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[18:03] [Music] there she is okay we're gonna call to order the special counts of the Boulder City Council's special meeting tonight for September 26 2017 Lynette will you call the roll councilmember Applebaum rocket here Burton Jones here more so your shoe

[19:00] maker yeah Weaver here Yates yeah young president we have a quorum excellent because this is a special meeting we're not having open comment but we have three issues under matters from city manager which I guess you're gonna okay the first one what Jane did you want to introduce it I don't really need to but I will ask our staff member current Vern hubber who is the deputy director of housing to come forward and he's going to make the presentation good evening so I'm excited to present to you this evening the the project at 30th and pearl known as previously as Pollard motors I'm waiting for this to go up on

[20:03] this screen here wouldn't be accountable beating powerfully to work perfect

[21:00] okay thank you so sort of the background on this site it was identified in in 2000 as a ideal area for a center for transit in 2004 the RTD acquired the site with the city of Boulder to develop the RTD a transit area there with Depot Square affordable housing on top of it the T vapp Transit Village area plan was adopted in in 2007 and then there's been two study sessions with with counsel one in 2012 and one in 2016 to look at the particular site that were discussing tonight and the outcomes that City Council was looking for then in 2016 the the forum based code was adopted which also impacts what this site will look

[22:03] like and sort of the approach of the development of this site so last October in the study session we presented four different scenarios to you and I'll just go over this briefly and then summarize what came out of that studies so we hired a a consultant to do our financial analysis of the site and look at the different levels of affordability that could be obtained through different approaches so the first scenario was pretty basic it was assuming that 20% of the units on site would be affordable but that we would sell the property to a developer at a cost that was estimated at that time between 12 and 15 million dollars city council wasn't generally

[23:01] supportive of this idea and really wanted to maximize the outcomes on this site not just for affordable housing but for other areas as well that are priorities with the city do this okay there we go the second scenario we were able to give 32% of the the units as as permanently affordable combination of low mod and middle and this this scenario assumed that the whole site would be for sale units both the affordable and market units and I think there was some concern about whether we could get a developer to develop this as completely for sale as well scenario 3

[24:02] we got 30% affordability but there was a mix of a wider mix of units between very small units up to townhome units 20% low mod 10% middle and there's you know different ranges of the of the market units as well which enable the site to create the affordable units from a financial standpoint and these different scenarios looked at different levels of slightly different levels of density on the sites as well so the scenario got the highest level of affordability with with 45% and you can see sort of the summary of that the 32% low mod and 13% middle but it required that the city would put some resources into the project and for all of these

[25:01] scenarios it's a mix in it's a balancing of many things it's it's the unit types it's the sizes it's the number of units it's the percentage of ownership and rental so we were really just playing with with different options to see what they would look like so the feedback we received from you last October this is a summary so you wanted a diversity of housing type sizes incomes you wanted some rental some homeownership family friendly you also wanted to serve different types of households so you talked about coops and cohousing it was our discussion around the you know perma supportive housing as it relates to our homeless strategy was also discussed maximizing density to enable the most amount of affordability and then looking

[26:02] at a real creative project that the people would want to go to the holiday project was was spoken about as an approach that you liked with the diversity of architecture and developers on different blocks and affordable commercial space was also discussed not just at this study session but in other places as well as something that was a concern for the city and maybe this could be addressed on this sites as well so we took that information and we developed an RFP in the summary of the RFP is is somewhat similar to that but we put targets in place the first was for the site to provide 50% of the of the total number of units on the site as permanently affordable that's being a

[27:00] combination of both low mod and middle a mix of housing types 10 year which is rental and homeownership and a project that really focused on the mobility aspects of the site and really connected well from a pedestrian standpoint and biking and it being next to the RTD station it really made a lot of sense to to focus on this again the affordable commercial space hitting some of the city's sustainability goals and since form-based code had been put into place that obviously became sort of a benchmark for the project as well to meet those requirements so the RFP went out in March it the we had four submissions that were submitted the middle of June we had a staff committee

[28:03] that was put together that represented all the different technical areas of the city that related to the RFP and then we had a public forum in this room where each of the four applicants presented their proposal to the public we were able to hear questions and comments from the public and then the staff went through a process and scoring of the of the applications the the the committee was unanimous in recommending zocalo Community Development and felt that it really hits all of the areas that that were identified in the RFP so from a housing standpoint they exceeded the targets with 63% of the units as permanently affordable including

[29:04] middle-income they had a mix of both for sale and rental on the property and they had made a commitment with older housing partners in Boulder Housing Coalition to own the affordable rental units the the parking was you know based on what the requirements were using the some principles and they had affordable commercial space 21,000 square feet which they recommended and agreed would be deed restricted and so I'll go into some of the detail of some of these areas now so the sustainability strategy they they really looked at at the whole site they they looked at the envelopes

[30:02] of the buildings and put a lot of effort into these envelopes to make them the most energy efficient possible they recommended looking at geothermal having an all-electric site with all electric appliances on the site and not having natural gas on the site from an urban design standpoint they had a collection of architects on their team that that brought different styles and architecture to the project related to the surroundings to the park and the team has experience with with with the form based code so here's a table that that really looks more closely at the affordable housing component so you'll see that from this project 190 permantly

[31:04] affordable units would be developed there's a broad range of both unit size and type and ami so they're hidden hitting some of the lower AM ice we're predominantly the the other proposals were just hitting the 60% ami and so that top table describes the the rental permanently affordable housing the the bottom table shows permanently affordable homeownership units both two-bedroom condos in 3-bedroom townhomes which would represent 10% of all the units on the site so one of the things I wanted to look at was how this sort of the family housing how that compared to what we would call family

[32:00] housing on the rest of the TV area projects that have already been developed or in the process of being developed so in that middle column work says existing under construction in the T vApp area there's 109 townhomes which represents 10% of the unit's there and there's 66 condos or stacked flats so all of those are home ownership units and at 30th and Pearl the the percentage of townhomes would be similar but the percentage of condos and stacked flats would be significantly higher so we saw this as an opportunity you know to house a higher percentage of families than the rest of the the T vapp phase one development so the affordable commercial space so this is sort of a new idea

[33:03] within the city we have an internal team currently working on how this would actually be structured so we would be working with the developer and this would really be a pilot for us but they've identified 21,000 square feet that would be deed restricted broken up into smaller parcels for small retail spaces pop-ups some nonprofit some startup smaller businesses and really looking at the types of businesses that would activate the site and really relate to what's happening in the street and the public space so the parking if you look at this diagram on the right it indicates there's sort of four blocks here the north and south blocks on the western side of the site would have underground

[34:02] parking of 280 spaces and then the townhomes in the upper right would have tuck in parking and then you'll see there's public parking along the streets as well so the one of the ideas is that it would be integrated from a management standpoint with the beach add parking area it would again use the sub principals 700 bike spaces on-site car share and really relating the sites to the pedestrian connections surrounding this site for mister Stane ability standpoint they were really looking at melding the environmentally socially and economic areas our approaches to the

[35:01] site so again it's a electric site with photovoltaic solar generating electricity not having any gas on the sites looking at geothermal and really looking at the site in its totality in its approach to the energy use also using user load control so really you know part of it is actually eating the building built and the other is how the people are using it and so really putting in approaches that would help people reduce their energy usage also integrating all this or with the coop and Co housing programs as well from the urban design standpoint again there was variety of architecture on the

[36:00] site the staff felt that they responded well to the form based code it interacted well with the the park that's going to be developed in the northeast corner as well as the the Goose Creek path that goes along the north and the variety of building types was was supported by the staff I also want to mention that several the staff members are here that we're on the committee and can answer more detailed questions about any of these specific areas so our next steps the the fourth quarter if you approve we would move forward with negotiating a letter of intent with zocalo which would really be an outline

[37:00] of the agreement and then in the the first quarter of 2018 we would complete this development agreement and bring it back to City Council and the developer team is also here to answer any questions but these are the the final questions related to this presentation and I think that's the first presentation of every given that I wasn't interrupted so that was I was I was surprised we're just gearing up you just wait so I think we'll have a lot of questions so get ready in Mary Andrew I would like to know who was on the team if it was a kind of a coordinated effort among a bunch of different companies who were they or who are they so I will let them respond to team members who's on their team yeah

[38:04] and if you can start by introducing yourself I will do so Thank You mayor I'm William chef gun and I'm the project lead and consultant to zocalo Community Development I had a great time assembling this team and I'm proud to introduce some of the members so our ace design team includes Brian Bowan and his firm caddis bill Holley key and Coburn and Chris years and shears Atkins Roquemore we also have a local investor group in signature partners represented by Neal Littman Bob Reichenberg and Wendell Pinkett lower Steinbaum is here from Boulder housing partners who along with Boulder Housing Coalition represent ownership and management for the affordable program on site we have a variety perhaps half a dozen other partners including potential commercial tenants a non-profit and small business

[39:00] who are part of our team nantan we may have more questions but I'm happy to stand or oh well we'll see Mary you're up next you have questions for thanks Curt I really wanted to interrupt but I contained myself so you mentioned the 21,000 square feet of the affordable commercial space so I was really happy to hear that it was gonna be a variety of sizes and types of spaces so that's really great and I'm curious to know how what is the basis for setting the rent part one of the question and then part to the question is that rents are gonna go up by the Consumer Price Index and in a video that we received from staff maybe a couple of weeks ago with respect to the Gallagher amendment it talked what about one of the flaws of the whole Gallagher and amendment was the fact that the one

[40:05] aspect of how how the taxes Rose was was because they were based on the Consumer Price Index so I just want to understand why the CPI and if if that makes complete sense based on the Gallagher amendment and what other options might be so the I think the starting point is that we don't know the answers to your questions but we're working on them the other thing that we've looked at is is connecting it to the area median income which is you know related to the inflation of people's incomes annually we do know as the Consumer Price Index is is typically more stable than the real estate market and the level of

[41:00] increase is not as steep typically and doesn't have the you know the peaks and troughs that you would see in the real estate market so at this point we believe that it's probably the most stable measurement but we're open to looking at other things as well so this committee that we have currently working on this right now is looking at those things it's also looking at you know how tenants are selected and what role the community may or may not have in that you know how the deed restriction is monitored and you know what the starting price is from a rent standpoint so those are all areas that were focused on right now and quite frankly we're going to work on it together with the developer

[42:00] and with input from yourselves in the community well thank you I think this is a really exciting piece of this project and my second question has to do with affordable housing rental affordable housing units on site and we always hear about how difficult it is to actually put rental affordable housing on-site I was just wondering what we've learned through this process that we might apply to other situations where we're told that it can't be done apparently it can so I want to understand that part of the reason it can be done is because they're they're being given a 12 to 15 million dollar subsidy and they're not having to pay any cash in lieu or you know they're putting all that money into the site so we're not exactly comparing apples to apples this site is also in the in the qualified census tract which allows it

[43:01] to have a little bit more leverage from a cash standpoint from the tax credits that opportunity exists for the next two years and they you know base their assumptions on that not all areas of the city are able to take advantage of that what does that mean yeah what does basically it's basically asset it's from census data that looks at what the income levels are of different neighborhoods and so different neighborhoods are able to take advantage of that based on that and HUD basically maps that out for communities yeah and that's why it's actually changing and that's why we have a two year window on that so when will the application go in for those tax credits at what stage in the process and what type of tax credits so as it happens the

[44:03] QCT designation for 30th and parole disappears on January 1st of 2018 because of changing demographics and incomes we met with chafa last week Jaffa being the implementing agency for HUDs programs as Curt suggests we believe that we do not yet have solid legal opinion and if we are if we file for our 30% lytec boost which is at the qct enables basically a 30% boost and the value of those tax credits if we file by the end of the year a date to be determined by essentially the bond issuer which could be Boulder housing partners up to two day two years from that date of filing we have to essentially begin work construction on the affordable part of the project we

[45:03] need to work more carefully and closely on that matter and have started to do so as Curt suggests it's going to be really important for us as a developer team and the city to work together in an expeditious way to take advantage of this particular program to say nothing of others this is what allows us to go the extra mile if you will at this Tod location on the Affordable program we can still do a robust affordable program without it but this is what really we think makes this program even stronger and are you playing for the 4% or the nice is the four percent so the non-competitive program Mary if I could also add to your prior question a response you might recall you and I met on a different project about a year ago and you were the one who introduced me to Holly Brogan who in turn educated me on the problem of small and non-profit business affordability in Boulder which is why in another project or a rapaho

[46:01] project we began to experiment with this idea of affordable commercial space so we're already learning a lot about what we can do what we have committed to do in our proposal using tools like the CPI most likely but we remain open to other techniques is work closely with the working group at city staff to figure out a very creative way to make permanently affordable to commercial space in this project and to then use that as a model in other projects whether it's our rapaho Avenue project or some project that another developer does we want this to become as important and doable as affordable housing itself has become now over several decades well thank you for that I really appreciate and I I think it's really important to do this it's I just found out today that we're losing another landmark business in Boulder and it's quite disheartening indeed so four percent you're applying

[47:02] for rather than the nine percent because you're sure to get it and timeline dictates that you do that a couple of reasons really one yes the non-competitive nature and in a complicated project such as this we want to manage and control for risks and uncertainties as much as possible we also want to make sure that the nine percent opportunity which is a limited and competitive one is available to other projects in the city of Boulder and throughout the county so we don't necessarily want to use this project as as a competitor for that competitive if I could add to that as well as a as a county consortium we meet on a regular basis and talk about other projects that are going on and communicate with each other around who's going for what deals to ensure we're not competing against each other in any particular years this

[48:08] is this may be a question for you court or maybe for bill and that is and this is not a knock on this project all I think this is this is wonderful but that but as I look at the distribution of affordable versus middle-income which is something that we've been focused on and we continue to seem to get further and further behind on I noticed that you know there's a 53% affordable allocation and or you know distribution and the 10% on the middle and what what drives that not just for this project but for all projects I mean is there is it that the sort of the leverage you get for the type of program you just described actually pushes us to create more affordable than the middle income yeah let me say something then you can jump

[49:01] in as well so I think part of it is the for the affordable low mod rental units which would be owned by bhp there's a certain efficiency you get from scale so if they were gonna do let's say 30 units they'd probably have to put almost the same amount of reasons affordable housing resources into it as doing 43 units so the scale makes a big difference and so if they increase the percentage of middle-income buy from 10 to 12% they probably drop much more than that on the low mod so it's it's kind of balancing those things yeah Andrew it's really also a public policy issue HUD low-income housing is now a

[50:02] centuries-old problem predicament opportunity so public subsidy public support is essentially what allows us to develop and build at any scale low to moderate income housing it's only been in the last decade 15 years arguably starting in the early 80s that the problem of the missing middle of the middle class and thus middle-class homeownership becoming a crisis we do not yet have the policy supports as with affordable commercial so goes affordable middle-income housing so what I expect is that we will see communities like Boulder on the cutting edge we're dealing with this assiduously and carefully over the next decade or two developing innovative supports that increasingly generate public support that would allow us to subsidize or otherwise incentivize through public policy the development of these projects

