Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[6:02] now other than I would very much like to turn it over to County Commissioner Elise Jones who will talk about the words they cause three program review good evening everyone thanks so much for having us here today to present as WA said I'm Elise Jones one of your brother County Commissioners and with me tonight is Meghan Davis who is a key member of the county's policy team and it's our understanding that you really don't have much on your agenda tonight so we're thinking one to two hours there good three excellent no seriously we know that the city of Boulder cares deeply as does the county about maintaining a strong safety net and we greatly appreciate the partnership we have with you on safety net issues and really applaud the fact that you and the people of Boulder back up your commitment to those in need with a significant investment of resources and it's good to periodically stop and assess the results of those investments and to that and we

[7:01] wanted to share with you tonight the sizable benefits that the people of Boulder in Boulder County are receiving from the worthy cause initiative as you probably know where's that really cause is the sales tax initiative of 0.05% for those of you who don't like to multiply multiply percentages that's five cents on a hundred dollar purchase I am one of those it was supposed passed in 2000 it was renewed twice since then and it's for the specific purpose of providing for the capital needs of nonprofit service providers in Boulder County and tonight we wanted to provide a presentation on a report which is in front of you I believe on the specific impact of worthy cause three which was passed in 2008 and the impact it's had over the last 10 years on helping local agencies provide better services in our community things like affordable housing health care clinics mental health counseling early

[8:00] childhood learning disability services aging services and the like and the bottom line is that worthy cause has been a real game changer for our nonprofit partners and the clients they serve and with that introduction I want to turn it over to Megan who's gonna walk you through some of the details Thank You Commissioner Jones thank you council members for having us here this evening I'm going to talk to you a little bit about some of the details of the worthy cause program and specifically I'll talk about the program structure and some of the investments that we've been able to make in the community all throughout Boulder County but also specifically in the city of Boulder through the program for the last almost 10 years so as commissioner Jones mentioned worthy cause is 0.05 County wise wide sales tax that supports capital projects for human services agencies this can be agencies that provide healthcare childcare aging services disability services housing and more and it's been in place since 2000

[9:03] in 2000 the voters approved the conversion of 0.05 sales tax from emergency services to human services for nonprofit capital projects and that's when where the cause was born at that time it was specifically dedicated for transitional housing and for health services in the community and there were a handful of projects that were funded that was a three-year sales tax at that time it was extended in 2003 and the voters extended it for 5 years that was really cost 2 and then in 2008 voters again extended worthy cause this time for 10 years during that time it changed a very little one one change in 2008 is that we did add housing authorities as a eligible recipient of worthy cause so it wasn't just 501 C 3 nonprofits but also our housing authorities with in Boulder County were then eligible for the funds as well which has been critical to help us meet our affordable housing needs in

[10:00] the community so just to share the specific language from from worthy cause three kind of the meat of it is that it's for the purposes of funding capital facilities and equipment for nonprofit Human Services agencies and transitional and affordable rental housing and other human services including but not limited to childcare early childhood education basic needs such as food and clothing and the services for elderly and people with disabilities so the revenue that's generated through worthy cause has no surprise increased over the years and when it began 2008 in 2008 it was it was about 1.7 million and unfortunately we've seen that klein with the increased sales tax revenues and the improved economy to 20s in 2017 it generated just over 2.7 million so in total it's generated just over 20 million dollars

[11:01] and this doesn't include 2018 which will be the last year that worthy cause 3 will generate revenues within the community so we're projecting about the same for 2018 it's about 2.8 million is what we're projecting right now to be included in the budget for 2018 so the process by which the process we use to allocate the funds is through a pool funding process and annually typically in the spring we open up a process where nonprofits are allowed to apply through a request for funding process and they can apply for projects that they have either just really kind of conceptual projects we call them concept projects and that might be something that they know they're gonna be working on in the next year or two and they're starting to look for some early investment funds to kind of maybe kickstart a capital campaign for that project and that's been really critical for nonprofits in

[12:00] their capital campaigns to have some some buy-in from the community through programs like worthy cause we also will fund capital purchases of buildings or land and all construction renovation those types of projects we've also funded debt reduction through worthy cause so those projects you know that it's really hard for for nonprofits to identify or to find debt reduction funding so that's the kind of been an important piece aspect if they need to kind of close the gap on some projects that they've been fundraising for for a long time we did have what we call designated agencies and worthy cause three and that was where we identified some projects that were in the works when we went out to the voters for where they cause three and so for the first five years we did have some portion of the funding that went to those designated agencies and then we still had funding remaining though for an annual application process through the pool in terms of where we are right now

[13:01] we're just closing the application process for worthy cause at the end of this week and that will be for the 2008 cycle which will be the last cycle for where they were they cause three so all of the data that I'm gonna share is in this report that we provided to you and then at the end I also have a link to the report so others can find the report online so over the lifetime a worthy cause so far again we have one more year where the cause has awarded 113 Awards to 43 agencies between 2009 and 2017 the total funds awarded during these years were about 19 million we did set aside 1 million dollars for permanently supportive housing during the years of 2016 and 2017 when we looked at the projects that came in we funded a significant number of the projects that came in both in 2016 and 2017 but really recognized that there was a high need

[14:01] for permanently supportive housing in the community and wanted to have some funding available for those projects as they started to kind of come to fruition so we have this million dollars that we intend to go out in 2018 for a formal process for a permanently supportive housing so that has not been awarded yet so in terms of match funding this is a really conservative estimate of 50 million invested in our community it's conservative because with the projects that we fund with nonprofits no more of the problem the project the max maximum amount of worriedly cause that that's in each project is 50% and for most projects it's much less than that particularly some of those really large projects you think of projects like clinica and salud clinic in Longmont they're very high dollar projects and we we have much less than 50% so we kind of use this estimate of you know twenty twenty-five to fifty percent but really we know that we've leveraged far more

[15:01] than that within the community so it's really made a significant impact in terms of generating match dollars both from within the community and outside the community with private donors grants other contributions to nonprofits for these capital projects so if we look at how the investments have been made within our communities by service area it's kind of split pretty evenly the the five key areas that we identified in the blue you can see about 22 percent has gone to children and use those projects include child care early childhood education teen centers or youth type programs those types of services and capital projects in those areas 24 percent to health and well-being obviously clinics dental services mental health 29% a real big chunk to housing and homeless homelessness of course those are costly projects but we've been

[16:02] able to make some significant investments there over the past 10 years and 20% for basic needs economic well-being that includes agencies like fo sister Carmen the our Center in Longmont who are providing some of those kind of basic needs for folks in our community and then 5% to community safety type organizations and those are human services community safety so organizations that provide domestic violence services children's services for organizations like blue sky bridge who are helping with kind of child safety and and domestic violence issues so that's kind of the range of issues that we funded Megan am what question for you has that pie-chart varied through time yes that's a good question from a year-to-year basis it does it does vary and I'll give you an example we the commissioners identify through sometimes

[17:02] formal just depending on what kind of needs assessment processes we might be having within the community around what the current issues and needs are or informally in working with our departments and with our community partners to see sort of what the trends in need are and I would say in the first four to five years of worthy cause two huge area areas of need well I can mention three but were early childhood and childcare and so we made a lot of investments in childcare providers in those years and really kind of conscientiously focused on some of those projects in addition our basic needs providers that was you know really kind of in the height of the recession and they were really starting to create strategic plans and visions for how they could meet the increased demand which is a good thing because what we saw is that the demand increased during the recession and didn't really drop off so it's really kind of been sustained within our community and and nationwide so so they started to build more

[18:02] capacity by increasing their capital infrastructure to support that and then in the last five years we've definitely seen more investments in housing so it has definitely shifted over time thank you so in terms of where these investments have have been in the community you can see that most basically all the communities in Blair County have benefited from worthy cause and the column all the way to our right is a countywide column and that I highlight that because a lot of the agencies that we fund and as you know that provides services in our community they really serve the entire county so agencies like via Community Food Share they're really serving you know countywide so that's a big chunk of the money the investments that we've made the city of Boulder has gotten some significant investments about 4.6 million of that total 19

[19:03] million that's been invested has been invested in agencies that are in the city of Boulder and there again are others that are located in the city of Boulder but they provide countywide services so that gives you kind of a snapshot we've seen also significant investments in Longmont and and Lafayette and as you know there's there's kind of some similar services in Longmont in terms of basic needs health care they they have almost sort of like their own catchment for some of the service providers there so I think that this really reflects where the need is within our community and I think or it's great to see that we have such strong providers that are based throughout our community to provide the services they're gonna use the tax collector in every city yes it is yep thank you it's countywide mm-hmm so this just gives you another just another look at how the funds are distributed and it kind of shows you the

[20:01] type of agency in each community that the funding has been provided so you can see where housing has been supported basic needs children youth etc and then in in the report you'll see a full list of all the agencies and where they're located and what they actually received for their awards so you can really just drill down and see all the details and here's a look at many of the agencies here in the city of Boulder who have provided or who have received worthy cause funding and again all these agencies have made some capital investments and capital improvements in order to better serve our community it might be enhancing the facilities that they have so that they can better serve those in need or it could be they're growing in the number amount or type of services they're providing so we've seen a lot of agencies who have kind of taken that

[21:00] step to make capital improvements and investments the facilities that they own in Boulder so finally in terms of the outcome outcomes some of the outcomes are really easy to quantify and some of them aren't but I can tell you in all the interviews that we've had with agencies and we've had several roundtable discussions and and we had a summit of where they caused summit where we invited all the agencies to come what we hear most regularly around outcomes are that worthy cause has allowed them to increase the quantity of services or the number of people they serve and also to increase and or improve the type of services that they provide so a couple of examples the our Center in their new facility has they were able to provide food to people and their old in their old facility but in their new facility they have really kind of a

[22:02] state-of-the-art it's kind of the cutting edge model in providing food services where it's really more like you know a shopping center where people can go in and they can choose what they want and it's a very nice setting and they also could create sort of a community cafeteria that was a much nicer setting for the delivery of those services so they were able to have a new way of delivering services that was more efficient and dignified in the way that they deliver services to their to their clients increasing the number of clients the agencies are able to serve so an example is with some of the childcare providers we funded have actually been able to open new classroom by an entirely new facility to increase the number of families and children that they can serve and then strengthening connections between providers we have worked really hard in fact collaboration is kind of a key piece of the

[23:00] application criterium process we ask agencies if they're collaborating with other agencies and particularly with small providers who might not be in a place where they want to have their own capital facility but it makes sense for them to co-locate and work together and they can gain efficiencies perhaps have joint administrative services that type of thing we've worked to get them working together on their actual capital projects so that's been really helpful and also just in locating services to make referrals easier to make it easier for people to get from one agency to another we've kind of looked at all those pieces as we're working with agencies on awards and then just strengthening providers providers who might have not had as much certainty in the community because they were renting and and their rent kept going up or they didn't you know how about kind of a permanent home this has really given a permanent home to some of those nonprofits that we really depend on so those are question yes you mentioned

[24:01] that you provide funding to get people from one place to another I know that is that like a specific allotment or how I'm just curious as to how that works well so not from one physical location to another so that would be if they're in a rental situation and they want to buy then they would then they might decide to you know purchase a building so that's what I meant by that not from not transportation from one okay you know for example when we look at you know a place like salud is really important and some of the other providers in Longmont we look at okay can people easily get from one agency to another agency and so when they're looking at their projects you know we asked them are you on a transit line do you who do you refer to a lot you refer to mental health partners is are you in a place are you looking for a location that's going to make it easier for your clients to get to those places

[25:01] where they most commonly need to go for referrals so we're kind of thinking about that as they're thinking about where they're gonna be located and a lot like I said a lot of agencies will come in at the concept stage where they're just saying oh we're just looking you know for a site and we'll talk with we'll talk through with them kind of all those pieces set about collaboration and you know how they're where they're gonna be located and and try to work with them on finding something that's really gonna make sense in the context of all the services that their clients might need thank you yeah so where the cross 3 is set to expire in 2018 that'll be our last year as I mentioned and Boulder County has placed an extension on the 2017 ballot for consideration so I'm going to turn it back to Commissioner Jones and then I'm just gonna leave my contact info and then this is the website if anybody would like to link to the report so I'll just wrap it up by saying that this will be County issue 1a

[26:02] and we are hopeful that the voters of Boulder County will see be as generous and compassionate as they have been in the past we did do polling on this measure the idea of this measure back in June and it 82 percent of survey respondents indicated that they would be likely to vote for an extension worthy cause and it's it will have a very similar structure to the other worthy causes with the exception that rather than having any designated agencies we did designate three buckets or categories of need that we would try to fund in the first three years so specifically calling out 2 million dollars worth of affordable housing 600 thousand for senior and aging services for agencies including but not limited to meals on wheels and then $900,000 for new and expanded health and medical mental health services and this was

[27:00] based on our roundtable with the service providers on their sense of what the needs were in the community and in their plans and so that's why that was included specifically and with that I will conclude by saying we would be delighted if the city of Boulder you all would see fit to pass a resolution resolution of support for this initiative we think it is really a proven success for the residents of Boulder the clients in Boulder and throughout the county so thank you and if you have any more questions we're happy to answer

[28:03] so that's correct it doesn't it just funds capital needs so you know when we when the capital projects are when the agencies are working on developing their capital projects we you know ask them questions about what their operating performance going to look like if they're going to be expanding services and what kind of feasibility study they've done in the community to determine what the need is and to determine you know for example if it's a childcare center to determine that there are you know X number of families in need so in each of those categories you know we have information and data around you know what the need is and with what the need is within the community for example an early childhood of the early childhood council has you know data and has done an assessment around what the gap is in terms of the need for early childhood obviously with housing the housing partnership has kind of done the

[29:00] same thing so that's part of how we determine what the need is on an annual basis is really looking at what's out there in terms of those assessments and and where we know there might be high need but we don't I don't have a number that says in each of those areas this this is how this is sort of closing the gap we know that it is helping to close that gap but I don't have would be good to see that yeah Charlie could I just add that obviously fundraising for capital needs is a particular type of fundraising challenge for nonprofits and any money that you put towards your capital needs is money that you can't put towards operations and if you think of your own budget your your the cost of your mortgage is often the biggest expenditure that you as an individual putting in it's not that different for nonprofits so if we can help with that or if we can help with equipment like solar panels that help offset the utility bills so that more money can be put into programs that's helping what we

[30:00] do know in general about need is as Megan pointed out the the demands for these services is not going down but what is going down is federal and state funding in these areas and there's a whole lot of uncertainty around the federal funding in particular so that means that at the local level we are the source of stability for for the safety safety net thanks Elise and Megan my question is about when you're looking at the concept they come in for a concept do you and talking about how this is for capital only and obviously when you build a building or expand or something you add to your operating costs so do you look at that as you're looking at the concept to see how they're going to be if how much impact and if they can sustain it we do yeah that's it that's a great question and that's part of that's

