” says Ortiz. “For new streets, incorporate bike facilities and sidewalks. Make sure you have bike parking as a function of new development, and if you can get rid of minimum parking requirements, do it.”

“Whenever you look at a new project, incorporate the needs of the bike community,” reiterates Greenwald. “Not every project has to be expensive, either. Find the low-hanging fruit and how you can make small improvements. When you open up places where people feel safe, people will ride.”

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The Honey Bunchie company has been in Longmont for more than a decade, but a television appearance on Friday night will put the business and its gourmet honey bars in the national spotlight.

The bars, which were recently rebranded to Bon Bee Honey from Honey Bunchies, will be featured on an episode of “Shark Tank,” a reality show in which entrepreneurs pitch ideas to investors, or “sharks.” Made by hand in a commercial kitchen in Longmont, each bar is a sweet, salty blend of honey, nuts and sunflower kernels. Nearly half of each bar is pure honey, which Chief Marketing Officer Kendra Bennett said makes the product unique.

“Standing out in the nutrition bar category is extremely hard,” she said. “We feel really fortunate that we have something that is completely different.”

The mind behind the bars is Bennett’s father, Ed Payne, a mathematician, entrepreneur and Vietnam War veteran. As a fighter pilot in Vietnam, one of his favorite forms of energy came from a snack made by his wife, Jennifer Payne, that would ultimately inspire the Bon Bee Honey bars. In 2010, Ed Payne launched the Honey Bunchie company, initially working by himself to make, wrap and promote the bars.

“He had no experience in the food industry, and he just figured it out,” Bennett said. “He was making something that would taste really good because he wanted a really good snack.”

In February of last year, Bennett decided to reach out to a “Shark Tank” casting producer on LinkedIn. To her surprise, the producer responded, which led to Bennett traveling to Los Angeles in September to represent the company on the show. Bennett said her sons helped her practice for her appearance by posing as the “sharks” and asking her questions.

The whole process, Bennett said, has been “very surreal,” especially as a fan of the show herself. She said the idea of going on “Shark Tank” was something she kept in her back pocket for years.

“We really didn’t want to bring in investors for most of our journey,” she said. “We wanted to do this on our own. We wanted this to be ours as long as possible.”

Bennett said it felt good to represent her hometown and fellow Longmont entrepreneurs on national television.

“This is definitely going to bring some attention to Longmont, which makes me super proud,” she said.

Bennett remembers carrying a cooler up and down the streets of Longmont and Boulder, handing bars to pedestrians and “anybody who had a register.” Red Frog Coffee in Longmont became the first retail outlet to sell the bars, in 2013; since then, the company has expanded to put the bars in stores throughout Colorado, including Whole Foods, King Soopers, Natural Grocers and Ozo Coffee Company.

“We just wanted people to try them, and we knew once people tried them, they would love them,” Bennett said.

With Ed and Jennifer Payne as the co-owners, the Honey Bunchie company is equal parts woman-owned and veteran-owned. Bennett’s brother, Edward Payne, is also involved as chief operating officer and lives in Longmont as well.

Since roughly 4 million viewers are expected to tune into Friday’s episode of “Shark Tank,” the family is bracing for an increase in website traffic and a spike in demand for the bars. The bars are also set for a nationwide launch with Kroger in June and can currently be found in a handful of 7-Eleven stores in Dallas.

“People are absolutely getting behind us,” Bennett said. “To go outside Colorado and receive (support) like this in a place where it’s not our hometown, it’s mind-blowing.”

Jennifer Payne said the recent attention directed at the company comes from her family working hard and making a good product. She said her husband is excited about the success of his idea.

“He’s very, very happy that something he has created is going where it’s going,” she said.

Bennett’s appearance on “Shark Tank” will air at 7 p.m. Mountain Time on ABC.

A child abandoned by his father at a Longmont hospital lived there for at least three weeks and could be there for months more due to a lack of resources, according to an email thread obtained by the Longmont Leader.

An email from Chantell Taylor, vice president of government and regulatory affairs at UCHealth, to Rep. Judy Amabile was shared with Longmont City Council members and other officials at the end of June. The Longmont Leader obtained the email through a Colorado Open Records Act request.

According to Taylor in an email sent June 27, a 13-year-old boy with autism was brought to UCHealth Longs Peak Hospital’s emergency department and abandoned by his father in early June. The boy had been brought in on an M1, when an individual is thought to be in danger of harming himself or someone else.

Taylor said the hospital tried to place the boy in an inpatient psychiatric facility.

“...However (he) was denied at all facilities in the state primarily due to his (Autism Spectrum Disorder) but also because he simultaneously was cleared by psychiatry and did not meet criteria,” Taylor wrote.

