Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

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[4:08] a special meeting of the Boulder City Council on May 22nd 2018 Anette will you call the roll council member bracket here Carlisle here Carano here Jones you're more Zell Nagel here Weaver yeah Yates here young president mayor we have a quorum excellent so we are gonna have a relatively short special meeting tonight and then we're going to adjourn and convene into a study session before we get started in our special meeting we have to amend the agenda and we'd like to make the following amendments we would like to add an agenda item to honor a staff member who's retiring and we also want to add item for a discussion on supporting the people's

[5:00] resolution concerning needed federal and state action to create a path for the Colorado residents Araceli Vasquez Ingrid in Colada Latorre Rosa Sabido and Sandra Lopez which is an item that Mary young put out on hotline so can I have a motion to amend the agenda second any discussion all those in favor it's unanimous okay and we're gonna start off tonight's meeting with two declarations and the first one what a mirror body is going to take care of and I don't know if that's on all right hi everybody so tonight we're gonna be honoring kgn

[6:01] you and their 40th anniversary so I'm going to read a declaration the boulder community broadcast Association incorporated better known as Kay GNU community radio began transmitting on a frequency 88.5 FM on May 22nd 1978 that is older than I am [Laughter] during these 40 years kay GNU community radio has worked diligently to fulfill its mission to stimulate educate and entertain and to amplify the voices and issues that are overlooked suppress or underrepresented by the commercial media cagey a new community radio provides our community with access to critical local public affairs and emergency management information cagey new community radio broadcast media that matters and music that inspires fueled by volunteer power and a commitment to public access to the airwaves cagey new community radio

[7:01] through its extensive internship and youth radio training labs endeavours to train the next generation of media makers k GNU community radio has been recognized as a crucial community asset for the contributions Kay GNU makes to media diversity arts and culture in Boulder the City Council of the city of Boulder Colorado declares May 22nd Keiji new community radio day and encourages all residents to celebrate the importance of local independent community media and its vital role in the democratic process [Applause] and did any representative the kg you folks did you guys want to say anything that's gonna alright good did Wow like

[8:07] just you were all here sure briefly you have to use the mic so that we know you could hear me in the back row without him but I did not found the station there were other great and who began four years before we've done 40 years ago today but I was on the volunteer roles that big day and I was a the engineer on the science program as a matter of fact and our producer was in fact one of the handful of people four people or so who sat through four years of free school class and meetings and filling out FCC forms and all the stuff

[9:01] you have to do getting the grants from the myriad of government organizations to get the transmitter and all that stuff so by the time I showed up I just needed to know you know which end of the mic to point at the guy in which end of the plug goes into the wall and we had a show and the first month that we were on the air our show came on it was kind of humble beginnings for many of us who didn't really have radio experience whatever we knew about audio let's say were sound or music the radio thing was a new experience the fact that the community came forward in enough depth and passion it helped us get over that initial hump there were some deep valleys and every day was the kind of a is this station could have survived another month just even when we had money there could be interpersonal squabbles again nobody knew how to do we were building it a day at a time as it came along I wasn't one of the inner circle by any means in those first couple of years I came on and got to be

[10:00] the paid guy after three years of broadcasting and maybe well-publicised going off the air coming back on they could hey one guy a starvation wage and I got to be the guy for a couple of years and that stabilized us so when I left the payroll in 83 it's been nothing but a steady upward growth since then fueled at every stage not so much by government largesse but by citizens coming forward with volunteer energy to make radio and also just ponying up a few bucks here and there granted we had the occasional person who could come in make a phone call and get us ten thousand bucks from somebody who would even remain anonymous and not want to have the transmitter named after him and stuff but mostly it was people just like the people in this room who came forward with their special skill or even not having any particular skill but merely wanting to be a part of this community organization and effort and we

[11:02] could teach him what we knew so far and we kept learning more and more each each month shall we say so over the years alena have we had a thousand volunteers do you think that we could list of all the people who have come come through their door more five six thousand ronson Wow at the moment I think we're around 300 and at any one moment for several years now it's been about that so spread throughout the community all ages all backgrounds Keiji and you continues to be I think a wonderful opportunity for members of the community and we perform I think a vital service during the flood I think you all remember people were tuning into us because we had the best information we hope to continue doing it to expand and be even better in the years to come but people just like you kept us going and helped us to get where we are today thank you all and thanks really to the volunteers including Roz who has put the committee together to help us celebrate this 40 year anniversary

[12:07] and I think we would all agree in this day and age of media consolidation and you know and by hedge funds and whatnot that it's really refreshing to have community owned and operated in fuelled media coverage so thank you okay so we have one more declaration and I guess I'm supposed to stand here and I would like to invite Tracy Winfrey to come up so we've been experiencing a little turnover it goes with being a big city but some retirements hurt more than others and this one hurts a little bit Tracy and we're gonna be really sad to see you go and we have a long resolution to to talk about all the amazing things you've done for the city so okay so this

[13:04] is all about it being also an addition to KGA new day it's Tracy Winfrey day so Tracy began her illustrious career at the city of Boulder in 1990 as a plan of transportation divisions go Boulder office in seven short years she was asked to manage the programs group of transportation innovators during her years with gold Boulder Tracy helped develop the Eco pass and CU student pass and to launch the nationally renowned boulder community transit network including the city's flagship hopper out plus the high-performing skip jump dash found all those routes and many more that continue to serve the community today Tracy was again promoted in 2001 to the position of the Director of Public Works for transportation in this capacity she oversaw the implementation and maintenance of a sustainable local transportation system she devoted herself to building regional partnership with neighboring communities serving as chair of the 36 community solutions and

[14:02] playing a key role in the creation and work of the us 36 mayors and commissioners coalition the capstone achievement of this of these regional efforts was a construction of the multimodal improvements along u.s. 36 including the Flatiron fire bus rapid transit service and the commuter bike way now considered a nationwide model for multimodal corridors which is very true and we thank you every day that we do we take that down to Denver okay we got a ways to go here so Tracy also oversaw the development of the for transportation master plans including one in 2014 which was honored with the Gold Award by the Denver Regional Council of Governments in addition she collaborated on and provided inspiration for the adoption of the city's transit village area plan now known as Boulder Junction which is a vibrant transit oriented walkable bikeable mixed use district and home to rdd's newest regional transit hub not satisfied with

[15:01] her well established reputation as a local and regional transportation rockstar Tracy also represented Boulder with distinction at national and international conferences including the International eco mobility Congress where she shared boulders transportation story with cities around the world while returning with new innovations to serve our community in May of 2015 she she began her second career just when she thought she had cemented her legacy Tracey was tapped to serve as director of open space and mountain parks during this time she helped the department continue the massive efforts to recover from the 2013 flood she helped launch a regional round table of land managers aged land acquisition and protecting and preserving open space values led the completion of the agricultural resources management plan the North Trail study area plan and supported a successful

[16:01] launch of the first master planning effort for all the states in mountain parks not to miss not one to miss out on the joy the outdoors Tracey took the opportunity to experience the big picture on the ground and it recounts a day that you had where you did lots of things I'm gonna skip ahead throughout her career Tracey dedicated herself to public service and made significant contributions to creating boulders walkable lifestyle to making it top u.s. bike-friendly City and to preserving and enhancing the communities more than 45,000 acres of open space but perhaps more important to those who worked with her every day she worked as a mentor dedicating to encouraging inspiring promoting and building leadership throughout the organization feeling best only when others received the credit due for a job well done for these reasons and countless others the City Council of the city of Boulder declares Tuesday May 22nd 2018 Tracie Winfrey Day and urges all members of our

[17:01] community to recognize the special occasion and I'm just gonna add that [Applause] that it's really true you've done an incredible amount you got to be so proud of all the things you've done and you're also so very humble about every darn one of those things so we are gonna miss you we're happy for you though and we want to hear a few words okay all right a very few words I would just say it has been just such an honor such a privilege to work in service of this community I think Boulder demonstrates time and time again that change happens at the local level and all the things that Suzanne

[18:01] mentioned and all the other things that the city works on it's taken this whole community to make meaningful change that the rest of the world watches it's an honor to work with the City Council it amazes me how people volunteer their time night after night day after day weekend after weekend boards and commissions volunteers throughout the community to make this community a special place whether it's volunteer Raptor monitors who volunteered with us for 30 years or the very first neighborhood group that got together to create the neighborhood eco pass I mean wow that is change happening at the local level so it's been such an honor such a privilege to be able to work with this leading-edge city to achieve many things and it couldn't be done without the people here and the caliber of staff that it's

[19:00] inspiring to me each and every day to work shoulder-to-shoulder with people who they devote their career to making the world a better place making their community a better place being in service of something bigger than themselves and I just count myself as fortunate to have had this career and fortunate to be able to have perhaps another career so thanks very much to all of you it's been a privilege [Applause] your next item is your consent agenda you have one item a tonight so the item has to do with first reading of our accessory dwelling unit ordinance and we're not going to discuss it tonight but just wanted to point out that this

[20:02] is one of those topics where it would be really helpful for people to get out first reading questions additional research that would be helpful for our deliberations that are coming up and if anybody wanted to take a minute to mention any of those research things that they would like this would be a good time to quickly do that so I've got a hotline that had one source of data on average rents for one and two-bedroom apartments and I would just like to ask staff to add to that with other sources because I think we should be clear on what we're looking at for comparables as we talked about it use yep so I'm in the process of just thinking through and preparing a hotline post that I'll put out probably tomorrow having to do with

[21:00] addressing some concerns in one neighborhood specifically Martin acres around saturation so I will do that tomorrow I have a few questions I'm wondering how many illegal units are in the city just an approximation since of course we can't know all of those but we ought to be able to do some sort of approximation in Mapleton Hill on university hill in Newlands in martin acres areas like that I think that even an approximation neighbors call in make complaints that it would be helpful to know this without some approximation of those numbers I don't know how we can move forward on creating new units additionally how many illegal short-term rentals I think I read on in our packet that there are somewhere around 400 of

[22:01] them that showed up on an Airbnb and VRBO yet there are many other platforms and how much how many units has the city licensed and then if we can enforce these how will we enforce the new units as the staff says on page 27 I mean we haven't an enforcement issue already that we hear about all over the city so I'm wondering how we would enforce these new ones if we indeed go through with it and another question is why does this is this presented as a one-size-fits-all rather than as a neighborhood by neighborhood issue which might meet with more approbation from the the groups who are actually being asked to do this and then what happens to units that are built in anticipation of a detached dwelling unit if saturation already

[23:00] exists for example there's one that's been built behind 7-eleven pine and there is another that is proposed for the second house in from ninth and pine so I'm wondering how we just there's so many questions that this raises that we saw from what the housing board and the Planning Board seemed to be all over the place with these so I'm just wondering and I'm not commenting but just these questions I think would help clarify and whether or not this is experimental rather than incremental and will illegal units be grandfathered and what will that do to saturation limits and how do we address equity across the city with all of these questions that I've just asked Lisa I just really have to two questions and

[24:04] one is how are we going to address the diversity of our various neighborhoods it's along the same lines as Cindy I don't think we can move forward one size move one size fits all and so I'd like to have some suggestions for how we start working in neighborhoods and addressing the different issues associated with a to use and then secondly but I think very important I certainly hope affordability is a major component of all of these a to use if not most of them and when you read about the history of a tea use it's clearly been there's always been an affordable component on that and so I guess I'm just wondering how are we

[25:02] going to keep it affordable and what kind of guidelines are you staff going to come forward I would second one Cindy and Lisa just said and I would also add and I'm not quite sure how stuff is going to answer this but having a mother who's a scientist I always learned that when you do an experiment and you change things you change one thing at a time so that you can see everything else is a constant see how it affects the others that are constant and so changing 12 things some of which I understand could be small so maybe change three things but there's one really big thing in there I'm kind of curious how we're gonna attract this how the metrics are gonna work to track 12 changes and how this is gonna almost kind of be like a downhill effect so that's I just would be curious how staff is tracking that right so various questions have been

[26:00] raised about affordability which hmm so I'd be interested to hear if staff could look into whether any of the many other Adu programs across the country include an affordability component and if so what that looks like thank you also in that vein how much would it cost for us to require permanently a permanent affordability is is it an extra staff member what is enforcement look like how are we ensuring it what about that new owners just it would be helpful to run through the logistics of it yeah I forgot one more what would a variance process look like to get in units that are not functioning legally at this time and how how would

[27:06] what would a variance process be for someone who wanted to add an Adu when the saturation limit was already met okay so I'm just curious how many people are currently on the waiting list for ad use due to the concentration limit so presumably the concentration limit has slowed down or stopped certainly to use I'm just curious how many that is and if raising it to 20% as has been discussed would take all of those people off the list are you able to tell if they're on the waiting list because of concentration or parking my understandings parking is the bigger prohibitor than the concentration limit staff let us know so we'll get back to

[28:01] you on that okay so the whole idea was to just get some of that out so that we can have a richer discussion I think and if you have more you can email them and I just have one word short one yeah so in our in our memo it said that 62 respondents to the ad you survey said that it be okay to allow options for residential infill in some neighborhood in some neighborhoods was there ever any discussion about what those neighborhoods would be okay so with that yeah obviously it's going to be a rich conversation but thought that would be helpful to kind of air that out a little bit okay so with that could I have a motion to move the consent agenda

[29:01] any more discussion this is just a pass this forward on first reading okay yeah you asked for discussion I don't want it okay I said if we do we need but yes he's gonna say I'm not gonna support this on first reading and I think because I don't think it's ready to be brought to us for discussion and I think there's too much pressure in getting this done too quickly for the community sake so I won't be supporting it fair enough any other comments I do wonder why we're having a first special meeting to accommodate this so why we wouldn't just do this in our normal business meeting so there's a good reason for that Jane will tell us the good reason is that the council asked us to get the ATU ordinance to the council before their

[30:01] retreat and their schedule is so busy in June that we weren't able and in May it's been busy that we weren't able to do it so I'm working with CAC we agreed that we would have second reading and public hearing on June 5th and in order to back that up to first reading May 22nd was the appropriate night because last meeting when you ordinarily would have had it you had several other items on the agenda thank you no thank you the recess yeah I meant the recess thank you so thank you for reminding me why we do this and the whole idea is we have a pretty ambitious agenda so we're just trying to get it all in before I was just gonna make a comment that I expect that this may take more than one additional reading as we work through the other issues so I think it's important to maybe set expectations that there will be an iterative process