[51:01] without which they just are not economical too difficult to make the numbers work and is there you know the I guess the you know it's one of the concerns you have to hear expressed about market raise that it's you know goes it goes at the market right and then it continues to appreciate and so it always stays sort of at a certain level but but for a developer who's developing something and selling it at a point in time with a deed restriction at a market rate I mean is that is that maybe that's something that you know is is possible and does that allow us to increase the middle income within a deed restriction after the fact which shouldn't affect the depo developer but maybe I'm wrong that makes sense again this is essentially an emerging market the idea of permanently deep restricting essentially market rate housing to meet the needs of the middle this is

[52:00] experimentation this is innovation happening before our eyes clearly most developers if they saw a deed restriction on market rate capping at certain levels on an annual basis would walk away that's not an attractive deal but increasingly with so-called impact investors patient capital and a new generation of developers understanding a new and emerging market and need social need as well as economic need I think we're going to see more acceptability absorption in the market but we're really at an early stage in the evolution of a new kind of real estate ok thanks and les last question and this is you we saw a distribution sort of analysis comparing this project to others in the area you know and as you heard at the study session and I think you hear from the public in general just because they know it but this holiday concept how does the distribution of types of units here compare to the

[53:02] distribution of types of units at holiday I don't know that off the top of my head this is a this is a more urban setting so it is a little bit higher density the overall affordability at at holiday is forty percent so it's lower than this and I think the reason it is lowers is simply based on the density and they are two different projects with two different cost structures but from an affordable housing standpoint this project really performs very well against Holliday and if I could just chime in little bit Holliday is a fair amount less dense so they're they're not they're very few apartment buildings and a fair amount of houses and duplexes and some single-family homes whereas this has some townhouses but mostly condos and apartments so it's this is definitely

[54:00] denser that's right I believe it's the difference between five and a half acres and holidays what 25 30 acres more great bill Holley key with Coburn throw a little color on that because we participated heavily in holiday I think that here we have about 10% townhomes and holiday it's maybe two or three times that for single-family homes or kind of product it has a fee simple kind of situation it's just on a piece of land but the primary difference here besides the urban setting and the size of the parcel is that Tod setting so the idea is though the more people that we can get within walking distance to the Tod center the more likely they are to use alternative modes of transportation so right now holiday everybody has to walk to Broadway to catch the bus which works it's great but it's a whole lot easier to go 200 yards away to the bus station so that's that's the change of product type there a little bit Thanks okay Sam and then me and then Lisa so

[55:00] first question is back to Mary's question about what did we learn about how to do rental affordable housing on-site is its own building are you financing is somebody going to finance a building that's strictly for affordable rental yes so and there will be several buildings I believe the total is four of the seven including the coop Co housing building which will also be affordable so while they will be discrete separate buildings we have very purposefully tried to integrate through our and design the location of those buildings so as not to create the sense the feeling that there are affordable units here and market rate there the key theme as bill just reminded us of of our proposal and of course of this site and this part of Boulder is mobility and what we tried to do very explicitly in

[56:01] our proposal to say that it's not just about TDM and buses and bikes and people walking on sidewalks this is about social and economic mobility this is about residents businesses who see this site as an opportunity to engage across the spectrum in the ladder and by living cheek-by-jowl or at least in a well-designed urban neighborhood low income low to modern come to high income earners we think that in a sense is the American experiment and this becomes a great site to demonstrate that again just a little bit of color but we found with a holiday model especially that as long as we can create a mixed street so the pros do you have a public realm and if you can put both market rate and affordable opening on at that public realm then the street becomes a mixed street it doesn't matter so much that the building is different keeping the affordable in one building again we found this lesson in holiday to be pretty eliminating allows us to lower the HOA dues because we can focus just on those things that the affordable

[57:00] units need and not charge them for a saline pool or spa stuff that is you know extra if we don't have to so we can drive the Oh a dues down and then we can still create a mixed street and the last thing that we did and we had a this was part of our Q&A we looked at the entire area so if you start south of pearl and you end north of Valmont you can start to look at where the affordable and the market rate is and start to try to create kind of a chessboard of mixed income as you go down because we don't want to do is have this site continue a pattern of say the affordability that's just to the east of the performance structure you don't want that our site to increase kind of an affordable block or take the Solana market rate model directly to the south and continue a market rate you want that to be mixed so all the streets are mixed so there is in the in the packet an analysis diagram of how that works are you trying to jump in on that so I'm the point of my question

[58:02] really I'm quite pleased that their own site and I'm quite pleased that there will be this mix I was just trying to make sure that I understood the mechanics that were required in order to be able to achieve that so it's the both the tax credits and the donation of the land but also the fact that you broke them out so that they can be financed individually yes so there are definitely mechanics regulatory financial and-and-and otherwise got it very good just a question you can stay up there for a little bit but quick question did all the projects do the performers as if the land was donated yes they did okay and they all in the end did it didn't approach where the city was not putting additional resources into the project it's just the land and what fraction of the total project costs that you expect to be at the end of the day is the land donation

[59:00] well I this would be very much a ballpark and depending on the valuation of the land so we've got what 12 to 15 mil as price range so what project that represents perhaps about 10 percent of the value of the pro forma okay I need I just needed to kind of understand what we were bringing to the table you bet can I just ask is that typical is land cost Marie only ten percent of a project I wouldn't depends case case-by-case okay depends what gets built on it okay so for an intensive development really only 10% I can answer some depth to little extent it varies pretty heavily based on the the yield that's allowed on the land and where the land is so if you look at Tellem borders you can put a lot on that

[60:00] land and that land is very valuable but again you can put a lot on it so that tends to lower the land bases as a percentage of the overall project because you can put four stories on it if you go out maybe tees Boulder where you can only put one story on your point five FA are it's gonna lower the land value because you can't put as much development on it but on the other hand the lands cheaper so actually this particular site tends to be our areas around here tend to become a little bit different because you can still get a lot on it or a reasonable amount on it but the land maybe is a little bit cheaper than it would be downtown it's not maybe downtown this parcel goes from 12 million to 20 million and I'm making numbers up there isn't any personal available so it's hard to gauge the market but generally that would mean that we've we've just recently done some other projects in the area and based on the land sales I would say that potentially normally it's more like 15% the land value is maybe 15 to 20 percent of the overall project cost maybe you're in the 15 range but the form-based code

[61:01] has reduced a little bit the yield because we've carved off the pocket parks and we've solved for smaller buildings in more public space so there's a little bit less that can fit on the site despite the FA are limits so if I can kind of ask another question or other quick summarize what you just said is what you just said basically that the land value depends on the intents absolutely the amount that you can fit on the because you know what the market will pay you know how much it's going to cost you to put it on even if it's leveraged from tax credits and so the only variable is the land at the end of the day so that's what can I just ask you question following up on holiday holiday was also owned by the city the city owned that do you remember what the percentage was of lien cost on that I don't Laura's here in bhp drove that project so she might be able to I mean be word the master planner they were the master planner yeah and and I don't know what the individual

[62:01] parcels were if you're gonna talk UK sorry just so that everybody in TV land can hear you and if you could introduce your something good evening I'm Laura Sheinbaum with Builder housing partners so I was not party to the development back in the day when holiday was done I do know that our land cost was significantly less than what we're looking at it the pollard say I would hazard a guess a Buy and I guess I'm also wondering from the time the city bought the holiday property to when it was developed it's a much shorter period of time from when we bought Pollard and then our gonna develop it and so I have a question with regard to are we assuming a rate of inflation for that property because there is a real value to that versus is actually just the cash

[63:02] that the city put out for that profit that 12 million does not represent what we paid for it represents what we think the market value is okay yeah but that was for the total sites so it's probably closer to 5 million as part of the consultant analysis market studies were done to determine what they you know what the current market value of the land is okay I could just add to two other cases Mary's original question so we have another project before the city similar project east arapahoe it's about exactly 10 percent the value of the land total project cost and another project that bill and I have recently explored along with David and let me introduce David Sackler CEO of zocalo Community Development it's a it's a case study and what happens when land values just get so crazy so this is five and a half acres in North Boulder a site not to be

[64:01] identified and the sellers looking at a price point of over 20 million dollars and this is a site that will not accommodate much density at least the neighbors wouldn't allow for it which essentially precludes any on-site affordable it just doesn't work economically now the the one safety valve and all this right is a market downturn of significant proportions which makes all of these land values suddenly more attractive but none of us necessarily wishes for that so we think the land cost here whether it's the nine million divided by the the area of this particular part of the the planning area or some other inflated more inflated figure we very carefully over the period of three months as we developed our proposal really identified those financial risks that we could control

[65:00] for and manage so as to be able to maximize the affordable program including the middle-income piece which ultimately is and was the hardest part of the puzzle to solve for okay so going back to Sam with more questions so this is probably for both of you there's a lot of really great things in this project I mean bunch of elements they're just fantastic do we know that these will all actually show up or what are the things that might fall off the table if push comes to shove on financing rates or what you get for your tax credits or how will how will we monitor which of these elements are going to be sure to come forward I'm assuming the affordable housing at the top line would set correct would would fall off no no it come forward that's a that's a priority and a sacred piece of this so as I think

[66:00] we said at our presentation you know we not just because of the city's contribution of the land but because many of us live in Boulder we see this as a special place and are concerned and also excited about its future see this particular opportunity 30th and pearl is a showcase opportunity as a trust as a sacred trust as my colleague bill Holika said so what we will do and commit to is put all of our creative energies and our intellects not just us as a development team but working partnership with the city of Boulder the city staff across departments and disciplines this is a multidisciplinary project to come up with the best project we possibly can the next three months as Kurt said are the time when we get to outline the priorities and the non-negotiables the things that we are committed to early on by the time we come up with a development agreement that the city staff will then present to you you will have a very clear sense of

[67:01] what this project is committed to legally and otherwise and what might be essentially optional but our intent is to follow through as completely and thoroughly and professionally as we can with everything we said we would do in this proposal what we tried to do was leave nothing - for guessing we've committed to the form based code we committed to the other requirements is spelled out in the RFP and we used our economic analysis to show that it was doable so if I could just add on to that in the development agreement there would be a list of assumptions that would be made as well that would you know relate to those outcomes so okay so both Jane and I want to ask a little bit about this one assumptions finding assumptions so we would make assumptions that for example they're going to be able to obtain 4% tax credits and you know other other things like that that would impact

[68:01] what the outcomes would be and I guess one of the things and I appreciate what you just said and yet we have been down this road before and it is curious to me that people can submit proposals be graded on them be chosen for them and they're not required necessarily to follow through that blows my mind and I guess and one of the things we're trying to do is I think with community benefit is be a lot clearer about what we get because we've had some experiences in the past so I guess I want I appreciate what you just said but about now because there's a lot of other I mean by far affordable housing you you got that at the top of the list but there's some other stuff like this geothermal stuff like that would be kind of important too because we're trying to figure out some of this stuff in our sustainability work and so that's an

[69:00] attractive piece of this but if that Falls or what anyhow I guess I want some more reassurance from you that we can hold them to their great commitment made orally but not yet on paper right so they also need to be able to build the project and so I think the starting point is understanding what the environment looks like now and making that part of the record and all of the applicants that that put forward applications used you know fairly similar assumptions as well so I think that there's consistency there but I you know documenting what those assumptions are I think is critical to the agreement okay Jen did you want a variation on this thing or you just want on the list okay yeah yeah just on this cuz Sam's got more questions we're just doing on this one question just I mean it makes sense

[70:03] to to document the assumptions involved but it seems like at the time the development agreement that there'd be certain things written into the agreement as well as assumptions but also commitments right I mean that's part of what this process will entail is that eventually y'all will arrive at an agreement that does write on paper you know certain things that are committed to now plus assumptions to have the right percent tax credits fell through you'd have to go back to the drawing board but a certain assumptions are met then these commitments would be made as well absolutely yeah okay and can I give the developers perspective david zucker of development first of all thank you for the opportunity we see this really is the convening the the annunciator but the project is the city of Boulder the fact that the city as stutely as it did in 2000 2010 acquired the property 2004 I'm sorry acquired to to insulate from

[71:02] market issues this is the now the opportunity to reap the benefits the city is therefore our partner in just the way that we respect any equity partner and one of our projects and this is perhaps the first thing that we talked about with with Curt last week when we met is that in in my mind as the managing member of the development there is nothing that happens without the approval and buy-in of the partner of our equity partner to the city so it's it is completely understandable for recent history for there to be sensitivities our assumption is is that there will not be a conveyance of the land unless we are delivering what was what was sold to the city and so might there be a condition where 4% tax credits go away the pricing and the 4%

[72:00] tax credits diminishes so in those exigent circumstances then we would have some some further discussion might we put some things on a wish list which if the pricing of the tax credits let's say is is better than $1 and we have dollars to use for things like geothermal or or geo exchange we will do that so there may be some reach items that's why we're looking for a pace loan for instance that we can match against energy savings so a commercial pace is is kind of the progenitor here in Boulder so we're excited to engage in that there may be some things that are wishlist items and those would be with our partner and we've talked about this dialogue of monthly meetings with with our partner the city of Boulder and Curt fern Hebert so will not be able to my mind we're going to be making very clear commitments of what it is that the city is going to be getting and

[73:00] therefore what is required before we can close on any one parcel of land okay so I just want to here's the keel Sam's got more questions I'm in the queue you're in the queue yeah Aaron's in the queue Dan's in the queue so if we're done with this question I I'll let you go back okay just I noticed that there's a soft goal of getting to net zero on the site and I was curious how the mechanics of that would work like is it all gonna come from the solar panels for the electricity for the geothermal heat pumps or is it gonna buy some wrecks or buy some wind source or how were you going to think about getting to Net Zero thanks Sam so we know this is a sensitive issue and we've recently done in the area our company has done a net zero building and it came out still performing better

[74:01] than Net Zero it's just got TCO so that's really positive continue we'll continue to break come back and let you know how it performs over three years because modeling is one thing real life is another it just opened the building just opened the comments most open right around the corner is because we were able to use an extra wall for solar panels so we were able to do something that's a little bit unusual when we did the presentation with staff and we walked through our sustainability goals will you try to be as clear as we possibly could so it's probably worthwhile to repeat this a little bit so the way we're going to attack sustainability first we're going to go after the envelope hard and we have some ways to do that that approach passive house standards and have not really been done in Boulder or really in Colorado before in flirting pretty heavy-duty ceiling of the buildings and very thick external insulation so we're trying to drive the loads down as far as possible that's the

[75:01] biggest bang for your buck that we can get so on top of all the rooms is it give me but there's only so much roof area so then we start to have to look at managing plug loads managing user behavior which is much easier done in a commercial setting that is in a residential setting because you only have two or three tenants in a commercial building and you can put in the lease that they have to care in a residential building you have a bunch of for sale units a bunch of individual owners and there's nothing that says they have to care so they can turn on the blender all day long and run it so we're trying to create a system that cares for the folks that live in it so the simple one that everybody knows is a nest thermostat that learns with you there's learning thermostats there's all the things like geofencing so when you leave your unit your key fob shuts off everything except for a couple of outlets that are necessary the smart appliances are changing there's ways to manage people use energy within their within their units and some of that's very simple like a geofence some of that is very complicated and some of that's consumer based with Google home for