[31:00] one of our criteria is you know do they have a plan to sustain the growth in operations that could you know could be driven by this because some for some agencies it is growing their clientele or you know their services but for others it's not it's just providing more stability for them but that is definitely one of the factors that we consider mm-hmm I actually have a excuse me a question for Jane Jane do we have it on the schedule to consider resolution in support of this we don't but at CAC we can add it to the schedule in fact if you want to not give me direction at a study session but provide guidance tonight we can have something ready for next week September 19th my personal guidance would be I would love to see something like that come forward not that I read my emails during the meeting but we've been told these microphones mmm Oh yours in

[32:03] particular isn't mine seems to be yours I thought you were gonna tell me I was saying something inappropriate coincidence Carrie nice jar whoever was trying to shut me up I think that's a great idea and we should get a sense if folks want

[33:01] to give that guidance I imagine folks want to give us sense okay that looks like our guidance to you Jane yes thank you we can make that happen I mean just are there other questions anybody okay thank you again thank you then you can have your choice of mics [Laughter] okay so I guess the rest of the study session will devote to the city's budget right absolute to set up these

[34:07] so welcome to the first and I guess I hope that we have this year in the budget throughout the year people will

[35:26] be able to watch it after this meeting we'll be presenting a financial Reserve policies a topic that we've discussed recently we'll be presenting information about the dollars involved in the recommended budget and then I'll be finalizing it with talking about budget initiatives and then we'll have plenty of time for y'all to ask questions the many of which I hope we can answer tonight and those that we can't we will

[36:02] prepare for either the study session or first reading so with that let's run the video every year the city dictated by its charter must adopt a balanced budget by December 1st for following years annual budget with guidance from its residents and community leaders community sustainability framework helps responsibly direct city resources to initiatives that have the most impact on safety sustainability economy and community just to name a few so what is the city's budget the total recommended budget of holder is just over 389 million dollars in 2018 the two largest portions of the budget include

[37:00] the operating budget and the capital budget the capital budget is just over 111 million dollars it is part of the capital improvement program it is focused on major ongoing business needs maintenance and repair of city assets the operating budget is just over 200 to 77 million of the total budget and is funded through various funds the Transportation Fund open space and mountain parks fun recreation activity fund and others with the largest being the general fund the general fund pays for city services such as the Human Services police and fire departments and city libraries as well as administrative functions including finance information technology and human resources the general fund is funded through various revenue sources including fees for service grants occupation and franchise taxes but is largely comprised of sales and use tax

[38:01] and property tax similar to 2017 the recommended budget reflects a conservative fiscal approach to ensure adequate resources are available during economic downturns for natural disasters the proposed 2018 budget reflects community input to enhance engagement outreach opportunities recommended by the public participation working group [Music] council feedback staff are developing an implementation framework and we'll identify near-term focus areas including assessment measures as well as additional outreach in check-ins with city council additionally addressing focus areas outlined in the 2017 human services strategy is a major initiative in 2018 with over 1-point million dollars being dedicated to various programs and services this includes funding for homelessness services childcare subsidies

[39:00] I'm going funding to work with the emergency family assistance Association these investments focus resources on integrated and coordinated services and partnerships for greater efficiency and effectiveness across the city and community the city is also dedicated to maintaining and enhancing core services as a part of this plan the city will continue its investment in public safety as well as setting aside general fund dollars to address finally the city approach the 2018 budget in a collaborative manner that continues to recognize the importance of fiscal stewardship and a commitment to service as a result the recommended budget represents a conservative spending plan that invests in community priorities and cautiously accounts for decreases in the sales and use taxes as poplars economy reacts to the national climates for more information about the city of boulders budget visit slash budgets or attend a public hearing sessions scheduled for

[40:01] October 3rd [Music] ah nice so now for the financial update and Cheryl Patel er Director of Finance will present this thanks Jane so I'm gonna talk about domestic and then the Colorado economy right now the economy is is growing at a slow growth trajectory some of the positives last quarter the GDP grew at 3% for third quarter the recommend or the expectation is two and a half percent and a lot of this growth has been led by consumer spending as well as business investment retail sales in July will above what was expected at 4.2 percent home prices and manufacturing sector continues to expand areas of caution also our inflation rate

[41:09] has been below two percent for quite a while now which 2% is the federal target for inflation last month we are at 1.7 percent labor market continues to be healthy unemployment in August was 4.4 percent consumer confidence remains high but there are several uncertainties out there right now first being interest rate so back in July the Federal Reserve decided not to increase the rates the good news is they kept their projections about the economy the same so there is still an expected rate increase coming up before the end of the year but what's happened in 2017 as the yield curve has started to flatten a bit so the short-term rates have inched up yet the longer-term rates haven't and

[42:01] historically what we've seen when the when the yield curve actually starts inverting is it's usually a precursor for recession so we're going to be keeping an eye on the interest rates of course we all know about the debt ceiling debate and tax reform discussion coming up the financial market so far with all that's been going on I've actually been pretty stable but they are expected to become more volatile as these issues arise in the fall tax reform many feel that the current administration the reform suggested would actually spur economic growth however there's a lot of speculation that this reform will never actually make it through so that that's an area we're looking at as well domestic policies and proposed federal budget cuts so the last speaker spoke about the proposed cuts one of the areas

[43:01] that would really affect us as a city is the proposed cut of the Community Development Block Grant program so we receive about 1.2 million a year that goes into the housing division and actually in 2016 we received an additional about 3 million for disaster recovery from that grant so that would really not be a good thing for us and then final uncertainty of course our global concerns most notably North Korea and in the issues surrounding that looking at Colorado we're actually growing better than the national economy we did slow down a little bit in 2016 it actually was the slowest year in the last five years however we do seem to have picked up a bit and the economists are predicting moderate growth for the remainder of this year and 2018 so our 5-year on the positive side our

[44:01] five-year average of GDP has been about 5% currently it's at 2% and our CPI is up over 3% right now negative or a cautionary our the growing population seems to be slowing a bit so I'll talk a little bit about the labor market and how that that slow growth in the population definitely affects employers ability to find people for jobs also for the last few years our agriculture and then oil and gas industry industries have had a really rough go of it and those are two really big industries for our economy here in Colorado so our labor market is very healthy we're well below the national average we're at 2.4 percent about 27% of companies here are saying that they're hiring and there's expected 60,000 new jobs in Colorado in 2017 and

[45:03] that's really across all the sectors but mainly construction and then tourism like leisure and hospitality like I mentioned before employers are having a really difficult time finding the experienced workers that they need so this is putting a pressure on wages housing remains strong again at the end of 2016 we saw rents stagnate but they've come back a bit year-to-date prices are up a lot of that has to do with the fact that inventories are still pretty low some just cautionary things the last few months we've actually seen the average home price as well as the average condo price declines so we're looking is it a fluke or is that a trend that's starting to come about and certainly for higher end homes there there definitely has been a softening on prices and finally retail sales in a

[46:03] couple slides we'll go over surrounding Front Range cities but it's really mixed what the different communities are seeing as far as retail sales certainly retail marijuana has helped that cities in this area so you've seen this slide recently this is our sales and use tax revenue projections and we did revise the projections for 2017 we talked about really there's been a lackluster growth in retail sales here in the city also construction use tax has down considerably the number of permits as well as the average value of the permits is down business use tax is also down and that's the tax that we get from businesses when they purchase things outside of the city of Boulder for their business so as you can see the

[47:00] year-to-date numbers are actually a little worse than our projections are our 2017 revised amounts but last month we did see a little better than what we've seen the last several months so we want to hold those revised numbers where they're at for now until we have a few more months so we pulled information on sales and use tax comparing to other cities around us and this is actually through June of 2017 and you'll see that we are definitely on the lower end of the pact as far as sales tax revenue and there's really three areas for us that have been down considerably this year first is grocery store revenue I know we've been asked do we think people are leaving Boulder to the other communities we can't really answer that based on the data it definitely is a possibility when

[48:00] you look at Longmont in Louisville but also a lot of those areas have seen a lot of population growth so it's really hard for us at this point to to really tell what would is behind the difference in that area the another area is apparel stores were down about seven percent nationally apparel stores are down but we've had several clothes in the last year at the city and especially at the twenty ninth Street Mall and then finally consumer electronics for the city are down about forty percent for this year nationally that too is down but for the city it's much more than the national trend looking at construction use tax we wanted you to just to see how how really volatile this this use taxes and what we did for the 2018 budget and Katie I'll talk about this a little bit more but in the last couple

[49:02] years we've been using the revenue that we've gotten in the last couple years as the basis of our budget projection and given what has occurred this year our major decrease we really looked at how we're budgeting for this tax and we felt that a better base number to use for construction use tax would be our historical average for the last 10 years so that's what's in the 2018 budget and our thought on that is if it comes in higher than that we will use that money for one-time funds ok I'm not going to spend too much time on reserves we've talked a lot about this recently can I ask you real quick just you should the construction use down 40 or 50 percent as I recall that's compared to last year correct and then what is it

[50:01] compared to on this overall average figure that you're budgeting for going forward it's about isn't that about 6 mil it's about the 6 million total construction use so it equates to what we are doing moving forward the dollar amount so what would that be is it they get a percentage about the same or cracks okay great yeah we have a question about how every year it's relative to the preceding year so if this year's down we're projecting next year's to similarly be down or it would be 0% change as opposed to minus 40 percent change correct it would be 0% change so it'd be at the base level that we're seeing this year which has been around our historic levels and we're keeping the revenue projections flat and now ears into Cheryl's point if we see revenues come in above the six million base we'll use that for one-time dollars so just when we're looking at these the

[51:02] minus 40 this year could be because the before was a killer year it was right in several years it shows the volatility but it doesn't show how much tax were bringing in relative to Broomfield or and then you know what I'm saying it's just relative to how everybody's previous year was right okay anything else on that so back to everyone's favorite topic of reserves 16% again is the baseline and then you look at the risks so of course our biggest risk are is revenue diversification or lack thereof so about close to 70% of our general fund revenue comes from sales tax and property tax both of which really are dependent on the economy and then our risk of a natural disaster and

[52:03] of course we've all seen the last couple weeks the impact and with fires and flood risk we really feel it's important that we need to be above that baseline given our risks for for those items so our recommendation again is that we increase the reserves in the general fund to 20% by the year 2020 the budget before you has reserves at 18% if the utility occupation tax does pass we talked about that the reserves would go down to about 15% and then slowly be replenished over several several years the enterprise fund we're not recommending any changes those are at about 25% which is typical for utilities and then other funds it really varies by the type of expenses whether it's

[53:00] capital or an operating fund in each of those funds sure question for you you mentioned that if the utility occupation tax passes that it would go down about 15% would it be up to that 20% by 2020 you know so by 2020 we'd be up to our goal still attracting how long the the tax is extended for it will be replenished by the time that it's completed which is prior to 2020 I believe I think we already made a decision on what the time period would be so five years yeah it's it's a little longer so I do not think unless we made some budget decisions to make that happen so we could we could also take that approach so we'd be on a little bit of a slower pace of that right tax passes good good evening Council I'm gonna walk you through some of the budgetary numbers and then 2018 budget so there'll be a lot of numbers thrown at you but happy to pause for any

[54:00] questions that you may have so as Jane mentioned we start the budget really January 2nd but we're already in December so this graphic really shows all of the thoughtfulness that's gone on the past few months between when you've seen the CIP budget last month to this month and continuing on into October for the public hearings as you saw in the budget book the recommended budget for 2018 is just over 389 million this is an increase from last year largely due to capital expenses which fluctuate over the year and especially in 2018 where we have large utility projects that have been planned for for several years prior to this so the capital budget is really about 82 percent of an increase in last year the operating budget is recommended to increase about six and a half percent and Jane's going to be providing more specific details on what's comprising that budget increase so new to the budget book this year I know it's small

[55:01] font but it's more demonstrative about how complicated our funding structure is here at the city of Boulder and how many funds that we have that are really from restricted revenues and make it more challenging to prioritize requests across the city but these are broken down by each of the different types of governmental accounting fund structure so you'll notice this year compared to last that sales will show mentioned sales and use tax is really the primary source of all of our city revenues and especially to a general fund that you'll see later on while sales and use text could be a reflection of the economic stability utilities which is another high revenue source is really related to consumption you'll also notice that we have these other categories and wanted to provide a little bit more detail about what other taxes are and other revenues are so other taxes can comprise accommodations

[56:00] and emissions your climate action tax all the special taxes that the city has passed whereas other revenues are largely based upon fees for services and fines and rentals when you look at the revenues without utilities you notice that sales and use tax and property tax really make up the bulk of the revenues as Cheryl mentioned unique to 2018 as this debt issuance which is related to the utility capital projects that are coming online so it's a revenue source that we receive in one year but pay down over the next 20 years or so we're going to dive a little bit more and see these specific revenue sources with starting with the utility cost so for 2018 you guys were all breached back in May about the different restructure that's occurring within utility bills so overall a typical resident first a homeowner would see an $11 a month bill

[57:00] increase and the rates changes are largely based upon both the structure change that's occurring in 2018 as well as just the typical rate increases that you see to accommodate the costs and capital needs so sales and use tax again the chart that you saw just a second ago is reflected here we wanted to emphasize that while sales and use tax is a large part of the general fund there's several other funds that receive sales and use tax and with the decline in projections they're utilizing different strategies and we mentioned some of these at the CIP budget discussion as well so in the general fund what you'll notice in this budget is that we've really focused on shifting from ongoing budget request to one-time in lieu of kind of economic softening to kind of see what it does over the next several months an open space they may focus on stewardship and slower expansion of the system for 2018 it doesn't affect their current budget but it may in the out years and in the transportation fund

[58:02] they're shifting capital projects so the capital budget that you saw last month was 120 million it's now about a hundred and eleven million so that's largely due to shifting transportation projects to next year and prioritizing the reductions based upon their transportation master plan goals and the 0.25 cent sales tax fund which is for Parks and Recreation and Parks and Recreation has several funds that support it and so they're shifting capital projects to a fund that is largely supported by property tax instead of sales and use tax so these are just different strategies that like I said because of our funding structure we can shift priorities so as a reminder property tax comes into the city a fairly small portion compared to the total bill school districts receive the largest portion while the city receives about fourteen percent we received preliminary estimates a few weeks ago and anticipate that there'll be about an

