November 27, 2018 — City Council Study Session

Transcript

Captions from City of Boulder YouTube recording.

[0:00] [Music]

[2:31] whoa welcome everybody we're gonna go ahead and start Boulder City Council study session of November 27th 2018 we have one topic main topic tonight which is funding for our library system thanks Suzanne the first presenter tonight is Katie Dolan who is our budget officer and she's gonna set the context but before we get started I just want to

[3:01] thank the people in the library department so David Jennifer and the many staff members as well as our finance department our consultants and in particular the Library Commission for all of the work that they've done so much work has been done to bring this presentation to you and we're really anxious to hear your thoughts as we present lots of data and answer the questions that you have so let me turn it over to Katie with many things for her work and that of others thanks Jane and good evening ham council a large portion of this presentation is going to be done by our consultant from George K Baum but I did want to kick it off briefly with providing some context stage setting a background and then we're gonna dive deep into a lot of numbers presented by Robin Moore who's of George Kay bomb and the presentation for her sexual take about 20 to 25 minutes and then an opportunity for council discussion and questions and then we're going to switch gears and look into the district formation and

[4:00] governance led by David here and then again an opportunity for questions and discussion after that presentation and then the library commission has provided additional materials and responds to the presentation that we gave them a few weeks back about the state materials so just again Frank could just say I would hope that we don't spend that much time and that you can push it faster we're certainly try when we gave it to the library commission it was about a 20 minute presentation right but we need to be done with all the presentations by 30 minutes so figure that out thank you the one thing I guess just by way of context I think tonight we're gonna try to give guidance on options for how we want to fund the system so regardless of what mechanism people like understanding the finances is I think it's gonna be key to whatever we end up deciding and I had

[5:01] anyhow right we've all read the packet correct alright great so the goal of the presentation again coming out of the July study session when we presented the master plan had two main frameworks that we were working on one was to conduct a detailed financial analysis that presented a balanced impartial analysis of the funding options outlined in the master plan which is where the consultants George Kay bomb came in again a lot of detail in this we're like in three different service levels that were analyzed over eight scenarios presented and in two different governance structures and their policy decisions related to each of the governance structures that Robin will be sure to point out as we go along the different scenarios and then they'll also be more information on the library district governance structure that will be presented by David so just briefly I'm cruising through background you've all been prepared through this but it's been almost a two-year present or process to get to this point starting in 2016 and then it's gone through various

[6:00] boards and commissions including the Planning Board and Library Commission before council adopted the master plan in September and then again we're here tonight to talk about those two main key points that came out of the July study session in September just as a reminder on the 2019 budget were added additions to the library budget that met one of the key service levels within the library master plan so just under five hundred thousand dollars was allocated to the library budget in the 2019 budget and then again George K Baum was hired to conduct a financial analysis in October you have in front of you a handout and this is just illustrative of what's on the handout at the Monday council action committee it was asked to really be clear about what's presented in the master plan and what you get for each of the different service levels so I'm not going to dwell on reading those to you but you can certainly review as we go throughout the presentation about what each service level provides

[7:04] again a little background the three service levels the first one was maintained and this was primary goal just like it says to maintain service levels and this is what was adopted then 2019 budget to achieve the maintain service levels so we reinstated proposed reductions we added some operating and maintenance budget and then also added some funding for studies including the main library North Building the second service level or funding level that we talked about is meet community demand and this is to implement services or capital improvements when additional funding is available examples include the North Boulder branch library and associated operating costs and staffing expanding youth programs and increasing materials budget and then the finalists final service level that we talked about is expansion and this is really our vision statement and includes a Gunbarrel corner library and associated operating and staff costs and it could

[8:01] also include Canyon theater activation pilot program again the details of each of these these are just examples are provided in the additional handout three-page that you have so before I jump over to Robins presentation I do want to kind of highlight this pie chart as an illustration of what we're really talking about tonight so oftentimes when I come before you and we talk about budget we just talk about what the direct cost of any service area is so that's the blue chart here and that's your what you think of is your library approved budget which is just under ten million dollars at nine point seven million what we're gonna be talking about tonight a lot is the true cost of a library system so what we mean by that is when we include what we call as cost allocation but those overhead costs that it would take if you were a separate business to run a library you're your legal services your HR your finance support we want to be sure when we talk about operating a true cost of a library that we include those and then we also

[9:01] have included in there as it cost for running service your maintenance and facility backlog so Robin will touch a lot more on that but just setting the context you guys often see just the budget portion of it and tonight we're expanding that to talk a lot about what the total cost of operating a library will be the maintenance and capital versus the capital the 380 versus - 800 yeah I'm sorry one of those backlog yeah the 380 is an average backlog to keep the maintenance you know up and running that we try to address if we have additional funding but not always guaranteed and do you have similar comparisons for like open space Planning Department all these other departments how much it costs to run those departments we don't tonight and we should get those yeah it's easy to provide good evening I'm Robin Moore

[10:02] my colleague Matt Dempsey will be joining us can you hear me he's driving up from Blow and he's the mastermind behind all the numbers so I'm going to walk through these I want to be respectful of your time please feel free to ask me to give you more detail or less detail and we'll move it along so the purpose of our analysis was several fold one is we looked at all of the costs that it takes to operate the library so as Katie mentioned we looked at the capital cost the operating cost and then the cost allocation or the indirect cost what we also did was identified some of the main assumptions that we had to make to prepare this analysis and multi through some of those and then at the end we're gonna walk you through several sustainable funding scenarios so what is the tax implication or how much revenue do you need to generate to provide for a sustainable library and we do this for the different

[11:02] service levels that Katie described so to start off with the key assumptions we have cervix service costs and those are the operating cost the cost allocation the capital outlay we'll talk about the growth rates that we used and we'll talk a little bit about the fun balance assumptions and then when we look at the district scenarios so if you move from a municipal library to a district then we have some other assumptions that factored into the analysis like how big the service area is and additional materials that need to be put in place to provide the service that you that your community would expect to see so to start with on the key assumptions on the service cost so we have operating costs that include personnel and non personnel recurring costs and we inflated these at different levels we also have cost allocation and what's important here is that right now your 28 team budget is already set so we assume in our analysis that cost allocation or the internal services that

[12:01] Katie was referring to begins in 2019 and we use 2018 numbers for that by inflating separately are you referring to year-over-year okay thank you that just means that in the cost of inflation okay we tried to match almost exactly what the city is already doing your budget projections on the capital outlay slide let's pause here for a second because these numbers are important when we start looking at what's included in what it costs to run the library so that capital and maintenance backlog is the first bullet point there we have 780 thousand from 2020 to 2024 and that accounts for some of the backlog that's in place and that's about 3.9 million and those are costs that are typically allocated to the fam the facilities and asset management for annual capital maintenance expenses we averaged about six hundred and seventy thousand from 2019

[13:00] to 2033 that North Boulder branch library there's five million of construction costs that start in 2019 and they go to 2023 and then we have another 1.7 million of development cost in 2020 2020 for we've got a few major expenses in the analysis and you can see those in the next bullet points the major library renovations we have about 2.5 million in 2024 and then 5 million in 2029 and then the materials handling handling machine and replacement we've got 1.3 million in 2024 in the master plan service expansion scenario we've got four hundred and sixty eight thousand and 2024 for the gun barrel corner library and then only in the library district expanded boundary scenario do we have an additional corner library that's four hundred eighty six thousand that we factor in in twenty twenty four for the growth rates that we assumed and again these match the city's

[14:00] budget model so for property tax growth we looked at five percent in that tax years twenty twenty and twenty to twenty twenty two yep the question in the previous slide you have two foreigner libraries in the same year and there's a difference and what can that be attributed to a gun barrel corner library in the additional corner library right but when is for sixty eight that one other one is for eighty six and I was just curious why they now why is the cost different they won't hear you on in TV land in the finance department the costs are different because they're happening in different years and there's some inflation that happens between the time that gun barrel happens and the additional corner library both the same year sorry they're both in 2020 yeah I

[15:02] think in the model they're slightly different TBD yeah TBD so it's only for an expanded district which we'll get into what the expanded district scenario means but we presume that if you expand your district beyond city limits beyond the valley comp plan limits that there would be a need for potential additional services again all part of the assumptions that we needed to make during the presentation heading back to the growth rates that we use so we had growth in property tax at five percent in the tax years and then four percent and reassessment year for the sales and use tax we did not inflate those as high that's more volatile of a sac of us of attacks so we have 2% after 2025 and then backing up from 19 to 2024 we lined it with the city's budget so that's 1% up to 1 in

[16:02] 1.75 percent and again the expenses match the city's growth assumptions personnel we grew at 3% annually and then non-personnel in capital at 1% in that last section there the fund balance so the way the city right now has the library as a department it does not require the library to set aside its own fund balance so we assumed going forward in the municipal library scenario and in the district scenario that the library budget would now have its own targeted goal of a 20% fund balance so we grew that over time with the target of 20% when we get to the library district scenarios we have three different boundaries that we looked at one is the city of Boulder so it mimics what you have right now two is a Boulder Valley comprehensive payment plan or the city of Boulder planning area and then the third is the expanded boundary and that

[17:02] picks up the library's patron base and the last bullet point there those voting precincts with in Boulder County that include portions of nahuatl in the mountain communities and that's where we pick up those additional libraries as well when we get to the district scenarios you'll also see that there's additional cost for materials and facilities and so we grow that budget cost to get to $14 per capita and if we if we get to that scenario what we also did and this is back to the other point is we have an additional corner library and that was the one the one time 486 thousand of construction costs and that captures the fact that there's you know expanded geographical region and you want to provide a higher level of service to capture some of those patrons the next section that we're going to

[18:01] focus on is the funding requirements for the master plan service levels and then a term that we call the gap funding the gap and that's the cost difference between 2019 and years going forward and we do that for the three different service levels so this chart here each year has the three different service levels broken out and this here shows the total budget needs by service level from 2020 to 2024 2020 has some additional capital outlay items which is why it's a little bit higher but this just gives you a visual depiction of how the library funding would occur over the years and when we started talking about tax and revenue requirements we smooth that out to make sure that in all these years you can raise sufficient revenue to cover all the expenses the next slide is the gap that we just refer to and the

[19:01] municipal library scenarios and funding this gap and so the gap again refers to the expenses for the library that is in 2020 as compared to 2019 and this does not include the three point three eight million cost allocation that we talked about before so we take that out of the analysis and so we have all different we are the three service levels but let's just look at the first one the maintain service level and the total unfunded in 2020 is that gap so the difference between 2019 and 2020 and that's that one point four six million quick question so just in 2019 we budgeted additional levels to try to get close to that maintain service levels so those numbers would have been higher had we not done that yes so it takes those into account thank you and this this is another depiction of

[20:02] the municipal funding scenarios and the gap and in this case we have twenty twenty twenty-one all the way to twenty twenty four and in each year it's the difference in that year as compared to twenty nineteen so you can see in the first column there's that one point four six million that we just referred to and then if you follow the column down you'll see the tax impact of that of funding that gap so the one point four six million if you're looking at it in property tax mills its point three seven nine mills and if you want to look at it just as a sales tax its point zero three nine percent I'm it question to make sure I understand it so that the numbers across the top and the first line these are cumulative right those are those are actually not cumulative and and it seems like it might be because in 2024 it jumps up so what's important to note there is that there's those capital outlay items that we had referred to and the some prior

[21:01] slides you've got 1.3 million for the materials handling in 2.5 million for major library renovations so that's what jumps out that number in 2024 thanks and so again each year so 2022 for example that's the difference between 2022 versus 2019 so the that's that's where that gap is and same footnote at the bottom these scenarios do not include the three point three eight million cost allocation in 2019 numbers and that's assumed to be covered still by the general fund moving along in the analysis we're gonna start talking about the municipal library as compared to the library district so these next couple of slides just give a depiction of the service areas and the options that are available there for the library district in the key point on the east couple of

[22:00] slides is that as you grow the district boundaries you have more Theory you have more taxpayers that you can spread the cost out to so you'll see in this analysis as we move along that the geographic boundaries the lower the tax impact to the residents I have a question did you do any analysis between who in terms of patrons both inside and outside of the boundaries whether or not they're actually property owners or not since the city of Boulder has a fairly high number of renter's this slide here these numbers might look familiar to you these are the library service area assessed values so those columns in gray are the three different geographic areas that we talked about the city of Boulder

[23:00] the Boulder Valley comprehensive plant service area and the expanded service area and then the white columns in between are the incremental difference so we use these assessed valuation numbers to determine the tax impact would I look at at the bottom there is the second to the bottom row the revenue generated by one mill and you can see that as the area gets bigger you get more money per mill because there's more taxpayers there to spread out them you're assuming all the people all the houses are property owners and not renters and we have about 52% proper renters hmm so you didn't take that into a cessation and the more the market value and the assessed valuation so you didn't factor in who's paying the taxes we just used the so my n Lords would pay double or however many properties they have they would pay the tax yeah everyone would still have to pay the property taxes it's just whether it's

[24:01] passed on to a renter if they're renting or whether the property owner absorbs it but the property still would have to be there on an attempt to on these incremental 19,000 people and 31,000 people wasn't it attempt to estimate how much sales tax how much Boulder City sales tax those people who live outside the city might leave behind with us we didn't do that okay because that would be part of their contribution to the library right look at the existing library exactly already it's there any studies done on following a library user in terms that they come to the library they go to the grocery store they go have lunch they go get a coffee so the trips that outside of Boulder library users do not from us but that would be an interesting study to look at but now if that's not so to start with

