Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] also ensuring that the diverse resources found on our shared land are conserved too but as stewards of the city's open space we couldn't have done any of it without the guidance of our open space board and the incredible generosity of our community so thank you [Music] you [Music] preparing today reduces the consequences of a disaster tomorrow [Music]

[1:14] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause]

[2:01] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music]

[3:05] okay we're gonna go ahead and get started the Boulder City Council study 28 we've got two topics and the first one is broadband I guess we're handing it over to you good evening my name is Julia Richmond I'm the innovation and technology officer for the city of Boulder I am joined by Christmas Chuck assistant city manager Joanne Hovis of CTC technology and energy and her colleague Michael O'Halloran who's sitting in the crowd we're gonna talk with you today about community broadband the purpose of this meeting is a follow-up to our January session where we were asked to provide additional technical and policy information including evaluation of business model options for providing broadband in Boulder and then gather feedback from you on those options and next steps just a quick overview of our

[4:01] agenda we're gonna review with you the vision and guiding principles along with kind of the project timelines some key definitions and then we'll go through a discussion of the five options for broadband that we have evaluated over the past couple of months we'll also talk about the intersection between broadband and possible electric utility both in terms of operations financial constraints and construction we'll talk you through recommendations and next steps and then we'll review a couple of questions that we have for you so why are we doing this project the city's vision is to provide Boulder with the world-class telecommunications infrastructure for the 21st century and beyond as part of this vision we recognize that connectivity is essential that everyone in our community should have access but this is increasingly becoming a core urban service and that

[5:01] we need this in order to future-proof our city if you remember from our January meeting we reviewed and updated six guiding principles which are on the screen in front of you these principles were originally developed in 2016 and we revised them in January this year the first one is about citywide access which is the concept of infrastructure for everyone everywhere in the city next is about equitable and inclusive so no cherry-picking no serving communities that will pay or high demand areas but serving everyone future-oriented so thinking about our long-term needs projects and the transformation of municipality over time competitive marketplace recognizing that increased competition reduces prices for consumers unfettered access so the concept of net neutrality and open access so a network that's open to

[6:00] multiple users and/or providers will review the various options the five model options that we have evaluated over the past couple of months and will provide you with a response to each of these guiding principles in terms of the favorability towards towards the guiding principle for each option so can it meet that option can it meet the guiding principle and how then the degree to which it can meet the principle so just a quick overview of the project timeline just to refresh we began this work really in earnest in 2016 last year was spent and technical analysis and feasibility the past few months we have worked on four different kind of key deliverables with our consultant CTC and also internal conversations with the city so we've looked at partnership options cost estimates technical construction analysis and policy analysis over that time and the memo that you received

[7:00] contains basically all of those deliverables so apologies about the length of that I'm sure it was lovely bedtime reading so what's next we hope to come out of the meeting today with some guidance from Council on models or a model for us to move forward on in terms of additional analysis and then we have a scheduled public hearing for June 12th and are proceeding forward with the ballot until you tell us not to so what in the meantime we've also been doing some amount of community engagement around this topic and I'm just gonna give you a quick overview of sort of what we've done if you recall the city launched our engagement platform called be heard Boulder earlier this year and community broadband was the first project that we put on be heard the project that we posted allowed people to log their internet speed and do a speed check at

[8:00] their home we had a number of visitors post most of them were receiving less than 30 megabits per second the u.s. average is about eighteen point seven five we had about three hundred and seven visitors to the engagement site recognizing it's both a new site and a short time frame for engaging we also had a session that we called broadband brainstorming in April and we had about 45 people there we reviewed kind of core tenants of broadband so should the government be in the business of broadband if so why would you switch would you switch from your current provider those kinds of things super helpful conversation with the community and some strong feelings about broadband we also had a booth at what's that Boulder and had dozens of conversations with constituents that were very interesting just a couple of key themes coming from those meetings we think we heard often that people expect that this is happening there there's a

[9:00] pretty consistent expectations when expectation when we meet with constituents that they thought it was already in the works and so we suspect that some amount of disengagement from this process so far is that people think it's already going on the second is that there's a pretty clear desire in our community for local control and accountability sort of over and over we heard that from people that that was the model that they were interested in based on the cost estimates that we have done particularly in what's up Boulder we shared with constituents the constraints that were under in the difference in price between us longmont and people were surprised at our our inability to issue a similar price too long that so something for us to talk about in this meeting as well most people were interested in faster cheaper net neutral internet and most people were interested in switching

[10:00] because of their current customer experience with their provider all right so just a couple of terms to kind of help the discussion and we've created sort of a metaphor if you recognizing that different council members have different experience with broadband so we wanted to do a little bit of level setting here so a couple of terms you'll hear throughout the night internet backhaul if you think about broadband in terms of streets the internet backhaul can be thought of in terms of a highway so it's a huge piece of infrastructure backbone fibre more like an arterial so Broadway or Canyon would be an example and a parallel of the street distribution fiber would be collectors and streets so smaller streets side streets those kinds of things and the service drop could be thought of like your driveway can you clarify there's these pieces of infrastructure will also run along roads but you're talking about analogies to a metaphor for yes yes no we'll show you

[11:04] plenty of maps where the fiber will go but this is just a metaphor thank you for asking that question it's just another clarifying question what we're really talking about is the last three items that the backhaul is typically purchased from another provider or actually multiple providers have redundancy and so we're really talking about backbone distribution and service drops exactly exactly yep okay so as you saw in the memo we explored five different options all options were on the table for analysis and that was the guidance that we had from you so we did a pretty broad sweep of different models for providing service the thing to know is that communities around the country use each of these models so there's not you know a a preferred model around the country but really it's about best fit for your community and your you know

[12:00] financial constraints and things like that so in terms of the public-private collaboration that was our previous focus last year and that was the model that counts us council asked us to think a little bit harder about and and provide other options in response to the second is a city backbone so this is really thinking about core infrastructure but the possibility to light it up in the future the third is around a city build so fiber only so we would build both a backbone in the fiber and lease it to a third party to provide the Internet service and this is kind of considered the wholesale or dark fiber model city build so this is the city building both the fiber and providing the Internet service and the last option which is always an option is refraining from acting so I'm gonna orient you to some of the information that we'll walk through this evening in front of you you have an 11 by 17 sheet of paper which has an evaluation of all of the options

[13:00] a summary I think this will be helpful to have kind of easy at hand as we go through the discussion it's just a quick look at everything so you at the top you have kind of the picture of the model a quick description and then a breakdown of the various elements of infrastructure and who would own them who would be the service provider in that model the implications to the city in terms of organization and staffing financial implications so this is based on our cost model and the work that we did both internal to the city and with CTC the elements of control and alignment with the guiding principles if you look on the left side model one is the lowest risk lowest cost option and going to the right increases the risk and cost to the city so they're organized purposefully as we go through slides this evening you'll see a couple of pictures the one on the Left provides kind of corporate of broadband and we'll

[14:01] show a key based on who owns the various elements and where the control sits and then we've developed a table that allows us to go both through the guiding principles but also cost risk positive consumer experience and those kinds of things and then the label at the top that's in blue is sort of the overall rating of all of those scores underneath so each model Chris will walk through these different elements so I think that's all I had Chris I'll turn it over to you thanks Julia so I'm gonna dive through each of the models and what I'll do is I'll describe the model and then at the end of that then I'll pause to answer any questions that you have about that model before we move on to the next one and you'll be able to kind of follow along with the handout as well so the first model is a public/private collaboration so this is where the city would work with a private company that would develop a network and provide broadband service so this would all be essentially privately owned but

[15:00] facilitated by the city and so when we look at this from a gold standpoint there's a modest likelihood of being able to achieve our city goals some of the key points to look at is obviously our our cost would be fairly low in this model because a private partner would be taking the vast majority of expense and risk but in this model because it's a privately owned network open access is probably not likely there are examples of this all over the country two of the case studies described in your memo and in the attachments from CTC include Lexington Lexington Kentucky and Lincoln Nebraska there are two partners that are potentially still interested in Boulder as a location and that's a low communications and ting Internet and we have talked to both of those folks going back even into 2016 there's an

[16:01] attachment of partnership considerations attached to the memo that describes each of those businesses and a little bit more further detail so that's model one any questions on that why is this a public-private collaboration because isn't this simply like comcast is now where they have ability to get in rights-of-way and they do it either with us or with the utility you could you could look at it that way where essentially you issue a franchise agreement to one of these and then it would be more of a private risk what other communities do is actually work with one of these partners they may actually sign some sort of agreement that maybe sets up certain expectations for their service delivery or in some models there's actually an investment by the local community so that's why we categorize it under under a public-private sort of partnership or

[17:00] collaboration if I could follow up but now I know and previously when we talked about this model we talked about contributing City Fiber sharing city fiber which I know only gets us a few percent of the way towards the network necessary but that would be another slight public element that would add a fair statement correct yeah there is a chance that we could utilize some of the existing city fiber assets our fiber strands the actual kind of cable or wire that's in the conduit in the ground and so conduit is the plastic pipe that the fiber runs through our our bundle or fiber strands are not of enough capacity to actually run a broadband internet service off of them so you'd have to replace the fiber inside the conduit but potentially that would be an option if we went this route is we could release or sell our conduit to a private provider thanks for clearing wait a minute we've been adding conduit and fiber all along and it's not sufficient where we have it is that correct

[18:02] something that we're also gonna run into the future when they figure out more things that need to be on gizmo's it's not sufficient to provide broadband internet speed access so we have sufficient internet for our use in fact the city has a very high calibre network that we use that has been basically developed through dozens of partnerships over the past 15 years at almost no cost but it's not sufficient based on the agreements that we have it's not sufficient to provide a broadband service based on so for example the brand Network our partnership and brand we only have 12 strands of the entire set of fiber in the ground so we couldn't do broadband off of that so let me I'm gonna pass the microphone over here to Joanne and she can describe that a little bit more - thank you we actually we evaluated exactly that in the initial feasibility study and your existing network is actually very

[19:01] impressive and something to be very proud of it was built very efficiently and cost-effectively and smartly over a period of time through public public collaborations than public nonprofit collaborations like with a higher ed community and its purpose was to serve internal city functions and it was designed beautifully for that but what it wasn't designed for was to support a network that would go to every home and business in the city you would build something very different and that's where model two comes in but what you have is something that I think has more than achieved its purposes which is the city internal city okay thank you for that and you'll hear maybe some of us reference or you'll see in the materials strand counts so that's the number of fibers within the the fiber cable when you start to talk about things like backbones you start to be in the 144 strand count as we talk about the next model Centennial is putting in a bundle

[20:02] that's 432 strands really giant and so those are the sorts of things that our current network doesn't have that number of strands so in the table you show unfettered access as a possibility is that because it would be possible from the standpoint of how a negotiation would the outcome of a negotiation yep exactly thank you okay any other questions on this one just about centennial my understanding is that they are allowing a private company to pretty much that out and to cherry-pick as well so do you have any background on that that you could share with us yep and why don't I jump forward to the second model because that'll include Centennial and so this is the city backbone model so

[21:01] this is where the city would build a backbone for the network and then we would work with a private company to extend that network to homes and businesses to actually provide this service and so you see in the diagram the city would own part of the fiber network but we would not build a network all the way to homes and businesses and we would not be the internet service provider so to look at this more geographically what we had CTC do is a preliminary backbone design and so what you see here on the screen is where the fiber would go throughout the whole city and you can see that it loops around the city and part of that is because you design a backbone to have connected rings just like think of a water system or an electric system where if part of the network goes down its redundant and it can back itself up and you can reroute that in this case data traffic so that's why you see kind of that configuration the way that it is but

[22:00] that's essentially what a backbone is so you see it doesn't go to every home in business Fremont of that map Chris I assume that in that evaluation I think I saw on the memo it's 93 miles did I read that correctly you took into account existing fiber accounts that are held by other parties in other words are there are there some of the make accounts that you're talking about you know one forty four to eighty eight's available from people who already have fiber in the ground or is that capacity pretty exhausted privately knew we would pretty much have to build it from scratch what we asked CTC to do was to design the backbone and we gave them our existing conduit assets and fiber assets and they use that as part of it so it didn't include any private assets it only included those public assets of conduit that we already owned so where we already owned conduit it was more efficient that we would reuse that conduit so they designed the backbone in that geographic location but those places we don't have

[23:00] there's a possibility it could be a bi versus build if the fiber exists sure like a great example as you see that line headed down 75th Street we don't have fiber assets there but B vs D does are you gonna okay so along the lines of my previous question having to do with the unfettered access wouldn't this model also involves some sort of a negotiated contract with the provider and why and the other one was it possible and this one is challenging so that's a good question so it depends on how we decide to if we were to take this model in this approach how we were to decide to do it so if we were to build a backbone you're gonna build that backbone and then find a private

[24:01] provider to build out to homes and businesses and as Sam described in the case of Centennial Colorado this is what they're doing they're just finishing building out their backbone now and Tinh internet is the provider that is has agreed to lease their backbone or part of their backbone and then build out to homes and businesses and neighborhoods but they they have expectations and desired number of subscribers per neighborhood so they will select where they build first or where they build next based on the number of potential subscribers and so when we look at from a goal standpoint what we could achieve there's it really depends on where that private company decides to build so building on Mary's question um you said