[59:01] 18 percent increase to the city's revenue stream which is about 6.7 million property tax go ahead I have a question yeah so you've got the count the schools County City districts of those governmental entities I know that the city of Boulder has Dee Bruce does that correct so who else of those has done that I have that information that I could pull off but off the top of my head I'm not completely familiar okay I guess that was part of my question so we get the full amount of whatever the home value goes up but there's shifting between how much the homeowners pay and how much business owners pay is that correct that's that so there's been an 18% increase in the assessment and I did the math and homeowners go up

[60:01] by 8 percent so it means the balance of that is assessed to our business properties is that right is that how you understand it okay just a little bit more I think it's on your next slide yeah we're gonna talk about how the Gallagher amendment affected the residential and I believe the commercial is still assessed at 29% and that doesn't change just a note though for property tax because I don't believe it's on the next slide but the general fund again while it's a large REE recipient of property tax there's several other funds that it supports namely the library fund Parks and Recreation fund and the community housing for assistance program fund chap there have lots of acronyms by way of history while it seems like in the past few years we've had large assessment race I wanted to provide a little historical information about how over the past eight years we've really seen a

[61:02] 7% increase between 2010 and 2007 at large increases in the last four years but assessment as a reminder occurs every two years so that's why you'll see the dip do you mean a 7% annual rate effective yeah between 2010 and 2011 ooh that's increased has been about 7% when you annually total all right so this is make it to your question so property tax calculation is fairly complicated and what made it a little bit more complicated this year relates to the Gallagher amendment that tries to level out the assessed value and the percentage received between commercial and residential and so what would have been a 20% increase if you received a 20% increase assessed value on your home is now about it eight point five

[62:00] increase and again this is just for the city of Boulder we want to be very clear there's different portions of property tax but this is largely due to the assessment percentage declining for 2018 hhor-- and that that assumes that we maintain our mill love you the same level which we won't make that determination until December is that correct do we make it before it's oh I'm sorry you're required to make it under the Charter by December but you will make it when you pass the budget got it thanks and can I ask a question about that I understand we'd be bruised so the question would be if we lower the mill levy are we then able to increase it again in a future year only with a vote and so what cities who want to give relief to is that they provide a credit as they keep the mill levy the same they provide a credit okay thank you yeah so in the previous slide you talked about total property tax revenues increasing by 18

[63:02] percent of set that right correct first row 18 yes a total and then but residential properties are going up by 8.5% so in other words commercial properties are going up more than 18 percent in order to make that up likely any other questions on the side let me follow up on the other question again as the city does even anyone's knowledge ever done a credit against the mill levy have we done that yeah you'll see in 2010 to the 2011 revenue year the reason that the perd the percentage change between us Italian property tax value is because of a mill levy that was credited in 2010 or 2011 um from historical knowledge it looks like years prior especially during the economic downturn that there was some credits the mass has some history they were credits for quite a while before it cut D bruised and then

[64:00] after got D Bruce they were credits this instead of raising it all in one year it got raised yeah I don't remember how many years that raised little by little incrementally over several years until it reached the max and then it just sits there unless council decides to do a credit again I want to provide time because I know this part gets complicated any other questions around property tax I'll ask one thing I don't know if you know the answer I've looked this up in the past but do you happen to know of the property tax how much actual revenue comes from residential versus commercial industrial into the city something that we wanted to look into as well as new construction and it's something I could provide yeah be interesting to get a sense of that even though the

[65:00] residential is worth more since the commercial industrial is paying at four times the rate and it is actually four times that which is kind of amazing obviously it takes a lot less commercial valuation to raise the same amount of revenue when they paying four times the rate it would be interesting to get some sense of that it's not something you can figure out intuitively you just have to really look at the county's assessments yeah I'm sure we have the numbers okay all right now we want to move on to expenditures so citywide expenses the largest portion of expenses reciting utilities and it's especially true as we mentioned given the large capital projects that we have in utilities this year without utilities you'll see that it declines substantially but yet there's still a focus on public safety and open space as long as Parks and Rec

[66:01] and then we try to for the sake of ease of the presentation lump in some of these other like internal services which are really our finance and HR an IT and then what Jane will be talking about of our new capital program for the general fund as well as some citywide debt and general governance so moving on to the general fund no surprise here we've seen that the property tax ends and use text is the largest portion we do have a fairly diverse revenue structure but it is important that you know property tax and sales tax are there to help balance each other off as the economy may soften so typically you'll see one revenue source declined before the other and vice versa so one revenue source start to grow faster than the other one does so they're really there to help offset each other as far as expenses Public Safety is a critical one as well as library arts and human

[67:00] services when you want those together the general fund also supports largely the internal functions so that's why the 13% so big it's because functions like HR finance and IT really don't have their own dedicated revenue source and so the general fund has to support all of the core services I want to move on briefly to talk about staffing and then Jayne will provide again more detail about the specific people that are included in this number so the 2018 budget is recommending almost 12 full-time equivalent employees of that five are going to be fixed term we also wanted to show by fund again with our diverse funding structure that about half of the employees that are being requested will reside in the general fund largely around Community Engagement once we get to that slide in public outreach the other funds have a mix of employees that are being requested along

[68:03] with community outreach construction and some again more public engagement where you move off that slide I think the one and a half head counter for the sugar sweetened beverage administrator that's fully compensated for by the tax itself right so even though that's a net head it's not a net cost to us in any others of the heads that are compensated by corresponding fee or tax yes and the general funds the point five in the sugar sweetened beverage is a special tax auditor of the other point 5ft eeob funded by marijuana money okay okay I believe that's all I can think of Alice okay any other questions before I pass along to Jane great thank you thanks Katie so we're gonna talk about sort of the initiatives that we're putting forward in the budget

[69:02] we believe I believe that this was a budget that we prepared in a fiscally conservative manner so one of the things that you know we really believe in and Katie has already talked about it is that we use one-time expenses when time revenues for one-time expenses that's really important to the city and that's why some of these employees are viewed as fixed term as well as other expenses that we've got in the budget in in thinking about all the the matters that the council has decided and talked about over the year we felt like I felt like that these initiatives that we've got on here are ones that really mattered a lot to our council into our community so you'll see that we are putting dollars into community engagement the human services strategy that you passed in July social equity on the climate commitment and the unfunded capital in particular and we're trying to separate them all based on the sustainability

[70:00] framework so that they're it's easy to understand where our dollars are going so onto the next slide so under environmentally sustainable community we start off with the camp program now you're gonna hear more about the camp program in October and you'll learn about some of the metrics and the success of that particular program we think that this made a real difference for our community in reducing the number of people that were parking in the neighborhoods and also having people use the bus to access Chautauqua on the weekends we also have some changes in the open space a mountain parks department so a couple of years ago when the Affordable Care Act really ascendant and we were all trying to understand more about it we began looking across the organization but particularly in open space of mountain parks which was doing an organizational assessment at the issue of are we treating our employees fairly under both living wage and the affordable care act

[71:01] and the work that Tracy and her team have done are leading us to make some changes this year that affect that department they're mostly related to our trail employees and what we're doing is that we have a number of fixed term employees six of them are moving to full-time standard employees four of them are four of the positions let's say not people four positions are fixed term that are being eliminated and one fixed term is being continued and so I really want to honor the fact that the open space department has been really serious about looking at treating employees fairly under both Affordable Care Act and living wage and in accordance with their organizational assessment so that's one of the things that we're doing under the energy strategy project we continue to care deeply about our climate commitment one of the things though that has been at the top of a list with regard to climate commitment

[72:01] has been our work on the energy future or the municipal ization project as you know the utility occupation tax that forms the funding for the municipal ization project will end at the end of this year as we prepare the budget for 2018 we do not assume that the voters will extend the tax we have to assume that it will not pass and so this budget is prepared to allow our existing staff to transfer back into their respective departments and their goal if we're not to pass would be to spend 2018 thinking about ways in which we can meet our climate commitment otherwise if you could go to the next slide here has been our historical spending on the energy strategy so what you can see here is our budget for the last several years and our recommended budget for 2018 under the assumption that the utility occupation tax would not pass is substantially reduced this would allow these personnel to transition out

[73:02] of the organization over the first quarter and to set us up to send some back to their departments to work on the climate commitment we also have a scenario in the budget at page 83 of the city budget that is a scenario to about how we wouldn't spend the dollars in the event the utility occupation tax passed so we do have a fallback position in the event that that were to occur so we're ready whether either of those situations happens so so under safe community one of the things that we started talking about in living wage you'll recall is having our emergency medical services provider which is a third party outside provider provide a living wage that increased our cost of EMS services substantially and so as part of the next budget and as the fire department looks forward to its next master plan we are suggesting funding dollars to look into

[74:02] the idea of should our city department our city fire department provide emergency medical services and so that funding is in there under safe community in addition our police officers have been using body worn cameras for a couple of years and as you know we were one of the first communities in Colorado to start that we've updated those cameras and we are extending that work in 2018 to provide new in-car video that connects with the cameras and makes the the work of the police department seamless and in addition there will be funding to maintain and license the equipment yes the emergency medical services the hundred thousand is to research it's to do research on how we would transition if we could transition what it would cost to transition to emergency medical services so it's very complicated it is very complicated to do

[75:01] we would need to have fire fighters that got new certifications and we need to know how many would be appropriate to deploy across the city how long it would take how to train them and how to keep that training up so we need to understand all the different aspects of EMS before we can even recommend looking at it further so I'll add a little bit more detail to because part of it also is that our you have to have a medical director as part of your team and right now it's through our third party EMS contractor and so if we move away from that the split of not having that medical director becomes a little bit more difficult and so this is also to get outside medical consulting without using the third party if that makes sense yeah because I think what Suzanne asked was is a hundred K to do the research about bringing him in so so I think the KDS explanation is probably far more accurate than my own part of it is the

[76:03] medical director and part of it is to do the exploration so it's not all for a third party consultant I know I don't know the breakdown okay I didn't me counsel my cause are as a fire chief so the hundred thousand is actually split it's not split in half it's probably about thirty thousand for consulting the seventy or so is more for bringing the medical director contract in-house so that we have that person technically reporting to us rather than using their services through and by proxy through AMR so we felt that much better that it be under our supervision rather than using our vendor to provide that service so so that's the big part of it and then the smaller part is okay

[77:02] how do we ramp up if we're going to ramp up advance life support which involves DEA type issues storing medications there's a lot to to stepping up that so this okay so it is partly implementation and partly research yes okay oh sorry I've got us going off on the squid I think it's okay so chief in the current situation people pay the ambulance service when they're transported would that continue to be the case yes sir and the people don't typically it's the sure they're responsible for it but the insurance company typically takes so then once we've got this set up and the start-up costs are all done it would be self-supporting from a financial standpoint I wouldn't characterize it in that way in other words if we stood it up as a separate service I wouldn't say oh yes it will pay for itself partly because by using firefighter ents we're killing two birds

[78:01] with one stone are actually taking the all-hazards approach whereas right now their EMTs and that's all they do and they work for a third party so they're not our employees either hence why we're paying them to pay the living wage bring them in house we can use them more broadly so one thing I think we should ask during this consulting period is look at the scenarios under which we might increase the costs of that and scenarios under which if possible we decrease the cost - I know it's insurance companies who pay it but sometimes you know people who don't have insurance they're stuck with the bill so I'd be real that's one thing I'll be very curious about is how that will work out for both the users and for the city and we would want to understand what best practices are around bad debt because there certainly is bad debt in in this that we would be writing off and we need to figure out what the right percentages of that etc so yeah it's complicated sort of related to Sam's

[79:01] question the he asked about the insurance basically getting covered where the am lien or the insurance covering the ambience ambulance trip does that mean that the city then is the entity that's submitting for the insurance claim yes so the way typically works the cities that run a millon services whether it's our own department or it's run through the fire environment they usually use the third-party contractor does the billing does the collections us although but it is the city that is the the party doing the billing of the insurance companies thank you and so that's the kind of thing that will get worked out in terms of how much personnel you're you'll need this mapping all of that stuff okay thank you okay thank you Jesus okay so on to the next one ah I turn to the wrong page okay so under economically

[80:03] vital community you know that we have been talking about and actually have started work on a downtown retail strategy we talked about it earlier this year but one of the things that I think we now know based on the revenues that we've seen coming in or not this this year is that it would be very important for us to do a citywide retail strategy and one of the things that we haven't prepared the RFP on this yet because it hasn't been funded that but a thing that I would like us to be looking at too is the idea of service businesses in the city and what kind of service businesses we want to have in a vital community like ours we also know that we recently lost Walmart which was a vendor a retailer to those of less economic means and how is our community serving that how is our retail community serving that

[81:00] population so I think that we can do a broader study about really across the board how is our retail serving our community and what kinds of mix of service industries small we are houses etc we might need so I'm thinking of that a little bit bigger than just start a retail strategy but it would be a citywide strategy in addition we have $60,000 that we want to put into two efforts around boulders innovation economy the first effort is an interesting one by the Small Business Development Center which is working out of our library and they have started a business in queue later for innovators in the technology area it's a virtual business incubator and they're starting to get some traction there in our community for some of the small companies that don't really qualify for investor dollars that we're seeing others in the community receive and so this is a way for really small entrepreneurs to find a way to get a

[82:01] foothold and to start incubating their business and we also have the Boulder Chamber and the boulder Economic Council that's working on a project that they call it Boulder breakthrough and we are collaborating with them that would be the smallest portion of this funding $50,000 would go to the Small Business Development Center and I think $10,000 to the other effort then we have the University Hill redevelopment efforts that we are continuing we want to support the employee eco paths as well as fund some of the operating expenses that our Hill Community Development Coordinator is working on we've had a lot of success success up at the hill in the last couple of years and it continues to grow hopefully you were able to go to the Sun days on the hill this summer which one I think were very successful so we're wanting to continue that jana have a just a quick question on the previous slide and in the retail strategy is the plan to include the

[83:05] human services strategy whatever relates to would relate to the retail strategy as well as like the community perceptions survey how those kind of come together and intersect so we haven't written the RFP yet so the answer is I don't know yet but a focus that I have is on making sure that we have retail in our community that serves all economic segments of our community and so certainly that involves some of the Human Services and the community perception I'm sure but this focus would be kind of less on the Human Services side and more on the sort of social equity economic justice side of the world so thank you that's my view so on to liveable community um as you may know the Ponderosa mobile home park is one

[84:00] that we've been working on especially since the flood they were severely impacted and we are going to be starting to invest in infrastructure and interim management of that this is around a little bit over a half a million dollars that we would put into the Ponderosa mobile home park we do know that there would be future expenditure expenditures in later years and if you have any questions about that Curt fern Harbour will be able to answer those later this evening we also have a we know the council is committed to the living wage and there is a state minimum wage requirement we are accelerating that for the city for non-standard employees so next year we would propose to go to the $11 an hour which is earlier than the state would require most of these employees are located in the parks and recreation department and the way that we would pay for this is through budget reallocations in that department as well as fee increases in the areas that don't relate