[76:01] example you can do things now that you couldn't do two years ago so driving down the plughole is a big deal after that it starts to get complicated so we did say we'd like to get to net zero or near net zero but we acknowledged in the presentation that that would be a challenge one of the challenges with geo energy for example is district-wide we have railways that cut up the site it cuts them into four parcels and we can't run private utilities underneath those right away at least we don't think we can but that's one of the things that we moving forward and that's a set of meetings that we have done you're still so in that regard this project could be sort of a bellwether or a testitude to see what is possible within the city right away standards and can we put in district-wide heating and cooling and still span right aways or if we can't then do we look at mini scale ones that really just power two or three buildings and is there still value in that so I just wanted to be clear that we're not seeing up here saying you're gonna get your thermal and Net Zero but we are going to use the package that I just

[77:01] described as the starting point which gets you a pretty good building especially with the Passivhaus external you know kind of envelope and then continue to work with the city's sustainability department and our knowledge to try to drive that down as far as we can this is going back to San your question the record will reflect that I think we were one of one or two teams that said we will do our level best to get to net zero energy but we can't commit or promise to it other teams promised that they could do it we didn't think that was achievable and we didn't want to say July do it hopefully with prices going down on various tools and technologies by the time we build this project perhaps we'll be able to do it we didn't want to commit we're an honest straightforward team secondly as Curt noted earlier with respect to the

[78:00] qct that changed two weeks ago so something nobody was planning on suddenly showed up on our screen as a variable so our intent is to be really open and honest as changes that affect our project economics and the project operations come to us we can go to Curt and to Jim and tamale and to Jonathan and to Edward and everyone else at the city and feel comfortable and confident in being able to have an honest conversation about a change that we weren't planning on so that's a great answer I would have been shocked you guarantee that we get in that zero and all this affordable housing that would be almost too good to be true but I will say that looking at the geo exchange could be really interesting at that site if you can get units that are sized appropriately last question it's also on the energy issue you talked about no gas

[79:00] or minimal gas coming to this facility within there's mentioned of combined heating power I would assume that would be a gas gen set that you're covering the heat D water for either space heating or water eating so how do you resolve I'm not sure I would think of at least it's using the gas as efficiently as possible to make electricity and heat but what's your thoughts on CHP systems it's changing pretty rapidly and what we're finding in we've started to look at hyper efficient units and heating and cooling them so let's start with that side those are so low that there's nothing commercially marketable that will do it so we're talking like BTU BTU loads of 5,000 BTUs or 8 thousand BTUs there's nothing because you know generally you have one external wall everything else is inside even if there's a roof it's our 50 and that we're looking at walls that potentially have as much as four inches of unbroken insulation on the outside and are sealed with a new product that essentially

[80:00] people hate it when I describe it this way so I apologize but you set off a bug bomb inside the unit with a fan pressurizing the unit while the thing is drywalled and studied and the fan pressure pushes it's like a tire flat seal it pushes it and seals every crack in the unit much better than anybody could do by hand they end up with is really low air changes so you've got a unit that's not conventionally he-double so we're looking right now I don't have a solution to this yet is essentially doing almost a heat exchanger based on a bath fan so we build a little unit that has a heat exchanger in it so it's electric based so that's how the unit heat is done so then you're left with domestic hot water that's the always the big problem when you eliminate cast so there are ways to do it but as you know it's less efficient then like the most efficient gas hot water heaters because we can get different we can get very efficient gas hot water here so what we're looking at actually is heat pump water heaters so like GE makes that one there's some

[81:00] other Rheem is coming out with one there's a few options the early ones like four years ago when they came out commercially or extremely problematic one of the problems with them is that they cool space they're in so you put them in a mechanical room it's heating the water but it's pointing the heat out of the air to heat the water so it's not as efficient as it looks like it is on paper long story short I don't have an answer for you but getting it different what really it comes down to the domestic hot water problem is the biggest problem with all of this but you can put a little money into solving that problem because eliminating all the gas infrastructure and the project pretty that's that's a lot of money you know hundreds of thousands of dollars probably wouldn't distributed to all the units so you can put some money into the solution of the problem so it's me and then you continue me on the same we just threw out a Panasonic on Thursday and looking at the stuff coming down the pike and different cities we're presenting on their kind of

[82:01] their latest innovation and Westminster is working on this geothermal their city hall the Municipal Building is funded or its is heated and they're doing a whole district down there and my only point is if Westminster is doing it just saying I think it's good you know what you're saying about you're willing to work with the folks sitting back there in the second row I think it's worthwhile as a city for us to be able to test out some of these concepts that we've been talking about as part of our approach you know the climate and energy and then to actually be able to work with developers on city-owned sites to actually bring them into life I think it ranks for affordable housing but it may be just right there next in line is a really kind of important element of this I think well then the cheaper the utility cost is that more affordable the units are I mean that's that's forgotten so I will just make that point there one

[83:02] other thing I want to just throw out there because we've been talking about most of stuff collectively is parking okay we here at Thomas vehicles are coming shared electric bundled if our dreams come true we won't need huge parking garages and yet we need them now so I guess the question is are we building these in a way that I wishes all come true and need to own vehicles in the future I know I should rephrase that as the majority of folks don't need to own them anymore we can Rogers in 15 years or whatever if indeed all that comes to pass terrifically can you address how you could do an indoor soccer I would like to hear if the parking structure that I'm gonna do that's a serious can that be converted standpoint there may be some financial response to that well

[84:01] you may tackle but so the first is if cars may go away then there's absolutely no reason to let them dominate or change the public landscape that we would want to have so what we want is think about it in terms of if you go up a scale you have airplanes right you have airports and you fly an airport and then you get into a car so we want to do that with cars and walking so you drive your car somewhere or you get dropped off somewhere and then you can walk around so these little hubs this is a hub new parking now obviously to sell the units we want to make sure that the parking doesn't dominate any of the public streets so everything is parallel park there's no parking lots there's no talk on there that you can see from the street all that so we've driven it all underground that's the first step the second thing it's probably a little bit of a different answer here than it is on other projects because here we're in a parking district so all those you know either driverless cars or uber cars they have to go somewhere at night when we don't want them just driving around town wasting energy so this would be an appropriate place for that to be sort of

[85:00] the dock for those cars at night it's right at the Transit Center it's in the center of town and so I could see you know there's a public-private partnership and maybe we're talking 50 years down the road but eventually perhaps that becomes a place for the driverless fleet to hang out when it's not being used you couldn't repurpose that one as an indoor soccer facility unfortunately and because it's underground it probably isn't very easy to repurpose it because we'll have sloped ramps if it was above ground and this is concepts of reason and other places the idea is to use twin tree construction and then you can just remove the parking garage later I could just be craned out and you can even put more units in what kind of construction 20 so instead of pouring everything in place out of pieces and that is to demo it with a wrecking ball you can buy concrete double tees so it looks like an upside down tee or an upside down double

[86:00] tee and then you just set these pieces of concrete in place and you can make your ramp so long I'm making it sound easier than it is but you can come back later and just take them out with a crane interesting okay were you gonna you did you have more to say on that you don't have to just start kind of okay I'll continue on parking and and you know this is the Transit Center and so and I I like that you guys come in with the least amount of cars or parking spaces but one of your competitors had I forget who it was had you know the fleet of shared cars and bikes and what are your what are your thoughts about that well as bill suggests you we love the idea of overtime and whether that's five six years which by the way many economists and urban planners believe will be the threshold year when car sharing is ten

[87:01] times cheaper than car ownership which historically in economic history is the tipping point when a technology shifts so we I think it will be a really interesting several years in Boulder and across this country as car ownership and car dependence begins to evolve some new form takes shape you know the the best answer we have right now for how we will deal with parking and the issue or problem of cars at 30th and parole is by maximizing the smart well design density in this project and that I believe applies across the city of Boulder so what we've done is Bill said is we've done our best to basically hide the car and parking footprint while accommodating what we know today and at least the foreseeable futures needs right no I really appreciate that but you know right now we do have you know shared cars and shared bikes and there's

[88:00] a whole affordability component in here which I'm very excited about and when we you reduce the cost to people as you produce those vehicle costs we're and your utility costs so I just want to talk about the the vehicle costs and reducing that for people it's it's a great point and we're trying to stay really flexible on it there's so many changes there you guys see it I see it on a hotline you guys live it but RTD maybe changing the Eco pass yeah we have to you know the project all projects pay in for three years of eco passes for the people that we live and work there if there's not an eco pass where does that money go do we do a car show instead one thing we do know is that the entitlement process is likely to take about two years and if we're fighting against that QTC window for two years it's going to be tight but we know that it's gonna take a year and a half or two years to get through this I I know that the right answer in 18 months is different than the right answer now so that's one of those things that we've talked about

[89:00] trying to be flexible with and look at if in 18 months there isn't an eco I mean I hate even saying it but if there isn't an eco pass available there would be great if it's a community-wide eco past which would be even better than maybe the community the project contributes in a different way which may be his car sure what's so ironic about this site for me it's it much easier to access by my bike than by car and and and it's much easier just to move around in there and just to get there I mean the first time I went to the the pub the railroad station couldn't figure out well where would where would how would we get our car there and and where to park and stuff like that does it likes to drink beer yeah my car likes to drink beer but anyway there it was rainy I don't know we were trying to figure out how to get there and I had only gone bike by bike because it's just so easy and so we have the site that we've done so much work in the whole transit village to kind of make it

[90:01] all mode or and I don't mean call it ultimate but suitable for other modes that I would really like to see that shine and I get you need to sell your your units but it would really be nice to be able to reduce the number of parking units can I ask Molly winter then to add something as well community vitality just to clarify this project is within - over lying districts one is a parking district and one is the TDM district or travel demand management so yes there is an initial pilot payment to kind of start the project off to cover the TDM programs which right now are car share bike share and eco pass but the project will continue to pay property taxes and so those services that eco pass car share bikes are whatever the district feels is the most appropriate it could

[91:01] be mobility as a service it could be new programs in the future will continue they'll continue to be part of that district and get those services so I just want to clarify that it's not site-specific um it's part of a district and this is the benefit of all for all the properties within the district it's great thank you so the district board gets to decide how to how to spend that money so they could change over time the program to tune it as you're saying and then the other thing I want to point out is all the parallel parking that you see on the streets that was expressly designed to help with pick-up and drop-off or uber and drive those cars if that comes by the car share right now well and it also makes it more pedestrian friendly that's what we did up in North Boulder and it makes it great and I really like it and I think having cars parked on streets is a much better thing to do than having structures and we agree yeah okay so I have another

[92:02] question or comment it's on affordable commercial space and it has to do with your potential tenants and I know it's probably way too early at this point to identify those tenants but what's your what are your thoughts with respect to local versus national type tenants and Mary referred to a company we just a longtime company that has been a mainstay of boulder who's closing and we just lost another one maybe a month ago so what do you thoughts about that sure as I indicated in July at the presentation among the finalists we had sort of an interesting opportunity again thanks to Mary who encouraged us on our Arapaho project to reach out to small businesses and nonprofits we had a surfeit of them we had more interested

[93:01] in our Arapaho project than we could sit down with comfortably over a period of months and so it was that surplus of potential commercial affordable candidates that we first reached out to when conceptualizing our Pollard program and they are reflected in our proposal so we reached out to people like Andrew Rose at Boulder emotional wellness and Emily Isaac's at the Women's wilderness Institute and sat down and said what kind of space are you interested in and and what kind of rents and how might we partner with you we also sat down with Margo Joseph's from the city who helps to manage the tree op program working with bridge house bringing homeless man into makerspace to take emerald ash borer waste and converted into value-added products we'd love to see a makerspace at this site so we essentially started out with a handful of let's call them illustrative nonprofits but our intent would be to

[94:01] layer on those restaurant and retail of say a bigger scale more robust or aggressive whether there's national credit retail at the site TBD but this is a group deeply committed to the economic future of this city and is not necessarily enamored of what's happened to the Pearl Street Mall over the years we would love to continue to see unique and indigenous enterprises here be able to thrive so I have a couple questions on housing and I was wondering you know if you go to the packet no I can't they're just and I'm on packet page 11 and it's the your development housing data table and I'm looking at the yellow table that talks about affordable ownership and I know in affordable

[95:02] ownership people who are making a hundred percent AMI there are 29 units but there's no none for 70 percent or 80 percent and is there any way to try to get that I mean because those are those are people who are almost there and really need would like a stable home and would like to own their homes and I'm just wondering if there's some ability to kind of look at those a.m. eyes and and get it a little bit lower because I think I think there's a lot of people who could use that so they said there might be I don't want to commit to saying yes there could be again our intent is to work really closely with

[96:01] Curt at Michelle and Kristen and bath at doah to work the numbers to work closely with Laura and bhc to figure out the mix across the low mod and middle we think we've presented an economic and feasible model with our program mix today there might well be some tweaking on the margins that we could do we see that as the work of our collaboration going forward our intent was to win this project so that we had the opportunity and privilege to be able to sit down as developer master developer with staff and working I - I figure out the optimal mix no that's great I just want it to bring it up sewer and then I have a question about the 35 coop Co housing unit and you didn't tell me what those are I mean I know what co-op and I know what Co housing but I don't know what the 35 units means is that 35 coops is

[97:01] that you know 35 cohousing how many people are in each unit so that and I'll leave that are Brian and give you the lay person's definition which is it's a co-op essentially boarding house type living arrangement embedded and ACO housing building so two types of habitation within one structure Brian yeah Brian Bowan category sure it's asked that question because it's really interesting opportunity for us it's the first opportunity I know of in the country where we've done a purpose-built causing uni with a co-op embed inside it there are some other examples of this happening around and so there are a few things that have been you know challenging in terms of innovating this housing type right now we think we're gonna have 5 of a 35 or the 15 co-op Eunice is actually counting as a 5 unit

[98:01] equivalency through the land use code the way they count the coop hands and so we're thinking that the way that's gonna be structured is we're gonna have probably those Kolok located on one floor so that when you leave in the structure for those is like really more of a boarding room to the bedroom type situation with shared bathrooms shared kitchen and so they'd flow out into some shared space that's really for the coop and then that would then flow off into the common house kind of space for the co-hosting community and there's a lot of really ending conversation going on around how to how to structure that so it's really socially sustainable right now between us and Boulder Housing Coalition bhp and also zocalo and the idea though is that we really need to activate those common spaces so that Co houses go there and the cup folks also go there and you know commingle with each other these precious her all about the choreography of people's days and how you really design that in so there's you know opportunities for casual social interaction that are really positive and that ties into how we're gonna design