[25:01] that this could be this could be a backbone that then could be tapped off of by a private provider but are there two other options which is it could be tapped off by multiple other providers right have to be what as a matter of fact that might be a pretty good idea because then you can create a competitive dynamic in the second is this is not necessarily doesn't have to be phase one of option one it can also be phase one towards option four in other words this could be the the initial build by the city and the city could could then build off its own network and and build and operate an ISP under your model for is that right correct so if we were to say let's build a backbone you're gonna need a backbone in models two three or four and so what we tried to do in each of these models is what's the different what are different business models that result in fibre to homes and businesses so then if we decide to move forward as a community

[26:01] we don't have to pick exactly one of these models we could start with a backbone and then that leaves the door open to several different models going forward in the future the cost for something like this CTC model did if we were to borrow money roughly eleven million dollars is what the backbone would cost to construct but as they described in in the analysis we'd probably really want to treat this as core city infrastructure versus trying to actually base this on a business model you could lease this backbone to one or multiple providers as Bob described but you may or may not get enough lease rates and lease revenue to actually pay for the whole backbone so many communities that's very common for a backbone type construction so like in the case of Centennial it was funded through their regular CIP rather than expecting that revenues were gonna pay this thing back over time versus the

[27:01] other models that will describe later where it's modeled as a standalone self-sustaining business if we did look at this as is there's the first step towards model for which you're going to get to an event and let's say there was a gap of time between the build-out of the of the backbone and then also ultimately building out the entire network and and providing service are there ways for us to monetize this as an ISP other than through just selling fiber in other words we could sell off fiber strands here and there to need it but actually the laterals want for that I mean obviously distance matters I get that but I mean this is gonna go past a lot of at least businesses right and could we in the first phase monetize this by providing Internet service to those homes and businesses that happen to be along those 93 miles I don't know there's a little bit of a fairness issue because a lot of people that deep in the neighborhoods are not gonna have that access until we go to model for that that's where we get but is that a

[28:00] possibility it is it's a possibility and it there's some variability and essentially what the electronics that help light this fiber up whether those are included who owns and pays for those network electronics but it's actually an example in urbana-champaign that we found slightly intriguing which is when they built their backbone they also chose to expand or build laterals and distribution fiber into some of their underserved neighborhoods which was actually a really interesting concept that I thought from an equity standpoint was really interesting so you could potentially try and either do some initial service in certain parts of town or as Bob as you described monetize some of the backbone by leasing some of that to allow a provider to utilize that for initial internet access a couple quick follow-ups though so the 11 million you said included debt source or interest

[29:02] services that rice does not just the cost of construction but assumes some bonding said that was our number for what the bonding would be with an assumption that there were some lease revenues coming in each year if there were no revenues at all they would go up a bit but this seemed like a based on the construction numbers that the engineers came up with the financial analysts estimated that with modest lease revenues you'd be looking at bonding about 11 million okay great thanks and then what would be the approximate to construct about them like this yes so much of it depends on conditions time of year you get started but this could be done optimally in a year it could take longer very much in the hands of the city in in many ways and then access to utility poles for the aerial parts of the I'm sorry it's all underground I

[30:00] take that back spit my brain immediately goes to poles it's all underground its infrastructure you own it's in your rights away so in your control around here so can you explain the 438 and whatever it is strands that Centennial's doing versus a lesser amount of being proposed maybe so our engineers did a design for this backbone to give you maximum flexibility in the short medium and long run the idea is that this is an infrastructure and a network that's going to serve multiple purposes over time in the short term it may support city functions only and have some leasing but in the long term it could support a city-owned network that goes all the way to the homes or privately owned network or perhaps more than one so they use their best judgment as to the right fiber accounts Centennial put in a very high count in that backbone in

[31:03] order to give themselves that same level of flexibility but they it is the question about industry you cited a much smaller number when you were talking about us what you incidentally have in your existing network okay which was designed for internal city purposes only and also in an earlier era before the numbers got so high but the if you were to build this backbone you would build it in a future-proof fashion to make sure that this is a 20 to 40 year asset which is a proposing particular fiber account I'm I'm sure the engineers did and it's somewhere in the documents but 1:44 yeah so okay well that's what I thought you said 144 in Centennial has 400 and some so that's the part I don't get isn't it true that a vast majority of the cost is is actually the underground in the condo in other words the cost of a 144 fiber account network is only

[32:01] slightly less than over 432 in other words soames are digging up the ground you might as well put in a bunch because fibers not really expensive in and of itself yeah the most cost is related to getting the conduit into the ground we asked that exact same question at Centennial when we talked to them on the phone is well why'd you do such a huge fiber bundle and they just said in the end fiber was cheap and we decided go go really big and that way it always preserves our options into the future I mean that's the the key point here is the conduit right is giving the conduit in and you make a guess at the right number of fibers you either end up with some bark fiber for a while until it gets lit or you'll be short and you'll pull another cable through so I I mean it's pretty simple to do that I think it's fairly simple to do it and you're gonna probably end up doing it maybe at the parts that you need it so you could imagine that parts would end up with higher point-to-point desire and people would pay for fibers so it's really

[33:01] about getting the conduits in the right place for the backbone I think yeah that's something if we were to proceed with exploring a backbone approach we could do that analysis of what we think the right fiber strand count would be for us one of the one of the key points related to a backbone as Julia described and in the project vision is it's really about connectivity as essential look as we look forward forward to the future and how do we think of future proofing our community and when we look at what are the data demands even from a city services standpoint as you start to look at kind of essentially smart city technology so on sensors on water systems where you can detect main breaks without waiting for somebody to call it in advanced kind of the next phase of advanced metering from an electric utility standpoint autonomous vehicles need these communication nodes along roads that's going to require

[34:01] connectivity and communications infrastructure cars in the future can communicate with traffic signals and the so the traffic signals themselves need really robust communications infrastructure so when we think of a backbone we also are thinking about those city services that could benefit from infrastructure such as this so with that any other questions on model 2 before we move forward I just wanted to say one more thing about Centennial so I think another interesting thing about Centennial is that they have a number of institutional partners with whom no formal agreements have been developed so as they went to build this network they have three different school districts that are nearby and so they said you know yes we're interested and you know no we're not sure what yet but they are also building with that in mind that they've got a bunch of different partners who will come online the other thing is is it I think their plan is a

[35:00] three year plan and they're completing the first ring of their I think it's a three ring model and that's happened in the first year so I just didn't want to have that out there that it's only gonna take one year I think it's a three year plan I'm sorry the Centennial plan Centennial's plan yes full build-out with the private partner right so yes yeah but but this backbone could be done approximately it I don't know once you say year we're holding I know I think we would need to do more work on that so before I go into the next two models there's a important term that we're gonna start using that that is pretty critical and that is what's called take rate so a take rate is the percentage of the potential subscribers that are offered the service that actually subscribe or take the service and the reason that take rate is really

[36:00] important is that it influences price pretty significantly the other term that is on the definitions sheet that we gave you is about passings so think of passings as if you're driving down the street the number of houses or businesses that you pass and then take rate is the number of people the number of passings that actually take the service so if we start using the term take rate just know that it's the percentage of people that actually are taking the service signing up for it paying monthly subscription fees and as we get into these models if we start using technical terms that that are new just holler at us and we can make sure we define them because it does start to get pretty technical pretty fast and so the first of these models model number three is what we call city fiber only so that's where the city would build an entire fiber network all the way to where were passing homes and businesses and then we would lease that

[37:01] to a private company to provide the service so we wouldn't be the internet service provider we would lease that to a third party who would provide the Internet service but it would be over the city's fiber network and so just to give you an idea you saw the backbone before this is then what a full city fiber network could look like this is kind of a diagram example of that but it's a whole lot more fiber so in ctc's analysis it was roughly 386 miles of fiber is what I would need to be deployed throughout the whole city on that how much of that additional mileage is in conduit almost all of it in conduit today in conduit in the future we estimated the number of underground versus aerial and it's roughly one-third two-thirds so two-thirds would be underground one-third above-ground is what I remember yep okay that is correct

[38:01] so three of the four hundred miles of fiber yeah three to the 400 ish miles of fiber would be underground correct okay so if there was above-ground utilities electric service we would we would potentially look at fiber on those existing poles we did have CTC as a part of their infrastructure analysis model what a 100% underground system would look like and it does add in the tens of millions more to the network but that's all always of course an option to us and the drops to the houses are those typically off of a pole or are they typically underground depends on where that distribution fiber is coming from so if if the distribution fiber is hung on a pole and that's above-ground electric service then it would be an above ground probably dropped to the house it could be underground but then if if

[39:00] the distribution fiber were underground then the drop would be undergrad as well okay thank you so when we look at this model there's a fairly high likelihood of being able to achieve our goals because we would own the whole network and so we would be able to make sure that it reaches the entire city and that we could design and facilitate that throughout the city the risk on this is very high and I'll get into in a second the cost becomes pretty challenging in this model there's several communities that have taken this approach to that we that CTC used in the analysis is Huntsville Alabama and Westminster Maryland and if I mean you see in the cost analysis they modeled actually both of these communities and so you'll see references to the Huntsville model and the Westminster model the difference between those two is who owns the drops that final fiber connection to the home

[40:03] and so it changes the pricing for Boulder this would be somewhere in the neighborhood of 78 to about a hundred and two million again depending on who owns the drops if we were to build the drops to the homes that's what pushes it to the higher end now when we did the modeling for this the fees that we would need to charge that private provider the lease rates over this network in order to make it cash flow for us those lease rates would be much higher than the market probably can bear and so in all of the different approaches the two that were modeled here neither one of them cash flowed over a 20-year period and so if we were to choose this model what we would need to probably do is assume that this is more of essential infrastructure and not we would have to subsidize the construction of the network rather than depend on the lease rates to pay back the network over time

[41:02] when we modelled it both of them were about negative ninety million dollars by year 20 questions on this one I'd like to hear the comparison with option number four and then maybe have a question there okay and um Huntsville has a municipal electric utility that they run so they're not making money even with their own do they capitalize on that infrastructure do you know yeah Huntsville has a number of built-in structural advantages they're a municipal electric they own all the poles they were very established they've been there for a while so they were in a position also not to have to bond for the total amount they also were in a position to be able to meet city needs with the new fiber so they have revenues attributable to what they're providing for the city as well as providing for

[42:02] their internal needs so there were there are a number of things that really put them in a remarkably good position they're also in a very relatively low cost construction area it's just cheaper to build in Alabama than it is here so the numbers in terms of the revenues that they got from their private partner or their customer who is Google Fiber are pretty modest relative to what you would need here but they've made it work they're okay the last model model number four is the city fiber plus isp model so this is where the city would build the fiber network and be the internet service provider to the subscribers that signed up so this would be essentially the full municipal retail model is what many times it's referred to this is what what Longmont is providing in their community

[43:01] so when we look at this as an approach it's our highest likelihood of achieving all of our goals because we're we're essentially in control of everything a couple of key important notes here that are on the chart as well is from an open-access standpoint we probably would not make this an open access network and that the reason is and this is the feedback we've heard from long lawn and Fort Collins and other communities is you're essentially entering into a competitive business market at this point we'd be competing against Comcast CenturyLink other Internet service providers and so part of where we need to look at take raid we need to acquire those customers from their current subscriber to our service and so in that model you probably wouldn't want to open up your network that you just built to provide your service to your competitors and so in this model this cities cost is fairly high and our risk depending on if

[44:03] you get the take rate or your pricing wrong your risk can be pretty high as one of the examples here that we included is Salisbury North Carolina that unfortunately didn't get there their model right and their community is still paying for a network that they're not providing municipal service over anymore and so take rate and pricing is really critical you want me to ask your client or to ask your question now or do you want me to go through that pricing another question about the assumption that you used for saying that we wouldn't allow another ISP on it seems like if you were going to have another ISP that's available for open access that you would charge them the significant amount money to be able to access your network because you're still having to pay it off why is it that that model of blended access or we offer the ISP services but

[45:00] other another company could also offer i as p services but they have to pay a fair bit of money to get access to our network i might hand the microphone over to joann I think she can help describe that you could definitely set it up that way I mean you would have to offer a wholesale litt service rate to another ISP sufficient to make the economics work for you but also sufficient to make the economics work for them they need enough margin on that that service so we didn't model it here in part because it really doesn't exist anywhere in the United States and we just don't have any precedent for it which is not to say that it couldn't and that it won't be attempted and there are projects emerging around the country that are looking at ways of providing open access at Al it service --is layer usually without municipal services but just

[46:00] multiple ideally private companies but it's very very early there's almost no data to show will the economics work will they not just just a clarifying point just for folks who are following along net neutrality something people care a lot about right and that's defined here by the unfettered access right so just to clarify open access is about whether multiple internet service providers could provide retail service over this backbone but this would provide the net neutrality features that you're calling unfettered access right provide the service we could we could decide whether or and choose to make sure that it's a net neutral service so I'm curious do you mean something besides net neutrality by unfettered access and if it's not why not use the words everybody knows like then we wouldn't have to explain the two different kinds of excesses we actually had that same debate amongst the project team as well of what's the right terminology to use

