Monument’s council approved a drive-thru coffee stand it had sent back two weeks earlier, cut most of the police records fees it adopted in August before those fees take effect, moved the town’s employee health benefits to a public-entity trust, and hired a new water attorney to begin replacing one who has represented the town for decades. Every item passed 7-0. The meeting ran an hour and 31 minutes.
The Drive-Thru Comes Back, and Passes as Drafted
Ordinance 23-2026 approves the final planned unit development for a 7 Brew drive-thru coffee stand on a 0.91-acre lot at 15822 Jackson Creek Parkway, inside Monument Marketplace. The applicant is Harman Management Corporation, represented by Tait & Associates. The Planning Commission recommended approval 6-0 on August 12, subject to one condition: a stop sign in the site’s bypass lane.
Council continued the hearing on September 8 over how vehicles would move through the site. What returned on September 21 was a three-page presentation dated September 11, not a redesigned plan. The plan set the ordinance approves is still the one prepared on April 27, and the stop sign is still the only condition attached to it.
The presentation makes operating commitments instead. At peak hours the bypass lane becomes a third on-site queuing lane, staffed by employees taking orders. Staffing rises during the opening weeks. Off-duty police are to be hired for the grand opening and for promotional “swag days.” The company says it will work with town staff if a recurring problem appears after opening. None of that is written into the ordinance.
Merrick Klanowski, the project manager and civil engineer, told council the stand’s peak is between 6 and 9 a.m., before Wells Fargo, Kohl’s and Freddy’s open. Chad Clark, representing 7 Brew’s corporate side, said the average queue at peak is seven and a half vehicles, that the brand looks for sites holding 15 cars, and that this one holds close to 30 with the bypass lane in use. An app with ordering built in launched two months ago, he said, which moves cars through faster. A co-owner of the franchise told council she lives 20 minutes away and intends to be a good neighbor.
Two figures for the same measure sit in the record. The applicant’s slide gives 4 minutes 27 seconds as the average order-to-served time, described as measured at a comparable open stand rather than projected; the stand is not named. From the podium, Klanowski said the typical turnaround time is five minutes, and later used four and a half minutes to work through a queue calculation.
The council’s objection was the entrance. The way into 7 Brew is the way out of Freddy’s Steakburgers next door, across a shared-access easement. “What we’re concerned about is the one-off, the two-off,” one member said, “where your entrance directly conflicts with Freddy’s exit.” Another described a bottleneck: one lane of traffic entering and dividing into three, with an exit lane crossing in front of it. A third returned to the private drive itself, and to two stop signs on it, which he said should be removed so traffic can clear.
Planning director Dan Ungerleider said the town engineer had reviewed the applicant’s traffic study and found no issues, that the private drive is owned by the shopping center’s owner rather than the town, and that the drive is inside the scope of the transportation master plan the town is preparing with Triview Metropolitan District. He said he would recommend to the applicant that it coordinate with the police department whenever it runs an event, and floated that coordination as a possible condition. The motion that followed was a plain approval. The town’s vote display recorded it as “Approve,” passed 7-0.
The public hearing was opened. Nobody spoke.
Police Fees Rewritten Before They Start
Resolution 72-2026 revises the police department’s share of the fee schedule council adopted on August 17, 10 days before the schedule takes effect on October 1. Commander John Lupton presented it in place of Chief Patrick Regan and called it “mea culpa for us from the police department.” After the August vote, he said, staff reviewed the police fees for implementation and found several that are “subject to limitations or requirements under Colorado law,” then compared them with nearby agencies. Council asked no questions and approved it 7-0.
The Independent reported on August 19 that the adopted police fees ran far above what the town’s own consultant recommended. The revision moves most of them back toward that study, and in two cases to a ceiling written into state law: C.R.S. 16-22-108(7)(a) caps sex-offender registration at $75 for an initial registration and $25 for each later one. The August schedule charged $120 for both.
Against the fees the department charges today, the revision is still an increase on most lines.
| Fee | In effect now | Adopted Aug. 17 | Revised Sept. 21 | Consultant recommended |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Local background check | $5 per hour | $95 | $15 | $5 |
| Sex-offender registration, initial | $30 | $120 | $75 | $30 |
| Sex-offender registration, annual | $10 | $120 | $25 | $10 |
| Case report | $5, first 10 pages | $95 | $10 plus 25¢ a page | $10 |
| Body-worn camera recording | $15 | $95 | $15 | $15 |
| Records search, retrieval and redaction | $30 an hour after the first hour | $95 | $41.37 an hour after the first hour | $30 |
| Open-records request | $30 an hour after the first hour | $37 | $41.37 an hour after the first hour | $32 |
| Crime analysis or statistics | $20 per hour | $95 | $95 | $32 |
| Special-event security, per officer-hour | $70 | $157 | $70; $75 with a patrol vehicle | $157 |
Two lines are worth marking. The charge for staff time on a police records request rises from $30 an hour to $41.37, the maximum the Colorado Open Records Act allows and more than the $37.37 Willdan Financial Services calculated as the full cost of providing it. And crime analysis stays at $95 against a recommendation of $32.