[25:01] let's look at the municipal library scenarios and we'll talk about the funding options and then the taxes that we need for sustainable funding this first slide here and you can see it from the header funds the gap so the average gap between 22 years 2020 to 2024 and again we wanted to make sure that in all of these years the taxes that we're talking about would cover or the revenue would cover all of those needs so we average them out the first scenario that we looked at has no tax increase and that's the not focus again on the maintain service levels so that's funding the 3.3 million and this money can be reallocated from other general fund services if you wanted to have sustainable funding for that gap the second scenario also assumes no tax increase and this is just a reallocation of existing taxes and that's the

[26:01] equivalent is point 806 Mills or 0.03 percent sales tax and again I'm sticking with a maintain service level and so if you expand the service level you're going to trigger a charter change which could require an election if you go much higher mm-hmm I just want to tick and tie these numbers um bear with me on page 21 you showed us the doll by the way it's very handy to have this in paper thank you for me that so for example the top Roah in 21 which is maintained service dollar-cost she got 1.4 million and then 1.8 million all the way across and that looks like to me like that adds up to about 16 or 17 million dollars and then you flip over to page 26 and you took that 15 or 16 or 17 million dollars over those five years and divided it by five and you said the annual average annual cost

[27:00] it's obviously lumpy actually increases over time with with half that money in 2024 we would have to raise we'd have to find 3.3 million dollars somewhere on average over those five years to do all the things that per year thank you same for all the other numbers right okay just to put this in perspective I kind of know the answer but I just want to hear it we've been sitting on a large gap for years is that I mean and now we're finally having a conversation about it or how I mean I know we've been getting by with less for a long time this is a huge gap so I guess I'm just if we looked backwards how would we summarize what the gap has been you know I think one of the biggest takeaways that I found during this analysis was really putting in perspective the maintenance backlog that we don't talk about a lot when we quantify it you typically it's those operational direct costs that we know about which is a lot smaller of this portion when we talk

[28:00] about it but when you throw in the maintenance backlog and the capital outlay assumptions to really again have the high quality you know full cost of a library service that's what really in my opinion jumped up the cost when we're looking at this like give us some examples of things that we got oh so we've been needing to do that for years like what are we talking about paint the picture yeah I mean I think it's none oh we but needs to it it's just finding the timing and available funding for stuff like the bathroom renovations right those came through this year but it could have been a need I mean I'd have to look to the actual library folks to see what their maintenance and backlog is roofing you know we know that it's coming up or that we have outdated or we're reaching the lifecycle of a lot of items and the buildings already you know 50-plus years and that's typically past a lifecycle but with limited building opportunities or space available you just can't move either but it impacts how much it costs to maintain a building so I would just say having been here for

[29:01] a while we stopped funding the library in the late 90s basically just putting the king to put the man just haven't had those community priorities and just for clarification - so since is this because we haven't had a general fund capital fund is that why why this has accumulated the capital cost of a keeps a portion of that I would definitely say of focusing the priority on it and the general funds typically just paid for those direct costs and because the general fund is very limited it's paid for a lot of the other initiatives - that don't have other funding sources available and so does that mean that other departments in similar situations could potentially have similar gaps a little bit naturally turn to James

[30:00] James this is a small piece of a much bigger problem of deferred maintenance right I think when we look at the CIP as well as we look at our budget every year we see a pretty big list of things the city would like to do you talked about yes that's exactly true every department or every program area that we have is likely in this very same position in the past during budget times we will bring forward the facilities and asset management program and we show over time that our backlog of maintenance grows and grows we've spent in different years we've decided to focus money in different areas to try to reduce that backlog but it grows so much that it's really hard to do and so we we make decisions about delaying roofing because maybe the doesn't need it right right now we also often delay changes in our fleet so

[31:02] while we would love to maybe have new vehicles every five years we don't do it until every seven years or whatever so yes we make hard decisions every year because we don't have the funding to fund all of the maintenance needs that we have so understand how much of this is the capital backlog it looks like on page 14 you have an assumption that said the the average annual capital backlog was 780 thousand I know that's an average so so can we assume that at least under scenario number one that 3.3 million about 780,000 is allocated to that backlog and that would actually be the same number for the meet community demand and the service expansion right the 780 would be the same for all of those so it's somewhere between maybe 25% and doing that quick math here and 15 15 to 25 percent okay so the rest of

[32:00] it is operational actually look at that on page 14 there's annual capital and maintenance expenses understand how that ties in so it's seven eighty plus six seventy plus six seventy and then also the 2.5 million dollars that we have you know that makes that big jump for 2024 as well so again what that big big hunka number was for - it's for so what we had to presume is that there will be eventually a big capital need and so that they the consultants based upon you know their experience and other communities just presume that at some point there would need to be a big renovation of the library system at two and a half million dollars so it's not a specific thing is just like stuff happens yeah it's beyond it's the it's kind of the newer stuff beyond the taking care of your roof and stuff making it look pretty nice five million in five years later in 2024 we we had 1.3 million for the materials handling

[33:01] machine okay sorry the errands in there and then you well and I was just gonna make a quick point about exactly that that like that that 2.5 million in 2024 stood out to me because I think Jane correct me if I'm wrong but traditionally a big renovation like that we don't fund out of an annual budget right we find subway like a tax or something like that so this would be like including in an annual budget I'm a sudden saying this is the wrong thing to do but just calling it out including in an annual budget something a large capital thing that we've typically done through extraordinary means right that's right in 2011 our voters approved the capital bond issue and the last library renovation I believe was paid out of that along with lots of other capital projects in the city and it was our first capital project sort of summary of lots of things that needed to get done in in oh well over a decade maybe two decades that we really had delayed the

[34:02] backlog and we just put forward that capital bond I was just gonna point out that you know that's exactly right that a community culture and safety tax if we wanted to take that to the voters where would there's a specific line item it could be funded like that outside of what we're looking at here but this generally is gonna roll up what the tax burden will be to support it however we want to look at that whether it's you know kind of one-time three-year closed ended things or whether it's an ongoing I'd like to thinking about it in this way because it kind of gives you and that roll up regardless of what the program is but I agree with you completely that you would say we're on the corner library in Gunbarrel and we want to run that perhaps as a voter initiative kind of deal and just I'm not necessarily saying we should do it that way I just want to call that out as we continue the discussion over how we might fund I think what's important to I'm just keeping the back of your mind for this in the project that Robin had

[35:02] to undertake was the key term sustainable funding source right not kind of piecemealed and so while there are again several policy decisions that you can make throughout the night of like where you want to fund things and what timing like this is just an overall big picture it's sustainable you don't have to keep going back out to voters for different pieces of what you want to achieve so just in the back we good okay so the last slide talked about scenarios where you did not have a tax increase so the next slide is funding all of the direct costs of the library so as a reminder and if you can think back to the pie chart that Katie started off with that was the nine point seven million of direct library costs so did not include the indirect cost allocation and we have different scenarios here if there's obviously a lot more you could because you can combine property tax and sales tax and lots of different ways so what scenario three shows the sales tax only and again I'll stick with the maintain service

[36:00] level column that's that point two seven five percent scenario four is the property tax only meant two point six two mils something that's important to note on all of these scenarios they do require a vote and some of them do require a charter change because you're increasing your mill levy and then under five and six we combined different sales tax and property tax scenarios so you can see under five we tried to split it somewhat equally of 0.15 percent of the sales tax which would then require a one point one six mill increase for property tax and that last scenario is where the Milly mill levy goes to the cap but doesn't go over and that's the one point oh one nine mils that you have left and then that combines with the 0.17% sales tax so that again as a reminder that gets you to the maintain service level those are all increases and they were all they are all increases and it's for the direct library cost only so that nine point seven million in 2019 Dan so

[37:04] one person who wrote us pointed out that he was actually in the letter that we received from the library commission that the cost allocation was left out of this right and so the way I think of that cost allocation here is adding one mil because roughly speaking the the valuation in the city's about three and a half billion dollars and so a mil on that is three and a half million so if you want to do the mental math to be able to say okay if we were including those costs what would what would that look like because there costs that are being paid so you can add one mil roughly to any of these scenarios that don't include that cost allocation or 0.1 percent sales tax yeah roughly one percent one other point on the bottom there and you can see in the footnotes these do assume that the point 3 3 3 mil for the library fund is maintained so this is in addition to that it's already in place on the next

[38:04] slide what we do here is take the property tax increase so if you if you look at scenario number 4 which is the property tax only and the 2.6 2 mils we then ask the question well what does that mean for a homeowner in the boulder area so that's where that next slide comes into place for an eight hundred and fifty thousand dollar home and again this excludes the 0.333 mill levy it's one hundred and sixty dollars per year again this is the maintain service level column that first column on a 1 million dollar home it's one hundred and eighty nine dollars a year and for commercial property owners this is on market value we looked at 1 million dollar market value property and that's seven hundred and sixty dollars per year in the next scenarios we're going to look at the district so moving from the municipal library scenario to the district and

[39:01] what the funding options are and what the taxes would need to be for sustainable funding so these scenarios here we have the three different geographic areas that we talked about before the first is maintaining that city of Boulder area so essentially it's going to look exactly the same geographic boundaries that you have then is the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan boundary and then the third is the expanded and you can see the mill levy requirement drops because you have a larger geographic area and a larger assessed valuation the notation here at the bottom is also important the first point is that the 0.333 mill levy for the library fund that we did maintain for the municipal library scenario for these we assume it is not maintained so the when you form a district we assume that the library would not have that access to that point three three three Mills so to just clarify that that means that the effective mill rate city of Boulder taxpayers would be the amount

[40:02] you have here - 0.333 yes and it does include a cost allocation we also assume here and we talked about that before that the expanded boundaries so the BBC boundary and the expanded have additional library and materials costs that we grow to $14 per capita and then again as we talked about the additional corner library expense for the expanded boundary and that's at four hundred eighty six thousand dollars don't move off that yet quite yet let make sure I follow these numbers so under your scenario number four property tax only was two point six mils that did not include that is that does not effectively include the point three three mil because that's a incremental to that and it also does not include the three point three eight million cost allocation okay so then you said well geez what if it was all mils right so a scenario number six the same people right City Boulder poured at four

[41:01] versus six it jumps up to three eight five and the reason why it goes from two point six that three point eight five is you're including the effectively you're including the three three three you're also including the mill equivalent of three point three million dollar account of cost allocation how about there's a sales tax component though too isn't there well when you when you become a library district you actually don't have access I mean there's they're sort of back-ended ways but your your source of revenue would be a property tax okay and remind us again how much of the eight point nine million is his sales tax most of it so the city would have the city would have like an extra seven or eight million dollars in sales tax that they wouldn't have to expend on the library that could either refund to the taxpayers they're lowering the tax rate or by giving it to the cops or something like that right yeah I'd be cautious to say that it's all sales tax it's general fund revenues right which is comprised of sales tax property tax your court fines I mean a whole slew of things so the majority of the library budget is in the general fund which is

[42:00] funded by sales tax and property tax and then a smaller portion roughly a million or so is in that point three three three library funds and we actually we have a slide a few slides down from now of what that number would look like if you moved to a library district what the available funds would be and then one other point here all of the backing up to the municipal library scenario and the district do assume that 20% fund balance so that does remain consistent and the analysis for both scenarios the municipal library in the district can I make one more comment on this side the other thing to think about here if you're doing you know mental math is that depending on the decisions that we might make if we went to a district as far as facilities right whether they were leased whether they were sold whether whatever we do the value of the facilities is that point six mils okay so that's about if I understand that right is that correct that if there were some attribution of the capital cost of

[43:03] using city of Boulder facilities as part of the library district it could range anywhere from zero two point six mils is that right to the best of our ability that we know right now this was a very rough assessment internally to determine what the property value would be it's also important to know that in that analysis that was done by staff there is no included North Library parcels because it's all one that's connected to the municipal facility and so to break that out was difficult to ascertain but I mean minimally it would be 0.6 knows so how did you come up with that because it's about thirty million in property value for the the libraries as buildings and land so how did the attribution of point six mils come about we'll get back to you with that question

[44:07] [Laughter] facilities so what I did is I looked at the value of the facilities and I took the estimated debt payment on 30-year debt so that's how I came up with that so I took the level and I assumed annual debt service and then figured out what that would be in terms of mil thank you I get one lifeline the boulder taxpayers then be paying for those facilities

[45:01] twice they already pay for him once right we own him I guess in a district those outside of the boundary would also are the city limits would also be paying into it but you say also so that does assume that the city of Boulder residents are paying twice for the same thing they are already paid for but what would happen for Boulder residents is they as part of the district they would be paying for them again so twice but they'd also as City residents be receiving the payments back from the district that would redound to the benefit of the city that their residents of and how would they received those payments back would they get a check well the individuals would not get a check the city would get a check and as shareholders so to speak in city

[46:00] government it would essentially redound to the benefit of city taxpayers because the city would use those dollars either to invest in further capital or to spend in some other way that helps the residents of the city as determined by the City Council something like they'd like and just and that would be a discretionary policy right that would not be required for for the library district to pay that rent or whatever it was okay and can you expound what do you know I mean we'll talk about that more later I think but if the library district were formed there would be many ways that the assets could be handled between the city and library district they could be given they could be sold they could be kept by the city they they could be rented for no money they could be rented for at least that you know there are a lot of options but the numbers that we're seeing here do not assume purchase this just says it would be added on if that was gonna happen okay so what we did from the last