[99:03] common spaces to run along the Paseo so that connects people to people who are circulating across the site how the courtyard n relates to that and there are maybe four or five six really interesting precedents in terms of causing projects that have been done in the last four or five years that are four or five storey unit urban and causing communities that are not this sort of like back-to-the-landers for a farm style houses and a prairie kind of scenario they're really more urban design projects I think there's a lot to work with I'm very excited that this is in this project so and we asked you I think some of us said please try this but I still am wondering when you say 35 is that like Sam and I have a roof or you know yeah but the Uni mix so inside

[100:02] the coop there would be basically single units in double units so you know a couple could be there or a single person could be in one of those rooms outside of there they'd be efficiencies you know micro units we're looking at two one better than two bedrooms and so the inside that one building there will be a pretty huge diversity viewing types and we think that that's gonna be the kind of thing that really lets people live you know across generations and across across periods in life we're seeing my company gets a lot of phone calls from both young folks do energy co-ops and older folks wanted it coughs it's a huge push for the senior car movement as well and so I think that's gonna be really helpful actually one little like last nuance on that is that one of the reasons we decided to make that building entirely rental was sort of the tenure of people who are living there might line up more compatibly between the coop and the co housing units so that's a little bit of an unusual thing in the cohousing world there's a very common in the coop world so there's a there's a place where we're starting to blend those two things

[101:00] together quite a bit maybe we'll be doing the full you know participatory design process to get people involved with that I mean we have to contrive that a little bit to in the context of light tech funding and non-discrimination rules and stuff like that in this building I would say about 65 to 70 would be the little guest I would have right now 62 if I may jump in as well I had another question I have one one more bit a few about us about that cop related well actually cohousing related it's interesting that you said that it's not going to be rental because typically cohousing is ownership and the people start from the ground up working together in its design so I guess it's

[102:02] being invented then it is being invented I think you know when he first started doing cohousing communities 1718 years ago the ethic was really that you would drag people through the most exhaustive design process possible and through that difficulty they would forge these great relationships and so but time has really changed and you know now people have you know every time I do a causing project the people who live there have already been to ten other causing projects and so the work of trying to figure out what you're gonna do in the common house is really more like a study of what people do in common houses and how do you want to tweak it as opposed to this imagination of like how would you conceive of a space like that and so we've really moved away from I mean the participatory design process still absolutely part of the process but we've put more emphasis on doing other things besides that facilitation trainings working on policy group effort at projects on the site and and fun

[103:01] turns out to be a really good thing to do and we wouldn't know other people outside this room we're having fun too the you know cohousing principles on some affordable housing projects that were lytec funded and environments where we didn't have the benefit of that involved in the design process and I think we've been able to overcome that pretty well when I go back to this projects five seven years later you know people are running this party to say you know it's really weird everyone here knows each other like wow that's good that's what we were shooting for so I think there's other ways to skin the cat okay okay question yeah and this has to do with the public process and so you're going after lytec funding you're going after non-competitive so I assume and correct me if I'm wrong but I assume you'll go into that process or that application knowing how many units you're going to be getting and and so

[104:03] that'll be a given from the very beginning based on your economic analyses correct so how do you envision doing a public process or what kind of public process because in recent past we've had public processes but I feel like we haven't put all the cards on the table so the public isn't really [Music] knowledgeable of what has to happen at the very beginning and so we've gotten comments that their participation has not been very very well spent and so and I really don't want to have I'm excited about this project I don't want to have people butting heads about this and so I want to make sure it's done in as as good clear collaborative in intentional

[105:01] way as possible so can you describe how you'll handle the public process sure and Bill can can add further we are as committed I think Lisa as you and council is to making sure that folks feel like they know about and are being heard as the redevelopment of this part of Boulder and this site in particular goes forward you know we feel good about how Curt and his colleagues handled the RFP we certainly as an applicant felt like it was a very open and inclusive process it was not an easy RFP to respond to as staff knows well and there were several meetings throughout we are now of course engaging in specific discussions negotiations really with staff so that we can get down to brass tacks and come back here and present to you a viable and

[106:01] proposal what I can say right now is our relationship with staff our diverse team most of whom are based here including bhp BC caddis the architect of note when it comes to co-op and cohousing we think we've already got on our team some terrific let's call them channel captain's folks who are tapped into different constituencies parts of this particular community to ensure that as we move forward month to month we are staying in touch with those key stakeholder groups and constituencies indeed tomorrow is really our kickoff meeting with bhp bhc and Cadiz to begin to really talk about what the coop cohousing building program looks like including Mary the public participation piece so we have already SPECT for Brian given his expertise which is of a national stature Brian will help choreograph some of those discussions charettes meetings that even though

[107:01] perhaps not conventional or traditional starting from scratch ground-up ownership included we can vary the theme given the requirements of this project but still engage and include visa vie the cohousing co-op piece we intend to work closely with bhp as we work through our lytec and and related applications and processes to make sure that low mod issues and constituencies are heard and are part of this process so so far on the team we think we've got terrific leaders and representatives of many constituencies that we believe will satisfy ultimately a robust test litmus test when it comes to the participation of the logic from more technical process standpoint I mean we've seen the issues that happen when you have a project that's already committed to by Jaffa but it's not approved yet and how does the public feel about it luckily we are in a very different

[108:01] situation in that we have the form based code so that's one of the things that's supposed to help with that because we all have a sense of what's allowed from a mass and kind of bulk stamp also where we should have public spaces where there should be parks where we should have interfaces with other other parts of the city and how those interfaces should work so that's a big help one of the things that I was kind of discovered in the public probably get the name wrong public process participation working group that we have through that and we will you know I think the outreach some of the ways they say to meet with the community are really good ones but one of the things that points out is if everybody can be on the same page if as the in terms of the goals to start we've always found that to be the form based code gives us a leg up in that regard because we've just gone through that as a community you guys have approved it and so to that end you were allowed to ask for

[109:02] variances from the form based code for various things we don't think that we have any and this we try really hard to make sure that at least all the big things and you know we haven't had a chance to go through it with staff and Carl Guyler is really the expert on staff of that if we've been through the process before but we think these 150 feet stuff like that so we tried to eliminate as much as we could in terms of what we're asking that could drive a you know kind of a community issue no and you make a great point about the form based code and I hadn't thought about that that yes and that was one of the reasons we went for form base code but I'm just glad you're committed to a thorough public processing that you know about the PWG so so that's so that's great in terms of time check y'all good we have Aaron in the Jin and then this

[110:00] has been great I think you're getting a sense of us of where we're at through our questions but hopefully we can wrap this up relatively shortly yeah a couple quick questions so the is your intention for all of the commercial space to be the affordable in nature or is there something would not be yeah our intention as we stated in the proposal is that 21,000 square feet of affordable commercial space permanently affordable and that's all of it with that and and that's all the commercial space that's all the commercial space again whether we end up tweaking in terms of square footage and affordability is up to discussion and negotiation with staff but our intent is to deliver what we've said in that proposal understood great and then I said the partners or potential partners that you highlighted in your application were primarily nonprofits office uses things like that but one of the intentions I think in that forum based code is to have a retail that's

[111:01] activating the street you know providing active uses and things like that so I heard you mention restaurant before is it are you keeping an eye on that and that tenant mix to have that mix of active uses and office uses yeah absolutely great um the organization's we offered up in the proposal were those that we had the privilege and benefit of talking to early on in a rather contracted application process but our intent is to open the field and indeed as Kurt suggested many on staff are really interested in this subject and we look forward to working with them and figuring out how to govern the process of selecting and designing and then ultimately making decisions about the ideal mix of tenants but the urban design mandate to create a really active and exciting urban place where people want to be walking around and moving about that's that's the goal to do that affordably is yet another goal embedded

[112:02] in it great thank you so my last question is for staff they're just mentioning that the potential for a geothermal system over the entire site is inhibited by the prohibition against private utilities under the right-of-way and do you know if that's something that's required 100% for technical reasons or if there might be some flexibility in this situation to look at being flexible Hallowed Edward respond to that édouard staff would develop movie manager for public works it's a combination of items technical certainly a concern with limited right away space in accommodating the necessary utilities and the variety of things that already have access it is also currently prohibited in the Boulder Revised Code there is some internal conversation we'll probably be bringing something forward to Council to consider some modifications to that for certain limited crossings a variety of ways but we're still working on that in particular right now recognizing that there are some projects like this that

[113:01] maybe brings things forward we also want to be very cautious about what we allow within the ride away in easements that we don't detract from the initial public need nor create a public safety hazard which is always a concern when you add something where it's not expected to be found where we may be doing emergency digging and repairs so it's a variety of issues that are to be considered for it great yeah that makes absolute sense than just my little bit of feedback would be if there is a way to allow them to do district wide energy system that does not impair all public safety or the public utilities I think it's worth considering that anybody disagree with that sentiment no I think that's probably yes widely held and okay [Music] that we authorize the city manager to issue a letter of intent to negotiate administer development development as a master developer let the mare choose I

[114:13] think it was really I think 30th Street

[115:02] [Music] [Music] and you know best in class situation Aaron I'll be brief it's an exceptional proposal you know when you put out an RFP like this you're hoping that you'll get something innovative like what you all put together and here it is so hats off and good luck with the negotiations and I really hope to see all this come to fruition yeah and I want a double ditto what Aaron just said I just want to especially thank you for the affordable commercial effort I think it's and much-needed yeah so did all that

[116:04] great fantastic project thank you very much all of you they do you want to make just a different comment altogether than this follows up on that line of questioning I had and that is you know when we talk about before as we were doing the discussion we just voted recently on the inclusionary housing you know changes and we talked about how you know we can't address the middle-income fully in that one and that that's a it's just a it's just one of the many tools in the toolbox we had well I think we heard perhaps some of us for the first time tonight that that there there are some incentives out there maybe they're not I mean who knows how long the last but there's some incentives out there on the affordable side that that that are you know helping the balanced set up but again we're still missing on the middle and and so we know where is that tool that we're gonna find to help us pick up

[117:01] there and I'm not hearing it and so I challenge this project to think about you know being creative and figuring out what can we try something different in the city of Boulder a long bill suggestion of you know boulders builder may need to lead the way here but also thinking about you know what can we do to fix something that we continue to hollow out would this project as well so I guess I'm the affordability this is if I get this all right 63 percent permanently affordable yay great work and folks in all those classes need affordable housing so the middle-income it remains a conundrum and we'll keep working on it but I I think this is a winner for lots of people so I take nothing away from this project that's great and again in addition to the cohousing stuff in

[118:00] the commercial affordable which is also really cool that you're piloting that i underscore previously noted enthusiasm for also being a demonstration project on some of these sustainability concepts like the heating district and seeing what we can do there I think that's very exciting as well yep so echo much of what's been said before it is a really exceptional project so hopefully you'll be able to do some of the pioneering things as Ann just mentioned we put out I thought at the very lowest end of the spectrum I don't know that this is possible or feasible but some of those very low-income housing units if there's a way to have permanent supportive housing one of the things that we're really looking for is exits from homeless providers and so if there's any way to think about permanent supportive housing or in the other facility maybe it's also in the commercial space depending on you know what kind of

[119:00] nonprofits are served there to serve the people at the lowest end of the income spectrum so I just wanted to get that out there I know it's a lot to ask because there's already a lot in this project but there's so much focus on affordable housing here that if there's some way to add something as far as exits from our homeless service providers that would be great too thank you and I'll just add that I'm very excited I think everybody else is but I look at this also in the in a longer term and I can remember we used to have different subcommittees on council and ours on the affordable housing one and I did that with Tom eldritch and Tom elder tonight we were on the Affordable Housing Committee when we first started talking about Pollard being an affordable housing site and I'm getting goose bumps because this was just a vision that we wanted to have we both

[120:00] tom was from Chicago I was from Kansas City train stations big thing and we just our vision was that there would be some affordable commercial on the first floor that would meet the needs of the people who are going to live there and then that there would be a mix of housing upstairs from that and people would eventually get to use a train but also have this this kind of very urban experience where you really are an urbanite and you don't need these cars and and other things and and so I think we we brought that idea out in we started negotiating a Molly was was my I must have been like 2001 2002 something like that we had so many meetings about that and it's 2017 now and just get it done and I'm just really excited about

[121:00] this and this is turning out much better than I ever envisioned it and I I'm sure Tom would be there too so I just want to thank everybody and I'm really excited about this okay then we have a motion we have talked at length shall we vote hands all those in favor it is unanimous thank you so much thank you thank you your next item is a regional transportation update kicking out tom is

[122:04] that what we are we're kicking out the city attorney I'm gonna go ahead and introduce this and I you can guys can blame this next bit on me a little bit there's so much going on a regional transportation and there's so many staff involved but there's also so many council members involved in different pieces of this conversation that I thought it was worthwhile for us to make sure we're all on the same page there's a lot of big conversations happening out there with other cities and whether it's statewide funding ballot measures to these arterial bus rapid transit projects that I thought it would be really helpful for us to all come together around remind ourselves of what our priorities are what we have is at stake as a community and what we need to

[123:02] be pushing for within these regional conversations so that that was sort of some of the impetus and a lot of great things are happening but there's a lot also in play here that we need to make happen and I think for those of us who are advocating for boulders transportation priorities if they're regional organizations it's really helpful to have the council give us all your input so that we're carrying the flag forward for the whole council and not just trying to represent what makes sense to us so it's okay yes so I think we're ready and we've got our gold board I've seen here today pretty much home team a few few missing kathleen back it's gonna start it off oh hey you know what i forgot since we didn't do public home on the previous major we did not hold a public comment period on the previous motion which is my bad so pause for a moment i think we don't have anybody in the public but a couple

[124:02] members i would like to see if anybody sorry about this if anybody out there wanted to speak to the previous matter which was about the thirtieth and purl development project okay my bad come on down yep excited you have three minutes okay hi my name is Donna George eight four six six one Tallyho Court actually when I saw this in the newspaper I was shocked I was like why are they donating the land they already owned to a private developer the land was bought with affordable housing funds if you compare this to pay low Park which was a dedication in a neighborhood for a park or a school the city bought that land and then sold it to bhp and it was a hundred percent affordable housing the people there

[125:00] wanted more for sale units but we're told they couldn't get them and then if you look at Castro put out by Boulder housing hold the County Housing Authority this also has some retail sites and it is also 100% affordable so why on earth are we selling land we already owned and giving it to a private developer that is not even going to put a hundred percent affordable housing on the site when there's already a lot of market rate in the area there's already the 32 like eighty percent at like Boulder Junction or whatever so this would be a prime spot for I even asked Boulder County Housing Authority to put in a proposal and they didn't do it because they said older housing part was working on this so why aren't old housing partners getting together with Habitat for Humanity and building the habitat community can build housing for