[31:01] around ad use kind of like there was when we worked through the coop issues that feel right to people well or that is likely to happen that way what's it seeming that way it did to me doesn't feel necessary but understand that other people want to go that way I'll just throw one one one quick comment just to remind folks how high I don't have the number in front of me but how high a percentage of support there was for a to use in our statistically valid survey of the community for the comp plan process okay so good enough for now we can vote on moving this forward on first reading all those in favor is looks like seven all those opposed okay thank you for that you gonna yeah your next item is a staff update on the public process for the South Boulder Creek flood mitigation project and let

[32:02] me introduce Molly Scarborough from our public works department utilities who was the project manager for the South Boulder Creek flood mitigation project hello good evening it's at the right volume great and I also want to recognize that Jeff Arthur Director of Public Works for utilities as well as Kate Ryan and Kurt Vincent Raab members are in the audience as well for this empty so this slide shows the overall timeline for the South Boulder Creek flood mitigation projects I'll be stepping you through this timeline at a very high level and then we'll focus on and provide a greater level of detail for the public process for the current and next phases of the design for the Phase one flood mitigation projects the public process for the current phase carries forward and builds upon past studies

[33:01] community input and decisions made at each stage of this timeline so to begin in 2003 the city initiated a floodplain remapping study for the South Boulder Creek flood plain which included an extensive analysis of the South Boulder Creek Basin hydrology the revised flood plain mapping was accepted by the city in 2008 and by FEMA in 2010 the city then initiated a flood mitigation master plan for South Boulder Creek in early 2010 in partnership with the urban drainage and flood Control District the master plan recommended three phases for flood mitigation I do want to note that North is to the right on this map so that's a little different in the far left in white is phase one regional detention at u.s. 36 which is the project we are currently working on designing phase one select was selected to be the first phase because of the large down Street and flood benefits by

[34:01] reducing the risk of floodwaters overtopping us 36 and spilling over into the West Valley the master plan also included two other future phases phase 2 is shown in purple and would include other improvements to the West Valley the third phase is shown in green and would include storm water detention at the Flatirons Golf Course just south of Arapaho Avenue the next step in the south boulder creek flood mitigation project was the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan Update as I mentioned earlier the South Boulder Creek master plan identified as phase one reasonable attention at u.s. 36 on the University of Colorado's to use south property and just for orientation this map north is because the see South property is not owned by the city in order to put flood mitigation project at this location we will need an agreement with the property owner CEO stated that it would like this property be annexed into the city limits

[35:01] and with annexation C you will agree for the city to use a portion of the property for flood mitigation because of this during the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan Update process the future see you suppose has discussed extensively with the community this input ultimately led to the creation of Cu South guiding principles that were included to complement the future land use designations on the site the Comprehensive Plan up to aid including the C's South guiding principles were approved by the city's Planning Board City Council Boulder County Planning Commission and the Boulder County Board of County Commissioners in July of 2017 these new land use designations and guiding principles were intended to guide the future agreement a future agreement between the city and Cu for the long term uses on the site the blue area labeled public on this map is where future development by Cu could take place the dark green area labeled parks urban and other at the top is the area

[36:01] envisioned for regional flood detention and the boundaries of this were based on the South Boulder Creek master plan phase 1 concept the lighter green labeled open space other corresponds to the 500-year floodplain and envision some sort of open space and no enclosed structural development by CU in this area in the future the guiding principles clarify expectations for each of the land use designations on the site among other things the guiding principles provide direction for the flood mitigation area this includes directions to evaluate the different flood events during the design process including the 100-year 500-year and long duration storm events as well as to evaluate the possibility of removing the existing CU levee on this map is that faded white curved line kind of to the right and the light green sir prior to City Council considering

[37:01] whether to bring C south into the city limits we know that further conversations that the community will need to be had to better define what will occur on the site such as setting parameters for future development or specific protections for open space and habitat restoration however before we engage in these more detailed conversations around the future of the site it's important to take the next steps in the design of the flood mitigation project this will allow us to better understand the location of the project on the site and the way it might affect some of these other discussions about the site so just as a reminder the parks urban other land-use that is shown in the dashed red lines up there was based on the south boulder creek master plan concept which assumed that the C levee would remain in place and was focused on mitigating the hundred year storm the adopted guiding principles are asking us now to look at mitigating the possibility of mitigating the 500 year storm as well as look at the potential

[38:01] of removing the C levee so with these different variations being explored this could change the shape and the footprint of where flood mitigation project and inundation area might happen on the site for this reason we're taking the next steps in the flood mitigation concept evaluation in selection to understand how much land we will need from Cu for the project which will then help to inform the next rounds of community discussion around the other future uses on this youself site so we are now applying the boulder valley comp plan C self guiding principles direction to the phase 1 flood mitigation project for your regional detention us 36 here's a high-level timeline for the phase 1 project we're currently in the concept evaluation phase at a minimum each of the concepts that we're considering must prevent overtopping of us 36 during a

[39:00] hundred year storm and again a hundred year storm it has one percent probability of occurring in a given year the concept must also be permitted by the regulatory agencies such as FEMA EPA US Fish and Wildlife Service as well as the acceptable to the state engineer's office and CSI south guiding principles were also evaluating design concepts to address the 500 year storm as well as a long duration low intensity storm and concept variations with and without the existing Cu South levee the different mitigation design concepts to the community advisory boards and councils soon this summer for a discussion on which concept we should move forward into the next steps of preliminary engineering but first I want to talk

[40:00] about the interrelationship of the project engineering schedules shown in the blue bar here and the future discussions around annexation of the University of Colorado Boulder south property as I mentioned once we know which concept will move forward into preliminary design we'll have a better idea of where and how much land we'll need on scene yourself for flood mitigation potential agreement between the city and see you on future uses of the CU south property these discussions will be happening currently to use the land for flood mitigation from all property owners that includes Cu the Colorado Department of Transportation and Council of course before we move into the final design and construction of the project we anticipate that the preliminary engineering for the project will take approximately a year and so we will be working towards reaching a

[41:00] potential agreement with property owners for council consideration within that year now I'll describe the public process timeline for the concept evaluation preliminary design phases of the project so this timeline zooms in to show the community engagement and advisory board and council and but planned for the concept evaluation phase that we're currently in and also for the next phase of preliminary design just you do have a handout of this in front of you if you want to look at it a little closer in more detail to orient you the central blue bar shows the flood mitigation project phases an estimated timeline for those above the bar shows completed and plans community engagement and below the bar shows planned advisory board and council meetings so starting with Community Engagement to review the project design concepts being considered

[42:00] and to get feedback on evaluation criteria to use to differentiate between the different flood mitigation concepts we've also met three times with an ad hoc group of nine interested community members who requested to meet with staff and consultants to discuss the consultants scope of work and technical details about the project design concepts being considered we now realize admittedly in hindsight that we had underestimated the level of interest in the technical details of this project by some community members so we had not previously planned for regular community updates on the project during the early part of this phase of the project this group was very interested in understanding the details and the status of the consent work and wanted the opportunity to provide feedback directly to the project team so they asked to meet with staff and consultants and we agreed to three meetings with this group we hold those meetings once a month from March to mid-may and now we have caught up to the point at which we were originally

[43:00] planning to engage the larger community in the valuation of the different design concepts so we're now gearing up for the next open house on June 7th the design concepts are evaluation of them and getting feedback before we present this information to OS BT and Rab ideally at a joint meeting in June just so you know that June date is still tentative if we're still confirming that we can have quorum of both boards at that meeting so that date is tentative at this time come back to each of those boards separately in July for their deliberations and recommendations to Council os BTE will be looking at the different concepts to determine if they could be acceptable to them as a property owner will then be asking web to make a recommendation on which project concept to move forward into preliminary design on how we have applied and as our guiding principles to

[44:02] the project and how the OS BT and rad recommendations relate to the boulder valley complan land uses and guiding principles then come back to Council on August 7th for a decision on which project concept to move forward into the next phase of preliminary engineering the flood mitigation concept selection will be coming back to Council for a study session on September 18th this will need to discuss the draft approach for the annexation process and Community Engagement to get your feedback on our approach before we reach out to the community on those issues in advance of the meeting and we'll relay their feedback to you at the September 18th study session during preliminary design for the flood mitigation project staff will provide regular updates to web and the community on the progress of the project design and we'll be keeping

[45:01] project information up today on the website on south boulder creek comm we have learned that there is a lot of interest in the details of design of this project by a number of community members not just as an ad-hoc group so we are now planning for providing regular updates where the community can learn about the status of the design ask questions and provide feedback to the project team so between the upcoming board and council meetings regarding the design concept selection future annexation related engagement lab updates and other flood mitigation project progress updates we anticipate roughly monthly touch points with the community on this project probably over the next year so if that concludes my update presentation I'm happy to answer questions thank you for that presentation I was wondering you know we're in the concept evaluation phase

[46:01] and you talked about all right Oh SPT and Rab having a joint meeting and then giving recommendations and then I noticed that it's going to Planning Board on August 2nd and whether its formal or informal why aren't we asking for planning board to weigh in on their recommendations so it's my I read the memo and it's my understanding that planning board and does not typically have purview over flood control mitigation projects or flood engineering projects that's Rabb's purview OSP T's purview as a property owner has sort of a special purview in this area we understand planning boards interest and that's why we wanted to provide the relationship to the boulder valley comp plan cu self guiding principles so that they can understand how this mitigation

[47:03] project relates to that before we bring it to you but they don't have a specific purview over the engineering of this project I understand that but eventually they'll be asked to recommend make a recommendation on enix ation and certainly this is a major land use issue in terms of how it's going to be zoned and stuff like that so I guess I'm very much interested in hearing from the Planning Board and I like the sequencing the OS BT and the rap but I think it's very important to get planning board's input in this whether it be formal or informal and we anticipate hearing comments from Planning Board and certainly being able to relate that back to council it's great question and that has to do with this planning

[48:05] board part of the preliminary design so they will it will go to the Planning Board before it comes to City Council with regard in that preliminary design yeah and so again that's during the preliminary design phase of the flood mitigation projects that are going to Planning Board is really around the annexation issue and our plans for Community Engagement so yes we have not set a date yet for that but we do anticipate going to them particularly around the annexation process plans and community engagement plans before we come to you at this study session a recommendation regarding annexation before we came back to Council okay and then one last question about the project

[49:01] concept I assumed this concept will be somewhat iterative that we'll have a few options yes we have looked at about 15 different options but they are really sort of sub variations of three main concepts with different flood events and with and without the Cu Levy etc etc and so we are bringing evaluation of all of those different concept variations forward to the boards soon thank you sorry a couple questions for you think that was a clear presentation and it's very well laid out the process so it's easy to understand and it looks like a great process so thank you for all your work on this thank you I know there's a lot of attention paid to it you're in the spotlight my understanding is that so on August 7th we're going to select a project concept right that's up to us at that point based on the recommendations we're getting and feedback from Planning

[50:00] Board if not are not a recommendation then the September 18th meeting that's just about process is that correct correct how staff is proposing and working through the annexation process annexation agreement process as well as the community engagement and the topics around community engagement for annexation over the following nine months to a year okay very good so so we'll be talking about what process default but not picking any making any choices at that correct yes we wanted to come to you early on to make sure we were reaching out to the community in the right way making sure we were asking the right questions and so it would not be a decision point at that point but certainly get your input on that process great call thank you so my other question was so just in looking at this timeline over the next year and a half or so and then moving into the next phases is there any time where kind of the planners and the engineers or have

[51:02] done their work and then they're sitting around waiting a few months while we talk about stuff or is it kind of really proceeding kind of a pace as they finish their work we make decisions we are trying to sequence the preliminary design with the conversations around annexation the reality is as we go out to the public and hear feedback from the public around annexation we don't know how long that will take we are aiming to align those so that when we are done with the preliminary engineering we will be ready to discuss a decision around annexation with you all but I can't make those promises right now simply because Community Engagement is an unknown right and we want to be true to that process it needs to be a genuine process absolutely I just I'll just invite you of course our calendar fills up fast sometime so please do reach out to CAC early you know when when you're seeing what needs to happen when it needs to

[52:01] get on our calendar just reach out dive I don't know if I'll still be on so you see it that way but whatever it comes okay on page eight of the slideshow you have kind of the timeline and the designs one year final design one year construction two years but given that we're just in concept evaluation and haven't even chosen the final one to move forward with how confident are you that like what if we choose do you think my question is the designs you're gonna bring forward to us preview which will be rolling out to others soon but sort of preliminary understanding of that is that we believe that all the different concepts that we are bringing forward

[53:00] will roughly have the same schedule I know that was important to the community and when we asked at the open house level of importance of different criteria schedule was definitely one of them and so we've looked at that there are different things influencing the schedule on different concepts but it's our understanding from the consultants that they're all roughly about the same so again these are obviously approximations that will evolve over time but it's our understanding that one concept doesn't extend that timeline significantly more than another so I just wanted to say that having seen at the open house that you guys put on which was a really fantastic event I think for letting people see these three concepts are pretty interesting and they're not just simply a single one so it's gonna be something that I think we

[54:00] will need to make sure that people get the opportunity to become educated about and the next meetings that we have with Rab and OS BT and planning board I think it's important that all of those bodies get a chance to really air out including Planning Board because the decisions they'll be making afterwards will be influenced by the selections that are made of the specific projects so land-use decisions will probably follow flood mitigation decisions and so the earlier they can see it and be part of it I think the better but anyway this will be fun these are some interesting different ideas and on that note we encourage all to come see the public open house on the 7th to get a preview and similarly that is why we're splitting the OSB T rad initial presentation of information and then the follow up deliberations because we know it will be a lot to digest and we want everyone to have the opportunity to really think through the different concepts how was the second one go too

[55:00] different from the one that was on April 23rd so on April 23rd we identified as I mentioned we're looking at 15 different variations but three main concept this next presentation will actually show concept diagrams for more of the variations so you can actually see the difference in SE the structure in the inundation level between a hundred year design variation versus a 500 year design variation there's a different footprint that occurs from that and so we'll be diving into the detail of some of those sub variations a little bit more in addition we've each of those variations according to different criteria cost environmental impacts flood benefit etc and so we will be presenting that evaluation / concepts so people can kind of see the trade-offs

[56:01] between so you've done that much since the lesson yes sorry if I'm in your presentation okay to get married can I just ask for the benefit of the public if you can tell people when that meeting is and where it is which is where the 30 to 7:30 in the evening thanks very much and can you tell us what kind of rainstorm this just wanted to weigh in on getting planning board's feedback on the concept of science and I too would be very interested in seeing that all he thinks that it was very helpful this is a genuinely a question not a criticism I see we call that back in August of 2015 when City Council moved with this mitigation plan there was discussion that the berm would be completed around 2018 or 2019 I'm remembering correctly