[85:01] to to youth or seniors or low-income users but would relate to people that are using services that are let's say more for more taken advantage of by the wealthy so we'll see how that works out but we intend to cover it in that fashion and then a really important change in our budget this year is that we're hoping to drive a lot of dollars over 1.4 million dollars to address the goals that are outlined in the Human Services strategy so if you could go to that one so the Human Services strategy was adopted by the council in July of this year and it had a number of goals associated with it as we looked at the goals we tried to find ways in which we could address all of them so certainly the homelessness strategy which is part of the Human Services strategy is one that we've been talking about all summer

[86:00] and we are proposing to put 750,000 dollars into the new homelessness strategy you're gonna be talking a little bit more about it next week on September 19th but we think that that is a great investment to change the conversation and change the dynamic around homelessness in our community under the keep families housed program oh I'm sorry do you mind if I interrupt you there was just what particular aspects of the homelessness strategy is are those dollars are going to navigation services and the coordinated entry services so essentially the two RFPs that have been issued so far would be to support some work of the boulder shelter for the homeless and Bridge house and Karen will be able to talk more about that later if you want to have more questions well actually are we since we are dealing with some of those topics next week are we gonna get an update on that's good yes thank you great so keep

[87:03] families house was a pilot program that we started in 2017 you may recall that it actually came about because of the bus trip that we took and we were talking about ephah and the work that they're doing to keep families out of homelessness we funded it this year it was very successful and we want to propose that this is ongoing funding not one-time funding as we move forward we also want to increase the Human Services fund this is a fund that has not seen increases for a number of years a thing that I want to say about this is that I had been hopeful that we could increase the Human Services fund a little bit more than what we're proposing in this budget we're proposing $200,000 I have been hopeful that we could go up to around $400,000 but because of the revenues not coming in as we had hoped we had to make some priorities and this

[88:00] was one area where we did not fully fund what I had hoped to do there is another area that you'll see in a minute and we'll talk about that we want to change the edge program from one-time funding to ongoing funding we're going to increase our ongoing funding for childcare subsidies and we're going to add one-time funding for inclusiveness and diversity grants as well as moving one of our program coordinators to full time so you'll see that we have an ongoing budget request of 1.1 7 million and 230,000 of one-time so this is a real big effort for us this year and I think that we have the council and the community and the nonprofit community in particular to thank for the great work that they did with our department and creating the Human Services strategy so thanks for that and I'm excited about seeing good funding in this area so on to the next one another area is the Human Services

[89:00] strategy sugar sweetened beverage area so Healthy Living was one of the main topics of the Human Services strategy and the sugar sweetened beverage dollars certainly speak to that so in in this area we're going to be focusing on physical activity chronic disease prevention healthful living clean water and our collections began only in July and so the while people needed to collect in July they don't need to remit the tax until August and we don't I don't want to say auditing it but we don't gather all the money so we do not actually have any information for you about how much money we collected in based on July sales and because of that we want to have a conservative budget estimate for 2018 that right now is 1.5 million in budgeted revenues we are hopeful that those dollars will increase and if and when they do we will be coming back to you with a change in the budget that would reflect better

[90:01] projections but right now we have a conservative budget projection as was pointed out a little bit earlier among those dollars the first funding will be directed to the funding program coordinator and to halftime or 1/2 of an employee for the special tax auditor and the rest of those dollars 1.3 million will be spent on program distribution we've already started distributing dollars based on projections for this year and then later in in 2017 our health equity committee will be getting together to make projections and expenditures for 2018 and that will continue as the revenues come in so Jane the the community funding program coordinator would oversee the distribution of the money is that mostly what they're doing are they actually doing healthy programming they are coordinating the program they're not doing the program yeah okay so under

[91:02] good governance this is this next item is one that's actually a really top priority for me and that's why it's in this budget we have known for a while that our general fund does not receive any specifically allocated dollars for capital planning and as a result of that we have to look around pretty hard to find dollars to support the fire department the police department the library all of those general fund entities that do have capital needs including the information technology department when we have the citizen or resident committee connected with the extension of the community culture and safety tax this is one of the top areas that they pointed out to us they said our best practice would be to establish a general fund capital plan and we

[92:01] really want to call this out as something important so in this budget we are proposing a little bit under 3.7 million dollars to be invested in a general fund capital plan our hope is that if council were to pass this and to give us direction that we would spend 2018 coming up with guiding principles around this kind of a plan and continuing it into the future possibly increasing the percentage of general fund dollars that would go into this we would need more studies I guess to understand the kind of funding needs that there are but I really want to going and I think that this would be a great way to do that among the things that we could possibly spend this these dollars on would be there are in the police department for example there are two specialty trucks one is an incident command vehicle and one is a rescue vehicle both of which would have great use here in the city and those two vehicles that we have are very outdated

[93:02] right now I think one of them is well over 20 years old and it's just not serving the function than it needs to we don't have the dollars for those the library commission has been very anxious to improve the bathrooms at the library and that would be a source of funding for this possibly the railroad quiet zones that we weren't able to fund through the capital tax which I hope passes would be this would be a possible funding to support that so we have many many needs and I think that we can come up with lots of great projects for the council to look at with regard to this funding so another thing is that we need to improve our IT software replacement funding we were able to reallocate dollars so this isn't new dollars from expiring debt service payments and so those debt service payments that we do not need to make we're taking those that that money and putting it into IT software and then finally the last two

[94:01] items come out of the kafir' the comprehensive annual financial report and we were recommended in the kafir' that we need to retire our outdated legacy systems in the city and that they're they're costing us money and we need to get rid of them and in particular the sales and use tax system is outdated and it soon will be unsupported and since that's one of the most important aspects of how we collect money in the city we definitely need to replace that system so on to the next one for accessible and connected community probably in addition to Human Services strategy one of the highest priorities the council has had this year has been on public engagement and we really think again the public participation working group for the hard work that they did and we want to honor their recommendations by recommending that we follow a number of them so we're proposing that we hired two new FTE one would be a Community Engagement Manager

[95:00] and one would be a specialist those two employees would be located in the city manager's office in a more centralized location in the city and they would be helpers and assets for the rest of the organization to improve the way that we do our outreach making it more transparent making it more consistent across the entire organization certainly we want to extend the community newsletter but at the bottom of this list are some other important aspects that the public participation working group called out our website I think is no surprise to anyone could use some improvement and so we need to get ready to do that because not only does it need to be completely redesigned we've got to get it ready to be redesigned and we need several employees or proposing to employees that would help us do that and then phase one of our website refresh and we redesign again all of the website people and dollars are related to public

[96:02] participation working group and better community engagement Jen can I ask you a question that certainly can you explain the distinction between the two Community Engagement people that you're imagining like what their different responsibilities might be so the Community Engagement Manager would be a kind of higher level position that I think would be thinking broader and across the city and a community engagement specialist might be much more of a hands-on doer working with specific departments on a project like we've got an upcoming public meeting help us figure out the nuts and bolts of putting that together so normally when one person can't just do all the jobs we normally need two people to do a good teamwork job and stuff like this okay don't fall question Jane I know obviously we already do public engagement in some departments have more of that than others for example Public Works

[97:03] open space the playing department have engagement folks who spend at least parts of their jobs on that would this take some of the time and pressure off of those people in other words would this be a centralization of some of the community engagement that already occurs on a department by to are my basis so I think I want to be completely straight about what I think I don't think it's gonna end the intense need of each one of those departments and those employees to spend a lot of time on community engagement the effort here would be to bring all of those people together in a collaborative team and talk about ways that across the organization we can standardize the way that we do things we can be more consistent we can help them with their process but not I don't think we're gonna take the process away from them they're gonna be doing the process and this group is going to be assisting

[98:02] them to meet the the goals that were set for by the public participation working group okay thanks yeah so lastly under healthy and socially thriving community we have some dollars associated with the Arts Grants program and this is an area that I want to call out a little bit because this is the second area where I was hopeful that we could put more dollars but the constraints of our budget did not allow that to occur so we have had around 225 thousand dollars in ongoing funding for our community cultural grants in 2017 we were able through one-time funding to bump that up more to around it was around four hundred and sixty five thousand dollars we can't continue that level of funding next year because of budget constraints but nevertheless we are adding again

[99:02] around two hundred and thirty-five thousand in arts grants programs to help add to the 225 that already is there to continue our focus on community cultural grants we've heard from the community that we're reducing the budget and I suppose technically we are reducing it but what we're doing is changing the amount of one-time dollars that are going into the program because we needed to have priorities established and both Human Services in this area and the arts grant were ones that sort of came in unable because of our budget constraints to be funded at the full level that I would have wanted them to be funded at another thing that we're doing under healthy and socially private community is that we're funding sixty thousand dollars for the makerspace as you may know the makerspace is one of the most popular areas in the city of Boulder not just at the library and what

[100:01] we have been able to do through grants from the Boulder Library Foundation is provide materials and supplies free to the public we want to be able to continue that in the budget and so we are proposing $60,000 to allow people to be able to use those materials free of charge and really continue to make great use of the makerspace there's a lot of wonderful stories that are coming out of there and yes someday we'll have David Fernand come and tell you all the good things that are being done and then the next thing is the civic area as you know we're getting closer to being done with our beautiful Civic area to the west and we want to continue to fund that area as it opens up and really activate it and so there's funding for different departments to continue the public programming in the Civic area and then finally diversity and inclusion is a real important aspect of our city employees and amount of our internal effort to make sure that we have a

[101:01] diverse population in the city and that we understand the areas of inclusion respect for others etc and so we have had a position that was a fixed term I proposing that we make it an ongoing term ongoing position and we also are providing funding for our new employee to be able to work on developing and implementing a strategic plan in 2018 so next so that ends my presentation although you know that there are many people in the audience anxious to answer all of your questions our next steps are either our next step might be that you will want us to come back on September 26th for part of the study session that day we don't have to and this might be a question for you later tonight whether you want to reserve that time but in any event we will be coming back for first reading on October 3rd 2nd reading on October 17th and we're anxious to get

[102:03] moving on the budget so our questions are do you have any questions about the many projections about the sales and use tax or property tax and then do you have any feedback on the recommended budget so any of us are really anxious to answer your questions so from a process point of view if we can answer lots of our questions tonight or get first reading questions out I'll just say from CeCe's point of view not having to have a second study session before first reading I think would be preferred given how jammed up our schedules getting so with that in mind why don't we let's open it to questions if people have like 12 questions why don't we take turns asking a couple at a time or maybe we'll wrestle somebody starts one topic we'll wrestle that one to the ground and then move to the next just so that we don't

[103:01] we can all stay engaged so with that who would like to start off with some questions Erin in the gym look at that way I only have two questions okay one was about in the Transportation Fund section I saw that there was a budget request for hot fleet replacement fund increased contribution and I was interested in what the schedule for replacement was before and how this impacts that and and and how we might see hop replacements going forward with that funding so Mike Sweeney our director of transportation is here and can answer that question and we're not taking it personally that everyone is like way in the back of a room like cooties or something I don't think we smell we certainly know why more comfortable seats I believe that's the story at least so the answer on the

[104:02] replacement is were trying to take care of a couple of different objectives one is that we are working hard to replace the diesel fleet with a full electric fleet and the second one is to get the fleet in good working order so taking those two things and putting them together our primary source of getting funding is through federal and other grants and it's become clear that for us to be able to replace them at the schedule that we need them replaced we need to over match what is the current minimum match and so what you're seeing in the budget proposal is a strategy where we're upping our local match quite significantly to hopefully attract that and be able to replace the

[105:00] diesel fleet with an electric fleet and meet our needs as far as reliability great and do you have any kind of sense of a time frame of when that might happen so I think if I remember correctly the intent is somewhere over the next five years we wouldn't be able to have fully replaced the fleet a lot of that is contingent upon the availability of the federal grant so okay it's somewhat speculative on our part okay appreciate the answer while you're standing here why don't we just pause and if people have other transportation questions can we just do it that way I didn't well I did have one about are beyond vision zero efforts there's some it was called out in our highlights can you just talk a minute about what what that is alluding to specifically in the coming year yes so really it's a

[106:03] multi-faceted approach I think we've come and talked to you a few times we're really focusing on the four ESO education enforcement engineering and evaluation and so it's also very much a data-driven approach so we're reviewing the our crafts experience and then we're tailoring our solutions to try and address those directly so the next step in the process is that we are about to embark on our next update to the toits vision zero report in which will then have two more years worth of data that we will then inform what those four es are and so it's a bit to be determined and you'll start to see some of the initial results from the next turn of the of the report here hopefully in the

[107:00] first quarter of 2018 okeydoke anything else on transportation okay great thanks Aaron did you go back to the comfy seats my other one was a question about the arts funding so Matt I was hoping that you could talk to us a little bit about the funding the ferret's program got last year or this current year I guess and what that enabled and then what would be different under their proposed funding level for next year and Matt just to add Aaron's question Jane mentioned that it wasn't so much that the funding was going down but that it was being switched to one-time funding right so let me just call your attention to the slide that we just put up there that we prepared for tonight this is a historical view of our arts funding so you'll see back in 2013 14 and 15 that we were at lower

[108:03] levels but since we adopted the community cultural plan at the end of 2015 our funding for the Arts has increased significantly and in 2016 we added the 225 thousand dollars of one-time arts grants and fifty thousand dollars of a marketing program that I think Matt can explain and then a 2017 there have been so much interest in the arts grants that we increased that funding to the level that you see there four hundred fifty thousand dollars as well as a one-time Civic art public area and project we're proposing for 2018 is that we're going to keep the ongoing funding growing you can see the blue is continues to grow and that we're going to add one-time funding of two hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars so instead of four hundred and fifty thousand dollars it's two hundred and thirty five thousand dollars and so Matt

[109:01] now can explain the impact of those funds great thanks Matros sanski with the office of arts and culture so for the impacts on this year specific to the grants program the total grants funding was about six hundred seventy-five thousand dollars with both the ongoing and the additional one-time funding the reason for that increase in a little more detail was partially to fill the gaps that we found in 2016 so in that previous cycle it was discovered that many grant applications and especially in the general operating support category were scored highly by the Arts Commission but there wasn't enough funding to fund them all so a lot of the reason for that increase was around filling that community need that we discovered the the vulnerability that was exposed by that so a lot of the