[47:03] slide is we took the three point eight five mils of the property tax for the city of Boulder boundaries only and looked at the tax impact on the same values that we talked about under the municipal library scenario so for a 3.85 mill property tax on an eight hundred and fifty thousand dollar home that's two hundred and thirty six dollars a year and on a 1 million dollar home that's two hundred and seventy seven dollars a year and if you want to comparison a few slides back under the municipal library scenarios so that 236 compares to a hundred and sixty dollars on a 1 million dollar market value commercial property that's the nine hundred and two dollars I'm sorry 1117 to put those milton numbers in perspective though isn't the city's the city's share of the mill levy right now as eleven point nine mills right eleven point nine eighty one eleven point nine so so on the surface service expansion

[48:01] and this is without the the debt financing that we earlier points it's assumed that we just gave the asset so the mill at the service expansion the mill levy would increase by about forty or forty-five percent from what it is now we be bumping that the property owners property taxes our share of that by a forty or forty-five percent the high engine yeah that's if we gave away the asset yeah the Studio City share would drop from eleven point nine eight one buy drop by that point three three three but you'd still be okay yeah thanks yeah thanks then we take this same analysis so this is the city of Boulder boundaries and then we do the same thing for the other two service areas so the three point eight five Mills then gets reduced to three point two nine and that tax impact before on them let's just look at the million dollar home was two hundred and thirty two hundred and seventy seven dollars now it's two hundred and thirty seven and then when you expand the service territory even further on the next slide

[49:00] we've dropped to three point one one Mills and that tax impact on the million dollar home drops again to two hundred and twenty four dollars a year and then seeing footnotes the addition there and we've talked about this on the prior slides is that as you expanded the service territory to this largest geographic region you're including additional or at least our analysis included additional capital and operating expenses that were associated with adding an additional corner library right that if I read this right we're talking about tens of dollars difference per room and then this last side gets that the question that was just raised before that if you do form a district then in theory you potentially could have some funds in the city's general fund that you can reallocate for other purposes and this is you know a purely analytical look at it there's obviously a lot of policy questions that you would have to noodle on but from a numerical standpoint if the district library is

[50:00] formed these are the breakouts in the operating and facilities capital and then we totaled it per year we did a five-year total in a ten-year total all the way to the right of this of this slide that you can see how much money is theoretically could be available for other purposes and again this is if the district the district library scenario goes forward and the funding in the general fund is therefore available for other purposes and thank you for that Robin to clarify this doesn't include also the portion of the library fund which is roughly million four so it presumes that you might repurpose or a charter change trade remove that year mark so it's anywhere between eight and nine million dollars and this was the more basic library scenario to maintain so we didn't say well you could have built a Taj Mahal and then save that money so you know we tried to be conservative in this estimate so from the analysis that we looked at that was the the points that we looked to to achieve and the

[51:00] summary of lots and lots of numbers that were talked about it was an absolute pleasure working with the staff on this and certainly we're here to answer any questions or give more data and any other scenarios that you'd want to see it's very thorough thank you yeah we might as we get further in our discussion but I think we're good for now was well done Thanks all right hello members of council david gear with city attorney's office I'd like to start with just a few introductions Janet Michaels the senior assistant city attorney with our office has been helping us along with this project and has been the primary attorney and then we also have and I would ask them to approach the table as well Kim Zetter and Elizabeth Bob who are basically experts on library district formation and the Colorado library law just to

[52:03] honor Lisa's request I'm going to make my presentation much briefer than I planned I really appreciate it because we've read all this and we'll talk about this at the retreat and and I would encourage you to all take advantage of the knowledge that both Kim and Beth bring to the table they have a great deal of you know just knowledge on the on how districts are organized and how they're governed and really have been very intimately involved in the creation of a number of them across the state of Colorado so basically there are two approaches to forming a library district under the Colorado library law as you can see there's an approach with the governmental entities that have authority create a district come together and through cooperation create a library district through the adoption of a resolution or ordinance by all of the governmental entities involved then that follows by that follows with appointing

[53:03] a board adopting an IgA and then finding a revenue source for that district the other approaches is quite similar but it's by petition and this is in frankly it seems to me from my reading of the Colorado library law that it's it's rather easy to get a petition before the governing bodies to get a district started but the the district required to do it by petition of course first there's a petition the petitions required to meet a number of specifications within the Colorado library law the petition is sent to the Colorado County it would be sent to the boulder county county commissioners and the commissioners along would basically set it for an election it's also sent to the city there's a number of requirements related to hearings it's and that type of thing but once the

[54:02] petition has been certified and sent to the county commissioners there's a couple of things that can happen the first thing that can happen is when you get the petition you can just go ahead and say well rather than go through this election how about we just form a district so that the governing entities at that point can just form the district if they don't want to do that if they'd say we would like to put this up for a vote then it's set for an election and then the voters will decide whether or not they want to form a library district once the district is formed there's a board of trustees that are appointed by all the governmental entities involved and this is the same for both the petition process as well as a resolution and ordinance process they adopt an IgA and if you have questions about that I think that Kim and Beth really have a great to offer in terms of their knowledge on

[55:02] what has been negotiated in other library districts with regard to how the governments cooperate and the intergovernmental relationships and then there's also a requirement in for both that if you are going to use Tabor or a mill levy as your revenue source for the district that you have a taper election and with regard to the petition you could you could do it at the time you establish your district or you could do it at some future point the statute doesn't specify a specific time when you have to do your Tabor election so that's it that's it at a very high level and with that I'd like to just open it up for councilmember questions I've got a couple since and all directed to you all thanks for being here since sounds like

[56:00] it's about the ig8 portion of it so the just to make sure I understand it correctly is something like this were to happen that a Board of Trustees would be appointed and they would then become an independent body that would negotiate the IGA with the appointing bodies is that correct that's correct this is interesting I just point them and then they get their own powers and then you try to hash something out as a intriguing so the and then with the appointment of the Board of Trustees it's the governmental entities who would do that if we were to look at a library district that included parts of the county how would the appointing authority be divided between the city and the county commissioners the statutes provide that the establishing entities can form a committee and then that committee can exist in perpetuity so it could be so many council members so many County Commissioners to do the

[57:01] the actual appointing overtime alternatively and what usually happens is everyone kind of loses interest and the library board is appointed to make recommendations which are the ratified by you for instance in a rapaho library district the recommendations go to Arapahoe County and they're approved or disapproved there and then they go to the school district and they're approved or disapproved there so again there's a lot of flexibility but if you're going to have two establishing entities both will have some say in that appointment process would actually be would be decided at that initial stage when you are going through your initial IgA that is one of the things that is required to be determined is how you're going to move forward with your appointment process but you don't have the IGA yet

[58:01] when you appoint the original commissioners that's true mm-hmm so it's really you just have to make a decision at that once you have completed your negotiations whether or not you want to maintain that initial board so you could do something preliminary and then either maintain the same structure through the IgA or not so this is a question born out of curiosity you're not saying that we would do this but could you also have a hybrid kind of process where you would have ordinance resolution and then boundaries and then have a vote you you kind of have to what we've seen in several of the districts is there's always a concern that the Tabor election

[59:01] is going to go is going to lose it's not going to pass so in the intergovernmental agreement for several of the library districts that was provided that there would be funding coming from the city and the county or usually just the city for the new the newly formed library district while the city library continues to operate that district then goes out and conducts the Tabor election just for the funding so you have two entities existing at the same time you have the library district board that has been formed through this appointment process and you have the city library moving forward keeping the library services going then the Tabor election is promoted by the library district and if it doesn't pass and there's something in the IGA that says after so many efforts the library district board is dissolved answers your

[60:02] question but it answers a question like my question was actually instead of having the that council decide that it wants to form a library district could that question be taken to the voters yes thank you it doesn't have to do with that the formation of the district so much is that within our materials we were asked about whether or not we wanted to move forward with a poll preliminary correct did I make that up no no that's in there so so the polling whether or not this kind of thing would fly first as well correct and could you oh sorry it's just gonna on if you polled how would you decide that poll I mean do you pull in the city of Boulder do you pull in the county who's not

[61:00] paying any tax right now and they would have a say the various boundaries how do you decide who gets pulled yeah we don't we don't do the polling but the polling I've seen would take into account which of those scenarios you want to deal with so you're three scenarios begin narrowly and then expand outward so your pollsters would would take the poll in the smaller area that would give you that result and then expand out you're now adding these voters what's the result there and then you'd pull out here as well so but would it be would subsequent polls would those be like the onionskin would they just be the Boulder Valley comp plan and then or area and the expanded beyond comp land area you know I think your pollsters would want to do

[62:01] rather than doing it like the Indians again you'd have to pull what about what do you people think of this because your mill levy is gonna be different and then go out and do the entire so I think it was in the memo but I'm now not recalling can you do the formation election and Tabor election the same allies can we've had trouble with that in some of the library districts because then you're forced to ask a question that says will you fund this entity recognizing that if you don't it's gonna go away it's not going to exist because you're asking a formation question that's contingent upon a funding question so the questions get really complicated does that make sense you don't want people voting to approve a library district but turning down the funding yeah I would think you could Ward it well yes tapirs a strange beast

[63:00] right that's you okay who's got Mary sorry I just want to follow up on that so would you have it at one election where you had the first question then a year later at the next election yes is that what most other districts have done no most of them the establishing entities go ahead and form the district with the idea that the district will go out and attempt several elections and if it isn't funded within so many years it dissolves I think three elections is the longest I've seen so and that was for Collins and it passed the first first election I believe so the other scenario is what you said right is polls see if people are favorable and if they are then you go ahead and form it and then you put that's correct and it's on page in our packet it's on page 14 of this study session packet where they talk about

[64:01] staff and the I would assume the library commission also coming up with questions for the polling but I was gonna ask about the Fort Collins election how did that go it was successful was it close was it contentious was it no it was a long time ago back since it did go from a municipality to it into a district yes and I don't remember there being much contention at all it did pass the first time the city and the library district and the city library really worked together everybody was in favor of making it happen the intergovernmental agreement was worked out with regard to the property before the library district was absolutely certain to exist because we had that contingent funding question the reason for that was because it gave you an opportunity to go to the voters and say if you vote yes this is what's going to happen if that IgA isn't in

[65:02] place to some extent then it's kind of a shot in the dark but it went it went pretty smoothly did can you tell us how they how did they deal with assets that one the existing libraries were turned over to the library district after the first year so the library district was formed it was funded collected its taxes over a year and then the existing assets were turned over there was a lot of there were a lot of exactions that had been collected by the city for the library district and there was some kind of a work out with regard to other property that the city wanted so there were trades of property that was kind of owned by the library because of exactions that the city wanted and so

[66:00] things were were traded around in that one the Library District entered into agreements with the city to utilize a lot of the city services so contract supervision procurement personnel and a lot of that has continued to this day property now all belongs to the library district and that's one of the things that you call a mutual benefit correct yes it's worked out very well I think for everyone I don't know about the city but I think so do you have good I know you presumably expert in districts other than library districts yes okay so just cut out a law I know there's fire districts right because we're someone from over those we've chosen not to we have our own municipal fire department are there police districts or Parks districts or open space districts do those exist and does that kind of play - by Colorado long yeah there's parking districts water and sand districts all

[67:02] kinds of different cemetery districts so if we want to eliminate all of our funding problems we just create districts for all of our departments right you might have other problems but [Laughter] so it looks from a quick glance online that there's about 30 library districts or so on the state does that send it better is about right here and so how many library systems are there outside of districts like how many municipalities run their own versus how many vonda the district because it looks like roughly a third of the land area in Colorado has a district yeah I don't know the answer to that we get a lot of calls there aren't a lot of attorneys that do this so we get a lot of calls from municipal libraries but as far as just based on the calls we get there aren't all that many municipal libraries or they don't have many problems I was

[68:01] curious about Denver I was looking around at the cities in the Front Range that do and don't have districts has it didn't forever had this discussion yes and what's how is that discussion procedure and why a couple of years ago Denver passed a huge bond issue and at that time they were talking about a district but once that bond issue passed they just let it go I see and so can you name other cities that have become part of like he's Aurora apart I couldn't quite tell from the map if Aurora's part of a library district no Aurora has a municipal library they have we had conversations with them about five years ago they've closed several of their branches because of funding problems at the time that they that we were talking about the library district they went out for a mill levy and I think they were going to form what's

[69:00] called the G ID just to fund the library and it didn't pass and that was the last discussion County why aren't they in the Arapahoe district you know when a library district is initially formed if another municipal body has provides its own library services it doesn't get included in the library district so it can exclude itself so we could in theory there could be a library district that doesn't include the city of Boulder there certainly could be yeah and they could start their own library certainly could be yes I just had one more question here so I mean I think you just answered part of it so in the circumstance that a hundred people got to petition together who live inside an outside of Boulder and and called this question that I went to the County Commissioners at that point and the county commissioners and the city began

[70:00] discussions right around what we need to do for an IgA at that time what if we can't complete that discussion in 90 days I mean what if there's like a sticking point of some kind and it can't move forward what happens then yeah typically it doesn't happen in 90 days because yeah what the statute says is that the IG and IgA providing for the funding of the library district asked to be entered into what that's come to mean in our area of law is an IgA that provides you're going to go have an election and here's how we're going to keep you afloat to make that election happen so it's not a it's not that the the agreement should be in place in 90 days but it doesn't have to cover everything it just needs to address what needs to be covered okay so say the formation election happens then then there would presumably be more