[126:00] your workers who we always say the city workers can't afford to live here so if the city owns the property have Habitat for Humanity homes that they can sell to the workers that are always will always be deed restricted I don't understand why we're going to a private developer it makes absolutely no sense to me I do like the idea of putting affordable retail space here I think it's a great idea also Brian Bowan is on the Planning Board and his architectural firm is associated with this project isn't that a conflict of interest and should be considered in your vote so is this project building housing just for Google employees because Google just bought the land diagonal across the street for one hundred and thirty million dollars why isn't this parcel of land being treated the same as payload Park and other land that was owned by housing authorities and one hundred percent affordable housing put on it and it could be a mix

[127:00] of different affordable housing you can even have middle income down here why on earth oh is it going to where it's not going to be 100% affordable housing it makes zero sense I don't think that you should sign the letter of intent I think you should go through Boulder housing partners and Habitat for Humanity and build homes for your workers that we all keep complaining that can't afford to work here yeah afford to live here it makes that makes more sense to me so please rebuild thank you thank you so much for coming down and I'm sorry I got that out of order and Donna kesi just I think if you I'd encourage you to send an email to with that question to Council and I'm sure curt front hopper would be happy to respond to some information what you should know but there's reasons what there's reasons why we we can't develop at this scale without some help

[128:00] so understand there's a couple of things here Boulder housing partners is involved as I understand it in this project and and so the issue is you can't build Habitat for Humanity in part they can't build that the density to create the number of units that we're talking about here and the and part of the you know the volume of affordable units is is much greater than you could develop with sort of Habitat for Humanity homes and the the other issues the city's just not a developer I mean and so part of the challenge also is getting someone to come in and that's why the city did an RFP process was to find out who could who could produce the the most number of affordable units with the greatest community benefit for the city of Boulder knowing that the city of Boulder can't do it itself because we're not developers and so this one that the

[129:02] whole idea was to pick out of all the developers who could deliver the greatest product the greatest benefit working with Boulder housing partners and that's that's what we enjoy and we're gonna have some 200 units of permanently affordable housing so a lot of that will be workforce so thank you appreciate your perspective and you come me down and let's that we're gonna turn back to the other matter but appreciate that okay sorry about that young okay well thank you very much mayor and council for the opportunity to be here tonight and talk about regional transportation and transportation funding a very important and very timely eight topics before we get started I'd like to really thank the council's mayor Jones and so many of you are involved on a regular basis with all of these regional initiatives councilmember young your work on the RTD past program working group is a tremendous and very important part of this and also

[130:02] councilmember bracket and councilmember Apple on for the work with the doctor cog Denver Regional Council of Governments port it's a it's a lot of work and we really greatly appreciate all that you do to support these initiatives as we go forward I'll introduce the team that's here this evening so with us is Mike Sweeney the Director of Public Works for transportation also Natalie Stifler and Jane Sampson from the globe older team both senior transportation planners and we'll be providing part of the presentation this evening also Karl Castillo is here as well he's an important part of our team he was here helping us on these regional policy initiatives so it truly takes a team effort with staff and working with council to bring this about I'd also like to recognize Bill reg'lar who's the chair of the transportation advisory board and he was here earlier as well so

[131:00] we will jump right in I also want to share a good news item this week we're celebrating the boulder second annual bus to work day which is on Thursday so again thank you to councilmember Yates and Brockett for bringing this idea forward last year it was the first annual festive work day and now the initiative is actually spread to be Boulder County wide so boulders leadership is really paying off and expanding bus to work days to be all of Boulder County so it's pretty exciting pretty cool we've got a record number of registrants and there'll be breakfast stations and lots of different things to celebrate transit Thursday morning and the flex will also be free that's pretty good price thing lots to celebrate for sure so tonight we're here to talk about

[132:01] two particular areas of transportation that's regional transportation and funding those are two key areas of our transportation master plan I'll provide just a brief kind of policy overview and then we want to dive in Jeanne will be providing updates on two key corridor initiatives East rapaho and state highway 119 known as the diagonal and then Natalie will be providing an update on our transit service delivery study and then I'll be providing an overview of transportation funding and kind of our challenges and opportunities ahead but before we get started and all of those details I think it's important to talk about the why we do what we do for regional transportation and its really centered in our broad community goals people are traveling to work to live their lives to go to school and so very much connecting to our community sustainability framework and not just the part about being an accessible and connected community but really supporting our economic vitality goals

[133:00] and our environmental goals and so all over the work that we do rolls up into the Boulder Valley transportation plan comprehensive plan excuse me too much transportation and supports these broader goals so I think that's an important context for us to keep in mind in addition a big part of why we do what we do is to support builders climate commitment the greenhouse gas emissions from surface transportation are a big contributor to that issue and we have a lot of opportunities and responsibility to go to work on to help reduce the emissions from traveling and help provide mobility options and choice for people and it's an area where I think our our land use our transportation and Technology all have an opportunity to come together to help solve this problem so all of our work for transportation rolls up into the transportation master plan we call this boulders transportation master plan it's really community based and community created

[134:01] we've had a transportation master planner TMP since the 90s we consider it to be a living document and we update it on at least every five years and as we go forward we look at what our measurable objectives and how are we doing so it's not just a plan that creates a vision or a sort of just goal statements it's really about creating an action plan and going to work on those actions and seeing what those results create and so every two years we do the transportation report on progress and we call that our report card to ourselves in our report card to the community how are we doing in reaching those community goals and how where are the areas that are working well and where are the areas that were struggling and to be honest the areas that we're really struggling in has to do with regional transportation and particularly the commute trips we've made a lot of great progress and I should say the boulder community has made a lot of great progress over the decades to travel by

[135:01] walking and biking and transit for a lot of the daily trips but the trips that we have a challenge with are the longer distance regional commute trips so it's an it's another reason why we're focusing in this particular area and why it's so important within our transportation master plan we have five different focus areas and the one again that we're centering on this evening is our regional travel and when we talk about our regional travel policies it's really recognizing Boulder as an economic Center in the Denver metro area in the Front Range regional employment center and that the regional travel is increasing people are traveling of further distances for their daily trips certainly for commute trips and how do we continue to expand the choices that people have to make those trips by multimodal options and safe options another important policy within the TMP is not just what we do but how we go

[136:02] about it and so it's really centered on a coalition based approach that we have a lot of needs within the community and a lot of needs regionally but we know we need to use a partnership model to get there and the u.s. thirty six mayors and commissioners coalition again we really appreciate your work on that it's a it's a big lift and it's an ongoing lift and we work very closely with Boulder in Boulder County and Louisville in Longmont and Erie and Lafayette and Westminster on these initiatives and we work with commuting solutions that it helps connect us with the business community excuse me the business community in our region and so it's how we all come together to Center on these initiatives so that we're able to accomplish both our local and regional goals and I think one of the projects that we point to as a great role model is us 36 and we see and we're enjoying the multimodal improvements that were created there all opened in 2016 the bus rapid transit the

[137:01] Express Lanes the commuter bike way it's really a high functioning corridor and it's improving the travel time for everyone today whether you're traveling by bus or you're traveling in the Express Lanes the general purpose lanes the results are really showing that it's improving the travel time and reliability for everyone and I think it's not only a good role model for the outcome in terms of the infrastructure and the transportation demand management programs it's really a great model about the how and as many people know it's taken over almost 15 years or more for this coalition approach to bring forward the improvements on us 36 and bring together local and regional and state and federal funding to bring those projects to life so we see us 36 as a model not only in terms of the project but the approach this is just sort of an illustration that helps reinforce that message about our regional travel in the

[138:00] context that we're in and how much travel is coming in and out of the boulder community each day and that information is what then feeds into our planning processes so this map is the sort of articulates boulders renewed vision for transit that was developed back in 2014 as part of our transportation master plan again it helps to illustrate that the local system improvements that are needed as well as the regional improvement so the local is primarily shown here in blue the regional routes are shown in red and highlight the arterial bus rapid transit routes on 119 and 7 and South Boulder road for example and these regional routes come forward from our TDS Northwest area mobility study so we've integrated our local planning and the regional planning to identify this network of improvements and while this may look like more of a service map it's really identifies both a kind of a holistic approach of looking

[139:00] at capital investment as well as service planning as well as programmatic elements and the importance of how they need to work together so these are just some quick examples of projects that have come forward and we're making progress in areas since the 2014 TMP we've talked about the u.s. 36 the flat iron flyer has launched the ridership on the flat iron flyer is over 45% higher than the prior B routes that we're operating there the inter-regional flex service is the picture in the lower corner there are over a hundred riders a day on the Express service operating between Fort Collins and Longmont and Boulder and then certainly continuing to work on the past programs of a very popular neighborhood and business eco pass program and we want to be able to expand that and create more access to it with the community pass and then continuing to work on the hop because it's important to not only think about the regional routes coming into Boulder but then how do people travel around Boulder when they're here what are those first and final mile connections and how

[140:01] are we layering that high frequency local network to help with people's mobility throughout the community so we have a lot of work to do we're making some progress in some areas and we want to continue the momentum going forward and address the challenges that we're facing another kind of a new area that came out of the transportation master plan is the creation of mobility hubs and it's really kind of a next generation rather than doing stand-alone and rights it's how do we integrate the regional and local transit into one I call it one-stop shopping so you can come into the community you can hop off your regional route and have easy access to bike share car share transportation network companies and local routes and that it's integrated with our land use in our urban design it's not a standalone facility but it's very much an integral part to our placemaking throughout the community so there's there's a lot we're working on and the ideas that it's all connected each of

[141:00] the pieces of the puzzle whether it's transit or roadway projects or commuter bike ways transportation demand management programs it all needs to come together to create the place that supports all of the different needs of the community and help support our role as part of the larger regional kind of ecosystem so with that there's just sort of a summation of our regional policies again they're centered on our adopted plans and strategy documents and we take this coalition approach we work closely in addition to the MCC and a lot of policy and technical advisory committee meetings as well and then we really Center on what are those key regional priorities we have a lot of local needs and we have a lot of regional needs but the idea is that we work together with our regional partners to focus on those key initiatives such as arterial BRT eco paths and the commuter bike ways so with that I'll turn it over to Jean and she

[142:01] can cover the corridor plans there's any questions thank you and good evening my name is Jane Sanson senior transportation planner with NGO Boulder and project manager for the east arapahoe transportation plan so I'm gonna just take control okay so as Kathleen mentioned state highway 7 is one of our most important regional travel quarters and we're working both at the regional level and at the local level to advance a multimodal corridor between Braden on the east in downtown Boulder on the west so at the regional level the city is supporting work of boulder county state highway 7 study of which mayor Jones is representing our community on the policy Advisory Committee and this study is taking a closer look based on Nan's recommendations BRT feasibility and operations and also considering infrastructure improvements between state highway 287 and 75th streets and initial study results

[143:01] indicate that BRT service is a viable regional transit option the ridership forecasts are looking really really good and should be accompanied by other modal solutions such as a regional commuter bike way and doing things like intersection improvements further east to address safety concerns and congestion now at the local level so you can you know kind of squint to the to the west side and sort of that green study area we're taking a very close look at the Arapahoe corridor within Boulder as part of the Easter wrap-up transportation plan we're developing a long-range plan that will improve travel and mobility options for regional commuters as well as for the people who are working out there today living in the corridor and those that will be in the future so truly looking at completely complete Street design for the east arapahoe corridor can I just jump in there and if you if you showed that map again okay so Erie and Lafayette are building a ton

[144:00] I chose Brighton and so the idea is this is this quarter is gonna be hugely traveled more and more and more in the future and so I just so you know I think the challenge is how do you plan ahead knowing these things take 15 years so that you're gonna copy you be ready to accommodate that but also make some improvements now that improve the quality life and congestion and now and so what you said about intersection improvements to me I didn't realize what that meant that means like figuring out how to have left turn lanes and things like that you know to widen things at the intersections so you have longer turning cues just so the through traffic you keep going and you can better manage people that are turning on and off in key intersections as you get as imagine as you travel to Lafayette and URI and that that will greatly improve travel through those corridors for at

[145:02] least in the near term so the next two to five years it will greatly improve things while we plan for you know the more fuller multimodal I think also we very much want to see the original bike hopefully separated lane as part of that just because we want for the safety issue and also because of the you know the increased interest in cycling but I just want to put out that in the near term that's kind of where the focus is for the biggest bang for the buck as we do that longer term 15 year till you actually build it out thing so just to dumb it down this is how I think about Inc you know that raises the question for me about the communities out east they have completely different approaches to their land use policies than we do here and one might say that there's a mismatch in terms of what our

[146:00] goals are in terms of land use and how that intersects with transportation so my question is how do you reconcile that in terms of what I'm thinking is you need out east you need lots of land for parking rights yes that's that's an excellent question and so I can't speak for the communities and their policies but I think there's a general understanding of their development patterns look quite different than what we have further west of two things one is that as part of the regional state highway 7 project one of the first things that the county did is just look at the operations of the BRT itself a next phase is going to be looking at station area planning along the corridor so between Brighton and Boulder and that would include the communities of Erie and Lafayette and looking at those station areas and identifying appropriate locations for parking rides as well as for the appropriate types of densities that would support transit

[147:00] support that would support transit in the corridor so you know you're exactly right just along 30 days you see along 36 appropriately appropriately located park and rides particularly given the development patterns out there will be an important part of that regional project and part of it is how do you get them to set aside that land now right for the development that's coming so they're designing their shopping mall over the park and right at the intersection knowing that they don't need to build it yet but they're gonna need to build it so getting that land used locked in though well and just just also their planning so if you you know I think about like way down south where you have the current the office park interpreting the name of the big office or tech center that Denver Tech Center yeah and then how it relates to the train stations where it just yeah and it's a real concern particularly given

[148:01] the pace of development at some of those major intersections is getting ahead of it and being able to identify and reserve that land so we're working very closely in coordination with staff and elected officials along state highway 7 corridor to the point where and I was going to get to in the presentation but the idea is that out of this work the communities between Brighton and Boulder will be forming a state highway 7 coalition much along the lines of the us 36 mayors and commissioners coalition and continue to work on those issues and yet leverage federal funding today so it gives from the side okay thank you so moving on so since we began this Easter rapaho planning process we've been committed to the principles of the city's public participation working group recommendations and we've undertaken a public engagement process that fosters meaningful contributions to this planning process so as you'll note as I go through the next set of slides that the sticky notes indicate where our process reflects those values and we've

[149:00] incorporated them into the planning process so let's start with the why why are we developing this plan and quite simply we're asking this question of our community how do we move more people safely and efficiently through one of our busiest travel corridors so with regional forecast predicting as much as a 20% increase in traffic we need to reorganize our streets to provide better travel options for commuters and for the greater number of people who are working and living in the corridor and this has been a you know a very open conversation and generated a lot of good input which I'll be sharing with you over the next few minutes but let's take a look first at our planning process and schedule so since May of 2016 we've been working with a 20 member community working group and it's made up of a cross-section of community members everyone from small to large business representatives neighborhood representatives and interested community members and they along with our larger community have been helping to guide the process and provide feedback to us at major milestones everything from drafting the plan goes to developing and screening