[110:01] funding went towards that there was also interested in the Grants Program growing in a few sort of more minor ways especially around adding professional development scholarships and trying to ease issues with the affordability and accessibility of rental of cultural venues so the rental assistance fund was created in order to to address some of those needs we found that largely to be successful and especially with the arts and economic prosperity study were able to show that in 2016 with the grant funding that was delivered to the community that returned a very large economic impact almost seventy million dollars in total economic impact now the graph it wasn't one-to-one but we were supporting that activity that generated that that level of of economic activity in the community we expect in the 2017 for that to increase and we've got two different

[111:01] studies that are going to try and dissect that so that was the the effect and what was enabled by that money so we're gonna continue to do that work and so with the recommended level of funding for this year for 2018 we're going to rely on the Arts Commission to give us advice on how to distribute that and we haven't been able to consult with them on that so I don't have their advice to give to you that happens at their October retreat but I can say that will bring forward and some different options so we're gonna talk about things like reducing the overall program by the same percentage that the the new funding level represents and that could mean general operating support to go down a little bit our arrangements with the general operating support recipients they understand that that might happen there could be other options though and

[112:01] some that the Arts Commission could bring forward including trying to fund the operating support to a higher level but gutting other parts of the grants program for the time that that that reduction is in place thank you and I know that was it year and a half ago that we instituted those the new three-year cycles on major grant right in this those are coming up do they extend all the way through 2018 or yeah those would come up again in 2019 yeah well we'll open up a new cycle in the 2019 grant cycle and just the annual ongoing funding the blue bar and this thing is that sufficient to support those major operational grants at the level that they were a year and a half ago for for the 2019 secondly if we assume say similar funding in 2019 as is wearing tests as this proposal no we wouldn't be able to make the same kind of commitments that we did in 2060 okay thank you and well actually a request

[113:00] can we get a breakdown of the of how the 2017 arts budget you know the details of that yeah absolutely I'd appreciate that thank you okay arts questions don't go away well I just clarification because I talked to David today what he said was that this would be blow away a third of the grants basically and that the Arts Commission could decide to do 20 to do fewer 20 fewer small or six to ten of the larger so it would impact what we've already committed to however the organizations have been told it is up to the council to approve every year so that's it's definitely a message that we approve the community culture plan and now we're backing way before the third year right so I actually disagree with that we're not backing away we really support the community culture plan it's just that when you go through a budget

[114:02] and create the priorities at the end of the budget there aren't sufficient dollars and so you need to make priority decisions about where those dollars are going to go and in this instance the recommendation for me to you is that the arts grant funding that was always one time many have forgotten that it was just one time funding we may reduced from 450 to 235 but we still support the community culture plan we hope that in future years revenues increase so that we can increase those dollars again but we can never count on the fact that those dollars are always going to be there the community culture safety tax that passed in was it 2014 how does that show up in these bars does

[115:02] not is not it does not so there was six hundred thousand dollars for public art that doesn't show up in here on top okay thank you over the course of three years in the one seventy-five thousand for the Civic area project is that happened yet it's underway selection and and did that come from the eight million allocated to the Civic area from the community oh no thanks no it came from funding and 2017 that we approved we added that in 2017 to kind of really kick off the public art project and particularly in cooperation with the redo of the Civic area but we still do have funding in the Civic area for public art well and and

[116:01] it may show up in 2018 so it'll feel like we fund it in 2018 if that helps yeah any other questions okay thanks Jim I'm just gonna start it a little higher level and just talk about revenues and ask questions about revenues so I've got two questions one would be I think I saw somewhere that your projection for construction business use tax is it would be flat from this year to next year is that correct it would be flat from the revised amount for 2017 so we revised it down by what we're actually seeing coming in right now okay and you're making that based on what you see in the way of building permits and that kind of thing or how are you doing that just kind of projecting based on revenues or both actually we we do work with to get

[117:00] information on the permits that are coming in along with what we're seeing as a trend sure so I'm just curious about the building permit thing because I think the perception is that there is some building happening so I'm curious is this just the lumpiness you know a big project comes in or two or three but then they get built the next year or whatever or do you see this as a trend and at how many years how many data points do you call something a trend for that matter we're gonna let Mari and Rhea talk about at least the trend piece and we can tour a Public Works I think it's a combination part of the lumpiness of construction also you all mentioned earlier 2016 was a bit of an anomaly so the activity levels that were are occurring are more like 2014 and 2015 and there are some valuations that are down in addition to what we issue

[118:00] permits for revenues are also collected from the federal labs and see you for their construction activities and some of those revenues are down so you're calling that a trend or or lumpiness well I think it's just these are factors that are characteristics that we're currently looking at and in terms of the long term trend I think we're still figuring it out but in terms of what it's like now 2016 was unique activity levels in terms of number of permits and inspections are more like 2014 and 2015 so there is a lot of activity out there it's a different type of activity valuations are a little bit lower and they paid for these projects already that's career seeing the activity but they actually paid for it by the fire yeah right okay and then I think hopefully I'd like us to all stand this property tax thing because I think residents are a little emotional about that this year and I'm confused

[119:01] about it because when I see mines printed out page 49 the talks about property tax as a percentage of all citywide sources and that's 46 million and 14% and then the next page it is 36 million and 25 percent I understand why that percent would be different because that's not including utilities but why would the dollars be different so can we just confirm the actual dollars of property tax can you repeat what pages you're looking at yeah it's 49 and 50 it's yep so I believe as part of a heads up that was sent out of regarding the utility slides these two were also slides that needed to be updated and so the real number I believe is the one on page 49 and it's updated online as well so what we project to get in property tax revenues is 46 million dollars I'm

[120:03] looking to my staff to confirm that I believe that's correct that's the number that's on page 49 yes okay because I see another number that's forty four point five so I just need to know what the number is I guess what do you think it's 46 million Jen where's the 44 million that you're talking about I'm seeing the same number 14090 and 50 mm I couldn't I've got numbers all over the place from different sources and that's why I'm trying to pin this down yep over 46 is I guess number 46 is so number yes okay and so the individuals when they look at the property taxes that they're paying the portion that they're paying to the city went up or will go up 8.5% that's their increase and then Matt or someone

[121:02] said commercial is going up four times that okay what did you say it's 4x the amount of total dollars or but I mean they can explain it better than I can but with the wacky Gallagher amendment so if you own a million dollar house right your property tax was ten thousand dollars and it should be less than that that's what you'd have to pay total not just to the city the city we get a little portion of it right you want a million dollar commercial building your property tax would be 40 thousand dollars right just four times that you give to the Gallagher amendment okay and again the city would get whatever thirteen fourteen percent of that and the other jurisdictions would get the lion's share of it because that's the way it filters out so costs of the of the reanalysis at the state level which is really confusing that's how you get

[122:03] to the fact that even if somebody's valuation and Bossier assessed value and up twenty percent or so a residential unit their property tax would only go up eight nine percent whatever it turns out to be whereas if you're on a commercial building in Boulder you go up a heck of a lot more than that wouldn't it go up by the increase in the valuation he would go up it would go up by the increase in the percentage increase your percent increase in property taxes and commercial starvation the valuation percent doesn't change it never changes and the residential keeps going down down down down down which wasn't really the intent of Gallagher but it's the way it's turned out was it in many years another way of saying is if you had a residential property whose evaluation went up twenty percent and a commercial property whose value so make sure you went up twenty percent actually be I believe a two and a half times larger increase in property taxes for the

[123:00] commercial rate as you get that full twenty percent instead of just eight and a half person this year this year and every year that's gonna change but nonetheless the commercial properties this year because of the change in the state numbers it's a four to one ratio for the same actual value and that's just been that ratio just keeps going up since the day Gallagher was passed it kind of started at about one to one and now we're up to four to one for a variety of reasons okay but I think the the other piece of that for people to understand is it's very small amount of that goes to the city right the larger amount but small amount goes to the county and a whole bunch goes to the school district which is one of the reasons we have some great schools okay and then if we decided to

[124:00] take this credit I think was the terminology that would be applied the same to commercial and to residential yes okay and it's just a one-year credit so the next year it could go right back up to the regular or we couldn't discuss the credit again or whatever right you can make that decision every year right okay I wanted to focus on revenues does anyone else have questions about revenues I do yes you do about revenues because it might be good to kind of focus on revenues and then get to expenses and then go to different models or something like that sure so that's it for me if you want to jump in Sam well some of mine were around property tax and that's been pretty clearly brought out my other question about revenues has to do with affordable housing and so

[125:02] there's kind of a whole bunch of choices that can get made around the affordable housing developer can choose to build if they're willing residential they can choose to build their inclusionary zoning requirements on tight one question I have is is that accounted in any way or is that just an expenditure for them because if they pay cash in lieu it comes in somewhere into the city so I guess that's a two-part question first part is is there any accounting for the affordable housing that is being built by the developers who are siting it on site or is that just something that are required to do and second if they pay cash in lieu what fund does that go in to get even incurred for an hour deputy director of housing so for projects that where the affordable housing is placed on site zero diagonal would be an example of that they're not

[126:00] paying any cash in lieu that will not come into our budget either as income or expense it will simply be added to the affordable housing stock as it's developed we track projects that are currently going through the development process and we're always working with each development to understand sort of where they're going with their approach to the affordable housing either cash or on-site we have a pretty IET idea before it gets the Planning Board which direction they're going and we're working with them on that so we're also predicting in 2018 what at least the information we know now which projects at this point are expecting a bake ash in which ones aren't you know what that number is especially well for 2018 we're expecting I think 9 million to be paid in cash in lieu and then we have projects like zero diagonal

[127:01] 1996 Arapaho and Airport Road there's there may be others that are putting units on site okay so when that come well I just was wondering how much are you projecting for linkage fees that I think we're being more conservative on that seven hundred and sixteen thousand yeah thank you we're hoping to be a little more surprised though so if we had to talk about the square footage of the housing being built versus the square footage of what you're basing that estimate on for commercial space do you know how that would compare I don't but I could get you they love to have that information and so the other part of my question was when we get the affordable housing cash in lieu into what fund does that go is it under planning and development planning

[128:00] Housing and sustainability yeah it goes under the affordable housing fund which is a portion of that okay linkage fees the same the affordable housing from yes that's correct okay and I guess well I bet you up here maybe I can save you another trip I was gonna ask about an expenditure side thing but it was around the budget for affordable housing I think if I can get this to go doesn't always do it I want okay so under the expenditures by fund affordable housing has five million budgeted this year 5.4 million I'm on page 164 of the packet and so what projects are is that intended for I don't think that I can

[129:00] actually answer that because it's a competitive process and the the projects you know put a proposal forward so it would be unfair to me for me to actually okay I had so much specificity because you were looking at particular ones I see so you usually are part of what's contributed to an affordable housing project okay so this represents some multiplier on that for what will actually get built the second thing that I'll add which I think would be helpful is that as we go through the year we track the the the income that's coming through impact fees and cash in lieu and if that is on target or above targets that would give us more flexibility to fund other projects as well up and about video above and beyond the what's in the budget so I guess this is to the finance people in order for that to happen is that done through an adjustment to base

[130:00] okay okay great thank you and then I think just one more question is planning your housing community housing assistance 3.3 million and what is that exactly what does that go for is that vouchers or what's that so that would be very similar to the affordable housing fund and would be supporting the same types of projects so it there's a lot of flexibility with that funding so it can support permanent supportive housing it can support the HP projects it can support infrastructure at the at the shelter so there's a huge variety of places that that could go so where does the funding for that come from that's property taxes that's property taxes does that okay and Community Development

[131:02] Block Grants that's not as big five hundred fifty thousand that's federal that's correct what page did you say yeah I am on page 164 I said 162 I was wrong it's down at the bottom so I think that's all my questions okay good thank you yeah I've got it it's an expenditure one but it's housing so Kurt I'd I have a question about Ponderosa and I'm just trying to understand what we think that's really gonna cause if you look at the budget it's get at five hundred and seventy something thousand for next year and it's got three and a half million for the subsequent year and I know we're getting a bunch of flood money but what I don't quite understand this is how that's all gonna net out in the end maybe we are in quite there yet in terms of what it's really gonna cost the city to purchase it - the revenue we get from the flood money of course and do all the fix ups

[132:03] that are going to be necessary and continue to operate it do we have any good sense of that yet you can't it's really hard to figure it out from the budget because it spreads out over multiple years or so the the 2018 amount is really going to go towards the annexation process and in designing the infrastructure on the site and designing the you know the sort of the final direction of the site and there's also an offsetting income of about just over four hundred thousand a year which that's in the budget so we don't normally have which is nice so it almost offsets the expenses for her next year we have received two different estimates on a current design for the infrastructure which is which is around three million dollars which is what's represented in the following year and

[133:04] what the the cost that we don't know of yet and we'll know better as we go through 2018 is sort of the solution for the housing and how much you know support that would need we have estimates of what we how much we could support that and we believe that we will stay under our sort of our benchmarks of you know seventy to ninety thousand dollars per units that we would typically spend on a hundred percent affordable housing project so it really depends you know working with the residents of the community as well what those housing outcomes will look like so first on the infrastructure so that does that include because you've had this issue with other parks is that include everything roads utilities what im sue with all the wreckage probably all got to be rebuilt that's correct okay and

[134:00] then on the units I mean it's truly often subsidized units seventy thousand dollars but those are fixed fixed in police units as opposed to what we call mobile homes which aren't really mobile I mean it that sounds like we're planning and replacing everything so we eventually most of those homes will have to be replaced there in that type of condition the other aspect that you need to remember on Ponderosa they're currently paying five hundred and thirty dollars a month as a pad rate so if we keep their housing costs the same that's an income that can be used to you know offset housing costs as well so it really helps us first of all it's it's it's an ownership model but but it creates a

[135:03] sustainable income source to offset the the cost of you know working at replacing the housing so we wouldn't be covering all the costs of replacing the housing and that's pretty clear okay and our last question is I'm going to assume we're working with Boulder County this is currently in the unincorporated County to see let's just put it this way if they are interested in contributing because this is the unincorporated area and they've you know us annexing it is it is a good thing for us and it's a good thing for them to obviously it should be annexed but have we been having discussions with them about how to make that all work out in the long run we have and one of the obstacles you know the the worthy cause fund if you'll notice when you looked at that tonight it says it supports rental for housing and at home ownership so that's sort of a a challenge for this particular project yeah okay thanks

[136:06] just kind of a side question from Matt's line of questioning since this is an annexation the vast percentage of it that comes in as annexation has to be affordable housing in this case it'll be a hundred percent that's correct and so I mean that's something to consider in the way these numbers play out as well absolutely okay thank you okay any other housing questions thanks Kurt and that was a sidebar from revenue so how about Bob wants to have a question and then we'll come back if you have more does you have more okay good just mine has more on the expense side Jean um this is more of a headcount question when you were walking through your presentation you mentioned that Tracy had done some good work an open-space about identifying maybe