[71:01] discussions on the issues that didn't get completed yes yeah okay there'd be a process in the original ig8 for how those discussions would take place but the process wouldn't necessarily address issues of substance yes correct so you could go through that process and end up stuck in a place where if you hadn't worked those things out I need described in Fort Collins that they got some things dealt with before they even form the district yes but it's possible to be essentially forced to form the district by the the petition carriers and then still not have resolved some of the big issues absolutely okay thank you yeah that's absolutely correct the only thing I would add is that the 90 days that is listed on your slides it's actually 90 days in the statute but then the statute goes on to say that you are permitted to extend that IGA negotiation period upon agreement of the parties so

[72:01] truly the 90 days is just kind of arbitrary so when you say agreement of the parties let's say in this case for example you've got Boulder County the city of Boulder and then the petitioners who have gathered their petitions and got the county in discussions so do the petitioners have to agree to extend no sir it's just the city in Kenya okay so now I'm gonna bring a different city into this which is Longmont so if we were to look at forming a district library district and it would be the expansive one that's been talked about so it's outside the comp plan boundaries another set of boundaries would be the county and so would then if that were the proposed formation with the city of Longmont the city of Boulder and any other city be negotiating with the commissioners or how would that work not necessarily Beth and I talked about this

[73:01] this afternoon because the statutes don't provide that every municipality in the district takes part as an establishing entity so only the establishing entities participate in the IGA or even in the formation process so if you think about Colorado and all of those districts that we've talked about they all overlap one another every which way the Library District can do the same thing the only question for the library is at the beginning is who's going to establish it so you could establish it and this hasn't been tested but the way the law reads you can go out to that outer boundary and you don't have to talk to the county commissioners but the petitioners if that's done by petition could go to the county commissioners and include they could try to include Boulder the only reason Boulder could get out of it is because it already

[74:00] provides its own library services Longmont I don't think has a available library system okay so they could remove themselves Nahuatl probably does not so they could not so the election would go to the people within that boundary and any municipality that provides library services can remove itself from that election or staying but those who don't are in so one last question and I'll be done so in theory a town another small town in the county could do this formation process and it would just be the case so they could say Superior and the petitioners get the county commissioners to move forward under this and then the cities that provide library services could choose to opt out yes okay thank you so kind of following on that I was really surprised that a hundred people

[75:02] could petition to get this and how did that can you explain how that happened because for every other kind of petition you need thousands of signatures depending on if it's municipal or state or whatever how did this one happen I can't tell you I mean it seems kind of outrageous to me that a hundred people who don't even live in the city of Boulder could petition to have us form a for a library but it's it's reassuring to understand we don't have to participate if we decide to opt out I think the key to feeling more comfortable with the 100 signatories issue is that you're really petitioning for an election of some kind it's either an elections you have to have thousands of people yeah so there's no difference I don't see the difference you know so a hundred people is not a majority of

[76:00] people or even close to it and candidly the library law is not a model of clarity excellent question two more questions we started talking about this and then we kind of want examples of where cities lease their assets are loaned into the districts but did not give them away Adams County did that they turned the assets over to the library district but they actually kept what's called a right of reverter on them so that if the library did something other than actually providing library services on those sites they reverted right back to the county as time went by that library district I don't know if you know this but it's it is now Adams County Library District is known worldwide for its

[77:01] services and facilities but what happened was over time they'd just contact the county and say this building is not good for us we want to sell it can we sell it and every time the county said that's fine just go ahead so they gave up their right of reverter on all the buildings you know most of those buildings nobody would have wanted anyway but okay so there's models for that and then can you just talk a little bit about Jeffco so they started and then they decided not to what was the story there a couple of things in in Jeffco you remember earlier I mentioned that if a city has its own library services it can opt out of a district formation so Jefferson County had the Jefferson County Library system which included Westminster but Westminster decided they wanted their own libraries so they went ahead and built some very nice library facilities

[78:01] that became an issue for Jefferson County because if a library district was formed now Westminster has the opportunity to opt out of that library system so that was a concern and that was being worked through the bigger issue and I can't tell you I understand this but it has to do with Jefferson County's accounting they had a dedicated library mill levy and the language of the dedicated library mill levy said that the mill levy for the library was up to something 3.5 million either County Commissioners controlled that mill levy whether it was one mill or 3.5 Mills and what they had been doing and they were very open about this they used that mill levy since they could just move it around to adjust for

[79:00] their Tabor requirements so that they didn't have an overage in revenues and expenditures and in the mill levy so the library district dedicated mill levy became kind of their adjustment tool and because they didn't they haven't a boost I think with me because they haven't de bruised yeah okay well that's sort of interesting but I guess not relevant okay yeah I was and actually that was part of the reason that the library board wanted to to form a district was because it was their mill levy that was what's going like this all the time okay any other questions I guess we're on to part three who's in charge very helpful thank you yes yes sorry thank you very much

[80:02] bear with me while I switch presentations and we'll have the library green means go awesome hey good to be back with all of you again and thank you for this bit of time appreciate the thoughtful dialogue around this ongoing conversation and also having the opportunity to provide a bit of context for our friends and neighbors as well as folks that may not have some details and I'm Tim O'Shea I'm a library commissioner here in the city of Boulder and with me is Gianni Teeter who will be speaking as well so I'm gonna happily step through some slides to move us right along to some key areas

[81:00] of context and conversation and with respect to council and Commission it's really isn't the first time we've been here as a commission in this capacity or as a council in this capacity but that said one of the things that's really nice to know about the city of Boulder is it's a community that loves its library the service is provided the programming and also has a very clear sense of itself and its history and the two slides that you've just kind of looked through reference back to some of the reasons we have libraries in this country and they were community members Benjamin Franklin and Andrew Carnegie who both saw the need to provide funding for services to the citizenry that allowed for a certain degree of empowerment and what's more is they understood that funding these services led to significant change growth development opportunity and I think that leads us to a topic of some

[82:00] relevant recent pertinence and that's our own Carnegie branch library Boulder has always been ahead of the curve and when Andrew Carnegie started funding libraries within the United States and beyond Boulder was one of the early recipients of funding to begin our own Library System and our beloved Carnegie Library began as a seed grant to create and fund a resource and at that time Boulder considered itself the Athens of the West and I'll defer to counsel as to how you want to be referred to going forward the point being that we quickly outgrew that library and that growth has continued to this day at this point in time across the boulder Public Library System we see approximately 1 million visits annually and those are consistent numbers and we've seen those growing over the course of looking at and measuring our library system and it's utilization and that million equates to

[83:02] roughly 2,800 visits a day what's important about that is when we think about our community and all of the goods that we provide the visits to the library are six times more than to Chautauqua four times more than the Boulder County farmers market and three times more than all of the rec centers combined only open space mountain parks in the Pearl Street Mall see more visitors annually than our library system how do you how do you count just we actually count people coming through the doors is that right yeah yeah it's it's not quite as good as some of our traffic monitoring systems out on the streets but it's gonna say if we wanted to gather everybody in the room and walk through the doors a few times we could probably push past a million this year so kids running back and forth don't count we count them only about as tall as they are so it takes three data we do measure the the foot traffic through and the sensors in the systems they are aligned with also the monitoring the resources

[84:00] coming and going so they've counted me over 100 times I would hope so Mary yeah at least to the visits and meetings and seeds yeah and that's a good point is that a lot of folks would say well with the internet with where we find ourselves these days the library is kind of irrelevant not true and we're able to measure that and see consistently that there is growth and increase in utilization of our library system the numbers speak for themselves and one of the things that I think is worth noting is I mentioned libraries being about empowerment and certainly access to resources information literacy of all kinds and our community makerspace building 61 repurposed city facilities and introduced a 1500 square foot makerspace and what's fascinating about the library is it's not just books and periodicals but there have been over 50 businesses started in this makerspace because it's providing access to new forms of technology and again that literacy and I

[85:01] think it's wonderful to think about our libraries not just as a place to go and read but to actually create new opportunities and we see that time and again across programming in the library and the makerspace was started through seed funding through the Boulder Library Foundation very generous grant but with that risk an opportunity and success has come the reality that now our community has really latched on to this as a new and very meaningful good - certainly a diversity of audience that may not have visited the library prior and the goal that we identified in our master plan was some expansion of these kinds of programs there's great desire to see this kind of access continue and to foster the next generation of library patrons and how we look at literacy going forward and that dovetails nicely into what's happening in North Boulder with the 2m and - and tax extension we were fortunate to receive the five

[86:00] million dollars of funding to actually break ground and create a library facility in North Boulder expanding on the corner branch that you've heard about that's been such a successful test case the challenge here is buildings are one thing staffing facilities excuse me materials and programming is something else entirely and it's worth noting that when we put that together we were in the midst of finalizing the most recent master plan so North boulders actually been in the works for quite some time and was an unmet goal in 2007 similarly outreach to a greater diversity of our community including the Latin X population was a goal that was identified way back in 2007 that has continued to go unmet and we're hoping to do better as we move forward similarly we've talked about the expansion into some of our surrounding communities one of the great successes of the North Boulder Corner branch has been the ability to really gauge and test and door counts in North Boulder

[87:02] averaged about 45,000 annually and that's a 450 square foot space that really proves not only demand but service and capacity the challenges you still have to staff them you still have to provide materials and we've recognized with great interest that the community our friends and neighbors up in Gunbarrel would love to have a branch like the North Boulder Corner branch a small footprint where they too could return their books without having to jump on the diagonal and for any of you who were commuting from that direction this evening like myself there was quite a backup and you know the ability to provide these services within that community really redefines what can happen in those spaces and meet some of the goals that the city has identified so we love our library that's clear I've been with you a number of times around this very topic and I appreciate all of the goodwill and positive comments about what we've been able to do the challenge is we're doing more with less and as

[88:02] already has been established and identified a few times this evening we're operating at funding levels that are setback in reductions in 2002 and we've seen decreases in our full-time equivalent staffing positions and we are really starting to fall behind on the demand that we're recognizing and seeing in the community and certainly measuring as we go forward so our conversation tonight really comes down to I think what's the key goal with our master plan which is really cracking the nut of this long-term financial sustainability I'm hoping that there are some Benjamin Franklin's or Andrew Carnegie's here in the room tonight that can kind of help us through this process but again this is an unmet goal and it isn't just unmet from the 2007 master plan but the reality is this goes back much further and with that I'm going to hand over to Johnny Teeter to continue our conversation thanks we're taking advantage of demographic differences

[89:00] I've been around long enough to remember all of this stuff so this is a comment from the library commissioned in 1997 essentially saying counsel please don't keep kicking this can down the road as we mentioned in our memo to you you have the dubious distinction of being the third Council to have a study session on library funding options and this was the first of that the context for this 1997 kind of study session to go back to some of the questions about history earlier in the late 1980s those of you been around may remember Boulder used to have double-digit increases each year in sales tax revenues and in the late 80s that started to come to an end and the city started projecting that we were going to have revenue problems in the future libraries operating budget was cut other programs as well in 1987 there was a community sales tax past that included dedicated funding for the library and a number of other soft departments Human Services was in that I think parks was

[90:00] in that Lisa and Cindy you may remember what other departments that was a 20-year sunsetted action and over time that was reallocated and as you see a little bit later when it finally came up for reallocation council the sales tax up for an extension but on you're marketed and the library was no longer receiving those funds the library did his first master plan in 1995 council at that time asked the library commission to come back with funding options and they did in 1997 and that was the study session that had the quote we showed you that was framed as a philosophical discussion about options to fund the library and philosophy seems to be what came out of it in following that City revenues continued to decline the operating budget was cut further staffing decreased by 16% 2007 the library master plan was updated and approved by council the 1987 sales tax

[91:03] sunset at about that same time and that funding went away one of the discussions in that period was can we actually dedicate that sales tax revenue to the library but a decision was made not to do that 2010 there was a second council study session on library funding needs this one focused on both capital and operating and the council's focus was primarily on capital that was the first of these big capital measures I think the one you mentioned Jane that had 120 projects including the main library renovation but no action was taken on operating costs and the noble Branch Library which had also been part of that discussion there was no action taken and so that takes us to tonight three's a charm we hope this is our third study session with you as you know we had a study session with you in July well you had a lot of questions which hopefully have been answered tonight you adopted the master plan in September with a lot of enthusiasm and so tonight we're

[92:01] hoping that we can actually stop kicking the can down the road and find a path forward to address this so in our way of looking at this there's really four basic questions before you what does it cost to run the library what options are available to fund library cost what are the impacts to taxpayers under different scenarios and then what are the impacts and benefits to the city's budget and you've seen that down in the weeds we're going to try and pull it up to the 30,000 foot level just to try and give a different sort of context so what does it cost to run the library here's the status quo if you take this bar chart and you just add those numbers and average them you can see the total cost over five years and the average cost and I want to say has a library commission we're comfortable that these are real costs you know we've had our heads in this for about two years now we've talked to other libraries and other library districts some of these numbers have been benchmarked against other library districts especially the overhead cost we always assumed there was some economy of scale and being part of the city that

[93:00] doesn't seem to be the case based on the 3.4 million that came up that number in in particular was benchmarked against five other library districts and it's within two to three percent so this seems to be a good estimate of what it costs to run the library district we give you here the status quo which is sort of continuing the underfunded scenario and then full funding which is the master plan the next slide is just a high-level summary of what you get for status quo and what you get for full funding and you have a copy of this as well by the way we passed it out to you so then you go - what are the options available to fund a library costs and we just want to kind of summarize those for you two of them only fund the gap and continue to rely on the general fund well if there's anything we've learned over the last 35 years it's that reliance on the general fund is not a sustainable funding solution the library disappears amongst all of the priorities that come up for City Council and so you may have a council that says oh we want