[57:03] looks like we're now looking for a competition of around 2022 which is about three or four years later than was originally discussed when the community asks you that question just so we know how to answer that question as well how do you how do we explain the lengthening time period I was not around during that time so I may not provide the best answer and that I think Jeff Arthur might correct me if I'm wrong I suspect that the conversations around the boulder valley comp plan and see yourself the kid development of the guiding principles put the engineering of the flood mitigation project on hold while we had those community conversations around the future of CU south and then we came back and sort of restarted the projects fall of last year after this you South guiding principles were developed so that's what I suspect is that what intervened in between the

[58:00] development of the master plan and the start of the flood mitigation design process okay but even if we started last year the fall last year which is 2017 still looks like is a five-year process from from that start to completion is that correct okay so that is a longer as

[59:17] well guiding principles there are some areas where there's a little vague or concepts for instance in open space has a very clear definition of how they define open space open space land use designation has a wider sort of honing in on once we know the shape of the blue

[60:06] around that we'll discuss in our approach when we come back on 18th but in our starting point and working to refine those areas within it so in terms

[61:00] of the public process you know recently there was this ad hoc group but going forward it's just public updates anybody can come here and update and give your opinion but you could give it anyhow and it's not a working group so much as public an opportunity for the public to make sure they're tracking the details is that accurate that is our yes that is our plan to do that certainly regular updates we're needed depending on the progress of the project some community meeting updates as well as we're having engagement around annexation there might be just sort of a tag-along update on the flood mitigation project with that so we want to kind of utilize all those different tools as we move forward okay good well I just I think that's good I think having just lend a note of support for the public process being in public yeah so I guess I'll just maybe tie this

[62:00] up by saying this is really helpful I think it's very clear to the public there's lots of opportunities for people to to engage to learn more to give opinions and I also think that we regularly get emails and conversations with people that are very concerned that we keep moving forward expeditiously that appears to be a guiding principle here and as I think much appreciated I think we all agree we need to keep moving forward on the flood aspects especially every time it rains I know it makes people nervous so great anything else okay thank you so much thank you your next item is a council discussion on supporting the people's resolution so I'm going to Mary do you want to mention this yeah real quickly this resolution was

[63:03] afforded to me by a immigration activist Bob Norris and it's the product of about five months of discussion and meetings with different folks such as immigrants rights activists and attorneys and faith communities and it's based on some recommendations that were put together by some folks that are in sanctuary across different across Colorado and and I just wanted to bring it forward to Council so that if we just to see if council would want to sign up for the resolution as a body we can each sign up individually it would be of course impeccable if the whole city council signed up for it so I brought it forward to ask that you

[64:02] consider that discussion on the good look thanks Mary for doing that I definitely do support it and so are we looking for a vote tonight to go ahead and support this resolution yeah so I wonder if you might read the resolution so that we have that for our own context and for the public into a mic all right I'll read the whole thing concerning needed federal and state action to create a path for Colorado residents Araceli Velasquez Ingrid ANCA da de la Torre Rosa Sabido and Sandra Lopez whereas Immigration and Customs Enforcement is focusing its extensive resources on the

[65:00] state of Colorado with the second highest deportation rate in the country with ice detentions and arrests doubling in Colorado and Wyoming in fiscal year 2017 whereas Colorado families businesses and local communities are experiencing crises due to inaction at the federal level whereas more than 71,000 u.s. citizen children whose parents are undocumented Coloradans are powerless to apply for relief whereas the bipartisan Colorado delegation has a responsibility to work towards solution and to recognize the contributions of these four women to their communities whereas our current immigration policies by the path to legal residency for for Colorado women who represent thousands of other residents of the state of Colorado whereas our four women have complied with all requested of them by our immigration system short of deportation

[66:00] and participated to the fullest extent in the life of Colorado whereas our four women are engaged in extraordinary sacrifice by claiming sanctuary to keep their families together and remain in their communities whereas our four women have significant and widespread support across Colorado for their significant contributions to our community whereas Araceli Velazquez arrived to the US seeking asylum in 2010 and faces direct threat to her life if forced to return to El Salvador she and her husband Jorge are raising three years citizen children or hajr five Christopher three and Keven fourteen months her previous Liars did not sufficiently prepare her asylum defense ice denied her stay application in 2017 and current law does not allow her husband who has temporary protective status to apply for her or a justice status and current law does not allow her to apply through her minor children as Ingrid in Kalevala Thor has lived in

[67:03] Colorado more than half her life arriving at age 17 and 2001 she and her partner Eliseo are raising two children who US citizen children Brian 9 and Annabelle - Ingrid is a well known leader across the country and the state and her only infection has been to work to sustain herself and even though she completed our restitution and rehabilitation required of her and has expressed deep remorse for the impacts of our loss laws on the person impacted her deportation continued and current law does not include a path for Ingrid to apply for status there her minor children nor her citizen and it is inhumane to foot further Finnish people beyond the penalties imposed by the criminal justice system and a 1996 law iír IRA I don't know what that stands for and it doesn't say

[68:00] the power of discretion from immigration judges to consider evidence of actual personal character closing a path to status for mother's like Ingrid and I our IRA is a failed and inhumane experience experiment and depriving fairness to so many like Ingrid in the United States continuously since 2001 Sanda is a well-known member of Roaring Fork Valley community and Colorado living here with her husband and raising her their three u.s. children at Le Toux and Edwin 13 and her oldest son Alex who is attending his first year at Mesa State University in Grand Junction studying mechanics and Sanders deportation began with wrongful arrests when one of her young kids dialed 9-1-1 and hung up all charges were immediately dropped local police reported sandra to ice and ice refused to grant her last day of deportation and current law does not allow senator to apply through her

[69:00] minor children and immigration proceedings continued against people even when charges are dropped or they are found innocent and there is no path to status for long-term residents of Colorado as the vast majority of the last 28 years in Colorado with her citizens stepfather and mother Rosa is well known and a fixture in southwest Colorado between her catering business and as pool secretary for the Catholic Church Rosa is the main support for her aging citizen parents salsa complied with the terms of ices order of supervision between 2008 and 2017 and received stays of removal between 2011 and 2017 this year without explanation ice tonight or seventh application first day and Rosa has been the beneficiary of her mother's immigration petitions since 2001 but client law has delayed her mother's application for by 17 years Ragosa is now classified in the family

[70:00] based preference category 1 as the adult unmarried daughter of a US citizen based on the number of visas set by Congress for each immigrant category and the number of petitions ahead of her it will start be many years before Rosa will be able to apply for a lawful permanent resident residents based on her mother's petition for her what can you just skip ahead to the part about what we're gonna do as a delegation anyway why don't we skip to the last that everybody has a flavor of the last three paragraphs the last three paragraphs by using the authority of the office to provide and this is the Colorado delegation and our Colorado delegation to Washington and the state legislature and the governor by using the authority of their office to provide official mercy and support to all four

[71:00] women to enact policy changes at the state and federal level allowing our Colorado residents to participate in the well-being of our state and the opportunity to apply for a path to status by taking steps to value the tapestry of our communities the unity of our families and our humanity and take steps such as below to create a pathway to citizenship for all undocumented people as the Colorado delegation worked to create a path for temporary protective status and I'll just shorten those maintain a commitment to human rights by protecting asylum seekers restore past legal permanent residency for parents of us children by repealing the iír IRA restore past a citizenship by giving back to judges the discretion to consider a personal character by repealing a IRA create a transparent and timely path so fulfilling our promise to families by eliminating quotas that mean decades of waiting for millions of parents and their children as the

[72:00] Colorado Legislature and governor to uphold our Constitution and require Immigration and Customs Enforcement to show a judicial warrant in Colorado before receiving informant information about or detaining people allow for equal access to the justice system mean to serve Colorado residents by creating a bright line between law enforcement and ice including becoming Immigration and Customs Enforcement and probation safeguard Colorado against iír IRAs devastating double jeopardy and deportation impacts through public advocacy and mercy okay second second we have a motion we have a second okay any discussion so I'm a little concerned about adopting an oral resolution I understand it's not before us before you it's not in the packet notice other than

[73:01] hotline not the way we normally do things it's a resolution yeah the Charter says you act by resolution ordinance or declaration and so how is this not a resolution it's not in writing it's not before you it's not part of the packet I think that Mary sent sent a link to this on hotline yeah it's not publication we don't get that way sir I have a question tom would your suggestion be to bring this back at the June 5th meeting yeah we could do it on consent we can type it up and put it in the pack and provide adequate notice series that meet the schedule requirements for this because no it doesn't snow time ish issue here Mary yeah and yes and it was tonight tell me is there a difference between a resolution and a declaration the the Charter is is

[74:02] sort of ambiguous on that Bob it just says you act by a by ordinance or resolution and so resolutions in action I guess a declaration would not be I don't want to go back I mean this feels to me more like a declaration this is this is our request to our legislators both of the state and federal level to take certain actions right well can we just have this discussion and it seems like well I guess we haven't and a vote but I would think most people would be in favor of it and then move forward with the formal letter just by us without a resolution but we can write a letter from the City Council right Tom yes and we can agree to do that in the public right now well then we can put the words of the resolution on our consent agenda June 5th but that would

[75:01] address the action needed to be taken tonight well I think I think that we can meet the deadline because we can as a body decide to go to the website and sign on to this resolution which is different from resolution so and that's what we're really asking for tonight is the ability to I'm asking for the ability for the for one of us on council to go on and say the Boulder City Council and you do need to be a group so that would be great I think probably is more appropriate fear for the City Council to adopt a motion for the city manager to sign on behalf of the city of Boulder that you can authorize to do and the city manager acts on behalf of the city of Boulder and then you can do a

[76:00] subsequent resolution so we can accomplish the intent of tonight's and then you would so Aaron's trying to jump in here with a suggestion so it's just you could change your motion to one that's authorizes Jane to sign this on behalf of the City Council right so I move that City Council authorize the city manager to sign on to this resolution behalf of the City Council on behalf the city of Boulder on behalf of the city of Boulder second okay have we resolved that how are you feeling good and then we also put it as a resolution or we don't need to on the fifth we might as well yeah yeah let's have it as a formal record okay so we will do both Dean are you okay with that sure okay this seems like the right thing to do yeah do we need to discuss it further well I just say Tommy would have been handy to get a heads-up so we might have

[77:01] been able to remedy the published thing ahead of time I thought we were good yeah I just want to make a comment that I find it unfortunate that we have to do this but I'm proud to be one member of the Council which I think all of us to be happy to sign for this but it's it really says speaks volumes that we have to go to these links to do this thank you Mary for bringing it forward yeah all those in favor oh we do we made a motion word anybody from the public like to speak to this okay we will close the button anybody any more discussion okay thank you for bringing it to our attention Mary it is unanimous

[78:04] great thank you ma'am so with that we're ready to move to our study session is there any other matters here before we adjourn this special meeting mmm wish good help to Jane yes okay two minutes and then we'll go right to our study sessions [Applause] [Applause] [Music]

[79:00] [Music] [Music]

[81:15] okay city council come back [Music] okay thank you all right well they can hear us in there no no while they're waiting

[82:02] I'll wait first we need five one two since we have five of us I know some of the folks are waiting for the restroom but we'll go ahead and they can hear us in there I know but in the okay we now have six okay yes it's it's my pleasure to introduce Karen Ron this evening I'd like to acknowledge her retirement announcement earlier today

[83:00] it's with mixed emotions of course Karen's 22 years of amazing service and significant community contributions have just been outstanding and it's been my pleasure to work with her over the past few years we'll have an opportunity to celebrate Karen more during the month of June but I did just want to acknowledge her announcement today Thank You Miriam and many thanks to Karen her staff team for tonight's presentation as well as the Human Relations Commission we're still a little in denial Karen well you have six weeks to okay so why don't you start okay counsel I'm Karen Human Service Services also with me tonight presenting is Carmen at Elana our manager of community relations in office of human rights and

[84:02] our human relations commissioner chair Anna Kiel manka car will also be speaking we also have in the audience with us and available for questions the rest of our HRC members art Fiegel Lauren Gifford Lindsey Loberg and Sharon Simmons and we also have a couple of our youth opportunities advisory board members here to answer any questions about vote 16 neighbor Martinez and dick Sims so we have a full complement to folks here to answer any questions so we're here tonight to provide an update on the HRC our Human Relations Commission inclusive and welcoming and also to ask council for some specific feedback on legislative initiatives that the HRC is interested in pursuing so we have about a presentation and then we can have followed by council questions and discussion opening remarks about the

[85:04] HRC's work and the development to the work plan tonight the Human Relations Commission is really happy to be able to get this opportunity to present to you the Human Relations Commission so just so people know we have a goal in advising the city on improving social conditions and alleviating social problems in the city and an overall goal of fostering positive relations among all citizens and community members additionally we assist in the protection of human rights in the city in doing so we we make legislative and policy recommendations we allocate community funding for cultural and social issue events such as indigenous peoples day and celebration of immigrant Heritage Month and we also conduct community outreach and issues of importance as well tonight in this welcome and

[86:03] inclusive plan it presents' to the top is that the Human Relations Commission has identified that we would like to work on for 2018 and 2019 we consider the public feedback and multiple community engagement processes that have informed both the plan and the initiatives earlier tonight just to give you an idea of the comprehensiveness of the community engagement we and the staff have done I just want to mention both the Human Services and homelessness strategy updates a community perceptions assessment which began in 2015 was initiated by the council and completed in 2017 this was to assess to conduct a broad data gathering and outreach in the community on how welcoming inclusive different segments of the population feel in the community after that we had a in November 2017 at a community perceptions assessment open house which

[87:01] was an opportunity again for the community to give feedback on this study and to present solutions and ideas of what they would like the Human Relations Commission in the city to do about the issues that came up in the study additionally we have had lots of public feedback especially since the 2016 election and Human Relations Commission meetings and we've conducted issues on immigration as well so all of that is going into has gone into developing this plan because I meant to you tonight and we put those legislative initiatives that we would like council feedback on to move I would be remiss if I didn't mention in listing all of those studies and all the community engagement this Commission has done if I didn't think the council and the city manager's office for helping us plan those and especially all members of the Human Relations Commission between 2015 and now and Kevin and the staff for changing all of those community forums it was a lot it was a lot to do but we developed a good plan on the Human