[137:03] reductions and staffing or what positions could be eliminated when you we show a must slide that shows a increase of heads I think was roughly 7 per minute and five fixed is that um is that net in other words I stood there during the course of the year positions open and closed or eliminated and added and so on and so forth is that 12 net on top of our base or is that just 12 between December 31 and January 1 but those numbers fluctuate during the course two years I questioned somewhat clear I can answer that yeah in between different changes fixed terms expiring which we don't necessarily show the net change is five FTE and the new bodies is how we were displaying that it was the 12 5 being fixed term and 7 being full-time staff but between some of the fixed terms expiring and Tracy's group and others then a head count is five no overall this is a probably really odd

[138:03] for a question overall head County as I know we've got consultants we got part-time employees but do we have a FTE or full-time equivalent and this doesn't I don't care if it's fixed or um or permanent do we have an FTE estimate across the city as of like now wish we do and I am going to yeah 53 yeah I'm equivalents which includes fixed-term and standard employees it doesn't convert our non-standard hours into full-time equivalents right okay thank you so you what was the number you just said for a full-time equivalent I believe okay so I just wanna make sure I was looking at 1350 53 thank you thank you very much we have people questions and your questions that you yeah I'm on

[139:02] the same topic here on page 68 I didn't understand what the variance 2018 base to 2018 rec that's 34 people you kind of explain this whole chart here yeah it gets confusing when you have fixed terms expire and so part of the budget request includes extending some of the fixed terms so we have fixed terms that are project-based that may be taking longer than what the original budget request was so instead of a to your fixture more including one more year to complete the project and so the chart on that page really shows okay here's our 17 approved if we were to remove all the fixed terms that were expiring it would go down to kind of a base 2018 budget however we know that we need to extend some of these fixed terms to complete critical projects and so adding them back in provides you with the variable the base 53 correct so these are really not

[140:04] full-time people they're the contract people who are working full-time we categorize them as fixed term so it's slimmer to what you might think is a contract where it's kind of on a temporary basis for some sort of again project related generally or initiative and then depending on when the initiative ends we tend to expire those positions so if we say it's for the column that says variance base to recommended that's 34 people so that's including a bunch of these fixed term people correct I see that we're just there working longer than I originally estimated okay good okay do you have additional questions I do have a few additional questions that are general in nature on the expenses that just kind of I was curious what percentage of the

[141:00] operating budget is taken up with salary increases so we have an overall increase in the operating budget of what six percent right what percentage comes because we pass this you know salary increases mm-hmm what percentage of the overall operating fund increase is coming from salary increases so you're not increasing programs or anything like that you're just getting it through the salary increases well we know that our salary increased amount that we put in was three percent but I don't have what percentage of the total operating that would equate to and salaries generally around 70 to 75 percent of operating costs to know that yeah and then I have

[142:03] another question about we talked about declining revenues for construction of business use since we budget very conservatively I was curious what kind of decrease we'll have in expenses tied to that decrease in revenue so I assume there could be some headcount that might not be necessary anymore since we're not processing all that all those permits and things like that so what kind of decrease in revenue in expense will be associated with that decrease in revenue moe can answer and I also know that the actual activity hasn't really decline it's largely based upon the assessed value of the permits that we're seeing but she can speak a little bit more clearly to that I think that's right on the head so the because activity levels continue back that's why I said earlier there's still at the you know 2015 2014 levels we're not

[143:00] proposing to reduce staffing at this time and it's important to point out that about 20% of what's planning and development services staffing is fixed term so recognizing the volatile nature of the work as well as some of the one-time investments were making we're in the process of changing out our technology that supports our development tracking and mapping programs and services that globe go-live implementation date is next April so a number of our fixed term staff are all about getting that system up and ready for customers to use that we adjust staffing in PDS as activity levels drop and rise so there have been changes over time and I can certainly provide you with more than a 10 year history of how those FTEs have fluctuated over time so are you saying that when we implement that system then some of those fixed room people will that's what we do not go away shown in these numbers won't be

[144:03] shown in 2018 because again implementation is in 2018 but beyond that we'll expect some changes and again in addition to programs there's also changes in FTE that correspond to activity levels so again I can provide that information as part of the first reading information that just shows you the history of PDS staffing over time and how that's um varied okay okay thank you for vote others Arin and then to actually well now I had to question on different topic if your office is on this one yeah so I'm on page 164 this is the budget planning specifically and so I see development review is going down by two and a half FTE headcount for 2018 is that is that partly the response to that that's fine

[145:01] Jim Robertson director planning Housing and sustainability yeah what what in essence all of those lines there which is let's see one two three four five lines under planning quite a bit of what you see happening there is really positions being moved from one group to another for example development review which you see going down we moved a position that previously was identified in development review into the urban design position which you have seen jump up that's part of our city design team and that was actually a move to bring that person over there as part of the design excellence initiative so much of what you see that you can see that the development review decrease almost nets out with the urban design increase because that's a that was just moving a position from one work group to another I do see that I also see that the budget

[146:03] for planning goes down by about three-quarters of a million dollars so there must be some actual savings there yes what you're also saying here is that I was just down the hall getting clarification on this I'm glad I got that this is the budget here includes not only FTEs but actually money that was appropriated in for 2017 for some consulting services associated with Alpine balsam in the Civic area we actually ended up not spending that in 2017 and we're carrying it over and we'll be applying it to the Alpine balsam area planning in 2018 as well as the continued work in the East bookend planning ummm remember when we talked about the in the community culture and safety either Capital Improvement tax renewal there were questions about East bookend planning and I remember some of you asked do we have funding to do that East bookend planning even if it's not

[147:00] included in the CIT er and the answer to that was yes and that's what you see here as well very good as long as we have you up here I was going to look under climate and sustain I just ask then if this money is rolling over that means it's not part of the 2018 budget or is it it is not you will see it during the first adjustment to vase right okay so what's going to happen then we're going to approve this budget but then at some point later they'll be this they're these plugs that will come in which will be these are rollovers from 2017 correct so the overall budget will then go up okay thanks Sam climate and sustainability here I just was curious there's customer service and there's climate and energy and I think I understand zero waste could you talk a little bit about what is division

[148:01] management support and customer service and then what is the bulk of the climate and energy expenditure this is where oh maybe Johanna Paradiso is going to get here I join a Paradiso Financial Analysts supporting planning and Public Works Development and so what you're seeing under division management support and customer service it's the directors support as well as the communications staff and then under climate and energy it's personnel and also non personnel dollars related to climate and energy initiatives okay and so we have the climate action plan tax that funds programs right is that the source of funding for this climate in an energy most of that funding is from the climate action plan tax and the utility occupation tax the park that does not go towards the municipal ization do we know

[149:00] what that funds that goes into the general fund just to support all the programs in the general fund I see and is that you're marked in some way to go towards things like energy service contract for city buildings is it no so the base part of the utility occupation tax is the old franchise fee and that those dollars from the old franchise fee went as Cheryl said into the general fund and supported the police the fire the library just all services the increment on top of it is that's for municipal ization goes 100% to municipal ization the rest goes to the general fund that's clear thank you any other questions for these guys okay cool aaron has a question sorry I had a process question so are we only asking

[150:00] clarifying questions tonight or are we giving any feedback where's that waiting for a first reading it would help us quite a bit if we could get feedback tonight because there's only two weeks between first and second reading and we'd have to really scramble to make a lot of changes in between those two if you want to changes so we'd very much like to hear anything that you would like to see change in this proposal Thanks very well I'll wait other questions to be over to okay I did not realize we were doing it okay well then we might want to speed up the questioner part but we should get all the questions answered that we want okay two things I'll ask one is thinking a little more about the affordable housing I am going to be interested in like how many projects and square footage produces the nine million and which projects we expect and how much square footage would produce the 770 so that's one thing

[151:00] that's not for tonight I just wanted to reiterate that though one other thing that I have in my questioning is about Parks and Rec so I will get there so that's starting on page 157 is the budget there and since the budget is going up 8.7 million dollars I thought I would just ask if you could give us a brief on where that's going and we're seeing for that I'm not looking at the page you're looking at but I believe they refers to our capital components largely 7 point almost 9 million dollars thank you Katie earlier this year when we visited with you we both talked about taking care I'm sorry you've had bad in Parks and Recreation we talked about taking care of what we have you've seen correspondence for us throughout the year about investments in the neighborhood parks the eight point seven

[152:02] is because we have both two councilmember Applebaum's feedback really taking a hard look and prioritize some large-scale items that have waited a long time you have seen the committee review options for us on those projects and one of those is the pool we have to have a component of what we're spending to go to projects like that then capitalizing on what may or may not be coming from any voter approved initiative this November so we are all along going forward with this base level provision of taking care of what we have and in this case we've been holding off and saving to be able to create some baseline money to do basic services at those facilities across the board you are seeing similar projects right now under our budget occur at the north pole directs center where we're working on the pool you see neighborhood parks being enhanced around the community and that

[153:01] was in your packet that's the capital portion of what you're seeing okay and I guess then I would ask about the remaining amount which is eight or nine hundred thousand dollars of increase I see the capital component in there which is you're part of the capital upgrades that we talked about earlier and then could be that there will be passage of a measure to provide even more funding to go further those but what about the other 900,000 where's that increase coming from so also early and I think this goes to the operating question of what we talked about the council direction that was received earlier this year relating social equity has impacted Parks and Recreation and the ref on significantly you'll recall a number in the package that about I want to say thirty to sixty sixty thousand for OSP but the vast majority 333,000 impacts

[154:00] Parks and Recreation and we are doing various things in the budget to cover those there you also heard early in Katie's presentation how we hope to offset some of that by reducing a roughly eighty thousand dollars and expenses and then making minor adjustment to fees for exclusive services and I also remind Council as part of the first ATP and an extension of living wage and what opens basted during the 2017 budget as we converted six seasonal so you'll notice that in the detail page between parks Park operations Natural Resources and forestry all of whom utilize seasonals year-round forty hours a week every week and so those were converted during the first ATP and not necessarily an additional 2018 budget request of almost three hundred thousand and if I could compliment my colleagues in open space this is also work that we've talked about a lot together and so we were able to do some of that prior to them rolling it out into this budget it's the same

[155:01] type of organizational effectiveness work and one last question for me I just want to dig down I think I understood what you said but did that change in wage policy is that what led to the jump in rec center O&M operations and maintenance it's both that and then also the timing of replacing equipment has come up for some of the larger pieces so again it relates to our ongoing maintenance of capital kind of minor maintenance of capital items this will not mean for example a wholesale replacement of all of the fitness equipment in a rec center instead you have ongoing maintenance things and things that reach the end of their lifecycle part of the direction that Council gave in 2014 under our master plan was to make sure that we were timing that effectively over the life cycle so you don't reach these periods where everything gets decommissioned at one time and you're really in a problem and so we've tried to be more aggressive and our

[156:00] maintenance and replacement schedule what you're seeing in this budget for example would look at the life cycle of things like spin bikes which actually unbolt or get a lot of wear and perhaps going to the ones that are all those ellipticals and replacing those and you'll see that over several years as we develop a more and not only robust as a management program but life cycling out things our customers across the system expect to be able to have working equipment than they visit the facilities this is part of living to that commitment that's all hi Yvette I have questions as long as you're up here I'm looking at the packet there was a table in the study session packet where you were outlining the changes in rec center fees and kind of question about lap lane

[157:03] rental agreements now you mentioned that the adjustments in the fees were gonna be done based on what type of uses there were and in the lap lanes you've got 15 the new price the new fee will be $15 per Lane and does that not change based on the number of people in the lane that's being rented there's a difference between regular rec center visitor use of a lap lane and these rental agreements so we have several different things going on here some of which you saw is it with last year when I talked about for example the new joint use agreement with Boulder Valley School District where you wouldn't necessary we see all of this fluctuation because of what Jane referred to in adjustment for youth and obviously we have tried to work over time with our more exclusive

[158:00] users on trying to not negatively affect any particular group where you might see this occur and we are still working out all the details on how this we don't want this to affect negatively on those who need this facility most is weird might we look at adjusting rates that affect exclusive use what I mean by exclusive use is not those that serve the general community and we certainly don't want to affect things that would allow us to scholarship so it may affect things like a lap lane and that becomes more or less affordable as our partners program differently as you know I visited counsel several times to talk about swimming in various iterations over the years the work that we have done around the aquatic feasibility study led to additional review of how do we assign lap lanes how do we charge for

[159:00] them and the like we still have some work to do in this table so if I'm understanding correctly what you're saying is is that there are different groups that come in and rent lanes correct those the fees may vary depending on who those groups are correct okay and that was both not only counsels direction but a great deal of work and credit goes to prep for their review and thoughtfulness as we reviewed this and all the stakeholders who also participated in our analysis so this $15 per Lane that we're seeing is sort of a average perhaps yes okay that's a probably a fair way to say that thank you still has a lot of iteration any other parks and recs questions okay thank you do that so I know Jan has more and you have one right [Music]

[160:02] we have two scenarios around the U of T in here one is that it doesn't get passed and the other is that it does get passed and I noticed some program expense and people expense that would decline assume assuming that it didn't pass Tom I was wondering in regards to the headcount on your staff because your staff has spun off quite seriously and the percentage of their time they've spent on you ot would you see any changes in your head count if the UT does not pass no we well one we have one fixed term FTE paralegal we didn't we've never increased our staff to handle it so we wouldn't expect to decrease it to not we just have people working harder so I mean how did you cover the things that they used to do when they weren't spending so much time on the utility occupation with those two I'm sorry they do those two keep in mind

[161:01] we have a lot of outside counsel as well uh-huh okay so they were basically doing two jobs for some extent yeah remember when we started this it was supposed to be the major focus and that was the only thing we were doing and over the years it's sort of added on and the lawyers just tend to work more hours they're paid salary and they cover what they need to covering they have a professional responsibility to do that but Suzanne is right a lot of the heavy lifting is done by outside counsel uh-huh okay thank you I've got a question Maureen where would I find the budget for road repair is that you like if you can point to the page it would be helpful so expenses related to

[162:03] the street repair is out of the transportation division and so kind of find it quickly here so the significant changes are listed on page 174 where's just that background information cave okay no departmental details 176 is what I'm hearing the audio yeah so on page 176 is the transportation division transportation maintenance so towards the top of the page you can see the the recommended budget is the three point two seven six million so that's basically flat from the previous year