[150:01] alternatives and at this point in the process where you see that we are here we're considering a narrowed range of alternatives and conduct and have conducted a detailed technical analysis of these alternatives and we're sharing these results with our public and have been doing so since the spring asking for input them and feedback now moving forward we'll be recommending a preferred alternative with an implementation and phasing plan for review by Council in in the coming months just real quick have you included commuters I would say that maybe a third of the business representatives do not live in Boulder and what we've been doing to really reach out to hear the voice of the commuters a couple things one is we participated in the boulder county state highway 7 public meeting so we provide information at those meetings and have really been incorporating the information we receive from those folks

[151:00] many of whom work in Boulder but live outside of Boulder the other thing that we do is we're out in the corridor a lot doing things like lunch-and-learn so I'll be doing one for instance this Thursday at Boulder Community Health where we bring employees and and the and the hospital provides lunch most of the people I would say that we're speaking with or do not live in Boulder so that pop up events we were going to be doing something similar with fall so we're really making a very concerted effort to hear from that commuter perspective so these are the five plan goals and they support the five transportation master plan focus areas that Kathleen mentioned and they're being used to guide development of transportation improvement alternatives and the criteria by which we evaluate the alternatives and well I won't go into each of the goals specifically I just want to point out a couple of things that one is that the plan goal the first one of developing a complete Street that offers people safe travel choices is directly directly tied to the cities

[152:00] toward vision zero initiative so with safety we use that as the lens through which we assess all alternatives and you'll see that's that's something that comes up again and again in conversations with our community the second point I'd like to make is also at the top and that relates to the funding goal just recognizing as mayor Jones mentioned that this is a long-range plan and it's going to require phased implementation over time and so as I mentioned over the spring and summer months we've been out in the community sharing a range of alternatives and the renderings that you see at the top of this slide illustrate a range of transit and auto alternatives that basically range from maintaining the current configuration out on Arapaho which on the east and is it's about six lanes it varies depending on which segment of the corridor you're in see the alternatives that you see on the right-hand side of that slide that would actually repurpose general traffic lanes for bus rapid transit and then underneath that along with these alternatives we've been

[153:00] sharing the results as I mentioned of the detailed alternatives analysis which is summarized here and basically what this does is it compares the benefits the impacts and the trade-offs associated with each and when we're back in front of Council in December we'll be sharing this detailed evaluation with you all as well and the input and feedback we've received on it and yes you have cost options on these because there seems to be a pretty significant brain guess we do it would be grateful that things and so at the bottom of the slide what you see are cross-sections that illustrate pedestrian bicycle and amenities they're an option so basically the edge of the road and these can be paired with any of the roadway alternatives above and note that each of these options the bottom show designated spaces for pedestrian and bicycles and each of the bikeway facilities are protected from traffic to a certain degree okay I'll let you do this page and then I'll ask my question okay I just want to spend a

[154:01] minute talking about how we're sharing this information I touched on some of it you know in addition to working with our community working group we've been using a variety of other means to share information everything from neighborhood meetings to workshops with our community youth groups which has been really interesting working with our growing up Boulder and youth Opportunity devisor a boy board I mentioned the lunch and learns that we've had and we're continuing to have along the corridor and then just a host of sit down one-on-one meetings with area businesses as you see listed here and as I mentioned we're also participating in the state highway 7 project and have a pretty strong website and social media presence my question on engagement was about the level of engagement with RTD on their preference on the bus operations do they have a strong preference for between those so we are coordinating closely with RTD and we're really taking the lead on what that configuration looks like and basically it's on us to determine what that would look like but given certain constraints

[155:02] that they are probably going to be working with if they are to be the operator of this future transit service things like ensuring that we have right-hand boarded boarding doors and that sort of thing so there's some logistical issues related to vehicles and such but the fact of the matter is at this point in time RTD does not have the money to implement this project so it would be something that we would be phasing overtime but you know as far as RTD goes they very much leave it up to the local jurisdictions to provide the infrastructure to run their service it makes sense what about communities to the east because like if you pick say center running bus versus a bus on the sides you probably want to have the same methodology throughout the area that you did a full implementation of BRT yeah what about communities have input on what they might be interested in implementing right and so communities to the east so there's been a planning and environmental linkage study basically that's the infrastructure design for state highway seven that's been

[156:00] completed out to i-25 from 287 I 25 and what that design is calling for is side running bus rapid transit or it's they would call it bus on shoulder and then the study that the county is currently undertaking to look at 287 to 75th Street one of the options is also looking at bus on shoulder so again that that curbside running bus and then within the city again to your point yes you want to be as contiguous as you can not to say there aren't systems that do vary between side running instead of running particularly in more urban areas we wanted to look at that sort of broad range of in a spectrum of different types of configurations and as I'll share with you in a minute there are a lot of constraints just on a running bus rapid transit and I think that our community understands what those constraints are particularly related to traffic operations and we're not seeing a great deal of travel time savings to be honest with you for the center running bus rapid transit so at this point in time it's looking more like from a technical analysis

[157:00] standpoint and community feedback standpoint that the side running bus rapid transit is looking like the more feasible option is consistent with what's being planned for their East I think that's how I'm looking forward to hearing more about it in December I guess yeah so just quickly here's just one example the type of preference poll we've used at our community meetings low tech dot exercise and when we asked for feedback on the alternatives and as you'll notice I was just getting to Aaron that there are a large number of dots next to the alternative three so this would in this alternative or looking at business access inside running bus rapid transit and what we're hearing from these from these meetings that we have with folks is the understanding that and based on the detailed analysis this alternative offers a pretty high transit ridership with a lower cost fewer traffic impacts as I mentioned as compared to center running BRT and has the greatest potential to be phased over time which again is another limitation of looking at something like a center running bus rapid transit so the business

[158:02] inside running bus rapid-transit configuration would provide a transit travel time that's competitive with the automobile but in fact most likely would not degrade auto travel time and actually has the potential to decrease travel time for all commuters and that's to impart to two factors one is that we know that today the outside travel lanes are underutilized because drivers are choosing not to get in the outside lane to avoid getting stuck behind right right turning vehicles or buses and the other factor is that by providing this high quality BRT service that actually provides a competitive travel time where do we may reduce the number of vehicles on the road itself thereby opening up capacity so it's looking very favorable from a technical standpoint as well as from the type of feedback that we're receiving from our community members then when we look at the range of bicycle and pedestrian options or consider we're considering we ask committee members the same question

[159:00] about the design which one do you prefer and this is after sharing all the technical information and there's really a preference for raised protected bike lanes and there are a couple factors that go into that one being creating greater visibility for cyclists I would say more often than not that's what I'm hearing as I'm out speaking to to community members raised protected and really what it gets to the issue that it gets to is just creating more separation from general-purpose traffic and greater visibility and ensuring that any facility that's designed would minimize driveway and intersection conflicts and then I think imagine that or when I'm in meetings with major employers in the quarter what we're hearing from them is that their workforce is increasingly interested in and really asking for safe and convenient prices in facilities on Arapahoe which are very limited today and as we share the results of the alternatives analysis with our community members we've also asked them in

[160:01] indicate which results are most important in selecting a preferred alternative so ranging from safety to changes and travel mode share to forecasted transit and auto travel times all which is information that we've shared and overwhelmingly people say the pedestrian and bicycle comfort and access and safety are noted as the most important criteria in selecting a preferred alternative a little bit more on what we're hearing as mayor Jones mentioned interest in both short and long term improvements so yes we want a long term vision but we also want to look at taking incremental steps to improve conditions out there today and so it's part part of the plan we'll be developing an implementation strategy that includes both short mid and long range strategies then again there's also ongoing concern about automobile congestion particularly further east which is why it's so important as mayor Jones mentioned that some of these intersection capacity improvements that the county is working on happened sooner rather than later to address those choke

[161:01] points for commuters coming in to Boulder yes would that be just working on the intersection so if you funnel in I guess your choke point there when you fill it back into we're looking at expanding the number it's actually we're not necessarily looking at expanding the number of lanes but we are looking at creating greater capacity to move more vehicles through what's a limited intersection race everyone stopped at one time you can only move a certain amount of vehicles through that but if you can move more and then merge them back into that single lane it actually would operate pretty efficiently with the addition of left turn pockets where it's needed to access areas to the north and then do we have data that proves that yeah we done

[162:02] I guess that's three lanes to one what they found the counties got some great data on this is basically once you get to the edge of Boulder as you head out on a rap hoes the traffic moves pretty well in between the big intersections except for where people have to wait for people to turn and so the idea is get more people through the stoplight and then it keeps going fine especially the people are turning and it's pretty cool to look at the models but yeah it is they have well documented it as kind of the biggest bang for the buck and one of the quickest things we can do to adjust the congestion again while we're looking at these longer-term land-use choices that will accommodate kind of a future growth yeah moving on just a little bit

[163:01] more about what we're hearing to the top bullet integrating transportation improvements with land-use and urban design first and final mile connections and transportation demand management so while I've been sharing some of these emphases infrastructure improvements that cross sections that's only one component of the plan and we're very much looking at things like transportation demand management mobility hubs that create first and final mile connections for instance we've been working proactively with our planning department as they updated the bowler valley comprehensive plan and our community working group I think was very instrumental in working with a planning staff to advocate for a small area planning at 55th and Arapaho for example which is now scheduled for the 2019 2020 timeframe and that the build alternatives support existing and future development and and and and to the point that they're not dependent on any one development proposal but are adaptable to changing conditions which is what we're trying to achieve you know the other point about the first and

[164:00] final mile connections is that the success of a regional BRT system will be dependent very much so on that easy first and final mile connection so how do I get to the Flatiron Business Park so creating those mobility hubs that create that one-stop-shop as Kathleen was saying or that seamless connection to a be cycle station or or an electric vehicle station or shared use mobility options will be key and components of this plan and then to the second bullet allowing flexibility to incorporate things like HIV and innovative technologies like autonomous vehicles we know that the future is going to look different and so what we're doing as we think about these infrastructure designs is that we plan to accommodate changing technology so for example by creating a dedicated lane for what might not be bus what might be in the future bus rapid transit it could be at some point in the future shared autonomous vehicles we're creating that space to move more people safely and efficiently through the quarter so just real quickly to recap the time frame so we will be back in

[165:01] front of you in December and as I mentioned some of the ongoing work related to state highway 7 is I'm continuing to to grow and evolve and to the point of establishing a state highway 7 coalition and will continue to work with our city departments and our agency partners moving forward so to switch gears state highway 119 is another one of our key dams corridors and so as Kathleen mentioned using the us 36 multimodal corridor as our model RTD has started to work on a BRT study for state highway 119 and CDOT has also stepped up to study manage lanes along the corridor along with a commuter bike way so true a multi-modal corridor where the very initial stages of both of these projects so the first policy and Technical Advisory Committee meeting for this project was held in August it will be an 18-month study and it's we are

[166:01] supporting it here the city of Boulder as well as Boulder County and the city of Longmont and other participating jurisdictions and agencies in this project the BRT study our 2ds BRT study will analyze alternative BRT improvement options between downtown Boulder and Longmont with the goal of advancing a locally preferred alternative so at the conclusion of the project there will be preliminary engineering plans environmental clearance for BRT improvements as well as preliminary cost and funding strategies which Kathleen will be touched can I ask what manager Lane means right so it would be something along the lines of what you see on u.s. 36 where it could be a tolled facility along with an HOV facility and perhaps transit using the same Lane this and that's kind of a general it is a general principle that any new capacity be managed so that we're not just building more roads HOV

[167:05] toll and bus just like us 36 you know I count they added a lane but they made it be a managed Lane so and that's the principle is that we don't want to just widen highways anymore we've won from that you know the I don't know if the 2x example I don't know if that means anything to you there was a big huge investment in expanding I guess it's like 25 down 5 south of Denver and and I forget how many within a just a couple years it's the congestion is just as bad it's that if you build it they will come and so it doesn't solve congestion manage lanes however have been proven to be a best practice and so that's the that's the idea is if you're gonna add capacity make it managed and you'll move it's all about how moving more people not yeah so anyhow

[168:01] so I'm just real quickly related to that as I mentioned we're just at the initial stages but the draft purpose indeed relates to things like as we know the increasing travel demand as mayor Jones mentioned increasing the person through Pitt's throughput through the corridor providing safe solutions and reducing corridor transit travel time and just as importantly reliability and also related to the first and last mile connectivity issue that we touched on earlier and identifying cost-effective options so very much along the lines of what we're looking at for other regional corridors such as state highway 7 and have done on us 36 I sent the notes out from that meeting to all of you guys the launch so and so moving forward next steps the project team on the BRT study is going to be identifying BRT options which could include dedicated lanes it could include high frequency and limited stop service transit priority at intersections

[169:00] enhance station branding etc and other BRT features and they hope to be out in the community in November so pretty soon with the first round of public outreach and then moving into later this year analyzing those options and I think that's when CDOT will be initiating their manage lane and bikeways study hoping to to finish up in late 2018 possibly early 2019 with a locally preferred alternative and environmental clearance which really kind of sets the stage to go out to look for additional funding for these projects so that leads to the funding question at this point RTD has 30 million dollars allocated in their business plan for implementation in 2022 this would only mean clearly only be part of what would be needed to implement BRT in the corridor but it's money that could be leveraged but there's a growing concern that their staff is currently proposing that this money be deferred again Kathleen will be much touching on that when she discusses the funding but on an encouraging note cidade has identified 5,200 million or

[170:01] more in implementation funding following the completion of their study so so key messages I think this sort of highlights some the key messages related to our regional corridor plans supporting the transportation master plan mobility and safety goals advancing the arterial BRT routes from the NAMM study creating real BRT that's a high quality experience and pairing that with a commuter a bike way to truly make these regional multimodal commuter corridors and integrating all the work we do with the land use in urban design placemaking and some of the types of projects we were looking at earlier when you were looking at 30th and Pearl so at this time I liked him by Mayor Jones to provide any additional thoughts or information that you might have related to these corridor plans I think I've been charming and just find out I guess nice to be clear so this is the study that will and the environmental clearance means that we

[171:00] can go and try to leverage this little bit of money to get federal funding to basically hopefully in a shorter timeframe sort of recreate the us 36 model so that we really make the corridor between boulder and Longmont sort of state you know top of the class and again along with the regional bike way which i think is a public amenity people are asking for so I think this is really exciting in it it's a great it's another great collaboration with our neighbors so I think the next 18 months that's what focus will be when justjust add that the in term from a federal funding perspective the focus right now and the opportunity is 119 and and not Arapaho from the the federal funds that we get through the dr. cog process I'm actually Arapahos not not eligible for funding in the next cycle in the next like four or five years but state highway 119 is and it's the our prime

[172:00] focus right now in terms of advocacy at the regional level of dr. cog is trying to get the federal funds designated for that through a variety of kind of maneuvers so that's that's that's the funding priority there at that level and would one when we get to more funding out of a question but right now there are a post on not eligible so people should know that this is our top priority regionally um coming out of Boulder yeah so why as did highway 7 not eligible for federal funds so in order to be eligible for federal funds through the Transportation Improvement Project process you have to a project has to be in the fiscally constrained regional transportation plan and project it's like so bureaucratic who is not on that list and we need to make sure is that it gets on that list so that it's eligible for a future funding rounds but you have to have already been on that list before this process starts so this is how Aaron