[88:03] Relations Commission is happy to answer any questions you have of us and on this we'll plan and presentation thank you thank you Nikhil so just a just to let folks know that the work plan that's being presented today is part of an annual work plan process at the HRC engages in and each year they update that and as Nikhil mentioned this particular work plan incorporated some pretty significant community feedback from different community engagement processes including the community perceptions assessment the open house results from that which is included in your packets public comment from HRC meetings and different HRC events so a lot of information went in to the HRC developing their work plan they also develop some very specific focus areas that led to the initiatives that were talking about tonight particularly

[89:00] tonight it will be focused on three legislative initiatives at the HRC would like to move forward and would like council feedback on whether that would be feasible for them and staff so I just want to mention briefly because this was a pretty important part of the community engagement process was the city's community perception assessment that was published in 2017 it was conducted by the the National Council on crime and delinquency and it was really to get feedback from the public and the community on how they perceive and experience inclusiveness in our community in November of 2017 the city held an open house hosted by the HRC to gather feedback on the specific recommendations and potential action that the community in the city can take I'm gonna turn it over now the comments could talk a little more specifically about the recommendations that came out of that process which led to the development to the work plan oh what's off I'm sorry

[90:14] sorry which brings us to the open house it was an opportunity for community members to weigh in on recommendations made in the community perceptions assessment report so there are four stations that were aligned with means and recommendations that were identified in the report these included policy and government community business and services individuals and interpersonal an orientation station at the beginning set the context for the background and for the information and then we had an exit station that provided an opportunity for people to take a survey which prioritized actions participants could attend an area of interest or they could go through all the stations that night so each station was attended by city staff and community organizations based

[91:01] on the theme stations featured specific questions for the public to react to and an opportunity to provide an open-ended feedback which was recorded on sticky notes and poster boards this feedback formed the basis for the community suggestions so it is particularly notable about comments made by open house participants is the extent of agreement and consistency the the only majority of participants saw the five recommendations listed here as the highest priorities intentional conversations are often conversations about delicate or sensitive issues and we had a number of these for instance related to indigenous peoples day specifically with regards to history so in expanding outreach and in the second bullet it has to do with making an app to interact with communities on terms that are feasible for them that involves

[92:01] scheduling events when people are not working providing language interpretation and childcare and then the next two bullets increase representation and hire diverse staff those are self-explanatory but when you get to the final bullet it has the words affordability and diversity right next to each other the issue of affordability comes up frequently but that's not within the purview of the HRC but it is a present in the minds of HRC members as they develop their work plan now because the HRC work plan is in essence a welcoming and inclusive community blueprint it overlaps considerably with the community perceptions assessment and the open house comments so bullets on this slide how largely to do with encouraging insight and to each other's cultures so learning enough about each other so there are not feelings of insensitivity

[93:01] or microaggressions above all to eliminate the likelihood of situations such as those in news stories where someone calls the police because a person they come into contact with seems different this quality of being insightful into each other's lives and cultures is sometimes called cultural versatility so the bullets on this site can be summarized as efforts to foster cultural versatility so now we shift our attention from the insight from the issues of insights and cultural versatility to policies developed to prohibit bias motivated actions since 2007 Boulder has had a sentence enhancement ordinance that increases penalties when a crime against an individual or a property as bias-motivated so the HRC is interested in exploring whether boulders law which is Boulder of ice code title 5 - 2 - 3 D

[94:01] is effective in providing protections from fear intimidation harassment and physical harm they try to see fills that it's imperative that the laws that prohibit bias-motivated hate crimes and the prosecution of these crimes can be evaluated and revised more effectively to address the needs of victims so the municipal level if you're wondering what these crimes would be they're assault in the third degree brawling physical harassment threatening bodily injury the use of fighting words and the damaging property of another next we have is a policy the number of cities around the country have informated you get all the way through okay Sam which would you prefer we're almost done with the presentations okay

[95:01] yep so the next is a policy that a number of cities around the country have implemented the best is to illustrate the best way to illustrate the intent of non citizen voting is through examples so non citizen citizens pay local sales tax giving them the giving them a bill and local elections amounts to giving them some safe and how their taxes are used they must comply with laws the can't vote to consent non-citizens also serve in the military the cat bolt for government represented its representatives that send them to war or conflicts and also non-citizens can't vote even though their parents and legal representatives to millions of US citizens so here the intent of granting non citizen voting rights is to enfranchise people who have a direct stack stake in local policies so the HRC supports

[96:02] either a citizen lead or a council led initiative in 2019 and the third the last initiative legislative recommendation is of local initiative that is a that is in part a national movement among youth to effect change it's not lost on our youth opportunity advice you brought that young people are affected sometimes disproportionately so bylaws and bylaws and policies there for young people are pressing from our formal role in shaping these laws and policies so like non citizen voting the HRC supports either a citizen LED or a community or a council that initiative in 2019 okay so that's our overview of the HRC work plan with the key legislative questions that

[97:02] they have and we they we and they would be happy to answer any questions so I'd suppose propose that we start with one and work our way through it and then move to the next so why don't we start with sentence enhancement okay I guess I have a few questions first for Tom so the laws that exist now as adopt in 2007 Tom allows first of all finding by the municipal judge that there was a race or a crime that was motivated by protected class as I correct is that how that works yes and the judge it has the discretion after she hears or the evidence to add an additional thousand dollars to whatever punishment she would allow that's correct and so I guess the questions to HRC or maybe the staff what on what incremental enhancement would you propose that we would have staff look into and did you have something in - worst jail time or

[98:00] additional penalties over and above time we have a statutory limit on what we can do is that right overall there's a constitutional limit and what centers it's a year in jail you're in jail and what's these are financial limit I'm not familiar I'm not sure ten thousand or some some number yeah I don't know that the Constitution has ever been construed to have an absolute limit for the number I think at some point it becomes sure excessive but at least a year in jail yeah I know about the yeren jail okay and so this is HRC have a recommend as to build on what was done in 2007 to a recommendation or maybe staff does on what to add to to what we have in the law right now so so I think we don't have that specific recommendation because I think the looking at the ordinance is much broader than just what the penalties might be and and looking at how effective the ordinance has been how many cases because maybe there's some substantive changes that need to be made and do you have that data in hours at work that you'd have to do if we

[99:00] wanted you to go forward when we checked into the data what's happening is a lot of local cases are charged at a state level because there are more serious charges so it would take some looking into municipal court databases to see exactly that but from from what I have been able to examine there are there are a few there aren't very many at a municipal level yeah and Tom presumably the in addition to as current said the the Karen said the penalties presumably we would want to provide judge cook or a municipal court with some guidance has two protected classes probably pretty well defined but what it is that we would expect the municipal court to look at when they're considering enhanced and there are hints punishments or sentences whatever those might be is that right so it's kind of a process question and a substantive question about what it is to look for and then what the enhancement

[100:01] of these would be I also think is to looking at and seeing whether it's an effective ordinance my understanding of some other cities have tinkered with theirs to try to improve them and I don't know I think Nikhil m'as may be poking around to look at what some cities have been doing that might strengthen that I don't know if you wanted to weigh in on this question either eyes of national what's happening nationally with the lives of hate and incitement of hate we've seen an uptick of paid climbs between 2016 and now so some communities you know city states have been looking at updating the laws and strengthening them so those components would be since this mismatch between a municipal state and at the federal level on what protected classes they have we

[101:02] actually have a pretty good the municipal as it was enacted is pretty inclusive in its language but for instance some states don't have include disability identity up until 2018 with the leasing bill by Mike foot at the state level so those actions to assess these and then look into what people can do better specifically something I found that might be helpful to the local municipal ordinance is the state of Florida just updated the bias-motivated crimes law to a couple mixed-motive hate crimes so this is an issue in these and thinking of why they don't get charged often why this difficulty putting them forth in the courts as well so let's say someone gets in a traffic accident and they get out exchange information and one of the motorists is black and all of a sudden

[102:01] someone shouting racial epithets and assaults them they win those cases go to trial they can present a defense saying it wasn't because this was I was really upset about the traffic accident well confusing that and the way defense attorneys can use that and it was awful assaults and these charges either being dropped or taken to trial because the DA's know they can't get a conviction one of them failing at trial police not having the probably direction to charge them at all based on that confusion so in updating mixed derivative hate crimes in Florida they have some language they used to do that additionally I found and in 2002 in Chicago and Illinois they updated the law to couple mixed they added something to decouple mixed matter of hate crimes law and it's something we could do if we just added a subtle but important please that says you know regardless of the existence of any other motivating factors or factors after we list the protected classes in a law that would

[103:01] give police NTAs and judges instructions as well and how to enforce the law so that's one example and then also just I think looking at you know things like we have disabilities update they specified what disability means because previously it was only interpreted as mental incapacity so I think they specified physical disability as well so it's good to take a look at this law after the decade based on what's going on and we could do some simple patches like this that I think would really make an impact in people's lives and the safety of the community thank you did you wanna just if I may just briefly to give a little more of what Commissioner makkac are is dead that although there is a majority of states that now have and municipalities to have biased crime laws and there's widespread support for them but there's also widespread question regarding some of the effectiveness of

[104:01] sentence enhancement as a deterrent so in addition to the elements that were described by commissioner makkac are it's also an issue of looking at perhaps trainings and understandings of of different protected classes and cultural versatility such as what we described earlier we might want to do both correct perhaps yes let me just add two quick points to that the public education initiatives in following local bias-motivated crimes locally imported I found that they often reach out to anti-defamation league to provide classes or education to people similar if someone gets in substance abuse issues they provide substance abuse classes as women of conviction so we could include that in the law and it's often already being done secondly one of the points that gets made is that you know so many states have adopted this law we have federal

[105:01] laws we have municipal laws and people say well hate crimes of gobbly they may have reached an all-time high in 2016 in news articles and conversations I've had with da standalone ad Michael Dougherty and other law enforcement officials it's actually by enacting the laws and people knowing that we have them it encourages victims to come forward and feel empowered to actually speak out on these crimes which were actually on to avoid it and it's similar to having laws of Ag old laws and sexual assault cases actually it's not making them go up well it's not ineffective it's actually allowing people to come forward because why would you come forward and say you you've been victim of a crime if the city can't do anything about it but so that's actually why there has been an uptick in data showing an increase in hate crimes this increased laws and laws have another go at them Sam I mean I think this is a good idea generally I don't see the downside to doing a review

[106:01] it's in the decade and so that certainly had enough time to collect information and see what the numbers look like and I think you know if this HRC is motivating itself to want to do this I think this seems like one good big chunk of a work plan so I would definitely support going forward with it I agree but I had some questions and with respect to the thousand dollars has that been adjusted for inflation I mean is it's like I just is there an adjustment for inflation inflation no and remember the thousand dollars is a maximum a lot of our defendants are indigent so it's very rare that we get a fine at all and the fines are generally much lower than that so the maximum fine doesn't come into

[107:02] play very often I can't recall very many cases if any where the courts impose the maximum fine thank you and then how long known is this to people that this is one of their rights that they could say that they've been picked on and unnecessarily or and reasonably so when it was first enacted by City Council in 2007 there was a lot of coverage of it and in the in the daily camera and other publications and human service that certainly did a lot to inform the public but as you know it's 11 years old and I think it needs to be promoted or known in the community so I would I would answer your question by saying I don't think it's very well known in the community that it exists you know if you guys the staff in nature

[108:00] C had thought about kind of know your rights campaign or something like that because we have a lot of you know different people who certainly don't feel like they're in the majority or in art and I think are treated differently and and a lot of times I think they don't know I mean a lot of times stuff happens to you you don't know that it actually just happened and you you think did that really just happen after the fact and and I I think people need to know that they have a right that you can't treat me or others like a certain way that some people might prefer to do yeah thank you for expressing that and I think is earlier expressed in the focus areas focus priorities that would certainly be an area that HRC and staff

[109:01] would focus on you know yeah thank you yeah at least I think you're exactly right maybe if we do move forward with this we could publish it in our magazine that goes out to all citizens you know something to that we could do to help get the word out I want to end strong support for this I think members of protected classes have been victims of bias-motivated crimes for centuries and it's well time you know that we get really strict on this I was actually contacted by he was a member of a protected class and the lead-up to this learning pretty horrific things that she's both been through and witnessed you know might not human but my brother and his husband have been chased through Subway's friends of mine have witnessed stuff like this in Boulder and so I'm happy because they're taking the lead and I guess just a staff to you know move forward as quickly as

[110:02] possible with implementation and agree with Jill hate and bias motivated incidents are unfortunately on the upswing in our country and I think it's important that we make it clear as a community that they're completely unacceptable here and given that the ordinance is ten years old I think now is an appropriate time to look into how we can tighten it you know broaden it and so thank you for bringing this forward I appreciate HRC too and so so does anybody disagree with those sentiments no more speeches ago I just had a question oh is it all right if I ask a question absolutely thank you I wondered if you have reached out to the University and the Cu City working group I don't know if that's even still extant but if it is that might be a good place to because a lot of the issues I know in the past at any rate have stemmed from students believe the group

[111:00] is still meeting I don't think it's met in a while but it would be yeah this would be a good issue to bring up with the committee okay can I just say is a great idea and we meet quarterly we'll see you PTSD in the county and inclusivity and welcoming issues are often discussed so I think that's a great idea we should we should talk to PBS D in the counties and feet on the ground right the other thing is I wonder whether or not restorative justice has been something that the municipal court has approached and these kinds of things in the terms of education as well as the whole concept of restorative justice for people who are involved in these kinds of crimes yes Carmen can speak to that we do work in that area yeah the community mediation service does work in the area of restorative justice and as we move forward with this we will certainly make sure that that element is is included

[112:01] I'm I'm unaware if we actually do restorative justice on bias-motivated incidents that have come our way through Municipal Court I don't believe we have but we certainly can promote that as we move forward and I know Judge Cook has been a big proponent of restorative justice at least with CCS it ECU issue so there might be another avenue well just one thing I may want if I may add is in 2006 when the initial sentence enhancement ordinance was being adopted see you did play an important role in providing input with for it thank you so if I can sum up what I think I'm hearing is yes go for us take a look at this lawsuit if we can enhance and strengthen it I think I heard interest in sort of some public education around it and getting folks to

[113:03] be very aware of it and then also reaching out I would include V BSD and the county as well but definitely see you and the idea of restorative justice and Nikhil mentioned the anti-defamation league is maybe a partner in providing some education training around this element as well as that's come up and in some of my studies is police training on how to investigate bias-motivated crimes is key so good point of ship with DA's office and knowing the law and what they need and then having adequate police training so when they live in a scene they actually recognize something as a potential bias motivated incident and investigated as such to get the best evidence possible [Music]