[94:00] to do this this year and then in two years there's another set of priorities and it disappears that's been true even with dedicated funding for portion of it four of the options rely on sales tax sales tax as you know is regressive and it's an historically unstable source of funding six rely on property tax which is in our opinion preferable to sales tax because it is not regressive and it is more stable seven of the options rely on dedicated funding and as we said in our foreword to the master plan we think that this is a necessity if we really want long-term sustainable funding for the library it needs to be predictable and that means dedicated six of the options require an election we are certainly recommending that polling be done we've reached out to some polster's that were recommended to us by every library which specializes in this kind of thing we've got some estimates of twenty-five to thirty thousand dollars to do the kind of polling that you guys were talking about earlier we

[95:00] would love to see that go forward in January and recommend that that could be actually taken out of library reserve funds to do that so it doesn't upset the budget and then two of the options expand the funding base which is we have pointed out is in our opinion the most equitable way to address library funding and that takes us to the impacts to taxpayers so what we've done here is just simply clipped the full funding expansion from the city of Boulder versus the expanded district so right now about 65% of library users are paying most of the freight for the library okay in the expanded go back in the expanded scenario go back thank you you've got about 90% of users paying for it and you can see the difference in mill levies now this is total cost this is true cost so this includes the overhead and this includes all the capital it's about 20% more cost to

[96:00] Boulder taxpayers if only the city of Boulder is involved in paying it versus 90% of the patrons in the expanded boundary and then the map which is the next one you can just see that visually you can see the little dots which represent where patrons are these are all active patrons by the way the library purchases its library cards regularly library district provides transparency and accountability and they wanted to address that briefly one of the advantages of a district is that the Board of Trustees is accountable to all the patrons and we know that there's some issues of people outside the city feeling like they're not represented this gives them a voice the budgets are also transparent and accessible and having spent all this time going through these budgets I would really appreciate that you know it's only a library budget you're not trying to figure it out and everything else there is an annual report required each year that goes to the two entities and to the taxpayers if you look at my

[97:00] district websites most of them have monthly P&L sup so it's easy to see exactly where your money is going and then the community assets remain in service and as has been discussed there's a lot of different options that you can use to deal with how those assets are handled I think that you're going to have a hard sell in saying that you want to charge market rate for these and then that money is going to come back to the city that sounds like yet another scenario in which we're going to use the library to generate revenues for city services that aren't related to the library people have already paid for these once and I think given the age of our facilities it's helpful to think about the fact that sales tax paid for most of those at a time was the regional hub so a lot of those people outside the city contributed to the sales tax that paid for our 25 to 50 year old buildings and I'm going to pass it back to to finish on this one so I think we really

[98:01] look at this as an opportunity to work closely with you as Council and certainly with the city to recognize that we have kind of a win/win shaping up where we're able to more fully fund not only our library in its current capacity but to really expand and meet that community demand and that community demand isn't something that just bubbled up over the course of the most recent master plan we really are looking back over time and trying to make good on promises that were established and respond to increasing utilization over utilization in some respects of the capacity that we currently have in system and what really starts to kind of emerge for us is something that you've already begun to suss out here this evening and probably in some of your conversations off line that there is a return of some funds back into the city general fund there's this opportunity to allow for new utilization of funding

[99:02] within the city and this more equitable distribution of the library has funded district asset across paid age really does open up some possibilities for conversations and that really does kind of sum it up that we free up general fund dollars that are available to be used for other priorities of which we know there are many in several it's a win for the library we finally have that sustainable predictable revenue that allows us to really think about the kind of history we want to leave as a community in creating this asset and sustaining it for what comes next and it's definitely a win for the community it fulfills a vision for the library as reflected not just in the 2018 master plan but the plans that have gone unmet in the time that we've been having this conversation so we do hope that third time's a charm and that in this case history does not repeat itself and we find ourself in a

[100:00] very different future going forward so I think fair to say that the same sentiments were expressed back in April 7th of 1997 and here we are November 27 2018 recognizing that if we can find a way to cooperate and work through this and create a sustained pool of funding the next commission the next council won't have this conversation and perhaps will solve a few other problems along the way thank you thank you appreciate that questions for the cushion urine um Tim can you go back to your slide number 229 do back this is the wind poll slide this assumes however that we create a district we raise taxes for whoever's in the district to fund the library but the city doesn't reduce the taxes that already pay for the library that we that we raise taxes but we don't give the tax

[101:02] funding back to the taxpayers we keep that too and so they get to pay for the library they don't own and then they get to pay for a library they do own right well I think this this assumes that it's money that you have available to allocate as you choose choose to give some back to the tax paper you could choose not to and the first one who reflects actual spending the others are basically opportunity go forward yeah second question I guess and this is a philosophical one why the library in other words we could be having this discussion with the police department the fire department the parks department why they and they all have constrained budgets they all would like to do more for for the community why the library and why not every other department in the city appreciate that question and I think that's the tough context to answer and certainly don't want to speak for the folks that are active and involved with those services and certainly those communities speaking for myself as a commissioner the answer is we didn't come up with

[102:01] this this has been a standing solution to a long-standing problem and when we began our deep dive and diligence around this most recent master plan we saw time and again that this had been mentioned and discussed and similar promises were made or solutions were offered but again the library tends to disappear over time and I think that's not uncommon with any number of services within the city what I've seen happen in my time as a commissioner is that the library shows up and is a very wonderful asset to package other things with and so a tax initiative will be floated the libraries in there it seems like we're solving all the problems and then we fall back to still being below sustaining levels in order to not only offer the current services but really to kind of meet that ongoing community demand and for me I feel that it's a reasonable solution and

[103:00] what's more it's a solution that we're not inventing it's not something that Boulder is coming up with it's untested and untried I think you've heard from some of the other expertise shared this evening that there are models for this I refer to what Kim said earlier that Adams district has become a model for libraries around the country and I think in so many ways where Boulder can lead this is a great opportunity to do just that my hope would be that this unpacking that we're doing actively as both council and Commission in this conversation really does start to look more I guess with transparency that Johnny mentioned around how this budgeting works how we really are funding the programs and services across our community that we value and that's a really tough conversation maybe it takes the library having that conversation to be a little more clear on what we want to establish going forward and I would agree with what Jim said but I would

[104:00] also add my own perspective I mean as some of you know I started out saying you know no dedicated funding no district no way no how and I have come to change that opinion over time and I think part of that has to do with the nature of what a library does libraries provide a different very different kind of service than most of the things that the city does you know think of water and sewer and roads and fire and police libraries are a lot more like school districts than they are like the city they're about education and opportunity they're about about community values that bring folks together I think school districts are separate from cities for a reason you know we can talk about whether school districts are well-managed or whatever but imagine if you guys are making decisions on curricula and enrollment and everything else along with what you have I think that it makes sense to separate this type of service because it is so essential it's about the future it's about getting new generations trained and going forward and for whatever

[105:01] reason in our culture those types of issues always fall to the bottom of the plate as Jim has said this is not a problem that's unique to Boulder all libraries have seen this happen I think that's the fundamental reason behind the Colorado library law so I think it is a special and unique system if you've traveled in other places I spent time in Egypt where they didn't have libraries and and I think that helps you see how important a library is in creating civic life in creating culture and it needs to have its own base of funding okay we thank you very much we know the Commission has put a lot of work into this and a lot of thought and and we're appreciative we are very appreciative thing yes yes thank you so much okay and now we're gonna talk amongst ourselves yes you have a question for them yeah I guess come back one of the things you just said was that over the course of

[106:03] this process you change your mind and you started out no dedicated funding no district no way no how so now we've come upon this proposal for a district did you all consider dedicated funding in other words I know we have a long-standing well maybe not so long-standing but for about 20 years now that we don't do dedicated yeah taxes but it is still an option so did you all talk about that or consider that at all well we did yeah and I think that that is illustrated in your packet tonight I mean dedicated funding within the city the best we can't get a number that shows how much people are paying today because of the complication of sales tax and property tax so that slide that shows what you would pay within the city of Boulder in property tax is a good surrogate to see what dedicated funding would look like on a cost per

[107:01] household if you then compare that to the expanded scenario where you have 90 percent of people instead of 65 percent you see that it's a lot more equitable because more households are involved and that means less cost per household so we thought dedicated funding would make sense originally we said you know if the city wants to dedicate funding that's great but then when you start looking at the equities of it and spreading it across a broader patron base we stepped back and said you know a district makes more sense this goes to Bob's question we have open space we have millions of people who come to our open space and we don't charge people to come to our open space and we basically say you know most of the people I mean we have a few places that have a charged parking few but for those open space trails that come into the city and most of them that eat don't even come into the city we use

[108:02] people come and shop here or work here or eat or do something so I I still don't get what the difference is between open space in the library where you have a lot of outside users open space did have dedicated funding which served it very well and we might have to go back but so it's an interesting question and I mean we don't share our planning department we don't share all these other departments so I'm still I mean I get how important libraries are very much so so it's I anyway it may be more a comment you know that well and I would call me back that I mean the open space tax was passed in 1967 at the time when

[109:01] the city was doing double-digit increases in sales tax every year sales tax was the gravy train we thought that would last forever if we were establishing an open space program today I'll bet it wouldn't be sales tax I think that's one change that's happened and of course it's that dedicated funding that has given us that system and I guess I because your Library Commission you didn't look at anywhere else in the city's budget where you could know okay any more questions okay thank you so in terms of us just having a discussion now you had some questions for us yes so in addition to any of the pieces of

[110:02] the presentation I'm including the financial or governance we also included the questions that are in your packet as guiding conversations that would greatly help staff in developing the direction for next year and we're planning and budgeting they might be interesting to know the funding level that we're interested in before we tackle how to pay for it what do you all think why don't we start with that one well okay I would just want to comment I don't know that we have to pick between these menu options because each one of them has a bunch of sub menu options which staff very helpfully helped us look at in the handout so thank you very much for that

[111:01] because it has the bullet points these buckets are fine to talk about in general but I also think that we don't have to pick a you know the meat community may demand one because I look the difference between a meat community man demand and service expansion is fairly small yeah but there's a big gap between maintain services now and meet community demand so I also think that we should be willing to be flexible about what services it is that we really want to see so okay so so far people said shoot for the middle okay well I definitely agree we need to at least go for the middle but the incremental amount to get us to the next level is really quite small as as him pointed out I think we can pick and choose I mean we don't have to take exactly these buckets but in particular I would really like to see gun barrel get some library services sooner rather than later they could use services of a variety of type I think

[112:00] particularly library services so I would really like to see our funding targets include of course the North Boulder library branch but also get that corner library and Gunbarrel in there so I would look to the maybe the high side of the meet demand level right and I don't know if as sample suggested if we need all the buckets or all the programs so we could take some of the programs out and I guess I generally do agree with increasing so I don't want to keep us where we are today I wanted to buffer gun barrel and you look down this list of potential services you know one bucket of those we've got some funding for but maybe not all which is outfitting the North Boulder branch right fine materials as well as buying furniture and fixtures and all of that stuff so I think that's a really important one David do you want to talk I'm sorry I'm on the handout on page five but it doesn't have though which page has the total costs twenty one is

[113:08] one of them as in page page Twitter page twenty has the increases that we need yes it is in the packet in the presentation at the end yeah I was just trying to figure out the best number so yeah we're the the library gap is of the gap funding is on 26 which is how much we have to cover in the incremental funding sorry David so if it's of any if it's of any help David Farnum library an arts director the expanded service levels in terms of personnel and ongoing non costs the sixty three percent of the cost in the expansion level or for gun burn for what for a gun barrel for opening up a gun barrel corner of a library and in the context of meeting community demand it

[114:00] is a long list right but roughly 66 percent of the personnel non personnel and one-time capital costs associated with that are north that's very helpful because it says that if we wanted to make sure that we have the facilities for Gunbarrel and the facilities outfitted for north polar we need to be looking at about 2/3 of whatever the Delta was as a minimum or each of those steps okay so I'm gonna find it for you so I'm hearing somewhere between meet demand and expansion knowing that there's some fluidity between the buckets is that a consensus of sorts so Lisa page 71 of the packet represent

[115:09] a consensus of sorts yes okay all right so question number one let it be noted two Tamizh more of a tactic than and boy but I will easily say whatever it seems to me that well let me ask you a question are we in agreement that we need to come up with a dedicated funding source of some type or others prepared to continue to try to fund it from the general fund what what's that general I guess to me that's a little bit of a short question yeah and there's probably a hybrid middle to right let's hear about that well I don't have a solution I know just I'm just saying I know as Mary pointed out where I think the Blue Ribbon Commission tried to

[116:00] steer us away wisely from dedicated taxes and so while you know we're looking at looks like about a four to five million dollar handle not we may not have all that be dedicated taxes it could be a combination of dedicated taxes and general Fontan okay I would suggest looking in our budget that we have right now and so I don't know we have not to do that but let's talk about as an right and I mean I'd be okay with a small amount of a dedicated tax but I think we can find many within and dedicate that money for the library in our in our existing budget so you mean our dedicating other programs okay so basically funded out of the general fund for the most part is where you're right but dedicated for the library so that it can move around I mean the planning department gets a specific amount of money every year the library needs to