[173:03] spends his Wednesday thank you for explaining that that clarification so what needs to happen in the process so that seven can there's an application process to get a project concluded in the regional transportation plan maybe Kathleen you can talk about what we're doing there sir so you're absolutely right it is the most complex interesting chicken and egg cycle that you can describe because you can't get on the list to get money until you're on the list but you can't get on the list unless you have money so it's really interesting so that's one of the things we're looking at with state highway 7 is how do we start to identify those seed funds just like 119 you know RTD step forward with 119 to create that initial 30 million dollars how do we find those types of resources for state highway 7 so it can get a toehold on that regional planning process and get into the list and how do we get the roadway itself

[174:00] classified on these maps that's there's a lot of detail to it but the idea is on every angle look for where we can identify resources so that the project can move forward in the regional planning process and we can keep its a real theme on all of this it's leverage and partnerships so we need to be working forward to do these things we have learned that seedot has some funding identified for repaving of state highway 7 and so that could be an angle if we can get that to count so to speak you know so each of those things we work on together with the county with our neighboring communities - it fancies projects and it is very unfortunately more complicated than it probably should be but the point if you have no funding identified yet you can get on the list to obtain funding you have a certain level funding in order to get in the plan and then go from there to ask for more funding and this is the reason why we're bothering to tell you all this is so that every time you CC dot director

[175:01] or RTD director or anybody in our state delegation you say hey you know 119 and highway seven we really hope you're gonna help us move those forward and I will say this that the southern metro area Douglas County those folks are really good at getting money for their projects and we need to be good collectively at engaging sort of all those people and getting ours and not just not just if you see LLC doubter RTD directors but if you see a council number from Broomfield or Lafayette you say oh hey you know that are you guys interested in state highways have maybe we can work together you know that kind of stuff too I think the folks down south are a little more organized they're relentless they're loud and they're nice people but they they tend to monopolize the conversation at dr. cog and other places in I mean like

[176:00] taking a lesson from their book about how if we speak as a region on Northwest corridor region we will do better and and we need to drag Louisville along with us to those conversations and how I mean they're interested I mean they're they're full participants I mean so it it's not like they're not thinking about it but I think we do require some additional active coordination so they're on they're on board I think we just we could do more I know this was covered a little bit earlier just in terms of sort of outreach in terms of in terms of public participation in terms of desirability for what you know different formats and forms of different different features and whatnot but I have actually her and it's important I think because of this project that was mentioned earlier that's that's being considered out in Arapaho the there definitely are some

[177:02] folks off of a rapaho that you know I think some to some of them this isn't probably news and the question is what sort of outreach is being done with 7 and Arapaho and what sort of engagement is taking place there in addition to some of the means that I mentioned like the community working group and one-on-one stakeholder meetings we've had several large format public open houses we've had neighborhood meetings that we've done in conjunction with the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan Update we've had really good turnout so I would say that's where we probably if you're referring to perhaps the neighborhoods in that area that's probably where we've had the best and the most participation has abandoned those larger meetings and we've also offered through our community working group representatives to let us know when they have HOA meetings and

[178:02] we'd like to attend those sorts of things so far we've had it's been difficult to get to get on there are a lot of issues that they're dealing with there's a new group out on a rapaho called the east arapahoe leadership committee and so we're also trying to get in front of them to provide more information so it's a continuous process okay and is there a place they can 0 website link or they can go there there's a website link link Easter app a transportation plan net and then another thing that's happening is next month the east arapahoe plan will be the front cover of the community newsletter so that's going to reach a really broad I mean it's gonna reach every household in Boulder - great thanks it's helpful if I make it I provide just a quick update on the program working group which is also a P pwg not to be confused with the other one so just real quickly what we've

[179:03] we've been meeting since April once a month it's a group of about 24 people from all over the metros all over the district the regional transportation district and over the last month we've kind of ramped it up and we began to meet more frequently there are three options currently on the table and three subcommittees that have been meeting to detail out those options and prepare them for modeling by the consultant so that's kind of where we're at right now is putting the final details on the details for the modeling and and then we'll kind of tweak after that and see where things go one of the options is expanding access to the Eco pass so which seems like a

[180:00] no-brainer but can't take anything for granted but yeah you cannot take anything for granted so we said what's the timing on the modeling the modeling should happen in over the course of the next couple of months and this committee will likely go into at least the first quarter of next year so that's all I have thank you thanks for serving on that oh okay moving on to transit service delivery study my name is Natalie Stifler I'm a senior transportation planner with NGO Boulder and I'm gonna be giving an update on the transit service delivery study so just start with the purpose of the study our current service delivery structure

[181:03] okay our service model relies heavily on RTD for both local and regional transit service is constrained we need to find additional or new models to fulfill the renewed vision for transit recently we've learned the RTD is backfilling fast tracks with base system funding and this will continue into the foreseeable future so this is really a structural issue for RTD and they haven't identified a solution and so we have along with many other communities are getting to the point where we understand that something has to happen and we need to do something different so the purpose of this study is to look at our current service delivery structure and the challenges with delivery and the renewed vision for transit that Kathleen had referenced and also looking at potential alternative funding operating and governance partner structures that can

[182:02] optimize opportunities to implement a renewed vision for transit so why this matters I think we all understand the importance of this but trans is the backbone of our transportation system and so it's a it's critical to meeting our mobility and sustainability goals that are identified in the transportation master plan so just to go over process we we initiated this study back in late 2016 and that was the first phase of the service delivery study so the first phase included a financial assessment of current and planned transit service an analysis of builders current return on investment for transit service provided by RTD as well as a review of national examples to various local regional service delivery models and so tonight I'll be presenting the findings from that first phase of work and now we're in phase two which we kicked off this month this will include the identification analysis of alternative transit service scenarios

[183:00] and their related for school impacts so options that we would look at working out maintaining or expanding our current service delivery model so an example would be an idea such as the city in Boulder County establishing and operating consolidated transit service or the city operating local transit management and operations of the CTN system and/or forming a new Regional Transit Authority so those are just a few ideas of scenarios that we'll be looking at in this phase to can ask any of the scenarios that we're considering involve withdrawing from RTD anybody so we've talked about actually having

[184:01] county or city legal staff actually understanding what it would take to answer that question agree but I'd like to see it okay yeah we can I think that's really important this comes up over and over again and I get pretty frustrated and there's all kinds of names you can come up with for RTD but I won't say him here but anyway you know to be Clara wasn't advocating it was just a factual question of yeah and we need to just know the what what the consequences of that would be yeah and then so as we move into 2018 we'll include a detailed analysis of these and other service delivery scenarios to understand and evaluate the costs and benefits opportunities and challenges and then the final phase of the study is anticipated to be completed in mid 2018

[185:00] and this will include a recommendation to carry forward one or more preferred scenarios and involve a detailed financial analysis and reckon a sustainable funding mechanism to support the operations of a preferred governance model so we're moving into the findings from phase one this included a financial assessment of our current and planned transit service just for a little background first this slide here shows what 1% sales and use tax breakdown is for RTD you just remind everyone so in 2004 metro area voters approved an additional point four percent sales tax to fund fast-track system improvements and then in builders portion in 2015 it was about 9.3 million for that point four percent and as I mentioned RTD is drawing down on our base system funding to backfill fast tracks due to massive shortfalls in the

[186:01] fast track's budget so we need vision for transit we found that our annual operating cost to provide our existing transit service in Boulder includes all of both local including all of both local and regional service for the whole you know Boulder County routes and city of Boulder is approximately fifty point four million dollars and the operating costs cost to provide boulders long-term vision for transit including all local and regional service is a hundred and seventeen point seven million dollars so over doubling our current cost for transit and this would obviously require funding from multiple sources including local regional state and federal funding sources those return on investment we considered all financial contributions to our tv4 base service so we're just

[187:00] talking about base service over the next couple of slides here what we found was that in 2015 the boulder community contributed a total of approximately 32 million dollars for TD transit service through a variety of revenue sources the two main sources were the sales and use tax at about 14 million dollars and then the fare box which includes eco pass contracts and subsidies and programs so that's about at eleven million dollars those are two main funding sources can I just get real quick question huh and your slide - two ago about the cost and how it's escalating so much have you made any assumptions about driverless because my understanding is a big piece of the expenses and the drivers and have you made any assumptions about smaller vehicles or driverless it's it's based on our renewed vision for transit that was developed in 2014 we didn't make

[188:01] major changes to that plan when we looked at the cost of what it would take to implement that I would say kind of you know in the background we've said we would look at transportation network companies to fulfill some of the first mass mile issues or to where we typically would have mobility options but those aren't part of this cost model so this is a pretty traditional cost model so just continuing with the return on investment the other side of the equation so based on our T DS fully allocated cost model for all RTD operated routes this is our TD local and regional based service for the boulder community the cost is approximately 34 million and 2015 this lesson includes a

[189:00] subsidy that RTD pays to the city to operate the hop so in summary Boulder covered about 94% of the costs of service directly provided by our GD and 2015 and this when you take out excessive that no includes revenues and costs for excess ride services when you take out accessorize services out of the equation that what we put in goes up so it's about 96 cents for every dollar we get back sorry real quickly what's the community that would come closest to this level of coverage we are by far in the attachment it there's a little bit more information detailed information about this but you

[190:04] can understand that is based on our fare box recovery and in your packet it talks about box recovery is in comparison to the district's box recovery and we're significantly higher most other communities what's another typical community invest another community we could get that for yeah we just know we're one of the highest yeah and we're having so County has talked about doing the same study at the county level they've done something similar to this in the past and so I think there's interests at the county level to look at this because we do know I think we all have a sense that if you were to look at this on the county level those numbers would likely be reversed

[191:02] they would be putting it the county would be the county wide would be putting in more than what they're getting back right so and then now talking about that that point four percent with fast-track so as I mentioned we contributed about nine million and 2015 to fund fast-tracks operating service and what we saw with the introduction of the fire and fire we're seeing about a two million dollar additional investment for fire and fire service on an annual basis and of course six infrastructure improvements and employer does receive a benefit from those capital investments that about two hundred million dollars what is the fare box recovery look like for the flat iron fire between six and

[192:26] eight dollars so six and eight dollars compared to the fire service extremely efficient under two dollars an hour two dollars per Rider sorry two dollars a subsidy per rider like six dollars

[193:01] subsidy per Rider okay thank you I had a follow-up question which was uh you know reading the analysis and in our packet on this I said there's the big differential in the operating between what we get and what we contribute each year I don't remember seeing any like amortization of the capital costs of us 36 to kind of say well or to be put in X many hundred millions and this and over 30 or whatever period years 30 years 40 years that's kind of worth this much per year to us it was there and it was they didn't do we just looked at they put in over the course of the last ten years

[194:05] [Music] agency review question last night I got

[195:30] a question about transportation between Boulder and really just curious because I didn't think there was anything going on but is there so today there's not direct service from Boulder to Greeley so there's local routes within the north front range that wouldn't need to connect to 287 and then through that connection for example someone could go from Greeley to Loveland and then

[196:01] connect to flex at Loveland and to commute into Boulder so there there would it would definitely be a multi leg trip to do that but there are my understanding is there plans to enhance direct service between Loveland and Greeley's so that trip could actually become more efficient over time but I think it's an example of the types of questions we also get from people that are commuting on beyond the art the typical RTD boundaries that we're hearing from east of i-25 from Frederick from Firestone from up north from from Greeley so when you think about the travel sheds coming in and out of Boulder every day it's it's very large and very interagency done you just have to be patient today it would be a really long trip is something that I think the North front range is trying to look at how do they enhanced okay proposed for

[197:00] Hyperloop has a different operating model and so each of these could be improved Department of Monica and then

[198:07] they provide transit as a separate agency in addition to what the regional Metro partner provides the service option the City of Seattle passed City ballot initiative to fund transit both locally and regionally for the city of Seattle and it was a pretty big initiative about sixty million dollars a year transportation provider King County Metro to provide that service and Seattle really has a lot of control in that situation appeared to be viable options for the city there's a lot of

[199:01] different ways we could go so that's really what this next phase of work is just that breakdown of all the sub options most important thing I think to remember here is that a separate local system would require full operating entity embracing all functions funding and governments through the public or private endeavors and we've done for us as I mentioned we've identified one question for you

[200:55] with the buy up option where we get more service when we put in more money is our

[201:00] TV pretty much always willing to do that as long as we throw the money at them or do sometimes they say look no we're just not willing to offer that service no matter how much you pay us would say yep that service if you're willing to pay for it but now constraints and driver constraints does not look good actually by OCD that likely going to see something from them in the future after 2018 or not it's questionable the by ups on the jump in on the bound because they're short 150 drivers out of close to 900 and they're

[202:00] having to just not run buses they just skip trips if they don't have the drivers to do the trips requires that one the driver situation is improved and and we would have to play a part in that and then to the vehicles we would have to pay for the capital cost related to vehicles thanks okay so I'm looking at this is great stuff but you're also exceeding I think how long we thought this was gonna go we are exceeding we are exceeding so this is cool so we have one more section I'm also aware that we have a member of tabs sitting here and if you want to add in your two cents at some point are you sure you don't have to but I want to give you that option okay all right so we have one more which is about this sort of the big funding

[203:01] okay so we'll go through this pretty quickly and again I think as we said at the beginning of this conversation all of these topics are interconnected when we're talking about division plans and then how do we go about developing the corridor plans and then it all comes down to well then how are we going to make them real and we're all kind of the rubber hits the road as people say is its funding so when we talked about transportation funding we look at it at at all levels local regional state and federal it's a kind of a combination approach and again I want to start with our our transportation investment principles that come out of our transportation master plan that's where again we go back to for all of our our policies and so where we really want to focus is creating a safe and reliable balanced transportation system that serves people using all modes for all ages and stages of life we do everything we can to

[204:02] leverage the resources that we have typically on an annual basis the transportation division budget is approximately thirty million and again that's made up of a combination of funds and then we look to leverage those through as many grants and partnerships as possible I think it's really important tonight to really thank the boulder community for investing in transit and transportation for the last 50 years when we think back to 1967 and that the the voters came forward with this visionary plan to fund both transportation and open space acquisition really set the stage for an amazing place and so that investment that's been made over all of these years has helped create the community that we have today the compact walkable community and so we're able to continue that investment we really view the work we do in transportation as being stewards of the community's resources and so how do we continue to invest

[205:01] those going forward for the next 50 years and how do we do that in a way that again continues to leverage everything that we we have and stretch those dollars as much as possible to create both the local and the regional transportation connections so we look at our funding bank up again that blue large blue portion is the local sales tax that's provided by the boulder community and then the others represent some of the state and federal funding as well I mentioned that all of these topics are interconnected when we talk about our resources our priorities for how we invest those resources are also identified in the the TMP both locally and regionally this map highlights some of the regional priorities and again as we've been talking about to the corridor planning process and the transit service delivery we need to focus on those key top items to go to work on with our coalition with our neighbors and be able to leverage the city funds continue to press for