[114:06] [Music] it can be destructive to communities instance in the Charleston South Carolina shooting identify that even though the public sentiment is they know that it is that can be incredibly damaging to the communities impacted minority communities impacted by those in moving ahead and the integration into communities so these are laws on multiple deep levels thank you great anything else okay why don't we go to non citizen voting

[115:04] I'll just well is there any questions otherwise we can just jump in with opinions I'll jump in with oh good so did the HRC and staff look at previous attempts to do changes of the Charter that included including non-voting [Music] residents yes it did it looks specifically at the effort to remove the requirement of a lector to be on boards and commissions and examined that as to why it and the question to you is to support either a citizen letter community or council that initiative noting that the time when elector was removed from the Charter it was a citizen let initiative right and so I just I just

[116:01] I'll just can I make a comment yeah so I guess from my perspective I think it's much better to go forward with a citizen led initiative not that I'm not for it or anything but I think there's a the requirement to do a lot of education to the public and why it's important and things like that and I think if the council just let it it would be much less effective it wouldn't have as many people involved in it there wouldn't be kind of the grassroots support to go out and get this on on the ballot and so in this particular case I think a citizen led initiative for 2019 would be preferable from my perspective okay so I agree with Lisa and I've been in touch with the group I met with I

[117:01] think it was last fall and I actually encouraged them to do a citizen that initiative for the reasons that Lisa mentioned as well as in order to put some effort like this together requires the building of coalition's civic engagement to you know a new level that the people who are involved in the process have to learn it builds leadership builds community I think there's a lot of benefits and I went for a brief portion of their meeting last week to this group and they recognized all of these things and and they're moving forward with looking at a citizen that initiative and they're pulling together the the coalition and already working on it so I for all those reasons I think it's a good idea to have it become a citizen

[118:02] that initiative otherwise it's a council that initiative and they have a much shorter period of time to do all of those things in the process of pulling together a campaign and this builds much stronger relationships you know I think they're causing themselves Coalition for expanding voting rights I think is what they're calling themselves that's the first thing they need to work on a good name ski other comments Sam Jill I mean I agree with what's been said before I do support both of these as I think initiatives that would advance inclusion in our city so I will personally support them I think there's many good reasons to have them done as citizen initiatives and I think you know any any support that that councillor staff can provide to make sure that they know what the

[119:00] process has to be like and you know about how long each one of the steps will take and so on I think we should be very supportive of it but I also agree that I don't think we should refer the measure ourself because it will be more powerful I believe if the citizens you know organize it and it seemed more as a grassroots thing rather than a council thing I just wanted to ask you guys I mean does HRC discussed their preference on this or is it really your totally neutral on either approach we discussed this will in favor of non citizen voting so of the what but the how has been the question and so initially I think the group looking at having a council initiated ballot initiative I think after meeting with some of you it's it's facile ated between that and a community led initiative so it's it's kind of up

[120:00] the discussion with you tonight that we'd like to get some direction on that I do know that we also have whether the council and/or citizen-led you also have to think of the timing in the elections and what would be best to actually get something like this pass because I don't think it will be just something that could happen easily so he wanted to happen with the best timing between 2018 2019 and 2020 but looking to you to you all the guidance on on the how it comes about yeah Jill and Bob are you done well I guess I I trust that other council members have had you know more in-depth conversations and I have but I have had a number of people reach out on this matter and we've from various organizations actually and where they've really pushed us to refer this rather than it to come from citizens

[121:01] because Mele it's the right thing to do and that's one of the reasons were elected and that they can their argument has been that they can then focus that Coalition on actually getting people to vote for it rather than expending volunteer hours and time and money and just getting it on the ballot but you know I will defer to the will of council on this this has just been conversations that I've heard I also heard a pretty clear request to do in even year not a nod whether it be 2018 is probably too fast but 2020 will have triple quadruple the turnout of a municipal election and so that's I've just been hearing some different things I of course want to support what I'm salmon and Mary and Lisa said I think that a citizen's initiative for all the reasons you said in coalition building I think the petition has to be in by

[122:00] June which means that there's been a lot of planning that happens during the summer and fall rather than just dumping this on the ballot in September you have to go out and get at least 3,000 signatures probably more so you already have 3,000 voters people are already moving the right direction rather than just having the nine of us you know you guys look more votes bo9 one other thing though I wanted to add on to what Sam said as far as asking HRC and the staff to work with whatever groups are grassroots developing this is please please please work very very closely with the City Attorney's Office because we have seen citizen's initiative come forward where there's a disconnect between what they circulate and then what does the trick and I would really really urge the whatever groups are leading this - as their very first step to sit down with the city attorney and work out the ordinance or the law change language ahead of time so we don't have the awkwardness that we've had in the past where a petition was circulated and signed by thousands of people and then it doesn't quite work and then we have to patch it together so Cindy and Lisa and then Mary I agree with what's been

[123:02] said by the other council members in terms of it being a citizen led initiative I think that the education that that comes from that kind of thing is really important for the wider community and as everyone has said grassroots having that kind of backing can ensure that something like this would pass much more readily than it were it just council directed I would think Lisa I was I was just gonna say that when the council had were and I can't remember because this went up twice and I think the first time was that council put it on the ballot or yes it did first time but it was voted against and so from my from my perspective don't go the route that

[124:02] voters are gonna vote against it you know build a big base and it does seem like the right thing to do but wouldn't year was believe the first time was 2003 2004 i think yeah i think maybe even a little earlier because it was in my first time on council okay okay and then the second time when it passed was 2008 yeah really yeah and I was uncounseled then but at that time that was a citizen so just based on those two there was a positive result with the citizen led initiative and people are a lot more informed about it so it's okay I have a pinyin I'm gonna jump in the queue after Mary Erin no I was just gonna say that 2019 is a City Council election and it can become a

[125:01] campaign issue so I'm fine with moving it in the citizen ballot initiative direction and hopefully the Mary the group that you're speaking of is is excited to work on this and and and wants to take this up which is wonderful but without there that I mean these are folks who are residents of our community and who do not have the franchise in our community and are not allowed to cast votes and so if if the if it feels like too much work or for people who are trying to get this done I'd like us to consider in another year potentially referring it if that's what we hear from members of the community the Coalition is broader than that I I wasn't speaking of I was speaking of the large group whatever groups you were speaking of I wasn't painting one oh no it'sit's it's the coalition includes people that can vote and people that can't just

[126:02] saying people without franchise need our help so right so I guess I'm fine I think there's a majority that feels like we should have a citizens vote I could be talked into referring it I'll be honest this is the year of Trump and I'm happy to stick up for disenfranchised people this year and I think a lot of people are pissed off about things so I would take that gamble that said I totally agree with you that grassroots movements are deeper rooted and that's a better way to go but I could be convinced to go this year and to put it on I'll just okay um here that is that on your work plan just kidding so anyhow I'll just throw that out there that we could buddy huh it sounds like the majority of council wants to go slow and have the grassroots do it next year the good news is those are mutually exclusive in other words if if for whatever reason the group doesn't wander

[127:01] where I can't get the matter on the on the on a no petition next summer we can always act like we can refer for the so either way it can gets on the 2019 value preferably through a citizen's initiative but if that doesn't work then we can always act and I mean it's kind of strategy as to whether they'd wanted in 19 or 20 anyway I mean I think 18 would be kind of a heavy lift to get it on now 20 is a presidential year and so it could be that the group chooses purposely to put it on 20 hi that's completely their call but yeah I agree fundamentally with you but I really do think that with the amount of time there is until 19 that would be really well served building support yeah and I look we're gonna talk next about something very related and I guess that's one of my questions is there synergy or competition between those two synergies okay can we do that next one but could

[128:01] we just have time very briefly outline what it take the time and all of that it takes to get it an initiative going or okay maybe maybe we see well and in terms of the role of the HRC maybe the HRC can help get that information to the groups that are working outside on't know if HR sees just wanted us to weigh in and you're done with it or whether you're going to help Shepherd it through but I agree that that's important information for groups that information out but yes staff would be doing the work on this yes so for the 16 year old is that where you're going yep so for 16 and 17 year olds I think they're fully capable and able to vote on local issues and I see a synergy between what we just talked about in this and I guess I would

[129:00] like to see a again a citizen-led it's a educational thing coalition building and but anybody who's spoken much with 16 or 17 year olds knows that they're as capable as 18 or 19 year olds and speaking about political issues and issues of the day so yeah I did and I like getting a good habit of voting okay since we have folks here to speak to it can come up and maybe say a few words about what you feel this is important and if you had thoughts on timing and how we could be supportive and introduce yourselves to us please so I'm Ava I just graduated folder high and I've been working on this campaign this initiative for about

[130:00] two years I think it's really important just because I especially with all of the things going on in parkland I think it's an important movement to show that we are as you were saying capable of voting and that these do affect us and we need a voice and what's happening absolutely I'm Nicholas Simms I'm a junior at Fairview High School and I also think this is really important there is a large movement in Boulder for registration a lot of people 16 Seminoles are registering to vote pre-register so when they're 18 already they can vote so there is a lot of there are a lot of people who are very excited and ready to vote so I think this is a great movement expand the voting rights 16:17 rule to or educated could you speak to the issue of timing like what year and also the this discussion we've been having about having it be a grassroots movement led by folks like you versus us just putting it on yeah so the nationwide campaign a lot of them

[131:02] have been little grassroots movements in San Francisco it was much like this campaign where it started through their Youth Advisory Board and then was brought into a coalition for voting that unfortunately didn't pass to last year I believe so that was a little bit tricky given they have 800,000 as their population as opposed to 100,000 so they're much bigger demographic there we were hoping at the start of it it in 2016 to get it on the ballot this year I don't think that will happen again and I could see 2019 being a good year for that as you were all saying City Council elections are then and that would be a good topic of discussion yes how would you feel about writing a

[132:02] single charter amendment that combines both the younger voting age as well as the non citizen voting it would that be something you would be willing to combine together and to so I was just curious I was asking for what they thoughts were about combining the efforts or doing them separately I mean we haven't necessarily worked with that group so I I don't know if we can necessarily speak to that but I think the the two topics are definitely related for sure yeah I think it would also be a little bit difficult to combine them because people they are speaking to a different thing in 16 and 17 year-olds versus non-citizens so I do think it would be my personal opinion is to keep them separate we've tried to reach out a little bit to the non citizen voting we haven't had much communication with them just since it's been a little hard to make that bridge

[133:00] but I do think they have their similar similarities but they need to stay a little bit separate okay I think Nikhil when to weigh in on the stunts thank you yes I just I agree I think you need to not either it wouldn't be wise to tie the two together so DS is an issue of when you look at timing between say 2019 and 2020 and you have to do similarly voting initiatives you have to think of like the cross pollination between the two so one is I think implementation with the office of elections there's some you know some comment could be some common shielded costs and things like that because one of the cities named when we had this presented to the Human Relations Commission by the youth opportunities world I had noticed a city that had passed about 16 project was able to

[134:01] easily pass a non citizen vote in quadrant it was able to pass it and easily implement it because they had done a lot of the logistics for each project so I think that console lose what does something to consider but you know you don't want one to go on a ballot and potentially compete well in fact the other one so I don't know I think the Commission would like some counsels thoughts on if they went to the ballot potentially at the same time and say 2019 2020 thoughts on that and just thinking strategically well if one went to the ballot in 2019 and lost how might that affect the next one in 2020 so I would hope we wouldn't look at them as competing with each other I mean we're trying to help people who are disenfranchised to start with to have more of a voice and to make their voice better known and so I think you could

[135:02] campaign kind of on that theme you know let let people's voices be heard no matter who they are on local issues so I would hope they're not competitive against each other but I think that would be some of the research you need to do originally in in getting these ballot initiatives written up and meeting with the City Attorney's Office and and doing a little I don't know pre polling but you you need to find out is there prejudice in the community against 16 and 17 year olds voting on local issues I don't know I would hope so I mean I can only say I'm okay with it but that's just me and then the same thing about non residents they should be able not non residents

[136:01] non voters who are residents they should be able to vote I think but I think you need to find out what the spectrum of thoughts are yeah and I didn't see the two groups as competing but I was thinking well it's an opportunity for collaboration between them in strategizing in thinking that both of them have to win over the public place so the both of them have to win the votes so why not both groups since they're not competing with each other strategize together to get the best outcome and to be clear the Commission is and is in support of both and we see the issues just voted expansion as a whole and so any items that come up was on this fit the bill for what we support I have a question about which of these places where it has passed is it actually for a municipality rather than a school board and where is it actually active in those up there has it been

[137:02] enacted so that it's actually working in the sense that students are voting and wearing yeah well in Takoma Park and Heights both already 30 been enacted and stood people 16 17 olds can can vote in those areas and is that a municipal or is that in school board that's in municipal and are the others are there are a couple of them up there that I noted that I think we're school board basically school district I should say okay thank you can I go ahead I was gonna pile onto the answer no I was just curious if they've had an opportunity vote already I have the report right in front of me can I answer that there's there's some wonderful literature out there and in both those cities in Maryland passed these vote 16 rules in 2013 so they've had five years of experience and the voter turnout among 16 to 17 year olds has been anywhere between 6 and 20% higher than the general population and very very

[138:00] aggressive voters and perhaps more importantly we all know that 18 19 and 20 year olds are really bad voters in those cities where there's been 16 17 year old voters when they turned 18 and 19 they voted a much higher percentages so they got in the habit of voting which i think is a good thing so Aaron yeah I'd really like to see this move forward and that's not just because my 15 year old son would kill me if I disagreed do I have to recuse myself no I think I think this is great Bob thanks for making this points I think we can help create lifelong voters by starting people at an early age and I think people at 16/17 are mature enough to vote and we can benefit from their voices in the municipal elections so I'm similar to the last one I'm open to having it be a citizen initiated referendum but if that doesn't work out or the the it's having a hard time getting going I'm certainly

[139:01] happy to put this on the ballot next year from Council if necessary I would agree with that I've also note that at the mayor's innovation projects conference the mayor of Takoma Park presented on this and they're quite happy with it and I think it's a good model and they've been touting it around as a mechanism for creating great voters so I was wondering with our with our charter you can't run for City Council unless you're 25 I think no 21 21 so has it has in these other cities have their age requirements for running for a local law I don't reach the on anybody enjoy your use enjoy your youth no I don't think they have I don't life I know really play high school sports and can I ask his HRC talked about taking this up and saying maybe 18 year olds can run