[117:00] get that same or similar amount you know so I don't know how the what's the mechanism for dedicating it I guess we're just hoping future councils well I don't know maybe you put it under in the in our budget it's in the current dedicated revenue for the library now is that is that earmark is found in the city charter but that's the point three three friend right and so maybe what we do is we could take part of our general fund and make that dedicate it or through it through a vote for library and I would suggest that by eliminating some of the programs we have that we're reducing them significantly other thoughts Mary then Erin yeah one one thought that I did have which I posted on the hotline is a request to Jane yesterday afternoon is to look at the

[118:01] admissions taxes and see what those might generate so I was just curious if you had a chance to do that yes we did we worked with Mike Ewbank and the admission taxes right now as you know say that we don't charge admission taxes for races out outdoors if we charged an admission tax our conservative estimate is that Monnet would be around forty four thousand five hundred dollars a year and in two years it would go up to sixty-seven thousand and the differences that currently we have a contract with Ironman not to charge an admission tax for them so my contract we couldn't do it if we were to decide that we want to charge admission tax it would be possibly a tax policy change that would require a vote but it's not millions of dollars it's sixty seven thousand dollars at the most

[119:01] and how much is our total admissions tax collected locations taxed now off the top of my head I'll have staff work on it well okay so before we go into the weeds on what we might cut I want to figure out which model we want to follow just to get a sense other people where people that in terms I'm sorry Erin sticks well I guess for me I would handle it differently as a district than I would without a district I mean I am interested in continuing to look into the district idea and and then it's inherently a dedicated tax if we're if the council's will is to not continue to explore that option then I would think about more what bob was describing is the hybrid option I'm leery of dedicating substantial amounts of funding because of the limits that it places on the city's flexibility for the long term I do absolutely support more funding for the library so I think if we're gonna go down that road I think I would need some more detailed discussion

[120:01] about exactly how we'd fund it and maybe there's additional taxes I mean Jane did what was the rough amount that we cut from the budget in this last year that you proposed those funding decreases and that we adopted a lot of it I think it was five million five point two million something like that yeah and that included around thirty three employees that were cut so so well I'm I'm sure we could repurpose some amount more we have already gone through a significant belt tightening exercise in the city so I I would look to try to find some additional revenue for the library one where any other modify what I said cuz I Lisa made me reminded me that there's really actually three parts to this funding right Erin points out that we're kind of getting kind of a little bit backwards because we should probably talk a little bit about district versus non district because the question really is is around non district because district by definition

[121:00] is dedicated so let's just assume that non district for sake of discussion I think Lisa's absolutely right I think there's really three sources of money one is is potentially a dedicated tax I'm not real thrilled about that but maybe it's smaller and said the second is is general fund and the third is really a reallocation of other department and this is a budget discussion which we're not gonna have in November we'll have this and you know July or August next year although maybe you'd be particularly into staff now I'd be helpful to staff so I think I think this is a discussion that we probably probably really sucks us into the weeds really really really quickly and so I think my suggestion is we have a discussion around district versus non district because it if districts off the table then I think staffs heard what we've said which is we want to increase funding for the library and then they can come back to us with solutions which could be reallocation from other departments taxes dedicated not dedicated so and so forth okay all right so maybe we should pause and talk about the district no district Cindy I I was gonna say at the least I think I would

[122:01] like to see the polling done to see in terms of the districting to see what it looks like outside in the layers that would be done for polling for districting because one of the issues that has been that we've heard throughout this process which started in was in 1997 is that there can be dedicated funding given to the library out of the general fund or whatever and it gets slurped up again when something else comes along and to be sustainable what they need is sustainable funding to make it work as we have all said we adopted the master plan so so it seems to me the least we can do piece of e the districting is to do the polling and see if there's any way that it would fly with a larger community so I will jump in and agree with you I think that we might want to pull on maybe more than one scenario but one of them being for sure a district we could

[123:00] also contrast that with a I think some sort of dedicated funding and I was on a blue Commission and I remember how we're the whole point was how do we free up money so it can be adaptable and discretionary and we can as a city respond to what's happening in our community as opposed to being locked in and what we found out is the library is consequently at the bottom pretty much continually so do I guess that I would like to pull on this idea around the district I feel like it would be a responsible thing for us to do is to see what the voters want I would also maybe contrast that with a couple other options I would certainly want to if we were gonna go forward with the poll I'd want to know the level of Taxation or dedication that people would be willing to bite off whether it be a

[124:03] district or stay within the city I'm inclined to agree with you and Cindy I just I think as Lisa has pointed out before this is one of our crown jewels and I think some hope education is the right word with the community to understanding because I find it really interesting that our Library Commission could be completely against this and then hear the understanding I think that they have the most knowledge out of anybody I would assume and that they now think this is a good idea and so I think if the community is educated on the pros and cons and everything that we just had here and to truly understand what has happened in the past people who may completely be against it might all of a sudden say wow this is actually a pretty decent idea and it's a great way to move forward or it may be that yeah we end up going and staying with it you know

[125:01] supplies and check on our budget and maybe we can find some tightening they're cutting programs or whatnot but the biggest thing is involving the community for me because there's a really big education gap here of just hearing it and freaking out versus understanding what it does and how it could support what our community wants so that's that's kind of where I think we're putting all the cart before the horse if we don't do the pulling so I'm good with doing the polling but like with any survey the questions matter if you get the question wrong you get the answers wrong and then you go for a vote and you get hammered and so we have to be extremely careful and I enjoyed working with Aaron when we did the compound survey questions we had to go through three iterations to get those right and so I would just say if we're going to do that we better pay close attention and get it reviewed by a lot of different people who want to I am not as excited about a district but I'm

[126:01] willing to talk about it there are a few things that I would point out there's probably a reason that Denver hasn't done one and I think Denver has a very high quality library system they also have a very well known you know set of libraries and a high level of service so it's possible to do this municipally is probably a matter of will and so when we contrast the different scenarios I think we need to make it clear how the government's would be different right so the people in the city of Boulder would now not be directly electing the people who would be responsible for the library that it would shift to be you know there we answer to the library decisions now as the elected officials we get advice from the Commission but I think that's a change that we need to make certain that people understand would be different and how it would be different I appreciate the idea that ninety percent of the people would now be paying for the

[127:01] services that they use that I think would be a good thing but I don't think it's sixty five percent now necessarily because sales tax is a funny thing and a lot of the people I live around here probably spin sales tax money either because they work in this area because they can meet here so we are getting some contributions from people who are outside of the city footprint I also want to highlight what Bob said because this is a really really important point every department and the City has aspirations that can't get met and it is unfortunate and it's part of what we have to do as a budget decision it took 30 years to move station 3 out of the floodplain once it was decided to need it to be done for the fire department so I think we need to be a little careful I agree the libraries are different and that they are special but fire departments are special police departments are special and open space and mountain parks which is the most analogous in a way to the library is something that we have maintained

[128:01] management of even though many outside users show up and use the open space in mountain park facilities I think we we've wanted to do that to be responsible stewards and because this has been something our community has brought up and forward so I will happily look at what the polling numbers say but I start out where Johnny did originally which is skeptical and saying that there's many paths that can get us to success and that's not the only path necessarily that it gets us a good library system so just a question about the fire and the police because I think that's an interesting question and so help me out here everybody pays into some sort of fire protection district no matter where they live isn't that true yeah but the levels they pay is quite different levels of service they do i do think open spaces probably you're right is most analogous because everybody pays for some you know the sheriff covers the county it's like nobody's not covered

[129:01] even though it may be differentially by fire and police you can enjoy a library system without paying into it just like you can open you can enjoy the open space system I'm just trying to think through because I think and you know that is an argument for dedicated tax by the way because we have a dedicated tax for our open space and that has kept it that way and given that a footing that it wouldn't have had otherwise because core services were never gonna let go right you know the police and the fire those are and the snow removal and Street maintenance you know all those things are utterly core and so one reason I think the library may get short theft is when the budget goes down it's a place you can take away funding from without losing a core service same in a way with open space so I think that analogy is perfect can I just do you mind I know you are right up but just on the open space analogy just think in one

[130:01] way that the counties up in space tax is in a little bit of a way a districting of open space we have access to a lot of other open space areas that we our city has enough funded so there's a little bit of extremes there okay so where are we here I want to say to Sam that it was mentioned regarding visa visa Denver Public Library's that they passed a big bond issue and therefore they dropped the district that's what so that's why if we passed a big bond issue maybe the library would have more stable funding and the districting idea would go away regarding open space even open space with its dedicated funding source because of its use will require more monies and particularly now that even part of it's one of those ballot taxes that did pass is going I've forgotten where it's going right now but it's being taken away from open space and so we have to think about funding for all of these areas as you pointed out but the library has had meniscal dedicated funding over the years and it has been

[131:02] this back-and-forth about the city's general fund going to it so I think we really need to look at something that will be sustainable which is what they're asking well if I can I we need to look at our priorities and so from my perspective libraries are key to our core services certainly they're not fire and police and things like that but they are key and I think Johnny talked about the value about their education it's not Public Safety I think it's probably the distinction now that you mentioned it their core but they're not Public Safety right and so and I think we need to elevate libraries and other things that serve our residents our residents on a higher level I mean we're always happy to look at I don't know give-give you know exemptions for races you know most of

[132:02] these people a lot of them are from outside of Boulder they bring a lot of money to Boulder and they they generate a strong sales tax so you know but I I think we need to somehow internally make sure that our libraries are one of our top priorities I mean planning is a top priority why isn't libraries in that top priority I don't know so for me I am not really interested in a in a district I understand wanting a sustainable base I agree with that but I think the city of Boulder can do that it's just a matter of our priorities I also haven't gone through the trash tax and the city of Boulder trash tax and the County trash tax the city of Boulder got screwed by

[133:01] the county with the trash tax in the sense that we went from everybody on the recycling and composting authority all 11 entities all the communities in the county all had an equals say and then there was a double vote in terms of the population but it's when the it was voted in that authority to turn it over to the county none of the entities none of the cities have really had much of a true voice in operating that trash tax in operating or having a say on the municipal recovery facility on household hazardous waste we've never agreed to do that anyway that's a whole different thing so from my perspective we've run a very good Library System we have one of the best library directors we've had in decades were fortunate to have him

[134:03] and his staff we have a nationally acclaimed library why would we want to dilute our crown jewels and I feel like this 90% 65% as Bob pointed out is is kind of a fake number because a lot of the people that come in are spending sales tax and they're they're spending money in the city of Boulder so we do recoup the people who are coming from outside of the city of Boulder into the city I I would like to look at how our our community or our organization is organized and maybe do some reorganization we talked about moving parking into transportation there's efficiencies that could be made there so let's not go to the specifics but okay well I want to talk about the specifics okay well I sat down to I'm not

[135:01] interested in a district cool Bob I want to get back to the polling question first of all I am and Lisa both are I'm not I'm in favor of a district but there's only nine of us and if someone's offering us more information to see what another hundred thousand people think that I'm you know all in favor of spending the 20,000 or 30,000 to find out what they think and maybe maybe maybe we're wrong so I'm okay with polling but I think Sam and Lisa both made really good points it's really important that the question not be wouldn't it be cool to have library district write the questions got to be would you like a library desk a turistic and are you willing to pay and I don't know what the number is X dollars more for that and and for the people in Boulder it's gonna be a small increment for the people outside of Boulder could be a really big increment because they're not paying that because they get the relief that we that bull residents presumably would get I don't know if that's gonna happen so it's got it's kind of a very specific number on it because people can't you can app how long has taken us to figure this happen right because I think there's two things

[136:02] going on is first we have to ask people do you want to increase spending on the library because I was gonna go there action the question is I think it's a three-part question which is well it's always the one there's one question which is do you want to increase funding for the library then there's two parts of it which is do you want to create a district and have your taxes go up by this much do you want to have a dedicated tax and have your taxes go at this much maybe those are the same numbers I don't know or none of the above are you content with that with with funding the library at the rate it is and so I think it's a three part question district this much money non district but dedicated this much or status quo right and I think the pollsters will figure this out but I think to Sansom it's really really important that people understand and I don't know how you do this in a you know in a one-page survey or a three minute survey because look how long it's taken us to figure this out and we're still struggling I'm still struggling with this I don't know how you have a very informed survey but I'm

[137:00] willing to give it a shot to see what people think but I think we have to be really specific about the numbers right and but yes and we need to be specific because whatever solution we come up with we want to know that people agree with us right so and I do think it'll be a tricky surveying it won't be a short one right okay we have Aaron but there's a couple things that come up that I just want to clarify denver's come up a couple times and I guess I just also I would love to know the answer to that and maybe we could talk to the library but they're also a County that's the other thing I want to point out and they're surrounded by entities that have their own library districts no doubt like Aurora so that also could be affect I mean they're much bigger than we are anyhow as we try to think about why some of our peer cities have or haven't that occurs to me that that might be one of them take a look at the map it's kind of interesting everything on the west side of the i-25 corridor are kind of to the northwest of Denver doesn't have a library district you know we ridge and all these other places so anyway it's um

[138:00] come here take a look at yeah okay one other question that came up I think was that we need to make sure that if we do a polling is that we talk about governance and then the issue with the county came up so it spurred a question for me which is the city of Boulder is the bulk of the bub of the population if we go with the district that's great you presumably in an IgA we could probably work it out that we promote we we appoint the bulk of the trustees I mean we can set up on this is a question so that the city of the extent that we retain control I be it through a point it as opposed to elected that we continue to that is the question hang it over to the county that's my whole point so I just the county commissioners or the county period under the statue you can be the establishing entity you don't