[206:03] ongoing investment by C dot and by RTD and any new funding sources that come forward as well so this this just gives us kind of that the regional picture of where those priority projects are and how we're continuing to focus on them in addition to the arterial BRT that we've talked about tonight the railroad quiet zones are very important on a regional scale we all know the impact to the train horn noise is having on our community it's happening and affecting the communities all along our transit corridors and the Tod neighborhoods and so we're working together with a regional approach to fund the quiet zone improvements and we're currently in the process of developing a what's called a tiger application for federal funding and we'll be submitting that in October again it's a joint effort with the city Boulder County Louisville long MA excuse me Longmont and Broomfield so it's just

[207:01] submitted some examples and how we're focusing our attention we mentioned a little earlier this evening to the federal funding that's administered through the Denver Regional Council of Governments or dr. cog that funding that comes in through the region has traditionally been allocated primarily through a reach competitive regional process and there are many factors at play that are going on now within the Denver metro area and the communities that's looking to do that differently going forward so where is it the past there was us kind of a smaller set-aside fund and then a larger regional fund for major projects to to compete for the new model is looking at a larger set aside and then a larger amount of the funding that would go to the sub regional levels which basically is the county level that would be allocated through a formula based approach by population and employment and what about all of those complicated things mean for us is most likely less

[208:02] dr. cog and federal tip funding in the future and significantly less for example and the current cycle were in right now the city of Boulder has received over eleven million dollars in funding for a whole variety of multimodal projects so we think about the diagonal you think about the baseline underpass and intersection improvements north broadway those are examples of projects that are being done today that are have been funded through this type of funding mechanism countywide the current program is over 22 million and that's for all of the communities in Boulder County what we expect under this new sub regional approach is likely for all of Boulder County there will be 12 to 16 million dollars and so when we think about that you know what is the city of Boulder share of that and what are the share of the other projects and then when you think about east arapahoe and 119 and south boulder road start to realize the

[209:00] the impact of this different approach and we need to be thinking strategically about how do we make sure all of our projects can compete on those lists we talked about state highway seven earlier we've got to get them on the list and we've got to be able to to compete our projects compete very well when they can get in the door and the regional front because of the multimodal nature of our projects but we've got to create a place where they can be competitive we'll continue to look for federal funding for the quiet zones and again I think the the punch line and all of this is that the future of our funding mechanisms are substantially changing and particularly on the federal and their regional front and we need to be preparing for that today and we need to be thinking about what are different types of strategies going forward one of those strategies is continuous do you mind going back to the previous slide just that we have a shot at more of this can get state highway 119 funded through

[210:01] the regional process and that's kind of our current advocacy focus that we're pushing on as hard as we can because if we are 12 to 16 as our likely amount if it's just the sub-regional amounts but if we can get 119 is one of the major regional projects funded then that what could make that go up substantially so that's our big advocacy push right now great thank you for clarifying that in that you're right that is really important so shifting gears to the state level because again we're all part of this larger transportation ecosystem I think see dot for the last several years has been making the case that they simply are facing financial challenges both on the basic operations and maintenance of their system as well as being able to do capital expansion and when we think about our transportation system here in Boulder many of our local roadways that we rely on are also state highways so we look to partner with

[211:00] cidade on roads like east arapahoe and the diagonal and Canyon and many of the streets that are important within our communities so we need to be thinking about how can we partner with c-dot to look at additional funding opportunities at the at the state level while Senate bill 267 was recently approved by the state legislature that provided some new funding for the state but it's very limited and it most likely will go to rural areas and not much will be seen in terms of new funding in the Front Range however the us 36 mayors and commissioners Coalition has made a request to see that region 4 which is our region that the transit funds that have been identified through that new initiative would be allocated to state highway 119 so again you're hearing the common theme whether it's regional funding state funding federal funding we're trying to do everything we can to focus resources on that corridor the other new news that

[212:00] happening on the state level is the idea of that's coming forward from the Denver metro mayors and metro chamber and Contractors Association about potentially putting an item on the 2018 ballot to raise funds for transportation and our hope and the work through the MCC is that that ballot item will include again a balanced approach similar to impact 64 or House bill 1240 - that was went forward earlier this year so that it would include funding for roadways funding for transit and then a share back to local communities so if we can get a package that includes all of those elements that is something that would be very helpful and work in concert with our goals and initiatives we've also made the case that it's very important that that new funding be not only for capital but for operating and maintenance because we all find ourselves in the situation where you can build a project but it's very hard to continue to run it over time or take

[213:01] care of it over time another issue that's coming forward or opportunity that may be coming forward is that in if a statewide solution cannot be found there's interest being discussed around forming smaller regional transportation authorities and for example the Colorado Springs area has that in place today there's the talk of either you know metro areas or north i-25 or Northwest area it's a it's a way to identify funding for specific projects for smaller areas so I think everyone's trying to look at all of the above you know what are those options and what could go forward and benefit all of our needs I'm just gonna ask about that Volkswagen diesel lawsuit I heard that maybe there would be money available for electric vehicles yes that's correct so the there is funding that will be allocated for a variety of things that

[214:01] come out of the the VW settlement some for electric vehicles for charging stations and they're all most likely competitive grant programs within those different pots there's a pot that's been identified for transit so being able to replace diesel buses with electric transit for example so there's a whole array of that as well and so we'd certainly be looking at that to fund local and regional projects as well the challenge with the the VW funding is that it's a one for one replacement so it's replacing a diesel vehicle with a electric vehicles so it I'll just use the transit example it's not funding that could be used to buy new buses to run a new transit route you have to be replacing an existing bus but it could be a very I would say a very good source for us to look at for example for trying to electrify the hot fleet that would be a priority and I was thinking about you

[215:01] know electrifying our stations out there yes so there's a whole citywide team that's looking at all the different strategies that we could go for for all of those different potential cuts of funding that would come about on the statewide ballot think I just think it's useful for all of us to be aware as his last last legislative session there was an effort to pass funding legislation and it failed by one vote and we worked really hard in our various little regional conversations to include to influence the the categories within that statewide ballot breakup breakdown to make sure that enough was going to transit and also going to local going into the local bucket as opposed to just building more highways out there somewhere joy damn the people I'll just say within the metro mayor's caucus

[216:00] people are really angry at the legislature for you know not getting that across the line so they've really converse ation about whether they'll will try it again for 2018 either through the legislature just go ahead and do a initiated measure but meanwhile this other commerce a is going on is to heck with the rest of the state they're on their own we're just going to do our TS but there's a whole lot of reasons why RTA's are really complicated and hard to do so I am there's no perfect path forward but one thing that's really important for all of us to do is to be a part of those conversations to make sure that the makeup of a state ballot item if it happens is something we'd want to support and and that we don't again Boulder doesn't trying to think of the proper word doesn't get short-handed or short shrift 'add again by you know helping to pass a state ballot measure that doesn't quite work for us so anyhow I just it's really important and Carl will keep us updated on those

[217:01] conversations but it's important what's in them and the worst thing would be to have something on the ballot that we don't like so which I think means partly funds to support our own operations but also just from a philosophy perspective having a heavy transit component to any funding initiative and the church app would like to speak come forward thanks I'm all about reconsideration so thanks very much me I'm bill regular in the chairman of the transportation advisory board I just wanted to just give everyone on council a heads up that at the next transportation board meeting in October we will be holding a public hearing about what we consider to be the safety issues long diagonal and also 36 which is outside of Boulder City Limits part of this is a part of the reason why we're bringing this to tab is that there's been a number of accidents involving cyclists most of those accidents are Boulder citizens so the purpose of having this public hearing is to then trigger a resolution that would

[218:00] then go to Council expressing the sense of the Transportation Board urging both council but also CDOT to look more seriously at safety measures that can protect our cyclists so like a regional bike way too long lots a sample so thanks Bill so on us 36 is it the segment north of Boulder okay yeah and on diagonal what part of it is are you looking at well I think that many if not most the collision are basically from IBM up until j so well thanks for prioritizing safety I think it's really important to keep working on that and maybe when we talk about a transportation master plan we can have all of tab divided on a more timely basis to join us yeah of course and I will say that we've been working closely with cyclists for community which is privately raised funds for signage on on 36 north of Boulder which

[219:00] I understand the council has in principle agreed to and that cidade is has been a bit tricky of accepting so our hope is that through these public information campaigns which will then be compounded with social media activity and emails to the community and also just some public awareness efforts that we can help move the needle a little bit but I want to emphasize that we want to work with you on this and so I just wanted to make sure that you have that heads up so you weren't caught off guard yeah and I just want to add to that next month in October the Rocky Mountain Greenway Committee will be meeting and we're really focused right now on us 36 and trying to get something that is it won't work for everybody right but that is off of 36 on the east side of 36 so people can ride very safely with their family and other members so exactly and we should probably talk about that you should do that anyway yeah thanks so much all right taking us home here okay great so I think we've talked a lot about this and

[220:01] funding that's going to take all all levels to make this work and we need to find complementary solution so like you're saying we need to be mindful of what's happening locally and regionally at the statewide so that we're rowing in the same direction and not at cross-purposes so that the transportation master plan funding focus area will certainly be a highlight topic for the update that's coming forward in 2018 and 19 to address all of these different shifting sands that are facing us in terms of transportation funding so I think we've covered a lot tonight at all these different topics again they're all interconnected or we're continuing our work in all areas of the TMP and the ongoing community engagement around all of these topics we'll be back to talk with you in December at our transportation master plan progress check-in we'll be sharing with you the draft of the 2018 report on progress it will have some new data

[221:00] points or hopefully we're moving the needle in in these areas and then moving into 2018 we'll begin the next update to the transportation master plan and the next edition of the safe streets Boulder report so it's a cycle of continuous improvement and we really again appreciate all of the help and effort that you all provide on an ongoing basis well back at you this is definitely a team effort and I I think it's really useful to to see kind of a full array of things that are going on that you guys are pushing and that we're trying to push for more rat and so it's very helpful and the packets very helpful does anybody have any other thoughts they want to throw into the mix I mean for me the the challenge with transportation is everything happens slowly right things do not move quickly and then when the change comes many people are caught by surprise because things have moved slowly through these

[222:01] long planning processes so like on a rapaho as the more we can get public input now and awareness so you're meeting with the leadership group in east arapahoe could really help smooth the way so that we end up not in as much of a surprise mode with people and that would be my one comment all of these things will take years perhaps to get to fruition and so you know to the extent that we can bring the community along with education I think that's very helpful it'll be great to having it on the front of the newsletter yeah that's exactly the kind of thing that helps absolutely do you have another slide you can invite everybody to the forum absolutely so that's that's another exciting thing that's coming forward October 18th is the future is here advanced mobility event and it will be Wednesday evening at the Boulder Library it'll be a great opportunity to learn more about new technologies with transportation new opportunities new

[223:00] potential policy considerations I think it kind of helps a cycle back to the beginning where we talked about the why and so how does new technology and how does mobility as a service and transportation network companies and autonomous vehicles how do they help us achieve the community goals and it's not just something that's new and shiny and sounds really cool but how do we deploy them in a way and how do we create a policy framework that supports the application of those new technologies so they help us move forward with our wider variety of community goals and values so it should be a great night I think it will be raising a lot of questions it'll be an opportunity to learn from a panel of people from around the country and practitioners and researchers around advanced mobility and then certainly be food for thought as we move into the transportation master plan update next year so it'll be a great event we really hope you can come and share that with us well and it's a big deal we were just

[224:01] out at Panasonic looking at all the new technology but it's not the policy framework to guide it to the right outcome so that they actually work to improve say greenhouse gas emissions and or other land-use goals and stuff it's not a given and so I think part of the reasons why this is so important is the world is a changing and how do we steer it in a direction um that gets as far as when it go so it's really exciting stuff but any on Carl's been doing a lot of work putting that together so Carl thank you for that as well all right and Thursday bus to work yay Thursday please please do and share the information with your friends great thank you so much we have one more quick item from Jean yeah and this one is super quick this study session well the special meeting was originally a study session in which we would have answered any further questions that the

[225:01] council had about the recommended city manager budget for 2018 but you actually did not have a lot of questions but CAC asked me to come and report really briefly on the status of the items that you brought up so certainly next week you'll be getting first reading and there'll be a comprehensive memo where the questions that you asked will be answered but the sort of outstanding burning items that I know that you were interested in as a result of our last meeting were adding around two hundred thousand more dollars to the Human Services grant funding and also restoring fully the arts grants that to the same amount that they were in 2017 so the total of those two items was $200,000 plus two hundred and fifteen thousand dollars so a total of four hundred and fifteen thousand dollars so we went back to the budget and I decided

[226:02] that we didn't want to take it either from fund balance or reserves and we didn't want to take it from the new capital funding that we had so we tried to find dollars in the general fund where we could find four hundred and fifteen thousand dollars and so our proposal that will be bringing to you next week will actually be showing you can go to the second one yeah we will be showing a total of six hundred and fifteen thousand dollars in reductions in the proposed budget so here's where they will come from you'll recall that we were proposing to add a citywide retail strategy for 2018 and my conversations that night with counsel and following that meeting on further reflection it began to feel to me like this was a premature item to go move forward because we really do need to get the results of our downtown regional

[227:02] strategy study before we move forward with a citywide one so I decided to reduce that I have so we're going to reduce it down to $75,000 we learn more from the current study then we'll be able to scope for next year and then possibly if we need to move into 2019 but for 2018 were making that reduction in information technology the proposed 2018 budget so that will not add it will be one less vacancy savings that can occur through delayed hiring so when people leave the city it takes a few weeks

[228:01] we'll be delaying that as needed and we believe that through those savings and reductions I will tell you in a personnel budget in the general fund we'll be saving $350,000 so four hundred and fifty thousand dollars will be going to the items that you talked about at the meeting last week two weeks ago so that's gonna be the proposal that you'll see next week in addition to lots of answers to the questions that you asked was thank you for your responsiveness to our requests and ideas and we can talk over the details when at our first reading but yeah it's really helpful to have a heads up Thanks okay and we all have I just wanted to thank you for the responsiveness yeah thanks and we have this slide in our presentation packet so

[229:02] people can study it at their leisure okay well thank you Jane much appreciate it thanks and with that Erin I just wanted to remind everybody about the regional housing summit that's happening 30 to 10:30 ho if you hopefully you've RSVP'd already if you're interested and if anybody wants to carpool see me afterwards me also we should debrief this really quickly other than Suzanne forgetting our new rules about voting and public hearings sorry about that other thoughts on tonight we did misjudge the time bit apologize that the presentation on transportation was more robust but it was good stuff so it was a little yeah I think the discussion on 30th and parole had to happen and I think it's really it was pretty good okay any other thoughts okay thank you

[230:01] [Applause] [Music]