[140:02] for city council might now that you mentioned okay good okay so is that enough guidance and I could go in for City Council for vote 16 it sounds like if you guys could bring it forward it would have more meaning than if we did but we stand at the ready maybe to help next year if that need me have you had any thoughts on whether you'd rather have it 19 or 20 like for the presidential election turnout or would you rather have it a municipal election I have given it some thought I think just keeping it as municipal so people don't get it confused with voting at the national level because I know that is a common confusion that we do have to clarify for people so keeping it in 2019 is kind of my thought just to keep that

[141:00] clear line okay that actually makes a lot of sense whatever sort the two cities of Maryland it did it in an odd year in 2013 that's a great point thank you for bringing that up but the other thing that we have not talked about is that there are logistical issues with both of these because we can no longer have the County Clerk just run our elections with the same set of electors that they use for any other election so that would be an important part of both of these things is to work out the practicalities of how this would function so we'll get a new County Clerk this time around and that could be one of their first project system she's barely 17 years old I bet she'd be excited that she would okay well and weed your questions I guess with enthusiasm we appreciate you all bringing these to us I think we appreciate the good work of the Human Relations Commission and look forward to working with you on these going forward Thanks thank you

[142:21] okay next up we're gonna switch for something a little different to transportation but thank you for all the Human Relations folks that came very so I just wanted to make a comment with regards to the some of the findings in the in the survey that was done and the feedback from the community one of the topics that was that came up from the community was to have courageous conversations and I just I wasn't clear about how that fit into the work plan is that part of what you would look for in the proposals that come forward to the

[143:02] HRC how how does that piece of it work into the work plan I'm sorry two specific areas one is within forums the in the focus areas of forums related to specific issues and the other is through giving out grants through the human relations fund awarding grants to community groups who have ideas to have those types of conversations because certainly they are the experts as to how to handle those or specific issues that they want the community to speak about so in that I would just caution on that to have community those courageous conversations before laying a foundation

[144:00] to have them I think that there has to be some sort of I'll give you an anecdotal kind of example of why you need to lay the foundation and I recently heard a young person at a at an event speak about she grew up in Boulder Boulder native here all their lives and commented on driving up and down Arapaho Avenue and not until that day knowing why it was named Arapaho Avenue and you know and you can't talk about the right relationship if you don't have that kind of foundation the historical foundation so I would I would just caution on the grant the granting process and making sure that before you have those courageous conversations that the foundation has been laid and I also you know I heard it was at 2018-19 work

[145:01] plan it's really more like a twenty eighteen thirty eighteen work plan it's it's not something that happens overnight and then just prepare for that long road so yeah I just wanted to comment on thank you maybe the Commission has taken up cultural competency and as a top priority and these conversations get held and and making sure that you know probably education is takes place but we're putting them on and we so we've taken almost a conservative stance and putting those on because those facilitated discussions as you pointed out with all of those reasons can can go badly and especially if all the people have called involved in them so I'm proud to say that the Commission has had especially in 2018 many discussions about that and what we can do better and figuring out the expectations that we have for community groups that come to us proposing these kinds of educational initiatives and we'll definitely stay on it but thank you for bringing up that

[146:00] point really significant any other comments for each our seat I was okay well thank you thank you so much have a good evening

[147:03] we're ready when you are thank you yes the next item for discussion tonight is on the 30th and Colorado corridor study so thank you Noreen for being here tonight you don't have to talk way louder yeah all right can you hear me now yeah helps to have the microphone so thank you all for your time this evening and for your feedback on the 30th and Colorado quarter study recommended options the question posed for your feedback is up on this first slide and we'll return to it at the end of the presentation information on this item begins on page 57 of this evenings packet and again I'm Noreen Walsh I'm the project manager for this study I also wanted to acknowledge and thank team members bill Cowen dave kemp natalie Stifler and bill Fox with Fox

[148:02] Tuttle Hernandez they're here to answer any more detailed questions you might have related to traffic engineering or any of the transportation modal questions so why are we doing this study we are doing the 13 color at 1/4 study to develop quarter design options to address both current and anticipated future travel needs you'll see that we have a number of collisions we have six intersections along these two corridors 30th Street from baseline to Pearl and Colorado from foothills West that have some of the highest collision rates in the city we've heard from the community and even our planning analysis has shown that the walking and bicycling facilities are not those that would be used by people of all ages and abilities to feel comfortable to walk and baikin we have a renewed vision for transit plans and those plans have additional services and

[149:00] so the roadway designs need to reflect that and we also have the boulder Junction area to the north of 30th Street we have CU williams village housing and the CU East Campus Center that's continuing to develop according to their visions and plans and so these roadway quarter designs really need to reflect those plans and visions I also want to mention justif isn't clear from this map 30th Street and where we were looking for this study the boundaries are from baseline to Pearl that section of 30th has between 18,000 and 23,000 vehicles today today each day as well as transit service riders bicyclists and pedestrians the limits for the Colorado corridor goes from foothills all the way east through the Cu campus on Colorado Avenue down 18th Street and out Euclid to meet at Broadway it was West right

[150:00] okay Hills West yes from foothills west and that carries between nine and sixteen thousand vehicles per day also has numerous transit lines and riders bicyclists and pedestrians this graphic here is to show the study process we started this in early 2017 we've worked at each point along the way with the community and we've developed an engagement plan that represented the decision framework that came out of the public participation working group we at each step in the way kind of sat with a community to listen to what their ideas were that helped kind of feed each product along the way so we began by hearing what their issues priorities needs were for each of these quarters that helped to feed the vision goals and objectives it also helped to feed the range of quarter options so in your packet you probably saw there were five corridor options for xxx Colorado and then that Cu section they were including various

[151:02] combination of roadway elements some were within the public right away somewhere without some had for general purpose lanes or to general purpose lanes bus and right turning lanes we had multi-use paths on Street off street bicycles there are all these different combinations to again see how we could get at addressing those issues and ideas and fulfill the vision of the study we then kind of talk through and got to refining those options and evaluating them against our goals and objectives to get to where we are to here today with two recommended design options so the intention was to work with the community each point of the way and ask questions that help to shape that next work product and with this final one being the recommended options we had a number of tools that we use for community engagement from meetings to online questionnaires to a community working group to go to your place for a meeting we make presentation at hey Joey's at

[152:02] Chamber hosted events and so forth so this next slide is just to give a shout out also to our community working group member so 16 members of the community were selected to represent a broad spectrum of viewpoints and perspectives they were using different modes they sometimes lived or worked along the corridors or sometimes they lived or worked outside the corridors but they came in and so they were all using these for a variety of purposes and it helped to you know really understand all the different needs these corridors met so again thank you to the community working group they listened to make sure that each point along the way when we got to a different work product that the public feedback was helping to shape that so I want to do is just go over the recommended options and then go through the process by which we got to that so for 30th Street baseline up to Colorado the recommended option is option 5a you'll see that includes for general purpose lanes

[153:01] protected bicycle lanes and sidewalks a little further north of Colorado we're recommending option three that includes for general purpose lanes the bike lanes and sidewalks would also allow space for trees either we're helping to maintain the valuable trees that are there today or providing spaces to plant more trees if you can think about some of the properties that would be working with to make the sure that we could fit this type of option in it see you on the east side from Colorado going up to Marine Street and then Scott carpenter Park on the west side it's a good question about that in terms of the placement of the landscape buffer there and will that allow us to save a fair amount of trees placing it they are just wondering like versus like having the landscape buffer next to the road and the bikes a little further in you know we think it will but also as you go along the way in each point you'll start to customize it to work through those issues one of the

[154:00] objectives was to minimize any removal valuable trees so I think we'll keep that in mind but I think that this one does help to fit that can I just add on today so I think Aaron's point is good and I had a similar question and the and I think it's great to really number one preserve the trees that we have but just from an urban design perspective it seems like you know if you have the trees next to the road and the bikes outside on the outside of the trees that also could help in traffic calming you know making the roads look mm-hmm more narrow and it's just an amenity so I guess you know where you can save the trees but where you have an opportunity maybe you can consider putting the trees right next to the street just sorry no

[155:02] no we're gonna get back into just asking questions but you keep going all right unless you have a question okay we'll stop we'll hold our comment curious how many treats you're looking at having to take down oh I don't think actually are looking to take down trees yeah certain elements in but yeah thanks for asking that question want to clarify that for sure so for Colorado the recommended option in the western section from Folsom to 30th Street is option 1 this includes two general purpose lanes bus and right-turning vehicles Ayn's protected bicycle lanes and sidewalks we also will try to fit in landscaping but we'll have to work with the adjacent property owners to see if we can get an additional space for that it's those bus lanes are always that way or just during rush hour or it's always that way always but yes mmhmm yeah so I had a question on this and when you have

[156:02] a one and a half foot pan mm-hmm and I assume that pan is concrete and that it comes out one and a half feet into the street and often we use asphalt to pave our streets and so the concrete and the asphalt are really two different types of material and actually writing over here this evening I forget what street I was on but maybe I was on suppose and there were some places where there's been a lot of erosion between the concrete and the asphalt and I'll go back and do inquire Boulder and report it but those are somewhat dangerous places for bicyclists and especially I mean I like that we have a five but Lane but if there's a way and I don't know you've got some

[157:00] engineers back there but if there's a way you could just do the pan so that that part is concrete I mean there must be a reason why you do this L shape that comes out but does it have to be a foot and a half into into the lane so I guess my question is is there a way to make that and narrower so you don't have so much erosion going on between the concrete pan and the street and we can keep that in mind word is coming actually onto the street again the good news with this option as well as the previous options for 30th Street is the bicycle lane as a protected bicycle lane is raised so it's at the same level as the sidewalk so I don't think we're running into the issue but I'll double check okay big incredibie southern pant it was just a general question in there for sure for sure so one of the things that when we were

[158:01] reconfiguring Folsom one of the things that reared its head was the hardscaping right and so the president's I'm thinking about 28 coming to make a left turn onto Colorado and so have you given some thought or done any traffic studies to look at what's gonna happen when that becomes a single left lane because right now that's a double left lane and so it's got a certain bay length and I would just wanted to raise then this means that you'll have a single left turn coming off of 28 does that correct go left turn yes and we did look at this information so you'll see a little bit further down line we've kind of jumped into what the recommended options were and I was going to build up to kind of how we got that point but in particular for Colorado we you know we did it for both 30th Street and Colorado to look at what are the travel times you know what how are we maintaining the vehicular traffic flow but in the Colorado you'll see that the that intersection is addressed okay so we'll just let you

[159:00] keep going down okay so keep in mind so this is Colorado from Folsom to 30th Street Colorado and the recommended option from 30th to Foothill is the same option that option one so it has the same configuration of facilities to general purpose lanes bus and right turning lane as well as protected bicycle lanes and sidewalks but if you recall the Colorado east of 30th Street has the woman ditch in the center so it just wanted to make sure you guys know that we're still keeping that I just have the same transportation facilities as the previous option for the CU section we went from five options down to two options and these are being forwarded to see you they'll take it into further consideration during their transportation Master Plan Update that's happening this fall these options have transit lanes bicycle lanes as well as sidewalks they do not permit vehicles except for emergency response and delivery vehicles if you're in that

[160:00] change that is a change although today there is a restriction on private vehicle use within those streets during the daytime I think it's like eight to five but it would be a full-time thing yes just point this out I did reach out to see you and ask them about their thoughts on this question about removing the private vehicles entirely and they said that that is their intention and to keep in mind this is west of Folsom right where there's the gate there currently but maybe you can drive in a little bit but it is their intention with their master plan to remove private vehicles from us it's not our concept really I mean I'm sure you guys worked on too but it's not just our concept is the point you didn't know private vehicles would be allowed on Colorado west of Folsom you you can if you have a permit I think you could still go through but ask see you for the details I just I just wanted to get out there that see you agreed this was the direction they were interested in with you yes thanks for bringing that up they

[161:01] were are part of our project staff team you'll probably hear a little bit more from our tab chair on their most recent letter of support but yes thanks for bringing that up so how did we get there so there wasn't any clear easy choice there wasn't one option that performed best for our vision goals and objectives that didn't have maybe major considerations like a pretty wide cross section or a large funding cost so we kind of needed to look at both what the community preference were and when they were expressed we asked that question back in February then we needed to go back to our technical evaluations and see how these options were performing for our four goal areas and all those objectives in there and so I'm going to walk you through this for 30th Street so at the point where we were asking what option your preferred and why we had two ways to collect that information we had a community meeting and an online questionnaire we advertised all our meetings through a mailing that went out

[162:01] to 9,000 different addresses in the surrounding area we also had our email group we had digital communications and social media promotion but we had a lot of groups in the community that helped to get the word out like Boulder neighborhood Alliance community cycles Chamber of Commerce even the University of Colorado would always take our invitations and put it out through their community as well so in person that's on the left-hand side here you'll see that the most preferred option was option 5 a followed by option 3 then to the reasons for these preferred options were the bike treatments the walking and the safety if you look online and what input we were hearing in terms of what was the preferred option it was existing conditions followed by option 5 a and 4 reasons for those preferred conditions online were maintaining reliable vehicular travel time safety cost and bike treatments and where we did have people who preferred

[163:01] other options and different sets of improvements we did always hear that not impacting adjacent properties keeping it lower cost staying within that right away was still very important to people who wanted maybe a different cross section of improvement so those were those types of reasons that we were repeating throughout ma and I ask the question about the people's comments on cost what options were they given on costs and were you did you talk to property owners I assume you did some property owners but I assume also a lot of those people are just users of the street right yeah so when we were talking through the cost it was kind of a relative cost based on kind of an estimate to get the improvements made but also if again it was a wider cross-section what those property impacts would be in the cost to obtain easements or property so we're keeping those in mind you'll see on the next matrix on the next slide it was kind of

[164:01] a relative figure doll signed 2-3 dollar signs I think also what we were hearing from folks who maybe wanted and not another option whether it's five a or or three or two was having a lower cost was really important because I think they wanted to make sure something was happening sooner rather than later and so if it was going to have a very large funding need as well as impactful it may take longer to implement so on this next slide so this was our evaluation matrix when we got to the point of evaluating every option against the goals and objectives and so the goals and objectives are along the left hand side and this first column to the left was if you look at what the existing configuration of the corridor is with roadway lanes and their bicycle and pedestrian facilities how would that meet all the goals and objectives of our study and so if you look at that today and into the future