A New Broker for Employee Health Benefits
Resolution 73-2026 moves the town’s employee health benefits from IMA Financial Group, its broker for years, to the Colorado Employer Benefit Trust, a multiple-employer trust that has covered Colorado public employers since 1980 and now serves about 37,000 members. The change takes effect on January 1, 2027, and passed 7-0.
Human resources manager Emily Trujillo told council the town held four roundtables on health benefits this year, each drawing 12 to 15 employees, and surveyed staff afterward. More than 70 percent of enrolled employees preferred the trust, she said, largely because it offers UnitedHealthcare alongside Kaiser Permanente and allows a third, high-deductible plan. Dental coverage moves to Delta Dental; vision stays with VSP; life insurance stays with Standard.
The money runs both ways. IMA quoted a 9 percent premium increase for 2027 on the town’s two Kaiser plans. Against that quote, the trust’s 2027 rates save $79,718.85 a year across 55 enrolled employees — of which $46,177.11 is the town’s share and $33,541.74 the employees’. The memorandum and the presentation both give the combined figure.
The trust’s own proposal, in the council packet, records its recent rate history: increases of 11.2 percent in January 2025, 13.6 percent that July and 14.1 percent in January 2026. The resolution authorizes the town manager to finalize plan selections and negotiate final rates, so the figures in the comparison are not the last word. Two other pressures sit behind the change: the town becomes a large-group employer in 2027, which affects how premiums are set, and the preliminary 2027 budget already assumes health costs rising 10 percent.
A Water Attorney for a Town at the Top of the Basin
Resolution 71-2026 appoints Nazarenus Stack & Wombacher LLC as the town’s outside water counsel, 7-0. Finance director Jennifer Phillips said the appointment is meant to give the town an overlap before the retirement of Robert F. T. Krassa of Krassa & Miller, who she said has been Monument’s water attorney for decades and “served the town extremely well.”
The town issued a request for proposals on May 27 and received four by the July 7 deadline. An evaluation committee — council members Chad Smith and Laura Kronick, town manager Madeline VanDenHoek, Phillips and water manager Jonathan Rigaud — interviewed three firms on August 21 and 24. The firm charges $380 an hour for its lead partner, $365 for the attorney assigned as Monument’s primary contact, $310 for its of counsel, $265 for an associate and $210 for a paralegal, with no fixed fee and no cap.
Council members who sat on the committee said the firm’s legislative work and its experience converting agricultural water rights to municipal use decided it. Asked how well it knows this basin, partner William Wombacher pointed to two suburban Denver districts the firm has represented for 25 years, both of which began with non-renewable Denver Basin groundwater and have spent that time moving to renewable supplies. The firm’s proposal notes that it represents no municipal clients in Water Division 2, which covers the Arkansas basin and Monument.
How the Town Manager Will Be Reviewed
Resolution 70-2026 adopts a revised version of the town’s town manager evaluation policy, replacing the one adopted in August 2025, and passed 7-0. The manager is reviewed annually, about 30 days before the anniversary of the appointment. Council members and at least five full-time employees complete evaluation forms, which go to a third-party facilitator rather than to town hall; the manager completes a self-evaluation; the aggregated results come back through human resources, and the review is discussed with the manager’s consent in executive session or in open meeting.
Trujillo said the town usually uses Employers Council as the facilitator. Mayor Mitch LaKind said council should keep the right to choose that firm and noted the policy does not say so. Asked how the employee evaluators are picked, Trujillo said a random number generator. Kronick and Councilmember Marco Fiorito volunteered to help draft the evaluation questions.
Employees Score the Town at 50
The evening opened with the town’s twice-yearly employee survey. Forty-six of 75 employees responded, a 61 percent response rate: 28 promoters, 13 neutral and five detractors, for a net promoter score of 50 on a scale running from minus 100 to 100. The score was 38 in March 2025, fell to 7 that September, recovered to 13 in March 2026 and stands at 50 now.
The comments run in both directions. Thirty praise workplace support and development, 16 leadership and culture. On the other side, six comments describe a disconnect between leadership and operations, among them employees “not being able to afford to live where they work,” and four concern town politics and comparisons with larger employers, including a request that the town not be “reactive, inconsistent, and overly political.” Trujillo said the town’s compensation study was benchmarked against similarly sized municipalities rather than Colorado Springs or Denver.
Also on the Agenda
The consent agenda passed 7-0, unchanged. It carried the September 8 minutes and a legal bill the council had pulled two weeks earlier for correction: one statement from Collins Cole Winn & Ulmer for $39,312.50, covering general work ($22,543), planning ($8,583.50), water ($4,728), police ($2,730) and a matter the firm labels “Buc-ee’s Annexation” ($728). That line does not appear on the firm’s previous statement to the town, and nothing else in the packet refers to an annexation.
