If You Go: Longmont City Council What: Longmont’s city staff is to present a review of the city’s policies and practices regarding undocumented immigrants, during a City Council study session When: 7 p.m. Tuesday Where: Civic Center City Council chambers, 350 Kimbark St., Longmont Further information: The full council agenda, including the city staff’s memo about the undocumented-immigrants presentation, can be viewed online through a link bit.ly/2ppW15m on the city’s main longmontcolorado.gov website

Longmont’s city staff is to make presentations at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting about the city’s current policies and practices when it comes to dealings with undocumented immigrants.

The council voted unanimously on May 2 to seek the staff presentation, after heard from dozens of residents who showed up on Aug. 25 to argue for or against the idea of formally declaring Longmont a sanctuary city for undocumented immigrants.

According to a staff memo for Tuesday’s meeting, presentations from the city’s Public Safety Department and Community Services Department will include information about: community safety; the Public Safety Department’s policies and practices; the city’s relationship with other local governments and with state and federal agencies, and the city’s “relationships with various populations in our community.”

The presentations also review the impacts of federal and state requirements related to grants and services to the community and how some of those grants are administered when it comes to potential recipients who may not be lawfully present U.S. residents.

‘Not interested’ in immigration status

Mayor Dennis Coombs, who made the May 2 motion the council adopted to direct Longmont’s staff to schedule Tuesday night’s staff presentations, said on Friday he hopes the staff’s review can calm down concerns the council has heard from “both sides” of the issues of the presence of undocumented immigrants in the community.

“This whole thing has been blown way out of proportion,” Coombs said. “We’re going to follow state laws and federal laws,” but “we’re not asking for documentation when they apply for a library card.”

Nor, Coombs said, do the laws task Longmont to do ICE’s job for them” — referring to the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.

The city’s staff memo for Tuesday’s meeting includes an email that Public Safety Chief Mike Butler sent to that department’s staff on March 15 about immigration issues and Butler’s expectations for how his staff will interact with all members of the community and other law enforcement agencies.

Butler said in that email: “I would like for each of you to let people you contact know that Longmont Public Safety is not interested, whatsoever, in any person’s immigration status as we perform our assignments We need to encourage people to reach out to us if they need any kind of public safety service.

“They need to know that we can be trusted and that our services are accessible to anyone, regardless of their status,” Butler wrote. He added, though, that “That does not mean we cannot or will not use the full force of local and state ordinances and statutes to enforce our laws against anyone who commits a crime, regardless of immigration status.”

The city staff memo to the council also details some of the limitations and restrictions Longmont city government must obey in administering certain federal and state funds. Federal law, for example, requires Longmont to verify the legal presence of adults applying for certain public benefits, such as those funded by federal Community Development Block Grant money and certain housing assistance programs.

Some programs are specifically exempted from such requirements, though, the Longmont staff said, citing such examples as emergency services, certain health care services, immunizations, prenatal care, soup kitchens, short-term shelter and crisis counseling.

The staff memo also notes city support for the work of the Longmont Multicultural Action Committee, a community-based group that the city staff said “works to promote cultural understanding, inclusion and involvement with the goal that Longmont remains a welcoming community where everyone belongs.”

World day for diversity

Tuesday’s study session review of the city’s policies affecting undocumented residents of the community will not include a public hearing after the staff’s presentations.

However, as was the case with the council’s April 25 meeting and again at its May 2 meeting, there will be an opportunity for people to sign up and speak at a “public invited to be heard” portion of the agenda that’s to take place before the staff presentations.

Coombs said on Friday that Tuesday night’s staff presentations are intended “to make everyone aware of what’s going on right now,” insofar as city policies and procedures for dealing with undocumented immigrants.

The mayor said he hopes that after the presentations, people on either side of the sanctuary-city designation idea “realize our city does a really good job” of protecting all its residents now and intends to continue to do so.

Coombs said he personally hopes the presentations and the council’s discussion of them will end those calls for an official and formal council adoption of a sanctuary-city designation — although he said that “I really don’t know” what the sentiments of the other six council members may be about that.

“I don’t know where this is going to end up,” Coombs said.

Also on Tuesday night’s council agenda is a proclamation designating May 21 as “World Day for Cultural Diversity for Dialogue and Development,” an annual date the United Nationals Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, UNESCO, first designated for world recognition in 2002.

According to the proclamation, the day will be an encouragement for “people around the world to support cultural diversity” and a day on which community members “can take concrete, grassroots action to support diversity.”

The proclamation also notes the Longmont Multicultural Action Committee’s efforts.

John Fryar: 303-684-5211, jfryar@times-call.com or twitter.com/jfryartc