[165:00] it's really not meeting most of the objectives in fact it's kind of a worse condition and so that idea of keeping with existing conditions wasn't really gonna meet our studies goals and objectives so we looked at some of those other options that were listed as preferred options and you can see at the bottom here that options two through four are better meeting or even best meeting our goals and objectives but they have very wide cross sections and had a greater cost so that was that major consideration trade-off that wasn't gonna be necessarily reflecting that balance and so then if you look at option 5 which is all the way to the right you see that it is better meeting the objectives for transportation but it's a lower cost and it's within that right-of-way and so we really felt like that 5a was that good balance of improving things and meeting our goals and objectives but also reflecting that input from the community keeping it within the right-of-way keeping the lower cost maintaining that vehicular travel time again I mentioned earlier

[166:01] we're gonna try to get to that option 3 because it does better meet many of the objectives particularly in our sustainability goal area and that quarter identity having good urban design landscaping and spaces like that so where we can get that fitting in we'll go after that so when we got to the plan layout and that was our meeting in early May we and these plan layouts around the walls I don't know if you guys got a chance to see him but we took the cross sections and laid them out and so what you're seeing here then is with this slide we started to get into ideas for crossing treatments and ideas of intersection treatments so these are ways to say what can you do when folks are crossing and making turning movements how can you kind of keep those movements separate I can even reduce the conflicts and we've got feedback on that we're not saying that this particular crossing treatment is exactly happening at that location for sure we were just trying to give some ideas to get feedback so that when we do go into

[167:00] further preliminary engineering we kind of get a sense of where we need to be with the crossing treatments and intersection designs and then you'll move into that even further along as you get into more detailed design so just to drill into that a little bit so that I mean tonight we're going to be picking essentially cross section options right yeah I think we want your feedback is on these recommended options - option 5a option 3 are those the recommended options kind of best balancing our goals and objectives and the community feedback we're not necessarily asking for you to pick um I think we have a proposed recommended option again supposed to be that balance right but my premise that we're looking at we're talking about the cross sections right I mean that's that's really worth weighing in on tonight yeah but if you go back to that previous slide I think yeah so that I mean a lot of these intersection approaches or improvements are critical for safety as well but are we weighing in on those tonight or is that a kind of TBD it's yeah it'll be further developed as we move along okay I'll

[168:01] have a couple comments on it but it's good thank you yeah thanks for clarifying sorry all right so in terms of what we heard for Colorado Avenue again for the western section Folsom to 30th Street at the community meeting the most preferred option was option one followed by option five then two top reasons were the bike treatments transit safety and cost for Colorado Avenue at the online feedback point we heard existing conditions was the most preferred option by options five and two top reasons were the vehicular travel time transit safety and cost did you speak to this earlier were these the discrepancy between these two online versus in person you have a sense of why where they organized by different groups or just well we did notice that you know people do tend to let folks know within their organizations that there's these opportunities to participate and I did mention before that we had community

[169:00] organizations getting the word out whether it was Boulder neighborhood alliance or community cycles Chamber of Commerce there are numerous organizations that help to get that word out and so that may have been why the difference between online and in-person then why was there the difference between I'm not what's your thinking I think that yeah I think we just had more promotion of the online opportunity through those organizations but neither do be clear neither one of these was scientific is that correct exactly this is just a question here another type of and community engagement tool to allow folks who would like to participate and are interested in the project give us that feedback yes it was not a scientific survey so if I can read this right mm-hmm so the in-person community preferences for Colorado Avenue going west is somewhere between option five and option two is that correct the community preference well I don't think there's a clear choice actually I think that's what we got from this is that you see that the top choice was option one at

[170:01] the meeting okay so difference because on here some of them are emboldened some of them are old yeah so option when was the first one mm-hmm followed by option five then - and then and did anybody in option five I mean that's basically six lanes across mm-hm right that's who and you'll see in the evaluation matrix that that is one of those major considerations trade-off so and on option two I can't see it this thing there's a tree in the middle yeah center median that you know how wide is that median I can't see that yeah I don't have it offhand either maybe I can look it up but I guess my point would be if if you're gonna do something that and I don't mean that in a bad way gross that you you need to have a much wider median in the middle it just doesn't

[171:01] work I mean having a dinky tree in the middle of six lanes just mm-hmm so you know you have a question clarification sure I may have missed this do you have the numbers of people who participated that were in person versus online yeah so we had an hour meeting in February over a hundred people at that meeting and then the online questionnaires you know it ranged from section some people wanted to participate and give us feedback on all four sections and so that would be anywhere between a hundred and three hundred responses to that so it's usually a little more online is okay thank you yeah so let's just take a quick look at the East section really what I wanted to point out here is that the options that were most preferred at the meeting for the East section is the same as the West right it's options one then followed by five two and then online same thing the most preferred option again was existing

[172:01] followed by options five and two and the same preferred reasons for those options so when you look at the evaluation matrix again for that existing conditions we're really not reaching any of our goals and objectives this existing configuration of facilities is really a worse condition in the future when you look at that option in two and five because again you were pointing out that you know that seemed to be similar from both online in the community the thing is is that those are wider cross-sections and so they are going to cost more they are more impactful to the adjacent properties so they're not necessarily they're meeting many of the goals and objectives but they're not hitting some of those other reasons that were important when you say impactful to the adjoining properties what are the impacts well it would vary but you know if you're having a wider cross-section than you have right of way can extend anywhere from 10 to 15 feet depending on

[173:01] the option right so they would maybe be Co convinced to sell a right-of-way to the city yeah or obtain an easement yes exactly so when you look at option 1 you see that it's actually better and best performing for most of the objectives except for that maintain vehicular travel time and so that was both an objective in our study and our goals but it also was an important reason and why people were expressing a preference for a certain option so when we looked at potentially laying this one out as the recommended option we needed to see if there was possibility to be able to meet that objective and and respond to that community feedback so just again keeping in mind the volumes in the eastern section or 9,000 they grow a little bit go up to 16,000 and go back down to 11,000 vehicles when we went into the plan layout which i think is over on this side here we looked at what are

[174:02] some more detailed improvements that we could do that can maintain that vehicular travel time and so in this 28th in Colorado you see that there's a double left turn and that allows that westbound travel movement to turn southbound it also results in some storage space there that allows that through lane to remain moving as well as the bus and right turning lane the intersection improvement at Colorado and Regent also helps to have that movement come out of Regent staying a dedicated lane to turn southbound on 28th Street so with this option and in a more detailed plan layout view we found that we could make those modal improvements but also maintain the vehicular travel times and I'll show you in this next slide what our traffic modeling software showed us so if you take a second and look at this top row this gives you the travel times for eastbound and westbound

[175:01] today they're 4 minutes in each direction if we have no project in the future we estimate that the travel times in the eastbound will be five minutes westbound six minutes with this option and that intersection design at 28th Street we actually see that the vehicular travel times will stay at what's the existing travel times today mm-hm with them without 28th Street design so what do those two mean yeah so remember when we looked at it as just a straight cross-section we hadn't made those additional ideas of improvements up a double left turn and so when you evaluated that and we ran it through our traffic modeling software that bottom row you see here that was the anticipated travel times eastbound would be five minutes westbound would be 17 minutes so actually by having that same cross section but doing some more further detailed plan layout and proposed

[176:00] improvements at those intersections we were able to actually get those travel times down to what they are today can can you go back is that the previous slide or maybe two slides so you've got a double mm-hmm this was your question about southbound but it becomes doesn't become a single lane I guess not mm-hmm that you had buses on the right and left I thought they were dedicated bus lanes going up the hill but I miss that I think it stops just at 28th Street and then they merge back in to go further west yeah indicated I don't think they're necessarily gonna be striped or colored pavement that way but for the illustrative purpose I didn't quite hear that so you're saying that going west on Colorado from 28th there would need to general purpose lanes not a dedicated

[177:00] bus lane yeah I think through here it's a mixing zone because there are some buses so I think an important clarification to this piece is that this section in between region and twentieth Street is very unusual it very unusual compared to the rest of the Colorado corridor and it required a little bit of a different design and and one of the things is what you're noticing is that as you're heading westbound east of the 28th Street intersection there's two general purpose lanes and one of them is being repurposed into a bat laying a bus and right turn lane as you pass through the intersection you you have basically a trap lane that goes into that double left turn lane because that's the dominant movement is vehicles traveling west and then turning south onto region and then a single through lane that

[178:01] continues on through the intersection traveling south on 28th Street traveling west on Colorado and then turning south onto Regent correct yeah well now you're there I'm sorry I made me I just totally missed this but I thought when you were tracking from the the far right corner of the screen side of the screen can you start over again certainly there's at that point where the cursor is there's currently two three lanes and that would change to a single general-purpose through Lane and a bat lane bus and right turn as you pass through the intersection there's still two lanes but one of them is a trap lane that traps into that left turn onto southbound region okay got it thank you and a single through Lane that continues through the intersection at which point there becomes again two through lanes one of which would become a bat lane and

[179:00] continue through into the the Colorado the University of Colorado and it may very well be at that point that we would need to swap them and have the the bus lane be on the inside because it would be passing directly into Colorado while everybody else would be coming up and turning right onto Folsom but at this stage kind of the recommended option with these designs is kind of how we're proceeding would get into more further design as you get into funded projects or next stage of things I think you had a question maybe about that double now I think that's answered most of the question yet all right it's a complicated little intersection mm-hmm so we wanted to go through kind of what the bus and right turning lanes help to support in terms of the planned service and the ridership so this table here is giving you a sense of the number of buses today in the PM peak hour on Colorado so about 46 buses

[180:01] starting with service changes this August and anticipated service changes for the next five years there should be up to 80 buses and the PM peak on Colorado so you have additional service that's gonna be happening fairly soon with that we also did a ridership analysis that shows that there is an anticipated ridership increase of anywhere from 52 percent up to 69 percent again related to that additional server that's already being planned to take half a plan to happen with the bus and right turning lanes we anticipate another nineteen to twenty percent ridership increase so these bus and right turning lanes are helping with meeting the additional service changes that are happening but also that ridership that's gonna be so and ridership is what's on a bus but but some bike buts in a car as ridership or is this just transit this is just

[181:00] transit ridership yep thanks for asking yeah can you go back a slide please the buff bus is looking at more than tripling their service in the near term yes let me just refer back to normal yeah yes that's true yes any more questions on this slide before I go okay great I'm going to go to this one so we also then looked at what are the transit travel times and so again if you look at the top of this table today in the eastbound direction it takes about seven minutes to go from Folsom to foothills in the eastbound direction westbound is eight minutes the travel times in the future without a project are anticipated to increase to eight minutes in the eastbound direction ten minutes in the westbound direction with this option one and the mentioned of the intersection designs that we just went over we're just being that we're actually able to keep that westbound travel time to what is existing today and kind of meet that travel time that's anticipated in the eastbound in the

[182:00] future the last row stand someone had asked that earlier this last row talks about what the anticipated travel times were with just the option one when it was just a cross-section before we did some of those intersection designs and changes so community feedback that we've heard so far we had her meeting in early May and we received you know for the recommended options when we asked and what are the things you liking most people are liking for 5a the bike facilities designs for safety and the auto facilities in the section north that 3a where we'd have more landscaping you see that they like similar features but they also like that ability to have natural features and they like that walking environment for Colorado Avenue they like those bicycle transit and pedestrian facilities for the recommended option that we have I want to hand this over to Jennifer Nicole she is our transportation advisory board chair they were also considering these recommended options and she's just going to share her input with you now hello

[183:03] there so I think knowing did an amazing job of kind of laying out a very long and very involved process but I just wanted to kind of reiterate the the why in terms of both the current needs for this specifically around safety and the fact that this is a very high collision area and then for the future and the fact that we need to plan for what's going to change in these corridors and the fact that the growth is already happening and the activity centers are evolving so tab really wanted to commend the transportation staff on how they handled the process of engaging the community because I think they really took the findings from the public participation working group to heart and they really provided numerous and various forums for people to be heard and I think the takeaway is they actually we all listened as well so I think that that that was really impressive we heard from numerous members of the actual community working group they said not only were they really

[184:00] pleased with the process they were actually very pleased with the outcome as well so in terms of the what of what were Tabb voted unanimously to in support of the recommendations and we appreciated that you know that staff was able to really think through creatively and combine options especially with the way they were able to look at the cost factors for options 5a and options 3 and figure out that you know along different sections of that 30th Street corridor they could evolve the options and really adapt to what was necessary and what was actually feasible based on the right away on we wanted to state that you know we think that these options really support our vision zero goals and they really helped us from a multimodal way of moving all of our community around in a way that is safer see at our last meeting we did receive a number of letters of support from members of not only the community working group but also the University of Colorado and

[185:00] community cycles in support of these specific recommendations finally we have heard from numerous members the community about what can be done now because especially the 30th Street corridor it's not safe for bikes and pedestrians and what we're hearing from people is that you know we know that there are crashes and we know that you know there is a vision zero problem on 30th Street we're hearing from people that that regularly bike and walk and say that they just avoid 30th Street altogether because it's they just don't feel safe and so we you know tab has raised this in our last meeting and wants to work with staff to identify what near term solutions can we come up with that we appreciate that this is a longer-term vision for this corridor that could take up to 20 years and we fully support that but we also know that there are media safety concerns and so really looking for support from council as well especially in lieu of declining sales tax revenues that support transportation initiatives what what can

[186:02] we do to fund changes in this corridor in the near term thanks Jennifer I just want to go to one more slide so you guys can see what some of the steps are so following your feedback today we'd like to take the design options into preliminary engineering so that we can actually have a cost estimation for the improvements for both quarters and we'd like to develop an implementation plan of phasing these improvements in overtime and we can look to you know Jennifer's comment as well on kind of short-term near-term things as well conceptual design plan so we'd like to come back with that to you all in early 2019 for City Council acceptance so that when development projects come in for review they can address and respond to these designs for these quarters so with that we're back to the question at hand are the recommended options for xxx and Colorado the best balance of the studies goals objectives and community feedback

[187:01] Thanks before we get to it could you just explain you know as projects are proposed we can incorporate these things into them the last thing you said about how we're gonna move forward it seems very passive and I'm curious what is the expected expected time over which these improvements would get developed if we just wait for projects to get but you know just to clarify so our intent is we'll take the design the next step really developed the cost estimates come up with some phasing options for implementation and then we'll be programming that into the CIP so from the city project perspective we'll be moving forward with a project but norine was mentioning is that at the same time what we'll be doing is we'll actually be developing the plan and actually adopting that plan so as development