[47:01] so unfettered access was the the common term that was used before the this most recent round of kind of net neutrality revisions and so if you think if it would be more clear for us to revise that to something like a net new follow net neutrality principles we could revise that principle for sure I'd recommend that I mean it could be in parentheses but I think it'd be good to clarify what you mean by this yeah everybody knows what that means what it means for sure but they know that they want it so as we mentioned take rate and pricing are really critical if we were to enter into this more retail approach where the city would be providing service so CTC modeled several different approaches based on pricing and take rate and the nationwide average for a

[48:02] new entrant to the market providing broadband service in a community is a take rate of thirty five percent and so if we were to provide service at 50 dollars per month we would need a take rate in order to cash flow of eighty eight percent which is highly unlikely as we get into at $70 per month and this is for the base residential service there would be commercial service that would be higher price than this and then up to a full service level agreement kind of guaranteed service that's even more expensive you get closer to about a 51 percent take rate we ask CTC to model what would our pricing need to be if we had a 35 percent take rate essentially that safe assumption approach we would need a price per month of 93 dollars for residential service and so you can just see the variability of you got to get your pricing and your taker it dials

[49:01] really tuned and which is part of why we're recommending that we do a statistically valid survey of the community we we also looked at what are some scenarios based on pricing or things that other communities are doing that turned out not to be positive cash flow and so if we were to have $50 per month pricing but we only got a take rate of 51 percent by the end of year 20 we would have a cumulative deficit of about 75 million dollars and if we were to provide a $70 service but it was locked in for life and that would was not able to vary based on inflation with a take rate of fifty one percent we'd be in a financial deficit by the end of year 20 that's cumulative up to about thirty five million dollars so just to give you an idea of the magnitude of it's really really critical and important that we make our assumptions based on real

[50:02] community based data of who actually might subscribe and at what dollar price point can you and maybe this falls under the dumb question but we obviously have Internet service now and they've provided it in some fashion it may be expensive and not fast but can you contrast what they're doing in terms of making it pencil out compared to what we would need to do to pencil down you know what I mean yeah flush that out for me just a little bit more well I meant okay so we get in we have internet right somebody built that so that we could have internet right how did they make that pencil out so they built in a very different era and for a very different set of businesses you have to citywide networks here in Boulder as most cities do in the United States the phone network and the cable network and the phone network depending on the age of the city was

[51:00] built in the early 20th century for phone service it was the only fund provider 100% of the community or close to 100% took service there was no competition and there were substantial federal subsidies to build out those networks and then when the internet happened as a commercial matter in the 1990s the phone companies were in a position to upgrade those networks incrementally and put in new equipment and offer Internet over it but they didn't have to go build a whole new network and so they were in a place actually a really good place for early internet era it's very similar story for the cable industry those networks were built for the provision of one-way video service in the late 70s or early 80s and there was no competition they were the only cable provider close to a hundred percent of the residential market probably took service some level of service may be basic maybe enhanced but they they weren't in a position where they had to compete they got to build in an environment

[52:01] where the poles were not nearly as congested so it was cheaper to build and they had 100 percent of the market at their disposal to go and market to you're going into a very different era building in a time when both of those companies are already offering service but you're also building in a much more congested Boulder than if you had built in the 1970s or in the 1930s does that know that's I hope I hope this is interesting to others but so now comcast exists and they would be the competition and you talked about hey if we built our own we wouldn't have competition but they exist so explain that and also the fact that they're existing now based on the system and they're trying to upgrade to faster speeds presumably how will they get to where they're trying to go and how does that compare to where we're trying to get does that make sense absolutely so the Comcast's upgrade plan

[53:07] on its path is to it has an infrastructure that's not nearly as capable of what we're talking about here if you build this infrastructure you will have competition you'll be competing with Comcast and CenturyLink and in the business market with a handful of other companies as well but their network is that network that was built in the late 70s or early 80s and it simply is not fiber-to-the-home a very very substantial portion of that network is an older cable technology known as coaxial cable and in order to get to the kinds of speeds and the speeds that will come beyond this and I've actually been on calls recently with another city being pitched by a company saying and will offer ten gigabit speeds which we're not at yet but it'll come at some point in the future in order to get to those kinds of speeds fiber will be necessary so at some point in the future Comcast may have to add a whole lot more

[54:00] fiber to its network but it doesn't have to now so it does not it it has a completely different financial picture a completely different business massive amounts of scale that you wouldn't that you don't have here I mean it's really these are different businesses and they're not they're they're doing different things than you would in order to compete but but pricing is based on market I hope one element of it that I think is important is when you think about the fact that they those two companies do have these structural advantages their networks are totally inferior to what we're talking about here but they built them a long time ago and they're in a position to really harvest off of them at this point when you think about that that helps you to understand why it's been so challenging for other private sector companies to come in and just solve this problem which is why cities are so engaged because it's not such an easy thing for a third company to come into a market and just build everywhere on a ubiquitous basis there's that's why

[55:01] there's an important role for cities to help that happen through one of these models so just to make sure that we're all level set here this is gigabit service correct correct this would be yeah gigabit speed service so on average maybe 50 times roughly speaking what people are getting now so that's another element of this that you can see with the modern network that you know this is a pretty big step forward it's not even just a doubling or times Tim it's 50 and as we heard it will be even more than that because fiber doesn't have that limit it lights fast and you know there's a lot of spectrum that you can put onto a fiber and so each fiber has multiple communication channels on it different colors that are going and communicating communication channels so at any rate that's one thing I wanted to just make sure that we all understand and then I

[56:00] have a question about what's the difference between the $70 and the $70 internet-only lines there so I'll answer the very basic part and then if we want to dive into details I'll defer to Joanne and Michael for each of the scenarios what we modeled actually was that we would provide essentially the triple service that many people subscribe to today so that would be internet video or TV and phone and for TV and phone we would essentially work with a private provider that would actually provide that service and we would we would get a small portion of the the revenues from that but it's based on essentially modeling that if we decided we don't want to be in that that business of video and and phone we would just be an internet-only that's what that model scenario is so why is the

[57:00] take rate higher when it's internet only then if I understand your other it's three three-way service why would your take rate be higher at the same price for Less features so you need a higher take rate in order to cash flow if you're offering internet only whereas if you're also offering voice and video you're getting in some incremental revenues on that so that's the increment and just because that that's the the break-even point not the projected take rate this is a little off but kind of riffing on zan's comparative questions I was chatting with somebody who so the world looking at this by 2020 if we start now essentially there was chatting study who's saying that with 5g coming which is estimated for 2020 and satellite that they're gonna be in that one to ten gigabit kind of range how

[58:02] does this become obsolete right around the time gets completed so I'll start to answer that and then I'm gonna pass the microphone to Joanne who can describe the 5g universe way better than I can but we're we're seeing deployment of or hearing a lot about 5g out there on the news all the time 5g is still really essentially a paid a technology that hasn't been deployed out in the market yet what we're seeing right now is especially in the cellular world is what's called small cell deployment so that's where they're adding essentially cell sites in a much more dense distribution throughout communities with the idea that then those could be upgraded to 5g or 5th generation wireless when we get to that but we kind of joke amongst the project team that you still need wires to do wireless so even if 5g happens or when it happens if people were to decide to

[59:03] use 5g is that last connection from the street to a home so you don't need the fiber drop you still need that fiber network to backhaul of that signal from that 5g node that's connected to a house back to the internet and actually we met with Comcast yesterday and they were describing their network upgrade plans here in Boulder and they were describing some of their experience with 5g and they they said you know part of the challenge with 5g is it's still dependent on environmental conditions and so when you have an area or a neighborhood with dense tree cover you start to lose speeds based on all of that interference along the way so that's another factor related to 5g that if you use a wireless connection you might not get the same speeds at least that's what they were describing to us versus if you had a fiber connection to the home or business does that would

[60:04] that lead to an argument that we should do the backbone approach and then reevaluate once that infrastructure is in place in case 5g has made significant leaps and then were we only need the backbone it's part of the reason why we call option two the future proofing option because it does allow us to build something and get into the market without you know getting ahead of our skis in terms of technology changes so I have another question kind of related to that so if we future-proof and and just build the backbone and evaluate and the SE 5g comes online wouldn't that also maybe obsolete the backbone because then you

[61:00] could use things like a hot button on 5g so you are the backbone you still need to you still need to essentially halt that internet traffic so that 5g node that's in say your neighborhood it's going to need to be connected to fiber to then connect back to the Internet and so whether that's the city's fiber or that's whoever the provider of that that 5g node is they're still going to need fiber infrastructure so part of what if we were to say build a backbone now and then the 5g deployment happens and it's revolutionized the way that people connect to the internet it may be that some of those mobile network operators maybe they'd be interested in leasing our backbone that could be an option to them versus building their own network we'd have to see if they'd be interested in that but and it likely that that scenario would likely affect the take

[62:01] right then people might choose I mean it's essentially more competitors correct correct if we were just then decide to do still a full fiber deployment we would we would want to make sure we understood what our chances of a take rate were at that point but I'm gonna pass the microphone over here to Joanne too when you think about 5g it we shouldn't think of it about as a wireless technology it's a hybrid fiber wireless technology it is where the two things connect to each other to give you a sense our engineers did this evaluation in the city of San Francisco and estimated that there would need to be fiber to three locations on every block to support the kind of 5g speeds that the industry is saying are just a few years away they're not feasible without fiber of that kind of density because the wireless piece 5g wireless is a very short distance but fast and then it's got to connect to a wire in

[63:01] order to really have that kind of speed so that's I think the point about future-proofing is that this fiber will never be wasted the the one other thing I would say that I think is important about 5g a four cities that are thinking about making sure that everybody gets serviced five g's incredibly promising and exciting and there's unbelievable amounts of hype around it maybe too much frankly but when it is deployed as Chris was describing because of the spectrum that is used there will be challenges with it going through trees through leaves through certain kinds of glass through other kinds of obstructions it requires something called line-of-sight and what that might mean is that the companies that deploy it if the economics emerge if the technology emerges all of after all those ifs the companies that deploy it are going to deploy it where they can but they're not necessarily going to try to figure out a way to get it to absolutely everybody in the city they'll they'll build it where its most cost effective so you might

[64:00] have a five piece of 5g equipment at the front of an apartment building that serves all the people in those units but in the back of the apartment building what happens then they'll have to be another piece of equipment what about people who are in areas that are very heavily treed and we don't have regulatory mechanisms to force companies to serve absolutely everybody so I think for many of the cities that are saying 5g looks very exciting we're looking forward to it they're also saying but we have to keep in mind that it's not necessarily going to get to everyone and that's got to be one of our considerations as we evaluate how important it's going to be to our planning just a question because I thought I read this in terms of the timing is it true that the FCC still has to allocate the spectrum for 5g so that might give a sense of you know we're not even through the regulatory process on that yeah they're there spectrum issues and 5g will use lots of different spectrum bands it's one of the things that's kind of exciting about it is that it's

[65:00] efficient in using lots of different spectrum but their technology issues the 5g trials that are out there there's almost no data so we would you know the companies announced we've had a very successful trial but we don't know if it was an antenna and a user or a thousand antennas and ten thousand users like we just we don't have a lot of information yet there's also still real questions on Wall Street like what I'm told by Wall Street analysts is Wall Street is not investing in this yet it's waiting to see what happens they haven't bought that the economics will work so I I think we're quite a you know we're a number of years away from knowing where this is going we know there's a lot potentially coming but a lot of the excitement right now as Chris said is around densification of existing cell networks 4G not faster speeds but just better service okay anything else on

[66:00] this model before we move forward just the one thing that I would note and ask about is 35% ninety-three dollars that includes paying off the bonds right that rate of 93 so it's always gonna be more upfront when you're having to pay off the bonds my understanding of what happened in Longmont and maybe you can expand on this is they recently dropped their rate because they had a high take rate and how far in their next light project how far along are they in paying the bonds off because wouldn't you expect that when the bonds are paid off that there would be rate reductions then as well so I'll start the description and then in terms of how that rate levels down I may look to some help here in Longmont it there's several things that are different than what we would experience here in Boulder the first is they only had to borrow fifty seven million dollars to do the whole fiber network to the whole community and part

[67:01] of that is because they already had a backbone in place and it's actually a side note something that was interesting and reading all the case studies is a lot of the examples of successful communities they already had a backbone in place before they did their fiber deployment to homes and businesses so Longmont already had a fiber backbone in place that they had build as a part of their electric utility back in the late 90s and then they explored a whole bunch of different models but part of what I understand too is that as they were under grounding their electric utility they were putting in some extra empty conduit in the ground so they had they didn't have to do as much digging they just had to pull fiber through that conduit is part of my understanding so that's part of why they were able to offer a lower rate is just they didn't have to upfront that massive capital expense and so that was a way they were able to do some of the pricing part of their pricing is that they did what they call the Charter membership which was if

[68:00] you signed up in the first essentially a few weeks that it came to the neighborhood you got $50 a month rate and then if you didn't get into that one there was the kind of the next one which was a $60 a month and then their pricing for some areas now is about $70 per month and so it depends on when you subscribe for the service what price you're paying and longmont any idea how long the bonds are or what will happen when the bonds are paid off I don't know how long their bonds are but in terms of describing that payoff I'll pass the mic off wait they even told us at dinner what did they tell us at dinner yeah they're close they did the one lesson they did tell us is because our take rates so high we had higher capital costs than we borrowed for because everybody wanted it which was an interesting problem to have but that was their advice to us as hey this is pretty cool but count on people