The record now says two things about September 8. The minutes approved on the consent agenda state that the 7 Brew public hearing “was not opened” before the item was continued. The staff memorandum and the ordinance adopted later in the same meeting both say the hearing was opened on September 8 and continued.
Hunger Awareness Month. Haley Chapin of Tri-Lakes Cares used the public comment period to tell council that the food pantry distributed 35,000 pounds of food through its no-cost market in July while taking in 28,964 pounds, and distributed 31,000 pounds in August. One in six children in Colorado experiences food insecurity, she said.
Comments on town social media. In council comments, Councilmember Chad Smith asked whether the town may turn off comments on its posts, citing a police department post that day that had “absolutely blown up.” The town attorney said the practice has to be consistent: a town that allows comments cannot switch them off only where it dislikes what it hears.
A third figure for the bridge grant. The town manager’s August report records a Federal Lands Access Program application “requesting $1.8 million” for the Mount Herman Road bridge. The resolution council adopted on September 8 said $2,000,000, and staff described it from the podium that night as $2.1 million.
No future agenda items were authorized, for what the mayor noted was the third meeting in a row.
What comes back, and when
- September 23: the joint study session with Triview Metropolitan District has been canceled. No new date is posted.
- October 5: the draft 2027 budget and the town’s first five-year capital improvement plan, both of which had been scheduled for September 21; adoption of the Monument 2040 comprehensive plan and the downtown master plan; a National Veterans Small Business Week proclamation.
- October 13: “Talk With the Town” town hall, 6 p.m., Town Hall.
- Unscheduled: the e-bike and e-moto ordinance council directed staff to draft on September 8.
- Meetings are at 645 Beacon Lite Road at 6:30 p.m., with remote participation via Microsoft Teams.
Sources & further reading
The Independent’s own coverage: Monument Town Council, September 8, 2026, the meeting that continued the 7 Brew hearing and whose minutes were approved here · Monument Town Council, August 17, 2026, which compared the adopted fee schedule with the consultant’s study line by line.
Town record: regular meeting agenda and the 119-page agenda packet for September 21, 2026, containing the September 8 draft minutes, the legal statement, the employee survey slides, Ordinance 23-2026 with the applicant’s September 11 presentation and the April 27 plan set, Resolutions 70, 71, 72 and 73-2026 with their memoranda, and the town manager’s August report · the August 17 agenda packet, carrying Resolution 64-2026 with the adopted fee schedule and the Willdan Financial Services user fee study · the meeting recording on the town’s YouTube channel.
Water record: the Colorado Water Court, Division 2 resume of applications for August 2020, Case Nos. 2020CW3044 and 2020CW3045, which identify Robert F. T. Krassa of Krassa & Miller as the Town of Monument’s attorney · Colorado Judicial Branch.
Law: C.R.S. 16-22-108(7), the sex-offender registration fee cap, in the 2026 Colorado Revised Statutes.
Entities: Town of Monument · 7 Brew · Colorado Employer Benefit Trust · Nazarenus Stack & Wombacher · Tri-Lakes Cares.
Methodology
This account is based on the town’s agenda and its 119-page agenda packet, both read in full before the meeting, and on the recording posted to the town’s YouTube channel. Dollar figures, dates, addresses, vote thresholds and the terms of each ordinance and resolution come from the packet wherever the packet carries them. Figures that appear only in the packet’s slide images — the survey response rate and the health plan comparison — were read from those images.
The recording carried no captions of any kind. The Independent therefore produced its own transcript using automatic speech recognition, running an open-source model against the town’s audio. Machine transcription misrenders names, garbles figures and carries no speaker labels, so every name here was checked against the agenda, the packet or the town’s published record, and confirmed by watching the recording; figures come from the meeting documents wherever the documents carry them. Vote counts are not taken from the audio at all: the town displays each vote on screen with a per-member tally, and the five ordinances and resolutions are reported from those displays, each of which read “Passed 7-0-0.” The consent agenda has no such display, and its 7-0 is the mayor’s announcement from the dais.
Two moments could not be resolved on the recording and are therefore not described here: whether the coordination the planning director recommended was ever attached to the 7 Brew motion, and an exchange on the dais during that discussion. The ordinance is reported as it stands in the packet, carrying the stop-sign condition. The town publishes adopted ordinances in full on its website for 10 days after passage; Ordinance 23-2026 had not been posted when this article was written, and the minutes of this meeting are due on the October 5 consent agenda.
The retiring water attorney is named on the recording only in passing. His identity and the spelling of his name come from the Colorado Water Court, Division 2 resume of applications for August 2020, which lists Robert F. T. Krassa of Krassa & Miller as the attorney of record for two Town of Monument applications. That he has served the town “for decades” is the finance director’s statement, reported as hers. His retirement date is not in the record.
The fee table compares three documents: the fees in effect today and the consultant’s recommendations, both from Appendix C of the Willdan study; the schedule adopted on August 17; and the revisions adopted on September 21. Claims made by the applicant, by staff and by speakers at the podium are attributed to them and have not been independently verified. The Independent has not put questions to the town about the matters described here.