The boy was cleared medically and psychiatrically for discharge the day after he was brought to the hospital, but his father has refused to pick him up. Taylor said the hospital has placed three reports with Child Protective Services for neglect, abandonment and interference for discharge.

Since then, the hospital’s social work team initiated daily meetings with departments ranging from the Boulder County Department of Housing and Human Services, the Colorado Department of Human Services, Colorado Community Health Alliance, Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing and the State Department of Child Welfare.

However, according to Taylor’s email, all agencies have said this is a “statewide resource issue,” and that it will likely take months to secure placement for the boy.

The child remains in the emergency department, is unsupervised apart from hospital staff and has had no adult with him. He has not had any “acute episodes” since his arrival in the emergency department, Taylor added.

“UCHealth has done everything in their power to discharge this patient in a safe manner and have received no assistance from the Department to protect this child and pick up from the

(emergency department),” Taylor wrote. “He has no acute medical needs and is in the ED without any supervision.”

Taylor added that frontline staff said Boulder County’s Department of Human Services had not spent more than five minutes with the child since his arrival three weeks prior.

“He needs protection due to neglect, abandonment and trauma inflicted by his father, this process with DHS, and the reality of extended stay in the emergency department environment,” Taylor wrote.

Amabile passed this email on to several figures involved in the issue, asking if anything could be done to get the child out of the emergency room.

In the email thread obtained by the Leader, Boulder County Family and Children Services Director Mollie Warren responded to Amabile’s concern on June 29. Warren first noted that confidentiality statutes prohibit the disclosure of individual information, meaning she could not confirm nor deny whether someone is a client of the county’s.

“As you likely all know, we are in the midst of a behavioral health/high acuity crisis both in Colorado and across the United States,” Warren wrote. “For many years, county human services departments have highlighted this crisis, the related impacts on the children and youth we are responsible for keeping safe, and the challenges this creates in terms of placements and longer-term supports …

“We are acutely aware of the impact extended stays in local hospitals, child welfare offices and detention centers have on the children and youth who most need behavioral health support. Our hearts are breaking for the children and families most impacted by this shortage of longer-term resources for young people in (a) behavioral health crisis.”

Warren went on to note that Boulder County Housing and Human Services staff are not trained, qualified or tasked with providing long-term care for members of the community suffering behavioral health emergencies.

“The Chief Judge of the 20th Judicial District, Ingrid Bakke, stated on the record that placements at our offices at the St. Vrain HUB are not safe for this purpose just this week,” Warren said.

Taylor declined to say whether the boy remained in the emergency room as of Thursday, citing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.

About the Author: Amy Golden

Amy Golden is a reporter for the Longmont Leader covering city and county issues, along with anything else that comes her way.

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Expert casters, fledgling fishers and everyone in between are invited to celebrate the sport together at Longmont’s inaugural Fly Fishing Festival on Saturday.

The free festival is hosted by Angles Sports, a ski, snowboard and fly fishing shop in downtown Longmont. Angles co-owner Matt Burditt said the event seemed like a perfect fit for the sporting goods store, which teaches fly fishing classes and guides fly fishing trips.

“We just thought it would be a great community event,” Burditt said. “We live right next to so many amazing rivers and places to fish.”

From 1 to 8 p.m., festival-goers can enjoy games, food and music at Left Hand Brewing Company’s beer garden, 1245 Boston Ave. Fifteen vendors, from fishing companies to artists that feature fish in their work, have joined the event for its flagship year.

“It’s our first time putting it on, but we’ve had so much community support, it’s crazy,” Burditt said. “I’d be happy with a few hundred (attendees). I would love to fill the venue up.”

Guests can purchase $5 raffle tickets for the chance to win a fishing boat, a guided fly fishing trip, gift baskets and several other prizes. Proceeds will benefit Project Healing Waters — a nonprofit that offers therapeutic fly fishing experiences for wounded military veterans — and the St. Vrain Anglers chapter of Trout Unlimited.

Burditt said Angles chose to support the two nonprofits based on their shared values of river conservation, catch-and-release fishing and “leave no trace” principles.

“The backbone behind everything we do, whether it’s skiing or snowboarding or fishing, is helping people enjoy and appreciate the outdoors we have around us,” Burditt said.

Saturday’s family-friendly and dog-friendly festival will give guests a chance to see microscopic bugs from St. Vrain Creek up-close during an entomology demonstration, which will be held by Trout Unlimited members until 5 p.m. The event culminates in a fly casting competition that will allow participants to hone their skills throughout the day with casting lessons offered on site.

While this is the first iteration of the Fly Fishing Festival, the event is one Burditt hopes to bring year after year to Longmont.

“There’s no doubt that there will be a second annual,” he said.