[69:00] wanting it but now they seem pretty close but somebody who was there that has a memory should answer I don't know what they're bonding conditions were although I will also agree it's just cheaper to build in Longmont and in a variety of ways the the other thing that I would say is our model for you on this the financial model that we built assume 20-year bonds you could bring those rates down by financing over a longer period of time but 41 percent of your operating costs each year will be debt service so that gives you a sense new year 21 is gonna look a lot better now the markets gonna have changed and we're going to be using the network in very different ways 20 years from now but it it's a big very sensitive but we'd

[70:01] probably be reassuring bonds over time if we took this route anyway because we would need general obligation bonds to start out right we wouldn't have an enterprise and revenue to bond against but as we got it as it kicked into gear we would so I imagine we'd be turning these over you know and replacing them with you know revenue bonds potentially different terms they'd be a lot of details here right it's not just a 20-year bond and then you retired right is that fair to say yeah and what I also remember in the cost model is that it's actually a it would be a series of bonds you'd get that authorization for the full debt but there'd actually be a series of bonds that you'd issue and then I think you're right we we may need to refinance those or convert those depending on whether they started as geo bonds to revenue bonds that sort of thing those are all the financial details that we would still need to spend time flushing out it would be complicated because you wouldn't need 41% does service forever right that would taper off of her purity beers

[71:02] absolutely how long do you think well it's that's the amount the percentage of operating cost for the 20 years so it's a different amount of principal and interest each year but that's the amount based on the assumptions we built into the operating model and and these are conservative assumptions we we model these things pretty conservatively so since we started drifting into the bond territory this is a question probably as much for Tom as anybody if we went down the path of option two for example and if we wanted to raise ten or eleven million dollars to the backbone initially do we have to have voter approval to issue I don't have to have voter approval to raise a tax but let's assume that Jane can do magical things and cause this not to have to be taxed to support the Geo bonds because I'm you know I know maybe we can monetize some of it maybe the interest carrying cost

[72:01] could be covered or the general fund do we need to have voter approval 42 flop bonds or only two to raise a tax to support about you need both the table requires voter approval for any multi year fiscal obligation it wouldn't require it for an enterprise but since you're funding it with tax it can't be an enterprise so yeah you would have to get a table approval of both the dead and the tax so it so any general obligation bond in other words if that's I have an enterprise any general obligation bond requires for approval regardless you think that goes for more than a year Sheryl is raising her hand and she's smarter than me the case for bonds we could however look at see Opie's in which case we would not need voter approval the issue a certificate of participation so those really are

[73:01] considered one-year obligations the issue with CEO Pease is we would need to have the collateral in place which I'm guessing part of the system could be used as collateral and then we would need to look at other city property which right now if you recall the hospital was issued with CEO piece so we do have limited property that we would want to use as collateral on that I was gonna ask about this hat how much room do we have in our Co piece I mean essentially Seop is like a mortgage in the sense right and so how much room do we have in our assets to be able to support this whole project goes through for the hotel parking lot we were gonna use Co piece for that but a lot of that would be backed by the parking structure itself so if you're

[74:00] talking 11 million I do think we would have enough capacity Thanks okay okay and those are sorts items if if council is interested those are the sorts of the information items we could bring back on June 12th as well so the last model just to touch on real quick model 5 which is refrained from acting so this is where we would stop exploring broadband as a fiber to the home network we might continue to make some investments in public Wi-Fi as funding allows or consider regulatory changes to essentially encourage the incumbent providers to increase their capacity and investment in their system when we look at achieving our goals it does map that wouldn't achieve many of our goals in the community but of course there wouldn't be any cost to the city except for maybe public Wi-Fi honestly the risk would would be very

[75:01] low for us a question for Joanne because she did a good job of describing or maybe joined it about why cities are getting involved and that's why it's difficult for a private enterprises to jump in and battled the incumbents but in your experience Joanne in those cities that have facilitated a third competitor what happens to the quality and the pricing of the incumbents how do they tend to react I'm exactly predictably as as we learned in economics 101 right they they react to competition so in just a few data points Google Fiber is building and operating fiber-to-the-home in about nine metro areas a lot of towns and cities within those metro areas in 100% of those locations the phone company has started making substantial upgrades to its network right after the Google Fiber announcement was made in one case the phone company announcement about

[76:01] upgrades came about 90 minutes after the Google Fiber announcement it's not surprising the cable industry tends to do its upgrades not not on a cherry-picking basis but throughout its footprint but without question the areas where there's more competition Comcast in particular did its DOCSIS 3.1 upgrade there earlier and then even in smaller markets with smaller companies like ting internet and so on there's been a clear competitive response and it it's not only around upgrades but it's also around pricing and we don't always see reductions in pricing but we have seen even in cities where there's talk of a new network even if it doesn't happen this happened in Santa Cruz California for example the project never came to fulfillment but while it was being discussed the cable company announced that it was doubling internet speeds and not increasing prices just for all of its customers and suddenly started

[77:00] marketing and selling much more heavily customer service is something a little bit harder for them to impact because that's national it's not localized so I don't know that we've seen a huge impact of that sort but what some cities tell me is that in terms of local construction and network staff and you have it folks who go out the truck rolls when you when there's a repair they've seen an improvement once competition happens it doesn't happen so much with the call centers because the call centers are are not but it's it is exactly as we would expect competition brings good things and I wish that were better recognized in Washington DC policymaking circles so see it differently if we were to follow model 5 and do nothing and announce that we were doing nothing we should not expect the incumbents to out of the goodness of their heart change their pricing their quality we should just say we're doing something and see what happens Chris you also mentioned that

[78:07] there were also regulatory tools that could be used or you said in the absence of regular I forget how you said it but what those regularly regulatory tools would look like so I think if we were to go that route one of the things that I've heard other communities do is they might change their regulatory rules around permitting in the right-of-way and fast-track permits in the right-of-way to try and reduce the time and expense for a provider to upgrade a system that is located in in a communities right away so you could be things like that that a community could do to try and encourage an existing provider to to make upgrades just a quick question to make sure that I understand and it's clear the $93 that was put up for the 35% take rate would

[79:01] be for all three services internet phone and video so that 93 would just be the internet price so if you wanted to subscribe to video and phone it would be on top of that 93 dollars I see so where you compared the 70 Internet only in the 70 the the 70 in that case was all three services that's these price per month are only for the internet portion if you were to do the full kind of servus then it's above that so at the $70 a month if I remember right and Michael can correct me if I get this wrong you'd be $70 a month for Internet and then if you were to do phone and TV it'd be your total cost would be closer to about a hundred and seventy dollars per month is what your bill would be okay but the thing that confuses me about that it's hard to beat a dead horse is the difference between the 70

[80:00] and the 70 internet-only so the the person's bill in the 70 case not the internet only is still gonna be a hundred and seventy dollars a month but we can have a slightly lower take rate because we're getting royalties off of that extra money per month okay correct that's exactly right so think of these this was just we were modeling different scenarios to find out what would the price point versus the take rate versus the overall bond necessary to fund the construction B so it was about tuning those dials and so these are examples showing that so you're exactly right and then the longmont first like modeled the number that we hear bandied about 50 or 60 or 70 that's all for internet only and then they buy subscriptions to phone and video on top of that correct that's my understanding of how it works great thank you the customer the customer okay so the last

[81:00] section that we wanted to talk about is broadband and municipal ization so how does broadband relate to an electric utility and and part of the council's discussion in January was understanding what are the what's the relationship what are the synergies what are the cost savings and so we did a fair amount of analysis the first area is related to construction and so I'm going to describe this in a little more detail but the takeaway is if we were to construct the backbone of a fiber network in the same place that we're doing in the separation construction for an electric utility we could save about two million dollars which is about 30 percent of the backbone so if we were to look at that a little more geographically well this map on the screen shows in purple is that fiber backbone that you saw before and then the black lines on the screen are where separation construction will need to occur so you can see it's really kind of

[82:01] around the outer edges of the city but you'll see there's areas where the Purple Line the fiber network is close to the separation construction but they don't overlap so what we did is we did an exercise just kind of synergize the backbone design and move it towards the areas where that electric construction would be occurring so we could maximize joint construction so that's what this map shows is if we were to do that everywhere that's highlighted in green or areas where we could do joint construction of the fiber backbone and the work that's necessary to separate the electric system like I said it's only about 13% of the total network so all that great of the backbone you see would still just be regular backbone construction not with any synergy with the electric utility so that'll give you an idea at least of kind of the cost savings just saying the separation plan

[83:20] you're gonna dig in additional areas [Music] good evening I'm Steve Quebec the electric utility development director so in response to your question the separation plan where we'll be doing construction really is primarily around the perimeter of the city there are some interior small projects we'll be doing but this really did represent where we could this does capture me so Steve I

[84:01] have a question for you I'm so if you know an answer to Aaron's earlier question if we decided to go forward option two for example this year and the voters approved at November theoretically we could build the network and about two old Massa let's just call that 2019 the back just the backbone you exactly right we waited and we wanted to capture this two million dollars energy of overlap we would have to wait until we did the separation work which would be in a few years right we did look at was the opportunity to install the empty conduit as the fiber system was installed what we don't have an exact price on though is the Delta that that would increase the cost of constructing the fiber network right so fundamentally when you install electric it has to be deeper than the fiber lines too so if we were to install conduit for the electric

[85:00] system in conjunction the fiber ultimately would also end up being deeper which will affect the cost and create a more expensive construction that's helpful different that's great Steve had even thought about that but my questions a little bit different is more of a timing question because I know construction cost goes up every year and and so we have a two million dollar savings if we wait we may have an incremental cost if we wait as well in other words what's your best guess that wouldn't when the elected let's say the things go swimmingly on the Muni one's your best guess about the time frame when the separation electric separation construction work would happen and what is the incremental increase because construction inflation in other words we could build it now you know Aaron's question or we could wait I know you'd like two years three years four years or whatever it is for the separation but the cost of that is is also going to be higher in 2023 presumably than it is in 2019 is that a fair assumption that is

[86:01] fair presumably and speaking hypothetical if everything goes smoothly with the muni we hope to be starting construction at the beginning of 2021 and then we anticipate approximately three years of construction in order to do all the work that we have to do there would be some escalation in cost but it would be just two or three percent per year so asking about doing because I was thinking along the lines you were that if we go ahead and build the backbone now there would be the opportunity to go ahead and make it so that you could pull electrical lines now presumably that's in a separate conduit correct you'd have your fiber on one or need to have your electrical and another would there be any use for the electrical conduit if the Muni didn't go forward if for some I mean could we say we ended up staying with Accell and we had electrical

[87:00] conduit in the ground could we work with them to underground it much more inexpensively I'm just trying to figure out if there's regrets from going and doing both of these together so that you would kind of pre underground and so it could either function for separation or it could function for future under grounding if we remain with Excel typically what we would be installing would be a couple of six inch conduits two or three two inch conduits to support the electric utility and you raise a very good question that we'll have to examine a little more closely but yes if that conduit were installed and there would be potential for the city to pay Xcel than to underground their electric lines that are in parallel and overhead with that conduit that was installed I'm sure it would be at the city's cost though right but the thought being that you know I'd love to

[88:02] understand what the incremental cost would be of adding the electrical conduit underground and along with building the backbone because depending on how much that is if we know that we will eventually be able to get undergrounding from it and it won't mean more trenching again right because Excel would then not have to come dig again so I think it's worth thinking about this is not a synergy I thought about which is if we're going to be putting the conduit for fiber should we put conduit for electric line and how much will that cost because if it cost a lot the answers probably no but if we can use it in the future perhaps well it kind of a similar question to the extent you're taking notes for homework those conduits I know I know that electric goes deeper but are those conduits multi purpose in other words well the questions we didn't ask earlier fiber counters is multiple conduits because sometimes when you build a metro network you build you know two or three or six and if we did put an

[89:01] extra conduits thinking that we would use it for electric lines duhkham deeper and we ended up not doing the the Muni deal could those conduits be used for future proofing for subsequent fiber poles or is it just a completely different conduit and you just can't really pull fiber through that type of conduit or plastic plastic it's basically the same type of conduit that we use so it's the only issue we would need to clarify is if Excel we're gonna use those electric conduits would they allow us to be that close to their electric lines with our fiber there's a clearance requirement if if it's a city owned fiber and Xcel electric lines typically there's a space requirement tweens even if we do it after the fact everything would be buried so yeah we'd say we would just want considerate upfront so we might be able to use it to underground electic cells we might be

[90:00] able to use it for own future fiber we might not be able to use it for both we would have to check with looks own and is that the kind of thing you think you could get a read from the mom I mean I know there's a lot of discussions going on at the moment between the city and Excel is that something that you could get a determination on as part of the next step of investigation absolutely we're working with there Engineers now okay can we ask let me make sure I understand if I don't know what kind of spacing we're talking a foot three feet but at some point it's not really useful to do it at the same time as useful to do it at the same time right so I guess that's kind of a partial question and then if we're doing it because we're Anissa the same spacing issues or is it just an Excel thing or is it a safety thing relative to fiber and electricity it's a safety relative to two separate utilities having to access those conduits so if it's all one city that's providing it then it's