[163:03] correct yes okay and then just to be clear there are elements to things like pavement maintenance which are considered a capital expense and so those would be shown under the project management heading and that we do things like maintenance both in a capital way in in a routine way so if you do things like pothole repair whatever that go that's under the transportation maintenance okay and what would go under project maintenance again so what we also do out of the capital budget is we spend somewhere in the neighborhood of four million dollars a year in our paper maintenance program so more of the overlay and the chip seal and those types of programs which are capital maintenance instead of routine I see but the project management has done

[164:00] this fund correct okay yeah so that's going down a lot so the the intent of the capital the payment maintenance program is that if we catch it then it's never a pothole so the whole intent is to try and do more of the preventative programs to to honestly not have any potholes that doesn't happen perfectly but so but if you're gonna do more of that than more with the management of that program go down five hundred thousand dollars yes so there's a lot of moving parts in the in that project management workgroup and then we also do a lot of our capital projects which are grant related and so those are tend to be really lumpy for instance in a particular year it could go from just a million to I think in 2018 it's somewhere in the neighborhood of five or six million so it tends to go up and

[165:00] down with the federal cycles through the Dibble Regional Council of Governments thank you for that you better appreciate it I've got one question about we've kind of got the two scenarios Jane with the u OT but I didn't see anything like that with the capital tax so what would be our options if that did not pass so if it does not pass then the projects that the city has placed on that would not happen if at the same time this budget or some form of it passed that did have a general fund capital component to it we will take those dollars which we're proposing is around between 3.6 and 3.7 and try to figure out where those dollars would go for a most important project right now that most important project is the radio infrastructure which actually costs more than three point six million dollars but

[166:00] we would try to allow that to occur over two year period rather than in a single year I'm sorry I kind of missed where the three point six is coming from and in the recommended budget that you have in front of you you have a general fund capital which is a new item of 3.6 million dollars okay and you have nothing itemized into that now that's kind of a bucket that you're waiting to see what happens with the capital yes we are but I tried in my oral presentation to indicate some items that were near the top of the list to rescue vehicles for the police department library bathrooms which is one of the things that we had talked about before possibly more conversion of buses would be another one quiet zone so we have a long list of items that could be considered there and that's in the SIP there they're not currently funded in

[167:01] the CIP because the CIP is usually not general fund and that's why we're creating a general fund capital P okay yeah so if to M&N Pass then this list of projects that you're talking about you'll come back to us with if it doesn't then it's going to radial infrastructure yes okay okay one more question and that's it and that is have we ever considered going to a centralized purchasing model where we look at commodities and things that every department buys and could get leverage out of centralized pricing I think historically at the city they've used the decentralized model it definitely is something we're starting

[168:00] work in some areas on like for instance print services we're looking at all of the different printer contracts we have throughout the city and trying to centralize with one vendor with standard maintenance and and all of that so we haven't necessarily looked at a centralized purchasing but we are starting to look at center some of our big contracts for some of our commodities that we purchase and this is a project that were the printer services one that was started as a pilot project to see how good we can do around centralized purchasing brought to us by Julia Richman our innovation and analytics officer so we're trying it as a pilot and we're hopeful that we can continue to move in a good direction yeah thank you okay so we have Bob Sam and then Mary Jeanne said earlier in

[169:00] your presentation that one of your regrets I guess on this budget is that we're not maybe funding human services to the extent you'd like there's a few hundred thousand more that that you could find good homes for so if we were to agree with you that that we need to fund human services up to the level that you wish we could where would you take that money as you look across all the priorities and say geez if if council really wants to move the amount that you're talking about in human services world would you take that money from what I would really like to do is wait until November 9th and find that in fact there would be a positive outcome on the capital tax and that's where I would take it from but if there's not a positive outcome when the capital tax that wouldn't be a good spot to take it from so reserves would have to be that location so there's no other budgeted expenditures that you would cut in the stake of Human Services give me if council felt strongly about that right no unless if council were to

[170:00] say we we want to keep reserves high we want to keep the capital find another $200,000 somewhere in the budget then we would try to find it somewhere in the budget but I'm not making that recommendation for you thank you now can I just ask when you say take it from the capital text how could we fund Human Services from the capital tax I don't I was talking too quickly and I didn't I wasn't talking accurately the two places you could say don't take it from is don't take it from the reserves and don't take it from the new generals and capital plan fund of 3.6 million dollars so that would be a go-to place but you might say I don't want you to take it from there and then we'd have to find it somewhere else in the budget so you mean if the capital tax measure passes you'd feel more comfortable reducing the allocation to the capital tax fund that your Europe yes understood thank you well I was looking around for

[171:04] opportunities in the budget where we might find such a thing and I just had one more question about a few I was particularly looking at things that have gone up that's why I've asked some of the questions I have because I was looking as were you for other rebutting opportunities so with that I would like to ask Mike Sweeney take him up just one more time sorry about that I should have cut this when you were here last time you're having to leave your comfortable seat a lot exercise so I'm just looking here on packet page 178 and there were three line items that I was gonna ask about one is the increase in facilities operation and maintenance projects under 300,000 the other was selfies maintenance projects above 300 3000 and then the last was equipment replacement non fleet and that's gone up by almost

[172:02] 700,000 so what what are those for and we believe this is a question best served for a joke yeah sorry about that okay go back to his company six so maybe I said the page wrong 176 down near the bottom under Support Services Joe Castro facilities and fleet manager so I'm trying to find the light I am so equipment replacement non fleet yeah and not to about that it's down near the bottom of the support service listing okay so under the so in

[173:01] the in the lied I know for equipment replacement non fleet that's the fleet replacement fund is more of a reserve fund for departments to contribute to as as as equipment where is come overdue for replacement and what that shows is just an increase in the number and types of equipment that are going to be have to be replaced next year and again that's kind of the ups and downs of types and number of equipment and in this case I'm I'm not particularly sure which type of equipment is is going to be changed out for that year but something I can look for yeah I'd look to here just to say a little bit more about it on the one

[174:00] slide that was really impossible to read that we showed all the different funds this is a fund that's been a savings account fund if you will the different departments have put dollars into getting ready to replace equipment that is falling out of its useful life and so taking dollars from this savings account at different departments and put money into to fund Human Services would be sort of violating the fund structure so we would need to find dollars in the general fund is are any of these under Support Services general fund I don't know it's it's a combination the majority of is is general fund but it's it also services transportation and utilities functions that occupy general fund facilities and and and also Parks and Rec contributes to this fund so it it's a

[175:03] mixed fund again the majority is general fund but again it's a savings account that we depend to to pay for equipment replacements got it and the two lines above the facility major and minor maintenance yes that's that's also an increase in just operating cost for mostly some of it is living wage impacts on our janitorial and then the major maintenance facility projects that's an increase in our CIP funding for our backlog maintenance thank you before you sit down you mentioned the custodial services services and I believe you had mentioned that in 2018 the recreation center and library custodians were going in house

[176:03] did I hear that correctly yes I was mistaken about the the recreation centers they haven't gone in house yet but the library services has n 2018 or already has already hasn't the library okay and there is there's a plan for the recreation not in this budget cycle okay okay all right that was my question okay thank you okay we ready for comments okay sorry and this question is under communications I believe so in the in the study session packet under accessible and connected community it talks about utilizing digital engagement tools and and then when I look at the

[177:02] recommended budget under communications what I see under web content and social media our ftes so I'm a little I would just like some clarification on is it tools or is it personnel and if it's tools where would I find that allocation dr. von Karman communication director the digital content tool is an outsourced vendor provided software that links with our website we used to have mine mixer a couple years ago to test that it allows us to put projects online get feedback input from the community as a second way to engage the community and so we are currently exploring different options for new tools for 2018 if this would pass okay so is there a separate budget for for tools and because what I'm seeing is the web content I'm seeing FTEs in in the budget but not the

[178:05] budgets listed on page 21 under the city manager's bunch of recommendations you'll see the Community Engagement Manager new standard position plus 50k for operating costs in that 50k would be the initial operating cost that Patrick's talking about exploring a difference so that's the tool would be a tool that would be used by engagements that ok existing stuff okay so it's 50 thousand dollars for the rest ok great thank you I think Aaron's next yeah so I guess I had one final question that then leads into some feedback so Jean did you have a responsible to the Darius request for additional funding that we've gotten from them yeah I do so the dairy executive director came to speak to me about two and a half weeks ago with a request for additional film for funding of $250,000 a year ongoing

[179:03] which means every year from now on when I spoke with him I let him know that we actually don't have that kind of dollars in the budget and I tried to learn more about their situations so what I learned is that in 2016 they received a number of donations and grants that moved them from an S CFD fund of tier 3 to tier 2 and so not only did they get extra money but they also got S CFD money so they got extra donations and extra C's s CFD money as they look forward to 2018 not only are they not receiving those restricted one-time donations they now because they aren't receiving those removing from s CFD tier 2 back down to tier 3 which means that they have a reduction of those one-time funds as well as this s

[180:01] CFD tier 2 amount what probably should have happened as they plant their budget forward is that they should have viewed the CFD funding as one-time dollars as opposed to ongoing dollars but they didn't and so now they're coming to the city to request that the city covered that shortfall the community cultural plan that we adopted in 2015 would say that this is contrary to the community cultural plan the community cultural plan says that the way that we should be supporting nonprofits is through competitive operational grants that are provided to a variety of organizations if we were to provide it an operational grant of $250,000 on going to the dairy we would not have sufficient funds to provide it to a variety of organizations we already do support the dairy in a number of ways first of all they

[181:00] one of those three-year operational grants of $50,000 a year we provide under our lease with them maintenance for major operational cherrim not an operational maintenance changes I guess at the dairy to the tune around $60,000 a year they have a lease for one dollar a year when the fair market value of the building is in hundreds of thousands of dollars so it seems to me they were already supporting them sufficiently and on top of all of this if we were to say to one favorite organization we're gonna supply you with operational funding from now to eternity I think we'd have a line out the door of nonprofits that would want us to do the same for them so the precedent value of this is is unfortunate and difficult so my recommendation is that we not move forward with it and that we ask the dairy to take a hard look at their operating costs and possibly a hard look at the fees that they charge in order to

[182:02] make up the shortfall for what was one-time funding that they turned into ongoing operating funding that answers that question okay well then I'll just say wait I'll move on to a couple of comments I just I'll just say I think the budgets in great shape Thanks to everyone for extraordinary work in so many ways and I think the the new initiatives that the city is proposing I think are generally really on track and I really appreciate a lot of what you all are focusing on I won't talk for a long time about this but I'll just say to highlight one the additional human services funding I think something that I've I'm a big supporter of and I think is really important for the community I think it supports our community values and will help a lot of people in need so thank you for that focus in this budget year and there are lots of other great things I won't go into them so the one the one thing that I would like to look at investigating a change too would be

[183:02] the arts funding that I was asking about earlier I understand that that the reduction is in one-time amounts that the ongoing support for our grants is you going up a little bit which is great but that the but still since the one-time funding proposed for 2018 is substantially less than the one-time funding for 2017 it would result in a substantial decrease in the overall funding for the Arts in 2018 so I would like to see those the art funding stay at least static in 2018 from 2017 maybe not including the one-time Civic area arts grant set so it was a special thing but taking that out seeing if we can find the funding to to make at least those arts grants static and then I will just say James about your very clear recommendation on the Dairy Center I'm the I'm the city council representative

[184:00] on the dairy board I understand a lot of the concerns that you're raising there the one thing I do want to highlight about the value their request is their function is a Community Arts Center that provides under cost space for community performing organizations and in office space for community arts organizations of different kinds so I think that without some some additional city support they will provide less of that function that they'll have to go to more of a cost model in the rental space that they provide for performances and for office space and I think that's a kind of a special case that I think we could potentially use to support that so that's something I'd like to see us consider as we work through the budget process and that's it so just in terms of our process Jane you said you wanted feedback you want to know if everybody agrees with him I wasn't really prepared

[185:00] for us to do this tonight but or do you just want to have a sense of the flavor of things that are on people's minds so truthfully I'd like to know if on this particular item the council agrees because that changes the way that we look at how we bring forward first reading but I don't want you to have to don't do anything like that some if you can maybe have a flavor of it that would help me understand what to do for first reading that would be great okay the dairy one is one that really is an issue I guess I have to say and if council wants ongoing funding in that manner I really need to know about it I just

[186:05] wanted to say that I agree with Aaron and his concern about how is the dairy provides community space and office space and performance space and that's a very very important contributor to culture and arts in our community however I think that the situation that we're all in here is that we've heard some community members asking for increase in in ongoing funding to the dairy which is kind of contrary to the recommendations of the public participation working group where it's it's it's one organization that is bringing forth a concern and and wanting some support which I totally appreciate and and would love to be able to provide that money but it is contrary to the

[187:03] culture that we're trying to create moving forward in terms of making sure that we hear all the voices and that everyone is considered in fairly so I would love to be able to do that and to change the the budget but but there's a culture shift that we're trying to create here with in terms of how we do our public participation in this case it seems to me that it's been one organization with lots of emails and for us to change the budget due to that kind of sense of message that we haven't heard what the public participation working group said to us can I ask a question about that which is as the Arts Commission weighed in on this kind of question about ongoing funding subsidy issue the

[188:01] conundrum that would it would create in the dairy in particular so during the Cultural Plan process as in 2015 as the Arts Commission worked through redesigning the grants program they did address this over the course of about five months of wrestling with this along with other issues in the grants and they came out with a clear recommendation that the former way that we were doing business in subsidies for the dairy as well as the boulder Museum of Contemporary Art was not transparent and so they wanted to bring that in line with the good stewardship of the grants program so they made the conscious effort to move those to the competitive grants process and in this first three-year cycle of grants funding they did grandfather both organizations in so they weren't competitive in this initial round in order to transition them into being competitive for the 2019 general in his veins thank you Sam

[189:01] I wanted to speak in favor of two things the arts funding but also the Human Services funding that was originally proposed I mean I think they're both relatively small budget items when I look at just the general fund they're about point three percent point three five percent of the general fund so not even talking about moving a percent around within the budget and so for me I very interested in seeing if we can get those numbers and levels up just a little bit I don't feel qualified to weigh in on the process questions raised by the arts I'm pretty uncomfortable with changing a budget to direct funding to a particular community organization I really liked get through when hearts our organization which allocates the money based on criteria so maybe some of this

[190:00] additional money would be available more for that but I would like to support additional money in the budget for both arts and the Human Services back to where you originally had hoped to get didn't - you can ask a question about that and that is one of the things that was mentioned was yes - mm path sorry there's a 2 M + 2 m pass that it might free up some money for these things and I guess the question is process wise we won't know that for two months but meanwhile we're passing the budget in beforehand wait there's always the opportunity for adjustment to base right right allocated now and it weren't to pass then it would be even that much more important that we had done so and if they do pass I'd be very comfortable listening to whatever adjustment - based suggestions staff gives us so that's exactly what I was gonna say I'm thanks but first of all I agree with with Mary and and with Jeanne