[188:01] proposals come in let's say somebody to redevelops and on 30th Street then their project would need to basically comply with the plan so it's really we'll be working on the project and also at the same time development proposals will will also be implementing them that's helpful and over the normal CIP process how long does what's the range by which this would actually come to pass along both corridors yes so need to do is take design the next level so we really understand the cost and then I think what you've heard tonight is is trying to come up with phased approach to be able to implement the most important aspects of the project first and so we'll be doing that and then where you'll see this next is in the CIP provides in the CIP process you'll actually what we've have in the budget

[189:01] that we're currently developing for 2019 we have a line item in there that's basically funding available to do these kinds of projects and so as this project were to become more fully developed and that will change into implementing 30th and Colorado so sorry so to figure out what the total cost is and that what we have is capacity within our CA RP of about three million dollars a year to do these types of projects give you an idea of range of time that has taken us to do for instance 28th Street we adopted that in 2000 and we'll be finishing it in 2019 and so we hope to not have that type of timeline but that gives you an idea of a really long project quarter definitely takes a number of years at those kind of three million dollar chunks and then the other thing that we

[190:01] really are going to need to sort out is at the same time we'll be submitting for projects through the Denver Regional Council of Governments transportation improvements program in what we're as Erin I think it's described for you the that process is largely undefined right now and we're kind of making the plane as we're going down the runway and so we hope that that will also give us some additional money but we really don't know quite yet just yeah actually Mike can you introduce yourself Fertel I'm sorry I'm my goodness William the director Public Works for transportation sorry I jumped up and it's myself no worries and I don't I don't know that this is gonna be far enough along to submit for this tip cyclo we're probably waiting a few years but hopefully that next one we keep nice of money but and then we might get help from the state as well right there's some chance that correct there's some other things afoot and one of the questions last part I want to make is

[191:01] that we have chosen more or less the cheaper of the options here right so in terms of we're thinking about like how soon could we do this of all the options we were considering this will probably get done the fastest the approach that we're taking is that a fair statement it costs potentially less than the other options that right yep other than doing nothing right which will cost us in other ways okay input Sam and then Lisa so just a question thinking about redevelopment opportunities there's something to write in front of us Rev and Pollard will these before these plans before enough along to influence the way that they design their Street interface I think that the bread project has been responding to kind of had the most recent capital project on 30th Street has been built today which has on-street bicycle lanes and a multi-use path so if like that and that does allow for bicycles to be on that facility as well then Pollard as well will they that's the 30th end so this one goes

[192:03] right up to Pearl Street on the south side or so the Transit Village area plan would probably be the influence on the Pollard site that's on the north side okay there are other potential projects along 30th Street you know that could occur maybe south of walnut or something and so for the CIP what's the thinking on how to incorporate this into the CIP so will it be like I know that we look at it each budget cycle it's probably not going to be far enough along for the 19 budget cycle but would the plan be for us to start looking at possible 30th Street projects in the 20 budget yes I believe so yes and I think we'll have more information coming out of our next phase of understanding what the overall cost estimate is and then what sections or elements would happen for so I do think you'll see more information in that 20/20 yes okay and I read the feedback

[193:00] stage edgers two questions and at least I had her hand at least I have a couple usually I have a question so somewhere I got lost and I'm trying to figure out which options are being recommended for which portions sure so if I go through your handout the PowerPoint xxx recommended option baseline to Colorado is option 5a Yeah right okay it's so it just goes and then xxx from baseline north of Colorado they're the same go back to this slide here and I know that maybe it's a little hard to see how the smaller level but option 5a is from baseline to Colorado mm-hmm and then it's option 3 from Colorado North up to Pearl and so none of them include that six-lane scenario right so it is

[194:03] two lanes there are two general purpose lanes and the bus and right turning right that's good and I guess my only I have a couple things one it would be really nice to make the bicycling as safe as possible so I like the separated grade bicycle lanes so if there's anything you could do to get started on this ASAP start at baseline mm-hm and get the bikes out of the streets and get them up on two separated I don't know how much that costs but that would be really really important and I think would improve safety and I don't know if you could add a little bit of sidewalk there so that you know pedestrians don't feel like there might be being run down by bicyclists but that there's ample room

[195:02] for pedestrians to feel safe and bicycling and so I think I'm okay with everything else I I'd like to see as many trees as possible trees make everything better from my perspective mm-hmm and then one thing that I've raised in the past and I really just questioned and I don't know why we don't do more of them and I grew up in a big city that has lots of them on their major arterials and that's traffic circles with fountains and they they make a lot of sense in terms of movement of traffic and also make and I know people say oh it's more difficult as bikes and stuff but I think that can be worked out and I think the crossings can be worked out and you might have to walk a little bit farther but sometimes I think we should

[196:00] not shortchange urban design for just you know our immediate want and so I guess I yeah and I know because there and brought this up we're not talking about intersections at this point but I will like I would like to see some consideration of a traffic circle here there you know I don't know xxx in Colorado from my perspective as a bicyclist and a writer and even a driver in there I hate that intersection and I'm glad you guys are trying to fix it it really needs a lot of help and then the last thing you know buddy's brought it up here is speed limit but speed kills and I know we don't want to slow down the cars very much but everybody

[197:02] needs to coexist some and if you're gonna have all these multi modes out there maybe having a little bit slower speed limit might help so when you post a speed limit of 35 people are going 4045 so I guess I would like some consideration of what would happen if you move the speed limits down to 30 just to get them to go 35 saying 30 on 30th yeah 30 on 30th you know we do 20 and 20 let's do 30 on 30th and thank you thank you for your work on this I appreciated so I had a couple additional questions so one of them is about that cross section in Colorado between xxx and foothills that has the the woman ditch in the middle so is it at all possible to be a little flexible with the width of that central area like

[198:00] or there you have a 60 foot width recommend it there and is that 60 feet because there's like big trees right on the edge I think that it's actually reflecting the width at that cross section today so what we were saying was not narrow it to stay within that but I think I'm hearing you say maybe well so just put the thought out there that I mean if there are big trees right on the edge well you don't want to cut down the trees but like if we could get for example we could get a little bit of buffer between the protected bike lane and the travel lane in the bus lane you know if we get two or three feet there it would allow for a little more physical separation that wouldn't really fundamentally impact that that central median area that seems worth exploring okay I'll throw that coming in around my question and that the other question was is it kind of a bigger one but why did we stop at pearl when we evaluated 30th Street yeah when we were looking at the extents for the 30th street quarter we

[199:02] were looking at what the big activity centers are and the areas of change and so Boulder junction at the north and C Williams village on the south we do have the transit village area plan that's looking area I think it was already from Pearl to Valmont so we thought that that area south of Pearl down to baseline was them remind me on the the Boulder Junction plan there does it have really different cross sections for 30th through that hariya bill or mike do you remember with those cross-sections it incorporates these similar principles is gonna come out of like a little similar to you yeah I just can put this out there's a big this is a bigger deal but like I remember the the first time I biked on thirty throughs like one but not long after I moved here it was with my son in a bike trailer behind behind me biking south from iris on 33 it was terrifying and I got it I felt like I was taking

[200:01] his life in my hands and I got off of it as quickly as I could that bike lane is inadequate all the way north I mean really inadequate and so I I would really like obviously we've got like a 10 or 20 year set of things to do here but I don't want to forget about that section of 30th Street so hopefully we can have a you know maybe in the next phase we can evaluate those as well but um you know if we can just keep that in mind as we move through this process because we when we talked about the Folsom corridor and trying to get people to go under bike north-south I thought it was kind of ironic because the longest street we have and Boulder going north south is 30th Street and so I fully support Aaron's comments on take it all the way to diagonal and I don't know what it takes but the bike lane you're really skinny

[201:02] up there and and the cat that curved thing comes way out into the middle of the bike lane and so you really have maybe three feet mm-hmm it seems really narrow and do whatever I can to avoid that so yeah and so I mean I like the 29th Street you know coming down what is that Elmer's are you done I have a couple more comments below I guess my question is about what we can do in the interim and I guess greatly what can we do and I think we're gonna know some more information of that once we get through preliminary engineering and the cost estimation I think we need to get a little better understanding of some of the aspects of the to make kind of this design option happen I think we'll be able to understand how much that cost maybe per

[202:01] section and that may be right now and also and we're not talking about intersections but if there's also that piece to try to make them safer so I guess I'll just put it out there there's a lot of us that would like to have you come back to us and say okay yeah here's what its gonna look like but it in the meantime here's the priority things we are going to do starting next year so the only thing I would add to that conversation is that there are two projects that are scheduled both of which we expect to make the quarters be much safer the first is the underpass that will go underneath 30th in Colorado and we expect that that will a lot that will remove a lot of conflicts in that intersection and then the second is the the drawing that Narine had shown that entire cross-section route of Colorado through region and into 20th Street not including the intersection of 20th in

[203:00] Colorado but from that intersection West we actually have federal safety money to build a project in that area we're gonna and which you I'm not sure if you can quite see it but we're actually building experimenting with a protected intersection at that location and so we hope to get information about just how safe that treatment is and whether that's the right treatment that we should then take and use in other intersections in the corridor those are both things that are funded and will be constructed in 2019-20 go back to you oh sure so I can finish up my comments here people don't mind so well and just I'll just say one more time just that the intersections will be important so whatever we can do to so much of pedestrian bike safety happens at the intersection so and it will get to that eventually and I guess my only other real comment is something

[204:01] I was saying earlier which is that well first of all let me just say I think you've done fantastic work here the public outreach was top notch and the winnowing down some blending you just kudos so thank you for all that and I look forward to these changes they're gonna really help with safety through that corridor in usability in a lot of ways but so the one the one detail other detailed common is that I'm really happy to see the protected bike lanes and I think having them raised will make a big difference but in most of the places the way that you haven't proposed they're separated vertically which helps a lot but there's very little horizontal separation and I just love to see if we can eke out a little bit more separation so we want to preserve the trees right we're talking about that before so we don't want to just cut down all the trees and then move the bike lane in but if there are opportunities if there's a block or two where it really works to put the landscaping next to the vehicles and the bikes interior to that so that you have that physical separation for

[205:01] the bikes and the past reans I think that would be really helpful and where that's not possible you know if you if there's just a room to get another foot or two in and I don't want to say the B word but you know not necessarily bollards but some you know if there's some kind of an opportunity for some kind of physical separation the that helps out a little bit so that it's not just you know the kerb will help but but if a car drifts a little bit to have that a little bit of extra protection I'd like to echo what aaron has said both things how well together this has been quit and how well presented thank you thank you all and also with the safety issues and as Ann said sooner sooner the better Lisa spoke about speed and I would like to ask about with all of as this is moving forward with technology technological advances in enforcement as

[206:01] I watch people run red lights on a daily basis just boom boom boom as they're turning yellow and then red I would really like to see us maybe set up some pilot projects somewhere and and see if that can also help reduce as well as lowering speed as least if it's 30 miles an hour people are going 35 to 40 so I think those are really important there those are easier things to do as well but I think people take running red lights as a matter of course in this community mm-hmm so I just wanted to say also this is pretty nicely teed up but it is a corridor that absolutely we need to be looking at there's no question that I find that their district court or to be one of the scariest on the bike and so because there's so much population that circulates in there I think we're doing the right thing by prioritizing it this highly so kudos for that I want to just

[207:03] pick up on what Cindy was saying and say I don't know exactly where all the red light cameras are in town I know that there's a lot on 28th but the the point being that those have been shown to be effective at reducing crashes at intersections so that's another type of solution that we can deploy at intersections to get people to think twice about running through the yellow light and so I mean our traffic department you can say more about that because you guys have all the numbers on it but I do think that as we do this improvement in safety we want to also look at that I wouldn't mind the speed limit dropping five miles an hour because it's well established that the speed differential is what does the damage and different modes when there's a crash so all that said I think the process that you put together seems like it's worked out pretty nicely and it

[208:00] seems like you've got a broad cross-section of people who have come together on some options and I think it makes sense to leave four lanes on xxx for now because it's a major major arterial but to reconfigure Colorado I think except for the one section between 28 and region it probably won't change travel times too so all in all I think good job and thank you so I good so I just want to echo what the great work that you've done the compliments that have been given thank you and I wanted to just touch on what Aaron said and Lisa about 30th Street from from Perl to the diagonal and whatever you can do there even if it's just restriping or something because it is it could it has the potential to be a good north-south connection but it isn't right now and that's all I had so so I'll just jump in and I agree with

[209:00] what's been said I am curious about the red camera thing dude is there an option to add more of those in some of the worst in their sections yeah we have eight photo red-light cameras currently in the city at six different intersections and it's certainly feasible to add them into other locations the process that we use to do that is to look at locations where there are a lot of red light running crashes that's there are other crashes that actually tend to be caused by photo enforcement and so you want to balance that against the type of crash that you're that you're going to be mitigating and so we we try and place those in locations where those types of crashes are occurring and as you pointed out where we've done that we've been very successful at making those intersections much safer it's my understanding that we have the significant number of intersections with high crash rates on xxx is that we do I

[210:01] would have to look and see whether the crash type though was red light running we're not yeah we can certainly do look into that yeah that'd be great I just am I agree that's what's been said I really appreciate I think how you've taken the public participation working group input to heart and really fashion take a good process and I look forward I think we all do what comes out and how we can help support and move it forward quickly but I think people are very very interested in figuring out how to before was protected bike lanes in a way that serves all the modes travel time so thank you for that anything else I just add that a long time ago we had twenty five mile an hour speed limits through our schools and I remember

[211:01] asking for it to drop down to 20 and there was some resistance from somebody who will remain unnamed but the council prevailed and and we were able to reduce it down to 20 miles an hour and I think you know if you asked people at schools if you ask the police department it's been a real success and it hasn't been a big burden on the court which is what the previous judge had said and and so we've done it in the past and so and it wasn't that painful and I truly think 30 miles an hour is is fast enough to be going on these streets especially when you have so much going on just a communication suggestion you might

[212:00] remember that when the survey was out there online I'm one of the options I don't think was an option we were super serious about but just to be thorough loans the options was to narrow some of the 30th Street from four lanes to two lanes and we all got dozens of emails from people saying oh my god I can't believe you're thinking about doing that I might suggest that now that tab and council has indicated that we're not going to reduce from four lanes to two lanes and on these streets might be a little note out to those few dozen people who wrote us saying rest assured that we're going to keep this at four lanes just to kind of close the loop with those people thank you yes no rights just a fan to tab as well things tap for all your hard work on this and the working group [Music]

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