[91:00] perfectly acceptable to have them together okay how what is the distance then for you to separate utilities you know in other places I've worked it's typically about 12 inches for cable and for fiber okay so just a couple other items related to broadband and an electric utility there are then some operational customer service and financial aspects from an operational standpoint you could potentially have a joint operation center or kind of control center of the two networks you could put that in the co-locate that in the same facility you could potentially share maintenance equipment or some shared staffing so there are some operational efficiencies that you could gain if you were doing both services from a customer service

[92:00] standpoint you could have a joint billing system when we had the joint meeting with Longmont they talked about at this time they're actually it's they're providing two separate bills but talking about maybe in the future that they might merge their two bills together so you'd only get one bill for broadband and electric service but you could use the same software system regardless customer service agents or a call center you could jointly operate those facilities if you had both services from a financial standpoint both of these are gonna need revenue of some of some sort so at least especially it at startup we could not join the finances together and there's probably likely not enough debt capacity to carry broadband inside the electric utility until the electric utility we're mature and so from a financial standpoint especially a start-up we'd need to operate these as separate businesses

[93:00] this with respect the operational and customer service energy is a second and third on your list if for some reason the broadband network got ahead of the electric network we could presumably could operate that in such a way that we'd eventually be able to capture the network we would have a no regrets design so so to the extent we had operational and customer service costs we would do it in such a way that if we knew the Muni was coming along we could eventually bring those together right if we were smart about it yeah so let's say if we if we were gonna start a broadband service and you knew that in the future you were gonna also do municipal electric utility but you needed some initial control center functions you could potentially contract that to a third party or build a very simple control or operation center at the start knowing that you might co-locate those facilities in the future so those are the sorts of things that we would have to think through if we were to go forward in kind of a similar question

[94:01] well it's pretty obvious that there could be some synergies on operations and in customer service and so on so forth between our own electric utility and our own broadband utility it's possible that there could be greater synergies for those things if we partnered with other cities that are operating their own broadband network I know Fort Collins and long might have said that to us and so we'd have to compare the two sets of synergies to see which one saves us the most money yeah no I think that's really an important thing for us to look at and as we've talked to the communities here in the northern front range you know Longmont has their service for Collins is now launching building their broadband network Estes Park is doing theirs Loveland's exploring at Larimer County is exploring it Greeley's exploring it and so we've started to talk about well are there some efficiencies related to you may have your secondary network control center is that a shared function that we share amongst each other or as we talked about

[95:00] at the beginning that kind of internet backhaul within the definitions where you're buying that kind of wholesale internet maybe everyone can come comes together and you could actually get better rates if you're all buying that kind of wholesale Internet together so there are definitely some some synergies that are worth exploring if there are lots of communities that are exploring municipal broadband if we were to go that route it's worth having those conversations you know a call center for example yeah so I have another question on the synergies between broadband and an electric system municipal electric system and that's like what kind of additional services can you have by having like you mentioned I think advanced metering so next generation advanced metering dispatch load reduction I mean it seems like in the coming era of distributed generation and distributed storage it would be possible that the the intersection here would bring a whole bunch of additional service

[96:00] opportunities yeah I'm gonna let Steve answer it but as I've started to learn about it and obviously there are other experts here the the amount of connectivity that's necessary for that communication that will occur in the future for that distributed sort of technologies you were just describing a fiber network could benefit from that but I'll let Steve flush that out he's doing a great job but Chris is absolutely right as we talk about grid automation monitoring our system having better intelligence on how the system is running all of that is facilitated by a strong communication network that allows us to really see into how our system operates today it is a network where we know there's an outage because somebody calls and we know what's happening because somebody complains so that broad

[97:01] communication really enhances the level of service we can provide okay not to take us backwards I have a question back to unmodeled to when you designed that backbone network those 93 miles I know you went up to Gunbarrel and I know only about a third of the gun Bell residents are technically in the city limits the other two-thirds are in the county the county has now done the SB 150 to waver did you design that network such though that we could theoretically we are my partner could theoretically provide service to all the Gunbarrel residents regardless of whether they were in the city or outside the city so the backbone is designed that we could serve all of our service area so including area two that includes the unincorporated areas of Gunbarrel it's designed to be able to accommodate that service in the future as those areas would annex into the city the cost estimates for a full fiber or even if they were next so the the cost estimates for the full fiber network only include serving properties inside the city limits the potential that if we or somebody or

[98:01] the county or a third party wanted to tap off the backbone that we build that was designed in such a way that those people who happened to live out in gun broadside the city limits could still be serviced by somebody using our backbone correct okay are we allowed if you don't mind if are we allowed legally to serve customers outside of the city so those are the sorts of things that we would have to flush out if we were to provide retail broadband service as a municipality making a decision about where we would serve understanding the rules around SB 152 we I didn't I don't know the answer to that and we have to make the policy decision about whether we would want to treat this like our other urban services that we don't provide outside the city limits and decide whether for this one we would watch it's not a policy question it's just a strict legal question so it'd be interesting to get that answer okay and I just wanted to confirm I expect the answers yes that that includes the

[99:00] planning reserve to the north of the city that the backbone will extend to the point that you could dewdrops him to the planning reserve yep okay thanks we've building up there I was gonna say Sam you you want a future-proof for network right in a hundred years you never know what could happen I think we have a headline with all the money you're getting $30 linkage fee you'll be able to build up there Sam leaves the room and people start going so with that I'm gonna pass it back to Julia who's gonna wrap up with recommendations next steps and then questions for Council great thank you this has been really helpful discussion so thank you for all the questions so far I'm so wanted to present to you our recommendations in terms of where we go from here the first is that we recommend we see study on models one and three at least for the

[100:01] time being such that we can focus further study on models two and four we would also suggest exploring the viability of initial service from a backbone in the case of model to particularly to underserved areas in our community and the third is that we conduct a statistically valid survey of the community to test pricing and rate assumptions as you saw from the charts that Chris showed that take rate assumption is very important for us and in the what's up builder sessions where we were actually talking rate with constituents in Boulder there was kind of this cognitive connection to the the price that was being charged in long ma and an expectation that we would be able to replicate that so I think it's important that we have real conversations with community members about the potential cost in order to get a sense of switching so those are the recommendations they kind of feed right into the next steps if you choose to

[101:01] take those recommendations which is to prepare for June 12 study session where we further study model two and four explore the potential for initial service from a backbone and then share the results of survey the survey would be done between now and June 12th that's right thank you for that Julia if you go back to the previous slide was that one no the one with the recommendations that one right there we're under explore where you you would be looking at the viability of initial service from the backbone would that create the opportunity to also explore an enterprise status earlier so that the funding could be looked at differently in terms of Tabor issues so we actually that exact question came up in our staff

[102:01] team meeting this last week as well I don't have an answer on it yet but we're we're wondering that same thing whether whether you could convert a broadband service to an enterprise status earlier to benefit you still have to figure out do you revenues where those are coming from so there's lots more homework to do on that great question any other questions or thoughts on the recommendations do you want feedback now or just wait okay at the end of your presentation I think we just go to the questions which are should we do the things that we recommend I'm happy to start I mean I certainly think so I think you put together a really strong package I'm personally going to want to move forward on the backbone as soon as we can I don't see a lot of regrets that we'd have from that but if we can get that statistically valid survey done

[103:00] that quickly that's fantastic because that gives us even more assurance that the backbone itself really will be no regrets but I can't imagine it would be even if it ended up you know leasing fiber access to a private service so that we had more broadband in the community and I agree with holding perhaps another public hearing but I personally don't think we need to go to the ballot for the backbone based on what we've heard earlier so from my perspective I would change the point of the public hearing to be additional information and answers to some of the questions we've raised and potentially maybe making a decision or starting a process by which we could do that but it may not be a ballot process it's not clear to me that we would need it so you know at the hearing on the 12th we can figure that out but I'd like to have an option of proceeding with the backbone but potentially not going to the ballot but just a clear very having the ballot

[104:00] be an option that is part of what's on the table for people to weigh in on on the 12th yes about also having an option where we still proceed with broad bank as we've up till now the discussion has pretty much linked the two things broadband and a ballot issue and it appears to me that those things can be unlinked and we could still go forward with broadband but not have to go to the ballot and you're gonna find out more about that okay we have a queue here I'm not sure which of you is first you're in and involved well I'll agree with Sam I think we have an opportunity to move forward here y'all done a phenomenal job I would love to see us move forward with that backbone expeditiously so I that hearing in in a couple of months if you can definitely bring forward our options because I'd it's not clear that we would need a ballot measure so if we can dig into the analysis of what our options are for constructing the backbone

[105:00] whether that requires bonds or whether we can do with certificates of participation or whether there's some other creative way of moving forward and when you do that I mean I know you've already thought about how we might generate some revenue from that backbone so that's important to drill down into that a little bit but also on the maybe on the cost side I to me it's it's an important priority to think about connecting those underserved communities so I think we have some opportunities to for example provide some really great service to some of our affordable housing developments in town that the backbone would pass right next to so if we can factor that into the analysis of that's an opportunity maybe we get a little I'm sure we get a little revenue from it but it might be a cost as well so maybe think about that but I feel like this this backbone is something we could move forward with it can future proof our city and keep us positioned really really well for a lot of different opportunities going forward so I'm there too I think I'm finally at an

[106:00] option for what I'm particularly enamored of option two or model two because I think just no regrets is something that's got to be built at some point in time anyway I know and having spoken with with the potential public-private partners that model one just didn't didn't pencil out so if we're gonna have a partnership we have to make some sort of contribution it's got to be some participation by the city so why not get that started now and whether whether building the backbone is the first step towards building our own network or building the backbone is the first step towards us partnering with somebody that's not we keep those both those options open Mary's point if we can monetize some of it and reduce our carrying costs that's great also in favor of looking seriously the certificates of participation because one of the advantages of not having to put this on the ballot is we can move forward that much quicker because if we have to put this on the ballot we have to wait till November and then we start and assuming the voters approval which I think they would but if we can move forward in June you know and Sheryl feels comfortable it's a participation

[107:00] and you guys do some math and I also want to echo what Erin said you know I've seen estimates have anywhere between four and seven percent of the people in our community this is Boulder Colorado don't have access to the Internet and I would really very much want us to look at how we can serve we haven't uttered the word digital so idea tonight with us that's for me one of the drivers of this system is the bridge that digital divide gap it'd be great if we all have faster internet but I want to make sure that the first thing we do is get internet people that don't even have internet and to the extent we can monetize it over and above that to help us carry that debt that's great if Cheryl and her magic and and you certificates of participation that's great because then we can build this network you know the 12-month bill doesn't have to start in December that 12-month build can just start the summer clears the engineers can design the network so I'm really excited about model 2 and it's I would hope that this would be the first step and ultimately having a ubiquitous citywide serving everybody that lives here network whether we run it or somebody else runs that we don't to make that decision

[108:00] tonight but I think we need to start building it now thank you first one note maybe to add on that one of the things that we find particularly challenging with the statistic of underserved is we actually don't know where those underserved individuals are we know we can suspect particular neighborhoods particularly manufactured home communities and so this may connect really nicely with some of the other conversations that council is having around those communities I'm the council liaison to Buller housing partners and I know those aren't the only Unser of community as you said the mobile home parks also is in other places in town but they would be delighted to talk to the city about our green and providing you know they they they I think they have over 3,000 residents in our community just in bhp housing and they would love to talk to us about how to provide good fast internet to their residents for starters sorry so I agree with all the points that Sam and Aaron and Bob have already made and

[109:00] I would just ask if there might be any way that we could just have a look at the the survey before it goes out not to not to slow it down it's only a month away so not to slide slow it down or anything but just to have a look and to so the more eyes yeah I would just like to agree with what Sam and Aaron and Bob and Mary have already said just for the record yeah okay well on to boy we have certainly had a change of heart here since our last less than enthusiastic so I do think that's a tribute to the good work that's been done and also seeing the synergies for multiple things that we want to accomplish I do think the the survey having a statistically valid survey is really important so if we don't go to a ballot we still have a real sense of if we're heading in the

[110:01] right direction where the voters want us to go I mean our resident yeah the residents want us to go and I totally agree with what we said about trying to hit some multiple goals around underserved communities as well this makes a whole lot of sense to me and I think it's one of those things it's a good investment economically in terms of our economy I meant an investment in economic vitality is what I'm trying to say it so it just works on multiple levels there's a smart thing to proceed with and I do kind of feel like we're a little bit of a race with our neighbors or you know got to keep up with the Joneses so we had this exchange about doing potential underground and conduit alongside and I'd love to see that as an option if it could be that quick because I have no sense of how much that is but you know if it were a way to make it faster to underground our electric

[111:01] network whether we had a Muni or not I think that could also be something that'd be great to bundle together yep okay yep I just wanted to say also I think the the work that was done is just really outstanding and the presentation as well that clear thank you okay any more gushing okay and just are you all about on the same page you said yeah great we don't need a speech you can a feeling no okay I think we've been more clear than usual thank you Thank You Joanne

[112:04] date it's gonna be really fun next you think we ate stop by this yeah [Music] Oh

[113:37] absolute America's games I been trying to write I was checking from time to time yeah well you can't but if I was watching the game I might know thank you

[114:03] for letting me know yeah I worry about that counsel will come back

[115:14] yeah

[116:03] yes and this is where Hey so yeah okay why don't we go ahead and get started on our second and final issue ballot measures why not yes sorry about that good evening Council again my name is Cheryl Patel a CFO and we have four topics that we are going to discuss