[191:02] with respect to the dairy I think this is out of process and I think it's important for us to stay in process and we've probably talked about it all the time but I don't I don't support Erin the that's one off opportunity for all the reasons that Jane and others have said I agree with Stan completely that if I were to make to chip I think it's a great budget by the way I've been a fantastic job guys I'm for everybody in the room thank you very much are the only two things I would change where the same - the same and I would put them in order Human Services by far in a way would be my preference for the next couple hundred thousand that I would spend would be for Human Services to your wish list Jane and then and then if we had another 100 or - to the backfill for forces as as aaronandsam have said and so I like Sam's idea where we we allocate maybe a contingent allocation or whatever you want to call it so that you know there's the wish of council that if becomes available as a result of the election because Bella measure to impasses and that's the next dollars we'd like to allocate take them out of

[192:00] that 3.7 million of that that capital fund and allocate them for us to Human Services to tune of a couple hundred thousand and then perhaps another one or two hundred thousand for ours if it doesn't pass then I guess we might have another discussion you know next year about but where our priorities are but that's where we go I wouldn't make any other changes of the budget other than those said too and also Jane I I think you need to be cautious here especially when you're looking at ongoing funding and especially when you're looking at the at the process that we really need to make a heck of a lot better than what we have you know at a very minimum the Arts Commission should weigh in on this but in terms of extra money you know that's that's a tough one and and an

[193:02] Aaron Burr I disagree with you and I think I think you'd be setting another bad precedent is taking one-time money in a year oh we had some one-time money and then being annoyed that we're not continuing it is ongoing money if we start doing that we're gonna be in deep trouble not annoyed I'm just proposing something different yeah well that's just not the way the system works or should work when somebody gets one-time money that's great and they should treat it as one-time money and sometimes we have more revenues than we expect and it's wonderful that we can do that but to then look at the previous year and say well we had four hundred and fifty thousand dollars in one-time money and now we're knocking it down because we have a tougher revenue year yeah I have a real problem with that and I have a real problem with the concept that somehow this needs to be ongoing every year

[194:01] no it doesn't if it's one-time money and at some point the city will really have a tough revenue year that's inevitable where revenues will definitely fall and you're not gonna have any of that one-time money and I think you just need to make sure people are treating it that way and I think that was one of the mistakes the dairy made and I think that's the situation you may be getting yourself into an arts in general let's remember arts and culture have gotten very significant multi-million dollar shares of the last capital tax and also this capital tax so they're not exactly being underfunded in Boulder but I think that's something to be looked at just two other thoughts and human service is I I could see the two hundred thousand I will I would do it in a way that nobody else will agree would I would think the two hundred thousand from the homelessness effort there's a lot of work that needs to be done in homelessness no question and and the

[195:00] improvements to the you know basically tracking people and getting them into the system or fabulous but I think some of the other funding is not what we really should be going so I think we have two hundred thousand dollars we just need to change or we spend it and the last thought is on gee if the capital tax passes which would probably will now all of a sudden we have this great source of money let's just steal from the capital tax and start adding two hundred thousand here and 200,000 there to ongoing budget I would just say that's an immense mistake it has been a long time coming for us to finally get a capital wine item in the general fund that if you look go back and look at the pages and pages and pages of capital items that we don't fund in this city any of them pretty important many of them dealing with backlogs of maintenance I think it's absolutely the

[196:02] wrong approach to say well okay having now finally put something in the budget for that now that's a great place to start taking money out of anytime we need any money for anything because who cares right I think that's a huge mistake if you really want to find the money you should find it somewhere else even if it might hurt something instead of taking it from the capital budget I I mean if anything the general fund capital budget should be higher if we are ever gonna work our way through the tens of millions of dollars of backlog and general fund capital items that eventually in this city need to be dealt with and the right way to deal with them is really funding them in the budget not going out for taxes each time and so I think that was a great idea in this budget and would be a real mistake to to go after it other than that but I agree

[197:00] with that with my colleagues on it's a really good budget you know is every penny exactly in the right place look it's hard to know but in terms of funding first of all the things we need to fund as a city and secondly being true Dora master plans and our goals yeah I think it's a really excellent hudge it so I would pretty much leave it the way it is some tinkering always seems to happen but I haven't seen anything that's compelling enough to convince me to do that on the first year I'm gonna speak from what I feel our constituents are feeling and that is

[198:02] they're not feeling so good about their property tax increases I've had a lot of people say that's because I'm pissed and so for us to come out with an operate an operating budget increase of 6.6% I think that is not showing respect to what we call governance so I don't feel so good about that and what I really don't like I don't open space I didn't hear any initiatives to take money no reduce expenses initiatives in the business world we often went through the process called stop start and continue and that's the process where you really look at what you are doing what every team is doing what are we

[199:00] gonna what are we gonna stop doing what are we continue because the constituents value it and what are we going to start doing and I feel like we start a lot and we continue a lot we never stop anything and I think that stuff to us in terms of what we try to manage but also to the entire team and I don't think it serves us that well I really think we should start thinking about what are some things that are not valued by the community as much as we might value them ourselves and and let's stop those so I think it's I think it's bad governance to just not have by the way like matt says we're gonna have a downturn we should be preparing for that downturn we shouldn't wake up and say 20% of our people so that is a process I think should go on every year number two back to the property taxes and that's kind of

[200:06] this is a lot of people on fixed income they don't have money and I don't think we show them respect if we don't really have a conversation about that should we do a credit you know maybe that's a conversation we should have if not what are we gonna do with that money that shows respect for that increase last year you should provide to the people who are paying those property taxes new safety health and safety kinds of things basic services like fix the

[201:00] roads fix the potholes make sure you get the ice and snow cleared off have enough police people that we feel like we're safe in our community so I think one thing I've thought about before is if we in a property tax increase if we decided not to do a credit if if we took everything above cost of living and we put that in a special pot that said this is going to be the community pot that is the highest needs valued by the community and we hear those often in the surveys information next is I'm mentioning the fact that I just learned a couple weeks ago that we don't centralize our purchasing and I've had business people who are CFOs of major companies and 15 20 years ago and

[202:02] governments as well they say from 15 to 20 percent and so that's what I'm talking about if we want to fund the human services or we want to fund the arts let's go find the money and I think we can do it through efficiency and that's one I'd really like us to look at rather than doing a little pilot around printer services let's let's really look at can we centralize purchasing and I know that this the culture here is all power to the department but we have to look at the taxpayer dollars and what can we do to become more efficient and then my next point is around governance and this is my own particular hot button I see particularly a city manager's office increasing and staff and I've asked for this before our people don't think we have good governance they rate us uh I don't remember 46 or 48 percent which is

[203:01] not really great and I've asked for an ombudsman before someone who can represent the citizens to the staff and help the council deal with particular issues an example of that was a water main break there's an example going on right now with road construction of iris you know these poor people just banging their head up against against the wall so we need something that some process some people who can help council because we're supposed to be responsible to our citizens and I struggle sometimes in trying to follow up with them and show them that we are listening and we are acting on what the feedback they're giving us so I'm really gonna ask again can we not find room in the budget for an ombudsman someone who can help council represent the needs of our

[204:02] community and work problems through the process so that's something I'd like us to consider before it comes back for first review so again I'm not asking that shouldn't be incremental dollars that should be found somewhere where we can fund some efficiency and then do something that demonstrates to the community that we're listening to them and we want to act on governance so those are that's my feedback thank you anybody else tough act to follow so I was interested in I asked the questions about the communications and the allocation for tools because I was interested in looking at the new tools that might be needed to carry forward the public

[205:02] participation working group and and communicating with the community in different forms that they they may be evolving and what I'm referring to is using texting as opposed to email and to using texting as another form to communicate with folks so I don't know what that would cost and I I I haven't looked at it but I don't you know if Communications has been considering that if that's something that they are looking at sometime in the future it would be helpful to know what is going on there and then I just wanted to address the idea of Sam's idea of increasing the arts budget just a little bit wherever we might be able to find some dollars and I would agree with that and then finally I just wanted to respond to Jan that I think that the city does have Ombuds people there the nine council members sitting here and that's really

[206:00] our responsibility to be the the the folks that listen to the public and and then talk to Jane about our concerns so I don't support an Ombuds person because I think we have nine of us that the city gets for under eleven thousand dollars a year so so I in a in a perfect world I would I would I like the idea of adding arts and the Human Services I think that's obviously that those are important but I think Jan makes some great points and they're ones that we should think about particularly in in in this time where property texts are going up I think it

[207:01] remains to be seen how the economy is gonna do particularly light of all the natural disasters that just occurred and and and and whatnot and the fact that our revenues are certainly are uncertain certainly uncertain is is that we should be thinking about how you know we can justify to the citizens something concrete about what we're doing and in particular and I think and we've heard this from the city manager for years and it's you know we have the shiny metal objects that we focus on which are great I mean you know art is one of them but we do have some really fundamental I mean the purpose of city government is you know fire police safety we've gotten a number of emails lately about citizens being concerned about various safety issues and whatnot and I want to make

[208:01] sure the citizens of Boulder feel safe I mean that's that's just that's the number one function of government and so things like that so again it's I was and am comfortable with the budget but I think she makes some great points and I think we should reflect on that a little bit as we come up to first reading so so um I just wanted to say that I support the approach to human services and arts funding that Sam and Bob were proposing I'd be interested in that obviously we have two public hearings on the budgets it's not like we're making final decisions tonight but I'll just I'll throw that out there the one of the thing I wanted to mention was to conceivably look at the public participation area I really appreciate a the focus on that as one of the new things we're working on I'm not sure that we need two additional positions for that so that's one thing we could look at is the possibility of one so

[209:01] I'll throw that out there and then clearly there's not support for the dairy funding I understand people's positions I do appreciate having the conversation so it's loaded that I'm just gonna be requested Jane after that so I will have more to say it first reading I I'm brain dead tonight I'll just be honest but I will say that I want to echo what people said about this being a good budget that was deliberately and carefully crafted to make sure that we're doing the safety and we're trying to take care of what we have and be mindful so I think that we are largely there and then the question is do we do a little tinkering around the edges on these two items you guys mentioned of the two I'll say the human safety net given where we're at in these

[210:02] economic times and the fact that people are struggling um I would lean towards that as much as I love the arts I guess the other thing I would say is the county responded to I guess Mary Mary had a question about property taxes and the county wrote back to her I want in that email it talked about there is a homestead exemption program but it's to give seniors in particular relief from property taxes but that it's severe severely curtailed by the state legislature so I just wanted to throw that out as something and I know just enough to be dangerous but it seems to me that might be something they want to explore it's part of our legislative agenda if we want to see that as a tool going forward because our property taxes are doing nothing but going up and so this

[211:00] isn't a problem that's gonna go away so we may want to look at helping to reform that program to be more useful as we move forward so that that's could I just be that that email that you referring to was actually really really good in terms of explaining how property taxes work and how unfortunate it is that we can actually do very very little in terms of providing tax relief the the net effect would be very little and and and you know to John's points I think we should look and see and and just do the analysis to see what that would take it maybe that's something you'd come back with and just say if we were to not spend the five million dollars home from property taxes what would that mean in terms of tax relief were something like that just because it is so so minor but what I would like to do is post that email to the hotline so that other folks

[212:01] get to get the benefit of that explanation that was I thought very good and very clear like a pile on that XANA to two things on the on that I fully support I'm bringing up in our legislative agenda of a much broader exemption for seniors I actually did a little bit of a survey and that's a few months ago and Colorado really legs from most states and that most states or mini stays I should say have much more aggressive senior exemptions and we do some somewhere along the lines I think we just stopped we just fell behind and and so I think that's that's something that we can lead on the second is is also participation levels or participation levels or not as high as they should but you would think that 100% of the people who could avail themselves to this would and they don't and so I think that's something we can do here very very much locally is is educate our seniors who live in our community of the availability of this and this is maybe something that a staff can help us with maybe we can put together an edge opportunity to make sure that people know how to do that how to it's a small relatively small amount right now and we need to work on that end of it too but I think getting getting people at least

[213:01] what the deserve would be really really helpful yeah and again I would like to understand more about that tool I mean how much relief it could provide to people on fixing incomes so I think maybe you have one more request but I guess I would just say that it I think we're 90 95 98 percent where we need to be and we'll have more to talk about as we go to first reading and I guess I wouldn't encourage all of us to if we have additional thoughts to put them out early don't do it the night before thank you I'd say that to the public to out there to the extent that you have ideas of things to explore don't do them the night before a council meeting do them in the coming week or two so that they can have time to be examined so with that Sam chance to say thanks hard work in the budget I did something about that so thank you one thing I would be interested in

[214:01] seeing is we hear a refrain that the city does not concentrate enough on core city services but I look down the headcount and look at what most of the headcount is in and it looks like core city services to me so I was wondering if we could maybe have some kind of summary of what our administrative overhead is versus the people who are out doing the work in the departments but there's a lot of people in departments like Oh Public Works 333 people you know I bet many of those are out doing things in the public and those who aren't or planning or coordinating those folks so anyhow a summary of Jayne what you considered core services that cities need to do and how many head count we have there and then what fraction of that head count is administrative would give us some quantitative starting point for a discussion like that I quickly tated up something like 1,100 people and

[215:01] what I would consider core services out of the 14 so I think we should at least explain publicly what we are doing and around what I consider to be core city services and just to add to that a little bit is the the city does have an app that has the the pothole fixing report and I believe the policy is to fix any reported pothole within 24 24 hours so I think we also you know to Sam's point need to make that more public so that people are aware that all they have to do is report a pothole and it gets fixed within 24 hours so I think that would be helpful I think the next version of the app it'll fix the pothole for you that

[216:04] was our policy yes to fix a reported pothole maybe just say something the public about the tool that exists yeah that's correct just called the balancing act and it's the interactive tool that provides you what our total proposed city budget is and you can try to balance it using different varieties increasing fees reallocating the budget to where the citizen or Constantia would like to see it and then we also received feedback and analytics on kind of where that those priorities might be and it came out last year so this is the second year we're using it we also have in Spanish that's taking a little bit more time we had some technical difficulties but we should be able to get it off by the end of the week okay the public to

[217:02] go check that out and give us feedback but I do think this budget is in responsible what we perceive to be the public's priorities so I would love to hear feedback if that's not the case and with that so we call it a rep okay thank you [Music]