[139:03] have to have the county involved and that would but you said that if that would be if we only agreed to be a district if you form a district or if your petition to form a district with the boundaries outside of your city then you have to put that on the ballot but to the county commissioners for approval not under the statutes politically it's a different question and it's never been tested but that was kind of my point about the overlapping government entities in color I don't they're all over the place and a lot of the underlying entities have no say over what happens with the other entities so in the in the regular district statute there's a provision that says you can't form a district that overlaps with another district that's already providing that same service the library

[140:02] law says the same thing basically that if you're going to form a district if there's a municipality that provides library services it can opt out so by analogy I think that's what the law is saying that you can form the district larger than your own boundaries and do it on your own but then there's going to be an election to fund it and but the funding question I'm worried about governance so presumably if we're gonna say we did this just walk in your scenario out and we expand it to plan boundaries for instance just as an example we're gonna be taking you in a bunch of people in area three who aren't city taxpayers they don't get to vote on the City Council and would they say it went through and you know it passed we voted the entire city plus those people in the county and it passed how would

[141:00] they have a say the people who are not in the city boundaries over who the appointed trustees are all they could do is come to your board meetings and state their case your City Council meetings so one wouldn't have I'm not saying we wouldn't be smart to say hey somebody from my rod should be on somebody but I thought the county appointed the people that weren't in the city if we I guess it's all depends on what we come up with in that IgA correct we wouldn't I think this is important would we have an IgA with the county if we form the district and went you know to our comp plan boundaries no see we the would was but the IgA would be between us and the district and we could in that IgA right in county participation if we chose to yes yes I think that's all true the formal County well we could do it in many different ways we could include a role for the county commissioners or not or we could say hey at least one or two of the

[142:00] commissioners have to be out from outside of the city of Boulder I meant that's formal and just the citizen is informal so I think that's a good point Aaron I think that's a very good point because we could do it and we could still provide a pathway for out of City representation on the board I think if we went down that road it would behoove us very much I'm certainly was a role for absolutely but it does seem like we have maybe more control than we might we could have more control then we can initially but so yeah that's the thing that wasn't clear about is that we can initiate and it doesn't then involve the candy commissioners unless we choose to correct okay thank you okay so polling then is anybody disagree with exploring what the voters think on district and other funding options recognizing it'll have to be a very well-written poll you just

[143:00] give me actually UNIX I had a whole long speech prepared no no I know I do think polling is a really good next step I just I've said I'm interested in district I just want to make a quick point that I think the the the possibility the district carries with it the chance of increasing the quality and sustainability of the library for our own residents and for our immediate neighbors so I feel like we wouldn't be losing anything we'd be the there would be the potential to improve and gain so I think as has a lot of potential to share both the funding with our neighbors but also the services and increased services and improvements with our neighbors and I do really feel like there's some like North Boulder Library branch really needs to get built and I do I would really love to see those services in Gunbarrel so I'll just say that and I think that but but I think the polling can really guide us here we do a statistically valid poll of people within the city of Boulder and the people in these areas outside that we're considering building the district around and I think that gives us the big cues about the

[144:00] directions that we proceed in next I mean if we get something that's like everybody's like well we're 5050 one way or the other or the other then we have to come back and make the final decision ourselves but I think if if we get really wide numbers of people say they hate the district or they love the district or they know funding or they want more you know then I think that gives us our next step so I'd really like to see a high quality poll lead us forward okay so can I make a follow up on that I agree with that um it occurs to me now that we were thinking about the city potentially being able to initiate this and also expand it somewhat into the county that we would need to be clear with our tax payers there's one option which allows you to have sales tax and property tax but as soon as we go outside of our boundaries I think it's a property tax alone and so that's a point of education that I think we're going to need to include in that right and the thing I think that gets a

[145:02] little tricky is that there's trade-offs that could be decided like it could mean council could decide to reduce taxes it might mean not you know so and how do you kind of get a sense without you except that would be a logical question so anyhow just I think the pollster will have to try to be make sure that it's not a push poll in any way but is really sort of digging deeper I also think that this you mentioned I think it would be useful to have some materials on the website that explain the funding challenge and kind of that sum up the issue and talk about potential options again without determining which way so that people can go and educate themselves on this right the people need to be fully aware I mean

[146:01] they already have with their sales tax paid for the libraries once and they'll be paying again so I think you know I I don't think we can mislead people well we can we just clarify that's is if we bought that was the scenario we talked about was if we made the district purchase the the library the existing assets okay but you could lease for very little money right right so the idea is you wouldn't pay for it twice if the facilities were dedicated to the district for no money but any costs that is for the property would be paid for twice correct but so we don't have to set it up that way my only point right because I mean the city could retain ownership of the buildings and lease them for a dollar a year yes yeah this idea that you retain control but okay so

[147:04] dill we've heard from a few people about kind of where they're at I guess I'll just jump into the fray and say I started as a skeptic about I don't want to give up control of an asset that was my thing I am feeling my mind that as a fiduciary the part of our fiduciary responsibilities is to go this might be smart from that point of view and if we could figure out a way to do it without giving up control then my thinking has shifted a bit so I guess that's where I'm at as I'm open to it I do think we need to figure out a way to have more dedicated funding which yeah so I'm committed to figuring that out and I guess I'm more open to a district than I was before if the voters are cool with it who else wants to weigh in so I think at the the top for me is

[148:02] that we need to find some dedicated funding and it has to be sustainable so how we do it I would like us to definitely pull and have a really good poll and try and get as much information as we can out of the poll I would also in the meantime while that's going on perhaps get an initial [Music] proposal from staff about how we might be able options for how we might be able to get dedicated funding so that we can start to noodle that around say more about that so because dedicated usually means like the people vote dedicated is that what you mean when you say dedicated yeah and how exactly that scheme would work whether we would take part of the

[149:00] current sales tax and and with some other sales tax or part of the current property tax and some new property tax and then create a dedicated tax how we do it that's what I'd like to see is some options for how we would create that dedicated text because it is for all the reasons that have already been given here the library as it is not in many people's minds a core service does get money hijacked away from it so so to come up with some dedicated funding I think would in my first choice would be to come up with dedicated alternative outside of a district and then but I want to see what the polling looks like is it safe to say that everybody I think we already said this one right sure is everybody

[150:01] interested in pursuing some sort of dedicated at least a portion a portion or all of the library funded through a dedicated source that fair to say maybe that's not a big state did we say sustainable some kind of sustainable yeah I like the word to if it's only partially funded by a sustainable dedicated tax that means the other portion isn't dedicated which means it's less sustainable but taken yes but I would say dedicated sustainable means if we have fluctuating taxes their budget again is fluctuating and what they're asking for is a sustained underlying budget in order to maintain what they've got and sustainable is one of those kind of buzz words it's going to come and go well it just I think I think it's more something they can count on OK resilient ly sustainable I think okay I think I

[151:01] think what we're all trying to say is yes we're whatever you call it we want to make sure that there is some kind of funding that is going to maintain and be there for the library to support the increased use so that I'm saying there can stops here yep I guess it's kind of a question for David a legal question Kim can we can we dedicate how can we dedicate and bind future councils within our tax regime in other words I understand how you can go out to the taxpayers and say hey I want to pay more taxes it'll be dedicated we'll only go for this or that the taxpayers do this yes or no without raising taxes can we dedicate either sales or property tax and bind future councils or does that require a vote of the people well yeah it would require a vote of the people the question could be without raising taxes how would you like to have this portion or that portion of your property or sales tax be dedicated always and forever or until sunset for the librarian but you require of a lot of the people even though there's no tax

[152:00] increase yeah it would be the place you would do it would be in the city charter and you would just write put the budget Direction directly into the city charter audited people who would vote on it otherwise you know the other option as you mentioned is you know a dedicated revenue source when you pass it when you pass a tax that's another approach but for existing revenues I think that the main way would be just through the Charter so I just want to make a clarification to your I think you summarized councils intent correctly that there needs to be there's a desire to have dedicated or sustainable or whatever tax for at least a portion of the library however I don't want people I don't want the newspaper to walk away from this insane council wants to raise taxes because I think raising taxes and dedicating taxes are two different things and I don't know that we're at the raising tax point because Lisa made a really good point and we need to be looking at our budget first before we start talking about raising taxes because I really want to look at our

[153:00] budgets and reallocate our existing funds and that's what I was asking is there a way to reallocate some of those funds identify how much that is and make that a dedicated fund for the library with the tax without raising without raising without raising taxes I think the latter part the first part of your question is you know that you would you would state at your budget philosophy and the Charter the second part of it would be the exercise that you guys would undertake during the budget of prioritizing do you prefer police over libraries or no we're not doing that but right now without going into the weeds I think there's departments that either don't need to exist or it can be reduced significantly or be merged and take the funds of those departments and put those into the library well I I do think that

[154:00] that latter exercise that you're talking about is prioritizing a budget in the context of the limitations that you have on how you spend the money that are in the city charter we can obviously reallocate our budget yep okay but in that act without a vote of the people can we dedicate any of that reallocated funds are only the voters can dedicate it I think only the voters can dedicate future you know you you you do a budget and once a year and each it's a legislative act and that legislative act happens each year so you know that that priority can change if you know and that's the question and that's the question I'm asking so we could like for instance say we're gonna cut this much from the annual spending or we're gonna whatever and we're gonna raise your your dedicated mill tax for the library by X amount you know you could do a and put that to the voters or something okay yep

[155:03] so I have two minor points are we done with dedicated or every settled that we want to have there's just more than sorry I just need to make sure I fully understand this so the only way whatsoever to dedicate any tax to the library or not tax any funding is by a vote of the people is that correct otherwise we're just our council decides to budget for our years ago and then it wouldn't be a long term so that is the only way that's correct okay I think we're good most people so this is just slightly shifting gears I want to remind us that one of the impacts of having our 20% reserve target and being moving towards that right now is that it squeezes things like the library the hardest so just to heads-up and the other thing I want to I feel like we need to give staff a little direction on the polling and so I think one of the

[156:01] key questions there's obviously a version of a question that looks just at our city right and and says if the boundaries of the district where the city of Boulder here are a few ways it could happen but then there's once we go outside the city we're gonna need to have something of a sense of where those boundaries are drawn that we're having people take a look at the poll on and so I don't know if we want to do that now or if we just want to review the poll after it's been worked over a little bit but that's an interesting question because it could be very expansive and got two options here comp plan limits or even beyond that we need to do it now we need to do it now okay really do isn't a question I guess me throw this out there I presume we would poll on the three options but so to write that poll question requires 1zz city of Boulder one's heart may be easy the comp plan boundaries and then my question to us so that we can advise

[157:01] staff is do we want to think about a more expansive boundary in the county and if so where well do you like not like the one the staff came up with I didn't know that there was a boundary on the one beyond if I could help Sam out I think one of the problems is is that I mean I get the fact that we can ask three different populations right and we meet three different types of questions ask those populations and that we've already done the work and the boundaries of the problem is is theirs which population we asked i'm also affects the the costing in other words if we if if the district if the polling supports a big district and the costing for the people and boulders can be lower than if the if if the people outside of Boulder don't want to do it the numbers become a lot higher and so you almost have to give people a range but you can't I mean how it goes people go hey do I want more people to pay for my dedicate yes and the people in the county of do I want to pay for something I've been getting for free no and guess what there's more of

[158:01] us than them so if we put it on the ballot and our residents wanted it would pass to save this like thirty thousand dollars we know the I'm sorry but that's kind of human nature is it not the issue the complicating factor yeah when you put that question to them is now all of your city of Boulder person yeah your property taxes are gonna change a little bit and your your sales tax dollars are no longer Dorn's the library so anyway yeah and so that's that's really what we want to know and I hope that doesn't end up coming out in the wrong way the paper I'm just saying if you look at the population demographics if the city of Boulder residents understand and support this that would carry the day and that's the question is do you like this in your property taxes versus the sales tax I mean that that that's got to be part of this but I think there's more to it than that though I mean I think there's that human nature piece that you just outlined but your taxes would change in

[159:00] any district scenario and so in the city of Boulder it's not a slam-dunk that you would want it anyway but I mean if you ask the city of Boulder folks well do you want your taxes to go up and they would go up less if you include more people they'd probably say more people but but I think the the but I think and to the folks in the county if you talk about it as there would be additional services as well then it's not just well you're paying for something you get for free but I meant look at how the election just want went on transportation in general people don't vote for tax increases and so that was my only point I mean I think you can phrase it in terms of costs and benefits you know and information about it and I would agree with Aaron I think it's the services it's the improvement in services that are gonna reach a greater number of people right it's how we serve the greater number to the best of our

[160:00] ability and we have the opportunity to do it right here you know it doesn't mean we need to do it in a slam-dunk way but I think we should really be careful and the questions are important in the polling my only point just so be clear is the demographics are such that if the city of Boulder felt strongly one way it would carry the day didn't mean to imply that we wouldn't be offering services to the county and all but so yeah so can I ask staff how this black line was developed you should turn on your mic there David so last year council provided some input when they had initially seen some previews of the maps where individuals were and then we also I also met with the county they had an idea to include some of the areas east and also some of the areas north so this map the black line aligns perfectly with voting precincts it also we used

[161:02] I can't David may remember the name it's a 30 year old map that's the influence areas of all of the various municipalities and so it does not impede upon any other influence area like we have the comp plan other cities have other areas of influence it doesn't impede upon any or even really get close so when I look at this map I naturally think of Netherland have you at a conversation with them about their thoughts around this so Netherland already is a library district and this does not impede on either their municipality or their area of influence okay great and actually airs among caution with quite a distance really from their area of influence yeah and we followed voting precinct the cop the comp plan boundaries do not align perfectly with voting precincts and obviously if you were to direct us to look at that we'd have to line that up better we did not I think if we go to