[117:00] tonight related to potential 2018 ballot items for your consideration sugar-sweetened beverage tax items brought forth by the campaign finance and elections working group but and also two items from the Charter Committee will also discuss potential ballot items and funding needs and then two items that we are not going to discuss in this presentation broadband of course since we just had that discussion and then the oil and gas extraction tax that will be discussed next week so the sugar sweetened beverage tax was a 2016 voter approved tax on distributors it's two cents an ounce and it was implemented in July of 2017 and the revenue from that tax can be used for first the administrative cost of the tax to the city which is pretty minimal and the rest of the money goes to health promotion and wellness programs designed

[118:02] for prevention of chronic disease linked to sugary drink consumption so whenever we put a new tax on the ballot table requires that we provide an estimate of the revenues for the first full fiscal year so for that tax since it was implemented in July of 2017 2018 is considered the first full fiscal year and when the initiative committee brought this to us they estimated that we would generate around 3.8 million in tax revenue that was the amount that was on the ballot well we've had probably eight months worth of collection data and we are coming up higher than that based on what we've collected to date we are projecting that in 2018 we'll collect about 5.2 million so that's an excess of about 1.4 million so staff met and we

[119:01] are recommending to you this evening to adopt a tabor ballot question in 2018 to keep the excess tax and this is really the course that most communities have taken with Tabor in new taxes so Denver Fort Collins the state have all put questions on the ballot asking if they can keep the excess tax from a particular item if council decides not to put this item on the ballot or if it's put on the ballot yet the voters turn it down we really have two options first is just to simply refund the excess tax and this is what the Tabor language says that we would need to do the second however we're bringing to you because it's a recent development and that is to keep the excess tax understanding that there is a risk of possible litigation so back in 2012 El

[120:00] Paso County had a public safety sales tax and new tax and their projections were low as well and they went ahead and decided they were going to keep the excess tax there is language and Tabor that talks about making a good-faith estimate or effort on the estimate and that's what they felt they did and they also felt that there it would be difficult for them to be able to project this tax accurately so they did nothing and Douglas Bruce decided to sue them and just two months ago the district court down in El Paso actually the lawsuit was dismissed so they favored with El Paso County certainly there still is a risk for an appeal to that decision but we do feel that the the conservative way to handle this would be to put a question on the ballot but certainly counsel can choose

[121:00] otherwise if they want how would the measure read again the language is in the ballot and what we have now has made the city keep all revenues from the 2016 voter approved tax and continue to collect the tax at the approved rate and spend all revenues collected without refunding any amount for exceeding the revenue estimates set by the petitioners and included in the election so that's just draft language is that what your yes I just wanted to see if I was convinced we might need to see what it's being spent on okay Bob Cindy I know this is heresy in Boulder Colorado but I'm going to ask the question anyway here's another option that we actually lower the tax that would be part of the refund there's a few different ways we could technically refund the tax yes the voters if they would be okay lowering the tax there's this two cents right now lower to one and a half Center or whatever it takes to get us back down to

[122:01] the 3.8 million that we originally estimated yes I believe you could put that ballot eight millions only in the first year so the refund is only the first year right so the reducing it all you have to do is refund the one point something million that is a difference between 28 and the 5.2 I guess here's what I'm going I mean it's only it's you only have to estimate for the first year so this question that we're asking of the voters is is a one-off 2018 can we keep it so in 2019 we can do it over that we want we don't have to ask the voters that's correct that wasn't clear okay the tax but I guess that's not really well apparently is not people who still drinking lots of it does only undermines okay we have Erin and then Cindy well it changes my question no it's only for one year can could you give the proposed language again because it sounded like it was about in perpetuity rather about may we keep the 2018 overage it is in

[123:01] perpetuity and there's a mix when people read the Tabor language it's do we have is it for the year or is it thereafter and what our question would ask is for 2018 and every year thereafter so then my new question is could we not just phrase it narrowly your your language may be to me as a voter hadn't you've been following his home council I was like wow that sounds a little it's a lot of taxing authority which is very different from made the city of Boulder keep the 2018 overage of approximately such-and-such Aaron one of the challenges with Tabor is not a model of clarity and so when we draft things for the ballot we try to draft it protectively and so my recommendation that's why the language is drafted it is is because the court could come along later and say oh no no it's multiple years my reading of Tabor is it's one year because it says you only have to estimate one year so if we're gonna go

[124:00] to the ballot you want to make sure you have everything covered so it's great whether it's one year or more is that what you're saying you could David's are more of an expert on this all the defer to him but my reading is that you have to ask me one year you excute the what CD one you have to refund one year yeah that's that's what taper would decayed and in the El Paso County case that recently came down the court more or less said that the voter approval within the ballot language itself was enough for that for El Paso County to keep the revenue the revenue excess from that first year and when we compared our ballot title language to their ballot language it's actually quite similarly drafted and it is the similar amount overages I mean it's not gargantuan I mean does that matter I think Tabor just requires her you know at least potentially requires a refund if there's an overage in the first year

[125:02] Cindy I wondered wondered actually I didn't see it in the reading whether or not the language that appeared on the ballot was there for the uses because this is obviously a lot more in terms of where it's being directed than it had been anticipated at least for the first year yes this came directly from the ballot language had specific uses in all along the ballot and I remember I remember that but I didn't realize that they were that that was the specific language that it would be used for that and whether or not if it continues at these kinds of overages whether or not it could be directed anywhere else other than towards these very specific things well it ballot measure itself earmarked the funds so they're directed to a

[126:00] specific use and there's some level of flexibility within that language I mean it's not icy library in there somewhere [Music] my bed was in there somewhere no there is a health aspect in terms of for example the Grillo Center which was a Health Information Center which is now moved to the hospital I believe started in the library so having that kind of thing somehow ate the library might be in a health-related oh yes that's correct so I'm gonna jump in and say the kind of like where Cindy's going with this as you may gather could if we did put something on the ballot could we expand the uses that's correct yes so could you put the uses back up again sure so

[127:02] there's another one on there that I'm interested in as well which is access to safe and clean drinking water we've had some ongoing challenges with some of our manufactured home sites with the infrastructure for water delivery which includes both the purported inability to meter it as well as issues with leaks in the system and so on so I would also be interested in considering and this is maybe a separate discussion for the group that's that's allocating the funds but I'd like to consider since we have an overage if we would add you know something about the mobile home parks and their water infrastructure because that's been an ongoing problem I think in Ponderosa were handling it directly because we purchased Ponderosa but some of the existing sites I'm just curious but I guess I got to jump in in here if it's in if it's in that language we

[128:02] don't need to put it back on the ballot it's it was already passed I guess and I would headed the other way so I which is how long long ago was the El Paso ruling and has it been appealed two months ago yeah and Tom is loosen we've done the research on the they appealed it on April 2nd okay so so it has yet to be definitive sought immediate review by the Supreme Court and the court has responding to that he doesn't have a best track record okay because I mean the other thing is if it really is for one year and it's only it's over by a million but it was a 3.8 million task again it's off by what 20% 25% it feels to me but obviously it depends on how to lawsuit goes but it feels like we could be in a safe zone and okay so I'll just throw that out there I also think while we might be able to interpret these

[129:00] broadly I think we should be careful about why this tax was passed in the first place so but within what was passed I think we can interpret broadly but I don't the idea that we would put it on the ballot to change the purposes is I think a whole nother can of worms and I'm sorry who else had there that that said I still want to ask a question related to adding something to the purposes which when I look at that mental health is a very obvious potential addition so I'm just throwing that out there I agree with Mary more comfortable if we like a certain percentage could be used for these bradden uses I think okay so

[130:02] people came together really concerned about obesity diabetes and those sorts of things and did a lot of work to pass this tax so I think health broadly especially folks that are targeted for by corporations to have unhealthy diets like I think we there's a lot of things that touch on that and I think we are free within that to interpret it broadly but I do think we should stay true to the the motivation of the people that got this passed in the first place so that's that's all it's just a caution it's a caution that's all who hasn't spoken at that once we're circling back okay Cindy Sam Aaron I was just gonna say in terms of the mental health and even the sugar-sweetened part of it there was that infamous Twinkies defense in San Francisco way back when I mean that was sugar right it was sugary

[131:01] okay Sam I guess I would agree with you and that it should be the general intent should be what we're looking to to interpret what we use this for but it was largely for underserved populations and it was healthy bolder kids was another tagline and you know my point about water and mobile home parks is you know that's a place where you might have an intersection between health and underserved populations yeah we don't have to do a thing to pursue that if we want it that's true that's my point is anything on there we can already do though I guess I guess there's two parts to this question and one is do people think we need to go and deal with the Tabor issue on the ballot this fall or not let's let's start there yes yes no following El Paso no that's yet a third thing but mr.

[132:09] lawyer mr. lawyer says yeah I'd put it on the ballot I think that's the right thing to do to let people know where their money's being spent and remember your question tonight isn't you're not deciding it finally sure you're telling us to bring it forward and we can do a draft in all these things that you've talked about language and changes you'll work through in two readings of the ballot measure so I was just curious if they if this creates another lawsuit for us I mean again how big how much money is this gonna cost the city I guess the taxpayers cuz that's I'm just trying to figure out a monetary cost of do we are we more conservative or are we not I

[133:00] think the most conservative approach is to put it on the ballot you have some flexibility if you want to take a little bit of a legal risk to not put it on the ballot this year and with the hope that when the El Paso case works its way through the appellate process that the district court order is upheld so one of the risks you suffer is is it David correct me if I'm wrong it doesn't just require a refund it's is there an interest provision to you if you don't do it in the next that's gold yes so there's a penalty provision if so if we decided to litigate and in its be three years before the El Paso case gets to the Supreme Court most likely get a decision out of it if we wait and then we have the decision goes the wrong way we would have penalties to pay it back for three years yeah that's correct okay so three years and interest okay Aaron sorry yes ooh - Thomas point I mean I think this is worth moving forward to public hearing to decide the exact direction I'm you know that maybe

[134:00] we'll know more by then about this legal case but it seems like we need to move it forward just a couple thoughts that we were being conservative by putting on the ballot and we have very conservative language and and I doubt it maybe there's a we can take a slightly less conservative course that makes it more clear what we're asking for in the scope of it the and Sam to your point I think the mobile home water is a very valid way to use this money it's something we should very seriously consider with the additional money and I don't think we need to do anything extra about it if we want to consider something extra I would extra purposes we'd want to talk with the folks who put this on the ballot I think their input would be important but it might be that there might be a purpose that's very closely linked with those original ones that were put on the ballot that are about underserved populations and health equity but that aren't exactly in that list like mental health for example so if we chatted with those folks who brought it forward and engaged them there might be a couple of

[135:00] additional areas that there might be some agreement on so it's something worth considering the folks generally agree with what was just said underserved communities and health equity feels pretty close to the summing up the emphasis for this tax and that if if we were going to to do that exercise it would be stuff that was very close to that Nexus right is that so I'm sorry you said libraries and I'm like well it's education and it's health education it was health education is that different than building a library I'm not talking about building I'm just talking about flat revenues mm-hmm okay I just okay I think how we talk about this is also important yes very where do the downsides of putting it on the ballot I mean doesn't cost much they say no we would need to refund it's the 3.8 wouldn't go away I mean so

[136:02] how would we do that by the way how would we refund 1.4 million dollars to a bunch of people who bought sodas well I think that we would have to figure out an equitable way of doing it and the taxpayer is the distributor not the consumer in this case so it's actually a relatively small number of taxpayers so I think that figuring out an equitable way of distributing the tax would not be that difficult so we put in the language or should we refund 1.4 million dollars to a few large beverage distributors I think I gosh I feel like putting in us on the ballot is gonna be so confusing for the community yeah but to me that is the dent it really is you know I have to say I did not vote for this tax to begin with I was not a fan of it but now that I'm seeing the great work that we're doing with it and I think a lot of the do

[137:00] things we still have some did not affect our small local companies so much but but the I think companies have absorbed this tax and moved on and we just got it in place and it's to kind of throw this wrench in it now feels a little like it's gonna shake things up a lot and Tom said that he thought that we were in well maybe I shouldn't speak for him but my understanding was that El Paso is in pretty good shape thus far and yes they won in the district court well right now it's a win at for El Paso County and they're in good shape and and that your reading was that it was just for the first year and not ensuing exactly yes so what we would be returning would be just the overage in the first year if it's upheld which I would just bet it

[138:00] will be so that it isn't that and then whatever it is in ensuing years would be the cities to keep correctly wait wait a minute so I I never liked to bet on what a courts gonna do and okay I would prefer to provide you with confidential legal advice on my evaluation of the likelihood of success in the El Paso lawsuit because I have some significant questions based on my reading of that lawsuit and arguments that will be made so I'd like to do that to have that opportunity and you can do that you can evaluate that in your own and as you make move forward in the process if it's short and sweet if others would like that it's pretty simple yeah yeah okay so that would be useful information yeah this may be an obvious question but so if we were to get sued are we assuming we're getting sued by beverage companies

[139:01] or do we not exactly know and how many lawsuits could we be probably by double could be any taxpayer so so interview asked the question on in terms of the lawsuit I wouldn't expect it to cost us a lot of money we'd probably handle something like that in-house so we wouldn't hire outside counsel if we got sued the the and which is why in my answer I focused on the cost to the city of refunding the money with penalties but the the worry about being sued general on issues of municipal or state government law the our our staff can handle that pretty well okay thanks okay just real quick I mean the subject before us tonight is do we advance this to a hearing and I think I would like to hear from more people in

[140:00] the community one way or the other rather than trying to decide it tonight so I'd like to advance it to hearing and so from that subject I would like to I'm not sure how I'm gonna vote on it and what the options might be but I think we should at least take the time to do that everybody that it's worth further discussion and it sounds like we'd like to hear your thoughts on El Paso County is there anything else we wanted in terms of information well potentially different language options yet to be as clear as possible and and frankly I think you'd want to reiterate the existing uses to remind people why they voted for it and I would like I know that we got that way early on the to whom the tax was distributed just for information and how much sessions we've

[141:01] oh yeah yeah in the packet too so the next time you'll see this will be at a first reading and we tried it we'll try to get that to you before the break and then have the second hearing will be after the break and then you have to do it by the end of August usually to get this on the ballot so you have some time we'd like to get these things started okay everybody good with that okay all right campaign finance an elections working group I think you already know that i'm david gear from the city attorney's office and i'll be presenting the work of the campaign finance and elections working group the working group is eleven residents of our city that have a great deal of experience in participating in boulder elections as both volunteers and candidates it has been meeting since february of this year the first part of its charge was a review of the Charter requirements related to elections the group has provided its first set of

[142:00] recommendations to the council on a report that has already been presented to you and is attached to your memorandum for tonight's meeting staff intends to draft the ballot measures that may be used to implement the group's recommendations those ballot measures will be presented together with staff recommendations to the council during the summer with the other ballot measures it is anticipated that the council will have a substantive discussion on the recommendations and then either adopt amend or reject them the changes that the working group hey can I just sure and we're answering the same question which is should we just continue forward you just continue forward okay should I advance the slide and well no I just want to make sure if we are weighing in on each one in substantively or not I would say that I don't think you need to but if you would like to that would be great if there are some on there that may or may not be a

[143:02] starter that would be great input but I think that the the completeness of the work of the working group was such that the preparation of these ballot measures will be for staff a rather easy lift I think that they would be why don't you pause after you describe each one and see we can do this so the first the first change is simply a clarification related to the rules for a candidate to withdraw from an election before the election occurs the second one is setting timelines in the Charter the municipal initiative processes including the review of the initial petition signature verification title setting and title challenges and these are often referred to as the two Q changes that were removed from the Charter and it would be putting them back in the Charter the committee also recommended numerical signature requirements for municipal initiative

[144:01] and referenda and recalls and suggested slightly expanding the timelines and tying them to prior voter participation counts rather than the total number of registered voters which the working group found unnecessarily inflated the numbers of people that it took to get something put on about it the next change was just to clarify some existing charter rules about municipal initiatives and that they're often referred to as people's ordinances one of the things that our Charter says is that you cannot repeal a people's ordinance and there's a little bit of ambiguity about what it means when the council would like to amend them it sets standards in the charters for amending people's ordinance and for the most part there are simple changes that require

[145:01] first that it basically be within the intent of the original or that any amendments be consistent with the original intent of the ordinance or that they would be necessary to bring a people's ordinance into compliance with state or federal law and then the other notion would be that it would be required 2/3 of the council members present to vote on such an amendment well we're gonna blossom to say what it's just the last two they get a little crazy I'm pause for a second is everybody in agreement on moving the first four forward to a public vote those are the ones that are I think are most straightforward does anybody disagree okay so there's you answering your first floor okay so that next one requires

[146:02] what well it will have staff implications but they propose adding a requirement to the city charter that that that the city clerk verify signatures on petitions and in addition to the existing requirements for verification of voter registration information so as it is now our city clerk when a petition comes in they check all of the data on a petition to make sure that it's valid and consistent with voter registration records they do not do other than in terms of signature verification I think that there is just basically a cursory review of signatures and the clerk will use her judgment when she looks at at the signatures and oftentimes she can find basically very

[147:01] obvious Payton defects where everything is done with the same pen in the same handwriting or you know the there are other irregularities that are often obvious from the face of the petition so in the recent past the city has got we understand that we can now have access to the voter signature database of the Secretary of State's so we will have the ability to look at signatures which we have not had in the past but of course that's another piece of work that the city will be the city clerk will be doing during the election season and and I guess as you try to figure out how to review signatures there's probably some level of training or education that the clerk staff will have to undergo to be able to carry out that responsibility I think we have some questions Aaron Oh opinion are there we have opinions were you done

[148:02] with this one because we have opinions okay all right Aaron I have a question David the city clerk of Denver I believe has offered to help our city clerk with installing a system software system that they use it makes all of this fairly readily easy to use is that correct that's correct but I believe it's for the last bullet item okay okay I have another question specifically like what's involved is there a database where you go do yep do do or is it like got to go over to the County Courthouse and rifle through papers or what I believe it's the former doot doot so the city clerk is

[149:00] continuing to study this but it's but it's my understanding that basically that in years past the Secretary of State has just not let us have access to their signature database and in the recent past they have said that they will and apparently it's kind of a read you know that you have read-only access to their database and it'll be you know putting two things up on a screen and looking at them so I recommend that we don't move this one forward I think I'm concerned about the burden on city staff for comparing these signatures it seems like a large amount of work but specifically it seems like it requires advanced training I pity the person that tries to figure out whether my signature matches from one time that I signed to another I just so variable in random so the amount of training involved to do that properly and I do also worry a little bit about disenfranchising people because their signature was too

[150:01] sorry that it can't be matched to existing one so I would not like to see this written into our charter okay other opinions yeah I would like to see it move forward so we can have a fuller discussion with more community input because I wouldn't be in favor of a hundred percent signature checking I just think that that's way too big of a burden the way that the state handles this is with audits and I looked at some of the signatures that the clerk presumably threw out that we're all done in the same handwriting on the same page but people can be a little more clever than that as well and so I would be in favor of some kind of audit but as far as the question before us tonight I would like to have a fuller discussion of it so we can explore what it would mean likewise I would like to see it move forward okay the folks you call with yeah it's fine to move afford to keep talking about it I expect to not want to move it onto the ballot it the

[151:00] next time probably unless somebody gives me a compelling argument but maybe an audit approach instead of the 100 percent thing okay well and that might be direction to staff is is to get a sense of how owners it will be in terms of right you know if multiple petitions are coming and this is for signatures on ballot measures right so you could have many ballot measures come in at the same time and just to kind of get us is this like is this going to take a couple hours per petition or is this like many hours anyhow we haven't need to have a sense him and what would an audit you know yes the committee had quite a robust discussion about auditing and when we started to talk about the state procedures and the results of auditing and that you know when you start knocking signatures out because of an audit based on a percentage and knocking out a percentage based upon that with

[152:02] the sample size as small as a municipal election I think the thought of the group was that it would be an unfair result in that if you were going to do it was with such a small sample size that you should really at everything but we can we can flush that out as we go forward could we get not only what it's gonna be to staff but also to the Aaron's point about how detailed are they getting with these signatures I mean is it obvious glaring duplication or is it like one day I have my kid in my right hand and I'm signing with my left and you know something like that I don't want machines signing for people or fake people signing for people but there's a good point that you have I will just bring up I I don't know how strict this is gonna be but I had to sign something for my bank so that they knew every time they got a check in for me that it was my signature and I will

[153:00] say that yes signature changes a lot and depending on how busy I am and if I'm rushing out of the house but I've never had a problem either with the bank they've never come back and said yeah we weren't sure about this one so they're pretty lenient I think that they have a pretty nice range to know if something's just an input that you know I've experienced for I don't know 20 years of being in the banking system so the other thing that maybe if we're gonna have a public hearing on this is is there another entity that does this has got it dialed that could come and say here's here's what you're getting into and here's our advice if you're gonna do this or we would cost you to get I don't know I think it would be useful to to know if there's somebody in you know nearby that does this and has opinions one way or another whether it's you've been useful and doable yeah we can do that is that good enough on this one that's good enough for that one if it's good enough for you alright so the last

[154:01] one is to authorize the council to allow for the use of electronic voter identification for petition signing you know it electronically in addition to the traditional approach of having a circulator gather signatures on a paper petition so the idea would be that there would be some form of chronic petition signing I think that there's a I guess I know a hint of incredible optimism that this can be really done really quick when I speak to some people and a bit of a sigh on the other side of you've got a very difficult IT problem or a security problem or whatever but I don't think that there are insurmountable problems based on what we've learned so far but I do think that now the Charter is very

[155:02] specific about how you put together a petition and it requires a person a piece of paper data and a signature and this what the working group is recommended is that we expand that to also allow electronic forms of petition gathering as well and I believe that before we're able to actually put that into motion that we will need another working group we will need the support of our IT department and other folks that will have to help us figure out a way to do this so that everyone you know will trust the electoral process so aren't we just decreasing the number of signatures you need to get in order to put something on the ballot that's true yes I just want to make sure I understand I thought we were decreasing we're decreasing the number I just want

[156:00] to make sure that I understood the number to make it much yeah more reflective of yeah as opposed to inflated it'll be easier to petition something onto the ballot or do a referendum if the voters approve this didn't that that change so and this would provide another approach of gathering those signatures okay but but it's not necessarily solving a problem it's just a more efficient use of everyone I think yeah I think that I think that the working group thought of that they they discussed the fact that people who perhaps don't get out as much would be have more access to be able to participate in the petitioning process you know just a variety of reasons that you know we often gravitate towards electronic means of conducting the day-to-day get rid of caucuses opinions

[157:04] question no question yeah so David how long do you think that working group process that you described will take in other words to do a thorough job of having a working group that something to come up with a proposal how long do you think that would take I don't think I could really commit to that because I don't understand the IT side of it but what I would say is is that it's my aunt so first of all the working group would like to kind of gets have you guys started working group tomorrow and you know get to work on this issue because I think that they feel very strongly about it I guess my advice would be that the first thing we do is debate it and if appropriate put it on the ballot and then of course and then if it's passed then we would talk about putting together a working group and my hope would be that you could perhaps have

[158:00] rules in place for the 29 or 19 elections the 2019 elections and that's assuming that you could solve kind of you know there's a organizational process that you have to build the capacity to do it and then of course the physical technology that you would need to pull it off David are these all going to be one subject on the ballot that I don't know I think that we will have to start to try to draft them out and see what they look like but I could very easily see you know drafting one through four in one or maybe combine those with the Charter you know some of the charter committee changes and then the fifth and the sixth be done as separate measures but I think it would it's gonna be will make a recommendation and I think it'll be up to the council to decide how they want

[159:00] to proceed and if they want to present it to the vote that'll be a point of discussion there the public hearing okay that's good to know and the other question is for the electronic voter ID identification like that that to me it could be as something as simple as somebody still is carrying a petition but it's an electronic form and you simply sign a tablet that's correct which is an incremental change to our existing process another one is you're sitting in your basement and you go online and you say oh that's a funny house petitioner you know and and you go sign the petition online would this enable essentially any kind of electronic signing of petitions I think it just depends on how far you would take you know what it would take to do it and how far you would take it but would it enable potentially essentially I think that you know in terms of the conversations of the working group I think that they see it as how you described it in your ladder that it would be something that you would be able to go online read the petition

[160:02] decide you know enter some data that is personal to you be verified and then you would you know either attach your signature to it or not and then I think kind of playing it out that you would also be able to withdraw it up until the time that the council you know puts the ballot together whether you're in your basement in Russia kind of just be back on this how we wrote that would determine whether we just allow iPads to be used for signing versus people sitting in their basements right and so I think that that would be at least as it's presently presented by the committee by the working group the thought is is that it's just enabling language in the Charter it just says that in addition to the traditional forms you can figure out different ways so it's gonna be as you know it's gonna

[161:02] be to the legislative discretion of the council as to how it works and given that this is an area where you would assume that technology will continue to evolve I think you probably want that kind of legislative flexibility to be able to follow technology but it's just the authority for us to figure it out Marian and Cindy I think you just answered my question but I'll ask it anyway just to make sure so what the last item here is doing is just asking us if we would like to see the Charter change to allow for an additional option in collecting signatures which would be technological that's correct okay thank you that at council would figure out yeah yes subsequent council will figure out how to do it if you do nothing the process would stay the same under how the Charter is now versus how the committee has proposed to amendment

[162:00] supposed to setting up the mechanism in the Charter yeah okay and I would not recommend that just given technology changes so fast Cindy and then Jill so David this has been done in other cities has it not yes Denver's doing it and other places around there's a few other places that are doing it as well so you know there it's being done in a few places and a few different kind of settings you know some people are doing you know candidate I know it's pretty I think it's done for the the signing and I pad kind of that's my understanding but Lynette back who's not with us tonight is the one that's actually researching kind of the mechanics of how Denver is doing it okay I'll jump in with an opinion I think we should move this forward and debate it and I think that this is the direction we're headed in lots of different arenas of our democracy with voting and

[163:02] registration and you know everything really and I think this open up petitions to be more equitable we can maybe avoid smooth well who knows I'm sure paid folks will pop up in different categories but you know I don't particularly think some guy who's being paid to stand outside of MacGuffins leads to the best you know petitions and democracy so with the community so with great cautions I could see that it could have benefits but there are also many many ways this could work out really badly if we're not careful with it so I'm interested in discussing it I agree with Jill about that I think we should move it forward and discuss it but even doing enabling language and then some council in the