[162:02] vote you'll have to line it up better but maybe not for the polling so I'm I'm fine with that I just wasn't sure the people generally find with these geographies the one thing I had a question about David was that there's a cluster around gross reservoir and I wasn't sure why that one wasn't included and I just I pulled up a precinct map and it doesn't go I don't know it gets kind of near Nederlander it not know that's correct and so the voting precincts in the mountains are pretty odd and I I mean again this was totally hypothetical it was really for the purposes of doing the financial analysis and coming up with the assessed values it could change so we could and I think the GIS programmer actually did a map where he included the reservoir down there because when I looked at but other than that I think it's the boundary serve great okay should you like me to

[163:01] put that back in yeah I mean if it doesn't impede um Netherlands Library District that's not let me ask a question of staff hopefully we're probably in some direction here on this polling but um do you want more input from us on pulling or you want to just go out and do it and no no they're gonna draft it and run it by us okay that's the question was I wasn't clear about that so I'm asking I'm gonna put it out there okay okay we're gonna hire a consultant who does pulling a very qualified consultant and work with them on the questions and then we're gonna run it by you so the the issue that I have her the question that I have is this when we do the polling we'll be pulling inside the city and will also be pulling outside the city I think it would be easier for us to distinguish between inside and outside if we only had one outside area

[164:00] to poll which i think is the big black area of plus gross reservoir as opposed to trying to pull individuals who are not in the city but are in the boulder valley comp plan area and i want to know if that would be okay with you yeah basically it just captures the enclaves and of course so we argue with that something you would think good first so i just have one question in terms of the polling and i don't know if this is awesome but you know we have the leg up and being able to sit here through this and the full understanding and ask as many questions as we want is there something that we can do with our polling we're prior to being able to fill out the survey you have to watch a five minute video that goes with the poll and gives a very nice almost cartoon walkthrough

[165:02] of what they're doing where it's you know very low level but they can understand it and get the general gist of what we've just had here in the last three hours and then once it's done then they go fill out the polling questions so that it can be right to the holster that we hire to figure out a way to ask questions of people that are fully informed how to inform them so there there are other ways to do it I think and they're gonna have a better idea than we do but I appreciate what you're saying great thanks just to follow up on that when we did the comp plan survey the second one was much more detailed than the first the first was kind of general feelings about issues in the city and the second was like had explanatory text before the question and we tried to make it with the picture and not too long so I think you almost have to do what you're saying and I think there are ways that you can do it

[166:00] question by question so that people get background response background response so anyway whether it's written whether it's over the phone but either way it seems to me like it's because some of these things like Gramps to say in the past ten years for the past 20 years there's been a funding gap you know you have to tell them there's a gap and then say would you like to solve it or not you know like so I totally agree that we should make it that people are asked our answer is it's gonna be easier if we do it in writing honestly because people then can spend a few minutes to read the explanatory stuff if you're trying to explain it over the phone I think it's gonna be really hard so we'll get expert advice on how to do it correctly so if it's in writing is it more of a survey than it is a poll yeah and and that's what we want to talk or I want to talk to the consultant about is get there on how to get the very best information knowing that we've got these these

[167:02] considerations of we want to educate people we want it to be statistically valid we have lots of territory to poll yeah and not too complicated but I just have it's just a question in cases where we do a statistical evaluate at is paper we send it out and then we have another one that isn't statistically valid I think it's likely that we'll put this on online and if you do then something like what meerabai described it'd be a lot easier to place right on the website now now you're talking more expense but it's a big step Aaron basically made my points I think just the key point that we need to be able to do a little education as part of the polar survey or however we do it in trying to communicate that map over the phone good luck but there's a way to describe it

[168:00] there's a black squiggly line it would be I think it's almost like what we watched the other week with them the Eco cycle and that fantastic video that they did it was something that just it caught the person's attention and you could understand what they were saying but without it getting so into the weeds what people got confused because again how many people are going to want to spend their evenings sitting here doing what we're doing probably not that many and so giving a really great version that keeps you entertained and educates you so that we have these polls that are gonna be truly valid that's where I'm going yeah okay do you answer your questions can you fill them back up there did we you've provided a lot of helpful information and I think a lot of the questions are gonna be dependent on the results of the polling but I will put them back up for your review we did on

[169:02] the specific finding financing options presumably this is to give us options in the poll and we mentioned a hybrid do we need anything else budget okay so one of them simply is is figured yeah I mean we have departments that could be done by the private sector so it's like why do they buy are they in are in the city okay are we generally heading towards a ballot question one way or the other should we move towards we don't know okay anything else okay well I can't get in the weeds where with the allocations I mean we're talking about millions of dollars well I know um so I guess before

[170:01] we go and ask about a tax I think in this poll there also has to be a recent them about reallocation of our funds yeah that should definitely be one of the options I mean isn't it fundamentally isn't three questions which is do you want a district and it's gonna cost you this do you want to want to keep the library within the city in position to cost you this or do you want us to not raise taxes at all right I mean that's Lisa's final part I think you have to do you want us to take money from other programs because obviously who wants you to raise taxes than other programs okay it's gotta be specific so I'll just say it okay no economic vitality that's something that the Chamber of Commerce can be doing so they should I would propose we knock those guys out and then our CVB Bureau I think we could reduce them quite a bit and take the funds from both of those and

[171:01] dedicate those into for library so and both that those services could be done very well by the Chamber so that's an example but I'm not sure that yeah so and I could go even farther so and I'm happy to write something and talked about maybe what I'm saying is do we really want to pull an example unless we are all in agreement that's what we would do I'm not sure that you need a much bigger discussion but I want to make sure that on this questionnaire on this poll that this reallocation of city budget is on there and that it's not put to just other programs but other programs that could be easily privatized right we can do that it would be a mistake in my view to name the programs

[172:00] because that's your decision as a policy matter and delegating that to a poll of people that don't really understand the intricacies of the city budget is not fair to them and not fair to you but you're right Lisa that we can absolutely say one of the alternatives is to reallocate existing funding away from some programs to fund the library so my point is you know I don't want people freaking out that we're going to go after housing or social services but that are can be duplicated out in the private sector there so here's the problem there are many programs that we do that can be duplicated in the private sector that perhaps we would not want to have duplicated in the private sector so an example would be our recreation facilities we've got plenty of gyms that are private gyms in the city but nevertheless I think the council would want to keep our rec centers operational

[173:02] for folks but but they in many cities those are private sector right right but those are also community services so I don't know it's just let's get the questions back and look absolutely but I definitely want reallocation of our budget because I am not convinced we need more money we need dedicated money for the library but our priorities are skewed okay I will just know I think community vitality x' budget has gone down pretty substantially over the last couple of years there's a distinction to be made here because I had to look at the budget community vitality is different than the economic right actually I'm an economic okay I misspoke thank you for correcting me but yeah earlier this week council member Carlisle asked for information about that that we do have and we can provide that information and economic vitality has gone down economic

[174:00] vitality and under community vitality since you mentioned it is parking and parking services remember parking is a general Improvement District and so we can't really take dollars away from that and give it to somebody else we could merge transportation with parking we could we could do that I mean there right now in two different buildings they have new different heads there's all this duplication there siloing they could be a far better efficient if they were merged and I'm not that remains to be seen but that is definitely an idea that we've thought about in the past okay we good on this good and the timing on a poll when would we expect to see this again so we need to figure out about the polling up do you have ideas we have I think four different firms

[175:01] that Patrick Vaughn Kaiser Ling from communication has identified and so we'll put out an RFP that'll take us at least three weeks and I assume we can probably interview and hire somebody before the end of the year and show you something in the beginning of 2019 so that we have an opportunity to get it done before I mean conducted in February right that's exactly what I was thinking is conducted in February hopefully get the results in March which would give you the opportunity in April and May which is when we start thinking about ballot measures too make some decisions around that David I'll just note the open space Department is just embarking on a statistically valid survey in a similar way so I would check in with them we'll do that yeah and well Aaron and I are looking at that one we could just take this one I do know my question my question is a request I guess is to make sure that we

[176:03] get the opportunity to provide feedback okay I suggest there was a hotline today that had a final it's not about this and we just give a big thank you so just a question that's come up about Opportunity Zones and then there's this other program that I pointed out on the hotline which is the new markets tax credit program which affects ten census tracts within Boulder most of which around the University so I would just made the suggestion and this is just a question the council can we put questions out here that we'd like to have staff answer or follow up with hotlines

[177:00] I mean it probably would only take a few minutes but I would I think there's a appetite to move faster on this of staff he's gonna bring something back to us in December January it might be helpful for them to know what the questions council has us yeah I think it's I definitely think getting questions to staff makes sense and I think the question is do it is hotline good enough or do people want to do it orally here now that's a process question well I'm ready to ask questions I mean I don't I I don't know so I'm ready to ask some questions I mean I think some good questions have already been asked on a hotline and I think sounds like Lisi read a list and posted the nice thing about hotline two is is everyone everyone I can why don't you subscribe the communicates to see them and staff has them and you can be very clear about what your question is as opposed to I'm not prepared to ask any questions right now but I might think of something the

[178:00] next week or two yeah I'm happy to put them on hot line but I want I am very concerned because I don't fully understand what's going on here and I don't think it's been adequately explained and I'm reading different things from different journals and this this opportunity's own sound in some case pretty 10% of our whole city you know and what can they do so I mean I'll wait for my questions but I want to have this discussion sooner than later I do not want to wait till January 8 Cindy's not going to be here what about December 18th well and I put that out on the hotline well I seen you now when everybody's here because that is the next meeting where there's a little room depending on whether we on December 4th we have large homes large lots if there's anything

[179:00] that needs to happen moratorium mm-hmm would have to happen on the 18th if we're not going to do that then we have room on the 18th for this discussion so ok but I mean so do you need to even consider a moratorium for this zone for this area this is a federal program yeah and we have no control over exactly well so I mean how did it even come to us I mean waiting we've had the Boulder Valley comprehensive plan in place for 40 years that tells us what we want to do in our city and we've zoned in accordance with the Boulder Valley comp plan so people developers can't come in and just put anything they want anywhere they have to comply with our current zoning and the Boulder Valley comp plan so well they do that and we get Google I mean so it's anyway yes concerned that

[180:01] if we we continued kind of lackadaisical that nothing's going to happen in that our zoning is going to prevail everything we could get caught up short lackadaisical saying I don't know how that is why it didn't come to us originally to say yeah this is good have a discussion I mean people feel like this has been it didn't because there were hours between the time that I was told that we had to make a decision and we had to make the decision that we didn't have a council meeting right and you told me it was about the diagonal Plaza but now I have found out it's much larger than just a diagonal Plaza yes diagonal Plaza is one thing yep right it's based on census tracts and the diagonal Plaza is in a census tract that is geographically large because

[181:01] it's I guess less sparsely developed then other census tracts are so yes it is wider staff is meeting this week was the planning department to understand exactly what the molar Valley complan says about that area what the zoning is and on the 18th if we bring it back that day we will have zoning and comp plan information for you to look at and then you can make decisions at that point about whether or not you think there are areas of danger in that particular census tract so so what I am mostly concerned about is that this has is an opportunity to totally raise the property values there as they sit on the ground now which will dictate what happens to them sort of regardless of zoning the other thing that I think is really important is whether or not we as a community have the opportunity to roll this back and say to the state thank you

[182:01] very much we thought we wanted this but we have to public discussion about it after council discussion about it we are thinking differently and so that's one thing I would like to know by 18th for sure I don't know the answer to that question but then is I for this program and if we hadn't applied for the program then we wouldn't be in the consideration that correct that is true okay so that's the problem okay so I just want to point out that this is one of ten census tracts the opportunity zone is and ten census tracts are in this new markets tax credit program so I would also like to know when staff comes back did we apply for that or is that an automatic designation by the feds based on certain criteria because that I know everybody's freaked out about the opportunity zone because it defers and then eliminates capital gains taxes on long held projects however the tax credit is the tax credit and so it has exactly the

[183:00] same kind of attractor for investment if it's structured right so I want us to know about that as well if it's only for affordable housing then that's one thing but if it's for any kind of development because those are also seen as high poverty rate zones even though what they really are is mostly student housing and so I guess I think yes we're freaking about the opportunity zone but I'd like to be part of a bigger package of this other piece of federal tax incentives so we just have an idea of how they interact with each other and I have no idea whether it's just housing whether it's office what it is so housing is one thing anything else never open for so let's everybody get their questions in on hotline to staff and they're compiling information and it sounds like the xviii works for people it's that good anything else on that just when do

[184:03] we need to have the hotline questions in by it would certainly help if you had them in by the end of this week just want to point out that one of the reasons for this concern is that Long Island City had Goldman Sachs come in right before the hq2 announcement from Amazon was made and so there's so questions about are these zones actually being applied to places that are truly down-on-their-luck or they also being a places applied to places that are going to be gentrifying on their own so this level of concern is simply because Goldman for instance has seen this coming since the rules were changed whenever Congress did it earlier in the year and they've been getting set to be part of this and you know just depends on what you think about whether that's a good thing or a bad thing but

[185:02] it's a discussion I think we need to have good alright thank you everybody for that and with that we will call it a night [Music] - Parris on phones my god [Music]