[164:01] future or make some really flawed decision if there's not enough guardrails you know what's in the Charter so that the people can themselves say nope that's not what we meant or no that's not working out I just think we have to think really thoughtfully about this for me a possibility would be we talked about it and we decided it needed to be worked over some more by a working group so that we have a really good charter amendment not one that's necessarily too prescriptive but one that somehow puts the guardrails on so I will say that I'm very concerned about moving too quickly on this one without a very robust kind of thought process on what could go wrong and how do we prevent it okay well I you know I'm with Sam I as evidenced by all our our questions break questions tonight and we're just you know just reacting and our community's gonna have tons of questions about this and it feels to me if like we put it on the ballot and say don't worry we'll figure it out later it's it feels like

[165:00] ready ready shoot aim and I think I think we need to tell the community what this is not trust us we'll figure it out and I think we need to be very very specific if we're gonna even go down this path I have a lot of same concerns that Sam does but I think we have to be very very precise I mean you know Aaron talked about there we talk in life as signatures which is one thing and about anybody can in their pajamas in Russia get on in sign of attrition and those are two completely different things and if we just say let us figure it out I'm I think it's a lot of voters can say no you tell us what tell us what we're authorizing first then we'll let you know what type of David the working group that put this forward was the scene animus decision or was this split in any way no I it was all of the recommendations that the working group

[166:01] made were unanimous and they they had a very robust debate about the pros and the cons and I think that there was I guess to use a term from the last presentation a little bit of the digital divide which I never figure I'm on one side of it and there were people that were more comfortable with this on the other side of that divide but yeah it was it was very robustly debated with the group okay I just want to be clear that I'm not advocating Russia sign our petition there's technology being created that we can look at and sure taking our time I don't feel a need to rush this forward but I do think that heading in this direction is important no Russian okay agree with with with Sam

[167:05] and Bob that it's worth continuing the discussion but if we're going to move something to the ballot I would want to see something worded very precisely and I think it's fine if if we did move forward with this if we did something that enabled some limited subset this year and then some future year we could consider some larger subset you know my understanding is that there's not really good perfect like real true authentication of identity on the internet right now which is something I'd probably need in order to allow people to do it remotely so I do as much as I can online I really value that convenience I value the extra engagement we get out of it but security is kind of lagging behind hacking these days so we want to tread very cautiously okay Oh Cindy just lastly I agree with Bob the ready shoot aim it's the cart before

[168:00] the horse it seems that we need to have the discussion first before moving this anywhere without knowing where it is just too high line there I think it's interesting that it came from our working group okay so we'll continue to have the conversation but there's some reservations about making sure we get this one in particular right since it's more much more complicated if we is there anything in particular we need from them for this discussion that we ever not already mentioned I don't think so I think we've got what we need for this part of the presentation okay so now moving on to the term it II oh I would like to see Denver's authorizing language language or any other group there are other cities that have authorized this stage put a lot of guardrails or not yeah and at that hearing hopefully Lynette can be able to answer questions about Denver's specific

[169:01] program great thank you great feedback okay so now we're gonna move on to the city's Charter Committee the Charter Committee as you all know has three members of the council and it's supported by a number of city staff members it has met a few times this year and the Charter Committee has recommended that the council makes some consider making some changes related to boards and commissions and the capital improvements planning process can you remind us who's on the Charter committee it is Cindy Carlile Sam Weaver and Lisa Marcel yeah or Mary young I'm sorry so we got two out of three yeah Lisa's usually on it hey where is the list it shows what our assignments are well he used to be at the back of the packet is it still at the back of the packets I couldn't find it I was we

[170:01] don't do it anymore send it to Alex because I was trying to get it to him and I can't find it okay okay so the first one the committee thought now let's see we'll move forward here so the first change was to was related to changing the number of residents appointed to certain advisory boards from five to seven members presently the Planning Board and the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board were the only two boards that have seven members the committee thought that the council should increase the size of the housing and varrick at least considerate the housing Advisory Board and the open space Board of Trustees to seven and then ask staff to reach out to those boards and asked them for their preference so the open space Board of Trustees gave feedback that they thought that they are functioning well as a five-member board and they didn't think that it necessarily made change or make

[171:02] sense to change it from its current size on the other hand the housing advisory board unanimously favored the option of adding two additional members which two boards did you say were seven Parks and Recreation Advisory Board and the Planning Board I didn't parks get to be seven well the charters it was in the original yeah and you know it was they were both created the Planning Board's present composition was done in 51 and Parks was in 61 and I think that products of similar histories okay were you done we have questions yeah that's it on the five to seven issue right Sam and Cindy a little bit of context and let me just say something before you even say which is that two of the Charter Committee brought forward the been spaced Board of Trustees I was not

[172:00] present at that first meeting and so it wasn't part of that recommendation just to be clear and wouldn't have been just to be clear so I think where this ended up after some discussion is the second bullet which is to add the option for Council to decide between five or seven members in other words I wouldn't be in favor of having the open space Board of Trustees grow right now either but if the Charter if people want to let us make that choice based on changing conditions in the community I think that was part of what we were discussing was why don't we bring something broad which rather than just focusing on housing or we could focus on housing but we just wanted to have the discussion of do we want to do it as a council on the specific board do we want to do it have the option on all boards because sometimes having more gives you a broader spectrum of your community and

[173:00] sometimes you may not need it could ask a question on that though so if the ballot measure simply said council could make anymore between five and seven good if council took a board from five to seven and the next council wanted to take is from seven back to five how would that work and it would get kicked off and good politics involved and I guess I'm a little bit worried about about people not this council but some future council that's this one playing some games in either direction either by bumping something up to seven to get some extra buddies on board or by taking it from seven down to five and kicking some people off and I just I just I want us to be thoughtful about that maybe this is the right answer I mean it sounds like there's a unanimity among this group about taking the housing board from from five to seven so that's that's an easy one and hopefully the community will support that as well but I just wonder about this flexibility it sounds good but that I'm wonder how it

[174:00] would work in practice yeah I mean it's hard to legislate good behavior right so if we're really if that if we're worried that councils would use this as a too for political ends then I'm not that interested in it if that's where we think it would go on the other hand it does give a little flexibility to adapt to changing situations like you know if the community grows or whatever and you're trying to add more representation but we can do it on the I mean it's clear hab wanted and I think this council has said that we want have to be seven and so I'm fine either way I just thought I would put the argument out there about our discussion was Sandeep I I agree that we we just we all discussed have going to seven members before putting it to the to a ballot but the others I would say it's not broken you know what are we trying to fix here and Bob your point is well-taken it not that we would ever do anything like that but other councils may it doesn't seem to be

[175:02] broken as it is working according to the Charter Aaron so I do think we should move it forward and we can consider the different options but may one alternate option would be to say that to change have from five to seven and give the discretion that if any future advisory board has created Council can decide between five and seven people for that board at the time of creation okay so I I'm almost I totally agree with that I do think changing existing boards invites political in yeah I guess I don't think we need to go there have we were very clear and I think that makes a lot of sense and that would be a nice way to finesse it when you're creating new ones so oh yeah okay is everybody cool with leaving open space the way it is yeah okay all right so I think do what he said

[176:01] okay so it sounds like just restated that will draft the recommendation of the Charter committee as it applies to have with an option to also allow the council to change from five or decide five to seven on any board created it happened thereafter or yeah okay thank you oh I wonder weigh in on the the sex gender thing okay I'll gold is that a different topic it is a different apparently so the Charter community also recommended that the word sex be changed to gender when considering the composition of the board I believe that this the intent of this changes in the spirit of inclusivity an allowing personal generate gender identification to be considered when appointing board and commission members yeah

[177:04] sorry keep talking I mean can we make this more inclusive because we're still kind of going with them we're changing the word is good but we're still kind of going I think the wording is binary like you must have at least one person of each gender on board if there is that the language something that's that was a language and I wonder if we could change it to say something like a board may not be composed exclusively of one gender identity something like that you know which kind of looks at it from the other way but that but that way like if we could give people the option instead of having a go M or F that there can you know they can say non-conforming or something like that and then you just can't have all one people in one category and that could be more inclusive of different gender identities and is that how it's written no not all from one category does it specifically say a diversity so I have the disadvantage of presenting the work of the Charter Committee without going

[178:00] to even one of their meetings the language in the memo was it was it was a switch out of the words okay but you know boards does it's a must have at least I think it's not all of one sex as opposed to a oh yeah okay fine so yeah so then maybe I did you could just change it to gender identity then that might yep rather than gender that work for people and and then I wanted and then I just put a dot maybe we can incorporate that into our application so that I I forget how it says right now but it seems like it's either a more F and we could make it more broad applications just say what is your gender identity yeah so to finish out the Charter Committee changes I'm going to turn it over to Cheryl sorry about that

[179:01] relates to the capital improvement program and the timing this item was brought to the Charter Committee but actually staff were are the ones who brought this to the Charter Committee and the reason we would like council to consider this recommendation right now our capital improvement program budget in our operating budget are really on two different timelines and we're looking for ways to continuously improve our budget process and feel that this would be an important step forward so having them on the same timeline would allow us to make more strategic budget decisions also would give us a little bit more time for the capital improvement plan to have better revenue projections so currently the Planning Board is responsible for reviewing in passing along recommendations for the CIP 60 days prior to the first public hearing on the budget and the first

[180:01] public hearing on the budgets considered our first meeting in October that we present the budget the recommendation is to change that requirement to 30 days prior to the first public hearing and this is just a little visual on what that would look like so staff really starts developing the CIP in March and we bring it to our specific boards in May and June currently it goes to Planning Board in July and what we're proposing is that it actually go to planning board in August so the second thing that would change then is currently you we bring the CIP to you in a study session in August and it's separated we just talked about CIP through this change it would allow us to bring the CIP draft to you in September during our normal budget

[181:00] study sessions so we could look at the budget as a whole budget which is really the way it is because they both play on each part plays on each other there was question regarding the public input period for the CIP budget currently it's about 90 days it starts when the Planning Board hears the budget that's when it becomes public with this proposed change it would reduce that to about 60 days but staff feels that's still adequate time but certainly you may or may not agree with that so we have two questions for you regarding the Charter committee items and I think the first one has already been answered the second one is do you want us to move forward with the next steps to place the the change in the planning board on the budget and one thing I forgot to mention we have not brought this to the Planning Board for

[182:00] their feedback yet if you want us to move forward we certainly would do that and bring their input back to you so question and do you have a question okay just aligning the CIP in the budget seems to make good sense shrinking the public process does that NASA does it that seems less clear whether that's a good or a bad thing might be but doesn't have to be shrunk it would in this scenario because I mean technically it becomes public when we take it to our specific boards but as a whole CIP with a comprehensive all of the departments it does not become public until it is brought to the Planning Board so yes it would be because we're taking it to the Planning Board later and we're the the timeline would be expanded and just getting it

[183:01] done and getting all of the steps prior to that done as well okay that's clear that's good just just to make sure that I understand is the October meeting like the second reading of the budget where we actually had the debate and take the public input correct we usually so it's not unconsented at one's that's the public hearing so I mean I guess my thought and I think we checked on this too is sixty days is a lot of time for you know our first public hearing that we're gonna have on it because that gives two months for people to kind of weigh in on it and you know there's some sense at the board level of what's coming down the pike because the boards are kind of just refining typically what the staff proposal is so I think when we talk this over at the Charter Committee we did acknowledge that it was there less days but it's still two months for feedback before our first substantial conversation I just think about we go on

[184:02] a tour and stuff like that when do we normally go on tours that's usually at the end of July so that too might change next year okay most likely would change okay that's the part I'm not clear on other questions or thoughts angles you move it forward okay forward yeah okay thank you I'm just one last slide and we try to continually keep this in front of you but there are potential ballot item for next year the climate action plan tax they're looking at perhaps expanding that tax and that will be brought to you in the coming months some ideas around that we also have several possible needs in the future some of which would require some sort of ballot

[185:00] Muni Alpine Broadband housing library there are others but these are the the major ones that we see and for your reference tax revenue generation rates again property tax one mill is about 3.6 million in sales tax a tenth of a cent generates 3.3 million and our final question for you do you have any other items or any other information that you would like related to the 2018 November ballot very I don't have a question but there was a question that came up at the previous study session where we talked about these was whether or not there was going to be a ballot initiative that was going to be brought forward on expanding voting rights and I asked that question of the committee that's working on it and they said that they have decided not

[186:02] to do that this year they want to bring the board next year so we don't expect to see anything this year anything else okay I mean we know there'll be other things on the state ballot that we're working on um do I remember correctly that the deadline for submitting citizens petition is 180 days before the election is that right it's gonna say I don't remember okay I guess the question is is it is it too late now or really kind of we're not 180 days out right so I know this is 180 days reflection that part I know well I guess the question is do we anticipate any citizens initiatives there's nothing in the works right well we had that one and it was strong right they have to be submitted your signature

[187:02] right it was completely withdrawn they're not gonna resubmit okay that's what we've heard oh yeah okay all right it's called good over five minutes over you'll need the record thank you we are we we all done okay let's thank you very much staff [Music] [Music]